To simplify to an extreme, it could be said that Rene Guenon’s most trenchant critique of Western modernity boils down to the insight that Westerners have no understanding of, or room for, the faculty of intellectual intuition (i.e., direct apperception or gnosis). Instead, our mentality is dominated, by and large, by the operations of the senses and by reason.

The senses, functioning in tandem with concepts (like space, time, causality, and so on), give us impressions of “the world.” Meanwhile, reason enables us–to mention but two principal functions–to formulate hypotheses and to draw inferences. To utilize these two functions only or, in any case, mainly is to live in a grossly impoverished state, not to say in a condition of dukkha, or suffering.

Nowhere, Guenon rightly states, is there an understanding of the direct, immediate apperception of Reality, which he sometimes terms intellectus. While modern Western philosophy has severed knowing from being and has thereby privileged various theories of knowledge, the correct nondual teaching avers the indissoluble metaphysical identity of knowledge and Reality. To know Reality just is to be Reality.

But the identity of knowledge and Reality is none other than spiritual realization. Therefore, what is sorely lacking in the prevalent mentality or outlook of the West is the very possibility of spiritual realization. Such is Guenon’s conclusion. Thus, he turns to Advaita Vedanta, to Sufism, to Taoism, and the like in order to lay bare the metaphysical doctrine of nonduality–that is, to grasp the very essence of the perennial philosophy.