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Cologero asked me to provide the letter of explanation, despite my reluctance and against my better judgment. I detest any public persona as my work is better accomplished on a different plane of existence. Nevertheless, I am the ultimate authority for Gornahoor, which he operates at my pleasure. Thus, the moment has come to make things clear, not that they haven’t been for those able to understand.<\/p>\n
Many years ago, Cologero was studying philosophy, particularly thinkers of the Right. He encountered Leo Strauss<\/strong>, whom he read avidly. This meeting of the minds taught him to revere the classical world. It also taught him how to read a philosopher, even those he disagreed with, since, as Nietzsche points out, the false ideas of a great thinker are of more value than the truisms of a mediocre mind. Most importantly, though, he learned to read esoterically. That is, he learned to discern the state of mind of the author behind the text. The text always holds something back and a good author often has sound reasons to leave something for his readers to discern on his own. I encouraged Cologero to apply this way of reading to the medieval thinkers; the results of this sort of analysis are there to see.<\/p>\n Strauss made the interesting point that a great philosopher, or a man who can think things down to their depths, rarely appears. He then claimed that Martin Heidegger<\/strong> was the only philosopher of the 20th century. Needless to say, given Heidegger’s well-known sympathy for National Socialism this was rather disconcerting for a Jew to admit. Strauss then made a prediction that engaged Cologero’s mind. He speculated that the next great world philosopher might be Asian. That is when Cologero came to me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His knowledge of Eastern thought was limited to the pop Vedanta all too common among his generation. I led him to authors who were able to bridge Eastern and Western thought, especially Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan<\/strong>, Rene Guenon<\/strong> and Ananda Coomsaraswamy<\/strong>. In particular I asked him to read The Central Philosophy of Buddhism<\/cite> by T R V Murti<\/strong> which provides both the material and the mission for Gornahoor. So that it would not remain a mere intellectual task, I encouraged him to take refuge in the Buddha and to practice Tantra and Zen meditation. He then underwent initiation with a Tibetan lama from Boston. I will conclude this with some quotes from Murti; this will make the mission perfectly clear. Our goal is to awaken in some young philosopher the desire to take the Madhyamika<\/em> and apply it to the dominant tradition in the West, just as it had absorbed Greek metaphysics. Evola claimed that Catholicism went only halfway. This move will bring it deeper into the metaphysics of a teaching more ancient and developed than that of the Greeks. First of all, an elite must arise and become conscious of itself. Murti writes:<\/p>\n \nIn the last resort, there must be some considerable body of men who cannot be compelled to behave by external pressure, but who are intrinsically convinced of the worthlessness of material goods. They should have transcended the instinct of possession and must have risen above class and property, like the guardians of state in Plato’s Republic<\/cite>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The West has lost the spiritual unity of Christendom and the results of that loss are plain to see, even among those who remain blind to its cause. It is unlikely to be recovered without the conscious efforts of an elite who can bring in higher spiritual values. Murti makes this suggestion.<\/p>\n Only the spiritual can provide the basis for the society and can be conducive to the realisation of other values. In this regard, Mahayana absolutism and the Advaita Vedanta are valuable as providing the basis on which a world-culture can be built. It is only absolutism that can make for the fundamental unity of existence and at the same time allow differences. … The Vedanta is traditional in outlook and is bound to the authority of the Veda and perhaps it presupposes a specific milieu in which alone it can thrive. The Mahayana is quite liberal and it has proved its capacity to accommodate itself to various religious and social structures, to revitalise and absorb them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Unfortunately, this is all too easily misunderstood as a call to take on the outer trappings of Buddhism rather than the spiritual regeneration it is encouraging. The net effect is not spiritual unity, but a further division, as Westerners then come to loathe their own Sacred Tradition. They create Strife rather than Love, as your Empedocles<\/strong> put it. Murti then offers some quotes from Radhakrishan, but what he writes about Guenon is more pertinent to Gornahoor readers.<\/p>\n To take an example for the West, M. Guenon has made a commendable effort to interpret the true spirit of Hindu culture to the West in his many works. The form of regeneration consists, for M. Guenon, not in a fusion of synthesis of the two cultures, but in the West regaining, as the result of a dynamic turn in its present trend, those springs of true spirituality through the help of the East.<\/em> It would be hazardous to forecast the time of the change or the precise manner in which it would be brought about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But we can specify the general manner. It will not be from a philosophy of the academic type that everyone will miraculously accept. No, there must be a gnosis, an experiential knowing, that transcends words and thoughts. This the Madhyamika makes clear: it is not a matter of debate, dialectics or persuasion. That is why Cologero emphasizes the spiritual exercises so much. Spiritual unity will come, as he points out, from the depths, not from superficial and merely verbal agreement. Murti explains:<\/p>\n What we need is the realisation of the spiritual which is the bedrock of all our endeavour. Only mystical religion, which eminently combines the unity of Ultimate Being with the freedom of different paths for realising it, can hope to unite the world. The student of philosophy can only suggest that the Madhyamika Absolutism can serve as the basis for a possible world culture. It is not his province to show how best this could be implemented, what practical shape this would assume and at which point and time in the affairs of the world this could be introduced. These are questions which the religious reformer might answer, and even he has to depend upon the spiritual guidance and direction from above.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Murti concludes with a warning against scholars and professors, although he himself is one. The regeneration won’t come from them as even Murti is too irenic and sanguine. He writes:<\/p>\n We must end with a note of warning. It is possible, in our enthusiasm, to overrate the part played by scholarship and the theoretical understanding of things in the task of regeneration. It is good to remember that history does not record of a single instance of a spiritual revolution of global dimensions brought out by a band of scholars or skillful thinkers. The malady of the world is far too universal and deep-seated for remedies to be prescribed direct from books. A spiritual genius of the order of Buddha<\/strong> or Christ<\/strong> alone knows how to strike at the thing. But even a theoretic understanding of the Madhyamika absolutism should prove of value by way of preparing the background for the spiritual regeneration of the world<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No, it is the man of vision, the man of action, who understands and engages in the greater and lesser battles who will bring it about. The world is not awaiting a new theory, since there is nothing new under the sun. By overemphasizing unity, Murti betrays his own theory. There is neither unity nor conflict, there is both unity and conflict, there is no unity but there is conflict, there is unity but no conflict: this cannot be resolved by thought alone, but rather by action, that is, bringing the potential into act, non-being into being, making the unreal, real. Ideas have no existence on their own, but take on life in the mind of a conscious being. So we await not a new system, but a man, or rather the coming of a man-god. Only a god can save you now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" it is the man of vision, the man of action, who understands and engages in the greater and lesser battles who will bring it about. The world is not awaiting a new theory, since there is nothing new under the sun. Continue reading