Reading the Indianist Alain Daniélou has always delighted me. I keep coming back to it. Here he introduces us to the Rishis, or Seers who appear regularly. Their teaching is dated, localized, perfectly adapted to a people, to circumstances, to a time.
When times change, when circumstances are different and the forgotten past, the same teaching will have lost its relevance and usefulness. In some cases, it can even become dangerous if it is repeated verbatim, without intelligence, without openness.
Who are these Rishis in the Indian tradition? Inspired seers, guides of a people, beacons of an era? “Certain aspects of the physical or metaphysical world are revealed to men at specific times in the maturity of the human species. These revelations are the work of the Seers, the Rishis, who are intermediaries, mediums endowed with a perception of higher levels of creation. Some are subtle beings, others are embodied beings.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985
Great Discoveries
“New seers may appear throughout the cycles to ensure the maintenance of tradition and the timely discovery by man of the secrets of the nature of the world.
Great discoveries are always inspired, programmed.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985 By whom? Rubbed up against Hindu polytheism, Daniélou will answer: by the Gods. always the impression that there is another pilot on the plane. That I am no longer in control. I no longer act, I am acting. Puppet, I spin and don’t worry about it.
Obedience is the sacred rule of a channel medium. Humility, its indispensable corollary. Acceptance, resulting from their union.
Not to me, but to the glory of the Living One who will never die.
“The teaching of the Rishi is a living thing which enables the species to fulfill its role at the various stages of its evolution. It can only be transmitted through initiation through qualified individuals. The fixation in scriptures of visions , Seers’ perceptions present serious risks. The sacred book, valid for all times, is a fiction.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985
Dark Age
To transmit this inspired knowledge, Daniélou celebrates oral speech and underlines the dangers of writing. “Writing is an urban phenomenon, characteristic of Kali Yuga. The fixation of the teachings of” prophets “in books considered sacred paralyzes the spirit of seeking, fixes so-called established truths, and tends to oppose blind belief to seeking of knowledge.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985
It is Daniélou who underlines. When I read these lines in 1985, I was first startled. How does this author dare to criticize the written word? I who read everything that came to hand, I found it difficult to conceive that my first source of pleasure and knowledge could present dangers. My training as a philosopher had preached the contrary to me extensively. I had to detox.
The oral represents life, the vital momentum, moving and relevant like energy, powerful like intention, always in perfect harmony with the times. Writing, for its part, freezes and sclerosis, paralysis and ankylosis. It imposes a doxa, a diktat, a direction that risks no longer being correctly interpreted when customs have evolved.
I have always considered that each generation should rewrite the holy books, which is why I offered you my translation of a hexagram of I Ching, of a Greek text entitled The gift of Isis, and of Decalogue, with its self-commentary in voice over. Are the ways of God impenetrable? Not all. Some let it go.
“The nature of knowledge is to evolve. Like other aspects of the human being, it experiences periods of progress and decline.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985 At the moment, the decline is in full swing. True knowledge is masked by a false science, also the daughter of Kali Yuga, which has faith only in the written, the admitted, the forbidden and the reproducible. Any signs of death.
“The fixation in the scriptures of the visions, of the perceptions of the Seers presents serious risks. The sacred book, valid for all times, is a fiction.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985
Hence the idea that came to me to mark the sacred books with an expiry date. I see it from here. This book is valid until xxx. After this date, reading it may harm your psychic, mental or spiritual integrity. But faced with the skepticism of the Pope, the Grand Mufti, the Grand Rabbi, the Grand Ulema, the Grand Khan, the Dalai Lama, the Principal Demon, the Chief Lame Deer, Patate the Tramp and other Peacocks of the time,as Sufis say I abandoned the project.
It takes courage to fight alone against the howling pack of ignorant people and wolves. Since the days of writing bullshit, writing should have devalued itself. But that didn’t happen. It was counting without the Kali Yug ‘who destroys everything, dirties everything, everything stupefies. More than ever, the print credo shapes fragile heads. As long as it’s written, it’s true. How many times have I heard this untruth? If it is written, if it is printed, there is a good chance that it is an untruth, at least a misunderstood.
A sign of decline, writing is self-incense and awards chocolate medals to supporters of the system. Tradition is no longer taught, or if it is, it is too often by ignorant people who denature, deform and devalue it. The aberration is thus gaining ground with each new generation.
“Writing made it possible to replace the teachings of the Seers with the concept of religious or social reformers. Presented as inspired prophets, they gave birth to the religions of the book which characterize the Kali Yuga.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985
Now that he has warmed up, friend Daniélou reveals the depths of his thoughts. Books are a counter-education, in the sense that René Guénon speaks of a counter-initiation. These are the fads of Kali Yug.
“The superstition of the written word is an obstacle to the development of knowledge in the field of scientific or religious knowledge. Book religions have been one of the most effective instruments of the decadence of men during Kali Yuga and have been used by urban oligarchies, religious or secular, as an instrument of domination.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985
Urban civilization … I admire Daniélou’s stubbornness to designate the Western way of life in this way. It’s fairer, because globalization has reshuffled the cards. All over the world, two ways of life clash, two clans diverge: the rural and the urban. Yet in some parts of the world the two clans are mistaken. The print credo is the perfect illustration of this.
“To take the texts called Veda, Bible or Koran for an expression of reality or divine will is childish and dangerous. It is part of anti-religion which brings the concept of the divine down to the human scale.” (source)Alain Daniélou, La Fantaisie des dieux et l’aventure humaine, éd. du Rocher, 1985
Teilhard de Chardin has written sublime pages on this fundamental question. He believes that God is motionless, eternally stable, and that humanity evolves around him in an upward spiral.
Each age therefore perceives a different aspect of God. On this account, it is dangerous to rely on old truths, if one does not have the existential certainty that these truths still work.
Only what is fantastic is likely to be true. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
Nothing is ever true. Nothing is true for everyone. Nothing is absolutely true. (source)extract from the article Truely Wittgenstein to be published soon