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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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6. Names and forms.

Both Īśvara and the Demiurge produce or evolve the manifold world of names and forms. In the former case this process is evaluated negatively, in the latter case positively. We shall see that in Western culture names and forms are generally evaluated highly, as a result of the inheritance of both Greek culture, which evaluated the formed more highly than the formless, and of the Christian religion, which evaluated the named more highly than the nameless.

 

That the Demiurge as dator formarum ‘giver of forms’, does a positive work speaks for itself in the Greek tradition, for, the main trend of Greek philosophy since the Pythagoreans is to prefer the limited to the unlimited-for example cosmos to chaos. The Platonic theory of ideas placed above a chaotic and formless sensible world a perfect and ideal world of forms. In this connection it should not be forgotton that the Platonic term eídos means

form and is only conventionally translated as ‘idea’ (which is idea, another term for form). In the Republic the highest existing entity is a form, the form of the good. In Aristotle the formal cause is more highly evaluated than the material cause. Aristotle also discovered formal logic, and developed it to a very high degree.

This evaluation pervades Greek culture in all its aspects. It is apparent in the evaluation of the arts which are manifestations of human creativity where forms occur in their utmost purity. The achievements of the arts were certainly not greater or more in one culture than in the other. But their place and function in culture and society was different, as can be seen in at least two important respects.

 

(1) Whereas the Greek philosophers, especially Plato, and, as we will see below, Plotinus, as well as for instance the Greek statesmen, attached a high value to the arts in the scale of human values and in the whole of society, none of the great Indian thinkers in the Upaniṣadic or in the Buddhistic tradition and none of India's spiritual leaders (with the possible exemption of Śrī Aurobindo) seem to have had much regard for the arts which belong to the realm of forms. Greece stands here more or less alone and what the modern West evaluates in the arts comes mainly from the Greek legacy, since in Christianity also the arts were not as much favoured as in Greece. This applies especially to Protestantism and to the early Christians.238

 

(2) When we look at images which represent God, we have to make a similar distinction between Greece on the one side and India as well as the monotheistic religions on the other side, though India is in this respect much nearer to Greece (cf. in general the abundance of images of Gods) than monotheism. The ancient Greeks represented their Gods as embodied in perfect and beautiful but natural human bodies. The Jews, the Muslims and among Christians especially the Protestants did not allow any representation of God; therefore synagogues, mosques and Protestant churches make the impression of emptiness when compared with Hindu

temples and Catholic churches.239 Representation of the human being in general is not much developed in strictly monotheistic cultures.240 Even in Roman Catholicism images of God the father are relatively rare, though images of Christ, Mary, the saints and apostles are common. In India the idea of the formless is especially expressed in Buddhist art (also in Buddhism the concepts of nāmarūpe play a very important role). In the stūpas there is no figuration and in early Buddhist art (e.g. in Amarāvatī) the central seat is not occupied by a Buddha image but is either empty or occupied by a symbol (tree; cakra; etc.).

 

In Hinduism images of Gods are of course very frequent and create at first sight the impression that forms are throughout attributed to all deities. But it has to be observed that (a) The highest divine entity, Brahman, is never represented in such a way. (b) Images are mainly objects for concentration and meditation, from which the person who meditates has to ascend to the formless divine;241 accordingly images are judged on iconographical, not on esthetic grounds (c) Symbolic representations are widespread and often preferred: for example the liṅga, yantras such as śvī cakra, divine attributes, e.g.5 Viṣṇu's conch, etc, (d) Abundance of sculpture can be observed on the outer walls of the temples or the garbha-gṛha, but never inside the latter.242 (e) In general the manifoldness of divine forms tend to show the merely relative significance of each of them. (f) Special phenomena, e.g., the Naṭarāja-temple of Chidambaram, where on the left of the image there is a large screen, called the ākāśa-liṅgam (also: ‘Chidam-bararahasyam’); etc. (g) Natural forms are transcended and an attempt is made to go to the formless by disregarding the claims of nature. This partly explains images of Gods with many arms, legs or heads (this is not merely the expression of supernatural

power).243 (h) The images of Hindu Gods, even when represented in ‘regular’ human bodies, do not make the impression of a natural human body but manifest a stylized and abstract, unhuman form.244 These typical phenomena did not occur amongst the Greeks (though it might be possible to find exceptions, e.g., the Nike of Samothrace referred to by Coomaraswamy).

 

This shows that the Greeks attached more importance to (natural) forms than the Indians. In the West this is traceable almost everywhere outside the religious realm. As an example the German term Bildung may be referred to. This noun is derived from the verb bilden, ‘to give shape, to form, to cast, to carve, to model’. Bild means a painting, Bildnis a portrait, Bildner a sculptor. Bildung245 denotes the ideal development of human personality: it means education, refinement, learning, erudition, and culture. The ideal human being, the counterpart of the British ‘gentleman’, is the man who is gebildet (that German reality did not always correspond to the ideal need not occupy us here).

 

In Neoplatonism Plotinus accepts the Platonic world of forms in his second hypostasis, the nous, as kósmos nóētos, ‘intelligible cosmos’. Though it is un-Hellenic on his part to call the One aneídeos, ‘formless’, this is an immediate consequence of his metaphysical position, which culminates in the concept of the distinctionless One. But Plotinus does not maintain this distinction in the same manner throughout his system and does not disregard his Greek background. In general, the forms are evaluated more highly than the formless. The paradox, arising on account of this is best expressed in his doctrine that the divine is without form while everything else is more divine, the more it possesses form and the more it limits itself. For exampie: ‘The social virtues .... give order (katakosmoûsin) to us and make us better;

they limit (horízousai) and measure (metroûsai) our desires and all our passions and take away our errors; because an entity becomes better by being limited and by being as such outside the realm of the unmeasured and the unlimited .... But what is entirely measureless, the húlē, does not resemble God in any respect; the more a being participates in a form, the more it resembles the formless divine’.246 Again therefore there is resemblance between the highest and the lowest.247 While the highest is formless, what comes immediately under it is the richest form and when we descend further we find increasing formlessness again. Therefore ‘the essence produced by the One is a form-it would be impossible to hold that the One would produce anything but a form. But this form is not particular, but universal, not leaving any other form outside itself: therefore the One itself is formless’.248 The supremacy of forms is traceable throughout the hierarchy of the hypostases. ‘The noûs dēmiourgós gives to the soul which is inferior to it forms of which there are again traces in the realm of the third hypostasis’.249 From. the húlē we ascend to the higher realities by imposing more forms: ‘Thus everything consists of the forms of the elements. Firstly the hûlē; upon these other forms are imposed, and then again others. Thus it becomes difficult to discover the hûlē which is hidden under so many forms’.250

 

Plotinus' theory of the beautiful accords an equally high place to the forms, while at the summit the most beautiful is a form, ‘but shapeless’. ‘Therefore when one speaks about beauty, one should not think about any particular shape (morphḗ) .... The shapeless form (ámorphon eídos) is beautiful, because it is a form.’251 Beauty means form, and hence ugliness, the absence of beauty in Plotinus' monistic opinion, means ‘absence of form’ (eídous apousía).252 The One being formless, the beautiful is

therefore subordinated to the One. The Good is beyond the beautiful,253 it is itself ‘super-beautiful’ (hupérkalos),254 it is ‘more ancient than the beautiful and prior to it.’255 Though coming immediately after the One, the beautiful still plays a very important part in Plotinus' thought as is for example visible in the celebrated treatise ‘On beauty’.256

 

This highly Platonizing treatise, the first which Plotinus wrote,257 shows in a characteristic way how Plotinus ascends from the sensible realm up to the One, combining the high evaluation of forms with the concept of the formless One. He describes how the soul is attracted by ‘sensible’ beauty (tò en toîs sōmasi kalón, ‘the beauty (residing) in the bodies’) and is repelled by ugliness. But this attraction takes place on account of the ‘intelligible’ beauty which it remembers and discovers in itself. What constitutes the resemblance of beauty here (in the sensible realm) and there (in the intelligible realm)? ‘That is, we say, on account of participation in a form (metokhēi eídous). For everything shapeless is growing towards a shape, whereas a form(?) remains ugly outside the divine reason (lógos) when it possesses neither reason nor form; that would result in absolute ugliness’.258 Later he speaks about sensible beauty arising on account of an ‘interior form’ (éndon eídos).259 Henceforward the treatise deals with the higher forms of beauty, residing in the unseen, experienced by each soul but in particular by the loving soul.260 He speaks about love and the beauty of man, the beauty of character and the beauty of virtue. Here beauty becomes reality (tà ónta),261 and the beautiful and the Good are one.262 But having reached the highest Good and the One, it becomes clear how everything is beautiful through its participation in the One. Whoever has seen the latter

cannot but love it for its beauty.263 And descending again he sees how ‘all other beauties are acquired, mixed and not primary: they derive from the One’.264 Lastly he sees also the beauty in himself: ‘Turn towards yourself and look. And if you don't see your own beauty yet, do as the sculptor does of a statue, that should become beautiful. He removes a portion of the marble, he scrapes, he polishes and purifies until the beautiful lineament manifests itseif in the marble. Like him, remove the superfluous, straighten the oblique, purify all that is dark in order to make it brilliant and do not pause modelling your own sculpture, until the divine splendour of virtue manifests itself....’.265 Here one image displays the high regard for forms as well as the one Plotinian trend which approaches Advaita, i.e., the view that the divine manifests itself in the self and is not the product of a transformation but only of the removal of obstacles. This is clear from the description of the sculptor, which is given in a way as if the statue was preexistent in the rough stone and only discovered and made manifest by removing what hid it.266 But the One, though formless, is at the sarae time the principle which gives form to everything else, or as Bréhier called it, ‘the unconditioned, the measure, whose function it is to provide to beings their limits’.267

 

We may conclude, that in Plotinus form is higher than formless, although the highest principle itself is formless: preference of form to the formless is characteristically Greek. In India, on the other hand, the formless is, especially in the Upaniṣadic and the Buddhist tradition (not in the Brāhmaṇas or in Pūrva Mīmāṁsā) considered higher than any form.

 

The second half of the above thesis must now be substantiated, i.e., that in Christianity and hence in the Christian West the name is evaluated more highly than the nameless,268 whereas the con-

trary holds in the Upaniṣadic tradition.269 As this diverts from Greek philosophy a few indications must be sufficient. There are at least two kinds of contexts where this high evaluation of names in the West is given: (1) in the first the name of God is looked upon as of high value; (2) in the second the activity of creation through names and forms. is evaluated positively.

 

(1) (a) Amongst the Jews it is customary to avoid pronouncing the name of God, which is considered exceptionally holy, when reading or reciting the Old Testament. When the unvocalised name JHWH occurs it is pronounced as ha-shem, ‘the name’, (b) The above mentioned words of God, ‘I am that I am’, are regarded as the long expected revelation of the divine name: Moses said unto God .... ‘the children of Israel .... shall say to me: What is his name?’ .... And God said: ‘Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: I am hath sent me unto you....The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob .... this is my name for ever’.270 Consequently the three monotheistic religions tended to object to calling God the ineffable despite Negative Theology, which was often Neoplatonic in character. (c) The exceptional importance of the divine name continues to live in Christianity and Islam, where important statements of events are sanctified by pronouncing the words ‘in the name of God’-‘bismillāhi’. (d) In Islam the ninety nine holy names of Allah collected from the Qu'ran are considered very holy and play an important part in later mystical speculation. The names of God have also been related to the angles and the platonic forms (this is connected with the interpretation by Philo of Alexandria of the Platonic forms as the thoughts of God).271 In Christian speculation angels and Platonic forms were also identified. In Islam

the exact counterpart, with contrary evaluation, of the nāmarūpe can be found. Though such enumerations of names have a close resemblance to Hindu lists of divine names, e.g. the Viṣṇusahasranāama there is in Islam no higher corrective such as the Upaniṣadic ‘that from which all words recoil....’272. (e) In the gospel of St. John Christ is conceived as the Logos, the creative divine word, which denotes both the divine and the relation between God and the world.

 

These high evaluations do not occur in the pāramārthika realm of Advaita, but might well occur in other aspects of Hinduism, as we saw already from the instance of the Viṣṇusahasranāma. Moreover, just as the Jews hesitated to pronounce the name of God, the Bṛhadāranyaka says273 that the Gods are fond of the cryptic and indirect (parokṣapriyā iva hi devāh). The Gods prefer the indirect and cryptic name Indra to the direct name Indha.274 On the other hand, all over India the recitation of the divine name is considered beneficial. In a Purāṇic legend Rāma demonstrated to Hanuman that the name Rāma was more powerful than he was himself. In Bengal Vaiṣṇavism, Chaitanya held that the name of the deity is identical with the deity itself. Therefore the naming of the deity is the highest means for realizing the love of Kṛṣṇa.275

 

The Christian Logos is not dissimilar to the Indian śabda. The latter does not only apnear, however, in religious speculation, but has philosophical as well as grammatical affiliations. In philosophy the relationship between śabda ‘word’ and artha ‘meaning’ is primarily discussed in Pūrva Mīmaṁhsā and in Nyāya.276. The discussions relating to the fourth pramāṇa (śabda) are partly logical, partly theological. In Bhartṛhari's śabdādvaita metaphysical speculation is closely related to grammatical analysis.277

(2) In Christianity the Logos embodies the creative forces of the divine. God created through the Logos when he said: ‘Let there be light’-and there was light.278 In the Qur'an the whole creation has come into being through the creative word ‘Be’! (‘Kun’) of Allah. The view of creation out of nothing tends to stress the value of the creative word. In accordance with a low evaluation of words and names on the other hand, creation is denied and no actual change is supposed to take place, when names are assigned to things.

 

The high evaluation of names and naming continues to live in the Western interest in linguistic expression. While this opposes the Advaitic ideal, which goes beyond names and language, Advaita is in this respect an exception to the general Indian pattern. Few civilizations have paid as much attention to language and linguistic expression as Indians did from the earliest times. As early as the Ṛgveda there is interest in the creative power of the word in poetry and thought.279 This is transferred to the level of creation in the Brāhmaṇas where, according to Silburn, ‘the nāmarūpe are not the perishable forms regarded as inferior in the Upaniṣads’ but ‘the structure which orders the confusion inherent in the spontaneous activity of Prajāpati’.280 Only a very high evaluation of linguistic and literary expression can explain that vyākaraṇa (grammar), nirukta (etymology), chandas (the Science of metre), alaṁkāra (‘literary omamentation’) and other branches of knowledge deal directly or indirectly with these topics. Though these developments are more in the spirit of Pūrva Mīmāṁsā, both Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṁsās are concerned with problems of linguistic interpretation and adopt methods of interpretation used by the grammarians.281

Though Advaita considers the formless superior to forms, the artistic experience of forms is accepted in a special context. A work of art is effective through rasa and this gives rise to a certain

joy in the experiencer (rasānanda). This joy has something in common with the highest bliss, brahmānanda. Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka held ‘the esthetic experience to be akin to the mystic realization of Brahman’.282 According to the philosophers of Alaṁhāra the difference between the two was due to the fact that alaṁhāra, ‘egoity’, subsisted in rasānanda (though it was there of a pure, sāttvika type), whereas it had disappeared in brahmānanda. Whether the latter value could conversely be incorporated in the theory of rasas was a much debated question. Those who denied that there could be any connection between mokṣsa and esthetic values, held that śānta ought not to be incorporated amongst the rasas. In fact, Bharata gave eight rasas.283 But Abhinavagupta, his commentator, as Dr. V. Raghavan informs me, showed, that not only śānta is admissible as an esthetic sentiment, but that all esthetic experience is in essence of the nature of śānta. Later comes Bhoja with a new theory, in which only one rasa is recognised, i.e. śṛṄgāra, ‘love’. With reference to Advaita, this is called, pāramārthika rasa, and it is distinct from vyāvahārika rasa. The most basic type of this rasa is mokṣa śṛṅgāra.284 Moreover the presence of this fundamental rasa in a doctrine accepting only one rasa enabled the author of the Sāhitya Mīmāṁsā to call Bhoja's new rasa theory ‘śṛṅgāra Advaita.’285

The Logos theory occurs under a certain form in Plotinus too. The idea goes back at least as far as Heraclitus, for whom logos was ‘common to all things’ (xunòn pâsi).286 But ‘the logos according to which everything occurs’, says Jaeger,287 ‘is the divine law itself’. For Philo of Alexandria the logos is the first intermediary between God and man, and is assimilated to chance as well as to destiny. For Plotinus the latter obtains as well,288 but in the Enneads the more important function of the logos is to

cause the conflict and harmony of contrary forces (tà enantía; dvandvas). It becomes the principle of contrariety and equilibrium, and thereby a not very clear answer to the difficult question of the theodicee or the parallel problem of the origin of multiplicity from unity. When we ask what is the place of logos in the architecture of the hypostases, we find no definite answer. The reason for this probably is that the logos works on all levels and is a general concept of connection and relation.289

 

In conclusion, the pair of concepts, nāmarūpe occupying a low position in the Upaniṣadic tradition, and also in Advaita and Buddhism, but not in Indian thought as a whole (neither in the Brāhmaṇas, nor in Pūrva Mīmāmśā, nor in several later schools of thought) is highly evaluated in the West.


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