Dialogue  April - June, 2001 , Volume 2  No. 4

The Voice of the Sacred in our Time
Ramesh Chandra Shah

1

In the Indian tradition of Advaita Vedanta, knowledge in the highest sense is immediate, an experienced reality, in which the duality of knowing subject and known object lapses. But there is somethiung in the Western concept of knowing which transforms the other into an object and thus takes possession of it. Knowledge becomes conceptual control of the universe–permitting no inappropriable mystery in things, in persons, in other cultural–religious traditions. Similarly there is something in the concept of belief too, which can be sustained only by the existence of an infidel. An unbelieving other, who can never find himself and is eternally damned. Is there, one wonders in the westernized world of to-day, any possibility of a mode of experiencing which is non-objectifying?

One wonders if there is any word in Sanskrit, which corresponds exactly to the concept of the sacred or the holy as the polar opposite of the profane. Sanskrit with its rich ambiguities seems to have developed right from the beginning, in-built corrective against that representational and objectifying tendency which it might have shared with European languages. Perhaps the uniqueness of Indian philosophy and religion lies in the simultaneous de-objectification of the objectified, in the iconoclastic moment which is never for long absent from its iconism. While western logic clings to distinction, Indian logic tries to avoid or surpass it. As Betty Heimann had observed long ago in her ‘Facets of Indian Thought’, "this Indian attitude to logic, so different from the ancient and modern west, has also resulted in a strange combination of logic and mysticism."1 It is in early Indian thought that we find the first theories of the union of opposites as the ultimate foundation of the world. Recognising Man’s imperfection and need for being Made whole, Christianity promises remedy and betterment in the future. The original perfect state in paradise before the ‘Fall’ is hardly considered for future development except by poets like Blake and Yeats, who had to evolve their own radical reinterpretations or compensatory mythologies. Vedantic Hinduism, on the other hand, with its central experience of Atman-Brahman identity realised through meditative thinking, recognises an ideal state of radical innocence and unity, which is ever-present, though veiled or dimmed owing to our "mayic" involvement in the world, but never entirely lost.

As the formulation of Coomaraswamy cited above indicates, Indian sensibility can be seen to operate on both planes–the empirical and the transcendental, the sacred and the profane dimensions of existence simultaneously. Of course, the fullness and the constancy of the transcendental are superior to the limited and transitory aspects of the empirical world; but the empirical world is always connected with and nourished by the Transcendental, and always capable of redemption and fulfilment–that is, self-realisation–through any of

the unitive disciplines of Jnana, Karma and Bhakti Yoga. Meditative rather than calculative thinking has shaped the philosophies and religions of India; and if there is one experience which appears to ensure the availability of Indian insights into the nature of ultimate reality, it is, in the words of W.B. Yeats, "that experience accessible to all who adopt a traditional technique and habit of life." This, according to Yeats, "has become the central experience of Indian civilisation, perhaps of all Far-Eastern civilizations that, wherein all thoughts and all emotions expect their satisfaction and rest."2

2

The contemporary religious situation, however, is widely acknowledged to be characterized by secularisation and desacralization. Historians, philosophers, social and religious thinkers are almost unanimous in affirming that this is a novel phenomenon in human history and that its origin and unfoldment are to be found in the Judeo-Christian traditions. The presence and even occasionally violent expression of some forms of religiosity cannot conceal the fact that mankind lives to-day in a disenchanted world and religion is no longer the binding force it used to be. "Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold", - a prophetic poem of W.B. Yeats had told us–thus, almost anticipating the philosophical enterprise of Heidegger, who came to see this age of radical nihilism as the culmination of a long process which had started with the Greek philosophic enterprise ‘under the long shadow of Socratism’, as Nietzsche had put it. Paul Valery had already laid his finger at the virtual Europeanisation of the earth; and here was this existential philosopher telling us, that with the spread of the civilisation of the west into world civilisation, the night of nihilism had enveloped the entire earth. Scholars have noted the immense shrinkage in the scope of the Sacred brought about by Protestantism, which divested religion itself of mystery, miracle and magic–those most important elements of the Sacred.3 Here, the pluralistic religious milieu of India had resisted the pressures of Islam: the sacred life-world of the Hindu had even sought to renew itself during that period through the medieval renaissance brought about by the Bhakti movement. An unprecedented flood of poetry had been released poetry born out of the humiliation itself, as it were–a poetry of the sacred Imagination. But the nineteenth century renaissance was an altogether different affair, it seems–exhibiting, as the late Prof. J.L. Mehta has rightly pointed out, - "the effectiveness of the secularising force of the protestant presence in India ." "By becoming modern to the extent it has done so," Prof. Mehta further says, "India has become a participant in the world-wide phenomenon of secularization. Of late, however, voices of protest against this have been raised in the Christian world, by religious thinkers and philosophers, and in India by most of its leading thinkers."4 It would be pertinent here to dwell for a while on the kind of role this perceptive philosopher and Vedolgist has envisaged for contemporary Indian scholars. The problem, according to him, is , "how to keep the rumour of angels alive, so that the dimension of the sacred remains visible, from which divinity may once again peep through." He proposes the hermeneutical way as the best way of doing this: "the way of reinterpretation and reformulation of what speaks to me as meaningful and true from the sacred texts of tradition." He invokes the long history of the Indian harmeneutical enterprise and mentions three focal points in it: the first being Rigveda Samhita, including the Upanishads; the second, the epic tradition, especially the Mahabharat; and the third focal point–"summing up and creatively interpreting the entire preceding tradition for an altered world again."–is the Bhagavatpurana, which is the central text of Hindu religious life, enjoying canonical status in the various schools of Vedanta."5 Mehta thinks it imperative to go back to it again as presenting a massive task for reinterpretation in the perspective of the modern present because of its being unique in the religious literature of the world as a classic statement of how our basic pre-theoretical affective dispositions govern our primary attunement to all that is, on the basis of which, we then go on to build our theoretic construct. Also, because it exemplifies and captures in great poetry not only the primacy of the heart’s affections, but shows how we cannot enter into truth except through love; for to know things as they are in the realm of the sacred, we must first love them, not the other way round.

There can be little doubt that the Hindu life-world has been rudely shaken and altered by India’s entry into modernity since the last century. This, inspite of the fact, that perhaps no other country in modern times has produced such a steady and quick succession of spiritual leaders within such a short span of time. How to come to terms with this curious paradox of a tradition exhibiting such continued vitality and resilience on the one hand, and then sinking into such apathy and cynical self-oblivion on the other hand? Prof. Mehta’s concern, therefore, has to be taken rather seriously. He refers to the Indian conception of ‘homo hierachicus’ as the arch principle of social order, as against the common western ideology of ‘homo equalis’ as the prime example of a question that deserves a hermeneutical enquiry. But, as Simone Weil has pointed out, "it is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentic spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, the social is transcendent in relation to him. Our period has destroyed the internal hierarchy. How should it allow the social hierarchy which is only a clumsy image of it, to go on existing?" Anyway, one can see that there is an urgent need to investigate the forces that have brought about a certain upheaval in our traditional value–system. There are disturbing symptoms in our academic milieu as well as in the literary circles that should open our eyes to this question posed by Prof. Mehta: "How much has been thrown overboard in the name of rationality, modernity and a legitimate concern for justice and humanness? Is our amnesia of the sacred in life so complete that we cannot even notice that we live in a desacralized common world?"6

3

Do such questions sound extravagant and somewhat unreal in the Indian Context? In certain moods and situations they do appear rather remote; but outside them, they acquire an ominous ring. When one becomes part of a great congregation like the Kumbha fair at Allahabad or when one is merely watching the anonymous crowds taking a dip in the Ganges in the holy city of Benaras, one tends to be overcome by an emotion of multitude and to sing amid one’s uncertainties. The epiphanies of your own childhood begin to overwhelm you producing a powerful illusion of that, which ‘having been once must ever be’. And, why talk of childhood? Wasn’t it yesterday (just ten years ago) that having overcome my deep-set secular resistance to Sri. Aurobindo through his work on the Vedas, I happened to plunge thence headlong into his ‘synthesis of Yoga’, and, was dragged, inspite of myself into a world, which left to myself, I could never have believed in. What happened to all that? How could I lose my grip on my own experience as if it had happened to somebody else? Was it a mere failure of nerve on my part? Or, was it that what happened to me was part of what is happening all around me–part of that collective drift and amnesia, which in my vocation as a writer, I just can’t help witnessing and suffering. By collective drift and amnesia, I mean here the amnesia of the community of academics and intellectuals which forms my immediate milieu. Isn’t the Bhagvadgita most emphatically clear about that?–"Whatever the high in society do, ordinary people will imitate; they follow their example." Who is this ‘Srestha’ of Gita, if not the intelligentsia itself–the hard-hearted intelligentsia, of whom Mahatma Gandhi once said that they had been the longest nightmare of his life? This at once brings to my mind an entry in the journal of Agyeya—my literary mentor, - who was the pioneer of the ‘New Poetry Movement’ in Hindi:

Throughout my literary life. I hardly ever remember to have heard my fellow-writers discussing our sacred texts or, even the works of our, modern sages like Sri. Aurobindo or Coomaraswamy. One has to search elsewhere for sparks. I had occasion recently to witness something which I would never have believed otherwise. I witnessed the transformation wrought in the lives of millions of poor people through a movement called ‘Swadhyaya’, which is dedicated to the realisation of Bhakti as a social force. "you could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything"–says Simone Weil in her book called ‘Gravity and Grace’. I happened to be reading the book at the time and was astounded to hear Pandurang Shastri Athawale–the guardian spirit behind this (Swadhyaya) movement–expressing a somewhat similar sentiment. "This iron age, ‘kaliyug’ –he said." is the fittest for the practice of Bhaktiyoga and Karmayog of Gita. Who would have needed me or my work in so-called better times? I am luckier than Yajnyawalkya."

Well, that was reassuring enough against the backdrop of the omnipresent violence and corruption–wasn’t it?–at least for the time being. And many of the intellectuals who had accompanied me to that spectacle shared my positive, responsive feelings towards this triumphant demonstration of the still continuing validity and resonance of the ancestral wisdom. But, back home, one felt skeptical and depressed once again. Since, it is the conversational apparatus that maintains reality - that is, the experience of what counts as reality in a particular society at any particular time, it is of urgent importance to us to take the hermeneutical endeavour seriously. Such an endeavour, in the words of Prof. Mehta, is "the only way in which potency and seminal power of the primal works of our own tradition can become meaningful to us once again."7

4

This may not well be ‘the only way’; but it is certainly one of the ways to recover the sacred for a common life-world. There is another way, of course; and that is the way of the creative imagination of the poet. Holderlin’s poetry, for example, was, for Heidegger, "a pointer in the direction of rethinking about God in terms of the Holy and of Truth, of the arrival of the Divine as an event to be awaited and prepared for by a deeper insight into the meaning of Truth and Being." Rather unfamiliar and somewhat mystifying terminology for us Indians who have been accustomed to finding the English Romantics much closer to our own understanding and experience of the matter. One’s instinct calls for immediate assent to Coleridge’s definition of Imagination, for instance, and to Kathleen Raine’s comment on it, equating ‘the living power and prime agent’ with the Vedantic Sat-Chit-Ananda–"the presence within the finite self of the transcendent divine self". According to her, "Coleridge’s definition comes as close as it has hitherto been possible in the West to an affirmation of the universal ground of a ‘God within’. Coleridge in his later years withdrew into the religious snare of Christian theology from what as a poet he knew."8 This special poetic knowledge certainly brings us closer to an understanding of the concept of the holy or sacred which, at the outset, I had found rather untranslatable into Sanskrit. One’s instinct calls for immediate assent also to Blake’s ‘everything that lives is holy’ because that is exactly what we have been accustomed to hear not only from our Vedic and Upanishadic poets, but also from the greatest of our medieval saint-poets. Tulsidas, for instance, invokes precisely this live holiness at the very outset of this great epic.

"O you living creatures of the land, of water and of air! I bow before each and everyone of you, because you are the living embodiments of my Lord Rama and his consort Sita. Accept me as your devoted servant and bless me. I have no confidence in my intelligence apart from you and that’s why I seek and invoke your blessings"

5

Incidentally, it is the principle of ‘Joy’–celebrated by Blake as well as Coleridge-which seems to be of crucial significance in the present context. In his famous essay on Heraclitus, Sri Aurobindo has underlined the conspicuous absence of this very principle of joy in the Greek philosopher’s otherwise perfect understanding of the other two terms Being and Consciousness, Sat and Chit. He views the absence of the recognition of this third principle of Ananda as a limitation of his vision of reality. It is quite significant that Kathleen Raine, while praising the courage and clear-sightedness of Blake, has emphasised the presence of this very insight in Blake. "if Western philosophers might accept Being and Consciousness"–she says, "only Blake would have understood that the third term! ‘Bliss’, ananda, is in the very nature of being itself. ‘Life delights in life’, Blake writes: ‘the soul of sweet delight can never be defiled’. That is where poetry’s especial contribution to the understanding of fundamental knowledge lies".9

I have no idea what Heidegger meant by this conception of the Holy and God or gods. I don’t know whether the limitation Sri Aurobindo recognised in Heraclitus–that fountain-head of Greek philosophy—was also in some manner the limitation of this modern (in fact, post-modern) anti-metaphysical thinker of Being and Time. Scholars have suggested that in his famous essays on Holderlin (George Steiner, incidentally, considers Heidegger ‘the deepest reader of poetry in our times) the Holy has been determined as the Unmediated and the poet as the mediator. But the poet himself needs the mediation of the gods to give utterance to the Holy. In Heidegger’s view, the gods are the intermediaries, upon whom the poet depends and, who in turn depend on the poets. This language of the latter Heidegger somehow seems to conjure up before us the Vedic world-picture and it is no mere coincidence that the late Prof. Mehta went from Heidegger to his own independent and very insightful researches into Rigveda, which led him to a conclusion that is best expressed in his own words:

"In the interpretation of the Vedic text, it is not only religious and cultural-anthropological prejudices that have been at play during two centuries of Western Vedic scholarship; philosophical pre-suppositions too have wrought havoc here, through the unquestioning importation of Western conceptuality into another tradition".10

The evidence of visionary poetry, like that of William Blake, is certainly more to the point than what Coomaraswamy in his own ‘Approach to the Vedas’ had chosen to call ‘the Western game of scholarship’. Blake equates Imagination or the poetic genius with the god within, and that god within with Jesus. But, for Blake, Jesus was not the historical person of exoteric christianity, but the divine humanity present in all human kind. This, then is Reality as it is experientially known and established in the word and by the word by poets. "If reality is an experience and not an object in space"–says Kathleen Raine, "it is a realm of values, of which, the supreme value is the sense of the holy, the realm of the sacred."11 Also, that, "for lack of an adequate metaphysical structure, such as India possesses, the Romantic poets had to find their own terms in which to affirm the innate transcendent presence." "It is hightime Indian poets and philosophers did something about what seems to be an existential imperative for them: repossessing and creatively re-appropriating what is their very own, the inheritance of a civilisation where poets have been the virtual legislators, not just romantically, but literally. Blake’s first editor, - the poet Yeats–once thought of writing a ‘European Geeta–not doctrine, but song". But that’s exactly what Gita and the other sacred texts like the ‘Rigveda’ and the ‘Bhagavatpurana’ are and have always been to millions people in this country–not just doctrine, but song. There hardly exists a pure philosopher in the popular imagination: even the great Sankara had to sing. And no one knew it beter than Yeats did, who, after all, thought it worthwhile to put into English "what grass farmers sang thousands of years ago, what their descendents sing today". Let me conclude this rambling paper by invoking the voice of Blake himself.

Notes

1. Betty Haimann, Facets of Indian Thought, p. 150.
2. Aphorisms of Yoga, trans. By Purohit Swamy, with an Introduction by W.B. Yeats, p. 16.
3. J. L. Mehta, Philosophy & Religion, p. 246.
4. Ibid, p. 248.
5. Ibid, p. 249.
6. Ibid, p. 251.
7. J.L. Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, p. 219
8. Kathleen Raine, ‘Yeats & the Learning of the Imagination’.
9. Ibid
10. J.L. Mehta, Philosophy & Religion, p. 281.
11. Kathleen Raine, ‘Yeats & the Learning of Imagination’.
12. ‘Jerusalem: III; Poetry & Prose of William Blake, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes, p. 533.