Introduction Générale À L'étude Des Doctrines Hindoues

René Guénon's Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines can serve as an

introduction to all his later works-especially those which, like Man and His

Becoming according to the Vedanta, The Symbolism of the Cross, The Multiple

States of the Being, and Studies in Hinduism, expound the more profound

aspects of metaphysical doctrines in greater detail. In Part I Guenon clears

away certain ingrained prejudices inherited from the 'Renaissance', with its

adulation of the Greco-Roman culture and its compensating depreciation-both

deliberate and instinctive-of other civilizations. In Part II he establishes

the fundamental distinctions between various modes of thought and brings out

the real nature of metaphysical or universal knowledge-an understanding of

which is the first condition for the personal realization of that 'Knowledge'

which partakes of the Absolute. Words like 'religion', 'philosophy',

'symbolism', 'mysticism', and 'superstition', are here given a precise

meaning. Part III presents a more detailed examination of the Hindu doctrine

and its applications at different levels, leading up to the Vedanta, which

constitutes its metaphysical essence. Lastly, Part IV resumes the task of

clearing away current misconceptions, but is this time concerned not with the

West itself, but with distortions of the Hindu doctrines that have arisen as a

result of attempts to read into them, or to graft onto them, modern Western

conceptions. The concluding chapter lays down the essential conditions for any

genuine understanding between East and West, which can only come through the

work of those who have attained, at least in some degree, to the realization

of 'wisdom uncreate'-that intellective, suprarational knowledge called in the

East jana, and in the West gnosis.