Danielou and the open secret
The discovery of Danielou may seem a bit odd to some here: it is something that is only clear to someone who has devoted long study to the subject of Indian religion, and failed to penetrated its very simple riddle, which is shunted aside the moment people get close.
Danielou’s scholarship is a bit treacherous, and one needs to ‘get the point’ without accepting all his facts. The exact nature of the relationship of Shiva to Dionysus is not so simple, nor is the pattern of cultural diffusion and interaction in the Neolithic in any way clear.
But the issues raised by Danielou will explicate what is often unfolding in Indian and/or New Age groups behind a simple disguise.
Consider Rajneeh with his emphasis on tantra, almost to carry out the project indicated by Danielou.
Our concern here is history, not becoming converts to another historical fiction. Shaivism was not fiction, but its exemplars deal in fictions, we can be sure. Reviving the past is problematical.
With splendid naivete Danielou reveals the secret and the scandal where more tight-lipped poker players (and scoundrels) are plying this theme of the one and true ancient teaching, and doing shadowy things that the ancient Shaivism did in the open. Thus Danielou warns us of human sacrifice in the ancient tantric religion! Sufis, Gurdjieffians, et al. are not so talkative.
Thus, the somewhat thin quality of Danielou’s material nonetheless contains a set of keys to religious archaeology, and to what must have been the lost ‘religion’ of the Neolithic Indians, millennia before the rascal Aryans.
We don’t wish to be conned into another round of derivative new age tantra, but we can appreciate the historical value of Danielou’s key, so obvious, so out in the open, something we have read a few times before without it registering. After many confusing way stations on the road to Indian religion his most obvious analysis suddenly becomes clear (if incomplete, and riddled with possible scholarly errors)>
We cannot revive the past, and must beware of the crooks and con men who will recycle this material.
It all sounds suspicious reminiscent of Gurdjieff and his con, the ancient teachings, their secret, etc…
Use the historical clue, one the more useful from this naif, but beware of the conmen selling antiquities as spiritual paths.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 