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The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity Appears As One of Our Selections in the Perennial Philosophy Series

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The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity Appears As One of Our Selections in the Perennial Philosophy Series Religion Oldmeadow For millennia humanity has been linked to the Divine through Revelations from which flow rich traditions of wisdom and sacred art. Do these traditions still have significance in the The contemporary world? What consequences follow from the rejection of these traditions? Betrayal “[Rejecting the modern] destruction of knowledge and the darken- ing of consciousness … Harry Oldmeadow has collected in this book twenty-five compelling essays … from key perennialist authors and other eminent thinkers. Divided into five sections, their responses treat the oppositions between Tradition and Modernity, Perennial Truths and Modern Counterfeits, Social Order, the ‘Single Vision’ of Scientism, and lastly the Destruction of Traditional Cultures.… A of work such as The Betrayal of Tradition takes a clear inventory of the times and offers the reader a guide to comprehending the urgency of Tradition rediscovering the eternal.…” —Jean Biès, author, philosopher, and poet Harry Oldmeadow is one of the most authoritative contemporary writers on the Perennial Philosophy. He is the Coordinator of Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University (at Bendigo) in Australia, and is the author of numerous articles and books, including Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy and Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encoun- ters with Eastern Religious Traditions. The Betrayal of Tradition World Wisdom Articles by World Karen Armstrong, Titus Burckhardt, A. K. Coomaraswamy, Wisdom René Guénon, S. H. Nasr, Dorothy Sayers, Frithjof Schuon and others $ 21.95 US / $ 29.95 CAN Edited by Harry Oldmeadow BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page i World Wisdom The Library of Perennial Philosophy The Library of Perennial Philosophy is dedicated to the exposition of the time- less Truth underlying the diverse religions. This Truth, often referred to as the Sophia Perennis—or Perennial Wisdom—finds its expression in the revealed Scriptures as well as the writings of the great sages and the artistic creations of the traditional worlds. The Perennial Philosophy provides the intellectual principles capable of explaining both the formal contradictions and the transcendent unity of the great religions. Ranging from the writings of the great sages of the past, to the perennialist authors of our time, each series of our Library has a different focus. As a whole, they express the inner unanimity, transforming radiance, and irreplaceable values of the great spiritual traditions. The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity appears as one of our selections in the Perennial Philosophy series. The Perennial Philosophy Series In the beginning of the Twentieth Century, a school of thought arose which has focused on the enunciation and explanation of the Perennial Philosophy. Deeply rooted in the sense of the sacred, the writings of its leading exponents establish an indispensable foundation for under- standing the timeless Truth and spiritual practices which live in the heart of all religions. Some of these titles are companion volumes to the Treasures of the World’s Religions series, which allows a comparison of the writings of the great sages of the past with the perennialist authors of our time. BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page ii Cover: “Fall of the Rebel Angels” 15th c. French illumination from “The Book of Hours” of the Duke of Berry BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page iii The Betrayal of Tradition Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity Edited by Harry Oldmeadow The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity © 2005 World Wisdom, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in critical articles and reviews. For complete bibliographic information on the articles in this anthology, please see the the Acknowledgments section at the end of the book, pp. 365-67 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The betrayal of tradition : essays on the spiritual crisis of modernity / edited by Harry Oldmeadow. p. cm. -- (The library of perennial philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-941532-55-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Modernism (Christian theology) 2. Tradition (Theology) I. Oldmeadow, Harry, 1947- II. Series. BT82.B45 2005 202--dc22 2004022095 Printed on acid-free paper in Canada For information address World Wisdom, Inc. P.O. Box 2682, Bloomington, Indiana 47402-2682 www.worldwisdom.com BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page v ᇹᇹᇹሂሃᇹᇹᇹ Tradition speaks to each man the language he can comprehend, provided he wishes to listen. The latter proviso is crucial, for tradi- tion, let it be repeated, cannot “become bankrupt”; rather is it of the bankruptcy of man that one should speak, for it is he that has lost all intuition of the supernatural and the sense of the sacred. It is man who has let himself be deceived by the discoveries and inventions of a falsely totalitarian science ... [M]an has ended by being submerged by his own creations; he will not realize that a tra- ditional message is situated on quite a dif- ferent plane or how much more real that plane is ... Tradition is abandoned, not because people are no longer capable of understanding its language, but because they do not wish to understand it, for this language is made to be understood till the end of the world ... FRITHJOF SCHUON ᇹᇹᇹሂሃᇹᇹᇹ BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page vi BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Harry Oldmeadow Introduction: Signs of the Times and the Light of Tradition xi 1. Tradition and Modernity Frithjof Schuon “No Activity Without Truth” 3 René Guénon A Material Civilization 15 Brian Keeble Tradition and the Individual 31 Kathleen Raine India and the Modern World 45 2. Perennial Truths and Modern Counterfeits Rama P. Coomaraswamy Ancient Beliefs or Modern Superstitions: The Search for Authenticity 55 Karen Armstrong Faith and Modernity 73 Timothy Scott The Logic of Mystery and the Necessity of Faith 89 M. Ali Lakhani “Fundamentalism”: A Metaphysical Perspective 101 Rodney Blackhirst Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and Tradition 107 3. The Social Order Ananda K. Coomaraswamy The Bugbear of Democracy, Freedom, and Equality 121 Patrick Laude One for All, All for One: The Individual and the Community in Traditional and Modern Contexts 151 Fatima Jane Casewit Islamic Cosmological Concepts of Femininity and the Modern Feminist Movement 171 Roger Sworder The Desacralization of Work 183 Dorothy Sayers Why Work? 217 Robert Aitken Envisioning the Future 229 4. The “Single Vision” of Scientism Wolfgang Smith “Progress” in Retrospect 249 Seyyed Hossein Nasr Spirituality and Science—Convergence or Divergence? 275 Titus Burckhardt The Theory of Evolution 287 BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page viii Theodore Roszak Descartes’Angel: Reflections on the True Art of Thinking 301 Mary Midgley Putting Nature in Her Place 313 Brian Coman Never Say Die ... Without a Cause 323 5. The Destruction of Traditional Cultures Thomas Yellowtail Make Your Choice 333 Anagarika Govinda The Fate of Tibet 345 James Cowan Towards a New Dreaming 349 Philip Sherrard Epilogue 359 Acknowledgments 365 Contributors 369 Biographical Note 375 Index 377 BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page ix BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page x BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page xi INTRODUCTION: SIGNS OF THE TIMES AND THE LIGHT OF TRADITION The title of this anthology alerts us to the spiritual crisis of moder- nity and to its root cause: the betrayal of tradition. That there is indeed a spiritual crisis will hardly be denied by anyone who has pondered the condition of the contemporary world. We need not rehearse the whole catalogue of inter-related symptoms, but here are a few of the more conspicuous: ecological catastrophe, a mate- rial sign of the rupture between Heaven and Earth; a rampant materialism and consumerism, signifying a surrender to the illusion that man can live by bread alone; the brutal extirpation of tradi- tional cultures by the runaway juggernauts of “modernization”; political barbarities on an almost unimaginable scale; a religious landscape dominated by internecine and inter-religious strife and by the emergence of aggressive fundamentalisms in both East and West; social discord, endemic violence and dislocations of unprece- dented proportions; widespread alienation, ennui and a sense of spiritual sterility amidst the frenetic confusion and din of modern life; the loss of any sense of the sacred, even among those who remain committed to religious forms. These “signs of the times”— and the inventory is by no means exhaustive—are plain enough to those with eyes to see. No amount of gilded rhetoric about “progress,” the “miracles” of modern science and technology, or the “triumphs of democracy” (to mention just three shibboleths of modernity) can hide the fact that our age is tyrannized by an out- look inimical to our most fundamental needs, our deepest yearn- ings, our most noble aspirations. More problematic is the question of how we arrived at this state of affairs and in which direction we might turn for some remedy. In the luminous essay with which this volume opens, Frithjof Schuon observes: “That which is lacking in the present world is a profound knowledge of the nature of things; the fundamental truths are always there, but they do not impose themselves because they cannot impose themselves on those unwilling to listen.” Those truths, so often derided in the modern world, can be found in tra- dition—and by this term we mean something very different from xi BOT_September12.qxd 9/16/2004 10:59 AM Page xii The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity the jaundiced senses it has accumulated in the modern mentality (“the blind observance of inherited customs,” and the like).
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