Here extensive excerpts from an interview given by Raymond Abellio in 1969 to review Planet More , about Rene Guenon .
By transcribing (I do not report that I made a few cuts here and there) I have no specific goal: I'm no connoisseur of Guenon's work or, even less, that of Abellio, so loath to use without precautions work against one another's ideas, well I'd show if I started bragging to distribute vouchers and bad points, so I do not drink today for comment. Say that this conversation can at least see how these two authors are both close and distant from each other. You judge.
"Forced to wear on certain judgments Guénon restrictive, I would first like to emphasize that it is in him a huge positive, which most critics also agree. When Guénon appeared to beginning of this century, the esoteric doctrines were a real jumble of confused and ill-defined concepts. He did a considerable work of purification, he defined the concepts and fixed vocabulary, and especially he has studied the convergence of different traditions and identified the basic concepts.
- It does not seem that Guénon was your "spiritual master". Which ones you have to take this critical and reserved in giving you, perhaps, a broader vision?
books are certainly not the best way to receive spiritual influence. But, in this regard, Maite Eckhart, for example, touched me infinitely more than Guénon. I never knew Guenon, I have not approached. To read it, I do not feel at home "men inside "I feel rather Meister Eckhart. Dailleurs Guenon seems to have made an especially critical "outside" of the Tradition. I do not know if he lived in a domestic and on this point I can not wear a subjective assessment. All the apparatus of scholarship which surrounds Guénon is impressive, but this is ultimately a work on Tradition and not a work of re-creation within. At least that's how I feel. I admit that the negative judgments, pronouncements polemics Guénon bother me. But even his positive contribution I do not eat as much as I want.
- How Have you discovered the works of Guénon, finds Is there anyway Rene Guenon somewhere behind your books?
I known this work indirectly, thirty years ago, through what I call my spiritual master, that is to say Stone Combas. He had digested everything there is to digest, and, somehow, I gave it all chewed. And only after that direct instruction m'eut transformed, I found myself in contact with the work of Guénon itself. Is it because I was so prepared that I have not experienced "shock"? Possible. I would still be unfair if I did not remember that I keep the memory of such works as The symbolism of the cross or multiple states of being . I came out of Marxism and I remember being struck by the caveat that Guénon was between the magnitude and exaltation. I have found the Marxist opposition to the quantity and quality, but, you know, with less force dialectic. I also remember that the geometric aspect of the presentation of the Symbolism of the Cross had seemed especially demonstrative.
I did not find this same print on replay recent text. That's where I am led to say that this is the first external criticism. The formula is of course too simple, too severe, it does not address the role of consciousness-raising that Guénon was in its time, but the symbolism remains, by his own admission, pure space. The time is absent. It is virtually insufficiently dialectical. I know that is Guenon, and for good reason, anti-evolutionary. But there is still, to conscience, a genesis of being, or, if you prefer, a genesis of consciousness. When I was asked to study by myself, much later, the symbolism of the Cross The major problem seemed to be contrary to the temporal aspect even if, at the exit, temporality must be exceeded. But the only exit. We must revive inside this rise will lead out of time. That's why I put arrows between the branches of the Cross. My essay on absolute structure is, as Symbolism of the Cross, a meditation on the cross and six directions. But I found this symbol in my own way, I am not given initially. I reconstituted by an inner experience. That is why this work is entitled test. If at the exit I can verify the consistency between my findings and the texts of tradition, great. But it gives me more than a case illustration. Guenon He does not write the tests. It exposes the Tradition, he wants and sees any data. He did not re-create from within. He emerges as a result of a buried treasure that sheds its cocoon of earth, but that appears all set up and intact. It is obvious that the esoteric able to complete this work of clearing and cleaning work must itself be lit from within to be able to recognize the quality of what it takes to light, but it is precisely the nature of this inner light and I wonder that communication and that Guenon did not help me.
- In other words, you are more confident approach to the methods of Western philosophy?
Yes and no. Should agree on what is called Western philosophy. But it is certain that as Westerners we believed to be major time of Galileo and Descartes, and that since that time, we did not want to recognize true that we have received for such our own intuition of the evidence. At this reconstruction work inside the West has spent. Hence the concept of table open in Descartes. And this need of radical phenomenology of Husserl from the things themselves. I do not think this attempt is futile. This does not mean, of course, all products of Western philosophy teaching men are or become "real." That is another problem.
- But Husserl is you think a man of "true"?
Whoever said: "Phenomenology is a Gnostic community," even if it does not refer to tradition, was certainly open to problems of the inner man.
- Can you clarify your thinking when you say that you monkeys adds most critical "outside" of traditional texts?
See the meaning of the Triad, which deals extensively Guenon. With three "elements", the triad establishes a report two terms and a relation between them. It therefore announces a dialectical process, but it does not operate completely. The dialectical process is completely operated by the proportion, or ratio of ratios (as Plato called mediation). So in fact the number Six that in this respect is fundamental. If you do not establish this fact by analyzing phenomenological, you condemn yourself to overestimate the triad and to underestimate the senary, and for example does not include the large number Six in Kabbalah ... [ AMG: I cut here, those interested in this topic n have only to refer to the paper version or (re) read Abellio ...] See for yourself what Guenon said in the Symbolism of the Cross on the trigrams and hexagrams of Fo-Hi used in the Chinese book of Y-King . Why the 64 hexagrams do they cover the entire event? You do understand that completely releasing a dialectic of proportion as usual exegesis of texts of the tradition left in the shade. By retreating into the ternary Father-Son-Holy Spirit, where the Mother and the Woman are curiously absent, Christian tradition has also deprived of the power of dialectic senary. That is the problem of Women and the feminization of the Son who has been evaded. Julius Evola's book, Metaphysics sex , which is of considerable importance but is in line Guenon, is thus led to deal with the absolute Female where I prefer to call ultimate woman, genetic concept which implies an experience.
- Guenon's position against the modern West through the dark ages and as it denounces, for example, in the Reign of Quantity then you must appear unilaterally, too negative.
Yes, because the Black Age also contains positive factors. To paraphrase Heraclitus, one could say that nothing gets by strife and necessity. The genesis of the transcendental consciousness involves a confrontation with the resistance, opacity of the world. It can be assumed that the West is the current place of greater opacity, but also by the law of polarity, for our age, that of consciousness the most qualified. The guenonian plaguing the West refer to a traditionalist ideal East, entirely theoretical and timeless, while the real Orient, not protected by its tradition, is engaged in a process entropisation that has nothing to envy that of the West. The current East actually saw it his tradition? Not less, not more, in his high places, that the West in his or her true contemplative orders Gnostics. It is clear that the teaching of tradition as conceived Guénon is of paramount importance. It is still necessary that this tradition does not solidify into an orthodoxy and literalism. Also, rebuild and revive the tradition of the interior through a cataclysmic historical experience is at least as important. In this regard, the construction of the final Western philosophy is an admirable work, and its convergence with the tradition, even if the West is not yet aware, is a major feature of the next assumption.
- What today is initiation? What is its content?
I think today is the initiation of the order of the immanence of transcendence that much. The initiation can it come from a transmission, an unbroken lineage of initiates, she is the exclusive product in the West, institutions recognized as having received the regular filing of such primordial tradition of Masonry or the Catholic Church? I do not underestimate the importance of rituals and institutions, but it is underestimated, I think he's invisible power that does not recognize the possibility of another mode of consecration. In other words, I cross a tradition re-virginisée effort by "autonomous" of the Western mind, while taking care to put the word "independent" in quotes because any part of the universal interdependence. But it is perhaps peculiar to the Western mind to assert itself first as to take better self awareness then, the crisis in the West deluge, the very conditions of his addiction and his sudden ordination.
[ AMG: ach, comment, anyway! is perhaps the most important sentence of this interview, just being in the "next". One could say that we are in this "later" in this awareness, even during the debacle driven by the Western mind . Will we have time, and we have the possibility of "re-virginiser" the real, or is it too late (and Has it always been too late?), only one Apocalypse can reproduce of virginity? - The Paris are open! ]
- Guénon saw in our time that the cons-initiation. How do you mean?
I hear so dialectic in the sense that the reaction accompanies the action. It is certain that in its material and intellectual effects visible, the current world descends into the largest multiplicity. Very well spoken black Age Tradition. But the opposite is in effect invisible to the tops of some minds. It is significant that the cons-initiation today to take primary Motor extraordinarily entropic force of Marxism Asian appellant and reaction initiation of equivalent power. And then I think the mission of the West. Ultimately, I do not see initiation as a given but as easily been the product of a drama, a passion. This drama, I do not feel, at Guenon, the presence, even latent. But here we should give voice to those who knew him intimately. The whole debate is finally on the design that is the role of genetic history, even if one considers that initiation is at the final stage, which takes you beyond the story and makes you independent "events". Oriental traditionalists have been around long history, the West has yet to live. The former are somehow custodians of tradition, the latter are obliged to win. "
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