The term “exoterism” designates three different orders: firstly, a system of symbols and means; secondly, a way; and thirdly, a mentality. The first category embraces dogmas and rites, then legal, moral and other prescriptions, and liturgy in the widest sense; the second embraces the general religious practices, those which are incumbent upon all; and the third category comprises the psychism corresponding to a particular religious climate, thus all the manifestations of sentimentality and imagination determined by a particular religion, a particular piety and particular social conventions. In other words, it is important to distinguish the following aspects in exoterism: the formal system, which offers symbols and means; the exoteric way, which is based exclusively upon this system; the exoteric mentality, which is formalistic, voluntaristic and individualistic, and which adds all kinds of restrictive sentimentalities to the simple forms. These are three altogether different meanings of the term “exoterism”: according to the first, the religious Law is necessary and venerable, and it becomes a constitutive element of esoterism; according to the second meaning, the Law is different from esoterism without necessarily excluding certain elements of the latter; according to the third meaning, there is an antinomy between the “outward” and the “inward,” or between the “letter” and the “spirit.” It is of the highest importance not to confuse these three levels; in particular, not to lose sight of the fact that the first – Dogma and Law – is available to esoterism as regards both interpretation and practice. [GTUFS: FaceA, The Ambiguity of Exoterism]
Exoterism transmits aspects or fragments of metaphysical truth – which is nothing other than the whole truth – whether about God, about the universe or about man. In man it chiefly envisages the passional and social individual; in the universe it discerns only what affects that individual; in God it hardly sees anything more than what has to do with the world, creation, man and his salvation. Consequently – and at the risk of repetition, this must be emphasized – exoterism takes no account either of the pure Intellect, which transcends the human plane and opens out onto the divine, or of pre-human and post-human cycles, or of Beyond-Being which is beyond all relativity and thus also beyond all distinctions. Such a perspective is comparable to a skylight, which gives the sky a certain form, round or square perhaps; through this the view of the sky is fragmentary, though it certainly does not prevent the sky from filling the room with light and life. [GTUFS: UIslam, The Path]
Every exoteric perspective claims, by definition, to be the only true and legitimate one. This is because the exoteric point of view, being concerned only with an individual interest, namely, salvation, has no advantage to gain from knowledge of the truth of other religious forms. Being uninterested as to its own deepest truth, it is even less interested in the truth of other religions, or rather it denies this truth, since the idea of a plurality of religious forms might be prejudicial to the exclusive pursuit of individual salvation. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, The Limitations of Exoterism]
The exoteric point of view is fundamentally the point of view of individual interest considered in its highest sense, that is to say, extended to cover the whole cycle of existence of the individual and not limited solely to terrestrial life. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, The Limitations of Exoterism]
The exoteric claim to the exclusive possession of the truth comes up against the axiomatic objection that there is no such thing in existence as a unique fact, for the simple reason that it is strictly impossible that such a fact should exist, unicity alone being unique and no fact being unicity; it is this that is ignored by the ideology of the “believers,” which is fundamentally nothing but an intentional and interested confusion between the formal and the universal. The ideas that are affirmed in one religious form (as, for example, the idea of the Word or of the Divine Unity) cannot fail to be affirmed, in one way of another, in all other religious forms; similarly the means of grace or of spiritual realization at the disposal of one priestly order cannot but possess their equivalent elsewhere; and indeed, the more important and indispensable any particular means of grace may be, the more certain is it that it will be found in all the orthodox forms in a mode appropriate to the environment in question. The foregoing can be summed up in the following formula: pure and absolute Truth can only be found beyond all its possible expressions; these expressions, as such, cannot claim the attributes of this Truth; their relative remoteness from it is expressed by their differentiation and multiplicity, by which they are strictly limited. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, The Limitations of Exoterism]
In a certain respect, each religion is in the right versus the others, failing which any exoterism would be nothing but a snare; but precisely, exoterism is by definition unable of being conscious of the relationship which, at one and the same time, justifies it and yet limits it. [GTUFS: TreasuresB, Cosmological and Eschatological Viewpoints]

Exoterism / Esoterism: To speak of exoterism is to speak also of esoterism, and this means that the statements of the former are the symbols of the latter. [GTUFS: UIslam, The Path]
The exoteric point of view is fundamentally the point of view of individual interest considered in its highest sense, that is to say, extended to cover the whole cycle of existence of the individual and not limited solely to terrestrial life. Exoteric truth is limited by definition, by reason of the very limitation of the end it sets itself, without this restriction, however, affecting the esoteric interpretation of which that same truth is susceptible thanks to the universality of its symbolism, or rather, first and foremost, thanks to the twofold nature, inward and outward, of Revelation itself; whence it follows that a dogma is both a limited idea and an unlimited symbol at one and the same time. To give an example, we may say that the dogma of the unicity of the Church of God must exclude a truth such as that of the validity of other orthodox religious forms, because the idea of religious universality is of no particular usefulness for the purpose of salvation and may even exert a prejudicial effect on it, since, in the case of persons not possessing the capacity to rise above an individual standpoint, this idea would almost inevitably result in religious indifference and hence in the neglect of those religious duties the accomplishment of which is precisely the principal condition of salvation. On the other hand, this same idea of religious universality – an idea that is more or less indispensable to the way of total and disinterested Truth – is nonetheless included symbolically and metaphysically in the dogmatic or theological definition of the Church or of the Mystical Body of Christ; or again, to use the language of the other two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, we may find in the respective conceptions of the “Chosen People,” Yisra’el, and “submission,” Al-Islam, a dogmatic symbol of the idea of universal orthodoxy, the Sanatana Dharma of the Hindus. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, The Limitations of Exoterism]
The exoteric aspect of a religion is thus a providential disposition that, far from being blameworthy, is necessary in view of the fact that the esoteric way can only concern a minority, especially under the present conditions of terrestrial humanity. What is blameworthy is not the existence of exoterism, but rather its all-invading autocracy – due primarily perhaps, in the Christian world, to the narrow precision of the Latin mind – which causes many of those who would be qualified for the way of pure Knowledge not only to stop short at the outward aspect of the religion, but even to reject entirely an esoterism that they know only through a veil of prejudice and deformation, unless indeed, not finding anything in exoterism to satisfy their intelligence, they be caused to stray into false and artificial doctrines in an attempt to find something that exoterism does not offer them, and even takes it upon itself to prohibit. The exoteric viewpoint is, in fact, doomed to end by negating itself once it is no longer vivified by the presence within it of the esoterism of which it is both the outward radiation and the veil. So it is that religion, according to the measure in which it denies metaphysical and initiatory realities and becomes crystallized in a literalistic dogmatism, inevitably engenders unbelief; the atrophy that overtakes dogmas when they are deprived of their internal dimension recoils upon them from the outside, in the form of heretical and atheistic negations. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, The Limitations of Exoterism]
Now, if one proceeds from the idea that exoterists do not understand esoterism and that they have in fact a right not to understand it or even to consider it nonexistent, one must also recognize their right to condemn certain manifestations of esoterism that seem to encroach on their own territory and cause “offence,” to use the Gospel   expression; but how is one to explain the fact that in most, if not all, cases of this nature, the accusers divest themselves of this right by the iniquitous manner in which they proceed? It is certainly not their more or less natural incomprehension, nor the defence of their genuine right, but solely the perfidiousness of the means that they employ that constitutes what amounts to a “sin against the Holy Ghost”; this perfidiousness proves, moreover, that the accusations that they find it necessary to formulate, generally serve only as a pretext for gratifying an instinctive hatred of everything that seems to threaten their superficial equilibrium, which is really only a form of individualism, therefore of ignorance. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, The Limitations of Exoterism]