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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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2. Concepts of continuity. Karman

An analysis of the duality of śruti and smṛti leads to a recognition of the continuity which exists between the two. Likewise it was seen that the ritual act can be gradually ‘interiorised’ and can lead to meditation and subsequently to immediate knowledge.

Meditation on a sacred text, originally a matter of interpretative reflection and elucidation (in Pūrva Mīmāṁsā) develops gradually into a meditation on the Absolute itself and into knowledge of or identity with the Absolute (in Uttara Mīmāṁsā). The common factor of all these developments is the element of continuity, a characteristic of early Indian thought.

 

It is a primary tendency of man to experience himself as an everlasting and indestructible entity.44 The belief in immortality of the soul, the reluctance to accept death, the immortalization of kings (e.g., amongst the old Egyptians), of heroes, of sages, of saints, and later of everybody, but also the urge of modern man to preserve and continue his personality are some of the manifestations of this. So are the negative counterparts: the fear to die, to be dissolved or destroyed. In all ancient45 civilisations this desire for continuity is projected (in a more than psychological sense) outside upon the external world, which is in its entirety perceived as a continuum. In ancient India this tendency must have been exceptionally strong, as can be seen from many facts. Betty Heimann, who noted this, speaks of a certain constancy (‘Konstanz’) and explains this in the light of the richness of tropical vegetation.46 In the light of the fact that the first achievements of ancient Indians took place in the plain of the Ganges or still further towards the North West, where there was no exuberance of tropical vegetation, it seems preferable to accept this simply as a human tendency which is general and which seems to have especially developed in India for reasons which are unknown to us.

 

Three examples of this preponderance of ideas about continuity and preservation may be given, which are each instructive in themselves. They are connected with three important terms: ṛta, annam and karman.

The most important of the general or all-encompassing (it may be doubted whether it is appropriate to speak here about ‘abstract’)47 concepts of the Veda is ṛta,48 a supra-divine force (though in particular connected with Varuṇa) expressing a kind of general order, cosmic, ritual as well as moral. Ghate discriminates49 (the modern mind must discriminate and dissolve when dealing with the unity in meaning of such archaic concepts) the following developments of these three meanings: (1) ṛta regulates the alternations of the seasons and of day and night, in short of all the recurrences of natural phenomena (which are, it may be remarked, of special importance in an agricultural society - something to be accounted for when we arrive at a general idea of who and what the original ‘Aryans’ were - and which are typical for the Indian climate with its regularly recurrent monsoons). Ṛta gives birth to the Gods too. (2) From this(?) it comes to signify the correctness and the regularity of the cult or sacrifice; the ritual acts are conducted by ṛta50. (3) It then denotes the moral law which every righteous man must observe.

 

The postulate of continuity explains how such a unifying term for order or law, a link between a variety of phenomena, could come into existence. A term like ṛta would not have any definite meaning and would be merely confusing if this belief in continuity were not to exist in the background. This unity of denotation exists in the idea of order and presupposes the idea of continuity.

 

Secondly, the term annam clearly shows the continuity which exists between the material and the psychical and spiritual. This unity is difficult for the modern mind to understand. But after the increasing dualism of body and soul in modern philosophy since Descartes, which led to nothing but insoluble problems and insurmountable difficulties, there is again a tendency in philosophy to accept the unity of body and soul and the identity of the material, psychical and spiritual.51 This is a return - in a way which is more justified than ever (i.e., on a phenomenological basis) -

to the traditional view, itself a development of the archaic view as it existed in ancient India and as it is for instance manifest in the term annam. Annam, from the root ad-, ‘to eat’, means food. Nothing is as continuous as eating; food is continuously eaten, digested and absorbed, throughout the life of each individual. Moreover, the desire for a continuation of eating is one of the most basic desires. Before this phenomenon had become unconscious and self-evident, it must have been an important conscious element, drawing the full attention of human beings. In that period of human development it must have been looked upon as a ready basis for many analogies. Under such circumstance annam could mean ‘Everything which is eaten, digested and transformed on the fundamental basis of transformation’.52 Subsequently it became an equivalent of the later concept of substance. Betty Heimann has shown by analysing several Upaniṣadic texts,53 that the term points at a universal belief in transformation, a continuous transformation from everything into everything. That this should not be interpreted in an exclusively spiritual way is evident. But that there is, on the other hand, not even a preponderance of the material aspect (both errors result from habits of thought of the period of philosophy from Descartes to Kant)54 can be easily seen from a text like Chāndogyopaniṣad 6.5.1: ‘When absorbed, the food (annam) is transformed into three portions: the most gross elements become the excrements (purīsa) the middle become flesh (māṁsa); the most subtle become spirit (manas)’.

Since annam had a very general significance it could become extremely important and central, connected with the fundamental phenomena of life and death and of life-giving breath (prāṇa; cf. ātman - both concepts which manifest too the unseparatedness of material and spiritual). We read for instance: ‘It is food that is called exhaling and inhaling; it is food that is called life and death. It is food that Brahmins call growing old; it is food which is called procreation’.55 Similarly the ultimate concept, Brahman, is identified with food.56

 

Annam as food is not an image denoting phenomena of transformation in general, but denotes substance which is the principle of any transformation. Analogous terms are also utilised, for instance the term bhoktṛ, ‘enjoyer of the food’, which has become a very important term in later philosophy, denoting the experiencer in general. The concept also occurs in Śaṅkara: ‘The highest self, when reabsorbing the entire aggregate of effects may be said to eat everything‘ (when commenting upon the sūtra: ‘The eater (is the highest self) since what is movable and what is immovable is mentioned (as his food) )’.57

 

This symbolism of eating and food (which is not only Indian, but occurs for instance in the Christian eucharist)58 has reached a kind of existence in the human mind, though sometimes in the unconscious layer where modern psychology discovered it. The importance of eating and of food is manifest from the fact that sexual symbolism as discovered by Sigmund Freud, is preceeded by a more fundamental symbolism, namely that of food and of its digestion. Also in the struggle for life the urge for food is stronger than the urge for sexual satisfaction. In the footsteps of Jung, Neumann has shown that the concept of eating can express living as well as the general idea of possessing power. There are numerous references to this, old Egyptian for instance as well as Indian,59 where food is described as the entire content of the world and

hunger as the negation of everything, as destruction and death (which actually it can be). The same ideas are traceable in contemporary dreams. In the historical process there is a development towards spiritualization or interiorisation; to eat and to digest the world becomes to conquer the world and lastly to be beyond ‘this world’. In case of the Gods, to eat the world comes to mean to withdraw or to dissolve it,60 and philosophers interpret this in a purified terminology as a ‘reabsorption of the entire aggregate of effects’ (Śaṅkara). This occurs in archaic world views as well as in contemporary dream material, whereas it can be shown to possess a special significance for the child in an early stage of its development. To this conceptual realm belong breath, hunger, thirst, semen, excrement, breasts, sweat, spitting, teeth, etc.61

 

One might wonder whether any philosophical significance can be attached to this. The answer is in the affirmative and the significance might be formulated as follows. Originally in human being (and still in us, although often as a hidden background) a unity of different entities existed, which the progress of consciousness (which means repeated bifurcations through negation) split up in parts some of which were more highly evaluated than others. Then the tension which is typical for consciousness comes into being, and errors arise when the mind starts reflecting and identifying the original whole with one of the parts which have come out of it. The mind is unable to regain the fundamental unity which is at the back of such partition. To understand archaic concepts like ṛta and annam we would have to abandon the multiplicity which has arisen in the meantime through further developments and refinements, not by a synthesis of the manifold, but by an endeavour to see the continuous background of the whole.

 

Perhaps the boldest generalisation of ancient India is the idea of karma.62 This word denoted originally the ritual act, which established identity or continuity, or at any rate a link between the

performer of the sacrifice and his aim (see below). Later it came, to be applied to moral activity and to its results. It retained its function of re-establishing a continuity, applied in this case to human life in its duration as a whole. Thus it filled the gap before birth and after death, and took the shape of a rational causal element explaining the ancient doctrine of rebirth or saṃsāra. Man is supposed to dissolve at the moment of his death, but ‘his’ (and the meaning of a possessive pronoun becomes questionable in such cases where the possessor has ceased to be) karman is the indestructible substance which survives him and causes a new birth determined by good or bad acts of a previous existence.

 

This doctrine of karman offers a solution for the discontinuous and therefore unintelligible elements of human existence and it explains at the same time the existence of suffering, solving the problem of the ‘theodices’ (bound to arise, as we will see, especially in such world views as the Christian). The doctrine of karman need not, as it is sometimes said (referring to its identity with destiny as expressed in terms like niyata, vidhi, or diṣṭa, ‘fixed, settled’, etc.) destroy human freedom,63 because every human being, though born in a particular situation and provided with a determinate karmic inheritance, can in his life freely accumulate good or bad karman.64 Advaita develops this in its own way, as we shall see.65

 

It follows from this idea of strict causality in human life, where a kind of equivalent to the law of preservation of energy holds (which the Western mind does not accept in the spiritual realm, because of the idea of creativity) that karman is conceived as something close to annam. On the other hand, it preserves the idea of a universal law in its causality, cosmic as well as individual. Here it turns out to be the proper heir to the ancient ṛṭa. The karman substance belongs again to the realm where physical and mental are not separated. Thus, karman is assimilated to the current of

a river, to the shadow which follows man,66 or again to the food, in particular specified as its undigested portion.

 

The ritual background of karman is never lost in the later developments of its meaning; and there may be even an element of magic or witchcraft always distinguishable in it. A psychological or mental tendency must have been associated with it from the early beginning, as we can see from the root kr- itself, which can be applied to manas with the meaning: ‘to direct the thoughts or the mind’ (occurring since the Ṛgveda) and later also connected with buddhi, etc.67

 

The idea of karman has remained a central idea and dogma of Hinduism, (as S.N. Dasgupta frankly admitted) probably mainly as the rational expression of the notion of saṁsāra.68 It becomes an all-powerful principle on which also the Gods depend. Apart from explaining social inequality and providing a metaphysical basis and therefore justification for the caste-system, it is a kind of general theory of heredity, which applies to character, intelligence, behaviour and physique.69 Its fruitfulness in the field of psychology was especially great:70 the saṁskāras (a term derived from the same root kṛ-), the impressions left in the mind from previous experience, particularly during a former life, are forerunners of what modern psychology calls determinants (determining factors) of the unconscious. It can even be said that with the ‘collective unconsciousnesses’ of C.G. Jung (however questionable as yet the status may be of this philosophically unclarified and problematic concept) we are no more so far removed from an interpretation of the theories of reincarnation.

In the doctrine of karman the tendency towards the establishment or re-establishment of continuity has found a rational expression, especially on account of its causal structure. Its rationality makes this doctrine universally intelligible and popular even in the West.71 But we have to investigate further into its background. We shall find a causality which is much more universal and tends towards identifications of special sets of particulars. Of this, the karmic causation constitutes only the most intelligible and rational portion. This will be seen in the next sections, dealing with identifications and with sacrifice. Sacrifice will lead to the act of meditation.


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