Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta (Collected Works of Rene Guenon)

Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta is Guénon's central exposition of traditional metaphysics, companion to his other two great works in this genre: The Symbolism of the Cross and The Multiple States of the Being. Guénon held that Hinduism embraces the most ancient, profound, and comprehensive expression of traditional metaphysics we possess, which can in some ways function as a key to every other traditional form, and this work has been called the first reliable exposition of Hindu metaphysics in any Western language. Before Guénon, the West's image of Hinduism was a hodge-podge of translated scriptures lacking traditional commentary, fragments of doctrine reported by Jesuits and other missionaries, random impressions of merchants, imperialists, and adventurers, unreliable Eurocentric constructions of the orientalists, and the fantasies of the Theosophical Society and their ilk. To this day, Man and His Becoming remains one of the best (if not the best) expositions of the doctrines of the Vedanta, an exposition entirely free from the modernizing and Westernizing tendencies that first infiltrated the Indian subcontinent under the British Raj, and have not yet abated. This text is a veritable bible of traditional metaphysics and anthropology. In his Studies in Hinduism and Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctines, Guénon treats historical and cosmological aspects of Hinduism in further detail. Guénon published his fundamental doctrinal work, Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, in 1925. After asserting that the Vedanta represents the purest metaphysics in Hindu doctrine, he acknowledges the impossibility of ever expounding it exhaustively and states that the specific object of his study will be the nature and constitution of the human being. Nonetheless, taking the human being as point of departure, he goes on to outline the fundamental principles of all traditional metaphysics. He leads the reader gradually to the doctrine of the Supreme Identity and its logical corollary-the possibility that the being in the human state might in this very life attain liberation, the unconditioned state where all separateness and risk of reversion to manifested existence ceases. Although Guénon chose the doctrine of the Advaita school (and in particular that of Shankara) as his basis, Man and His Becoming should not be considered exclusively an exposition of this school and of this master. It is, rather, a synthetic account drawing not only upon other orthodox branches of Hinduism, but not infrequently also upon the teachings of other traditional forms. Neither is it a work of erudition in the sense of the orientalists and historians of religion who study doctrines from the 'outside', but represents knowledge of the traditionally transmitted and effective 'sacred science'. Guénon treats other aspects of Hinduism in his Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines and Studies in Hinduism. Br> Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta by Guénon, René; Nicholson, Richard C. (Translator) Terms of use A study of the constitution and development of the human being from the metaphysical point of view, with special reference to Vedantic doctrine. Descriptive content provided by Syndetics"! a Bowker service THE Vednta, contrary to an opinion widely held among orientalists, is neither a philosophy nor a religion, nor does it partake to a greater or lesser extent of the character of either.