An Excerpt From Hermann von Keyserling's Travel Journal of a Philosopher

Wikipedia:

Hermann Alexander Graf von Keyserling (20 July 1880 – 26 April 1946) was a Baltic German philosopher from the Keyserlingk family. His grandfather, Alexander von Keyserling, was a notable geologist of Imperial Russia.

Keyserling was born to a wealthy aristocratic family in the Könno Manor, Kreis Pernau in Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire, now in Estonia. After his education at the universities of Dorpat (Tartu), Heidelberg, and Vienna, he took a trip around the world. He married Countess Maria Goedela von Bismarck-Schönhausen, granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck. His son Arnold von Keyserling followed his fathers footsteps and became a renowned philosopher.

Hermann Keyserling interested himself in natural science and in philosophy, and before World War I he was known both as a student of geology and as a popular essayist. The Russian Revolution deprived him of his estate in Livonia, and with the remains of his fortune he founded the Gesellschaft für Freie Philosophie (Society for Free Philosophy) at Darmstadt. The mission of this school was to bring about the intellectual reorientation of Germany.

He was the first to use the term Führerprinzip. One of Keyserling’s central claims was that certain “gifted individuals” were “born to rule” on the basis of Social Darwinism.

Although not a doctrinaire pacifist, Keyserling believed that the old German policy of militarism was dead for all time and that Germany’s only hope lay in the adoption of international, democratic principles. His best-known work is the Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen (“Travel-journal of a Philosopher”). The book also describes his travels in Asia, America and Southern Europe.

I am sitting at one of the ponds in the interior of the sanctuary and listening to a Brahmin reading from the Ramayana. His assistant interrupts again and again the reading in Sanskrit with chanting explanations in the popular dialect. With glowing eyes and with an intensity which verges upon a trance, the congregation listens to the sacred song. The great epics, Ramayana, and Mahabharatam, mean to the Hindus approximately what the Book of Kings meant to the Jews: the chronicles of the times in which they were mighty upon earth, and at the same time in constant intercourse with heaven. From the human point of view they therefore mean more to them than all Shastras. No simple Hindu doubts their historical accuracy, and not many of their scholars do so either. They are fond of referring to episodes from the Mahabharatam for purposes of scientific proof, and it is not rare that heavenly events are quoted in order to explain earthly happenings. The Indians know nothing of history, nor’ have they any organs for historical truth. Mythology and reality are one and the same thing to them. And thus, legend is judged as reality, and reality transformed to legend, and every time this happens as if it were a matter of course. And not only the dead and the absent are changed, again and again living and present individuals are recognised as Avatars and revered by the mass as gods. For the rest, life takes its normal course. The appearance of a god upon earth does not seem to the Hindus any more extraordinary than the interference in the Trojan War by the Olympians seemed to the heroes of Homer. They believe everything with the same readiness, they accept what is likely just as they accept what is improbable, and they do not take anything specially seriously simply because it is historically true.

It is only here that I succeed in understanding these facts. Now that the Hindu mode of consciousness has been revealed to me in the concrete its insufficiencies are obvious: the Hindus do not differentiate strictly between fiction and truth, dream and reality, imagination and actuality, and for this reason it is impossible to rely upon their statements. Their science is inaccurate and their observation lacks predsion. But every mode of consciousness has a positive element, and this latter strikes me more and more. While at Rameshvaram I noted down that the attitude in which the accent is placed consciously on the mental image as such, and not on the external object to which it is addressed, generally reveals sides of reality which otherwise would escape notice. This applies also to the attitude thanks to which reality and mythology mingle. How does mythology change reality? Senselessly, or according to some idea? The change is always full of meaning; the significant element of reality is raised in the process of mythical transformation. In this process the essentials become more and more evident, not necessarily that which seems the most essential in the object, but that which seems the most essential to the poet and his kind. Modern occidental mythology effects this change with almost scientific exactitude; every new metamorphosis shows Goethe more like his own metaphysical self, whereas the Indian has generally only increased the significance of the hero to the people. If I regard these facts in connection with the positive elements in the Indian consciousness, then the problem appears to be nearly solved: the Indian consciousness accepts the significant elements directly as such; it has the same relation to every event as a pious believer has to a religious mystery; or, to give another and more pregnant comparison, he experiences in such a way as the contemporaries of Goethe would have had to experience him, in order to recognise his eternal significance as clearly as we do. And what is valuable, what essential significance or facts? Significance alone; facts as such are totally irrelevant. Thus, India, with its tendency to producing myths, has, judged from the angle of life, chosen the better part as opposed to precise Europe.

I dwell in the state of consciousness in which the battle of Kurukshitra, in which the gods could be seen standing by the side of men, seems as real as that of Sedan. The world which is thus revealed to me is it not more real than that of the research-student? Is it not real in a far higher sense? The teachings of Indian wisdom irresistibly take possession of my mind, almost without surprise. Significance is the primary, the eternal and the truly real force; that which is called fact is nothing more than its image, unreliable, like everything produced by Maya; the importance of appearance can be gauged only by the degree in which it expresses its significance. Accordingly, the astral world is more real than the physical one, and in turn the realm of ideas more real than the astral world, for in each successive sphere true significance is manifested in an increasingly pure form. Here below we are to ascribe a higher reality to inspired thought than to the events which seem to disprove them, for the things of this world pass away, whereas their significance remains eternally; and legends are more substantial than all history, because in them significance presents itself in the form of eternal symbols, which will out-live many Kalpas. Did Krishna really live, did he really deliver the speech which can be read today in the Bhagavat-Gita, to Arjuna, before the decisive struggle? Certainly, so far as you believe it. In higher realms, significance exists by itself without any form; as soul, it cannot be perceived by our minds. It finds expression just as you desire yourself; just as you believe, wish or think, it becomes manifest as god or goddess, as a system of philosophy, as an image of prehistoric times, as legend. It is all left to you. But the more you strive to penetrate into its essence, the more noble are the images which appear to you. I hold converse with the spirit of this wisdom. It appears to me as Mahaguru, as a great teacher who, gently and kindly, points the way to me. Do not let yourself be deceived by the evil Maya, the goddess of your Western science! Her greatest cunning is that everything she does is proof against the criticism of reason. But that which can be proved is never essential: everything capable of proof vanishes and transforms itself into something which can be proved anew, and deceives the uninitiated concerning its essence in every one of its forms with equal success. Of course, everything we imagine is Maya too, only they have this advantage over the physical world, that they display their peculiarity more honestly, and offer a more pliable medium to significance. How your scholars have misjudged the heart of reality! They have brains, as perhaps no Indian has had them, but instead of using them to seek significance, they waste the precious time of their human existence in studying indifferent unre-alities, and think they have achieved heaven knows what, if their results are objective! Of course they are objective, but they are also transitory. And look at my Hindus by com-parison. They know nothing of exact research; they do not understand Maya; they fail only too often in this world. On the other hand, their souls are opened wide to all possible influences of eternal significance, and they all wander along the road to liberation.