Guénon published his fundamental doctrinal work, Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, in 1925. After asserting that the Vedanta represents the purest metaphysics in Hindu doctrine, he acknowledges the impossibility of ever expounding it exhaustively and states that the specific object of his study will be the nature and constitution of the human being. Nonetheless, taking the human being as point of departure, he goes on to outline the fundamental principles of all traditional metaphysics. He leads the reader gradually to the doctrine of the Supreme Identity and its logical corollary-the possibility that the being in the human state might in this very life attain liberation, the unconditioned state where all separateness and risk of reversion to manifested existence ceases. Although Guénon chose the doctrine of the Advaita school (and in particular that of Shankara) as his basis, Man and His Becoming should not be considered exclusively an exposition of this school and of this master. It is, rather, a synthetic account drawing not only upon other orthodox branches of Hinduism, but not infrequently also upon the teachings of other traditional forms. Neither is it a work of erudition in the sense of the orientalists and historians of religion who study doctrines from the ‘outside’, but represents knowledge of the traditionally transmitted and effective ‘sacred science’. Guénon treats other aspects of Hinduism in his Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines and Studies in Hinduism.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 General Remarks on the Vedanta
Chapter 2 Fundamental Distinction between the ‘Self ‘ and the ‘Ego’
Chapter 3 The Vital Center of the Human Being: Seat of Brahma
Chapter 4 Purusha and Prakriti
Chapter 5 Purusha unaffected by Individual Modifications
Chapter 6 The Degrees of Individual Manifestation
Chapter 7 Buddhi or the Higher Intellect
Chapter 8 Manas or the Inward Sense: The Ten External Faculties of Sensation and Action
Chapter 9 The Envelopes of the ‘Self’: The Five Vayus or Vital Functions
Chapter 10 The Essential Unity and Identity of ‘Self’ in all the States of the Being
Chapter 11 The Different Conditions of Atma in the Human Being
Chapter 12 The Waking State: or the Condition of Vaishvanara
Chapter 13 The Dream State: or the Condition of Taijasa
Chapter 14 The State of Deep Sleep: or the Condition of Prajna
Chapter 15 The Unconditioned State of Atma
Chapter 16 Symbolical Representations of Atma and its Conditions by the Sacred Monosyllable Om
Chapter 17 The Posthumous Evolution of the Human Being
Chapter 18 The Reabsorption of the Individual Faculites
Chapter 19 Differences in the Posthumous Conditions according to the Degrees of Knowledge
Chapter 20 The Coronal Artery and the ‘Solar Ray’
Chapter 21 The ‘Divine Journey’ of the Being on the Path of Liberation
Chapter 22 Final Deliverance
Chapter 23 Videha-Mukti and Jivan-Mukta
Chapter 24 The Spiritual State of the Yogi: The Supreme Identity
Sanskrit Index

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