The Great Tradition

SEVENTEEN COMPANIONS

Book Seventeen:
Basket Of Tolerance
The Perfect Guide To Perfectly Unified Understanding Of The One and Great Tradition Of Mankind, and Of The Divine Way Of Adidam As The Perfect Completing Of The One and Great Tradition Of Mankind

The Basket Of Tolerance is a book like no other—simultaneously an unprecedented Spiritual Revelation and an extraordinary intellectual document.

The Basket Of Tolerance fulfills a unique function among the Divine Avatar’s 23 "Source-Texts". His other 22 "Source-Texts" are primarily communications of His Divine Self-Revelation and His Divine Instruction (both in the practice of the devotional and Spiritual relationship to Him and in the Nature of Reality altogether). In contrast, The Basket Of Tolerance is His comprehensive examination of the Great Tradition of mankind—in other words, of the global and historical context within which He has made His Revelation. Thus, The Basket Of Tolerance focuses on the immense variety of historical expressions of the religious and Spiritual search, from prehistoric times to the present.

The Basket Of Tolerance is structured around a bibliography as the core document. Since He entered Columbia College in 1957, Avatar Adi Da has maintained an intense interest in identifying all kinds of documents—not only books and articles but also audio-visual materials—that cogently present some aspect of humanity's religious history. Even before initiating His Teaching-Work, He began to compile an essential reading list and library. Over the years, He asked devotees who had a particular interest in traditional religious and Spiritual literature to show Him books, pamphlets, articles, audiotapes, CDs, videotapes, and DVDs that they felt were worthy of potentially adding to the reading list and library. In the course of thirty years, He examined at least 100,000 items, designating approximately 20,000—including many rare items from small religious publishing houses around the world—as part of the Adidam library. The library, catalogued according to a unique system based on the seven stages of life, is housed at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary in northern California.

The core of the library is the Basket Of Tolerance collection, consisting of approximately 5,000 documents selected by Avatar Adi Da as most useful to study. And the core of The Basket Of Tolerance book is the bibliographical listing of these documents—meticulously ordered by Avatar Adi Da in an elaborately subdivided sequence, to form a continuous "Argument". Avatar Adi Da introduces that "Argument" with a series of groundbreaking Essays, and He comments on the bibliographical "Argument", at numerous points, through a further series of over 100 essays relating to specific books (or groups of books) in the bibliography (covering a wide spectrum of topics). Through the "Argument" of this annotated bibliography, Avatar Adi Da examines in detail the entire human religious search and demonstrates how there is truly a single process, composed of distinct (hierarchically related) stages (corresponding to the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life), evident in all the diversity of human religious history (previous to His Appearance here)—a process of which any given religious tradition represents a "piece".

While Avatar Adi Da's examination of the Great Tradition concentrates on the various global manifestations of religion and Spirituality, it also embraces the "practical" issues that relate to the entire human process—such as right understanding (and right participation in the process) of death, right understanding (and right use) of the function of mind, right circulation of energy within the body, right physical exercise of the body, right diet, right emotional-sexual practice (whether sexually active or celibate), right living in the collective human context, and so forth.

Altogether, The Basket Of Tolerance is the elaborately detailed "proof" that there is, indeed, a "perennial philosophy". This "philosophy", however, is not a single "set" of unified "beliefs". Rather, it is a process, composed of distinctly different stages—and the points of view of the successive stages do not necessarily agree with one another. Furthermore, those stages are not (ultimately) based on conceptual differences but on experiential differences relating to the various aspects of the esoteric anatomy of the human structure. The fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life (representing the traditional human religious search in its totality) are each focused in a particular aspect of the subtle "energy-circuitry" (with its various pathways and foci) of the human being—and each such anatomical aspect of the human structure carries its own "philosophy", its own presumed goal of Realization, and its own preferred means of Realization.

Thus, The Basket Of Tolerance is a vast and precise demonstration of how the entire human Spiritual quest has always been a manifestation of the various stages of this single progressive process that is based in esoteric anatomy. Understanding that all religious and Spiritual traditions are exemplifying different aspects of the single progressive process of Divine Self-Realization is what makes true tolerance possible—for there ceases to be any need or justification for an oppositional stance between different traditions. In the context of that real tolerance, there can simply be the honoring of each tradition's effort to fulfill the aspect of the process with which it is concerned. Therefore, this "Source-Text" is, itself, a "basket" of tolerance—a gathering together, as in a basket, of the scriptures, histories, and interpretations of the world's religions. (In His choice of the word "basket", Avatar Adi Da is recalling the ancient Buddhist practice of storing their scriptures in a set of three baskets.) Through this gathering together of the world's religious and Spiritual literature (and also art and music) in The Basket Of Tolerance, all traditions are given the opportunity to co-exist in the disposition of profound tolerance, by means of Avatar Adi Da's Revelation of exactly how they are interconnected and interrelated.

By so gathering and interrelating the documents and testimonies of all the branches of the Great Tradition, Avatar Adi Da Samraj also serves to counteract the naive prejudices of scientific materialism, according to which only the physical realm is demonstrably "real". Such a materialist point of view—regarded as bizarre and aberrated throughout most of human history—has now become the reigning dogma. The materialist prejudice severely cripples humankind in its real heart-impulse to discover the Truth. Therefore, Avatar Adi Da Calls us, in The Basket Of Tolerance, to clearly understand the limitations—and the falsehood—of this point of view.

In The Basket Of Tolerance as a whole, Avatar Adi Da demonstrates that none of the religious or Spiritual approaches found in the Great Tradition has entirely transcended the ego-principle. Avatar Adi Da Reveals that the Realization regarded to be ultimate within the context of the fourth and the fifth stages of life is still involved in the subtle dimension of egoity, while the Realization regarded to be ultimate within the context of the sixth stage of life is still involved in the causal dimension of egoity. All of this is treated most elaborately in His "Lineage Essay", "I (Alone) Am the Adidam Revelation", to be found not only in The Basket Of Tolerance but also in others of His "Source-Texts".

Therefore, The Basket Of Tolerance is not only an "Argument" relative to the Great Tradition, but also an elaborate demonstration of how the seventh stage Realization, which is Avatar Adi Da Samraj's Gift to the conditionally manifested realms, is a unique and new Revelation—partially foreshadowed in a rare few Hindu and Buddhist texts, but never before actually Revealed or Realized. This is why the Way of Adidam is the Perfect Completing, and also the Perfect Transcending, of the Great Tradition—because Avatar Adi Da Samraj has Brought into the cosmic domain, uniquely and conclusively, the seventh stage Revelation that is Real-God-Only, utterly Beyond ego (gross, subtle, or causal), utterly Beyond any limitation on Happiness (or Love-Bliss), and He has thereby made that seventh stage Realization (or most perfect Realization of the "Bright") possible for all beings. (And, in order to fully represent the Completing Nature of His Way of Adidam, Avatar Adi Da Samraj has included numerous listings of His own writings in the Basket Of Tolerance bibliography, incorporated throughout at appropriate points.) 

The life and teaching of Avatar Adi Da Samraj are of profound and decisive spiritual significance at this critical moment in history.

Bryan Deschamp
Senior Adviser at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees

Read Excerpts:

The Great Tradition That All Have Inherited
The Five Possible Orientations (or Points of View)
Verbal and Philosophical Foreshadowings
of the Seventh Stage of Life
A sample of the bibliographical listing
The Western Prohibition Against Higher Knowledge and Realization

The Great Tradition That All Have Inherited

From "The Collective (Exoteric and Esoteric)
Gathering of the Great Tradition"

It is good (and even necessary) to make a right study of this collective Message (or Great Tradition) of mankind. The material display of the many documents in this essential gathering demonstrates the traditional range of divergent views that may, each in their moment, seem to any one (or to any culture) to be necessary, sufficient, and even absolute. Individuals and cultures all stand and change within a single but progressively developing range of characteristic possibilities (or potential stages of life and Realization). The ideas or persuasions of any individual or culture are no more than an illustrative expression of the stage of life (or Realization) that is, to that moment (or in that moment), Realized. Therefore, every one (and every tradition or tribe) must responsibly examine the Great Tradition that all have inherited. And, by this widest view, every one (and every tradition or tribe) must understand and transcend the provincialism (or the narrow look) of every merely local (or limited, and non-universal) inheritance (or view). Indeed, by all of this (and by signs of speech and action), every one (and all) must, for the sake of all, promote the culture of true (universal) tolerance—which understands (and positively allows) all temporary views, and which Calls every one (and every culture) to true (critical) self-study, and to constant self-transcendence (or Out-Growing of self, and all, and All), and would (at last) be Given the Gift of an even Most Perfect Understanding (of self, and all, and All).

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The Five Possible Orientations (or Points of View)

From "'God'-Talk, Real-God-Realization,
and Most Perfect Divine Awakening"

There are (basically) only five possible orientations (or points of view), each built upon (or Out-Growing, or transcending) the one immediately previous to itself.

The first (or the least) of these may be called "Conventional Monism". According to this point of view, the world (or cosmic Nature) is all there is, and it is a material Unity, also expressed as the individual body-mind (which is itself a material unity). And this point of view accounts for all lesser or gross (or materialistic, body-based, and, necessarily, mortal) orientations or searches in the (always struggling, and never truly, or finally, fulfilled) context of the first three stages of life in the human domain.

The second (or next) possible orientation (or point of view) may be called "Conventional Dualism". According to this point of view, the world (or even the Totality of Existence) is made up of a number of principal pairs (whether simply natural or, somehow otherwise, hierarchical). Most typically, the first of these principal pairs is the hierarchically conceived pair of "God" and the world—with "God" sometimes called (and, otherwise, commonly, and even popularly, conceived as) "Purushottama", combining both "Purusha" (or "Being" and "Consciousness") and "Prakriti" (meaning, in this conception, "Creativity" and "Creative Energy", or "Creator-Energy"). And the other principal (and, most typically, hierarchically conceived) pairs include "God" and the "soul" (or the psyche, or the subtle personality), and also the "soul" and the world, and also the mind (or the psyche, or the "soul") and the body. Each half of each hierarchically conceived pair (or even each natural pair) is (according to this point of view) related to (and interrelated with) the other half of the pair, but (paradoxically, and especially in the case of hierarchically conceived pairs) each half of each pair is also utterly "different" than (or even inherently separate from) the other half of the pair. And the obligatory "Goal" of each presumed lesser (or dependent) half of each hierarchically related pair is to submit to (and, eventually, even to ascend to) the greater (or higher) half of the pair. Therefore, from this point of view, the "soul" (and even the total world) must submit to (and, eventually, ascend to) "God" (or "God"-Realization). Likewise, the body must submit (or be submitted) to the mind (or the psyche, or the "soul"). Indeed, all that which (in the human being) is "of the world" must, according to the hierarchical conception, submit (or be submitted) to (and, in turn, be relinquished by) the "soul", which must itself (in turn, and by submitting to "God", and to the Urge to "God"-Realization) eventually and progressively ascend to "God". And this total Process is indeed the total Process characteristically (and traditionally) associated with the fourth and the fifth stages of life, and such great fourth and fifth stage popular (or exoteric, and, otherwise, esoteric) traditions as have appeared in (or among) the forms of Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and (in their own unique manner) in (or among) the forms of Taoism, and (also uniquely) even in (or among) some forms of Buddhism.

The third (and next) possible orientation (or point of view) may be called "Primary Dualism". According to this point of view, the Totality of Existence is an apparent combination of only two Primary Realities. These Primary Realities are traditionally called "Purusha" (or Non-conditional, and, As Such, Inherently Perfect, and Perfectly and Necessarily Subjective, "Being" and "Consciousness") and "Prakriti" (or "Objective Energy", Which, modified, appears as the body, the mind, all objects, and all others). From this point of view, this "Primary Duality" must, first of all, be understood (by observation and intuition) to be actual (or Really So). Then Purusha (or the conscious self, which—according to the characteristic, and paradoxical, traditional point of view of "Primary Dualism"—Is, Ultimately, a Perfectly Subjective, or Non-conditional, but also specific, independent, and individual, Self) must separate itself (basically, by willful ascetical discipline) from Prakriti (or the body, the mind, all their objects, and all others). And this point of view and Process (which seeks to be released from the body-mind, or from the illusory need to eternalize the body, the mind, or the body-mind) is the first possible point of view and Process traditionally associated with the sixth stage of life (and such great sixth stage traditions as have appeared within Jainism, and the ancient philosophical tradition of Samkhya).

The fourth (and next to last) possible orientation (or point of view) may be called "Secondary Non-Dualism" (or "Secondary Absolute Monism"). According to this point of view, there is no inherently independent and separate (or separable) Purusha (either as an eternal, and Non-conditional, individual Self or, according to some proponents, As Absolute Being Itself, or Absolute Consciousness Itself), but the Totality of Existence is only Prakriti (conditionally appearing as a beginningless and endless continuum of causes and effects, or, in effect, modifications of Prakriti, or of "Energy Itself"). Therefore, according to this point of view, Prakriti (or "Energy Itself") appears (and must be so observed) only as ephemeral (and observable, or objective) changes, preceded and followed by equally ephemeral (and equally observable, or objective) changes, until (by the Process of observation, insight, and self-pacification) the Inherent (or Original, or Nirvanic) State of Prakriti (or of "Energy Itself") is Realized. (However, there is an Ultimate Paradox necessarily associated with this orientation, or point of view, and Process—for, if the Realization of the Original, or Nirvanic, State of Prakriti, or of "Energy Itself", is, in fact, achieved, how can That Realization be differentiated from—or, otherwise, be presumed to Be other than, or not Identical to—Absolute Consciousness Itself?) In any case, this point of view and Process (which seeks to be released from both the illusory need to eternalize the conditional self and the equally illusory need to annihilate the conditional self—and which point of view and Process may, therefore, follow upon, or, otherwise, supersede, the point of view and Process of "Primary Dualism") is the second possible point of view and Process traditionally associated with the sixth stage of life (and such great sixth stage schools as have appeared within the traditions of Buddhism, and also within the tradition of Taoism).

The fifth (and final) possible orientation (or point of view) may be called "Ultimate Non-Dualism" (or "Primary Absolute Monism"). According to this point of view, there is (in Truth) no Prakriti (or separate and independent "Objective Energy", or any separate and independent body, mind, object, or other at all), but the Totality of Existence is only the One and Absolute Purusha (or Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Consciousness Itself). From this point of view, this "Ultimate Absolute" (or this Non-conditional—and, As Such, Inherently Perfect, and Perfectly Subjective—Reality) must, first of all, be understood (and directly intuited) to be actual (or Really So), and then Perfectly (or Utterly) Affirmed (By direct Identification with Consciousness Itself). This point of view and Process (which may follow upon, or be "Uncovered" by, the point of view and Process of "Secondary Non-Dualism", and which may even immediately follow upon, or be "Uncovered" by, the point of view and Process of "Primary Dualism") is the third (and final, and Principal) possible point of view and Process traditionally (and inherently) associated with the sixth stage of life (and such great sixth stage schools as have appeared in the form of the traditions of Advaitism, and also, secondarily, or with less directness, within the schools of some varieties of Buddhism, especially within the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, and, but with even less directness, within some of the schools of Taoism).

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Verbal and Philosophical Foreshadowings
of the Seventh Stage of Life

From "'God'-Talk, Real-God-Realization,
and Most Perfect Divine Awakening"

In the Great Tradition of mankind (previous to My Avataric Divine Appearance here), the characteristic (or Divinely, or Most Perfectly, Enlightened) "Orientation" (or "Point of View") of the seventh stage of life has not been Realized and Demonstrated. There has been occasional seeming (or suggestive) evidence, in the Teachings of a random few unique individuals and traditions (especially within the schools of Advaitism, and, secondarily, or by a less direct and characteristic expression, within some schools of Buddhism, and, but with an even less direct and characteristic expression, within some schools of Taoism), of limited foreshadowings (or partial intuitions, or insightful, but limited, premonitions) of the characteristic (or Divinely, or Most Perfectly, Enlightened) "Orientation" (or "Point of View") of the seventh stage of life, but that evidence is only verbal (or limited to expressions of a philosophical persuasion only, and a philosophical persuasion that is itself founded on the sixth stage orientation, practice, and possible Realization that preceded, and still limits, in every case, the apparently "seventh stage" expression or Teaching).

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A sample of the Basket Of Tolerance bibliography

Presented here is a section of ten items from the Basket Of Tolerance bibliography, taken from near the beginning of the list. The opening section of the bibliography is entitled "Literature Relative to the Potential Processes of the Fourth Stage of Life Through the Sixth Stage of Life", and the initial subsection (from which these items are taken) is entitled "Introduction to Religious Theory, Religious Art, and Religious Wisdom—Both Exoteric and Esoteric".

The ten items are sequenced to form an introductory "consideration" of religion in this world that is dominated by the cultural influence and concerns of the modern West. Starting with a summary of the teachings of Ramakrishna, as an outstanding exemplar of the traditional approach to religion in recent time (and one who particularly championed religious tolerance), Avatar Adi Da then goes on to a book presenting the teachings of Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna's chief disciple, who was instrumental in introducing Asian Spiritual Wisdom to the West around the turn of the twentieth century.

Next in the list is an essay by an Italian philosopher writing at the key turning point of the European Renaissance, which Avatar Adi Da has characterized as the point in Western history where "Man" more and more began to replace "God" as the central principle of existence. Two different translations of this essay are listed, to give the reader the opportunity to study more than one version of the text.

Finally, there is a series of articles and books commenting on the plight of humankind in the present anti-Spiritual age. The breadth of Avatar Adi Da's "Consideration" in compiling The Basket Of Tolerance is indicated by His inclusion of a seminal work of twentieth-century literature, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, among otherwise philosophical writings that deal with the modern human plight.

Following each bibliographical listing here, a few paragraphs are quoted, to give a general sense of the point of view represented by each book or article. These quotations give a taste of the manner in which Avatar Adi Da has sequenced the bibliographical listings to form an ongoing "Argument"—an "Argument" that continues throughout the 5,000 documents of the bibliography.

Following the ten bibliographical listings (with accompanying quotations) is Avatar Adi Da's essay "The Western Prohibition Against Higher Knowledge and Realization". Avatar Adi Da has placed this essay at this point in the bibliography as a commentary on the preceding series of books and articles (particularly those dealing with the modern situation). In the essay, He points out that the current anti-Spiritual circumstance of the West was, in some sense, inevitable, given the "prohibition" He describes, a "prohibition" that can readily be traced back to the ancient cultural roots of the West in Greece and the Middle East.

Sri Ramakrishna's Thoughts in a Vedantic Perspective, by Swami Tapasyananda. Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1993

[Sri Ramakrishna] is no philosopher in the academic sense of the term. God is for him not an intellectual postulate, but a living presence, more real than the common objects we experience in everyday life. Hence it is not by syllogisms, but by the testimony of his life that he demonstrates the existence and nature of God. . . . The great spiritual teacher that [Sri Ramakrishna] was, the truth of God was not for him a fixed dogma, a static object photographed (as it were) by thought, like the fixed things of sensuous life, with definite boundaries. It was for him a living, palpitating reality, beyond the oppositions of change and staticity. (pp. 82-83—final sentence re-punctuated)

The supreme message of Sri Ramakrishna to mankind . . . consists in the strength of his yearning for God, in the example of the fulfilment of that yearning his life offers, and in the persistence with which this God-consciousness abides with him in all conditions of life. His life is a challenge to the scepticism and Godlessness of the modern age. (p. 166)

Living at the Source: Yoga Teachings of Vivekananda. Edited by Ann Myren and Dorothy Madison. Boston: Shambhala, 1993

The ideal of Vedanta is that all wisdom and all purity are in the soul already, dimly expressed or better expressed—that is all the difference. The difference between man and man, and all things in the whole creation, is not in kind but only in degree. The background, the reality, of everyone is that same Eternal Ever Blessed, Ever Pure, and Ever Perfect One. It is the Atman, the Soul, in the saint and the sinner, in the happy and the miserable, in the beautiful and the ugly, in men and in animals; it is the same throughout. It is the shining One. The difference is caused by the power of expression. In some It is expressed more, in others less, but this difference of expression has no effect upon the Atman. (p. 9)

This is the basis of all ignorance that we, the immortal, the ever pure, the perfect Spirit, think that we are little minds, that we are little bodies; it is the mother of all selfishness. As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate. As soon as this idea of separation comes, it opens the door to all mischief and leads to all misery. (p. 9)

The disciple must have faith in the guru (teacher). In the West the teacher simply gives intellectual knowledge; that is all. The relationship with the teacher is the greatest in life. . . . The guru frees my soul. The father and mother give me this body; but the guru gives me rebirth in the soul. . . . The guru must be a man who has known, has actually realized the divine truth, has perceived himself as the spirit. A mere talker cannot be the guru. (p. 34)

Oration on the Dignity of Man, by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Translated by A. Robert Caponigri. Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1956

For the two different translations of Pico's "Oration", corresponding passages are given here, in order to demonstrate the kinds of differences that are to be found in different translations (which is the reason why Avatar Adi Da often lists more than one translation, where available, of works not originally written in English).

Let a certain saving ambition invade our soul so that, impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all our efforts to their attainment. Let us disdain the things of earth, hold as little worth even the astral orders and, putting behind us all the things of this world, hasten to that court beyond the world, closest to the most exalted Godhead. (p. 12)

[I]t is a patent thing, oh Fathers, that many forces strive within us, in grave, intestine warfare, worse than the civil wars of states. Equally clear is it that, if we are to overcome this warfare, if we are to achieve that peace which must establish us finally among the exalted of God, philosophy alone can compose and allay that strife. (p. 20)

"Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man" (translated by Elizabeth Livermore Forbes), in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Selections in translation, edited by Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990

Let a certain holy ambition invade our souls, so that, not content with the mediocre, we shall pant after the highest and (since we may if we wish) toil with all our strength to obtain it.

Let us disdain earthly things, despise heavenly things, and, finally esteeming less whatever is of the world, hasten to that court which is beyond the world and nearest to the Godhead. (p. 227)

Surely, Fathers, there is in us a discord many times as great; we have at hand wars grievous and more than civil, wars of the spirit which, if we dislike them, if we aspire to that peace which may so raise us to the sublime that we shall be established among the exalted of the Lord, only philosophy will entirely allay and subdue in us. (p. 231)

"The Anti-Wisdom of Modern Philosophy: A Passing Note", by Ian Watson. In Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Autumn 1972), pp. 221-224

The entire history of the Western world is, seen in one light, a steady drive towards a state in which only things material and only things secular are allowed to matter. And this drive is no longer limited to the West, but seems also to be overtaking the East—until there scarcely seems anywhere in the world which survives as a haven for another kind of thinking. Indeed, so deep-rooted has become the secular-materialist mind, that thinking in other terms has become almost impossible. And this 'secular-materialist mind' is, of course, closely related in the West to the rise of Liberalist-Individualist ideals, with us, in systematic form, at least since Thomas Hobbes and the Renaissance. [p. 221]

[T]he sole (however tenuously) remaining, wholly acceptable repository of 'value-theory' in the West—namely, what is called 'morality', and philosophy, sofar as it theorizes about morals—is nonetheless, increasingly characterized by an effort to cancel out 'the inner man of the Spirit', in the name of 'the outer man of the fleshly body'. . . . The suggestion of another form of understanding which might supply us with non-secular, absolute values is, by and large, either ignored or ridiculed by modern moral theorists.

. . .

This is thought to be an 'enlightened' approach by 'civilized man' to hard realities; and called—'progress'. In fact, it is only a scientific approach by modern man to the boundaries of empirically-verifiable fact: and far from being 'progress', would seem entirely to be an effort to deny man his true humanity, by robbing him of his Divinity. (p. 224)

"The Modern West in the History of Religion", by Wilfred Cantwell Smith. In Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 52, No. 1 (March 1984), pp. 3-18

[A]n intelligent Modern westerner comes to recognize that secularism is one ideology among many others; that it has not been discovered but concocted; that its apprehension of the human and of the universe is not a matrix within which the history of religion may be subordinately understood—but rather, vice-versa. We now know enough about the long and wide history of human religiousness that we can understand modern Western secularism as a special historical development: one that is highly interesting, certainly eccentric, and, like other ideologies in the total story thus far, wrong in some of its central theoretical presuppositions (especially, about other people; and therefore, about human nature; and therein, on this point at least, wrong also about itself). (p. 8)

Modern secularism is an intellectual error. It is so important an error as to be socially and historically disruptive; not to say, disastrous. (p. 18)

Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in Two Acts, by Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, First Evergreen edition, 1956

VLADIMIR: What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come . . . Or for night to fall. (Pause.) We have kept our appointment and that's an end to that. We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

ESTRAGON: Billions.

VLADIMIR: You think so?

ESTRAGON: I don't know.

VLADIMIR: You may be right. (p. 52)

The Flight from God, by Max Picard. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1989

In every age man has been in flight from God. What distinguishes the Flight to-day from every other flight is this: once Faith was the universal, and prior to the individual; there was an objective world of Faith, while the Flight was only accomplished subjectively, within the individual man. It came into being through the individual man's separating himself from the world of Faith by an act of decision. A man who wanted to flee had first to make his own flight. The opposite is true to-day. The objective and external world of Faith is no more; it is Faith which has to be remade moment by moment through the individual's act of decision, that is to say, through the individual's cutting himself off from the world of the Flight. For to-day it is no longer Faith which exists as an objective world, but rather the Flight; for every situation into which man comes is from the beginning, without his making it so, plainly a situation of flight, since everything in this world exists only in the form of the Flight. It may well be that through an act of decision each situation of the Flight can be transformed into the corresponding situation of Faith. But this is hard; and even if one individual should tear himself away from the world of the Flight into the world of Faith, he succeeds only for himself, as an individual. The world of the Flight exists independently of his decision. (p. 1)

The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture, by Susan Bordo. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987

[C]orrespondences between individual development and historical development . . . open up the imagination to a consideration of the thoroughly historical character of our modern structuring of the relation between self and world. Looked at more specifically, they urge us to entertain the notion that the categories which we take for granted as experiential or theoretical "givens"—subjectivity, perspectivity, and . . . inwardness, locatedness, and objectivity (all "moments" of the subject/object distinction)—may be historical developments, or moments in the history of dominant (Western) norms of consciousness, each with its own birth, life, and decline. (p. 49)

[F]or Descartes, . . . an epistemological chasm indeed separates a highly self-conscious self from a universe that now lies "out there." Dominant motifs in the earlier Meditations are a heightened and pervasive experience of self as inwardness ("I think, therefore I am") and anxiety over that self's connection with "outer" reality.

Such anxiety is peculiarly modern. The medievals had no "problem of knowledge" (at least, not as we conceive it, in terms of certifying a correspondence between ideas and external world). Nor was the self/world dichotomy a characteristic way of talking about the universe. Rather, . . . the dominating ontological metaphor was of the universe as a single "organism," whose domains (although hierarchically ordered) were characterized by interdependence and interconnection rather than mutual exclusivity. (p. 60)

The Outsider, by Colin Wilson. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1982

For the Outsider, the world is not rational, not orderly. When he asserts his sense of anarchy in the face of the bourgeois' complacent acceptance, it is not simply the need to cock a snook at respectability that provokes him; it is a distressing sense that truth must be told at all costs, otherwise there can be no hope for an ultimate restoration of order. (p. 15)

. . . [The Outsider's] revolt against Western standards takes the form of a sense of their futility, the sense that is expressed in Eliot's 'Hollow Men'. He asks questions about things that all his fellow Westerners take for granted, and his final question tends to be the cry of Bunyan's Pilgrim: What must I do to be saved? It is a cry that springs out of bewilderment. He sees the world as a 'devil-ridden chaos' and he is not sure of his own identity in it. (p. 242)

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

The problem for the 'civilization' is the adoption of a religious attitude that can be assimilated as objectively as the headlines of last Sunday's newspapers. But the problem for the individual always will be the opposite of this, the conscious striving not to limit the amount of experience seen and touched; the intolerable struggle to expose the sensitive areas of being to what may possibly hurt them; the attempt to see as a whole, although the instinct of self-preservation fights against the pain of the internal widening, and all the impulses of spiritual laziness build into waves of sleep with every new effort. The individual begins that long effort as an Outsider; he may finish it as a saint. (p. 281)

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The Western Prohibition Against
Higher Knowledge and Realization

In The Basket Of Tolerance, this Essay follows the listing for The Outsider, as a commentary on issues raised by the preceding several items in the bibliography.

In Western (or Occidental) literature, mythology, and religious legends, stories, and doctrines—there is a characteristic and persistent tendency to associate a negative connotation or result with the quest for higher initiation and higher knowledge (and, altogether, with the process of esoteric initiation, esoteric knowledge, and esoteric Realization). In the traditional Western (or Occidental) literatures, there is (characteristically) a "penalty" for those who approach the Divine too closely, or who even seek to Realize Oneness with the Divine. Indeed, the tendency to confine human existence and human potential to the mundane, the material, the physical, the social, and all that is merely exoteric is the principal characteristic of the Western mind, all of Western culture, and all that characterizes the Western (or the "Westernizing") and the "modern" (or the "modernizing") influence and tendency.

In the ancient Jewish story of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are penalized for taking the fruit of the Tree that would give them the unique knowledge that would put them on a par with "God". In the myths of the ancient Greeks, Icarus and Prometheus are punished for "getting too close" to the sun and to fire—and, when Bellerophon rides his winged horse, Pegasus, up to the dwelling place of the gods, he is thrown down, because he presumed he could attain the status of the gods. Likewise, according to the Christian legend, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified for claiming Oneness with the Divine. As these famous examples (along with many other examples) indicate, the traditions of the West (or that otherwise characterize what can be identified as the Western, or rather Occidental, mentality) are typically associated with the prohibition against higher (and, altogether, esoteric) knowledge and Realization. Therefore, there is a basic presumption in the traditional West (and in the characteristically Western mind) that one must neither own too much nor know too much—but, coincidently, the traditional West (and the characteristically Western mind) is possessed by a persistent fascination with owning and knowing, and even a kind of lust to own everything and to know all.

In the characteristically Eastern (or Oriental) traditions, the unique (or defining) characteristic is the opposite of the unique (or defining) characteristic of the Western (or Occidental) traditions. Therefore, in the typical Eastern (or characteristically Oriental) traditions, the stories, the myths, and the religious legends and doctrines are unambiguous about the praising, the glorifying, the seeking, and the attaining of higher (and, altogether, esoteric) knowledge and Realization.

The characteristic tendency (and ambivalence) of the Western mind not only shows itself in literature, mythology, and religion, but also in the basic Western (and characteristically "modern") inclination toward materialism (including scientific and political materialism), which is a way of knowledge (and of worldly power) that dogmatically eschews and systematically excludes all that is esoteric (or all that is metaphysical, or Spiritual, or Transcendental, or Divine). Therefore, the West (and all that is characteristically "modern") is characterized by ambivalence (and even suppressiveness) relative to higher (and, altogether, esoteric) knowledge and Realization, and (otherwise) by a clear preference for exoteric and materialistic knowledge. It can even be said that Western culture (and all of "Westernized", or "modern", civilization) is founded not only on materialism but on an actual and persistent (and gravely limiting) fear of higher (and, altogether, esoteric) knowledge and Realization.

By contrast, characteristically (and traditionally) Eastern (or typically Oriental) culture and civilization is associated with a positive and most profound orientation toward higher (and, altogether, esoteric) knowledge and Realization. Also, the typically Eastern (and typically Oriental) mind and orientation is characterized by far less interest in (or attachment to) material things than is (otherwise) seen in the West (and, altogether, in the "modern", or "Westernized", world). And the Out-Growing of the Western fear (and its ambivalence, its materialistic revulsion, and its suppressiveness) relative to the higher (and, altogether, relative to the esoteric) process and Reality is the principal necessity for even all of mankind in this "late" (or "Westernized") time and in this "dark" (or "modern") epoch.