THE TRADITIONAL TEACHING

WE HAVE SAID THAT THE PRIMARY FUNCTION of the highest caste, the Brahmins, is the preservation and transmission of the traditional doctrine; the discharging of this office provides the real reason for the existence of such a caste, since the whole social order rests on the basis of the doctrine, outside of which it cannot hope to find those principles that alone confer stability and the power to endure. Where tradition means everything, those who act as its custodians must logically stand supreme; in other words, if the diversity of the functions necessary to the subsistence of the social organism entails a certain incompatibility between those functions, so that they require to be exercised by different individuals, all these individuals always remain essentially dependent on the custodians of the tradition, for it is only by an effective participation in the tradition that anyone is enabled to play a correspondingly effective part in the life of the community: this is the real and complete explanation of the spiritual and intellectual authority belonging to the Brahmins. At the same time, this also explains the deep and indissoluble bond that unites the disciple to his master, not only in India but throughout the East, a relationship that has no parallel in the modern West. The function of a teacher is in fact a true 'spiritual fatherhood', and that is why the ritual and symbolic act by which it is inaugurated constitutes a 'second birth' for the man who is to receive the teaching through a regular transmission. This idea of 'spiritual fatherhood' is accurately expressed by the word guru, which is the name given to a teacher by the Hindus and which also bears the secondary meaning of 'ancestor'; among the Arabs the same idea is conveyed by the word shaykh, which literally means 'elder', and serves an identical purpose. In China, the prevailing conception of 'racial solidarity' lends a slightly different flavor to the corresponding idea, so that the office of teacher becomes assimilated to that of 'elder brother', the guide and natural guardian of those who come after him in the traditional path, though he will not become an 'ancestor' until after his death; but in China, as everywhere else, the phrase 'to be born into knowledge' is in daily use.

The traditional teaching is handed down under conditions that are strictly determined by its nature: to produce its full effect, it must always be adapted to the intellectual possibilities of each man to whom it is offered, and should be graduated according to the degree of understanding reached at any given moment, and this demands, on the part of a recipient who aspires to advance still further, an unremitting personal effort to assimilate effectively the teaching imparted to him. This is a natural consequence of the way in which the doctrine is treated as a connected whole, and it is this fact that makes necessary the oral and direct teaching which nothing else can replace; indeed, in its absence, the chain of a regular and unbroken 'spiritual filiation' is bound to be broken, except in certain quite unusual cases, where continuity can be preserved by other means which it would however be too difficult to describe in a Western language for us to undertake to do so here. In any case Easterners are free from the all too common illusion of the West, which consists in believing that everything can be learned from books, with the result that memory is set up in the place of intelligence; for the Easterner, texts count as no more than 'supports', in the sense that we have so often given to that word, and their study merely furnishes the basis for an intellectual development, without ever being mistaken for that development itself; in this way, erudition is given its proper value and is placed on the lower level that normally belongs to it, as a means subordinate and accessory to true knowledge.

The Eastern way is in complete antithesis to Western methods in yet another respect: the modes of the traditional teaching, which confer on it a character not precisely 'esoteric' but rather 'initiatic', are obviously opposed to any sort of thoughtless diffusion, which is more harmful than helpful in the eyes of anyone who is not in some way or other the dupe of appearances. First of all, one may be forgiven for having doubts about the value and scope of any teaching that is distributed indiscriminately and in an identical form among the most variously endowed individuals differing widely in their aptitudes and temperament, as happens at present among all the European peoples. This system of education, surely the most imperfect of any, has been called into being through the mania for equality which has destroyed not only the true notion of hierarchy, but almost every trace of feeling for it as well; and yet, but for the utter blindness induced by the indulgence of sentimental prejudices, it would seem impossible to present people who regard 'facts' as the only standard of criticism—in accordance with the spirit of modern experimental science—with any fact more obvious than that of natural inequalities, both in the intellectual and the physical orders.

Furthermore, there is yet another reason why Easterners, who are free from the spirit of propaganda and feel no urge to spread their own conceptions at any price, are resolutely opposed to all 'popularization': the reason is that by attempting to bring down the doctrine to the level of the common mentality under the pretext of making it accessible to all, it must inevitably be distorted and denatured in the process; it is not for the doctrine to abase itself or to conform to the limited powers of understanding of the many; it is for individuals to rise, if they can, to an appreciation of the doctrine in its integral purity. This is an indispensable condition for the formation of an intellectual elite, which will take place by a natural process of selection, since each man must necessarily stop short at the degree of knowledge corresponding to his own 'mental horizon'; it also furnishes a protection against the manifold disorders brought about by the diffusion of a semi-education that is far more deadly than ignorance pure and simple; the Easterners will always be far more conscious of the drawbacks of 'compulsory education' than of its supposed benefits and, as it would seem, with ample justification.

There is considerably more that might be said about the nature of traditional teaching, which can be considered under aspects that are still more profound; but as we do not profess to have made an exhaustive survey, we will confine ourselves to these few remarks, which refer more directly to the point of view we are considering at present. The foregoing observations, it must be repeated, are valid not only for India but for the whole of the East. It might be thought that they would have found a better place in the second part of this volume, but we preferred to keep them back until this moment, thinking that they would be rendered more readily understandable by coming after what we had to say in particular about the Hindu doctrines, which offer a representative example of traditional doctrines generally. All that remains to be done now is to indicate, as briefly as possible, how the Western interpretations of these same Hindu doctrines should be assessed; in the case of some of them we have indeed already done so in almost sufficient detail, profiting by such opportunities as have arisen during the course of our study.

PART FOUR:

WESTERN INTERPRETATIONS