Every poem is born of a seed, dark at first, which we must make luminous for it to produce fruits of light…the second phase is the clothing of the luminous seed, which reveals but is not revealed, invisible like light and silent like sound - its clothing in the images that will make it manifest.
René Daumal, from his essay, “Poetry Black/Poetry White.”
A moment comes when the voice that says, ‘I” must jump from the intellect to a more interior, more real life, and this new life sees that it is different from the intellect. Then it must put the intellect into service. But there is a period of transition between the two, when one feels a disgust at the emptiness of ordinary discussions (those that one has with oneself and with others, and I include the most brilliant philosophical ones). They will no longer do, but one has yet to find a new language at one’s disposition. That is why it is suggested that during this intermediary period of maturation, one should not talk about one’s work with “stranger”. You would like to be open and useful to them and they will want to pull you in. But it is like pouring a drink for someone who has no glass in his hand; your water spills to the ground and only creates mud.
In a Letter from René Daumal, from the book, “Rene Daumal: The Life and Work of a Mystic Guide” by Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt
The task is to continue writing…without becoming a writer.
from René Daumal, “Letters on the Search for Awakening,” 1930–1944
I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess.
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.
In a brief Postface to Mount Analogue written by René Daumal’s wife, Véra, she writes, “On one occasion [René] did describe in concise terms the path he saw before him. The text appears in one of the last letters he wrote me” (from Intense City)
Another way of putting it would be (without knowing Chinese) to propose this new translation of the first line of the Tao Te Ching: “A way that is entirely laid out, no, it is not the way.” I told you that I have encountered in my life a true teaching. One of the signs of its truth, for me, is that it never proposes an entirely prescribed path. No, at every step the entire dilemma is revisited. For me, nothing is resolved once and for all. And what I have always loved in you is your refusal of a prearranged path, and that’s important to me because alone one can’t sustain such a position. We must be a number of people to help each other, to awaken one another.
René Daumal from a letter to Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, November 1941 (Parabola)
“Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.” ~ René Daumal

“Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.”

~ René Daumal

“Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.” ~ René Daumal

“Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.”

~ René Daumal

Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.
René Daumal