Oh btw your background is similar to mine. I have a black wall meeting a white wall. I have a japanese carp on my black wall. I got it at Virgin media stores and cut it out and stuck it to the wall. I haven't listened to all of your video because I got bored....Sorry.
when they catch on to and shadow ban "tiny hats" we'll switch to "micro hats" and then "small caps" then "micro caps" etc etc etc yada yada yada and on and on and on......until one day when we'll have no choice but to use cryptography to communicate lol 😂
“Religion is an adaptation to a certain mentality, to save everybody. With Plato you cannot save everybody. But with a religion you can save the last man.” - Schuon
"A young professor of philosophy explains perennialism to his students, 1974" Turtleneck gang rise up! thanks for the video, Keith. Informative as always.
Keith, for years I've been trying to reconcile my spiritual affinities with one another, oscillating between Catholicism, Germanic Paganism, and more. Just this morning I was at Mass, wrestling with these questions, and I asked God, or the gods, or the universe, or something to help me find truth. I get out of the church and into my car, look at my notifications, and you've posted this video. I don't know what to make of coincidences, but this one made me think. Thanks for what you do.
You should listen to the Lord of Spirits podcast, they tackle some interesting angles on God and the Gods from a Christian perspective which might help you reframe your modern worldview to a more traditional one.
@@zuthula3847 it is the original church of christ and has existed without a pope for 2000 years without splitting like protestantism. Check out Father Seraphim Rose he was a hindu convert. Some other based priests on youtube are Fr Spyridon Bailey, Fr Josiah Trenham, Fr. Peter Heers. Jay dyer is also good at theology and has an interest in the occult and how it relates to Christianity and elite degenerates. God bless you
On pol they were arguing that you haven't been yeeted yet because you're a ccp shill. But this video exemplifies the actual reason. You spend enough time on the highly esoteric, deeply philosophical subjects that I think the mods or censors straight up just don't get what's happening here. Good shit.
I maintain that the late Heidegger was a perennialist. He seems to affirm that there is some kind of universal phenomenon of divinity, much like being itself. However, just like being, the phenomenon of divinity calls upon us to ever interpret it anew. There is no "final" or "ultimate" interpretation that will lay it all to rest for now and for ever. Instead, in traditional societies, every culture comes to its own interpretation of what it is to be, and what it is to be divine. We can recall Plato's description of differing city states being presided over by their own patron gods and goddesses which reflect their characters. Now what about the contemporary era? How has divinity been revealed in the age of techno-capital? I would argue that the most alarming thing about the contemporary world is that divinity, rather than being revealed, has been withheld. Divinity has been "revealed" in the mode of *absence* rather than *presence* by techno-capital. This is why religion has either been relegated to the private sphere as some weird subculture you can participate in, or it has become religion only in name. Think of George Floydism. In many ways it seems to be a new religious movement. However, it's missing the key component, the necessary condition of religion, which is that it relates humanity to divinity. Sure, you can participate in a religion voluntarily if you like. All the more power to you. I see nothing illegitimate about this. However, my central concern is civilizational. In our culture, the all pervasive background interpretation of being which holds sway and in which we all participate whether we want to or not, is inherently secular, materialistic, and cares for nothing outside of that which can be objectively and rationally quantified. This is how everything which exists is always already interpreted in advance and we, whether we want to or not, must contend with this interpretation of the universe as being a collection of indifferent "stuff" which techno-capital is constantly metabolizing into commodities, including our own capacities to think and act. As Heidegger says, "man too is challenged forth". The world, in the contemporary era, is understood as merely an aggregate of resources which call upon us to make use of them in the most efficient way possible. Contrast this with the world interpretation which held sway in the medieval period. Then, the world was understood to be the ens creatum, something fashioned by G-d for the sake of bringing glory to him. Every aspect of nature, history, and society was interpreted in light of Christianity in an ineluctable way. It didn't mater whether you were a saint or a highway brigand, you would see the world and your place in it through the lens of Christianity. To be an atheist was unthinkable. The entire social world reinforced belief in Christianity. It was the Christian interpretation of being and divinity which held sway. Back to the present time. As Max Weber says, modernity is the process by which the prophet is replaced by the bureaucrat. Adopting a religion is a reaction against the technological revelation of being, and while I don't think it's illegitimate to do so, it doesn't really provided a solution to the problem I've outlined. It's a reinterpretation of religion as being a private and personal affair that doesn't do anything to actually overcome the core issue which is that techno-capital has desacralized the world and turned us all into atomized, deracinated producer-consumers.
The most reasonable, insightful and intelligent comment I've seen in a while! Man, reading this is like a breath of fresh air in an ocean polluted by the usual stuff you find on RUclips. And not only is it an intelligent comment, it's an intelligent comment about a topic that truly is of importance! How many smart people waste their brain power and potential on stuff that is going to get us nowhere.. Do you have a blog or something? I'd watch your videos, read your essays and buy your books!
I had 2 mystical experiences in my life. 1 about 30 years ago when I was studying Taoism. Another 1 about 5 years ago as a Christian. When I had the 1st experience it was like this revelation that everything was 1. A thought came to me that we're all like drops of water, were separated now, but all from the same source, & 1 day we'll all return to it and be reunited. With the 2nd experience I had an overwhelming feeling of God's unconditional love. Bible passages that I'd read over 100 ×'s were illuminated in my mind and I could see what they were trying to convey.
For every one of those nobs that didn't understand what Peterson meant years ago when he said there are some things that are "hyper-real" and "true across time cross-culturally", I hope they run across this video. Thank you, Keef! Keep up the great work!
Seeing this come up in my feed just put a beaming smile on my face, thanks Keith for being part of the echelon staying an intellectual cut above others on the scene!
I stumbled upon Guénon in 2019, reading Reign of Quantity completely changed how I looked at the world. Amazing the resurgence of interest in Guénon and Schuon we are seeing.
Traditionalism, which one could call a branch of perennialism, holds that it is not enough to understand perennialism on an intellectual level, but that one must devote oneself to a religious tradition in order to gain firsthand experience of spiritual knowledge. I think that's basically true. Perennialism by itself is just a nifty intellectual position if it's not accompanied by firsthand spiritual experience, and it's no substitute for belonging to a religious tradition. And I say this as a perennialist. My own spiritual struggle consists of being spiritual, whereas I wish I could be religious, but no particular religious tradition today truly calls to me.
Very well put. Id feel the same way. Have been a member of two different religious traditions(beyond my birth one)so far, and have looked deeply into loads of other religious traditions and philosophies. I'm still inclined towards aspects of certain ones more than others. In this era there is so much distortion, false teachers and incomplete philosophies, that it's difficult to navigate in order to find a genuine spiritual path that's suited to our individual disposition.
I always wondered how many people are even capable of spiritual experience in the first place. It is why I often argue that permitting shrooms, lsd, and dmt may do some good.
A lot of people jump from Guenon to Evola but what is not well know is there is another disciple of Guenon who took a different path: Fr. Seraphim Rose. Guenon led Fr. Seraphim to Holy Orthodoxy. In addition to Evola do not cheat yourself, read Fr. Seraphim Rose. The Truth is out there.
Everyone should read Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines by Guenon. It gives a clear introduction to basic and intuitive truths held among 95% of peoples that have existed, without the admixture of modern error that all these other names, including Schuon and Huston Smith, tend to incorporate.
Pretty decent, but there was an error. The left hand path is not materialistic nor evil. It is the path of complete, active unconditioning from materiality, including from ethics and societal standards. It is a path to immortality which is an alternative method to the right hand path suitable to certain persons. It is the path of Bacchus, the Dionysian path, essentially, or maybe Crowley's enlightened Bohemian who finds God at the bottom of the bottle when he has exhausted all possibilities in hedonism. What you were talking about with regard to the profane aims of the theosophists is instead what Guenon would call the counter-initiation or counter-tradition. It looks like initiation, it looks like tradition, but its real purpose is to counteract the crystallization of tradition on earth and to forestall its practitioners from reaching initiatic heights through the reliance on falsehoods like universalism. Evola practiced left-hand magic and identified with a certain Dionysian character, which you might not expect from someone who saw such supreme value in the warrior. He recalled spending a freezing night at a lodge in the Alps, getting blasted on wine, and listening to Jazz, which he ordinarily dislikes. They went out and walked on the brittle ice, sometimes falling in. It was a divine experience for him in a Bacchic way. He also practiced Tantra, and explains in The Yoga of Power that a key part of Tantra was to break down one's resistances to action based on social mores. There were traditional rituals that were incestuous (usually simulated and not real, but occasionally real) and otherwise immoral included in some variations of Tantric practice to achieve total unconditioning of the self -- to conquer fear and break down barriers to action and pure consciousness. You might even think of a parallel practice in Mithraism in which the practitioner must perform a ritual murder to over come his fears and attachment to society. These were sometimes real, sometimes simulated. Those were not necessary, but that's just an extreme example of some of the methods that can show up on the path of total unconditioning, and this is why it has a reputation for being "evil" among outsiders. Even the traditional Tantrists stated that these doctrines were not for the public or the lower castes because they would misunderstand their purpose and be harmed by them. The line between methods of unconditioning and cthonic hedonism or suicide is very fine and requires strong will and consciousness. The arabs stated for this reason that magic was like walking across an abyss on a razor's edge.
His spiritual stuff is excellent, but I like his breakdowns of political ideologies and systems aswell. Especially the one on 'communist' China, that one was great. He should do one on Bonapartism and how it relates to fascism. I've seen people claim that fascism is a descendant of Bonapartism lately, which strikes me as correct. Bonapartism bears many similarities to fascism, and it came about in very similar circumstances, they were both right-wing dictatorships which came about as responses to leftist upheavals and meant to restore order and tradition to their respective societies which had been uprooted by Leftism. Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler were similar in many respects. One might even be able to trace the origins of fascism way back to Caesarism. Might be too spicy of a topic for YT though.
@@universome511 Really? How? I mean obviously there were some considerable differences in the specifics of these regimes, but Napoleon being an absolute monarch was pretty far Right, he was the definition of right-wing, I would argue he was further to the Right than Mussolini or Hitler ever were. If anything, Mussolini and Hitler were the centrists in comparison, being third positionists. Mussolini himself said that while fascism sat on the Right, it might aswell have sat on the center. Napoleon was basically considered to be the Hitler of his day to the leftists of his time, who considered him to be a right-wing tyrant who foiled their socialist powergrab and who was like totally the worst guy ever. And Karl Marx referred to Bonapartism as 'a situation in which counterrevolutionaries seize power from revolutionaries, and use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the masses', much like contemporary leftists conceive of fascism, which was just that, albeit with a left-wing socialist bent of its own which wasn't present in Bonapartism, which would place fascism closer to the center and to the left of Bonapartism, albeit not by much I would argue.
@@enki6676 ah i see the definition of left and right your using. That's why I don't use them because they mean so much to as many people. Far Right in the way the term is used means pro white/anti semetic. Some libtards use it to refer to Mitt Romney onward but generally that's what it means. Look I get where your coming from but saying that Hitler was a centrist. I mean what. ok he was a Nationalist and a Socialist but that doesn't place him next to Sargon of Akkad. Napoleon was a centrist in the sense that he was an enlightened despot, somewhere in between Louis and Rossouw. A Monarch but also a believer in liberal values not too religious but not antitheist and so on. Left and Right are pretty bad ways of observing politics and very bad for white people overall. Also is the UK today more based and redpilled then Germany in the 30s because of the monarchy? The Queen is just some old bag that would be indistinguishable from anyone running the city of London if it wasn't for the jewels on her head. I hope this comment doesn't come off as insulting or rude.
It feels like a crazy coincidence that you drop this video precisely know. The past couple of months I've been lifting myself out of an agnostic, materialist slumber, and many of the ideas I had recently fit into the category of perennialism. Just finished reading Jung's essays on archetypes as well. Your video seems like a godsend since it fills in some missing pieces perfectly, and gives a number of starting point to dive in deeper. Thanks.
Great vid Keith. Could this be the start of "An introduction to..." in a variety of schools of philosophical thought? I struggle to know where to begin with learning about philosophy. Which thinker to begin with? Which of their books / works to begin with? It would interesting if you did make a series on this.
Start with Plato, then Aristotle. If you want to have a comprehensive understanding, go basically chronologically from there. If you just want a basic understanding, read whatever interests you after that.
Great stuff Keith. Of course the perspective you describe as "Kantian/constructivism" has much earlier roots than Kant, and arguably a lot of the apparent narrowing of Christianity around a more exoteric position might be traced to the Church's official adoption of Thomistic Aristotelianism, with the dictum that "nothing is in the intellect which is not first in the senses." Then as well, very arguably the whole point of Christianity is that under original sin we cannot achieve our salvation by philosophical or mystical striving, but require God's radically exogenous intervention into history in Christ - an idea which has always been under a lot of tension within the Catholic tradition, but was radically embraced by the Reformation, with some branches of Protestant theology purity spiraling on monergism to the point of virtually total denial of the spiritual life. Which is convenient for those who would pin the flat spiritual affect of modernity all on Protestantism; but then, anyone who's been around actual attempts to practice any of this will have encountered the shocking immaturity of some of those who fancy themselves too spiritual for ordinary religion. Clearly, dismissing the exoteric as a shell to be discarded is as crude and unhelpful as "all religions are the same." So I would be pretty interested in learning more about the Traditionalist school. Although one thing that has always bothered me is how being a deracinated modern who chooses "a tradition" off the menu is already extremely different from those who actually receive it as a literal tradition, that is, something "handed down" to them within an integrated cultural context. Anyway, thanks for this, would love to see more.
Ah, Perennialism, my favourite topic! Also nice to finally hear someone point out there are actually different schools within the Perennial Philosophy.
Fantastic video Keith! Pretty much everyone i talk to about this has great miss conceptions about this school of thought and this will be a great video to link when the topic comes up. Keep up the good work
As much as i like Trad school i think their assumptions make their version of perennialism internaly inconsistent in practice, because in order to be a Traditonalist you at the same time need to 1. Belive in metatradition common to all orthodox religions 2. Stay within the orthodoxy of one particular tradition which are to bigger or lesser extent exclusivist in nature, by which i mean they prohibit you form beliving in metatradition (or at least heavly limit the extent of it) and would internally consider the claims of Trad School heretical
I'm sympathetic to Traditionalism as a methodology, though I have to disagree with their metaphysical claims. Indeed, I think they turned a method of comparative religion into a metaphysic, and thus reductively mistook the map for the actual territory, as it were. Since authentic religious traditions are ultimately irreconcilable, the analogy of climbing a mountain breaks up as we're approaching the peak. It's true that there is genuine wisdom in all traditional religions, it's true that they all to some extent reflect the ultimate Truth, but if we are to reach the summit, in the end, there is only one narrow road that leads to the Kingdom, one narrow road that goes the full distance.
Not all authentic religious traditions are ultimately irreconcilable. However, the Abrahamic traditions, at least as they are popularly accepted, do not lead to ultimate liberation, which is supra-personal. The stated aim of the latter traditions is to lead the believer to a sanctified, but still human and personal, existence in heaven. As dharmic traditions (such as Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism) make clear, such existence, while desirable relative to the earthly life, is not final liberation. The dharmic traditions are authentic religious traditions that are, arguably, ultimately reconcilable.
@@niccolop.carlyle4621 Which is enough to demonstrate that the analogy of the mountain doesn't work and that the supposedly shared metaphysics are merely philosophical reductionism. As for the "ultimate liberation", there can be no such thing. It seeks not alignment with Goodness and fulfilment/realization of human nature, but its repudiation. In that sense it shares in the essential qualities of gnosticism and even transhumanism. One of the foremost reasons to reject perennialism is exactly their shunning of Christendom, which Keith underplayed in this video presentation. Though he did point out a number of leading figures converting to Islam, and that ought to be enough to realize the folly of that school of thought. Born in the backyard of the Kingdom, lived in its house from their earliest days, but ultimately despite their penchant for contemplation failed to grasp any of it, abandoning their house for some simplified Christian heresy that, I suppose, tracks more easily with their, first and foremost, philosophical outlook. Philosophers are the merchants of lies.
@@horouathos8199 "It seeks not alignment with Goodness and fulfilment/realization of human nature, but its repudiation." It seeks union with absolute goodness, which requires the transcendence of human nature. "In that sense it shares in the essential qualities of gnosticism and even transhumanism." So what? Your two premises here don't imply there can be no such thing as ultimate liberation. "One of the foremost reasons to reject perennialism is exactly their shunning of Christendom, which Keith underplayed in this video presentation. Though he did point out a number of leading figures converting to Islam, and that ought to be enough to realize the folly of that school of thought." Okay--but this just begs the question of the ultimate truth of Christianity. (Begging the question is a fallacy.) "Born in the backyard of the Kingdom, lived in its house from their earliest days, but ultimately despite their penchant for contemplation failed to grasp any of it, abandoning their house for some simplified Christian heresy that, I suppose, tracks more easily with their, first and foremost, philosophical outlook." Again, this begs the question of the ultimate truth of Christianity. "Philosophers are the merchants of lies." Some of them are. Truth cannot be established by begging the question.
@@niccolop.carlyle4621 You can't transcend your nature, that ipso facto means that "your nature" isn't actually your nature. Those religions mistake man for Divinity and want to liberate his Divine essence. "Human nature" is merely illusory shackles that confine the impersonal essence, which itself isn't really anything either. In that sense it's not even clear what in the world is being liberated, apart from the non-existent void. It's not like we can litigate this thing in RUclips comments, but as far as I'm concerned that position is ridiculous on its face becase Divinity cannot be constrained in the first place nor can it fall out of alignment with itself and thus breaking identity. Furthermore, Dharmic religions are a decayed mess whose incoherence has been calcified by time. That's why it's difficult to even talk about Hinduism or Dharmic religions in general as some particular thing with any orthodoxy to it. The various movements within them are completely contradictory to eachother to the point of Dharmic religions exhausting and explicating all possible answers simultaneously. The only thing those converting perennialists did was fall victim to appearances and follow the path of least resistance. Instead of contemplating Christianity they packed their bags (some literally) and converted to religions that seemed more virile by virtue of their peripheral existence. Which is ironic given the whole Kali Yuga spiel they all constantly rambled about. In the end they fled the heart of the worldly undoing so they can LARP out their escapist fantasy, knowing full well that this decline isn't confined to "the West". Indeed, a sensible person would think that it is precisely in this place of Abandonment, in our final moment of global undoing, that Truth is to be found. They weren't sensible, though. They were philosophers.
@@horouathos8199 "It's not like we can litigate this thing in RUclips comments..." I agree with that. While I still don't quite agree with your view on perennialism, I appreciate that you gave a clear, non-question begging argument this time, in your first paragraph. Cheers.
The Christian answer to the Perennialist position is that the Soul is inherently Christian (created in the image and likeness of God), thus, in the pursuit of creating a religion, the pagan or non-christian will inevitably pursue a shadow of Christianity.
All normative religious arguments against perennialism start the same way: they take subject/object duality for granted, skip right to the object and argue from there, that their object (in this case a religious form) is the only true object, and all the others are false. Perennialism and the esoteric doctrines of every religion are based on the reality that ultimately there is no separation between subject and object, and thus the myriad objects contain a part of their subject within them, up to and including the religious forms.
Great video Keith! Recently been reading Introduction to Magic and Doctrine of awakening by Evola, really interesting to see the different schools of perennial thought differenteated in a consise manner. Am fond of taoism and jung as well, one of the main gripes I have with some esotheric and religious schools is the pathologizing of „negative“ exotheric emotion and action. All the best from Germany!
Looking sharp with the turtleneck Keith. Reminds me of the old Open University shows that used to be on BBC2 in the middle of the night, when I was a kid. Thanks for such a thorough explanation..
Have you tried meditation Keith? It's worthwhile getting an experiential taste of part of what perennialism is talking about. Meditation was for many of the pre-Socratics, as for Buddha, as for the Rishis (all Aryans in good standing) part of philosophy, or a tool for the philosopher, a tool dealing with an important aspect of reality that's so close to us we don't normally notice it. (For instance, we know little about Parmenides, but we know that his teacher (whose name I forget) "taught him silence.") The most elegant entry point into non-dual experience for an intellectual is to inquire into how strong the evidence is for you being a limited being peeping out of confinement in a body (so to speak, i.e. the vague idea we usually have of ourselves) - this is kind of the essence of Advaita Vedanta as a highly philosophical form of enlightenment training. The Frenchman Francis Lucille (talks easy to find on the web, a former scientist himself, good flautist too) gives this teaching well, and presents it in clear, articulate English. Pursuit of that inquiry leads one way or another to a peculiar type of experience that's totally at right angles to any ordinary experience (even drug trips). I think once one has had that experience (which is, btw, the same experience that was taught by Zen teachers to Kamikaze pilots, to prepare them; the same experience shared by ultra-nationalist Hindu Saivite mystics, or anti-Islam Buddhists), it has the result that's at the core of the Aryan or old-style European mindset: losing one's fear of death (without of course losing one's love of life). "Kerels, wollt ihr den euwig leben?" Traditionally, that experience in and of itself isn't yet "enlightenment," but it's closely related, and close enough for jazz for most people - and everyone's birthright.
Wow, really appreciated this. I talk about perennialism on my channel but this overview had more than a few new names for me. Added a few books to my reading wishlist for sure.
Have you read Mircea Eliade, Keith? Some interesting thoughts in his work. His ideas of the Sacred and Profane. How the modern world is something of the Profane and cut itself from the sacred. He offers insights on this idea of the eternal return and that eventually we will return to a more mythical religious age once the profane has been exhausted. It's quite Spenglarian. He was good friends with Ernst Junger, Carl Schmitt and Carl Jung. There's a brilliant analysis of his work called ''The Ecstatic Shaman (Sacred & Profane)'' on RUclips by some fella called C.J Cala. He makes some very interesting videos.
Profane the way I interpret it is any method of communication which seeks to alter the identity of language so that its meaning has no definition for two people. Example: -“just a prank bro” -the f word for everything -deconstruction of language -“literally…like literally” Sacred to me would be all essential social construction of meaning required for human life to have a future existence. Truth, beauty…
The cycle of the ages (manvantara) is a traditional version of this idea. Pretty much all the perennialists agree with Eliade here. Guenon's idea of "solidification" is very similar as well, and IIRC Eliade read Guenon and communicated with the traditionalists, so that's not a surprise.
@@puppetperception7861 I would add the simulacrum idea to the profane and ultra materialist worldviews. Anything that goes away from the source or the primordial. To me rapid consumerism is very profane. But I agree the deconstruction of language as well as symbology is very profane as it's again getting away from the origin. This is a post modern idea. This was bound to happen in a sense and you could label language as a form of techne, a tool to communicate originally between a tribe. I think the story of Babel communicates this within a society that thinks it can reach god by pure materialist means by building a tower to the heavens. To communicate to that which is beyond ourselves is not done through logic or reason because it does requare a form of detachment from yourself. So language although it can evoke, like great religious art or music is just a mere gateway to that train of thought. But the mystical is more than a train of thought then wards. It's why I think the mystic part is so important. You could say the sacred is nearer to the absolute/oneness, the profane is plurism i.e liberalism
@@spritualelitist665 I found something related and I’m passing it to you sir. A video titled, The Metaphysics of Social Engineering. It is a read of an article about presenting people in mass with two contradictory ideas without closure and how that affects behavior. An example it gives is the very word “postmodern”. Most of us here recognize the manipulation of the concept but might overlook the significance in the actual word. Ironically the solution to this “postmodernism” would be a form of Critical Theory which requires altering that word in such a way that only higher meaning could result from using it. Derrida was just correct in his analysis. I will post a link separately in case the comment gets removed
I would greatly recommend that everyone interested in metaphysics read René Guénon’s Reign of Quantity. That book completely changed the way I saw reality.
Curious where the middle of the Esoteric and Structural / Developmental Psychology branches meet...Where would Schuon/Guenon and Ken Wilbur agree? Can these two ideas not exist together? Cyclical nature of time as the psyche/soul continues to evolve and learn from past cycles. It feels like that's a natural progression to the idea of a cycle.
Interesting. I thought that Perennialism and Traditionalism are synonymous - you see both terms used interchangeably very often. I'm not very sure whether I'd call Neo-Vedanta and the Theosophical movement perennialist. Or post-modernists like Ken Wilbert - the whole idea of Perennialism is that there is primordial wisdom (Sophia Perennis) which is the expression of the higher, Divine principles, and does not change, evolve or develop but on the contrary - becomes hidden and lost in the Iron/Dark Age. At least that's my understanding of Perennialism for now.
I just learned today that it's called that. Absolute wisdom is not attainable by 3-dimensional beings, even if the son of god came down and tried to explain it, it would confuse everyone. Not that I think that happened, I think you get intelligent people in moments of clarity thinking they're a conduit for absolute wisdom when really they just happened to catch an idea coming from a peculiar angle that shouldn't be there.
Please talk in another video about Catholic Scholastic Metaphysics particularly the Augustian Platonic Metaphysics that both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien promoted. Remember God is not the same as the Universe as the monists would maintain. This is the crucial difference between Christianity Islam ( non Sufi ), and Old Testament Judaism ( non Kabbalahlistic ) versus Pantheistic Hinduism, Buddhism, Anamism. The Monotheist view of God is in fact not the same as the Monists/Pantheists view. Thanks best wishes.
Monism (in its Neoplatonic and Vedantic form) does not hold that God is the same as the universe (which thesis is pantheism). It holds that God is both immanent in and transcendent of the universe. "Pantheistic Hinduism..." Almost no branch of Hinduism is pantheistic. The Vedanta certainly isn't.
"You are that." said the father to his son. This is monist Hinduism of Šankara (Shankara). Perennialism is false because it makes the false claim that all religions at heart are the same especially mystical experience. The Christian though claims that Jesus is the person they meet while for example in the Baghvadgita Arjuna sees Krishna in the war chariot. The perennialist would dismiss both by rejecting both by claiming that the entity that the Christian and Arjuna actually perceived were the same entity. This ironically shows that the perennialist hypothesis is false. Mr Woods explains all of this in this video. Jesus is not Krishna. One died on the cross for mankind and the other one is depicted riding in a war chariot with Arjuna who Krishna encouraged to kill his cousins. They are not the same. Best wishes.
This is a well-done, comprehensive introduction to the concept of Perennialism, but I have to ask: why did you stop at Evola in the Traditionalism/esoteric branch? Where is Dugin, Dzhemal', Mamleev, etc.? The most recent (and most currently relevant) strain of Traditionalist thought has been developing in Russia.
Keith might be reluctant to go into Duginism due to the flack Dugin draws from some third positionists because of his Nazbol stuff, and because he might want to avoid coming across as endorsing National Bolshevism and being a Nazbol himself. Keith has drawn some criticism and been accused of being a Duginist Nazbol for talking about Dugin on several occasions previously. But Keith shouldn't let that prevent him from speaking his mind if that is the case. Regardless of what one thinks about Dugin and of his political ideology, he's an interesting multifaceted man which says interesting things. Disregarding people entirely, as a whole, just because one might not agree with some of their views, ideas or actions is a very primary and grug-brained thing to do. People are complex. Well some atleast, lol.
This is not correct. This explanation comes from lack of involvement in any single tradition. Traditions are unique routes to climb a very high mountain, each one has a particular route which may involve breathing, physical, emotional, intellectual, or energy methods ... applying these methods over many years carries you to a high place up the mountain. The only purpose of the traditions is to carry people high up, which is very difficult in such a disturbed world, which is why retreat from life, intensive practice and particular methods are used. There is then no "perennialism", because that is just a way of taking in no interest and saying "it's all the same" and we don't need to do it. "Mysticism" is a way of denying that the traditions work, by saying all "mystical experiences" are the same, and they are not. For instance Bohemian authors often "feel something" but this is in no way comparable to self-realization of Buddha. The only way to know things is to follow one intensively for many years. And this is the same if you want to say become a master craftsman; talking does nothing. In the same way if you wish to climb a high and dangerous mountain unknown to the species, you need a guide. One guide has learned a way of the North face, a different guide learned a way of the South face. If you wish to climb you employ one of the guides. Most people do not wish to climb and such type of discussions are means by which they reject making that effort. Guenon chose a guide and committed to it. Evola died looking at the Sun through the french doors of his balcony, beautiful but does this count as success? People like the idea of "freedom" that they have today and commit to little. Is this an honourable attitude or is our poisoning on a much deeper level than we recognize.
white board! ya know what's growing, Gnosticism. I'd like your take on theosophy and anthroposophy, there are specific differences. you could summarize them I suppose, but the breathe and depth requires a pretty deep dive, too much thinking for most people and time consuming if you don't intellectualize. they are my specialty if you're interested. They do have extended branches of thought, especially Blavatsky, but it's not for everyone, both the Madame and Steiner made some very controversial statements that would get you banned on youtube. In fact, some would argue it requires a karmic connection just to take them up. i would change the white board under Theosophy to Blavatsky rather than Steiner. Steiner's Anthroposophy took a pretty hard right from Theosophy when it was usurped by Leadbetter and Baily. Though Steiner admired the Madame his approach was very different. The Esoteric path can be very dangerous, Steiner can be attributed to making a safe road. BTW Evola loved Steiner, but I haven't read enough of him to see where he took the knowledge. What I do know of him is he's a bit of an esoteric rock star, and as we know rock stars are not the most reliable individual and tend to exploit what should be restrained broadly for the sake of current civilization and perhaps evolution. I have to look into the foundation of the category you're calling perennial. As always very interesting.
Thanks to everyone who supports this channel: www.buymeacoffee.com/keithwoods
www.subscribestar.com/keith-woods
Interveiw Jay Dyer
Can you do a speaking tour Kansas, USA?
Hello. Are you on gab? Thanks
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Please do something on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday
Oh btw your background is similar to mine. I have a black wall meeting a white wall. I have a japanese carp on my black wall. I got it at Virgin media stores and cut it out and stuck it to the wall. I haven't listened to all of your video because I got bored....Sorry.
This is like my college lectures but instead of a tiny hat enthusiast it’s a based Irishman
"A young professor of philosophy explains perennialism to his students, 1974"
we sure do get screwed by those tiny hats don't we! in all hijacked western nations and all areas of our hijacked lives!!
when they catch on to and shadow ban "tiny hats" we'll switch to "micro hats" and then "small caps" then "micro caps" etc etc etc yada yada yada and on and on and on......until one day when we'll have no choice but to use cryptography to communicate lol 😂
Truth is you were the small hat all along...
@@DreadfulCorpse lol
You know shits serious when Keith has to get out the whiteboard.
“Religion is an adaptation to a certain mentality, to save everybody. With Plato you cannot save everybody. But with a religion you can save the last man.” - Schuon
thank you for this
I took interest in Plato because of the so called noble lies.
Keith Woods just did an excellent presentation on the much misunderstood Guenon/Schuon/Evola school of thought.
It is good representation and sets a good example. He could probably even own a bank account and get service at a Starbucks
I see you Otto 😁
@@withnail-and-i Which one? Ananda or Rama? Thanks
"A young professor of philosophy explains perennialism to his students, 1974"
Turtleneck gang rise up! thanks for the video, Keith. Informative as always.
This.
Thought this was Mosley
Jay Dyer wants his whiteboard back, casts a +5 presuppositionalist curse on Keith
I know this is a bit off topic but the doge in your pfp looks like the eagle Mussolini used to wear on his cap 😂
@@Robcremvidz78 Haha nice one. I see what you did there ;)
@@samuelwysocki4547 sadly. A lot of good people would make a big leap in their philosophy if they had a better grip on presup and tag
Keith, for years I've been trying to reconcile my spiritual affinities with one another, oscillating between Catholicism, Germanic Paganism, and more. Just this morning I was at Mass, wrestling with these questions, and I asked God, or the gods, or the universe, or something to help me find truth. I get out of the church and into my car, look at my notifications, and you've posted this video. I don't know what to make of coincidences, but this one made me think. Thanks for what you do.
Nice. He works in mysterious ways.
You should listen to the Lord of Spirits podcast, they tackle some interesting angles on God and the Gods from a Christian perspective which might help you reframe your modern worldview to a more traditional one.
@@zuthula3847 tried Eastern Orthodoxy and Hesychasm?
@@zuthula3847 it is the original church of christ and has existed without a pope for 2000 years without splitting like protestantism. Check out Father Seraphim Rose he was a hindu convert. Some other based priests on youtube are Fr Spyridon Bailey, Fr Josiah Trenham, Fr. Peter Heers. Jay dyer is also good at theology and has an interest in the occult and how it relates to Christianity and elite degenerates. God bless you
I'm getting a lot of weird stuff since lockdown. Coincidence, synchronicity or something. I don't understand it.
On pol they were arguing that you haven't been yeeted yet because you're a ccp shill. But this video exemplifies the actual reason. You spend enough time on the highly esoteric, deeply philosophical subjects that I think the mods or censors straight up just don't get what's happening here. Good shit.
@Sail Foam I second this.
@Sail Foam maybe, I still like his commentary but maybe keep it on Odysee & telegram so we don't lose this on here
Esoteric perennialism.
Those threads always make me laugh. Still most /pol/ tards who show up support keith.
Algorithm can't understand his accent, sinple as.
I maintain that the late Heidegger was a perennialist. He seems to affirm that there is some kind of universal phenomenon of divinity, much like being itself. However, just like being, the phenomenon of divinity calls upon us to ever interpret it anew. There is no "final" or "ultimate" interpretation that will lay it all to rest for now and for ever. Instead, in traditional societies, every culture comes to its own interpretation of what it is to be, and what it is to be divine. We can recall Plato's description of differing city states being presided over by their own patron gods and goddesses which reflect their characters.
Now what about the contemporary era? How has divinity been revealed in the age of techno-capital? I would argue that the most alarming thing about the contemporary world is that divinity, rather than being revealed, has been withheld. Divinity has been "revealed" in the mode of *absence* rather than *presence* by techno-capital. This is why religion has either been relegated to the private sphere as some weird subculture you can participate in, or it has become religion only in name.
Think of George Floydism. In many ways it seems to be a new religious movement. However, it's missing the key component, the necessary condition of religion, which is that it relates humanity to divinity.
Sure, you can participate in a religion voluntarily if you like. All the more power to you. I see nothing illegitimate about this. However, my central concern is civilizational. In our culture, the all pervasive background interpretation of being which holds sway and in which we all participate whether we want to or not, is inherently secular, materialistic, and cares for nothing outside of that which can be objectively and rationally quantified. This is how everything which exists is always already interpreted in advance and we, whether we want to or not, must contend with this interpretation of the universe as being a collection of indifferent "stuff" which techno-capital is constantly metabolizing into commodities, including our own capacities to think and act. As Heidegger says, "man too is challenged forth". The world, in the contemporary era, is understood as merely an aggregate of resources which call upon us to make use of them in the most efficient way possible.
Contrast this with the world interpretation which held sway in the medieval period. Then, the world was understood to be the ens creatum, something fashioned by G-d for the sake of bringing glory to him. Every aspect of nature, history, and society was interpreted in light of Christianity in an ineluctable way. It didn't mater whether you were a saint or a highway brigand, you would see the world and your place in it through the lens of Christianity. To be an atheist was unthinkable. The entire social world reinforced belief in Christianity. It was the Christian interpretation of being and divinity which held sway.
Back to the present time. As Max Weber says, modernity is the process by which the prophet is replaced by the bureaucrat. Adopting a religion is a reaction against the technological revelation of being, and while I don't think it's illegitimate to do so, it doesn't really provided a solution to the problem I've outlined. It's a reinterpretation of religion as being a private and personal affair that doesn't do anything to actually overcome the core issue which is that techno-capital has desacralized the world and turned us all into atomized, deracinated producer-consumers.
Communication is proof of presence
This is a based, high-IQ take.
I think of Yeats Second Coming poem- "surely some revelation is at hand". Are we still waiting for it, or have we missed it?
The most reasonable, insightful and intelligent comment I've seen in a while! Man, reading this is like a breath of fresh air in an ocean polluted by the usual stuff you find on RUclips.
And not only is it an intelligent comment, it's an intelligent comment about a topic that truly is of importance! How many smart people waste their brain power and potential on stuff that is going to get us nowhere..
Do you have a blog or something? I'd watch your videos, read your essays and buy your books!
I had 2 mystical experiences in my life. 1 about 30 years ago when I was studying Taoism. Another 1 about 5 years ago as a Christian.
When I had the 1st experience it was like this revelation that everything was 1. A thought came to me that we're all like drops of water, were separated now, but all from the same source, & 1 day we'll all return to it and be reunited. With the 2nd experience I had an overwhelming feeling of God's unconditional love. Bible passages that I'd read over 100 ×'s were illuminated in my mind and I could see what they were trying to convey.
What religion are you know?
YES KEET.
Based perennialism, this is the exact content I'm clamouring for.
WHITEBOARD WOODS
WHITEBOARD WOODS
Shoutout to Keith's left arm for holding the whiteboard the entire time.
For every one of those nobs that didn't understand what Peterson meant years ago when he said there are some things that are "hyper-real" and "true across time cross-culturally", I hope they run across this video.
Thank you, Keef!
Keep up the great work!
White board nationalism
Perennialism.The ideology that goes away, then comes back every year.
🤣
Charlie Brown: 'All religions are basically the same. Name any two religions. '
Snoopy: 'Melanesian frog worshippers and Scientology.'
Seeing this come up in my feed just put a beaming smile on my face, thanks Keith for being part of the echelon staying an intellectual cut above others on the scene!
I stumbled upon Guénon in 2019, reading Reign of Quantity completely changed how I looked at the world. Amazing the resurgence of interest in Guénon and Schuon we are seeing.
Traditionalism, which one could call a branch of perennialism, holds that it is not enough to understand perennialism on an intellectual level, but that one must devote oneself to a religious tradition in order to gain firsthand experience of spiritual knowledge. I think that's basically true. Perennialism by itself is just a nifty intellectual position if it's not accompanied by firsthand spiritual experience, and it's no substitute for belonging to a religious tradition. And I say this as a perennialist. My own spiritual struggle consists of being spiritual, whereas I wish I could be religious, but no particular religious tradition today truly calls to me.
Very well put. Id feel the same way. Have been a member of two different religious traditions(beyond my birth one)so far, and have looked deeply into loads of other religious traditions and philosophies. I'm still inclined towards aspects of certain ones more than others.
In this era there is so much distortion, false teachers and incomplete philosophies, that it's difficult to navigate in order to find
a genuine spiritual path that's suited to our individual disposition.
Yes we must cleave to a legitimate tradition with absolute conviction, with our perennialist views in mind. This is the key.
I always wondered how many people are even capable of spiritual experience in the first place. It is why I often argue that permitting shrooms, lsd, and dmt may do some good.
Keith never dissapoints with his videos, definitely a gift for those Who have found his channel on here
Id like more frecuency even if quality is lowered somewhat 👍
A lot of people jump from Guenon to Evola but what is not well know is there is another disciple of Guenon who took a different path: Fr. Seraphim Rose. Guenon led Fr. Seraphim to Holy Orthodoxy. In addition to Evola do not cheat yourself, read Fr. Seraphim Rose. The Truth is out there.
Keith Woods has read, and produced a video on, _Nihilism_ by Fr. Seraphim Rose.
Everyone should read Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines by Guenon. It gives a clear introduction to basic and intuitive truths held among 95% of peoples that have existed, without the admixture of modern error that all these other names, including Schuon and Huston Smith, tend to incorporate.
Absolutely. That book is a must read.
Can't wait to dig into this. Would love to see some more stuff about Ellul. Especially about his theology
just picked up The Political Illusion at a local shop. Although im 60% sure the owner is an autistic marxist...
Professor Woods
Pretty decent, but there was an error. The left hand path is not materialistic nor evil. It is the path of complete, active unconditioning from materiality, including from ethics and societal standards. It is a path to immortality which is an alternative method to the right hand path suitable to certain persons. It is the path of Bacchus, the Dionysian path, essentially, or maybe Crowley's enlightened Bohemian who finds God at the bottom of the bottle when he has exhausted all possibilities in hedonism.
What you were talking about with regard to the profane aims of the theosophists is instead what Guenon would call the counter-initiation or counter-tradition. It looks like initiation, it looks like tradition, but its real purpose is to counteract the crystallization of tradition on earth and to forestall its practitioners from reaching initiatic heights through the reliance on falsehoods like universalism.
Evola practiced left-hand magic and identified with a certain Dionysian character, which you might not expect from someone who saw such supreme value in the warrior. He recalled spending a freezing night at a lodge in the Alps, getting blasted on wine, and listening to Jazz, which he ordinarily dislikes. They went out and walked on the brittle ice, sometimes falling in. It was a divine experience for him in a Bacchic way. He also practiced Tantra, and explains in The Yoga of Power that a key part of Tantra was to break down one's resistances to action based on social mores. There were traditional rituals that were incestuous (usually simulated and not real, but occasionally real) and otherwise immoral included in some variations of Tantric practice to achieve total unconditioning of the self -- to conquer fear and break down barriers to action and pure consciousness. You might even think of a parallel practice in Mithraism in which the practitioner must perform a ritual murder to over come his fears and attachment to society. These were sometimes real, sometimes simulated. Those were not necessary, but that's just an extreme example of some of the methods that can show up on the path of total unconditioning, and this is why it has a reputation for being "evil" among outsiders. Even the traditional Tantrists stated that these doctrines were not for the public or the lower castes because they would misunderstand their purpose and be harmed by them. The line between methods of unconditioning and cthonic hedonism or suicide is very fine and requires strong will and consciousness. The arabs stated for this reason that magic was like walking across an abyss on a razor's edge.
Right and Left path magic can only lead you to Hell.
'Breaking down barriers' leads to demonic posession.
Oh man, he's got a whiteboard. Things are getting serious.
Indeed perennialism is not Oprah Winfrey Eckhart Tolle new age syncretism. Quite the opposite actually.
You know shit is a about to get real when Keef gets out the white board
I love the spiritual stuff more then any other type of content you make
same
His spiritual stuff is excellent, but I like his breakdowns of political ideologies and systems aswell. Especially the one on 'communist' China, that one was great. He should do one on Bonapartism and how it relates to fascism. I've seen people claim that fascism is a descendant of Bonapartism lately, which strikes me as correct. Bonapartism bears many similarities to fascism, and it came about in very similar circumstances, they were both right-wing dictatorships which came about as responses to leftist upheavals and meant to restore order and tradition to their respective societies which had been uprooted by Leftism. Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler were similar in many respects. One might even be able to trace the origins of fascism way back to Caesarism. Might be too spicy of a topic for YT though.
@@enki6676 Napoleon was a centrist at most
@@universome511 Really? How? I mean obviously there were some considerable differences in the specifics of these regimes, but Napoleon being an absolute monarch was pretty far Right, he was the definition of right-wing, I would argue he was further to the Right than Mussolini or Hitler ever were. If anything, Mussolini and Hitler were the centrists in comparison, being third positionists. Mussolini himself said that while fascism sat on the Right, it might aswell have sat on the center. Napoleon was basically considered to be the Hitler of his day to the leftists of his time, who considered him to be a right-wing tyrant who foiled their socialist powergrab and who was like totally the worst guy ever. And Karl Marx referred to Bonapartism as 'a situation in which counterrevolutionaries seize power from revolutionaries, and use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the masses', much like contemporary leftists conceive of fascism, which was just that, albeit with a left-wing socialist bent of its own which wasn't present in Bonapartism, which would place fascism closer to the center and to the left of Bonapartism, albeit not by much I would argue.
@@enki6676 ah i see the definition of left and right your using. That's why I don't use them because they mean so much to as many people. Far Right in the way the term is used means pro white/anti semetic. Some libtards use it to refer to Mitt Romney onward but generally that's what it means. Look I get where your coming from but saying that Hitler was a centrist. I mean what. ok he was a Nationalist and a Socialist but that doesn't place him next to Sargon of Akkad. Napoleon was a centrist in the sense that he was an enlightened despot, somewhere in between Louis and Rossouw. A Monarch but also a believer in liberal values not too religious but not antitheist and so on. Left and Right are pretty bad ways of observing politics and very bad for white people overall. Also is the UK today more based and redpilled then Germany in the 30s because of the monarchy? The Queen is just some old bag that would be indistinguishable from anyone running the city of London if it wasn't for the jewels on her head.
I hope this comment doesn't come off as insulting or rude.
It feels like a crazy coincidence that you drop this video precisely know. The past couple of months I've been lifting myself out of an agnostic, materialist slumber, and many of the ideas I had recently fit into the category of perennialism. Just finished reading Jung's essays on archetypes as well. Your video seems like a godsend since it fills in some missing pieces perfectly, and gives a number of starting point to dive in deeper. Thanks.
With that kind of reading daily meditation and a reduction of stimulants helps with clarity.
that turtleneck is 2 cms away from teaching CRT
Great vid Keith.
Could this be the start of "An introduction to..." in a variety of schools of philosophical thought?
I struggle to know where to begin with learning about philosophy. Which thinker to begin with? Which of their books / works to begin with?
It would interesting if you did make a series on this.
Start with Plato, then Aristotle. If you want to have a comprehensive understanding, go basically chronologically from there. If you just want a basic understanding, read whatever interests you after that.
Start with the Godward Podcast on YT at episode 1
When Keith brakes out the whiteboard you know you’re in for a good time.
Great stuff Keith. Of course the perspective you describe as "Kantian/constructivism" has much earlier roots than Kant, and arguably a lot of the apparent narrowing of Christianity around a more exoteric position might be traced to the Church's official adoption of Thomistic Aristotelianism, with the dictum that "nothing is in the intellect which is not first in the senses." Then as well, very arguably the whole point of Christianity is that under original sin we cannot achieve our salvation by philosophical or mystical striving, but require God's radically exogenous intervention into history in Christ - an idea which has always been under a lot of tension within the Catholic tradition, but was radically embraced by the Reformation, with some branches of Protestant theology purity spiraling on monergism to the point of virtually total denial of the spiritual life. Which is convenient for those who would pin the flat spiritual affect of modernity all on Protestantism; but then, anyone who's been around actual attempts to practice any of this will have encountered the shocking immaturity of some of those who fancy themselves too spiritual for ordinary religion. Clearly, dismissing the exoteric as a shell to be discarded is as crude and unhelpful as "all religions are the same." So I would be pretty interested in learning more about the Traditionalist school. Although one thing that has always bothered me is how being a deracinated modern who chooses "a tradition" off the menu is already extremely different from those who actually receive it as a literal tradition, that is, something "handed down" to them within an integrated cultural context. Anyway, thanks for this, would love to see more.
good points, I agree all religions are not the same
New Right Wing Aesthetic just dropped.
New Shade of Turtleneck for that Relaxed Fascist Look.
@@osamaobama I often rock a black merino wool turtleneck myself. Grey gives a more leisurely appearance, however.
Man brought out the whiteboard
"Esoteric Perennial Traditionalism is like, when you do traditional stuff, esoterically, and in a perennial way."
- Julius Evola, maybe.
Ah, Perennialism, my favourite topic! Also nice to finally hear someone point out there are actually different schools within the Perennial Philosophy.
Yoooo that handwriting is flames, dawg
When what you want to present requires a power point presentation but you also want people to see your new turtleneck
Well done you did a really good job unwrapping all that.
So many people spend their life time on spiritual seeking.
Fantastic video Keith! Pretty much everyone i talk to about this has great miss conceptions about this school of thought and this will be a great video to link when the topic comes up. Keep up the good work
The explanation of the misunderstanding of perennialism sounds more like the Gnostic doctrine of the synthesis.
Jay Dyer collab when?
ortholarp
So early that I haven't finished watching. But I will say this: I agree
npc
Timely vid on important topic.
Good evening Mr. Woods
As much as i like Trad school i think their assumptions make their version of perennialism internaly inconsistent in practice, because in order to be a Traditonalist you at the same time need to
1. Belive in metatradition common to all orthodox religions
2. Stay within the orthodoxy of one particular tradition which are to bigger or lesser extent exclusivist in nature, by which i mean they prohibit you form beliving in metatradition (or at least heavly limit the extent of it) and would internally consider the claims of Trad School heretical
Agree.
@@nealdee1755 Im afraid many adherents to non-Abrahamic traditions would tell you otherwise
@@nealdee1755 Sure, but that doesn't actually make all those traditions reconcilable. It's a personal idiosyncrasy that can simply be contradictory.
@@horouathos8199 On the esoteric level, the authentic non-Abrahamic traditions are evidently reconcilable.
@@niccolop.carlyle4621 Potentially only certain schools. and the most poisonous ones at that.
I'm sympathetic to Traditionalism as a methodology, though I have to disagree with their metaphysical claims. Indeed, I think they turned a method of comparative religion into a metaphysic, and thus reductively mistook the map for the actual territory, as it were.
Since authentic religious traditions are ultimately irreconcilable, the analogy of climbing a mountain breaks up as we're approaching the peak. It's true that there is genuine wisdom in all traditional religions, it's true that they all to some extent reflect the ultimate Truth, but if we are to reach the summit, in the end, there is only one narrow road that leads to the Kingdom, one narrow road that goes the full distance.
Not all authentic religious traditions are ultimately irreconcilable. However, the Abrahamic traditions, at least as they are popularly accepted, do not lead to ultimate liberation, which is supra-personal. The stated aim of the latter traditions is to lead the believer to a sanctified, but still human and personal, existence in heaven. As dharmic traditions (such as Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism) make clear, such existence, while desirable relative to the earthly life, is not final liberation. The dharmic traditions are authentic religious traditions that are, arguably, ultimately reconcilable.
@@niccolop.carlyle4621 Which is enough to demonstrate that the analogy of the mountain doesn't work and that the supposedly shared metaphysics are merely philosophical reductionism.
As for the "ultimate liberation", there can be no such thing. It seeks not alignment with Goodness and fulfilment/realization of human nature, but its repudiation. In that sense it shares in the essential qualities of gnosticism and even transhumanism.
One of the foremost reasons to reject perennialism is exactly their shunning of Christendom, which Keith underplayed in this video presentation. Though he did point out a number of leading figures converting to Islam, and that ought to be enough to realize the folly of that school of thought.
Born in the backyard of the Kingdom, lived in its house from their earliest days, but ultimately despite their penchant for contemplation failed to grasp any of it, abandoning their house for some simplified Christian heresy that, I suppose, tracks more easily with their, first and foremost, philosophical outlook.
Philosophers are the merchants of lies.
@@horouathos8199 "It seeks not alignment with Goodness and fulfilment/realization of human nature, but its repudiation." It seeks union with absolute goodness, which requires the transcendence of human nature. "In that sense it shares in the essential qualities of gnosticism and even transhumanism." So what? Your two premises here don't imply there can be no such thing as ultimate liberation.
"One of the foremost reasons to reject perennialism is exactly their shunning of Christendom, which Keith underplayed in this video presentation. Though he did point out a number of leading figures converting to Islam, and that ought to be enough to realize the folly of that school of thought." Okay--but this just begs the question of the ultimate truth of Christianity. (Begging the question is a fallacy.)
"Born in the backyard of the Kingdom, lived in its house from their earliest days, but ultimately despite their penchant for contemplation failed to grasp any of it, abandoning their house for some simplified Christian heresy that, I suppose, tracks more easily with their, first and foremost, philosophical outlook." Again, this begs the question of the ultimate truth of Christianity.
"Philosophers are the merchants of lies." Some of them are. Truth cannot be established by begging the question.
@@niccolop.carlyle4621 You can't transcend your nature, that ipso facto means that "your nature" isn't actually your nature. Those religions mistake man for Divinity and want to liberate his Divine essence. "Human nature" is merely illusory shackles that confine the impersonal essence, which itself isn't really anything either. In that sense it's not even clear what in the world is being liberated, apart from the non-existent void.
It's not like we can litigate this thing in RUclips comments, but as far as I'm concerned that position is ridiculous on its face becase Divinity cannot be constrained in the first place nor can it fall out of alignment with itself and thus breaking identity.
Furthermore, Dharmic religions are a decayed mess whose incoherence has been calcified by time. That's why it's difficult to even talk about Hinduism or Dharmic religions in general as some particular thing with any orthodoxy to it. The various movements within them are completely contradictory to eachother to the point of Dharmic religions exhausting and explicating all possible answers simultaneously.
The only thing those converting perennialists did was fall victim to appearances and follow the path of least resistance. Instead of contemplating Christianity they packed their bags (some literally) and converted to religions that seemed more virile by virtue of their peripheral existence. Which is ironic given the whole Kali Yuga spiel they all constantly rambled about. In the end they fled the heart of the worldly undoing so they can LARP out their escapist fantasy, knowing full well that this decline isn't confined to "the West". Indeed, a sensible person would think that it is precisely in this place of Abandonment, in our final moment of global undoing, that Truth is to be found.
They weren't sensible, though. They were philosophers.
@@horouathos8199 "It's not like we can litigate this thing in RUclips comments..." I agree with that. While I still don't quite agree with your view on perennialism, I appreciate that you gave a clear, non-question begging argument this time, in your first paragraph.
Cheers.
I could never do this, well done!!!
The Christian answer to the Perennialist position is that the Soul is inherently Christian (created in the image and likeness of God), thus, in the pursuit of creating a religion, the pagan or non-christian will inevitably pursue a shadow of Christianity.
Interesting, but as a Pagan I don't agree
St Paul & Justin Martyr kind of preached this 2000 years ago lol
All normative religious arguments against perennialism start the same way: they take subject/object duality for granted, skip right to the object and argue from there, that their object (in this case a religious form) is the only true object, and all the others are false.
Perennialism and the esoteric doctrines of every religion are based on the reality that ultimately there is no separation between subject and object, and thus the myriad objects contain a part of their subject within them, up to and including the religious forms.
Fuentes is going to be pissed that you stole his whiteboard bit.
Little Nick Realllllllllllllllly likes catboys
What about evola's book on theosophy?
Rene Guenon has written a book about Theosophy, not Evola, it declares it a pseudo-religion which it really is
What a coincidence. I was just chatting with the lady at the post-office about this.
Awesome. Excellent video, Keith Woods. Well said. Spot on God bless, Ireland Donegal.
Great video Keith!
Recently been reading Introduction to Magic and Doctrine of awakening by Evola, really interesting to see the different schools of perennial thought differenteated in a consise manner. Am fond of taoism and jung as well, one of the main gripes I have with some esotheric and religious schools is the pathologizing of „negative“ exotheric emotion and action.
All the best from Germany!
Extremely interesting video - cheers Keith, would you ever do a video on determinism?
Looking sharp with the turtleneck Keith. Reminds me of the old Open University shows that used to be on BBC2 in the middle of the night, when I was a kid. Thanks for such a thorough explanation..
Have you tried meditation Keith? It's worthwhile getting an experiential taste of part of what perennialism is talking about. Meditation was for many of the pre-Socratics, as for Buddha, as for the Rishis (all Aryans in good standing) part of philosophy, or a tool for the philosopher, a tool dealing with an important aspect of reality that's so close to us we don't normally notice it. (For instance, we know little about Parmenides, but we know that his teacher (whose name I forget) "taught him silence.")
The most elegant entry point into non-dual experience for an intellectual is to inquire into how strong the evidence is for you being a limited being peeping out of confinement in a body (so to speak, i.e. the vague idea we usually have of ourselves) - this is kind of the essence of Advaita Vedanta as a highly philosophical form of enlightenment training. The Frenchman Francis Lucille (talks easy to find on the web, a former scientist himself, good flautist too) gives this teaching well, and presents it in clear, articulate English. Pursuit of that inquiry leads one way or another to a peculiar type of experience that's totally at right angles to any ordinary experience (even drug trips).
I think once one has had that experience (which is, btw, the same experience that was taught by Zen teachers to Kamikaze pilots, to prepare them; the same experience shared by ultra-nationalist Hindu Saivite mystics, or anti-Islam Buddhists), it has the result that's at the core of the Aryan or old-style European mindset: losing one's fear of death (without of course losing one's love of life).
"Kerels, wollt ihr den euwig leben?"
Traditionally, that experience in and of itself isn't yet "enlightenment," but it's closely related, and close enough for jazz for most people - and everyone's birthright.
Excellent timing for me personally. Another important video.
It’s certainly a timely idea that’s enjoying a revival
Wow, really appreciated this. I talk about perennialism on my channel but this overview had more than a few new names for me. Added a few books to my reading wishlist for sure.
Very much liked the style of the video. Keep up the great work!
Have you read Mircea Eliade, Keith? Some interesting thoughts in his work. His ideas of the Sacred and Profane. How the modern world is something of the Profane and cut itself from the sacred. He offers insights on this idea of the eternal return and that eventually we will return to a more mythical religious age once the profane has been exhausted. It's quite Spenglarian. He was good friends with Ernst Junger, Carl Schmitt and Carl Jung. There's a brilliant analysis of his work called ''The Ecstatic Shaman (Sacred & Profane)'' on RUclips by some fella called C.J Cala. He makes some very interesting videos.
Profane the way I interpret it is any method of communication which seeks to alter the identity of language so that its meaning has no definition for two people.
Example:
-“just a prank bro”
-the f word for everything
-deconstruction of language
-“literally…like literally”
Sacred to me would be all essential social construction of meaning required for human life to have a future existence. Truth, beauty…
The cycle of the ages (manvantara) is a traditional version of this idea. Pretty much all the perennialists agree with Eliade here. Guenon's idea of "solidification" is very similar as well, and IIRC Eliade read Guenon and communicated with the traditionalists, so that's not a surprise.
Fuck reading. Do something
@@puppetperception7861 I would add the simulacrum idea to the profane and ultra materialist worldviews. Anything that goes away from the source or the primordial. To me rapid consumerism is very profane. But I agree the deconstruction of language as well as symbology is very profane as it's again getting away from the origin. This is a post modern idea. This was bound to happen in a sense and you could label language as a form of techne, a tool to communicate originally between a tribe. I think the story of Babel communicates this within a society that thinks it can reach god by pure materialist means by building a tower to the heavens. To communicate to that which is beyond ourselves is not done through logic or reason because it does requare a form of detachment from yourself. So language although it can evoke, like great religious art or music is just a mere gateway to that train of thought. But the mystical is more than a train of thought then wards. It's why I think the mystic part is so important. You could say the sacred is nearer to the absolute/oneness, the profane is plurism i.e liberalism
@@spritualelitist665 I found something related and I’m passing it to you sir. A video titled, The Metaphysics of Social Engineering. It is a read of an article about presenting people in mass with two contradictory ideas without closure and how that affects behavior. An example it gives is the very word “postmodern”. Most of us here recognize the manipulation of the concept but might overlook the significance in the actual word. Ironically the solution to this “postmodernism” would be a form of Critical Theory which requires altering that word in such a way that only higher meaning could result from using it. Derrida was just correct in his analysis. I will post a link separately in case the comment gets removed
o sheet . The white board's out .
I would greatly recommend that everyone interested in metaphysics read René Guénon’s Reign of Quantity. That book completely changed the way I saw reality.
Keith you should have hung the low tech white board on the wall so you could have gesticulated with both hands. Otherwise excellent vid!
Can you put this in "based" and "cringe" terminology?
Keith with da whiteboard 🥶🥶
ΗΟLY SHIT THE DRIP!
Why didn't any of my university professors look like this
Curious where the middle of the Esoteric and Structural / Developmental Psychology branches meet...Where would Schuon/Guenon and Ken Wilbur agree? Can these two ideas not exist together? Cyclical nature of time as the psyche/soul continues to evolve and learn from past cycles. It feels like that's a natural progression to the idea of a cycle.
The aesthetics are there, how can you not listen to this man.
Fantastic video, Keith! What I learn at university is garbage compared to this
Interesting. I thought that Perennialism and Traditionalism are synonymous - you see both terms used interchangeably very often. I'm not very sure whether I'd call Neo-Vedanta and the Theosophical movement perennialist. Or post-modernists like Ken Wilbert - the whole idea of Perennialism is that there is primordial wisdom (Sophia Perennis) which is the expression of the higher, Divine principles, and does not change, evolve or develop but on the contrary - becomes hidden and lost in the Iron/Dark Age. At least that's my understanding of Perennialism for now.
Loving these videos. Such incisive commentary. This is philosophy at its best.
Great work. Thank you.
debate Jay Dyer
ortholarp
Woah, busting out the whiteboard! :)
High Quality Content
I just learned today that it's called that. Absolute wisdom is not attainable by 3-dimensional beings, even if the son of god came down and tried to explain it, it would confuse everyone. Not that I think that happened, I think you get intelligent people in moments of clarity thinking they're a conduit for absolute wisdom when really they just happened to catch an idea coming from a peculiar angle that shouldn't be there.
Please talk in another video about Catholic Scholastic Metaphysics particularly the Augustian Platonic Metaphysics that both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien promoted. Remember God is not the same as the Universe as the monists would maintain. This is the crucial difference between Christianity Islam ( non Sufi ), and Old Testament Judaism ( non Kabbalahlistic ) versus Pantheistic Hinduism, Buddhism, Anamism. The Monotheist view of God is in fact not the same as the Monists/Pantheists view. Thanks best wishes.
Watch Tyler Hamilton (Thamster Witnat) for an exploration of this topic
Monism (in its Neoplatonic and Vedantic form) does not hold that God is the same as the universe (which thesis is pantheism). It holds that God is both immanent in and transcendent of the universe. "Pantheistic Hinduism..." Almost no branch of Hinduism is pantheistic. The Vedanta certainly isn't.
"You are that." said the father to his son. This is monist Hinduism of Šankara (Shankara). Perennialism is false because it makes the false claim that all religions at heart are the same especially mystical experience. The Christian though claims that Jesus is the person they meet while for example in the Baghvadgita Arjuna sees Krishna in the war chariot. The perennialist would dismiss both by rejecting both by claiming that the entity that the Christian and Arjuna actually perceived were the same entity. This ironically shows that the perennialist hypothesis is false. Mr Woods explains all of this in this video. Jesus is not Krishna. One died on the cross for mankind and the other one is depicted riding in a war chariot with Arjuna who Krishna encouraged to kill his cousins. They are not the same. Best wishes.
our man finally brings out the whiteboard!
This is a well-done, comprehensive introduction to the concept of Perennialism, but I have to ask: why did you stop at Evola in the Traditionalism/esoteric branch? Where is Dugin, Dzhemal', Mamleev, etc.? The most recent (and most currently relevant) strain of Traditionalist thought has been developing in Russia.
Keith might be reluctant to go into Duginism due to the flack Dugin draws from some third positionists because of his Nazbol stuff, and because he might want to avoid coming across as endorsing National Bolshevism and being a Nazbol himself. Keith has drawn some criticism and been accused of being a Duginist Nazbol for talking about Dugin on several occasions previously. But Keith shouldn't let that prevent him from speaking his mind if that is the case. Regardless of what one thinks about Dugin and of his political ideology, he's an interesting multifaceted man which says interesting things. Disregarding people entirely, as a whole, just because one might not agree with some of their views, ideas or actions is a very primary and grug-brained thing to do. People are complex. Well some atleast, lol.
This is not correct.
This explanation comes from lack of involvement in any single tradition.
Traditions are unique routes to climb a very high mountain, each one has a particular route which may involve breathing, physical, emotional, intellectual, or energy methods ... applying these methods over many years carries you to a high place up the mountain.
The only purpose of the traditions is to carry people high up, which is very difficult in such a disturbed world, which is why retreat from life, intensive practice and particular methods are used.
There is then no "perennialism", because that is just a way of taking in no interest and saying "it's all the same" and we don't need to do it. "Mysticism" is a way of denying that the traditions work, by saying all "mystical experiences" are the same, and they are not. For instance Bohemian authors often "feel something" but this is in no way comparable to self-realization of Buddha.
The only way to know things is to follow one intensively for many years.
And this is the same if you want to say become a master craftsman; talking does nothing.
In the same way if you wish to climb a high and dangerous mountain unknown to the species, you need a guide. One guide has learned a way of the North face, a different guide learned a way of the South face.
If you wish to climb you employ one of the guides.
Most people do not wish to climb and such type of discussions are means by which they reject making that effort.
Guenon chose a guide and committed to it.
Evola died looking at the Sun through the french doors of his balcony, beautiful but does this count as success?
People like the idea of "freedom" that they have today and commit to little.
Is this an honourable attitude or is our poisoning on a much deeper level than we recognize.
Love your channel
Good stuff
its a well known fact ones IQ goes up several points whilst wearing a turtle neck.
Unironically your outfit and surroundings influence your mindset. People perform slightly better on IQ tests when they're wearing a lab coat.
Reactionaries will really turn to ancient heresy to avoid repenting of their sin and fully submitting to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
JS Mill says the differential between higher order and lower order pleasures are all that matter. Buddhism for the London Town lawyer.
1,185 hrs of Jordan Peterson condensed in into 34 minutes.
Jordan Peterson has no grasp of metaphysics
We'll see this lad at Mass yet 🙃
Thank you.
Nice work. So much info here.
A really good introduction on the subject. Excellent work.
This is definitely the video I needed today but didn't know I wanted
Like a young Foucault with those turtle necks bro.
Im pretty sure hes pro vax tho
@@chile_en_nogada2090 you are are ya?
@@Vingul i am pro vax when I know the vaccine works!
@@chile_en_nogada2090 I’m not.
@@Vingul good for u
white board!
ya know what's growing, Gnosticism.
I'd like your take on theosophy and anthroposophy, there are specific differences.
you could summarize them I suppose, but the breathe and depth requires a pretty deep dive, too much thinking for most people and time consuming if you don't intellectualize. they are my specialty if you're interested. They do have extended branches of thought, especially Blavatsky, but it's not for everyone, both the Madame and Steiner made some very controversial statements that would get you banned on youtube. In fact, some would argue it requires a karmic connection just to take them up.
i would change the white board under Theosophy to Blavatsky rather than Steiner. Steiner's Anthroposophy took a pretty hard right from Theosophy when it was usurped by Leadbetter and Baily. Though Steiner admired the Madame his approach was very different. The Esoteric path can be very dangerous, Steiner can be attributed to making a safe road. BTW Evola loved Steiner, but I haven't read enough of him to see where he took the knowledge. What I do know of him is he's a bit of an esoteric rock star, and as we know rock stars are not the most reliable individual and tend to exploit what should be restrained broadly for the sake of current civilization and perhaps evolution.
I have to look into the foundation of the category you're calling perennial.
As always very interesting.
you're my favorite