{"id":5629,"date":"2013-01-15T23:38:13","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T04:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=5629"},"modified":"2021-01-15T03:56:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T08:56:31","slug":"year-in-review-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=5629","title":{"rendered":"Year in Review Continued"},"content":{"rendered":"

The direction in which we may find awakening and liberation, the direction of liberation, is vertical and has nothing to do with the course of history. ~ Julius Evola<\/strong>, The Doctrine of Awakening<\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rather than respond to comments, I\u2019ll address several issues here. As I\u2019ve indicated several times, our goal at Gornahoor has been to prepare an intellectual elite. Over time, the audience has changed quite a bit to the point where there is now more of a common mind or at least a general agreement of principles. In post 1001, I will reveal everything.<\/p>\n

The end of my involvement in Gornahoor is not necessarily the end of Gornahoor. As more writers become involved, it will develop a different identity. It could take some time, perhaps generations, for the elite to become effective; after all, the time of preparation began some 90 years ago. Some readers think I have the alchemical skill to translate spiritual ideas to the written text and they have benefited from it. That was the intent: to clear away false ideas to get to the core of Tradition. Once certain principles are understood, the ensuing choice and commitment becomes clear and necessary.<\/p>\n

Ideally, there should be 100 new blogs bringing Tradition to the various walks of life, professions, arts, and crafts. So, I am not predicting an end, but rather a beginning.<\/p>\n

Buddhism<\/h2>\n

Readers must take care in what they read and not jump to conclusions that do not follow. I try to be precise. Furthermore, texts must be understood in the light of other texts. Reading in this manner is difficult; however, writing in such a way is even more difficult. I hope I have not failed completely. For example, I wrote:<\/p>\n

\nI myself have been initiated into Mahayana Buddhism, since that option was available to me.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given what we have written about initiation and conversion, particularly in the case of Guenon, who can conclude from this that I am a Buddhist? It is obvious that Guenon and Evola have put great stock into the idea of \u201cinitiation\u201d; as the correspondence show, Evola pestered Guenon with that question even 25 years after their first exchange of letters. So I, too, took it quite seriously. I also took seriously Guenon\u2019s claim in the King of the World that the \u2018lost word\u2019 would be found among the sages of Tibet.<\/p>\n

Hence, I studied everything Tibetan, including occultists like Blavatsky, Nicholas Roerich, even Alice Bailey who claimed a Tibetan connection. I took the sangha vows and a few initiations from various Tibetan Lamas. Now that settled the problem of initiation for me so I could continue my studies of Tradition knowing I was an initiate. Was that necessary? Readers can decide for themselves. As for myself, I have been thinking lately \u201cno\u201d. On the other hand, maybe personal instruction in forms of meditation and hearing doctrine from initiates really has made an effective difference in understanding; that can\u2019t be ruled out. In retrospect, it did lead to a change of direction in my life. However, I don\u2019t recommend this for all, especially those who have returned to the Western Tradition since they would have to confess that apostasy.<\/p>\n

In any case, that did not make me a Buddhist; just an initiate in a valid Tradition. I left when I realized that my purposes had been served. In any case, Buddhism in America is in a sorry state. For example, I received a booklet about my dharma vows, in which there is a general prohibition against oral, anal, and masturbatory sex. Since a large number of American Buddhists are ex-Catholics who have told me they have moved beyond that, these prohibitions are mostly ignored. Even more curiously, a minor transgression against the vows can be repaired with a personal prayer, but a more serious one requires the retaking of the vows with a lama. This is identical to the Catholic distinction between venial and mortal sins.<\/p>\n

What I liked about Tibet was that it was the last of the patriarchal theocratic societies, so it is still a good model. Unfortunately, no one else was interested in that sort of Tradition. Apparently, the Dalai Lama himself is thoroughly Westernized, despite his reactionary past if anything on the Internet about him can be believed. A blessing did come my way, from a Jewish convert to Buddhism who had a PhD in medieval history. She convinced me that the Medieval era was much more than the \u201cDark Ages\u201d, which gradually altered my view of that time. More detailed study led me to my current understanding.<\/p>\n

As for the question about the Doctrine of Awakening<\/cite>, Buddhism has become a \u201cdevotional faith\u201d by Aryan westerners. I oppose \u201clarge\u201d judgments about movements that evolve over the centuries involving hundreds of millions of people. They give the impression of erudition while lacking all content. You can judge the Doctrine of Awakening<\/cite> by how well Evola extracts the various inner states of Buddhist practices. He does that well through his quotes and organization of key ideas. Nevertheless, that is merely academic exercise without making the efforts of actually achieving those states. They do not arise, I can assure you, from reading about them.<\/p>\n

Priests and Kings Redux<\/h2>\n

To return to this tedious theme once again, despite the many times it has come up, no one ever addresses anything specific in those posts. In the first edition of Revolt against the Modern World<\/cite>, Evola quoted a text from the Aitareya Brahmana<\/cite> and claimed that the King was the Sun and the Priest the Moon. Coomaraswamy, a Sanskrit scholar, pointed out Evola\u2019s error in a review. The text really said the exact opposite; the Priest recited the bridal vow that an Indian groom makes to his bride. That is the proper relationship between the Priest, as the Sun, and the King as the Moon. Evola pulled that reference from future editions of Revolt, but never changed his thesis. Draw your own conclusions about hiding contrary evidence. From now on, any comments on this issue will have to address that specific text from the Brahmana.<\/p>\n

From a metaphysical point of view, it makes sense. The Priest is the link between the physical and the transcendent, i.e., the vertical. The King acts horizontally, although accepting the advice and the counsel of his priests. The vertical is Purusha, the unchanging, the masculine. Action is Prakriti; even in Tantra, Shakti is the feminine principle of action. To twist this to mean something else is a waste of intellectual capital. Together, the vertical and the horizontal form the sign of the cross, the sign of Triumph.<\/p>\n

The Western Tradition<\/h2>\n

So this brings us to the self-loathing that marks certain segments of the counter-Tradition in the West. They look everywhere for Tradition except for where it is. For us, that is the pre-schism Church, uniting the East and the West horizontally as well as the connection to the best of pagan Greece and Rome. We also need to mention the contribution of the Celts and the Franks to this synthesis.<\/p>\n

This includes an esoteric Tradition that has been poorly preserved and also the Hermetic tradition that is also preserved and developed. Note that this is not the same as so-called \u201cTraditional\u201d elements in churches today, since they are usually suspicious of anything called esoteric, perennial, or Hermetic. Nevertheless, the esoteric teachings are not intended to replace the exoteric teachings; rather they are reserved for the few who interest themselves in such things.<\/p>\n

In modern times, we have mentioned a particular trend that shows the initiation still exists in the West, as Guenon suspected. The Russian esoterist G. O. Mebes<\/strong> initiated both Valentin Tomberg<\/strong> and Mouni Sadhu<\/strong>. We have mentioned less about the latter. Sadhu was actually a Polish Catholic who lived in Ramana Maharshi<\/strong>\u2019s ashram for a time before settling in Australia. Based on his own experiences and studies, he claims that the highest teachings of the West were not less than those of the East. He published several useful books of exercises on concentration, meditation, theurgy, and control of the mind. Some may find them helpful.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, you are all on your own, some doing better than others.<\/p>\n

\n

15 Jan 2021: Correction. Tomberg was not initiated by Mebes, but was in direct contact with some of his students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The direction in which we may find awakening and liberation, the direction of liberation, is vertical and has nothing to do with the course of history. ~ Julius Evola, The Doctrine of Awakening Rather than respond to comments, I\u2019ll address several issues here. As I\u2019ve indicated several times, our goal … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[847,846],"class_list":["post-5629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-g-o-mebes","tag-mouni-sadhu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5629"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13703,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5629\/revisions\/13703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}