EPISODE 96: A TAMASIC WEEK

Welcome.

Last Saturday night I got up for a pee and on the way back from the bathroom managed to bump my head into a wall, drawing blood and a raising a bruise that lasted a week. Immediately I started to grumble loudly enough to wake my partner who I then blamed for making it dark  because she likes to keep the bedroom very dark whereas I would prefer to sleep with the curtains open. Obviously she wasn't very impressed by my accusations but we managed to get back to sleep and in the morning after reflection I thought that it couldn't really have been that dark and quite possibly I'd had my eyes shut.

My head did hurt a bit on Sunday but hasn't been a problem since, nevertheless it feels like it was the beginning of an-off centre week. On Sunday afternoon I went to visit Rob to organize a bit of business. Before leaving the house I said to my partner, 'Today is an important day in my life.' Preoccupied with her own concerns she failed to answer me. 

The reason I'd been so portentous is that my business has been suffering through lack of suppliers; a situation worsened by my main supplier saying he will be taking a year off from January. A month ago Rob approached me offering to supply a regular (but not great) quantity of material at a price considerably below what I have been paying so by Sunday I was gagging to know what he would deliver.

Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment because neither the quality nor the quantity were what I wanted and if the price hadn't been so low I would have had to say no and end the relationship straight away. As it was I accepted the deal.

By Sunday afternoon I was feeling a bit poorly and my stomach was grumbling and rumbling and expressing its unhappiness about something. Also I felt tired. Then on Monday when I woke up I discovered that my shoulder was hurting and that the pain was spreading over the right hand side of my chest making breathing uncomfortable and coughing agonising.

On Monday afternoon I drove out in the countryside to discuss some personal problems a friend of mine was having. We went for a walk while she unburdened herself. When I got back to the car, it wouldn't start so we had an hour and a half wait in the cold for help to arrive.

I could not sleep at all Monday night and on Tuesday I couldn't do anything or focus my mind at all.

On Wednesday morning, I felt slightly better although everything continued to hurt. Then a friend called Uma visited. She hasn't seen me for a long time and seems very fond of me. Without warning she threw down her bag and embraced me heartily. From then on the pain doubled and I felt as if my body was in trauma. Throughout the day there was nothing I could do to get comfortable and when I went to bed in the evening my body was burning and sweating while I felt cold and shaky.

At some point on Thursday afternoon, I felt really low. Until I banged my head, I'd been on a bit of a high, having kept both my Chi Kung and meditation together for an unusually long time. Within a few days it seemed that all that had been lost and been replaced by self-pity and heaviness. It was then that I remembered what I had been reading in my Shaivism about the three gunas.

The gunas are the three basic moods, sattva, rajas and tamas. 

"Each individual's mood is always an embodiment of a different combination of the three gunas - each of which constitutes a fundementally different way of feeling ourselves and relating to the world."  (Wilberg).

Tamas (black) is felt as dullness or darkness of mood, and as physical inertia, heaviness or lethargy.

Rajas (red) is felt as agitation, desire, impulse, intent and passion, and is expressed as physical tension, agitation and activity in all its forms.

Satva (white) is felt as pureness, radiance, calm clarity, balance and buoyant lightness of being.

According to Wilberg, Western Psychology is bi-polar and has no time for Tamasic states, considering them abnormal or depressive. The response is to fight them mentally and/or with the aid of medication to 'keep ourselves going' (Rajas) or to 'be positive' (Satva). As a result, says Wilberg, we end up either in even deeper and dark Tamasic states or in truly unhealthy Rajasic states of 'stress', 'anxiety' or manic hyperactivity.

 "If we can not feel dull, heavy and fatigued (Tamas) how can we rest or enter into deep sleep - thus allowing us to process our experience in our dreams and to wake up feeling once again clear and bright (Sattva) and refreshed with renewed vitality and power of action (Rajas)?"

The Gunas have been mentioned in most of the indian philosophy books I have read yet until this day I hadn't ever paid the concepts any attention. They bored me. And yet I've been fascinated by mood. In his book, Tantric Mysticsm for Today's World, 231-239, Wilberg elucidates further on the gunas. I will finish with just a few extracts which are meaningful to me.

Tamas: ...Anatomically and medically it is associated with the bowels, abdomen and womb. Psychiatrically it is labelled as mild or severe depression. Sociologically it can find negative expression as the destructive potential of spiritual ignorance, generalised political apathy, the dullness of routinised work, lack of empathy and lifeless personal relationships. People search to compensate for Tamasic existence either through Rajas - hyperactivity and busyness, revelry in drugs and consumerism or mindless entertainment or through bland Sattvic states of spiritual harmony, peace and calm.

Each moment of each day we can identify the Guna or the combination of Gunas colouring our mood. None of the Gunas in themselves is a 'cause' of pain or pleasure, suffering or joy, limitation or liberation - these come about only through our relationship to the Gunas, and through their relationship with one another within us. It is important to be aware and affirm all our Gunic states as natural states of being. Only by being more aware of them can we both embrace and transcend them.

Oh Arjuna, Sattva attaches one to happiness, Rajas to action, and Tamas to ignorance. (Bhagavad Gita.)

So now it is 8 days since I banged my head. My shoulder  and chest are still painful but not as much as they were. The business material turned out to be perfectly satisfactory and actually made me some money. And I said to my partner, 'Would you like some relationship advice that might help in any future relationships you may have?' 'What's that?' she said. 'Well just maybe if he or she every says to you, this is an important day in my life, it'd be better if you responded.'
'Yep,' she said, 'I think you're right.'

EPISODE 95: LET THERE BE LIGHT

Welcome,

As my reader will know, I periodically become obsessed with Shaivism. This is one such phase. Last year it was with the help of the work of Peter Wilberg (and I may well turn to him again); for the moment I’m being entertained by K.C. Pandev’s book on Abhinavagupta and ‘Encyclopaedia of the Śaivism, Volume 1’ by Swami Parmeshwaranand.

Since first coming across Shaivism in 1977, my experience has been much the same. I read about it and as I read part of my being vibrates and I feel I’m on the edge of understanding something. That understanding never seems to deepen much and then drifts away and when months or years later another phase commences that understanding still hasn’t matured. And as Swami P points out, ‘It is quite relevant to say that real conviction regarding the truth does not arise or shine forth until it spontaneously manifests in one’s own real nature.’

This later forage into the agamas actually resulted from a desire to explain analogy to someone. I remembered then a particular analogy from shaivism, called bimbapratibimba, which I have, for many years, be meaning to explain to myself. In the process of googling bimbapratibimba, I came across Swami P’s writing and, as if often the case with Shaivism, became struck by the language as well as the concepts.

We live in a world of isolation separated from one another by the creation of walls of distinction of fanes and riches, of position and status, and we live on the island of the ego. But when by the grace of the guru we are able to see the light - the light which unifies all, which brings all into the embrace of the Divine, we realize oneness and the singleness of Light within.

In order to see the light we do not need to go any further. It is near, it is everywhere. But first we should realize the light, recognizing it to be the very essence of ME as I. Then it occurs to the aspirant that everything is made of light. It has emerged from it, and is made from it

To realize that everything that is known as idam, the object, is really Brahman, but differentiation, the variousness, the divisions, the nanatva, is unreal. The reality is one singleness but multifariousness is also real which shows itself by the dynamic pulsation of the Divine, dancing in the rhythmic play of delight. The Divine is nothing but the one harmonious uniflavouredness of the experience of joy.

Whatever shines is divine in essence. The objects that appear externally and that shine as pleasure or pain internally, when seen in their essence they are nothing but light. But this light is not a simple light that floods everything and then obliterates but it such a light that not only makes the body of all appear as one’s own body but it pulsates as the very life of everything. Everything that shines is composed of this light. Everything that manifests is simply this glory. It is an all pervasive light encompassing all, which unifies all with the Divine by demolishing the barriers of separation.

I would copy and paste a whole lot more but copyright won’t allow it, so you are spared. I have been complaining about having to handwrite a copy of what I’m reading before reprinting it here but it occurs to me now what an effort and a bother it must have been writing down these things in the first place back in the 8th century.

In Chapter Three of the Anthology, ‘The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience, there is a wonderful exposition of Abhinavagupta’s theories of light in a piece entitled, ‘Luminous Consciousness: Light in Tantric Mysticism’ by Paul Muller-Ortega. He says:

The light is one and its nature is freedom

The light is self-illuminating.

The light pulsates with power.

The light is self-concealing

Objective reality arises as the congealing of light

The light is triadic: fire, sun and moon

The Tantric Mystic inwardly enfolds his individual consciousness into the light and perceives it as nothing but the light

The Tantric Mystic outwardly melts the objective outer reality into the light and perceives that it too is nothing but the light.

Only the light is.

Bimba Pratibimba Nyaya: The Theory of an Object and Its Reflection, is an analogy much used by shaivites to explain…well, what it explains we may see. My reason for wanting to look at it is that I have never found it very satisfying emotionally or intellectually. Why this is, I don’t know. It tends to arise in relation to arguments with Vedanta which has similar model of Self but considers the objective universe to be unreal.

Shaivism believes the microcosm is the same as the macrocosm in a holographic universe and that by studying man one can see the Divine replicated, or, reflected. What man does in a limited way, consciousness does in an unlimited way. So while the ultimate reality of the world is perhaps secondary to one’s experience of it, our philosophic attitude to reality might affect how we interact with it, and how we relate to it.

‘A reflection appears in a mirror on a clear surface. The mirror and the object reflected are different from each other, although they do not appear to be so. Even if a large object is reflected in a small mirror, the mirror does not undergo any change; its size remains the same. Moreover, even if many objects are reflected in a mirror, they do not intermingle with one another. For example, even though fire and paper may be reflected simultaneously, the paper in the mirror does not burn. When a cow and a tiger and reflected in a mirror, the cow is not afraid of the tiger and the tiger does not attack the cow. Since only the forms of objects are seen in the mirror, they do not intermingle with one another. Moreover, for there to be a reflection, the reflecting surface must be clear. The clearer the surface it, the clearer the reflection will be.

There is another requirement. If something is to be reflected, there must be an object, and that object must have form. Formless space cannot be reflected.’ (Muktananda: Secret of the Siddhas.)

At this point I’m stopping. My brain can’t deal with it. Muktananda says ‘Bimba Pratibimba is one of the most beautiful principles of Shaivism. Clearly, I haven’t grasped it yet. Here is a more succint version of the whole analogy:

'As in the orb of a mirror, pictures such as those of a town or village shine which are inseperable from it and yet are distinct from one another and from it, so from the pure vision of the supreme Consciousnessthis universe though void of distinction, appears distict part from part and distinct from that vision.'

Is that clearer? No?  Then let us go back to the ever pellucid light.

‘Being self-luminous

You cause everything to shine

Delighting in your form

You fill the universe with delight

Rocking with your own bliss

You make the whole world dance with joy.’

(Shivastotravali: Abhinavagupta)