Questions in the Air

The questions you raise appear to be “in the air” at the moment, prompted in part by this recent post of mine.

I’ve had two other inquiries besides your own in just the last week or so on more or less the same subjects: why Guénon, Schuon, and other Traditionalist authors regard the Eastern religions, notably Hinduism, as “off limits” (your phrase) for Western seekers; and why these same authors insist so strongly on membership in a revealed (exoteric) tradition. Are there no exceptions to these rules?

These are profoundly important questions. Rather than trying simply to answer them myself, I decided to share them with some learned friends, each of whom was kind enough to write back with a variety of helpful insights. I’ve compiled, conflated, and condensed these friends’ observations, taking certain of their formulations whole cloth while adding occasional clarifications, elaborations, and examples of my own. I’m going to present the results in four subsequent posts on this weblog:

“Why Can’t I Be Hindu Too?“, “Why Can’t I Just Go It Alone?“, “Discerning the West“, and “Facing Up To the Truly Difficult“. The first two of these are intended to answer two different (though related) questions, included at the start of the respective posts; the second two are intended to answer a single, multifaceted query, quoted in full at the start of both the third and fourth posts.