He was French and he was Muslim: two things that, let’s admit it, Americans hate. That alone would make Rene Guenon seem anathema to American thought patterns these days. However, he is precisely the man that Americans should be reading.

For the majority of his life, Sheikh Abdel Wahid Yahyia (1886-1951), as he was known to Muslims, was a Sufi. The Sufis were/are the “secret” branch of Islam, and they are the only Muslims truly capable of making a long-term peace with both the West and the East. From the 1930s on, he lived in Cairo, Egypt, and wrote books which attempted to explain what was wrong with modern religions.

On the surface, Rene Guenon was a living contradiction: he was a French Roman Catholic-Muslim who advocated Hinduism. But that was precisely his point.

The problem with modern religions, and modern civilizations for that matter, was that they have forgotten the esoteric (hidden or secret) teachings that are veiled within each major religion. Had humanity not forgotten the inner teachings that lie beneath the surface, they would have known the commonality of all religions, and of all humanity. Lacking the esoteric doctrines, however, the religions and societies have all degenerated into asinine charades that have led to countless wars and a deepening materialism based upon the failure to transcend the ego.

On the surface, two islands appear to be entirely separate land masses. Some would say a person would be crazy to argue that two islands, thousands of miles apart, were but one. Yet, if you look beneath the surface of the water, you’ll see that both islands stem from the same continental shelf.

So it is with religion. Most people never look past the storm und drang of their own egos. They only see separation, whereas beneath the surface they are all one.

Rather than arguing from an Islamic standpoint, Rene Guenon preferred to argue from a Hindu standpoint to explain what was wrong with Christianity. He felt that Hinduism, the oldest continuously practiced religion, would be more likely to be understood by Westerners than Sufism.

Unlike in the West, where the esoteric teachings were driven underground, Hinduism and its esoteric doctrine were for the most part openly taught amongst the Brahmin castes. The caste system, although questionable socially, did manage to preserve the ancient core teachings of the Vedas into the modern world.

Parallel to Hinduism in the West there were Greek, Roman, and Nordic religions, but these have long since faded into memory. That is why there is such an unnatural separation in the West between its secret inner teachings and its exoteric or public religion. Incidentally, it is also why Church Fathers such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas had to resort to classical writers such as Plato and Aristotle to justify their “new” religion to the intelligentsia. Christianity was, in fact, a re-embodiment of Greek and Egyptian esoteric doctrine, repackaged for a wider audience.

Rene Guenon understood all this and wrote extensively about it in such books as “The Crisis in the Modern World,” “The Reign of Quantity” and many other worthwhile books. Rather than the shallow-minded drivel many Americans read, why not try to tackle the works of Rene Guenon?

I doubt you will find an author more relevant today than this French Sheikh. Americans would be wise to follow this Sufi’s pathway to peace in the world and brotherhood among men.

Corey Wicks is an award-winning journalist and author. He can be reached through email at rosencruez@yahoo.com