Another peculiar thing is that modernists of all sorts (taking into account not those of the West alone, but also those of the East, for the latter are in any case merely ‘Westernized’), while they boast of doctrinal simplicity as representing ‘progress’ in the field of religion, often speak as if religion ought to have been made for idiots, or at least as if they supposed that the people they are speaking to must inevitably be idiots; do they really think that by asserting, rightly or wrongly, that a doctrine is simple they are suggesting to a man of the most moderate intelligence a valid reason for adopting it? This is in the end no more than a manifestation of the ‘democratic’ idea, in the light of which, as was said earlier, it is desired that science too shall be ‘within the reach of all’. It is scarcely necessary to remark that these same ‘modernists’ are always, as a necessary consequence of their attitude, the declared enemies of all esoterism, for it goes without saying that esoterism, which is by definition only the concern of an elect, cannot be simple, so that its negation appears as an obligatory first stage in all attempts at simplification. As for religion properly so called, or more generally the exterior part of any tradition, it must admittedly be such that everyone can understand something of it, according to the range of his capacity, and in that sense it is addressed to all; but this does not mean that it must therefore be reduced to such a minimum that the most ignorant (this word not being used with reference to profane instruction, which has no importance here) or the least intelligent can grasp it: quite to the contrary, there must be in it something that is so to speak at the level of the possibilities of every individual, however exalted they may be, for thus alone can it furnish an appropriate ‘support’ to the interior aspect which, in any unmutilated tradition, is its necessary complement and belongs wholly to the initiatic order. But the modernists, in specifically rejecting esoterism and initiation, thereby deny that religious doctrines contain in themselves any profound significance; thus it is that, in their pretension to ‘spiritualize’ religion, they fall into its opposite, the narrowest and crudest ‘literalism’, in which the spirit is most completely lacking, thus affording a striking example of the fact that what Pascal said is often all too true — ‘He who tries to play the angel plays the beast.’
But that is not quite all that need be said about ‘primitive simplicity’, for there is at any rate one sense in which that expression can find a realistic application, and that is when the indistinction of ‘chaos’ is in question, for ‘chaos’ is in a way ‘primitive’ since it is ‘in the beginning’; but it is not there by itself, since all manifestation necessarily presupposes simultaneously and correlatively both essence and substance, and ‘chaos’ only represents its substantial base. If that were what the partisans of ‘primitive simplicity’ meant there would be no need to disagree with them, for the tendency to simplification would reach its end-point in precisely that indistinction, if it could be realized up to the limit of its ultimate consequences; but it is necessary to point out that this ultimate simplicity, being beneath manifestation and not in it, would in no way correspond to a true ‘return to origins’. In this connection and in order to resolve an apparent antinomy, a clear distinction must be made between the two points of view, which are respectively related to the two poles of existence: when it is said that the formation of the world started from ‘chaos’, then the point of view is solely the substantial, and the beginning must then be regarded as timeless, for obviously time does not exist in ‘chaos’ but only in the ‘cosmos’, so that if the order of development of manifestation is being taken into account (that order being reflected in the domain of corporeal existence, by virtue of the conditions which define that existence, as an order of temporal succession), the starting-point must not be the substantial pole, but the essential pole, the manifestation of which, in conformity with cyclic laws, takes the form of a continuous recession, or of a descent toward the substantial pole. The ‘creation’, inasmuch as it is a resolution of ‘chaos’, is in a sense ‘instantaneous’ and is properly the biblical Fiat Lux; but it is the primordial Light itself that is really the origination of the ‘cosmos’, and this Light is the ‘pure spirit’ in which are the essences of all things; such being its beginning, the manifested world cannot possibly do otherwise than move in a downward direction, getting ever nearer and nearer to ‘materiality’.
12
The Hatred of Secrecy
A point that has only been touched on incidentally in earlier chapters must now be elaborated. It is what may be called the tendency to ‘popularization’ (this word being another of those that are particularly significant as pointers to the nature of the modern mentality), in other words, the pretension to put everything ‘within the reach of all’, to which attention has already been drawn as being a consequence of ‘democratic’ conceptions, and that amounts in the end to a desire to bring all knowledge down to the level of the lowest intelligences. It would be only too easy to point out the multiple ineptitudes that result, generally speaking, from the ill-considered diffusion of an instruction that is claimed to be equally distributed to all, in identical form and by identical methods; this can only end, as has already been said, in a sort of leveling down to the lowest — here as elsewhere quality being sacrificed to quantity. It is no less true to say that the profane instruction in question has nothing to do with any kind of knowledge in the true sense of the word, and that it contains nothing that is in the least degree profound; but, apart from its insignificance and its ineffectuality, what makes it really pernicious is above all the fact that it contrives to be taken for what it is not, that it tends to deny everything that surpasses it, and so smothers all possibilities belonging to a higher domain; it even seems probable that it is contrived specially for that purpose, for modern ‘uniformization’ necessarily implies a hatred of all superiority.
A still more surprising thing is that some people these days think that they can expound traditional doctrines by adopting profane instruction itself as a sort of model, without taking the least account of the nature of traditional doctrines and of the essential differences that exist between them and everything that is today called by the names of ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’, from which they are separated by a real abyss; in so doing they must of necessity distort these doctrines completely by over-simplification and by only allowing the most superficial meaning to appear, for otherwise their pretensions must remain completely unjustified. In any case, by such means the modern spirit penetrates right into what is most opposed to it, radically and by definition; and it is not difficult to appreciate the dissolving effect of the results, though those who make themselves the instruments of this kind of penetration may not grasp their nature, and often act in good faith and with no clear intention. The decadence of religious doctrine in the West and the corresponding total loss of esoterism show well enough what may happen in the end if that way of looking at things were one day to become general even in the East as well; the danger is so serious that it must be clearly pointed out while there is yet time.
Most incredible of all is the main argument put forward in justification of their attitude by this new variety of ‘propagandist’. One of them recently wrote to the effect that, while it is true that restrictions were formerly applied to the diffusion of certain sorts of knowledge, there is no longer any reason to observe them nowadays, because (the phrase that follows must be quoted word for word so that no suspicion of exaggeration can arise) ‘the general level of culture has been raised, and the spirit of man has been made ready to receive the integral teaching.’ Here may be seen as clearly as possible the confusion between traditional teaching and profane instruction, the latter being described by the word ‘culture’, which has become one of its most frequent designations in our day; but ‘culture’ is something that has not the remotest connection with traditional teaching or with the aptitude for receiving it, and what is more, since the so-called raising of the ‘general level’ has as its inevitable counterpart the disappearance of the intellectual elect, it can be said that ‘culture’ represents the exact opposite of a preparation for traditional teaching. There is good reason to wonder how a Hindu (for it is a Hindu who was quoted above) can be completely ignorant of our present position in the Kali-Yuga, and can go so far as to say that ‘the time has come when the whole system of the Vedānta can be set forth to the public,’ for the most elementary knowledge of cyclic laws compels the conclusion that the time is less favorable than it ever was. It has never been possible to place the Vedānta ‘within the reach of the common man’, for whom incidentally it was never intended, and it is all the more certainly not possible today, for it is obvious enough that the ‘common man’ has never been more totally uncomprehending. And finally, the truth is that everything that represents traditional knowledge of a really profound order, and therefore corresponds to what must be meant by ‘integral teaching’ (for if those words have really any meaning, initiatic teaching properly so called must be comprised in it), becomes more and more difficult of access, and becomes so everywhere; in face of the invasion of the modern and profane spirit it is clear that things could not be otherwise; how then can anyone be so far unaware of reality as to assert the very opposite, and as calmly as if he were enunciating the least contestable of truths?