The Necessity of Traditional Exoterism
MANY people seem to doubt whether it is really necessary for one who aspires to initiation to attach himself first of all to a traditional form of the exoteric order and fulfill all its prescriptions; moreover, this is indicative of a state of mind peculiar to the modern West, for reasons that are no doubt numerous. We will not undertake to ascertain how much of the responsibility for this lies with the very representatives of religious exoterism, whose exclusivism too often tends to deny more or less expressly all that passes beyond their domain; but this aspect of the question is not what interests us here, for what is more astonishing is that those who consider themselves qualified for initiation should display a basically equivalent incomprehension, although here it is applied in an inverse manner. It is indeed admissible that an exoterist be ignorant of esoterism, although such ignorance does not of course justify a negation of it, but what is inadmissible is that anyone with pretensions to esoterism should ignore exoterism, even if only in a practical way, for the 'greater' must necessarily comprehend the 'lesser'. Besides, this practical ignorance, consisting as it does of regarding participation in an exoteric tradition as useless or superfluous, would not be possible without a theoretical misunderstanding of this aspect of tradition; and it is this misunderstanding that makes the matter all the more serious, for it can be asked whether someone with such a misunderstanding, whatever his other possibilities may be, is really prepared to approach the initiatic and esoteric domain,
and whether he ought not rather apply himself to better understanding the value and scope of exoterism before seeking to go further. In fact, there is manifest here an enfeeblement of the traditional spirit understood in its general sense, and it should be obvious that it is this spirit that one must first integrally restore in oneself if one wishes thereafter to penetrate the profound meaning of tradition; the misunderstanding in question is fundamentally of the same order as that concerning the efficacy proper to rites, which is also so widespread in the contemporary West. We readily admit that the profane ambience in which many live renders the comprehension of these things more difficult; but it is precisely against the influence of this ambience that they must react in every regard, until they have succeeded in realizing the illegitimacy of the profane point of view itself-a matter to which we shall shortly return.
We have said that the state of mind we are denouncing here is peculiar to the West. Indeed, it could not exist in the East, first because of the persistence of the traditional spirit there, which still penetrates the entire social milieu, [1] and then also because where exoterism and esoterism are directly linked in the constitution of a traditional form [2] in such a way as to be as it were the two faces, exterior and interior, of one and the same thing, it is immediately comprehensible to everyone that one must first adhere to the exterior in order subsequently to be able to penetrate to the interior, [3] and that there can be no other way than this. This may appear less evident in the case-which actually occurs in the contemporary West-where one finds oneself in the presence of initiatic organizations with no
link to the whole of a definite traditional form; but then we can say that, in principle at least, they are by this very fact compatible with every exoterism, whatever it may be, although from the strictly initiatic point of view, which alone concerns us here to the exclusion of a consideration of contingent circumstances, these initiatic organizations are not really compatible with the absence of any traditional exoterism.
In order to explain things in the simplest way possible let us say first that one does not build upon the void, and wholly profane existence, that is, existence from which all traditional elements are excluded, is in this respect really only void and nothingness. If one wishes to construct a building one must first lay down the foundation, which provides the indispensable base upon which the whole edifice, including its loftiest parts, will rest-and this foundation remains, even when the building is completed. In the same way, adherence to an exoterism is a preliminary condition for coming to esoterism and furthermore one must not believe that this exoterism can be rejected once initiation has been obtained, any more than the foundation can be removed once the building has been constructed. Exoterism, far from being rejected, must in reality be 'transformed' in the measure corresponding to the degree attained by the initiate, for he becomes more and more qualified to understand the profound reasons for it; and as a result the doctrinal formulas and rites take on for him a significance much more genuinely important than they could have for the mere exoterist who in the end is by definition always restricted to the exterior appearance alone, that is, to what counts least with regard to the 'truth' of the tradition envisaged in its integrality.
Then also-and this brings us back to a consideration we alluded to above-whoever does not take part in any traditional exoterism by this very fact gives the purely profane outlook the greatest conceivable scope in his own individual existence; and in these conditions he must necessarily conform all his exterior activity to this outlook. At another level and with wider consequences this is the same error as that committed by the majority of those modern Westerners who believe themselves still 'religious' but make of religion something entirely apart, having no real contact with the rest
of their lives. Such an error is moreover all the less excusable for one who wishes to place himself at the initiatic point of view than for one who keeps to the exoteric perspective; and in any case it is easily seen how far this is from corresponding to an integrally traditional conception. Basically, this amounts to admitting that outside or alongside the traditional domain there is a profane domain that is equally legitimate in its own order. Now, as we have often said before, there is really no profane realm to which some things belong by their very nature; there is only a profane point of view, which is merely the product of the spiritual degeneration of humanity, and which consequently is entirely illegitimate. In principle, then, one ought to make no concession to this point of view, but in the present Western environment this is assuredly very difficult to do in fact-and perhaps even impossible in certain cases and up to a certain point-for apart from very rare exceptions each individual is obliged by the necessity for social relationships to submit himself more or less to the conditions of 'ordinary' life, at least in appearance, which precisely is nothing other than the practical application of this profane point of view. But even if such concessions are indispensable in order to live in this environment, they should nevertheless be kept to a strict minimum by all those for whom tradition still has meaning, whereas they are on the contrary pushed to the utmost by those who claim to dispense with all exoterism, even if this is not their intention and even if they are only more or less unconsciously coming under the influence of the profane milieu. Such dispositions are certainly as unfavorable as can be to initiation, which has to do with a domain that exterior influences must normally not penetrate in any way. If, however, because of the anomalies inherent to the conditions of our age, those harboring this attitude are nonetheless able to receive a virtual initiation, we strongly doubt that it will be possible for them to go further and proceed to effective initiation so long as they voluntarily persist in this orientation.