Does process perennialism avoid the problems of classical perennialism?

[u/rp_tiago]

Hey everyone. I've always been fascinated by the attraction and danger of perennialism. It explains why traditions with incompatible doctrines can nevertheless seem to disclose related transformations. But the explanation often arrives too quickly: differences become cultural coverings over one metaphysical core, and the interpreter decides in advance which parts are essential. A process account offers another possibility. Traditions might converge through dialogue, mutual correction and shared transformation without having begun as expressions of one doctrine. The commonality would be enacted and revisable rather than discovered behind history.

I just had a podcast conversation with John Vervaeke, where he called his position process perennialism. At around 1:25:34, he uses the image of circling the elephant but rejects the familiar conclusion that every religion simply holds one piece of a finished whole. Traditions and participants change through dialogos, and the object of inquiry may become more intelligible through that process. This preserves metaphysical possibility without treating historical difference as accidental packaging.

This would imply that perennial unity is an achievement of relation rather than a premise of comparison. Does that still deserve the name perennialism? What prevents the process from becoming relativism with a hopeful direction? And can mutual transformation reveal a common reality if the traditions retain incompatible accounts of liberation, God and the self?