The opinion that Adolf Hitler was an agent of the diabolical forces, that his initiation was only a monstrous counter-initiation, and that his SS Order was only a sinister brotherhood of black magicians, is—without a doubt!—widespread among anti-Hitlerians more or less daubed in occultism (and there is no shortage of them).
The most convincing argument against this seems to me to come from India. In the West, the confusion in terms of knowledge of the principles is such that it’s difficult to say whether there is still a group that can legitimately claim a true filiation with the Tradition. There is therefore no point of comparison between the attitude of true initiates and that of charlatans. According to René Guénon, practically all societies in Europe that claim to be ‘initiatory’ nowadays would be classified under the latter heading. However, it is their members who make themselves heard, who agitate, who take a stand against Hitlerism as Louis Pauwels and the Jew Bergier did, whenever they could, in the magazine Planète. Incidentally, I don’t know of a single European group interested in esoteric doctrines which is not anti-Hitler (I could be wrong, of course; I would like to be wrong on this point).
But the same is not true in India.
For one thing, one is faced with a completely different ‘spiritual landscape’ there. Instead of dealing with groups with more or less ‘initiatory’ claims, moving amid a huge profane society, infatuated with experimental science and ‘progress’ and concerned above all with its material well-being, we are in the presence of a traditional civilisation, very much alive despite the growing influence of technology. The man of the masses, not poisoned by propaganda since he still enjoys the ‘blessing of illiteracy’ (to use an expression dear to the Führer), thinks more about it than the individual of the same social level in the West—which among us is not an achievement! He thinks about it, above all, in the spirit of Tradition as witnessed by the young Sudra whose story I recalled at the beginning of these Memories and Reflections.
The Hindu who has been to school, and even the one who has studied in Europe or the USA, is not hostile to Tradition. He is familiar with the idea of natural hierarchy, of biological, and therefore racial, heredity intimately linked to the karma of each individual. And in the vast majority of cases he lives according to the immemorial rules of his caste—even when the ‘progressive’ government of a so-called ‘free’ India (in reality: a grotesque copy of Western democracies) has proclaimed the abolition of castes and imposed universal suffrage. In some cases, of course, he brings back subversive ideas or shocking habits back from his contacts with foreigners. But then he is scorned by his own, and orthodox society turns away from him—no government having the power to force matters, he has to accept it whether he likes it or not.
As for the traditional initiatory groups and the isolated masters of true secret science, they continue to exist as in the past: in silence, unnoticed by the general public. They keep themselves, in principle, out of the whirlwind of politics, and don’t give press conferences. At most, a word, a reflection formulated with a visitor who respects the Tradition, even if he is not an initiate himself, can sometimes let us guess where the earthly sympathies of this or that sage.
There are also, as is to be expected in an age of universal decadence, people who profess ‘spirituality’ and groups who claim to be transcendent masters and claim to transmit the so-called ‘initiation’ without having a shred of a right to it. There is no shortage of charlatans in orange tunics—or naked, with their bodies covered in ashes—who hang around temples, especially in places of pilgrimage, living by begging or swindling, posing as ‘gurus’ to credulous widows. They are rascals but of small scale and limited harmfulness.
Infinitely more dangerous are those individuals or groups who work to bring to India—as far as possible—the anthropocentrism inherent in religious or political doctrines influenced more or less directly by Judaism or by the Jews. By this I mean all those individuals or groups who, under cover of a false fidelity to Tradition, which they twist and disfigure as they please, preach egalitarian principles, democracy, and the horror of all violence, even if it is detached when this is exerted against ‘men’, whoever they may be—whereas the monstrous exploitation of animals (and trees) by man hardly disturbs them (if they are not completely indifferent there, and even if they don’t justify it!).
I am thinking of all those who claim to pay homage to the ‘true ancient wisdom’ by obstinately denying any natural racial hierarchy, by condemning the caste system to the core, by preaching the ‘right’ of people of different races to marry each other if they believe that in this way they will find their ‘happiness’. I am thinking of those who would like to replace, among Hindus, the old caste privileges with privileges based on ‘education’ (in the Western sense of the word) and the concern for metaphysical orthodoxy with an ever-increasing preoccupation with the ‘social’, the ‘economic’, the ‘improvement of the living conditions for the masses’. I am thinking of the organisers of ‘Parliaments of religions’, of the advocates of a fusion between ‘East and West’ at the expense of the spirit of Tradition, which was originally common to both, and which only Hinduism has preserved as the basis of civilisation; of the missionaries of a universal morality centred on ‘man’, as conceived by both the Christian and the rationalist West.
The ‘mission’ which claims to be inspired by the divine Ramakrishna—a true initiate who lived in the last century—seems to be moving more and more in this direction, under the influence of Western benefactors, especially Americans. But this trend is not new.
More than a hundred and fifty years ago it emerged with the foundation of the Brahmo Samaj, a society of deists deeply influenced by their English university education and the Protestant form of Christianity. This sect, under the pretext of bringing Hinduism back to a so-called ‘original purity’, interpreted it according to that ‘modern spirit’ whose hold on Europe René Guénon so rightly deplored. But, as Guénon says again, its adherents are, despite the social position and, what is more, the high caste of the best known of them, rejected by the orthodox Hindus. The latter refuse to give them their daughters in marriage or to accept their daughters for their sons. And in the villages they would not accept a glass of water from them—and, I repeat, no government could force them to do so. This attitude comes from the fact that the Brahmo Samajists reject the principle of the caste system: the unequal ‘dignity’ of men, according to their heredity. It also comes from the fact that the Brahmo Samaj is not Indian any more than any other like-minded sect is India (for example, the Arya Samaj, which is ‘Arya’ in name only because it also rejects the idea of a natural hierarchy of races).