FOREWORD
PERHAPS in ANTICIPATION of his approaching end, in the months immediately preceding his death René Guénon gave us some instruction regarding the handling of his work when he was gone. In letters dated August 30 and September 24, 1950, he ex-pressed, among other things, the desire that the articles he had not yet incorporated into his existing books should be collected into further volumes. 'There would only be,' he wrote,
the difficulty of knowing in what way to arrange them so as to form collections that are as coherent as possible, which at present I am quite incapable of saying myself. . . . If I had an opportunity to undertake this, which unfortunately I find increasing doubtful, I would above all prefer to put together one or two collections of articles on symbolism and perhaps also a companion volume to _Aperçus sur l'Initiation_ [published in English as Perspectives on Initiation], for it seems to me that there will soon be enough articles touching on that subject to make up a second volume.
The present work fulfills Guénon's wish, and we have chosen it to inaugurate the series of posthumous volumes because it could be more quickly reworked into its final form than the works on symbolism that Guénon originally envisaged, and also because the subject treated seemed to us to have a more immediate interest.
We must now say a few words regarding the composition of the present work. As we saw above, Guénon left no instructions regarding the distribution of the material to be published and so we had to assume that responsibility ourselves. The material we are presenting is entirely and exclusively from Guénon's pen. We have made no additions, modifications, or deletions except in those very rare cases necessitated by the presentation in one volume of isolated articles whose order of publication, often motivated by some then current circumstance, does not exactly coincide with the order that seemed to us most logical and to correspond best to the development of the author's thought. Regarding this order, we owe the reader some explanation.
In _Perspectives on Initiation_, Guénon applied himself to the task of defining the nature of initiation, which is essentially the transmission by appropriate rites of a spiritual influence intended to permit the being that is today a man to attain the spiritual state designated by the different traditions as the 'edenic state', and then to rise to the higher states of the being, and finally to obtain what can be called either 'Deliverance' or the state of 'Supreme Identity'. Guénon specified the conditions of initiation and the characteristics of the organizations entitled to transmit it, and in doing so noted on the one hand the distinction to be made between initiatic knowledge and profane culture, and on the other the no less important difference between the initiatic way and the mystical way.
The present work clarifies, completes, and illumines the above in several ways. The articles of which it is composed fall readily into four parts.
In the first part, Guénon considers the mental and psychological obstacles that may block comprehension of the initiatic point of view and the search for initiation. These are: belief in the possibility of 'popularizing' all knowledge; confusion between metaphysics and dialectics, which is its necessary and imperfect expression; fear; and concern about public opinion.
The second part clarifies and develops several very important points regarding the nature of initiation and certain of the conditions for its pursuit. In _Perspectives on Initiation_, the author had stated rather than demonstrated the necessity of an initiatic attachment. This demonstration is the aim of the first chapter of this second part, which also considers the case where the initiation is obtained outside the ordinary and normal means. The following chapter clearly differentiates the strictly spiritual influence from the psychic influence that is in a way 'clothes' it. Having made these points, Guénon then tackles a question he had previously not thought necessary to treat separately because it seemed to him to have been resolved in advance by his previous work as a whole: the necessity of a traditional exoterism for anyone aspiring to initiation. This chapter finds a natural complement in the study on 'Salvation and Deliverance', which is the metaphysical 'justification' of exoterism. Directly related to the preceding subject, chapters 9, 10, and 11 show how 'ordinary life' can be 'sacralized' in such a way as to lose all its 'profane' character and to allow the individual a continual participation in Tradition, which is one of the conditions required for passage from virtual to effective initiation. But it must be recognized that in the Western world, even among representatives of the religious spirit still existing therein, there is a tendency toward an increasingly accentuated 'secularization' of social life, which betokens a disquieting loss of vitality in the Christian tradition. It is of course not impossible for a Westerner to seek a path to initiatic realization in a foreign tradition, and chapter 12 shows under what conditions what is commonly called a 'conversion' can be considered legitimate. Nevertheless passage to a foreign tradition is acceptable only if it is independent of any concern with 'estheticism' and 'exoticism', and the author points out that there are Westerners who, because of their special psychic constitution, will never be able to cease being so, and who would do much better to remain so definitely and entirely.
However, the former must stay away from all forms of pseudo-esoterism, whether of the occultists and Theosophists, or of those perhaps more seductive fantasies which, claiming to spring from an authentic Christianity, would particularly seem to have the aim of giving an apparent satisfaction to those Christians who find they cannot be content with the current exoteric teaching (chapter 14). In chapter 15, Guénon shows the inanity of the reproach of 'intellectual pride' so often levelled in certain religious circles against esoterism. Finally, this second part ends with some further points concerning the essential differences between initiatic and mystic realization.
With respect to _Perspectives on Initiation_, the subjects treated in part three are entirely new, and mainly involve the method and different paths to initiatic realization, as well as the question of the 'spiritual master'. The chapter 'Collective Initiatic Work and Spiritual "Presence"' is particularly important for those who cling to what still subsists of craft initiation in the Western world. Here the author shows that the presence of a human Master in such organizations is not as necessary as it is in other forms of initiation.
The last and in many respects the most important part, considers certain degrees of that spiritual realization which everything preceding it aims to make more easily understandable, and, to a certain degree, more easily accessible (chapters 26 to 29). The last three chapters, finally, which are truly the key both to _Perspectives on Initiation_ and to the present book, provide a metaphysical exposition that allows an intellectual comprehension of the possibility of a total spiritual realization starting from our corporeal state, a realization that belonged by nature and function to the Divine Messengers called by the various traditions Prophet, Rasul, Bodhisattva, and Avatara.
In order to facilitate understanding of chapters 5 and 28, we thought it useful to reproduce in an appendix the texts recommended by the author relative to the Afrad and the Malāmatiyah, which designate degrees of effective initiation in Islamic esoterism.
JEAN REYOR