Each person must find his own with the help of the teacher. In a letter to Ribemont Dessaignes, he wrote:

The first sentence of the Tao Tei King is: “a path that is a path already traced is not the Path.” I told you that I have encountered in my life a true teaching. One of the signs of its truth for me is that he never proposes a path already traced. No, at each step, the whole problem is posed. Nothing is resolved for me, once and for all.46

The novel remained unfinished with only meager notes to indicate the direction in which it might have gone. In the postface added by his wife, Véra, she discusses the preparation for the successive encampments: “It is very likely that René Daumal would have explained what he meant by this work of preparation. The fact is that in his own life he was working hard to prepare many minds for the difficult voyage toward Mount Analogue.”47

The novel is truly a new embodiment of the Hindu concept of the mountain being the point where Heaven and Earth meet. In A Night of Serious Drinking, Daumal suggests “madness and death” as two escape exits, while the entire Mount Analogue constitutes the diary of an escape through the unnameable third exit alluded to in the previous novel. It is the log of someone on his way, a record left behind for others to read and follow. His proposed final chapter was to be entitled “And You, What Are You Seeking?”

Daumal indicates the preliminary stages of a true path as depicted in many traditions, a practical method for perfecting one’s life here on this planet. Thus Mount Analogue represents the culmination of Daumal’s expansion as a poet and perfectly reflects the esoteric teachings of Hinduism and Gurdjieff, both literary and philosophical. This final work is the consummation of all his years of honing his craft and his soul, surrendering his ego in order to ascend the holy mountain.

NOTES

1. R. Daumal, letter to Renéville, Hermès 5 (1967): 93.

2. R. Daumal, quoted in Rosenblatt, “Interior Resonances: A Conversation with Jack Daumal,” Parabola, p. 90.

3. R. Daumal, Mount Analogue, p. 31. R. Daumal, Le Mont Analogue, p. 15. (In subsequent references, page numbers in parentheses will refer to the French version.)

4. Jan Gonda, Vedic Literature, p. 43.

5. R. Daumal, Mount Analogue, p. 32; (= p. 18).

6. Andre Rousseau, “L’Avènenment de René Daumal,” Littérature du vingtième siècle, p. 67.

7. R. Daumal, “Nerval the Nyctalope,” The Powers of the Word, p. 38.

8. R. Daumal, Mount Analogue, p. 30, 32; (= pp.