Welcome to my blog which frequently concerns itself with the nature and purpose of writing and the writer’s life.
This morning I have been thinking again about my grandson and his love of story, about the success of J.K. Rowling and the innateness of story patterns, about the game of peekaboo, about the seduction of (personal) narrative, about the spectators in the Shiva Sutras, about the point or purpose of writing a blog, about the impulse to communicate, about rasa, and about Abhinavagupta, the 10th century philosopher from Kashmir.
These are not new considerations for this mind; far from it. They are interconnected and concern issues I, perhaps, am still just grasping at, whereas finer intellects than mine can digest and spew out the complete Abhinavagupta compendium at the drop of a pandit. But we are where we are and I was saying to Trevor the other day, we’re all members of the Lords club with allocated roles which are equal in essence. Ho Ho!
Abhinavagupta has appealed to me since I first heard his name over thirty years ago: he and Kshemraja made Kashmir Shaivism romantic for me. Kashmir Shaivism is one of the two major systems of Indian thought espoused by my guru, Swami Muktananda. The other was Vedanta. Abhinavagupta, Abhina to his mates, was one of India’s greatest philosophers, mystics, and aestheticians. He was also considered an important musician, poet, dramatist, exegete, theologian, and logician – ‘a polymathic personality who exercised strong influences on Indian culture’. Although Kasmir Shaivism predated Abhina, he synthesized the four strands that were preeminent and wrote commentaries and elucidations on many of the major texts, including the pre-eminent Siva Sutras.
The appeal of Shaivism, (which is probably the oldest religion in the world) is that it can seem more life-embracing than its nihilistic counterpart. Of course no philosophies, belief systems, religions etc. are true. A best, they are models and manuals: and as such are not always easy to connect with what it is you actually do when you attempt to follow the manual. One is what you do; the other is an attempt to describe what you do. Often it helps to have a guide to show you what the manual means – but sometimes it doesn’t. Philosophies, especially those of the East, were meant to be practical guides to reality and the guru was the one whose job it was to lead you from the darkness of your present knowledge to the light of understanding. Gurus, even more than philosophies, need testing for the vast majority, as in any field, are charlatans, liars, or just plain ignorant.
Abhinavagupta is, I believe, the one to explain to me why writers write and why being an artist is a good thing and how it is ‘that the experiences of the hero, the poet, and the aesthete are identical’ as claimed by no less than Abhina’s teacher in dramaturgy, Bhatta Tauta.
In Kashmir Shaivism the creator is called the Supreme Artist. The creation of the universe is seen as a compulsive artistic act. (Elsewhere in this blog I refer to this five-fold act of creation, sustenance, withdrawing (destruction), revelation and concealment) in which creations are produced solely for the heck of it, for the pleasure of the artist, for the experience of bliss, or rasa, that this artist has throughout the whole process. You are feeling happy, you burst out in song, and then the song makes you happy: maybe one could call this the supreme self-expression.
Whether I recognise this as so, or not, it begs the question, why do I want other people to read my book/blog/creation? What’s in it for them, what’s in it for me?
Shiva Sutras 3:9-11
9: Nartaka Atma:
The Self is a Dancer. Or, ‘Such a one (who is awake) is always immersed in the consciousness of his essential nature and is a Self that is only an actor (on the world stage.)
10: Rangontaratma:
The inner Soul (i.e. the subtle and causal aspects which contain the inner life of the individual) constitutes the stage (Of the Self that is the actor).
11. Preksaksani indriyani
The senses (of the yogi) are the spectators (of his acting).
So in Sutra 11, I get an answer to my question posed some weeks ago, namely, who are the spectators to the cosmic drama? Essential to the concepts of Shaivism is the axiom, ‘As Above, So Below’ - though they have a number of ways of putting it. Shiva is the jiva, Universal Consciousness and Individual Consciousness are the same thing, the cosmic process is the same is the individual creative act, As Here, So Elsewhere etc. Or, as the Prtayabhijna Hridyam says, ‘Even in this condition (of empirical self), he (the individual soul) does the five (cosmic creative) actions like Him (i.e. Shiva.)
In my first discussion of this sutra I was wondering why an artist creates, or rather, for whom? The cosmic answer appears to be for the enjoyment of the creator. So how does the creator enjoy the creation? Through the senses.
I have three translations of these sutras. The one I’m familiar with is Jaideva Singh’s. After each Sutra (pithy saying) he writes an extensive translation and an exposition. The opening part of the translation for Sutra 11 is: ‘The senses like eyes etc. of the yogi witness inwardly their inmost Self full of the delight in exhibiting the world drama. By the development of the performance of the drama, they provide to the yogi fullness of aesthetic rapture in which the sense of difference has disappeared.’
Iyengar’s translation of the sutra is: The Organs of Sense are the Audience. And the exposition: The eyes and other sense-organs of the Yogi introspectively see his real nature, filled with the pleasure of manifesting the drama of the world. They attain by the excellence of the play, the state where distinctions are abolished and they are filled with the appreciation of the wonderful play.
The third translation is by I.K. Taimni. Today space does not permit any fair reflection of his approach but the translation adds an ingredient which, ultimately, may help me relate the cosmic process to the individual one. The sutra reads like this in his hands:
The other Jivatmas (living beings) witness the part played by a particular Jivatma on the world-stage through their sense organs. They are not able to see the Atma (true Self) of the actor but only the extended part s/he is playing in the world.
I would like to draw all this to a rapid and meaningful conclusion. But I can’t. Another time; next week perhaps. I’d like to think I’d get another 5,000 words of my novel done by then because the last two weeks have been extraordinarily slack.
See you.
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