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)

EPISODE 15: FROM 21st CENTURY BRIXTON TO 10th CENTURY KASHMIR

Welcome to my blog. It will make you think. What it will make you think, who knows?

Last week I went to the Brixton Splash; a street festival organized in part by my son. I lived in Clapham and Brixton for six years between 1977 and 1983 and hence was around during the first riots. In fact as a co-operation between community, police and council, the Splash is a response to those troubled times. Because of the early rain the attendance was initially low but the vibe was good and better when the sun came out. I chatted to my son’s boss and told him how proud I was of my boy and how pleased to feel the changes in Brixton. An hour later my son was locked in a pub while axe carrying marauders ransacked Curry’s.

I have other children living in Bristol and Birmingham, so I feel a little involved and although I know it is all part of the bad news agenda I have discussed previously, I am sucked in to comment.  First must come the acknowledgement that few in power will want to make, i.e. that the rich have the poor’s money. They may justify it through inheritance, through hard work, through their value to society, through their education, through their risk-taking, through their arms dealing etcetera: nevertheless whatever wealth they have is raised from the poor.

In my previous entry I mentioned the Lord’s Club, the spiritual view of society presented in the East in which everyone is theoretical equal, (by virtue of all being one god playing out the different roles) and that the business of life is a bit like a worker’s co-operative where you rotate the jobs on some seasonal basis and all get paid the same. Philosophies like this can be more tenable when you happen to be a fat Brahmin and less so when you’re an Untouchable destined to spend your (much shorter) life with the dirty and the dead. You could just decide that this particular member of the Lord’s club, this spark of divinity, will become a rampaging and murderous one. David Cameron today talked of the tradition in this country of ‘policing by consent’.

Do you consent to poverty while we walk away the all the toys? No? What’s wrong with you? Here’s a lottery ticket, here’s a crap education, here’s £6 an hour, now fuck off and make something of yourself.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate all those obnoxious, foul mouthed, violent, ignorant, and vulgar manifestations of humanity as much as you (if you do) but let us not believe that their petty thieving is anything compared with the murdering, pillaging and exploiting of our leaders and money-makers.

Now, just to show I’m down with the kids, here’s a picture of Abhinavagupta

in an epoch pen-painting in which he is depicted seated in Virasana, surrounded by devoted disciples and family, performing a kind of trance inducing music on the veena while dictating verses of Tantrāloka to one of his attendees - behind him two dūtī (women yogi) waiting on him.

A legend about the moment of his death (placed somewhere between 1015 and 1025 depending on the source), says that he took with him 1200 disciples and marched off to a cave reciting his poem Bhairava-stava, a devotional work. They were never to be seen again, supposedly translating together in the spiritual world.

I will allude to the scene at the beginning of the second Boggy Starless novel in which my hero emerges after a number of years in a cave with an Afghani Sage and Hashish grower.

Among Abhina’s manifold achievements were contributions to the theories of poetics and drama attributed to the Bharata Muni, the 5^th century BC musicologist who laid down the aesthetic rules of drama that still underpin all Indian classical dance and theatre. Muni claimed that when humanity began to suffer from pride and the joyful life became full of suffering, the god Brahma created drama—with its attendants music, poetry, and dance—to uplift humanity morally and spiritually by means of aesthetics (rasa).

Abhina elevated the theory of rasa, (lit. juice, essence, flavour) by equating aesthetic rapture with spiritual exstasis.

The eight basic rasas were identified as Love, Comedy, Sorrow, Anger, Energy, Terror, and Disgust. Astonishment. Later a ninth was acknowledged, shanta-rasa, ‘the specifically religious feeling of peace which arises out of world-weariness’. Abhina likens it to the string of a jewelled necklace; while it may not be the most appealing for people, it is the string that allows the jewels of the other eight rasas to be relished. These rasas, (which of course need not be limited to or defined by these terms), these flavours, are what an artist is intending to evoke in his audience. Why? Why put them through these emotions when already their lives are full of quite real dramas, emotions, comedies and tragedies et cetera? What excuse is there for that?

The answer, according to these sages, is that art is otherworldly or ‘Alaukika’ in its nature and when the right conditions are in place the true aesthetic object does not simply stimulate the senses but also stimulates the imagination of the spectator. Once the imagination is stimulated the spectator aesthete gets transported to a world of his own creation. This emotion deindividualises an individual by freeing him from those elements which constitute individuality such as place, time etc. and raises him to the level of universal. 

The aesthetic experience is the manifestation of the innate dispositions of the self, such as love and sorrow, by the self. It is characterised by the contemplation of the bliss of the self by the connoisseur. It is akin to the spiritual experience as one transcends the limitations of one's limited self because of the process of universalization taking place during the aesthetic contemplation of characters depicted in the work of art. Abhinavagupta maintains that this rasa (literally, taste or essence) is the summum bonum of all literature and art.

The significant word here is ‘transcend’. Why would a philosopher-concern himself with the theatre and the arts? Why, when all your teaching is about spiritual union with Universal Consciousness, would you involve yourself with the fakery of the stage? Answer? Because although the drama is pretence, it has the ability through the rasa, through the aesthetic experience, to take the ‘sensitive spectator with positive taste and mind’ to a higher state of awareness in which they transcend the emotions and experience bliss.

For a moment there, I almost had it, but something slipped away.

Rasa, according to Abhina, ‘Is the universal bliss of the Self or Atman coloured by the emotional tone of a drama,’ and, ‘the developed relishable state of a permanent mood.’ Rasa is characterized by a peculiar state of awareness that simultaneously ‘transcends’ (lokottara) the ‘objective’ configuration and the corresponding ’subjective’ emotion, but is nevertheless, unlike the introversion of a yogin, both receptive to and intent on enjoying the sensory impressions.

I mentioned earlier the love of creation that pervades Shaivism and talks of the world, of which we are part, as Shiva’s garden. Tantra particularly embraces sensuous pleasure as a spiritual path with the idea of transcending an experience at its most intense moment of manifestation. Abhina, perhaps an exemplar Tantric Master, applies the same approach to the arts and hence can conclude that the pleasure one derives out of a real work of art is no less than divine pleasure.

In opening Episode 14 I outlined a number of issues about story-telling that I have been mulling. What have I learned at the feet of the Guptas? Not enough of course: that the creative process is spontaneous, natural and divine; that the aim of a work of art, of kavya, is to give pleasure ‘but this pleasure must not bind the soul to the body’: that the senses are the spectators: that wise spectators, connoisseurs, can experience an aesthetic rapture identical to spiritual bliss.

I know I’m close but not quite there but my feeling about the value of writing is strengthened.

For wiser words on Abhina and Rasa cf //www.svabhinava.org/abhinava/Sunthar-integral/index.php

 

Ps for my audience: In order to appreciate and to enjoy anything beautiful or wonderful one must have taste and approach with a sense of aesthetic appreciation, responsive imagination, the capacity to identify with aesthetic objects, and intuition. (Abhinavagupta).

So sharpen up please.

EPISODE 14: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR AGAIN DISCUSSES THE NATURE, POINT AND PURPOSE OF CREATION

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 10^th 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.