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The Lion's Roar: Siddhas of Lanka (6)
It was Swami Gauribala who introduced me to the mature writings of Ananda Coomaraswamy, Rene Guenon, and Frithjof Schuon. In 1981, when I found myself in the United States with Prime Minster R. Premadasa, I abandoned his entourage to meet Schuon who was living in Bloomington, Indiana with Whittal Perry. He rarely granted interviews but his curiosity had been aroused when Rama Coomaraswamy told him that I knew Gauribala Swami whom he had also met. I made my way to see him delighted at the prospect of meeting the last of these three men who wrote mostly on the Perennial Philosophy. I left my one hour meeting with Schuon, who was dressed as an Arab sheikh, and wired Swami thanking him for having turned me on to this school of thought. Swami wired back asking me to return at once to Sri Lanka. When I returned I asked him why. His response was "You need to be turned off from traditionalism." He then showed me an article by Schuon that was titled ‘The Problem of Sexuality' and asked "Do you have a problem with sexuality? Is there a problem with sexuality?" He then smiled and stated in Tamil the famous Yogaswami dictum "Oru Pollapum Illai" meaning ‘Not one problem exists'. Years later we are now witnessing the re-branding of the Perennial Philosophy as ‘Traditionalism' and its adherents as ‘Traditionalists'. Go to "The Lion's Roar: Siddhas of Lanka" Part 7 Courtesy: The Sunday Times of 16 September 2007 "The Lion's Roar: Siddhas of Lanka" Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 |Life and Times of German Swami | The Bohemian Swami
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