PREFACE

This book, — begun in Scotland in the spring of 1948, and written, at intervals, in Germany, between that date and 1956, — is the result of life-long meditations upon history and religions, as well as the expression of life-long aspirations, and of a scale of moral values, which was already mine before the First World War.

It could be described as a personal answer to the events of 1945 and of the following years. And I know that very many people will not like it. But I have not written it for any other purpose than that of presenting a conception of history — ancient and modern — unassailable from the standpoint of eternal Truth. I have therefore endeavoured to study both men and facts in the light of that idea of the succession of Ages, from pristine Perfection to inevitable chaos, which pertains not merely to “Hinduism,” but to all forms of the One, universal Tradition, — the Hindus being, (perhaps) but those who have retained somewhat more of that Tradition than less conservative people.

It may sound ironical that so intense a yearning after faithfulness to Tradition should have led me to an interpretation of historic personalities so different from that of most people who profess interest in things of the spirit. The endless future alone will tell who has understood divine Wisdom the best: those people or myself.

SAVITRI DEVI         

Calcutta, 21st of July, 1958

PART I

TIMELESS PERFECTION

AND

CYCLIC EVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

THE CYCLIC VIEW OF HISTORY

But apart from such incredible feats of a handful of individuals, the Ancients as a whole distinguished themselves in many material achievements. They could boast of the irrigation system in Sumeria; of the construction of pyramids revealing, both in Egypt and, centuries later, in Central America, an amazing knowledge of astronomical data; of the bath-rooms and drains in the palace of Knossos; of the invention of the war-chariot after that of the bow and arrow, and of the sand-clock after that of the sun-dial, — enough to make them dizzy with conceit and over-confident in the destiny of their respective civilisations.

Yet, although they fully recognized the value of their own work in the practical field, and surely very soon conceived the possibility — and perhaps acquired the certitude — of indefinite technical progress, they never believed in progress as a whole,

¹ While Icarus fell into the sea, the Peruvian hero was turned into stone on reaching the top of the hill destined to become the site of the great Temple of the Sun, in Cuzco.

And they believed that the return of a similar Age, foretold in their respective sacred texts and oral traditions, depends, not upon man’s conscious effort, but upon iron laws, inherent to the very nature of visible and tangible manifestation, and all-pervading; upon cosmic laws. They believed that man’s conscious effort is but an expression of those laws at work, leading the world, willingly or unwillingly, wherever its destiny lies; in one word, that the history of man, as the history of the rest of the living, is but a detail in cosmic history without beginning nor end; a periodical outcome of the inner Necessity that binds all phenomena in Time.

And just as the Ancients could accept that vision of the world’s evolution while still taking full advantage of all technical progress within their reach, so can — and so do, — to this day, thousands of men brought up within the pale of age-old cultures centred round the self-same traditional views, and also, in the very midst of the over-proud industrial cultures, a few stray individuals able to think for themselves. They contemplate the history of mankind in a similar perspective.

While living, apparently, as “modern” men and women, — using electric fans and electric irons, telephones and trains, and aeroplanes, when they can afford it, — they nourish in their hearts a deep contempt for the childish conceit and bloated hopes of our age, and for the various recipes for “saving, mankind,” which zealous philosophers and politicians thrust into circulation. They know that nothing can “save mankind,” for

¹ Satya Yuga, in the Sanskrit Scriptures.

To those privileged ones — amongst whom we count ourselves, — the whole succession of “current events” appears in an entirely different perspective from that either of the desperate believers in “progress” or of those people who, though accepting the cyclic view of history and therefore considering the coming crash as unavoidable, feel sorry to see the civilisation in which they live rush towards its doom.

To us, the high-resounding “isms” to which our contemporaries ask; us to give our allegiance, now, in 1948, are all equally futile: bound to be betrayed, defeated, and finally rejected by men at large, if containing anything really noble; bound to enjoy, for the time being, some sort of noisy success; if sufficiently vulgar, pretentious and soul-killing to appeal to the growing number of mechanically conditioned slaves that crawl about our planet, posing as free men; all destined to prove, ultimately, of no avail. The time-honoured religions, rapidly growing out of fashion as present-day “isms” become more and more popular, are no less futile — if not more: frameworks of organised superstition void of all true feeling of the Divine, or — among more sophisticated people — mere conventional aspects of social life, or systems of ethics (and of very elementary ethics at that) seasoned with a sprinkling of out-dated rites and symbols of which hardly anybody bothers to seek the original meaning; devices in the hands of clever

men in power to lull the simpletons into permanent obedience; convenient names, round which it might be easy to rally converging national aspirations or political tendencies; or just the last resort of weaklings and cranks: that is, practically, all they are — all they have been reduced to in the course of a few centuries — the lot of them. They are dead, in fact — as dead as the old cults that flourished before them, with the difference that those cults have long ceased exhaling the stench of death, while they (the so-called “living” ones) are still at the stage at which death is inseparable from corruption. None — neither Christianity nor Islam nor even Buddhism — can be expected now to “save” anything of that world they once partly conquered; none have any normal place in “modern” life, which is essentially devoid of all awareness of the eternal.

There are no activities in “modern” life which are not futile, save perhaps those that aim at satisfying one’s body’s hunger: growing rice; growing wheat; gathering chestnuts from the woods or potatoes from one’s garden. And the one and only sensible policy can but be to let things take their course and to await the coming Destroyer, destined to clear the ground for the building of a new “Age of Truth”: the One Whom the Hindus name Kalki and hail as the tenth and last Incarnation of Vishnu; the Destroyer Whose advent is the condition of the preservation of Life, according to Life’s everlasting laws.

We know all this will sound utter folly to those, more and more numerous, who, despite the untold horrors of our age, remain convinced that humanity is “progressing.” It will appear as cynicism even to many of those who accept our belief in cyclic evolution, which is the universal, traditional belief expressed in poetic form in all the sacred texts of the world, including the Bible. We have nothing to reply to this latter possible criticism, for it is entirely based upon an emotional attitude which is not ours. But we can try to point out the vanity of the popular belief in “progress,” be it only in order to stress the rationality and strength of the theory of cycles which forms the background of the triple study which is the subject of this book.

The exponents of the belief in “progress” put forth many arguments to prove — to themselves and to others — that our

promoted. The Hindus seem to be, to-day, the sole people who, by tradition, share our views; and they have, in course of time, failed to maintain the divine order — the rule of the natural ruling castes. And we, the only people in the West who have tried to restore it in modern times, have been materially ruined by the agents of those forces of false equality that the modern world calls forces of “progress.”

Progress? — It is true that, to-day, at least in all highly organised (typically “modern”) countries, nearly everybody can read and write. But what of that? To be able to read and write is an advantage — and a considerable one. But it is not a virtue. It is a tool and a weapon; a means to an end; a very useful thing, no doubt; but not an end in itself. The ultimate value of literacy depends upon the end to which it is used. And to what end, is it generally used to-day? It is used for convenience or for entertainment, by those who read; for some advertisement, or some objectionable propaganda, — for money-making or power-grabbing — by those who write; sometimes, of course, by both, for acquiring or spreading disinterested knowledge of the few things worth knowing; for finding expression of or giving expression to the few deep feelings that can lift a man to the awareness of things eternal, but not more often so than in the days in which one man out of ten thousand could understand the symbolism of the written word. Generally, to-day, the man or woman whom compulsory education has made “literate” uses writing to communicate personal matters to absent friends and relatives, to fill forms — one of the international occupations of modern civilised humanity — or to commit to memory little useful, but otherwise trifling things such as someone’s address or telephone number, or the date of some appointment with the hair-dresser or the dentist, or the list of clean clothes due from the laundry. He or she reads “to pass time” because, outside the hours of dreary work, mere thinking is no longer intense and interesting enough to serve that purpose.

We know that there are also people whose whole lives have been directed to some beautiful destiny by a book, a poem — a mere sentence — read in distant childhood, like Schliemann, who lavishly spent on archaeological excavations the wealth patiently and purposely gathered in forty years of dreary toil, all for they sake of the impression left upon him,

as a boy, by the immortal story of Troy. But such people always lived, even before compulsory education came into, fashion. And the stories heard and remembered were no less inspiring than stories now read. The real advantage of general literacy, if any, is to be sought elsewhere. It lies not in the better quality either of the exceptional men and women or of the literate millions, but rather in the fact that the latter are rapidly becoming intellectually more lazy and therefore more credulous than ever — and not less so; — more easily deceived, more liable to be led like sheep without even the shadow of a protest, provided the nonsense one wishes them to swallow be presented to them, in printed form and made to appear “scientific.” The higher the general level of literacy, the easier it is, for a government in control of the daily press, of the wireless and of the publishing business, — these almost irresistible modern means of action upon the mind — to keep the masses and the “intelligenzia” under its thumb, without them even suspecting it.

Among widely illiterate but more actively thinking people, openly governed in the old autocratic manner, a prophet, direct mouthpiece of the Gods, or of genuine collective aspirations, could always hope to rise between secular authority and the people. The priests themselves could never be quite sure of keeping the people in obedience for ever. The people could choose to listen to the prophet, if they liked. And they did, sometimes. To-day, wherever universal literacy is prevalent, inspired exponents of timeless truth — prophets — or even selfless advocates of timely practical changes, have less and less chances to appear. Sincere thought, real free thought, ready, in the name of superhuman authority or of humble common sense, to question the basis of what is officially taught and generally accepted, is less and less likely to thrive. It is, we repeat, by far easier to enslave a literate people than an illiterate one, strange as this may seem at first sight. And the enslavement is more likely to be lasting. The real advantage of universal literacy is to tighten the grip of the governing power upon the foolish and conceited millions. That is probably why it is dinned into our heads, from babyhood onwards, that “literacy” is such a boon. Capacity to think for one’s self is, however, the real boon. And that always was and always will be the privilege of a minority, once recognised

as a natural élite and respected. To-day, compulsory mass-education and an increasingly standardised literature for the consumption of “conditioned” brains — outstanding signs of “progress” — tend to reduce that minority to the smallest possible proportions; ultimately, to suppress it altogether. Is that what mankind wants? If so, mankind is loosing its raison d’être, and the sooner the end of this so-called “civilisation” the better.

What we have said of literacy can roughly be repeated about those two other main glories of modern Democracy: “individual freedom” and equality of opportunities for every person. The first is a lie — and a more and more sinister one as the shackles of compulsory education are being more and more hopelessly fastened round people’s whole being. The second is an absurdity.

One of the funniest inconsistencies of the average citizen of the modern industrialised world is the way in which he criticises all institutions of older and better civilisations, such as the caste-system of the Hindus or the all-absorbing family-cult of the Far East, on the ground that these tend to check the “liberty of the individual.” He does not realise how exacting, — nay, how annihilating — is the command of the collective authority which he obeys (half the time, unknowingly) compared with that of traditional collective authority, in apparently less “free” societies. The caste-ridden or family-ridden people of India or of the Far East might not be allowed to do all that they like, in many relatively trifling and in a few really all-important matters of daily life. But they are left to believe what they like, or rather what they can; to feel according to their own nature and to express themselves freely about a great number of essential matters; they are allowed to conduct their higher life in the manner they judge the wisest for them, after their duties to family, taste and king have been fulfilled, The individual living under the iron and steel rule of modern “progress” can eat whatever he fancies (to a great extent) and marry whom he pleases — unfortunately! — and go whenever he likes (in theory at least). But he is made to accept, in all extra-individual matters, — matters which, to us, really count, — the beliefs, the attitude to life, the scale of values and, to a great extent, the political views, that tend to strengthen the mighty socio-economic system of exploitation

to which he belongs (to which he is forced to belong, in order to be able to live) and in which he is a mere cog. And, what is more, he is made to believe that it is a privilege of his to be a cog in such an organism; that the unimportant matters in which he feels he is his own master are, in fact, the most important ones — the only really important ones. He is taught not to value that freedom of judgement about ultimate truth, aesthetical, ethical or metaphysical, of which he is subtly deprived. More still: he is told, — in the democratic countries at any rate, — that he is free in all respects; that he is “an individual, answerable to none but to his own conscience,” ... after years of clever conditioning have moulded his “conscience” and his whole being so thoroughly according to pattern, that he is no longer capable of reacting differently. Well can such a man speak of “pressure upon the individual” in any society, ancient or modern!

One can realise to what an extent men’s minds have been curved, both by deliberate and by unconscious conditioning, in the world in which we live to-day, when one encounters people who have never come under the influence of industrial civilisation, or when one happens, oneself, to be lucky enough to have defied, from childhood onwards, the pernicious pressure of standardised education and to have remained free amidst the crowd of those who react as they were taught to, in all fundamental matters. The cleavage between the thinking and the unthinking, the free and the slaves, is appalling.

As for “equality of opportunities,” there can be no such thing anyhow, really speaking. By producing men and women different both in degree and in quality of intelligence, sensitiveness and will-power, different in character and temperament, Nature herself gives them the most unequal opportunities of fulfilling their aspirations, whatever these might be. An over-emotional and rather weak person can, for instance, neither conceive the same ideal of happiness nor have equal chances of reaching it in life, as one who is born with a more balanced nature and a stronger will. That is obvious. And add to that the characteristics that differentiate one race of men from another, and the absurdity of the very notion of “human equality” becomes even more striking.

What our contemporaries mean when they speak of “equality of opportunities” is the fact that, in modern society

— so they say — any man or woman stands, more and more, as many chances as his or her neighbour of holding the position and doing the job for which he or she is naturally fitted. But that too is only partly true. For, more and more, the world of to-day, — the world dominated by grand-scale industry and mass-production, — can offer only jobs in which the best of the worker’s self plays little or no part if he or she be anything more than a merely clever and materially efficient person. The hereditary craftsman, who could find the best expression for what is conveniently called his “soul” in his daily weaving, carpet-making, enamel work, etc., even the tiller of the soil, in personal contact with Mother Earth and the Sun and the seasons, is becoming more and more a figure of the past. There are less and less opportunities, also, for the sincere seeker of truth — speaker or writer — who refuses to become the expounder of broadly accepted ideas, products of mass-conditioning, for which he or she does not stand; for the seeker of beauty who refuses to bend his or her art to the demands of popular taste which he or she knows to be bad taste. Such people have to waste much of their tine doing inefficiently — and grudgingly — some job for which they are not fitted, in order to live, before they can devote the rest of it to what the Hindus would call their sadhana — the work for which their deeper nature has appointed them: their life’s dedication.

The idea of modern division of labour, condensed in the oft-quoted sentence “the right man in the right place,” boils down, in practice, to the fact that any man — any one of the dull, indiscriminate millions — can be “conditioned” to occupy any place, while the best of human beings, the only ones who still justify the existence of the more and more degenerate species, are allowed no place at all. Progress....

Remain the “religious toleration” of our times and their “humaneness” compared with the “barbarity” of the past. Two jokes, to say the least!

Recalling some of the most spectacular horrors of history — the burning of “heretics” and “witches” at the stake; the wholesale massacre of “heathens,” and other no less repulsive manifestations of Christian civilisation in Europe, conquered

America, Goa, and elsewhere, — modern man is filled with pride in the “progress” accomplished, in one line at least, since the end of the dark ages of religious fanaticism. However bad they be, our contemporaries have, at any rate, grown out of the habit of torturing people for such “trifles” as their conception of the Holy Trinity or their ideas about predestination and purgatory. Such is modern man’s feeling — because theological questions have lost all importance in his life. But in the days when Christian Churches persecuted one another and encouraged the conversion of heathen nations by means of blood and fire, both the persecutors and the persecuted, both the Christians and those who wished to remain faithful to non-Christian creeds, looked upon such questions as vital in one way or another. And the real reason for which nobody is put to torture, to-day, for the sake of his or her religious beliefs, is not that torture as such has become distasteful to everybody, in “advanced” twentieth-century civilisation, not that individuals and States have become “tolerant,” but just that, among those who have the power of inflicting pain, hardly anybody takes any vivid, vital interest in religion, let alone in theology.

The so-called “religious toleration” practised by modern States and individuals springs from anything but an intelligent understanding and love of all religions as manifold, symbolical expressions of the same few essential, eternal truths, — as Hindu toleration does, and always did. It is, rather, the outcome of a grossly ignorant contempt for all religions; of indifference to those very truths which their various founders endeavoured to re-assert, again and again. It is no toleration at all.

To judge how far our contemporaries have or not the right to boast of their “spirit of toleration,” the best is to watch their behaviour towards those whom they decidedly look upon as the enemies of their gods: the men who happen to be holding views contrary to theirs concerning not some theological quibble, in which they are not interested, but some political or socio-political Ideology which they regard as “a threat to civilisation” or as “the only creed through which civilisation can be saved.” Nobody can deny that in all such circumstances, and specially in war time, they all, perform — to the extent they have the power, — or condone — to the extent they have not, themselves, the opportunity of performing, —

actions in every respect as ugly as those ordered, performed or tolerated in the past, in the name of different religions (if indeed the latter ugly be). The only difference is, perhaps, that modern cold-blooded atrocities only become known when the hidden powers in control of the means of herd-conditioning — of the press, the wireless and the cinema, — decide, for ends anything but “humanitarian,” that they should be, i.e. when they happen to be the enemy’s atrocities, not one’s own — nor those of one’s “gallant allies” — and when their story is, therefore, considered to be “good propaganda,” on account of the current of indignation it is expected to create and of the new incentive it is expected to give the war-effort. Moreover, after a war, fought or supposed to have been fought for an Ideology — the modern equivalent of the bitter religious conflicts of old — the horrors rightly or wrongly: said to have been perpetrated by the vanquished are the only ones to be broadcasted all over the world, while the victors try as hard as they can to make believe that their High Command at least never shut its eyes to any similar horrors. But in sixteenth century Europe, and before; and among the warriors of Islam, conducting “jihad” against men of other faiths, each side was well aware of the atrocious means used, not only by its opponents for their “foul ends,” but by its own people and its own leaders in order to “uproot heresy” or to “fight popery,” or to “preach the name of Allah to infidels.” Modern man is more of a moral coward. He wants the advantages of violent intolerance — which is only natural — but he shuns the responsibility of it. Progress, that also.

The so-called “humaneness” of our contemporaries (compared with their forefathers) is just lack of nerve or lack of strong feelings — increasing cowardice, or increasing apathy.

Modern man is squeamish about atrocities — even about ordinary, unimaginative brutality — only when it happens that the aims for which atrocious or merely brutal actions are performed are either hateful or indifferent to him. In all other circumstances, he shuts his eves to any horrors — especially when he knows that the victims can never retaliate (as it is the case with all atrocities committed by man upon animals,

for whatever purpose it be) and he demands, at the most, not to be reminded of them tog often and too noisily. He reacts as though he classified atrocities under two headlines: the “unavoidable” and the avoidable. The “unavoidable” are those that serve or are supposed to serve modern man’s purpose — generally: “the good of humanity” or the “triumph of Democracy.” They are tolerated, nay, justified. The “avoidable” are those which are occasionally committed, or said to be committed, by people whose purpose is alien to his. They alone are condemned, and their real or supposed authors — or inspirers — branded by public opinion as “criminals against humanity.”

Which are, anyhow, the alleged signs of that wonderful “humaneness” of modern man, according to those who believe in progress? We no longer have to-day, — they say — the horrid executions of former times; traitors are no longer “hung, drawn and quartered,” as was the custom in glorious sixteenth century England; anything approaching in ghastliness the torture and execution of François Damien, upon the central square of Paris, before thousands of people purposely come to see it, on the 28th of May, 1757, would be unthinkable in modern France. Modern man also no longer upholds slavery, nor does he (in theory, at least) justify the exploitation of the masses under any form. And his wars — even his wars! monstrous as they may seem, with their elaborate apparatus of costly demoniacal machinery — are beginning to admit, within their code, (so one says) some amount of humanity and justice. Modern man is horrified at the mere thought of the war-time habits of ancient peoples — at the sacrifice of twelve young Trojans to the shade of the Greek hero Patrocles, not to speak of the far less ancient but far more atrocious sacrifices of prisoners of war to the Aztec war-god Huitzilopochtli. (But the Aztecs, though relatively modern, were not Christians, nor, as far as we know, believers in all-round progress). Finally — one says — modern man is kinder, or less cruel, to animals than his forefathers were.

Alone an enormous amount of prejudice in favour of our times can enable one to be taken in by such fallacies.

Surely modern man does not “uphold,” slavery; he denounces it vehemently. But he practises it nevertheless — and on a wider scale than ever, and far more thoroughly than

the Ancients ever could — whether in the Capitalistic West or in the Tropics, or (from what one hears outside its impenetrable walls) even in the one State supposed to be, to-day, the “workers’ paradise.” There are differences, of course. In Antiquity, even the slave had hours of leisure and merriment that were all his own; he had his games of dice in the shade of the columns of his master’s portico, his coarse jokes, his free chatter, his free life outside his daily routine. The modern slave has not the privilege of loitering, completely carefree, for half an hour. His so-called leisure itself is either filled with almost compulsory entertainment, as exacting and often as dreary as his work, or — in “lands of freedom” — poisoned by economic worries. But he is not openly bought and sold. He is just taken. And taken, not by a man in some way at least superior to himself, but by a huge impersonal system without either a body to kick or a soul to damn or a head to answer for its mischief.

And similarly, old horrors have no doubt disappeared from the records of so-called civilised mankind, regarding both justice and war. But new and worse ones, unknown to “barbaric” ages, have crept up in their place. One single instance is ghastly enough to suffice. The long-drawn trial not of criminals, not of traitors, nor regicides, nor wizards, but of the finest leading characters of Europe; their iniquitous condemnation, after months and months of every kind of humiliation and systematical moral torture; their final hanging, in the slowest and cruelest possible manner — that whole sinister farce, staged at Nüremberg in 1945–1946 (and 1947) by a pack of victorious cowards and hypocrites, is immeasurably more disgusting than all the post-war human sacrifices of the past rolled in one, including those performed according to the well-known Mexican ritual. For there, at least, however painful might have been the traditional process of killing, the victims were frankly done to death for the delight of the tribal god of the victors and of the victors themselves, without any macabre mock-pretence of “justice.” And they were, moreover, taken from all ranks of captured warriors, not malignantly selected from the élite of their people only. Nor did the élite of the vanquished people represent, in most cases, — as it actually did in the shameful trial of our progressive times — the very élite of their continent.

As for such unthinkable atrocities as took place in France end in Spain, and many other countries, from the Middle Ages onwards, one would find quite a number of episodes of the recent Spanish civil war — not to mention the no less impressive record of horrors performed, still more recently, by the “heroes” of the French résistance, during the Second World War, — to match them and, more often than not, to outdo them.

And, curiously enough, — although (they say) they “hate such things” — a considerable number of men and women of to-day, while lacking the guts to commit horrible actions personally, seem to be just as keen as ever on watching them being performed or, at least, on thinking of them and gloating over them, and enjoying them vicariously, if denied the morbid pleasure of watching. Such are the people who, in modern England, gather before the prison gates whenever a man is to be hanged, expecting goodness knows what unhealthy excitement from the mere fact of reading the announcement that “justice has been done” — people who, if only given an opportunity, would run to see a public execution, nay, a public burning of witches or heretics, no doubt as speedily as their forefathers once did. Such are also millions of folk, hitherto “civilised” and apparently kind, who reveal themselves in their proper light no sooner a war breaks out, i.e. no sooner they feel encouraged to display the most repulsive type of imagination in competitive descriptions of what tortures every one of them “would” inflict upon the enemy’s leaders, if he — or more often she — had a free hand. Such are, at heart, all those who gloat over the sufferings of the fallen enemy after a victorious war. And they are also millions: millions of vicarious savages, mean at the same time as cruel — unmanly — whom the warriors of the so-called “barbaric” ages would have thoroughly despised.

¹ “Impeachment of Man,” written in 1945-46, and yet unpublished.

I shall, therefore, here, be contented with underlining a few facts.

Primitive man, — and, often, also, man whose picturesque civilisation is anything but “modern” — is bad enough, it is true, as far as his treatment of animals is concerned. One only has to travel in the least industrialised countries of southern Europe, or in the Near and Middle East, to acquire a very definite certitude on that point. And not all modern leaders have been equally successful in putting an end to age-old cruelties to dumb) beasts, whether in the East or in the West. Gandhi could not, in the name of that universal kindness which he repeatedly preached as the main tenet of his faith, prevent Hindu milk-men from deliberately starving their male calves to death, in order to sell a few extra pints of cow’s milk. Mussolini could not detect and prosecute all those Italians who, even under his government, persisted in the detestable habit of plucking chickens alive on the ground that “the feathers come off more easily.” There is no getting away from the fact that kindness to animals on a national scale does not ultimately depend upon the teachings of any superimposed religion or philosophy. It is one of the distinctive characteristics of the truly superior races. And no religious, philosophical or political alchemy can turn base metal into gold.

This does not mean to say that a good teaching cannot help to bring the best out of every race, as well as out of every individual man or woman. But modern industrial civilisation, to the extent it is man-centred — not controlled by any inspiration of a super-human, cosmic order — and tends to stress quantity instead of quality, production and wealth, instead of character and inherent worth, is anything but congenial to the development of consistent universal kindness, even among, the better people. It hides cruelty. It does nothing to suppress it, or even to lessen it. It excuses, nay, it exalts any atrocity upon animals, which happens to be directly or indirectly connected with money-making, from the daily horrors of the slaughter-houses to the martyrdom of animals at the hands of the circus-trainer, the trapper (and, also, very often, of the skinner, in the case of furry creatures) and of the vivisector. Naturally, the “higher” interest of human beings is put forward as a justification, — without people realising that a humanity which is prepared to buy amusement or luxury, “tasty food,” or even

¹ I refer to the laws against cruelty to animals that were, in my eyes, one of the glories of the National Socialist regime in Germany.
² The Bhagavad-Gita, Transl. of E. Burnouf, I, 47 and foll.

of all the living, — the god-like men, — are defeated, and their followers humbled and their memory slandered, while the masters of lies are hailed as “saviours”; the age in which every man and woman is in the wrong place, and the world dominated by inferior individuals, bastardised races and vicious doctrines, all part and parcel of an order of inherent ugliness far worse than complete anarchy.

This is the age in which our triumphant Democrats and our hopeful Communists boast of “slow but steady progress through science and education.” Thanks very much for such “progress”! The very sight of it is enough to confirm us in our belief in the immemorial cyclic theory of history, illustrated in the myths of all ancient, natural religions (including that one from which the Jews — and, through them, their disciples, the Christians — borrowed the symbolical story of the Garden of Eden; Perfection at the beginning of Time.) It impresses upon us the fact that human history, far from being a steady ascension towards the better, is an increasingly hopeless process of bastardisation, emasculation and demoralisation of mankind; an inexorable “fall.” It rouses in us the yearning to see the end — the final crash that will push into oblivion both those worthless “isms” that are the product of the decay of thought and of character, and the no less worthless religions of equality which have slowly prepared the ground for them; the coming of Kalki, the divine Destroyer of evil; the dawn of a new Cycle opening, as all time-cycles ever did, with “Golden Age.”

Never mind how bloody the final crash may be! Never mind what old treasures may perish for ever in the redeeming conflagration! The sooner it comes, the better. We are waiting for it — and for the following glory — confident in the divinely established cyclic Law that governs all manifestations of existence in Time: the law of Eternal Return. We ore waiting for it, and for the subsequent triumph of the Truth persecuted to-day; for the triumph under whatever name, of the only faith in harmony with the everlasting laws of being; of the only modern “ism” which is anything but “modern,” being just the latest expression of principles as old as the Sun; the triumph of all those men who, throughout the centuries and to-day, have never lost the vision of the everlasting Order,

decreed by the Sun, and who have fought in a selfless spirit to impress that vision upon others. We are waiting for the glorious restoration, this time, on a world-wide scale, of the New Order, projection in time, in the next, as in every recurring “Golden Age,” of the everlasting Order of the Cosmos.

It is the only thing worth living for — and dying for, if given that privilege, — now, in 1948.

Written in Edinburgh, on the 9th April, 1948, — the 707th anniversary of the famous battle of Liegnitz.

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CHAPTER II

TIME AND VIOLENCE

From the few facts that I have recalled in the preceding chapter, it is pretty clear that there are no cruelties in ancient history — no Assyrian horrors, no Carthagenian horrors, no old Chinese horrors, — which the inventiveness of our contemporaries of East and West, aided by a perfected technique, has not outdone. But cruelty — the violence of cowards — is merely one expression of violence among many, though admittedly the most repulsive one. Aided and encouraged by more and more staggering scientific achievements, which can be put to use for any purpose, man has, throughout history, become more and more violent, — and not less and less so, as people fed on pacifist propaganda are often inclined to think! And, which is more, it could not have been otherwise; and it cannot be otherwise at any period of the future, until the violent and complete destruction of that which we call to-day “civilisation” opens for the world a new “Age of Truth”; a new Golden Age. Until then, violence, under one form or another, is unavoidable. It is the very law of Life in a fallen world. The choice given us is not between violence and non-violence, but between open, unashamed violence, in broad daylight, and sneaking, subtle violence — blackmail; between open violence and inconspicuous, slow, yet implacable persecution, both economic and cultural: the systematic suppression of all possibilities for the vanquished, without it “showing”; the merciless “conditioning” of children, all the more horrible that it is more impersonal, more indirect, more outwardly “gentle”; the clever diffusion of soul-killing lies (and half-lies); violence under the cover of non-violence. The choice is also between selfless ruthlessness put to the service of the very Cause of truth; violence without cruelty, applied in view of bringing about upon this earth an order based on everlasting principles, that transcend man; violence in view of creating, or maintaining, a human State in harmony with Life’s highest purpose, and violence applied to selfish ends.

The two parallel alternatives are indeed one and the same.

For it is a fact that, the more disinterested be its aims and the more selfless its application, the more frank and straightforward violence is; while, on the other hand, the more sordid be the motives for which it is in reality used, the more it is, itself, hidden, nay, denied; the more the men who resort to it boast of being admirers of non-violence, thus bluffing others and sometimes also themselves; acting as deceivers and being deceived — caught in the network of their own lies.

As time goes on and as decay sets in, the keynote of human history is not less and less violence; it is less and less honesty about violence.

Only an “Age of Truth,” in which all is as it should be — a world in which the social and political order on earth is a perfect replica of the eternal Order of Life — can be nonviolent. And in the eloquent legends of all old nations, ideal society at the dawn of Time is said to have been naturally so. There was, then, nothing to be changed; nothing for which to shed one’s own or other people’s blood; nothing to do but to enjoy in peace the beauty and riches of the sunlit earth, and to praise the wise Gods — the “devas,” or “shining Ones,” as the ancient Aryans called them — Kings of the earth in the truest sense of the word. Every man and woman, every race, every species was, then, in its place, and the whole divine hierarchy of Creation was a work of art to which and from which there was nothing either to add or to take away. Violence was unthinkable.

Violence became a necessity from the moment the sociopolitical order in this world ceased to be the undistorted reflexion of the eternal cosmic Order; from the moment a man-centred spirit, exalting indiscriminately the whole of humanity at the expense of glorious living Nature, on one hand, and at that of the naturally superior individuals and naturally privileged races, on the other, arose, in opposition to the life-centred Tradition which had been sanctioning, for no one knows how many happy millenniums, the harmonious, divinely ordained hierarchy of peoples, animal species and vegetable varieties; from the moment a vicious tendency to uniformity — ultimately

leading to disintegration — set in, in opposition to primeval Unity within infinite, disciplined diversity. From that moment onwards, we repeat, violence became the law of the world, for good and for evil. The only way to avoid resorting to it was, henceforth, either to cut one’s self off, entirely, from the world, as it is, to turn one’s back to life and to move about in an artificial, dream-like time — the illusion of an illusion — or else, to live outside Time altogether. Pretty few individuals were sufficiently foolish to take the first course, and fewer still sufficiently evolved and, at the same time, sufficiently indifferent, to take the second.

But violence is not a bad thing in itself. True, it set in as a necessity only after the world had become, to a great extent, “bad” i.e., unfaithful to its timeless archetype; no longer in keeping with the creative dream of the universal Mind, that it had once expressed. The very appearing of violence was a sign that the “Age of Truth” was irretrievably closed; that the downward process of history was gaining speed. Yet, violence cannot be judged apart from its purpose. And the purpose is good or bad; worth its while, or not. It is worth its while when those who pursue it do so, not merely unselfishly — with no primordial desire of personal glory or happiness, — but also in keeping with an Ideology expressing timeless, impersonal, more-than-human truth; an Ideology rooted in the clear understanding of the unchanging Laws of life, and destined to appeal to all those who, in a fallen world, still retain within their hearts an invincible yearning for the perfect Order as it really was and will again be; as it cannot but be, at the dawn of every recurring Time-cycle. Any purpose which is intelligently, objectively consistent with the war-aims of the undying Forces of Light in their age-old struggle against the forces of Darkness, i.e., of disintegration, — that Struggle illustrated in all the mythologies of the world, — any such purpose, I say, justifies any amount of selfless violence. Moreover, as the “Era of Gloom” in which we are living proceeds, darker and darker and fiercer and fiercer year after year, it becomes more and more impossible to avoid using violence in the service of truth. No man, — no demi-god — can bring about, to-day, even a relative amount of real order and justice in any area of the globe, without the help of force, specially if he has

but a few years at his disposal. And, unfortunately, the further this world advances into the present age of technical wonders and human abasement, more the great men of inspiration are submitted to the factor of time, as soon as they attempt to apply their lofty intuitive knowledge of eternal truth to the solution of practical problems. They just have to act, not only thoroughly, but also quickly, if they do not want to see the forces of disintegration nip their priceless work in the bud. And whether they like it or not, thoroughly and quickly means, almost unavoidably, with unhesitating violence. One can say, with more and more certainty as the “Dark Age” goes on, that the god-like men of action are defeated, at least for the time being, not for having been too ruthless (and thus for having roused against themselves and their ideas and their collaborators the indignation of the “decent people”), but for not having been ruthless enough — for not having killed off their fleeing enemies, to the last man, in the brief hour of triumph; for not having silenced both the squeamish millions of hypocrites and their masters, the clever producers of atrocity-tales, by more substantial violences, more complete exterminations.

From all this it is quite clear that, to condemn violence indiscriminately is to condemn the very struggle of the Forces of Life and Light against the Forces of disintegration, — struggle, all the more heroic and all the more desperate, also, as the world rushes on towards its doom. It is to condemn that struggle which, at every one of its age-long, varying phases, and even through temporary disaster, has been securing for the world, beyond its deserved doom, the glorious new Beginning, which the few alone deserve. Within the bondage of Time, specially within this “Kali Yuga,” one cannot be consistently non-violent without contributing, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, to the success of the forces of disintegration; of what we call the death-forces.

As for that violence which is used to forward the war-aims of the death-forces, it is, and has always been twofold: directed on one hand against Life itself — first, against the whole of innocent living Nature, then, against the vital interests of higher mankind, in the name of “the common plan” — and, on the

other, against those particular men who, more and more conscious of the tragic realities of a darkening age, put up a stand in favour of the recognition of Life’s eternal values and of the restoration of order upon its true, eternal basis.

¹ This chapter was written in 1948.

before they are, themselves, ground to dust in a fratricidal war of demons against demons.

They are in a hurry — not, as the heroic “élite,” out of generous impatience; not out of any longing to see the “Age of Truth” re-established before its time, but out of feverish lust; out of the will to snatch from the world, for themselves, all the material advantages and all the satisfactions of vanity they possibly can, before it is too late. And as time goes on, their hurry amounts to frenzy. The one obstacle that stands in their way and still defies them — that will always defy them, till the end — is precisely that proud élite that disaster cannot discourage, that torture cannot break, that money cannot buy. Whether consciously or unconsciously, whether they be, themselves, thoroughly wicked, or just blind, through congenital stupidity, the workers of disintegration wage war upon the men of gold and steel, with unabated, hellish fury.

But theirs is not the frank, unashamed violence of the inspired idealists striving to bring forth, speedily, a lofty sociopolitical order too good for the unworthy world of their times. It is a sneaking, creeping, cowardly sort of violence, all the more effective that it is, outwardly, more emphatically denied, both by the scoundrels who apply it, or condone it, and by the well-meaning fools who actually believe that it does not exist. It is prompted by such feelings as one cannot possibly exhibit, even in a degenerate world, without running the risk of defeating one’s own purpose: by bare hatred, rooted in envy — the hatred of worthless weaklings for the strong, for no other reason that they are strong; the hatred of ugly souls (incarnated, more often than not, in no less ugly bodies) for the naturally beautiful ones; for the noble, the magnanimous, the selfless, the real aristocracy of the world; the hatred of the unhappy, and, even more so, of the bored, — of those who have only their pockets to live for, and nothing at all to die for, — for those who live, and are ready to die, for eternal values. Such is, more and more, the wide-spread violence of our times, less and less recognised, in its subtle disguise, even by the people who actually suffer through it.

The Ancients knew better than our contemporaries who were their friends and who were their enemies. And this is natural. In a world rushing to its doom, there is bound to

be increasing ignorance — ignorance precisely of those things one should know the best, in order to survive. The Ancients suffered, and knew whom to curse. Modern men and women, as a rule, do not know; do not really care to know; are too lazy, too exhausted, too near the end of their world to take the trouble to enquire seriously. And clever rascals, themselves the authors of all the mischief, incite them to throw the blame of it upon the only people whose unfailing wisdom and selfless love could have saved them, had they but wanted to be saved; upon that hated élite that stands against the current of Time, with the vision of the glorious new Beginning beyond the doom of the present-day world, clear and bright before its eyes. The whole amount of nonsense written and spoken since the end of the Second World War (and already before its end, in the newspapers and from the radio stations controlled by the Democratic Powers) about the sufferings of the European people, is the latest glaring instance of this broad-scale systematic lying, more and more common as the forces of disintegration become, with time, both more successful and snore sneaking. Europe lies in ruins — the consequence of six years of inhuman bombing. The United Nations did the bombing, in order to stamp out National Socialism — the only thing that could have restored order and sanity in Europe, if absolute selflessness, coupled with genius, were able to turn the tide of time, in a doomed world. And now the people are told that National Socialism is responsible for all the evils that bombing has occasioned, and that its inspired Founder is the greatest selfish megalomaniac who ever trod this earth. Some people believe it — even in Germany; or were prepared to believe it in 1945 before they got a taste of the substitute which the Democracies offered them in the place of the much criticised régime. Most people believe it in the rest of Europe. The cunning rogues, utterly dishonest about violence, who set the tune to this propaganda, have an easy task: they work in the sense of Time: for disorder, leading to disintegration; for the destruction of all that is still strong and valuable in present-day humanity; of all that is destined to survive, in spite of all, their coming destruction. And they exploit the very characteristics of a decaying epoch: the hatred of all obvious discipline and of all visible and tangible (and responsible) leadership, allied to increasing

We have spoken of two sorts of violence. Nowhere is the difference in the very nature of the two more apparent, perhaps, than in the attitude of the upholders — or condoners — of each, towards living creation outside mankind.

The frank and courageous violence, which any idealist with real vision is snore or less bound to use as soon, as he attempts to translate his intuition of eternal truth into action, in a stubbornly degenerate world, bent on its own destruction, that violence, we say, is never exercised — and can, logically, never be exercised, save, perhaps, in certain cases of vital emergency, — against any living creatures other than people. Its only purpose is to crush, as quickly and completely as possible, all resistance to a socio-political order imposed too soon to be appreciated by all those whom it affects. As we shall see, it does not, in fact, affect human beings alone. It concerns, and must concern, also, in the long run, all the living. If it did not, it would not be an order based upon everlasting truth, and the violence displayed to impose it would not he justified. But human beings alone can and do oppose such an order. They alone arc, therefore, to the extent they become obstacles to its establishment or continuation, the victims of the necessary violence of those whose duty it is to defend it. As a consequence of the fact that they have nothing to do with the shaping of human society, innocent animals are never tormented by men who believe that, if at all, torture can only be excused when applied to forward such impersonal political ends as are in harmony with eternal principles.

Such men can never tolerate the infliction of pain upon living creatures for the sake of researches destined, in the minds of the torturers and of their supporters, to alleviate the sufferings of diseased humanity or to satisfy a mere lust for “scientific” information. For if they really be the exponents of Golden Age ideals, — men of action, with an awareness of everlasting Truth and a burning love of perfection, — they cannot possibly share, either about humanity or about disease, or about the

morbid craving for idle knowledge at any cost, the common prejudices which have been developing, for centuries, as a result of growing degeneracy in this world. They cannot possibly believe that every human life, however debased, is necessarily worth saving. And they must believe that the best way to stamp; out disease is not so much to find out new treatments as to teach men and women to live healthier lives, and, before all, to strengthen the naturally privileged races through a systematical, rational policy, applied, in the first place, to the basic art of breeding. And they must feel a sane contempt for all forms of useless research, let alone for that criminal curiosity about the mystery of life, which has turned hundreds of men like Pavlov, or Voronoff — or Claude Bernard — into down right monsters.

There is more. The very Ideology of the strong naturally goes hand in hand with repulsion for every form of cruelty towards helpless and beautiful beasts. Nietzsche has exalted kindness as the highest virtue of the superman — “the last victory of the hero over himself.” And kindness that does not embrace all life is no kindness at all. Kindness that prompts man to “love his enemies” without prompting him a fortiori to love the innocent creatures of the earth, which did him no willful harm; kindness that urges him to spare the former’s lives while allowing him to chase and eat the latter, and to wear their skins, is either hypocrisy or imbecility. The Ideology of the strong rejects that two thousand year-old contradiction, with utter contempt.

¹ In National Socialist Germany, not only was the horrid “kosher” killing of animals forbidden, but traps were also not allowed. Animals killed for food had to be dealt with by means of an automatic pistol bringing instantaneous death. And cruelty to any beast was severely punished. (I know of the case of a person having spent three and a half years in a concentration camp for having killed a pig “in a cruel manner.”)

Contrast this with the treatment of creatures at the hands of the majority of those people who deny the superior individuals and races the right to be ruthless in their heroic struggle against Time; of those who would like us to believe they “love their enemies” and have a genuine horror of atrocities! We have seen, we see every day, how the hypocrites treat their enemies — when they catch them. And we know what atrocities they can perform on human beings — or order, or at least condone, — when it suits their purpose. They treat animals no better. They take the hidden crimes daily committed against them in this increasingly wicked world, as a matter of course, just as they do those committed against the men and women whom they look upon as “dangerous fanatics,” “war criminals” and so forth.

Of course, they find good excuses for their attitude, — one always does; logic was granted to man in order that he might justify himself in his own eyes, whatever monstrosity he might choose to support. But their premises are entirely different from those of the selfless people who fight with consistent ruthlessness for ideals in harmony with the perfect cosmic order. Their basic argument is “the interest of humanity” — indiscriminately; the “interest of humanity” as a whole; of “the majority” of human beings, good bad and indifferent; and of

¹ “An extended chapter of our talk was devoted by the Führer to the vegetarian question. He believes more than ever that meat-eating is wrong. Of course, he knows that, during the war, we cannot completely upset our food system. After the war, however, he intends to tackle this problem also. Maybe he is right. Certainly the arguments he adduces in favour of his standpoint are very compelling.”
                                       —The Goebbels Diaries, edit. 1946 (Entry of the 26th of April 1942)