The Multiple States of Being (les Etats Multiples de l etre)

Rene Guenon

Description

The Multiple States of Being
The Multiple States of Being, one of Guenon's major works, treats a truly fundamental idea: the soul's freedom lies in discovering its own nature as essential self-cognition and realising that all other states of knowledge and being are available to it as within itself. The metaphysics presupposed in such a realisation is discussed with thrust, brevity, and incisiveness characteristic of the grand traditional style.
"...a mind of phenomenal lucidity..." Marco Pallis
"The central figure who was most responsible for the presentation of the traditional doctrines of the Orient in their fullness in the modern West was Rene Guenon.... In his works is to be found one of the most important restatements of the doctrinal aspect of the sacred in modern times... a major step in the rediscovery of sacred knowledge's H Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred
"Rene Guenon defies classification... were he anything less than a consummate master of lucid argument and forceful expression, his work would certainly be unknown to all but a small, private circle of admirers."Gai Eaton
The Richest Vein
"Rene Guenon is not an 'Orientalist' but what the Hindus would call a ,master'."Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

FROM THE BOOK: "That which has no limits is that to which one can deny nothing, hence is that which contains all, outside of which there is nothing. This idea of the Infinite, which is thus the most affirmative of all because it comprehends or embraces all particular affirmations whatsoever can only be expressed by a negation by reason of its absolute indetermination. Any direct affirmation expressed in language must, in fact, be a particular and determined affirmation - the affirmation of something - whereas total and absolute affirmation is not any particular affirmation to the exclusion of others, for it implies them all equally. It should now be simple to grasp the very close connection which this has with universal Possibility, which in the same way embraces all particular possibilities."