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Studies in Hinduism consists of articles published posthumously, to
which has been added Ren Gunon's separate study, Eastern
Metaphysics, the text of a lecture delivered at the Sorbonne. In
this work Gunon completes his presentation of Hindu metaphysics,
which he considered the most primordial and comprehensive body of
spiritual teaching possessed by the human race, one capable of
throwing light upon and illuminating the essence of every other
Tradition. Of special interest are three chapters on various
aspects of tantra-a doctrine profoundly misunderstood in the
contemporary West-which Hindu authorities consider the spirituality
most appropriate to the Kali Yuga, as well as a chapter on the
sanatana dharma, the Hindu concept closest to the ancient and
medieval Christian idea of the philosophia perennis, which led St
Augustine to declare that Christianity has always existed, but only
came to be so called after the coming of Christ. Included are
extensive reviews of books on Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana Maharshi,
Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore, Mircea
Eliade, Paul Brunton, and others, as well as 40 pages of reviews of
books and articles by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Leading Indian
thinkers have called Gunon the most authentic expositor of Hindu
metaphysics in any Western language.
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Miscellanea (Hardcover)
Rene Guenon; Translated by Cecil Bethell, Henry Fohr
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R839
Discovery Miles 8 390
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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To spare readers extended research into obscure back issues of
French journals long out of print, Miscellanea gathers together for
Anglophone readers various articles by Ren Gunon, and by
'Palingenius', his pseudonym during the time of La Gnose, a journal
he founded in 1909. These articles have been divided into three
categories: Metaphysics and Cosmology, Traditional Arts and
Sciences, and Some Modern Errors. From the first chapter of part
one, 'The Demiurge', which we believe is the first text he ever
submitted for publication (in 1909, at the age of twenty-three) to
'Profane Science in Light of Traditional Doctrines', of April-May
1950, more than forty years elapsed. The breadth of the topics
covered can be seen from a sampling of chapter titles: Monotheism
and Angelology; Spirit and Intellect; Silence and Solitude; The
Empiricism of the Ancients; Gnosis and the Spiritist Schools; The
Origins of Mormonism, On the Production of Numbers; Initiation and
the Crafts; and The Arts and their Traditional Conception. In the
latter two key chapters, the author explains how initiation became
necessary in the measure that humanity receded from the 'primordial
state', presenting the reasons for the degeneration of the arts and
crafts due to the 'fall' or descending trajectory of the present
cycle; but he also points out the possibility of an initiation into
the 'lesser mysteries' based upon the craft of building which still
exists validly in the West.
Since the late nineteenth century, the Theosophical Society has
been a central force in the movement now known as the New Age. Just
as the Communist Party was considered 'old hat' by peace activists
in the '60s, so the Theosophical Society was looked upon by many in
the 'spiritual revolution' of those years as cranky, uninteresting,
and pass. But the Society, like the Party, was always there,
and-despite its relatively few members-always better organized than
anybody else. Since then, the Society's influence has certainly not
waned. It plays an important role in today's global interfaith
movement, and, since the flowering of the New Age in the '70s, has
established increasingly intimate ties with the global elites. And
its various spinoffs, such as Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Summit
Lighthouse, and Benjamin Crme's continuing attempt to lead a 'World
Teacher Maitreya' onto the global stage-just as the Society tried
to do in the last century with Krishnamurti-continue to send waves
through the sea of 'alternative' spiritualities. Gunon shows how
our popular ideas of karma and reincarnation actually owe more to
Theosophy than to Hinduism or Buddhism, provides a clear picture of
the charlatanry that was sometimes a part of the Society's modus
operandi, and gives the early history of the Society's bid for
political power, particularly its role as an agent of British
imperialism in India. It is fitting that this work should finally
appear in English just at this moment, when the influence of
pseudo-esoteric spiritualities on global politics is probably
greater than ever before in Western history.
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