Indirect Instruction in the Yoga Vasistha by John Mcgee a THESIS

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Implements of Enlightenment:

Indirect Instruction in the Yoga Vasistha

John McGee

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

CALGARY, ALBERTA

August 2007

ABSTRACT

This study starts with Northrop Frye’s notion that good teaching is ironic or indirect, in the sense that it engages the student and does not simply supply him or her with answers. I take this notion and apply it to the Yoga Vasistha, a Hindu scripture written between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries CE. This text teaches through a combination of philosophical discourse, storytelling, and dialogue, and I explore how each of these, as it operates in the text, constitutes an indirect mode of instruction, wherein there is no opportunity for a passive or uncritical acceptance of teachings, and where the student is ultimately obligated to embark on his or her own journey of, or toward, understanding.

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want first to thank my supervisor, Dr. Tinu Ruparell. It is not always easy having such a good critic as one’s supervisor. Dr. Ruparell’s points of criticism were always so pertinent that our meetings became known as “deflation sessions.” I can only say that I was and am grateful for them, and hope that at the next level I find someone who will subject me to the same.

I also want to thank my parents, Wendy and Al, without whose love and support this thesis could not have come into being.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ii

Acknowledgments iii

Table of Contents iv

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Discourse 10

Chapter Two: Story 27

Chapter Three: Dialogue 44

Chapter Four: Direction in Indirection 55

Conclusion 62

Selected Bibliography 68

iv 1

Introduction

Accept the mystery behind knowledge; it is not darkness but shadow.

- Northrop Frye, On Religion

This is a study of religious pedagogy in the Yoga Vasistha (YV), a Hindu scripture written between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries CE and unique in its combination of literary and philosophical elements for the purpose of instruction. As a scripture, the YV is dedicated to edu- cating a person in spiritual1 concerns and to doing whatever it can to help him or her achieve liberation. It seems to me to ‘think’ in terms of overall strategic objectives, caring little for niceties, theological or otherwise. There is, according to one pair of scholars “no finer example in world literature of a profound philosophical mind with a genius for artistic description,” and moreover, a “fullness and overflowing of the creative spirit [in this book] such as has almost never been seen in any other Sanskrit text.”2 As will be elaborated upon shortly, my interest is the way in which this creativity extends to the very pedagogical methods the text employs - methods whose common characteristic, I want to suggest, is a structure of indirection.

The YV originated in the region of Kashmir. Around the turn of the first millennium,

Kashmir was renowned as a place of great learning, where multiple philosophical and religious traditions flourished side by side. Abhinavagupta, “one of the great geniuses of medieval In- dia,”3 lived and taught here in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Indeed, there has been speculation that Abhinava knew the YV and even commented on it, but this is not known for cer-

1 The term spiritual is used adjectively throughout the thesis. While the term is generally associated with the Christian tradition, it is used here in a more general way to denote non-material values and/or realities. 2 J.L. Masson and M.V. Patwardhan, Shantarasa and Abhinavagupta’s Philosophy of Aesthetics (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1985), 9, quoted in Jurgen Hanneder, “Editor’s Preface” in The Moksopaya, Yogavasistha and Related Texts, ed. Jurgen Hanneder (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2005), 3. 3 Paul Muller-Ortega, The Triadic Heart of Siva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-dual Shaivism of Kashmir (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 45. 2 tain; nor is it clear whether this text might have inspired him or whether he might have helped inspire it.4 In any case, at this time and place “the religious and philosophical traditions of India had reached a certain established maturity,”5 and the YV can be seen as one of the climactic literary products of this cultural flourishing. The language of the text is highly literate and poetic, and abounds with “metaphorical descriptions, fantastic tales, and philosophical discourses that appeal to both the intellect and the imagination,” as Chapple puts it.6 Attributed to the mythical

Valmiki, the full text of the YV contains some 25000 to 30000 verses, making it one of the largest books in the world, even larger than its parent text, the Valmiki Ramayana.7 Multiple versions of the text have come down to us, but the main ones are an especially long version known as Brihad-Yogavasistha, a condensed version called Laghu-Yogavasistha, and the more recently discovered Mokshopaya.8 The Mokshopaya and the Yoga Vasistha are, according to Slaje, “basically identical,” except for relatively minor revisions made to the latter.9 The Mokshopaya can claim a greater authenticity in being the earlier of the two, as it is thought to have been composed between the seventh and tenth centuries. Nevertheless, it is the YV today that is known through the subcontinent, having achieved a “pan-Indian” status of authority following what Hanneder

4 Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 231-2. 5 Paul Muller-Ortega, “Aspects of Jivanmukti in the Tantric Shaivism of Kashmir,” in Living Liberation in Hindu Thought, ed. Andrew O. Fort (Albany: State University of New York Press), 1996. 6 Christopher Chapple, Karma and Creativity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 65. 7 Chapple has suggested that the text went through three stages of redaction or development. In the first stage, it was likely a “small, Brahmanical, Upanisadic text.” In the second stage, Buddhist influence was incorporated, in particular the doctrine of “mind only.” The third and final stage saw the development of an enormous text in which multiple traditions were represented, including Kashmir Shaivism (Ibid.). 8 Walter Slaje, “Liberation from Intentionality and Involvement: On the Concept of Jivanmukti according to the Moksopaya,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 28 (2000), 171. As Slaje discusses, there were multiple versions of the text in Sanskrit. What is also noteworthy here is that the text was translated into non- Indian languages such as Persian. The text’s influence outside the Indian subcontinent, significant though it may be, remains largely unexplored. .9 Ibid. 3 calls a “triumphant” progress of circulation made in the 19th century.10 The great epics and the

Bhagavad Gita are among the only other texts that can claim such ubiquity.

The literary and philosophical content of the text represents a broad heritage of Indian thought. Of the philosophical threads to be found in the text are represented the traditions of Ve- danta, Jainism, Yoga, Samkhya, Shaiva Siddhanta, and Mahayana Buddhism.11 According to

Atreya, the author appears to have thoroughly “imbibed” and “made his own” the immense and profound varieties of Indian thought that went before him, making any effort at tracing these influences thoroughly difficult.12 Any such effort lies outside the scope of this thesis. Still, some aspects of the text’s literary history are worth mentioning. The YV has a definite literary debt to both of the major Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. According to Slaje, it is

“beyond doubt” that the YV is “closely linked” to Mahabharata XIII.13 There, Vasistha asks

Brahma about the relationship between human effort and divine fate, and Brahma tells him in no uncertain terms that “everything can be accomplished by one’s activities, but nothing obtained from divine power itself.”14 In this view, fate is of no consequence unless there is real human initiative: just as “divine power cannot rescue a man full of desire and delusion,” so too “divine power steadily increases when conjoined with human activity.”15 In YV II the teaching is virtu-

10 Jurgen Hanneder, “Introduction” in The Moksopaya, Yogavasistha and Related Texts, ed. Jurgen Hanneder (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2005), 15-16. 11 Christopher Chapple, “Introduction,” in The Concise Yoga Vasistha, trans. Swami Venkatesananda (Al- bany: State University of New York Press, 1984), xii. Hanneder has raised the question of the extent to which the YV ought to be considered a yogic scripture. As he points out, it does not offer a program of transformation based upon an ever increasing inwardness or introspection, as it outlined in the authorita- tive and definitive Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. See Hanneder, “Introduction,” 17. 12 B.L. Atreya, The Yogavasistha and its Philosophy (Noradabad: Darshana, 1966) 7, quoted in Christo- pher Key Chappel, “The Concept of Will in the Yogavasistha” (PhD diss., Fordham University, 1980), 6. 13 Walter Slaje, “Nasti Daive Prabhutvam: Traces of Demythologisation in Indian Epic Thought,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 26 (1998), 27. 14 Ibid., 33. 15 Ibid., 43. 4 ally identical. Here Vasistha teaches that “whatever is gained is gained by self-effort alone,” and that “fate is fictitious.”16 Again, he says, “There is no power greater than right action in the present. Hence, one should take recourse to self-effort, grinding one’s teeth, and one should overcome evil by good and fate by present effort” (25-6).

The YV of course develops out of and is, in a sense, an elaborate interpolation of the early scene in the Ramayana when Vishvamitra arrives at the court of King Dasharatha and asks him for his son’s help in destroying some oppressive demons. Dasharatha is taken aback by the question and, partly losing consciousness, almost falls from his seat. He does not wish to let his

“lotus-eyed” son go anywhere at all, much less go off to battle: “He is but a boy and not yet fin- ished with his studies. He does not even know a strong foe from a weak one. He is neither strong nor skilled in weapons, and he is not adept at fighting. Surely he is no match for rakshasas.”17 The scene is one that is full of suspense. On the surface, at issue is a paternal love and natural attachment. On a deeper level, however, is the issue of the young man’s identity, and more, the question of who recognizes Rama for who - or what - he really is. In both texts, Vasis- tha intervenes, reassuring Dasharatha that no harm will come to his son. But whereas in the original, Rama sets out happily with the sage, in the YV he is too depressed to do anything at all, doubling the tension and giving the scene itself a power not unlike that which occasions the famous battlefield dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna.

Hanneder and others have noted that the YV combines literary forms and is not readily classifiable under any single genre - either Western or Indian.18 Nevertheless, the most obvious

16 Vasistha’s Yoga, trans. Swami Venkatesananda (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 25. All subsequent references to this text appear in the body of the thesis itself as “YV, xx.” 17 The Ramayana of Valmiki: Volume 1, trans. Robert P. Goldman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 164. 18 Hanneder, “Introduction,” 3. 5 or definite way in which it coheres is as a book of religious instruction. Discussions of what the book teaches tend to focus almost exclusively on the philosophically assertive content of the book. My premise here is that there is far more room for nuance in a critical appreciation of what and how this text teaches, its pedagogy being marked by a high degree of complexity and sophistication. What may underly and unify its means of instruction is irony, or so is the case I will be trying to make here.

The original inspiration for my interest in pedagogical irony and indirect methods of instruction came from literary critic Northrop Frye. Though a respected critic and scholar, Frye saw himself first and foremost as a “teacher,” and it is on this ground that I relate and employ his thought here.19 In the Great Code he says, with his usual wit, that most of his books have been not so much scholarly works as “teacher’s manuals, concerned more with establishing perspectives than with adding specifically to knowledge.”20 For Frye, a certain “quality of irony,” involving the “use of paradox” and the “pretense of naivete,” lies at the heart of good or effective teaching.21 The teacher, as he says, is “not primarily someone who knows instructing someone who does not know;” rather he is “someone who attempts to recreate the subject in the student’s mind,” and his “strategy in doing this is first of all to get the student to recognize what he already potentially knows, which includes breaking up the powers of repression in his mind that keep him from knowing what he knows.”22 In other words, the teacher’s role is not simply to provide the student with information; his goal is not just to replace an ‘unenlightened’ with an ‘enlight-

19 Frye’s work contains many scattered reflections on teaching, as well as more systematic studies of education in The Educated Imagination (a book I discuss in the second chapter) and a collection of essays entitled Northrop Frye on Education. See bibliography for complete information. 20 Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Toronto: Academic Press Canada, 1982), xiv. 21 Ibid., xv. 22 Ibid. 6 ened’ set of thoughts. Frye talks about “recreating” the subject itself in the student’s mind in order that he or she may independently investigate and explore its content. In short, what the teacher gives the student are new possible arenas of thought.

For Frye, good teaching is founded on the power of the question, and Frye emphasizes the importance of staying with a question as opposed to staying with an answer. To hold on to some answer is to be “mentally consolidated” on the level of that answer, says Frye.23 To question and keep questioning, by contrast, is to undergo a disruption of ordinary thought - what Frye calls a “disturbance in one’s habitual mental processes.”24 For Frye, such a disruption or disturbance is beneficial even if not inherently desirable. To confront what you do not know, or to lose confidence in what you think, is necessarily to be open to new possibilities of knowledge. In

Frye’s view, the student ought to have both a sincere and powerful desire to know and an attitude of tentativeness toward all forms of knowing. For, in his view, knowledge can both free and bind, depending on how it is used, or depending on one’s attitude toward it. It is not something to be identified with but related to dynamically, not to be owned but to be exploited. Frye says elsewhere that knowledge is something to be “gotten rid of,”25 not in the sense of renounced but in the sense of shared or passed on. Overall, the process itself may be trying, but the end is envi- sioned as productive and enriching, with the student developing an “instinct for cutting through a

23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., xx. 25 Northrop Frye on Religion, ed. Alvin A. Lee and Jean O’Grady (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 207. Here is the full statement from which this quotation is taken: “One finds that the ultimate aim in some long and complex effort of knowledge, such as writing a book, is not really to accomplish something by writing it. The ultimate aim is rather to get rid of it, for the sake of that breathless instant when all the possibilities of knowledge are still before one. The bankruptcy of knowledge is one of the most genuine and tangible rewards of knowledge.” 7 jungle of rationalizing verbiage to the cleared area of insight,”26 and arriving ultimately at what

Frye calls vaguely but provocatively an altogether “deeper kind of comprehension.”27

This study constitutes an experimental application of this notion of pedagogical indirection to the YV and specifically, to its three main modes of instruction, namely, philosophical discourse (Chapter 1), storytelling (Chapter 2), and dialogue (Chapter 3). What in my view is characteristic of each of these forms of instruction, as they operate in the text, is that they offer no simple or straightforward message and thus afford no real opportunity for a passive or uncritical acceptance of teachings. In arguing that irony may be the predominant pedagogical category of this text, then, what I mean to suggest is that it does not primarily concern itself with information-sharing, nor with inculcating a particular philosophical or theological persuasion; but that it aims first at a continual development of thought and perception, and aims finally at a kind of comprehension that is somehow outside the dualities of knowledge and ignorance, belief and unbelief.28 At every step, demands are made upon the listener to be critically engaged and to maintain a spirit of enquiry, never stopping to think he or she has “got” it.

The study is not intended as a work of literary criticism. While a discussion of particular passages is unavoidable, in general I am interested not in particular images or symbols but in larger structural and thematic issues related specifically to pedagogy. At the same time, the fore- going discussion of Frye should make it clear that I am not applying the terms and categories of

26 Frye, Great, xx. 27 Ibid., xxi. 28 In the YV, the terms for “knowledge” used most commonly are “vidya” and “jnana.” Both Sanskrit terms connote “comprehension” as well as “wisdom,” according to John Grimes’ A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). There is an inherent ambiguity in the YV’s references to such knowledge, with there being a tension between the view that the supreme truth is expressible in language and the view that it transcends any such objectification. In my own discussion of this knowledge, I have not tried to do away with this ambiguity but to maintain and explore it. 8 his criticism proper; nor is there any intention to contribute to critical discussion of the thinker himself. While Frye represents my leaping-off point, I take the main concept of ironic or indirect instruction and expand it to include forms or modes Frye himself does not directly discuss, and apply it to a context that, needless to say, he may not have readily envisaged for it. What I have to some degree done, in other words, is embodied the development or progression of my thought in the structure itself, and the reader will find that in the latter parts of the thesis (Chapter 4 and

Conclusion), where the main argument is reiterated, critics or thinkers other than Frye are given prominence.

Finally, the endeavor being exploratory, my approach at times takes on the character of a bricolage.29 This is particularly true in the discussion of storytelling (Chapter 2), where a variety of thinkers - including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Elie Wiesel, and Peter Berger - are used illustra- tively in an attempt to draw out the significance and purport of fantastic stories such as are found in the YV. In general, philosophical discourse, storytelling, and dialogue being such large topics, the list of potentially relevant thinkers and critics is almost immeasurably long, and it seems in- evitable that the reader will think of some theorist - or number of theorists - not cited here whose ideas might usefully have been employed. For myself, it often seemed that the thinkers whose ideas seemed most applicable in theory ended up being least applicable in practice - and vice

29 The decision to assume such an approach was made mostly from necessity. While never fully defensi- ble, such an approach in this instance has at least the benefit of good company, as some of my most important sources all admit to a certain lack of methodological systemacity. In her Dreams, Illusions, and Other Realities, for example, Wendy Doniger describes her method as “free-wheeling” and “spiral rather than linear,” in which she draws on “any text that serves my purpose at a given moment” and uses “different hermeneutical tools at different points” (7). In her Saints, Storyteller and Scoundrels, a book whose central puzzle is the religious power of parables, Kirin Narayan adopts what in an even more direct allu- sion to craftsmanship she calls an “eclectic tool-box approach” (7). In his Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience, Peter Berger states that if the book contains any method at all, it is a “baroque” one, “based on the assumption that there are hidden connections and a hidden order behind the near-infinite richness of the empirical world” (xi). 9 versa. Generally speaking, it may be that the concept of irony, like the concept of maya, does not let a person complete a study of her form - or one of her forms - without first giving an enact- ment of her powers. 10

Chapter 1: Discourse

In Baba’s talks, there were always contradictions. Particularly if you were a newcomer, you would think, “How can he say that? A moment ago he said the bird is white, and now he says the bird is black. How can it be?”

- Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Sadhana of the Heart

Subject to analysis here is Vasistha’s philosophical discourse. Before any argument is entered into, however, let me briefly define the key terms, “philosophy” and “discourse.” There is no precise Indian equivalent for the term “philosophy.” Scholarship on “Indian philosophy” today is by no means rare. However, it should be noted that the philosophical traditions of India tend to be disciplines of practice as much of thought; moreover, excepting certain materialistic schools such as the Nyaya and Mimamsa, they tend to be connected to what Wilhelm Halbfass calls “a spiritual and soteriological purpose,” with their “ultimate destination” being a “final liberation from the imperfections of worldly existence.”30 I use the term “discourse” to refer to Va- sistha’s formal, systematic, and quite lengthy discussions of philosophical and existential ideas.

The YV is not exclusively a philosophical treatise; nevertheless, much of the text is nothing if not discursive in the philosophical sense.

Indeed, Vasistha’s discourse is probably the least obviously “indirect” of the three major modes of instruction, and the empirical evidence here does not immediately appear to be in our favor. It favors instead scholars like Surendranath Dasgupta and Walter Slaje, for whom the question of what this text teaches is a straightforward one with a straightforward answer. For

Dasgupta, “the main thesis of this work is that the universe does not exist.”31 “Whatever appears

30 Wilhelm Halbfass, Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 243. 31 Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 232. 11 as the diversified universe” is “altogether” and “absolutely non-existent,”32 he says, and in this the student is to develop a “firm conviction.”33 For Slaje, the answer is much the same. The YV teaches a “firm-knowledge of the world’s non-existence.”34 It sees “correct knowledge” alone as

“soteriologically effective,” and the “certainty resulting from such knowledge” as the sole means to liberation.35

Now, it is true that if one were to open the YV and randomly read passages, one would be likely to find Vasistha declaring the total non-existence of the world (or the all-pervasiveness of Consciousness). However, what these scholars do not adequately represent - what they fail perhaps to take into account - are the ways in which Vasistha undermines these statements in the context of his pedagogic method. My suggestion is that understanding what this text teaches is not as easy as simply extracting Vasistha verbatim - not that easy for the scholar, certainly not that easy for the seeker. Here I discuss three prominent but perhaps under-considered characteristics of Vasistha’s discourse, namely, paradox, repetition, and puzzle, drawing out their rele- vance to the seemingly straightforward issue of the philosophical import of the text.

Before doing so, a couple of important preliminary points are worth making. First, the

YV does not necessarily see itself as teaching anything new. It is not modest about its power to liberate: it says, for example, “If one does not study this scripture, true knowledge does not arise in one even in millions of years” (5), and “except through this scripture, one cannot gain what is

32 Ibid., 234. 33 Ibid., 239. 34 Walter Slaje, “Liberation from Intentionality and Involvement: On the Concept of Jivanmukti according to the Moksopaya,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 28 (2000), 178. Patricia Dold, in her MA thesis on the YV, makes similar sounding statements about the non-existence of the universe, but in general does a better job of qualifying or explaining the non-straightforward meaning of these statements. See bibliography for information. 35 Ibid., 174. 12 good, now or at any time” (598). However, in its own conception, what is unique about it is not its philosophical or theological content. The YV identifies its teachings as the teachings of virtually all scriptures, saying, for instance, that “He who desires salvation should divert the impure mind to pure endeavor by persistent effort – this is the very essence of all scriptures” (27); and that, “The objectivity of consciousness is known as bondage and the abandonment of objectivity is liberation. Consciousness minus such objectivity is the reality of everything: this is the conviction of all philosophies” (231). What these statements seem to suggest is that the student’s attention ought be on some aspect other than the prima facie philosophical or theological - that the text’s saving or liberating power might not be immediately identifiable or discernible.

The second preliminary point concerns the question of who is and is not qualified to understand the YV’s teachings. At one point Vasistha identifies the criteria as four, namely, con- tentment, the company of wise men (satsang), the spirit of enquiry, and self-control (34). He says elsewhere that the mind needs to be quiet and the senses rid of their “coloring” (457). What is also required is the abandonment of the notion of objectivity, a disinterest in pleasure, and a cessation of cravings (162). Vasistha is not perfectly consistent nor strict on these points. What he is firmer on is the futility of instructing the person who is either not ready for or not interested in religious instruction generally. In a somewhat longer passage, he tells Rama:

My teachings are not meant for those, O Rama, whose intelligence has been silenced by a firm faith in the reality of this world and the consequent striving for the pleasures of this world. What foolish man will endeavor to show a colorful forest to a blind man? Who will strive to educate that man whose nose has been eaten away in the delicate art of dis- tinguishing different perfumes? Who will instruct the drunkard in the subtleties of meta- physics? Who will make enquiries concerning village affairs from a corpse lying in the crematorium? Even so, who can instruct that ignorant person who finds it difficult to govern the mind which is dumb and blind?… It is like endeavoring to cover the sky with a small umbrella (216-217). 13

What these statements - or rather, sarcastic, rhetorical questions - imply is that the teachings de- mand of the student a certain capacity or willingness of receptivity - that the teachings are, as it were, subject to degeneration in the presence of a polluted soul or deluded intellect. Of course, a scholarly interpretation such as mine would probably fail to meet these criteria - but nor is it necessarily trying to meet them. Certainly seeker and scholar alike must constantly wonder whether their understanding or interpretation of teachings is not basically off the mark.

Now for the first characteristic of Vasistha’s teaching: paradoxicality. By “paradoxicality,” I mean Vasistha’s proclivity to contradict his own statements, to deny the most self-evident of realities, and to define reality in purely inclusivistic and purely exclusivistic terms. In the examples that follow I mean to highlight a certain deconstructive aspect to Vasistha’s discourse, one meant, apparently, to confuse and baffle the listener and thereby engage him or her in a fuller way. I give a number of examples of paradox or contradiction; a discussion of the significance of this theme then follows.

To begin with, Vasistha contradicts himself on the nature - or existence - of the jiva. In one discussion, Vasistha tells Rama in some detail how the jiva first imagines itself to be atomic and becomes so; how it then acquires a body, including all the sense faculties and organs; and how it finally “comes to regard itself as finite,” binding itself to the world-appearance (52). But when Rama asks for clarification - “is there only one jiva that is cosmic, or are there many jivas, or is there a huge conglomerate of jivas” - Vasistha responds that “there is neither one jiva nor many jivas nor a conglomerate of jivas. Jiva is only a name!” (53). So, at first Vasistha states, or at least implies, that the jiva is a definite entity with definite characteristics, but then he suddenly says the opposite, that the term does not represent any identifiable reality whatever. 14

Vasistha contradicts himself too on the existence of the universe. Dasgupta and Slaje are right to say that Vasistha regularly denies the reality of the universe (or asserts the exclusive reality of brahman), but what they fail to mention is that these denials often come in the context of quite lengthy and elaborate discussions of the source and nature of creation. In one such discussion, Vasistha does indeed state multiple times that creation never happened, that the universe is no more real than water in a mirage, and, rather ironically, that, “it does not exist even now”

(49). However, in the same discussion, he outlines a process of creation beginning with a “subtle vibration in consciousness” and involving a gradual condensation of forms from “space,” to

“sound,” and eventually through to “egotism.” Vasistha also talks about “five elements” and

“fourteen planes of existence.” In this discussion and others, there are statements both for and against the universe’s existence. One moment Vasistha not only assumes the reality of creation but describes it in great detail; the other moment he denies it altogether. Rama himself com- plains here of “contradictory assertions” (48) - a comment for which he is rebuked.

At other times Vasistha denies the most seemingly self-evident of realities. For example, he tells Rama more than once that neither of them exist and that their conversation is not taking place. At one point he says, “Because of the recurrent feeling of the ethereal Vasistha that arises in the mind of all of you and also in me, I appear to be seated here. In truth, however, all this is pure void and all these are only notions that arise in the mind of the Creator” (588). In one rather humorous exchange with a similar theme, Rama asks Vasistha how he appears “here” being called Vasistha. Vasistha does not answer, and a few moments of silence ensue, in which the members of the assembly become nervous. Only after Rama asks again does Vasistha explain that silence itself was the only answer to his question and that all verbal statements are limited by 15 duality. “Making due allowance for this, tell me who you are,” Rama insists. Vasistha responds that he is the “pure space-like consciousness devoid of objective experience and beyond all mental activity or thought” (512). “Even so are you,” he adds for good effect.

In another rather humorous twist on the same theme, Vasistha himself suffers this sort of contradictory tutoring. Following a long conversation with Rudra and his wife, Vasistha asks, more or less: ‘How did you two meet’? Rudra responds, “I have not been created at all... What is seen here as you and I and what is seen as this dialogue between us are like two waves colliding in the ocean and making a sound. This lady here has not come into being at all: she is but a notion, a concept… She is neither my wife nor was she created as one” (555). Rudra thus does what Vasistha often does: assumes a reality only to then later contradict it.

While not, strictly speaking, part of Vasistha’s philosophical discourse, this paradoxicality can also be seen in the context of Vasistha’s own narrative accounts. Vasistha describes at some length a vision he had of the cosmic dissolution, for example. He describes seeing Rudra and

Kali dancing in space. Rudra, he says, “had five faces, ten arms, and three eyes. He had a tri- dent in his hand. He was moving in the space of his own being. He was dark like a rain-bearing cloud” (567). Kali, in turn, “had three eyes which were pits of fire. She had high cheek bones and a chin. She had a necklace of stars strung on air. With her mighty arms she filled the directions. Her breathing was so powerful that the biggest mountains could be blown away by it. Her body seemed to swell enormously as she was dancing” (569). But when Rama asks about these two dancers and their dance, Vasistha responds, “O Rama, there was neither a male nor a female, nor did they dance. They were not of any such nature nor did they have any such form” (571).

Later, upon completing his account - one characterized by many other powerful and vividly de- 16 scribed scenes - Vasistha states: “What was described as the end of a world-cycle - all that was but an illusory appearance” (572).

Vasistha also expresses what can only be called contradiction itself. He denies the absolute difference between knowledge and non-knowledge, between bondage and ignorance, between the existent and the non-existent (704). He says that the universe is both real and unreal

(55). Positively, or inclusively, he says that “pure existence” is both heaviness and lightness, both grossness and subtlety, both lightness and darkness, both substance and space: “it is nothing and it is everything; it is and it is not; it is seen and it is unseen” (319). Negatively, or exclusively, Vasistha says of supreme consciousness that “it is neither one nor many, neither seen nor unseen, neither subject nor object, neither this nor that” (105). He states similarly that “There is neither a duality nor a unity nor a void, neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. There is pure silence, or not even that” (573).

So, does the discourse consist of meaningless nonsense? Do I mean to suggest the very opposite of Slaje or Dasgupta - that there is no intelligible significance here whatsoever? Not exactly. What characterizes the discourse is a certain degree of dialectic. Vasistha teaches then unteaches, affirms then denies, constructs and then deconstructs. Many of the examples above end with Vasistha saying that, after all, ‘there is no universe’ and ‘brahman alone exists’. Thus,

Slaje and Dasgupta are not altogether wrong to say what they say, but only to fail to mention the dialectical context in which these declarations are made. Understood in that context, they are not ordinary propositions or assertions, but statements of synthesis or resolution, statements that pull together contradictory views or perspectives, statements meant to indicate some deeper unity. 17

They are statements made from what has been called a “standpoint of ultimacy”36 - a standpoint that assumes a truth and does not assert one. In all, what Vasistha seems to be doing is demon- strating what can and cannot be said, is delineating the very limits of the sayable. In a dramatic and at times humorous fashion, he makes the point that language, while useful for the purpose of explication, traps a person in duality and therefore ultimately needs to be transcended.

A second characteristic of Vasistha’s discourse is a high degree of repetition. There are many teachings that Vasistha repeats. The main ones might be identified as: the abandonment of sense-pleasures, the need for intense self-effort, the importance of enquiry, and the illusoriness of the universe. But the essential teaching that he reiterates again and again is the notion that “everything is pure consciousness.” If one were to count the number of times some version of this subtle truth is taught, the sum would easily reach into the hundreds if not the thousands. This repetition is one of the most intriguing themes of the text. So, how could there possibly be an element of indirection in it? Does not the repetition prove the doctrinal status of the teaching?

I want to suggest just the opposite: that by virtue of its repetition, the teaching necessarily and inevitably becomes a sort of anti-doctrine. The point was made above that the central teaching is no ordinary assertion - it is not a proposition among propositions but a sort of proposition to end all propositions. Earlier we saw how Vasistha warns that his teaching may not mean what it seems to mean and thus is not to be taught to just anyone. The following parable from Guru- mayi Chidvilasananda shows what can happen when the teaching is taken as a literal statement of fact:

36 Douglas Renfrew Brooks, “Introduction,” in Meditation Revolution: A History and Theology of the Siddha Yoga Lineage (New York: Agama Press, 1997), xxviii. 18

One day a king went to his guru and learned the supreme truth that “Everything is Con- sciousness.” The king was delighted with this philosophy. It was just the sort of thing he had wanted. Racing home to find his aged queen, he announced what he had learned: “Listen, my dear! Everything is Consciousness, everything is the Truth. Therefore, from today on, the maid will be my queen, and you will be my servant. What difference does it make as long as everything is Consciousness?” The queen looked at her husband as if he had lost his mind. She was quite furious. But, she wondered, two can play at this game. That evening, it was her duty to serve dinner. As she entered the dining hall, meals in hand, she announced that she too was now satisfied with the king’s philosophy. The king smiled widely and rather deviously. That is, until he looked down and saw before him a serving of steaming cow dung. As the king’s eyes went beet red, the queen remarked eagerly, “Enjoy your stew!”37

If, as the story suggests, the notion is philosophically delicate to begin with, what happens when it subject to such a high degree of repetition? It seems to me that far from buttressing the teaching, the repetition subverts it, practically emptying it of all denotative significance, but practically escalating its connotative significance to infinity. As opposed to some hardened doctrine, what Vasistha seems to be after is a set of almost perfectly meaningless words. In this, the teaching functions not so much as a “floating” as a “sinking” signifier, in that it steadily means less and less and at the same time steadily seeps into the reader or listener. It might be compared to what Patanjali calls a “suitable object for meditation,”38 or what Krishna calls an object of attention to take one beyond objectivity,39 or again to a mantra, whose liberating power stands in-

37 Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Kindle My Heart, vol. 2 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 18. 38 Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali, trans. Barbara Stoler Miller (New York: Bantam Books, 1998), 38. 39 The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Eknath Easwaran (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 34-35. 19 versely proportional to its communicative worth, whose veracity is nothing to its utility. What does the teaching mean the 1000th time you hear it? Practically nothing - and only then, perhaps, can it function or perform properly. What it finally becomes is a kind of still center at the heart of the discourse, there for Vasistha to invoke not so much to return the listener’s mind to the truth but to help quiet mental activity altogether, in the expectation that something better and fuller than mere philosophy will come to occupy the vacuum.

The third and final characteristic of Vasistha’s teaching is “puzzle,” or “enigma,” by which I mean a certain allowance in the teaching for an element of pure mystery or unfathom- ability. Vasistha teaches that many things are essentially mysterious and cannot be fully known or understood. These include the mystery of how the self forgets its essential nature, and related to that, the mystery of mental suffering in a universe where consciousness is ubiquitous; the mystery of how enlightenment, a state beyond duality, is ever reached or attained; and most of all, the mystery of why anything exists at all. On this last point, Vasistha suggests that there may be no intelligible cause or reason for the universe’s existence. “From where did the world arrive?” he asks. “One does not know… It is an imaginary city made of walls which are pure space or void.

It can only be compared to a castle in the air” (643). He asks again, “Why does this world- appearance arise at all? There is no reason, even as in the play of a young child there is no reason or motivation” (602). Vasistha calls it a “great wonder” how the “eternal is veiled by the transient” (153), and as for discerning some essential purpose or meaning behind it, this is knowledge that simply may not be available.

Such knowledge is depicted in the Upanisads as the knowledge that, if known, would make your head explode. In the third chapter of the Brihadaranyaka Upanisad, nine consecutive 20 brahmins ask Yajnavalkya increasingly refined questions about the nature of reality.40 These are duels, and so each brahmin is dumbfounded when Yajnavalkya is able to answer their question.

But the last one goes for too much. He asks the unaskable, and his head explodes. Yajnavalkya has just spoken of the imperishable – he who sees, but cannot be seen, hears but cannot be heard.

No further refinement is possible. Words break down at this point. To ask any further is a sign of ignorance and it is perilous. The ninth brahmin’s question was a question the answer to which dissolves such distinctions as that between question and answer. At a certain point - the idea seems to be - the mind just has to yield. Whereas the previous eight brahmins had become silent following Yajnavalkya’s replies, the ninth kept talking - when speech was no longer appropriate, when it was in fact dangerous.

In the YV, Vasistha often interrupts his discourses lest the listener start to think that the answer is really to be found somewhere in them. In the midst of a lengthy speech on liberation, for example, he says suddenly, “Enough of all this talk about knowledge and wisdom which are words without a corresponding truth. Liberation is the non-experience of ego-sense. Let this truth be clearly understood!” (527). At another point he emphasizes that “All this talk about who created this world and how it was created is intended only for the purpose of expounding; it is not based on truth” (179). Even expressions such as “That alone is” are “inadequate and mis- leading,” he says (705). At one point Vasistha seems to throw up his hands concerning ultimate reality: “Whatever is is – it is void, it is OM. Enough of such descriptions!” (719). Finally, he entreats, “Let the truth be this way or let it be different from this. Where is the need to be con- fused and confounded?” (720).

40 Brhadaranyaka Upanisad Chapter 3.1-9. This reference and all subsequent references are to the translation by Patrick Olivelle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 21

It is worth noting, in passing, that this allowance for mystery, as I call it, is not only stated philosophically. It is vividly depicted in the stories. Here, the characters are constantly amazed and astounded by what they see and experience. One character who travels across the universe and enters a parallel universe wherein she meets and interacts with a doppelganger calls her experience “strange and incredible” and compares it to “saying that a huge elephant is bound in the centre of a mustard seed, or that in an atom a mosquito fought with a lion” (60). Another cosmic adventurer describes seeing “many amazing things” including a “woman in whose body the three worlds were reflected as in a mirror,” a “world without a sun, moon, and stars,” and another world “in which there were no directions like east and west, no days and nights, no scriptures and no polemics, no distinction between gods and demons” (621). I will look specifically at the pedagogical function and purport of the stories in the next chapter. Passing mention of them is made now to reinforce the point that the teachings may have less to do with some static state of knowing and more to do with the appropriateness of an attitude of wonder.

Of course, the objection could be made that Vasistha’s philosophical instruction is not only elaborate but quite systematic and comprehensive. In listening to him, one learns about the nature of the self, of creation, of consciousness; one also learns about the importance of self- effort (230), the need of good company (201), the need to overcome cravings (160), and what is and is not worth searching after (354). I do not deny this. However, there is an important sense in which the end of the discourse does not appear to be a firmer or more comprehensive knowledge, a sense in which the ostensible content of the teachings is far from the main point. Nothing illustrates this better than the first story told to Rama, the “Story of Shuka” (23-4). 22

Shuka is a young man who knows all there is to know but has not yet attained enlightenment. Seeking realization, he goes to his father and asks him a question about how the world- appearance came into being. His father gives him an answer. But Shuka feels he already knows this answer and is not satisfied with it. He therefore goes to the royal sage King Janaka. Shuka asks Janaka the same question, gets the same answer, but this time attains the supreme state of self-realization instantly.

The explicit theme of the story is the importance of “confirmation.” Vishvamitra tells

Rama the story after telling him that he is indeed “foremost among the wise,” but that his knowledge needs “confirmation” - as Shuka’s knowledge needed it. What is interesting and provocative, of course, is that Janaka’s answer is no different from Shuka’s father’s answer. “Confirma- tion” thus points to a transmission deeper than the verbal - a transmission somehow distinct from and finer than the words shared. Most provocative of all here is the implication that the entirety of Vasistha’s instruction to follow represents nothing more than Rama’s “confirmation.” What does this tell us about it? It tells us that its true significance is in some respect hidden, that the instruction has, as it were, a formalistic or even ritualistic aspect to it - that it takes place on a level that is not only deeper than the philosophical, but almost antithetical to it. Ultimately, what the story implies is that while Vasistha spends most of his time talking about all-pervasive consciousness, this can be understood as an act of generosity or lavishness on his part; as the following illustration from Chidvilasananda implies, all he really might have had to do was make some simple gesture:

A seeker went to a Master and said, “I want initiation, right now. I want to know the Truth.” 23

The Master said, “Fine.” Silently he took the seeker to a bamboo forest. Then he said to him, “You see the stalks of bamboo?” The seeker said, “Yes.” “Some are tall and some are short.” “Yes.” “Some are tall and some are short.” “Yes.” “And some are tall and some are short.” The seeker recognized the Truth.41

What took place during this exchange? Was there something in the stalks? Did they reveal some mysterious power? What about their varying heights - some being short and some tall? Just as one could take this story or Shuka’s story in the wrong way, or on the wrong level, one could think that Vasistha really means what he says when he states that “all this is brahman.” But, in the end this turns out to be a kind of trojan horse of theological answers. It may look good and you may accept it willingly, but suddenly it may explode with all-too familiar problems and questions and contradictions. Insofar as it is a statement at all, it seems designedly difficult to submit or give credence to. It is more of a koan whose meaning is deliberately not clear, or a sutra desperately in need of unravelling. It is designed to focus the mind and possibly to still it.

At best, it states the problem succinctly. At worst, it is no better than bamboo: buy it and it will make you bankrupt; swallow it and you are likely to explode. Directly apprehend its true nature, and you disappear.

My effort in this chapter has much in common with Grinshpon’s in her study of the

Upanisads, in which she identifies and tries to counter a tendency among critics to overlook or ignore the narrative context within which great philosophical statements are made. The “domi- nant mood in the reception of the Upanisads has been in the abstraction of the metaphysical mes-

41 Chidvilasananda, Kindle, 153. 24 sage,” she says.42 This way of reading “seeks understanding of the literal meaning of the text” while “pointedly resisting empathic impulses.”43 Grinshpon speaks of empathy not only because her concern is with the particular characters who seek and receive the teachings, but with how the reader him or herself responds to the overall message of the text. She looks, for example, at the context in which the most famous teaching - “You are That” - is given. She points out that the message has an “essential” and “heavy” contextuality - heavy not only with Svetaketu’s personal drama, but with other pedagogical elements like metaphor and analogy.44 The point is not only that the context itself has didactic value - as much didactic value as the philosophical kernel embedded within it, in Grinshpon’s view - but that that context influences the very character of the teaching and how the reader receives it. The problem then is not only one of extraction but of extrication - the freeing of something from difficulty or constraint. To cite the statement as though it were “context-free”45 is to rip it from its deliberate entanglement in a context of what you might call literate philosophy, a context in which there may be an altogether different notion of what it means for something to be real or true, a context in which a concern beyond the strictly philosophical may exist. One might say that the context of these statements admit to the very onerousness of their articulation. Grinshpon makes the obvious - but often overlooked - point that the “knowledge of unity expounded in the Upanisads is not like other knowledge. It is mys- teriously - and abysmally - different from many kinds of information we possess. One is in need

42 Yohanan Grinshpon, Crisis and Knowledge: The Upanisadic Experience and Storytelling (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 36. 43 Ibid., 9. 44 Ibid., 35. 45 Ibid., 36. 25 of inner space commensurate with this knowledge, inner space dearly acquired and maintained.”46

Needless to say, there is a lot to Grinshpon’s thesis - and much that is common between our aims. However, Grinshpon’s exclusive interest is the narrative context of philosophy. In this first chapter I am comparing Vasistha’s positive or straightforward statements with the other kinds of statements he makes. In the next couple of chapters, we will see how both storytelling and the dialogue form further undermine the philosophical content of the text, or further compli- cate the question of what exactly this book teaches.

In all, Vasistha’s philosophical discourse seems less concerned with the presentation of a single or exact view of reality than with identifying the main points about reality that are mysterious or baffling. I characterize its instruction as indirect insofar as knowledge here seems to be used here to teach the distrust of knowledge; indeed, one might say that what the discourse best achieves is a sort of “expansion of the domain of your ignorance,”47 on the assumption that one of the conditions of an advanced spiritual seeking is a confrontation with your own limited ability to know. Many of the statements that critics like Slaje and Dasgupta take as straightforward philosophical fact are, as I have tried to show, undermined, contradicted, or relativized. If forced to categorize the sort of philosophy found here, one would have to call it “transformative” as opposed to formal - that is to say, concerned not so much with “true ideas” as with the development of “higher states of consciousness,” and operating on the assumption that it is not enough to keep

“shuffling” ideas around, but that the basic relationship between knower and known must

46 Ibid., 116. 47 Michael Sugrue, Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues. Audio Lectures. Course No. 463 (Teaching Com- pany), lec. 1. 26 change.48 If, finally, the text means to correct a person, it seems to be less on the level of what he or she knows and more on the level of what concerns him or her. In effect, it says not “Turn from error,” but “Error is all there is.” “But, meditate on the mysteries and you may be surprised by what you discover.”

48 John A Taber, Transformative Philosophy: A Study of Sankara, Fichte, and Heidegger (Honolulu: Uni- versity of Hawaii Press, 1983), 1-2. Taber’s other basic criteria for a “transformative philosophy” is an assumption that “ordinary experience is but a faint reflection of what is truly real,” a view the YV obviously also shares. 27

Chapter 2: Story

A serious human life can hardly begin until we see an element of illusion in what is really there, and something real in fantasies about what might be there instead.

- Northrop Frye, The Great Code

In this chapter we look at the use of story that forms part of Rama’s - and the reader’s - education. What is less than straightforward about story as a mode of instruction is the fact that what it relates may or may not have “really happened:”49 thus, its didactic value is not immediately clear. One of story’s connotations is, of course, something that is false, a “lie,” so in one sense, this chapter is on the efficacy of certain types of lies for the purpose of spiritual instruction. However, as Wendy Doniger says in her Dreams, Illusions, and Other Realities, Indians tend to make a much softer distinction between the true and false or the real and unreal, as if always to allow for the possibility that we humans may have things backward, that the reality we take for granted may be the biggest illusion of all.50 In Indian ontology, ordinary reality “has to share the burden of proof”51 with such things as dreams and fantasies, she says, and as such there is something of an equation between the conceivable or imaginable and truth or reality itself; in

Doniger’s own words: “In India, to say that something happened is to say that it is true, to force the hand of belief.”52 Here, then, the story represents - to some extent executes - a kind of para- digm shift, in which hard realities become soft and soft realities become hard, and a “serious”

49 The story is “an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment,” according to the Oxford American Dictionary. Its “informal” meaning is a “false statement or explanation; a lie.” Doniger says that stories in the YV are virtually always connected to the prevalent Indian view that human experience is basically illusory (Doniger, Dreams, 4). 50 This is the main theme of the book. See 4-5 for introductory remarks on this theme. 51 Ibid., 287. 52 Ibid., 128. 28 attempt at epistemology, as Frye puts it above, must start at a boundary line previously thought an end.

In the YV, there are some fifty stories. Some of them are short and to the point; others are elaborate and complicated, involving multiple layers of narration and multiple narrators.

Some of the stories are found within other stories. In one sense, of course, the entire book is nothing but stories within stories within stories. Below I have chosen five stories to re-tell.

Oversimplifying somewhat, it might be said that stories in the YV do two things: firstly, they present a compelling character engaged in spiritual pursuit to be emulated by the listener; and secondly, they present a fantastic vision of reality in which ordinary rules and laws appear to be absent. My selection, while by no means devoid of compelling characters, somewhat emphasizes this latter theme.

Let me note beforehand that it is my intention neither to interpret the stories on an individual basis nor to interpret particular details within them, my interest being the broader question of how the stories function within this religious pedagogy. Also, while what I present below are continuous narrative summaries, the reader ought to be aware that the stories themselves are fre- quently interrupted by explanation and discussion, Rama and Vasistha together engaging in a kind of ongoing criticism - bother literary and philosophical. The tendency to combine literature and philosophy and to interpret and explain stories even as they get told is common in Hindu literature.53

53 Doniger, Dreams, 132. 29

Lila

The “Story of Lila” is one of the first stories Vasistha tells and one of the more elaborate stories in the text. The wife of King Padma, Lila is an accomplished and beautiful queen who loves her husband dearly and wants the two of them to live together forever. When, one day,

Padma is killed in battle, Lila propitiates the goddess Sarasvati to find out where he has gone.

Sarasvati, appearing before Lila, tells her that if she wants to see her husband again she must enter a “superconscious” state. Thus, together the two of them sit down and enter into a state of deep meditation. Soon they are roaming freely across the universe. Ascending through space, they reach the realm of the gods and the very summit of creation. They then enter something of a parallel universe, where her husband (now named Viduratha) is presently being attacked by a neighboring kingdom. The two ladies join many other celestials and watch the battle from the space above the battlefield. When Viduratha is struck down, Sarasvati revives him and brings him into an apartment within his palace. There, Lila meets a complete replica of herself, a second Lila, as well as “seconds” of her own ministers. Baffled, she asks, “O Divinity, how is it that she is exactly as I am? What is the secret of this? All these ministers, too, if they are but the objects of our fancy, are they sentient and are they also endowed with consciousness?” Sarasvati replies, “All these experiences, though essentially unreal, appear to be real. Such is the nature of these ministers and the others. Even so this Lila exists as the product of the reflection in consciousness. Even so are you, me and all the others” (74). As the enemy forces continue to lay siege to the city, Sarasvati inspires Viduratha to recall his other lives. As a result of this, Vidura- tha’s soul crosses over to the first universe, entering into the inanimate body of King Padma.

Sarasvati and the two Lilas cross over at the same time. The result is not only that the original 30

Queen Lila and King Padma are reunited, but the king also gains a second Lila to adore and enjoy. The people of the kingdom rejoice upon hearing of the king’s miraculous return to life. In- deed, for a long time afterward, “people far and wide would recount how the queen Lila returned from the other world with another Lila as a gift to the king!” (85).

The Three Non-existent Princes

One of the shortest but most intriguing stories in the YV is the “Story of the Three Non- existent Princes” (122).54 The story is told by a nanny to an enthusiastic young boy. She begins:

“Once upon a time in a city which did not exist, there were three princes who were brave and happy. Of them two were unborn and the third was not yet conceived.” When, tragically, all of their relatives die, the princes leave their native city to go elsewhere. During the course of their journey, they find shade under three trees, “two of which did not exist and a third which had not even been planted.” They find three rivers; “of them, two were dry and in the third there was no water.” Nevertheless, the princes have a refreshing bath and quench their thirst. The princes eventually come upon a city that has yet to be built, enter three wall-less palaces, eat off three plates which had been broken (one “pulverized”), cook “ninety-nine minus one hundred” grams of rice, and spend time with three holy men without bodies. They then settle in the “city” for good. “My child,” says the nanny as she concludes the story, “this is an extremely beautiful leg- end; pray remember this always and you will grow up into a learned man.”

King Lavana

54 All quotations here are from this page. 31

The “Story of King Lavana” is one of at least two stories in the YV dealing with the be- guiling and terrifying power of maya, the principle of illusion. Lavana, a “righteous, noble, chivalrous, charitable and in every way a worthy king,” is one day sitting upon his throne, engaged in his regular royal duties, when a “juggler” enters the court (124). Saying he wants to show him something “wonderful,” the juggler waves through the air a bundle of peacock feathers. Just then a cavalier leads a beautiful horse into the court, and the juggler invites the king to take the horse and ride where he likes. The king, still sitting on his throne, closes his eyes and sits motionless. For one hour, no one disturbs him. When, after a period of an hour, the king awakes, he appears bewildered and frightened. He demands of his ministers, “Who are you and what are you doing to me?” Then, eying the juggler, he cries, “O magician, what have you done to me? You have spread a net of delusion over me. Truly even the wise are overpowered by the jugglery of maya” (125). What has happened to the king? In the hour of his apparently silent meditation, he has accumulated an entire lifetime of experiences – indeed, lived an entirely other life. He recounts what took place: “As soon as I saw this juggler wave his bundle of peacock feathers, I jumped on the horse and it led me into an arid desert where nothing lived, nothing grew, where there was no water and it was bitterly cold” (ibid.). He describes how in desperation he married a “dreadful looking” girl, got married, had children, began to trade in meats and to trap animals for that purpose; how a drought later hit the territory, causing hunger and death such that people became cannibals; how, eventually, unable to feed his children, he raised a pyre to end his life; but how, suddenly, he then found himself back in the court, “being hailed and greeted by all of you” (126-7). The king takes some hours to recover from his experience. But the next day, the thought occurs to him to go and see whether those places he saw and the people 32 he interacted with “exist in reality.” He searches for some time, in an area outside his domain, before, to his utter astonishment, coming upon the very scenes from his vision. Among other things, he hears a woman crying, “O my beloved husband, where have you gone, leaving us all here?” (139) - a woman he recognizes to be his wife. He gives her some money and does what he can to help the others before returning to the kingdom. Unable to make sense of these contradictory events, he seeks the help of the court sage, who tells him how the real appears to be unreal and the unreal to be real…

Bhusunda

The “Story of Bhusunda” is a curious story about a “great yogi” who happens to be a crow. Bhusunda lives on a wish-fulfilling tree in one corner of mount Meru. He has so mastered the art of yogic breathing that he is the longest living creature in existence. He survives even the great dissolutions, uniting with cosmic space in the abandonment of all mental modifications, then resuming his place in the nest when a new Creator generates a new universe (351). The

“story” of Bhusunda is less a story than a conversation, in which the crow shares with Vasistha the secret of his longevity. “The best of all states,” he says, “is indeed the vision of the one infinite consciousness” (354). He also shares some of what he remembers from previous world- cycles, such as of a time when “there was nothing on this earth, no trees and plants, not even mountains, but only lava.” Speaking of his present state of mind, he says, “I am not disturbed even when the mount Meru is shaken,” and my meditation “is not lost whether I am walking or standing, whether I am awake, asleep or dreaming” (358). Having learned the secret of his lon- 33 gevity, Vasistha responds, “Marvelous indeed is this, your autobiography, and blessed indeed are they who can behold you. May you continue to be blessed. Give me leave to depart” (359).

Cosmic Dissolution

In what is a powerful vision of the great cosmic dissolution at the end of a world-cycle

(an event witnessed by Vasistha himself and told within a larger story called the “World Within the Rock”), Vasistha describes in great detail the apocalyptic destruction he witnessed. In the first stage of the dissolution, Brahma enters a final state of meditation, uttering OM and remain- ing utterly still and silent. Vasistha describes what happens as the creator shuts his eyes:

As the notions in the cosmic mind of the Creator began to die down, at that very moment the earth with its mountains, continents and oceans began to disappear. The earth is one of the limbs of the cosmic person, the Creator. Hence, when the cosmic person withdrew his awareness from it, the earth ceased to be, even as in a state of paralysis when our awareness of a limb is withdrawn, it withers away and disintegrates (557).

As devastation advances across the universe, the first thing to go is the social order. Wars break out, kings and other leaders become intoxicated, saintly men are oppressed. Next, water “exceeds its bound” and there is terrible flooding that swamps forests and mountains and even the region of the gods. Then fire spreads out in all directions, with heat and light coming from some twelve suns that rise in every direction:

Living beings were everywhere being scorched by the heat… Mountains fell on burning cities, grinding them into a paste… It looked as if the demonesses were playing by throwing stones of fire at one another. Even the Sumeru mountain which was made of solid gold began to melt. The snow-bound Himalaya melted away… For some time these fires could not reach Kailasa, the abode of lord Rudra, but then he turned his fiery gaze on it and it began to burn. Nothing was left. Future generations could only wonder, “Perhaps there was a world, a universe, a creation, before” (563). 34

But even then the destruction is not complete. Following the fires come the winds of dissolution, “which blew so violently that the mountains and oceans became exceedingly agitated and lost their natural behavior, and even the netherworld seemed to fall into something far below it” (563-4). Vasistha comments, “There was no space. There were no directions. There was neither below nor above. There were neither elements nor a creation. There was but one limitless ocean” (565). Vasistha describes Brahmaloka, the residence of the gods, before everything is altogether gone:

I saw Brahmaloka as the sun beholds the earth at sunrise. There Brahma the creator was seated in samadhi as if he were an unshakable mountain, surrounded by the first princi- ples, the gods and the sages, the celestials and the siddhas, who were also seated in the meditation posture and deeply engrossed in meditation, as if they were without life. The twelve suns also arrived there and entered into meditation… These suns began to burn away even the world of the creator, as they had done with the earth. After burning the world of the Creator and entering into deep meditation like Brahma, they entered into nirvana like a lamp without fuel. Everything was then enveloped in a dense darkness (565).

Even this is not the end of the account. Next Vasistha witnesses the gods Rudra and Kali doing a dance of destruction. But we will leave the account there.

* * *

Thus, in just this small sampling of stories, we have witnessed other universes and other realms of existence; multiple instances of the same person; the interaction of “non-existent” persons and things; visions seen in a dream found to exist in fact; characters who defy gravity, travel through space, and interact with gods and goddesses; and, last but not least, a grand apocalyptic vision of the ultimate fate of all things (yogis like Bhusunda excluded). It is to the pedagogical import of these stories that we now turn. Let it be said again that the precise details of these sto- 35 ries - while interesting and illuminating - will not be my main interest. Rather, I am concerned with the question of how stories, even - or especially - fantastic stories such as those just related - disclose a truth beyond their narrative boundaries.

In her Saints, Storytellers and Scoundrels, Kirin Narayan poses the question: “What is it about stories that make them such a compelling vehicle for religious instruction?”55 This is

Narayan’s “central puzzle” in a book about the teachings of a swami she has known all her life and whose stories (and storytelling) she tries to understand in a more systematic or scholarly way. In the final chapter of her book, “Story-telling as Religious Teaching,” Narayan presents her main findings. The picture she presents is admirably comprehensive, but somewhat short on pointed elaboration.56 She does, however, make the following interesting and provocative points on which I will try to expand: that stories represent a reality that “stretches conceptions of the possible” and that they work not so much to reinforce current notions about the world as to “dis- rupt” them in favor of “transcendent meanings.”57

Taking Narayan’s puzzle for our own, then, our first suggestion is that the source of a story’s unique didactic or persuasive power may be its very distance from ordinary, concrete reality. Ludwig Wittgenstein has explored how the figurative or supernatural seems to exercise a greater influence on a human being’s life than the literal or empirical. In an essay on the nature of religious belief, he makes the observation that the strongest of convictions tend to be based on

55 Kirin Narayan: Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 6. 56 She says, for example, that “narrative in the broadest sense is a means of organizing experience and endowing it with meaning,” that insofar as narrative starts at one point and emerges at another “it mirrors the dimension of time in human life,” and that a narrative gives “an impression of lifelikeness that can recruit imaginative empathy” (243), but while excellent points in themselves, none of these is really elaborated upon. 57 Ibid., 243. 36 the weakest of realities.58 He looks at the Christian believer, for example, and his or her relation to such facts or events as the Resurrection and the Last Judgement. Clearly, these have the power to shape a person’s life - to determine his behavior, thought, and speech. By contrast, it is not possible to hold great conviction about a “well-established” reality;59 for Wittgenstein, this is the most “ridiculous” choice or option of all.60 Wittgenstein observes, in other words, that human beings tend to orient their lives to and draw greatest inspiration from realities that are unseen. It is as though the axioms we pay greatest heed and pledge greatest allegiance to are those furthest from empirical reality.

To the extent that a story is concerned not so much with the real but with the possible, it seems to gain in strength or appeal. Elie Wiesel plays with this paradox of interest in a story about an Hasidic Rebbe in his Somewhere A Master. Revealing right at the start that his narrative account is based not on hard facts but legends about this man’s life, he asks quite openly,

“Did he ever live at all? Could such a person have lived?”61 Wiesel does not try to hide but instead plays with the element of uncertainty or doubt. Again he asks, “Could the stories about him be true? Do the many legends really reflect his life?”62 Paradoxically, as the historical authenticity of the account is put to question, the interest level seems to rise. It is as if the reader or listener would prefer a fictional character over a real one – if it were to make for a better story.

It takes hardly any stretch of the imagination to see how this point about an inherent at- traction to the fantastic relates or applies to stories in the YV, especially those retold above. Each

58 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 54. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 59. 61 Elie Wiesel, Somewhere a Master: Hasidic Portraits and Legends (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 51. 62 Ibid. 37 of them presents a powerful and compelling vision not only of a reality that looks different, but of a reality of an altogether different kind, whose laws seem utterly incompatible with those that govern reality as we know it. It is obviously no easy thing to surmise exactly what the response to any of these stories might be. A person hearing the story of Lila might be inspired to try to enter his or her own superconscious state in order to accomplish some task or goal. An admirer of the yogic crow Bhusunda might want to take up yogic breathing in order to lengthen or im- prove the quality of his or her life. An intimate awareness of the catastrophic annihilation await- ing all things might move a person to seek a larger meaning or purpose to his or her life. What- ever the reaction might be, and whatever level it might occur on, the main point of interest here is simply the fact that while these stories are not demonstrably “true,” that while they may have no known basis whatever in “actual history,” still they seem able to speak to us and possibly to transform us in some way or another - not, again, in spite of their distance from concrete, empirical reality but apparently because of that distance.

A second way in which stories function as compelling vehicles of religious instruction may be in their capacity to give the listener a kind of “jolt” - to prompt some new perception or insight, if not to cause some degree of an epistemological revolution. I take the concept of the

“jolt” from Peter Berger in his Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experi- ence, a book not on irony, but on humor, a closely related concept. Berger argues that the comic is, among other things, a form of perception - one that allows for a unique insight into “an otherwise undisclosed dimension of reality.”63 It does this in large part because laughing - the response to the comic - is spontaneous, coming as a sort of “intrusion,” and involving what Berger

63 Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (New York: Walter Dr Gruyter, 1997), 14. 38 calls a “reflex of capitulation.”64 In a sentence, Berger’s view is that “the comic method demol- ishes taken-for-granted reality, disclosing its fragility, and thus liberates the mind to take a fresh look at the world.”65 “Demolition” is a stronger, or heavier, term than “jolt,” but Berger’s meaning is the same. What he is talking about is a transition between different worlds of experience, what (after Schutz) he calls “finite provinces of meaning” - provinces that include the worlds of dreams, aesthetic experience, religious experience, etc.66 According to Berger, the transition between realms is experienced as a shock or “jolt.” And the biggest jolt of all is the jolt into the experience of religious insight. Involving a “release from reason into a peculiar zone of freedom,” the assumption of faith comes almost unnaturally, almost as a surprise - a view strikingly similar to that of the YV.67

Berger’s ideas and concepts here are important, but it is Sallie McFague who puts the two

- the story and the jolt - together. McFague’s interest is the Christian parable, but the basic point she makes about the religiously oriented story seems relevant to our discussion. In her view, what the story presents is a picture of something like “belief in action.”68 It is important more as a “model for living,” she says, than as a “verification of some doctrine.”69 McFague says that the story instructs us on a level deeper than the intellect, practically on the level of the visceral: “If the listener or reader learns what the parable has to teach him or her, it is more like a shock to the nervous system than it is like a piece of information to be stored in the head.”70 Ideally, here,

64 Ibid., 45. 65 Ibid., 41. 66 Ibid., 65. Berger adds the world of the comic to this list. 67 Ibid., 61. I will discuss Rama’s state of samadhi specifically in both of the text two chapters. 68 Sallie McFague, Speaking in Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 123. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., 122. 39 one might cite examples of characters in the YV who are, as it were, zapped with intuitive insight immediately following a story, or, even better, right in the midst of some storytelling. We do not have specific examples as such, but we do have the next best thing: characters, Rama most prominently among them, who enter spontaneously into a profound state of meditation resulting from an educational process in which stories are one prominent tool. This state seems to represent precisely the deeper form of perception or deeper kind of knowing that Berger and McFague claim results from such a shock or jolt. Of that state more will follow in the next chapter.

What may presently be of some illustrative assistance is to look at a practical example of the sort of epistemological shift these critics are describing. In an autobiographical essay, Louise

Cowan describes how her study of Western literature awoke in her a kind of intuitive instinct or capacity for imaginative perception, one that transformed her reading of the Christian Gospel. In her words:

Before literature came to my aid, I had perused theology in vain. Even the Bible was un- convincing. Not until a literary work of art awakened by imaginative faculties could the possibility of a larger context than reason alone engage my mind. I had been expecting logical proof of something one was intended to recognize. What was needed was a way of seeing. I had to be transformed in the way that literature transforms – by story, image, symbol – before I could see the simple truths of the Gospel.71

Cowan’s experience does not of course represent a spiritual enlightenment. But in her language of “recognition,” she is clearly describing a perceptive shift in favor of the faculty of imagination

- a shift that, presumably, changed not only her reading of literature but her “reading” of the world itself. Berger talks about this sort of shift as an “epistemological reversal,” in which realities previously obscure or imperceptible suddenly come into view.72 Stories provided Cowan

71 Louise Cowan, “The Importance of the Classics.” Article Online. Available at: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0019.html 72 Berger, Redeeming, 210. 40 not so much with new information but with a new perceptive capacity, a “new way of seeing,” as she calls it. It may be that stories in the YV are designed to help the student achieve the same.

Seeing reality anew in this sort of way involves a kind of “substitution,” according to the

Upanisads. The “rule of substitution” is defined as a means by which one may “hear what has not been heard before, think what has not been thought before, and perceive what has not been perceived before.”73 It is taught by Aruni to his son Svetaketu, who has just completed his formal education and returns home “swell-headed, thinking himself to be learned, and arrogant.”74

As it is illustrated here, the rule does not involve a new object of perception but a new mode of perception. Basically, it involves seeing something new in something old, something different about something familiar. Aruni compares it to perceiving everything made of clay by just one lump of clay, or everything made of copper by one copper trinket. In other words, one substi- tutes the eternal or transcendent form of something for the mundane form, with the goal of

“obliterating” altogether the difference between the transcendent and mundane spheres.75 Sve- taketu thinks he knows something. In fact, what he knows prevents him from seeing more deeply into things. His knowledge keeps him stuck on the surface. You might say: Sveta sees and understands. He does not see and substitute. In teaching him this subtle rule that has to do with the secret connections between things, Aruni is teaching him to see the “real behind the real.” He is, in effect, teaching him to see “eternity in a grain of sand.”

My third and final suggestion is that story may achieve just this sort of breakdown in duality. In The Educated Imagination, Frye talks about how, through an act of the imagination, an

73 Chandogya Upanisad 6.1. 74 Ibid. 75 Olivelle calls this obliteration one of the central goals of Upanisadic arguments (399). 41 existential sense of “separation” may be replaced by a sense of “identification.”76 Frye uses his own extended metaphor to illustrate what he means. After posing a question about the place of the imagination in the learning process, Frye offers a hypothetical scenario: Suppose, he says, you were shipwrecked on an uninhabited island in the South Seas.77 The first thing you do is look around yourself. From this standpoint the world appears as an object, something set over against you. Naturally, you feel lonely and frightened and unwanted in such a world. But there are moments when the world loses its objectivity, when it ceases to feel cold and foreign, moments when you feel “complete peacefulness and joy, when you accept your island and everything around you.”78 This Frye defines as a state of identification. Your habitual state of mind, however, is one of separation, where you feel “split off” from everything. The transition from separation to identification, says Frye, begins as a person becomes “dissatisfied with what they see,” starts to believe that “something else ought to be there,” and “tries to pretend it is there or tries to make it be there.”

It may start in “pretend,” but Frye is not talking about projection. He is not talking about seeing an intelligence present where it is not, but where it is but does not initially appear to be. A person pretends there is something more to what he sees, only to realize that there actually is - and that his act of make-believe elevated his understanding of reality as it is. But it is not only that he understood something new about a reality out there; the essential point is that there was some connection between inside and outside. A new perception of the outer world entailed a new perception of the inner as well. Frye indeed seems to assume a universe not dissimilar to that found in the YV - a universe pervaded by a single intelligence or consciousness, and one in

76 Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 16. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 18. 42 which a collapse of the sense of separation from that omnipresent yet supremely subtle principle or entity represents the highest human attainment. What Frye is suggesting, at bottom, is that a true perception of reality requires an expansion of consciousness, and that the only means to this expansion is, paradoxically, through the faculty of fantasy, the imagination.

In the YV, analogously, the stories seem to function not only to visualize for Rama different parts of the cosmos - not only to envision for him a new universe of limitless possibility - but, more fundamentally, to show him how he relates to all that is. Here story functions as a sort of tool for transcendence, expanding Rama’s consciousness until it quite literally encompasses the universe. What he finally realizes, strange as it may sound, is that all these strange happenings and fantastic phenomena had somehow basically to do with him. (But of course, as soon as this realization hits, there is no more Rama left to speak of.)

Here, then, there is a sense in which a seeker must venture backwards - must entertain unreality to ascertain reality, must entertain fantasy to ascertain fact, must entertain the lie to ascertain the truth. It is as if in the universe of the YV there are no “lies” in the ordinary sense of the term. Symbolically speaking, an imagined event is as good as an actual event. In a universe in which all things share an underlying identity, there may be no possibility of fundamental difference, of something truly outside or other. Every statement of epistemology may have some corresponding ontology. Even the most fantastic imagining may represent a truth statement. Put differently, in this universe to truly tell a lie would be to tell the mystery of existence itself.

Summing up, I have suggested that fantastic stories such as those found in the YV may find their instructive power in their very distance from ordinary reality, that they may help pro- voke an epistemological shift in favor of “softer” aspects or dimensions of reality, and finally, 43 that they may help liquidate a person’s experience or sense of existential “separation.” Whatever the value of these points of speculation, storytelling’s basic educational worth or value has to be seen as something of an enduring mystery. If I identify an element of “indirection” at work here, it is because it is not finally clear what sort of education, if any, it offers. Indeed, what it seems to offer is a kind of anti-education. R.K. Narayan, one of India’s best novelists, has a humorous and interesting essay in which he describes himself as “anti-educational.”79 In this, he stands opposite the person who would object to any association between storytelling and “real” education, who would assume as right and proper an education limited to hard, verifiable facts.

Narayan says, “Keep your facts and your data. But I am less certain that reality is limited to them.”80 In this, he seems to speak for the YV and for much of the Indian literary tradition, which holds that fantasy may be an ally and not an enemy in an appreciation of reality in the objective.

79 R.K. Narayan. A Writer’s Nightmare: Selected Essays, 1958-1988 (New Delhi: Penguin, 1988), 106. 80 Ibid. 44

Chapter 3: Dialogue

If you look for me, you will find me. I live in your search

- Kabir

We turn now to the YV’s dialogue form. This form is inherently both compelling and complex, and while I will be arguing that it constitutes another - and in some ways the most important - mode of indirect instruction, I want to begin by acknowledging a contrary perspective.

It could well be argued that one of the virtues of the dialogue form is its facilitation of direct ap- peals, particularly through the use of the second person voice. An example of this from the text would be Vasistha’s urgent advice to Rama:

Strive to liberate yourself while you are yet young and with the help of pure and right understanding. Do it now. What will you do when you are old and senile? Old age itself is a burden; you cannot carry anything more. Both childhood and old age are useless; youth alone is the right time, if you are a wise one, to live wisely (660).

While the message here is strictly-speaking intended for Rama, the listener might very well hear him or herself being spoken to - and indeed Valmiki and Vasistha both indicate that the reader ought to act as if the teachings are meant specifically for him or her. That the dialogue allows for the reader’s identification with the narrative recipient is one attribute of the form whose importance I do not mean to deny. Generally, however, what is perhaps most important about the dialogue is not the content found within it but the very activity it represents - the sort of life procedure it models. The essential point about the dialogue, I want to suggest, is that it reproduces something from life and is itself to be reproduced in life.

Dialogue prevails in every part of the YV. The main dialogue between Rama and Vasis- tha is actually located inside of four or five textually prior dialogues - frame dialogues that open and close the book. The use of such frames is of course something of a convention within the 45 tradition. Multiple levels of narrative prevail in the great epics, in the puranas, and in many other works such as the Pancatantra. Sometimes it happens that the main narrative gets lost in the stories that are added to it, as van Buitenen has discussed.81 Doniger states that in India the addition of frames is practically a requirement for any storytelling venture.82 It might, therefore, be easy to overestimate the significance of the frames. But briefly, what they do is a add a certain amount of narrative complexity, allow the author, Valmiki, to relate the story of the text’s composition from inside the text itself, and function to introduce certain themes, among them the implicit social aspect of spiritual seeking itself in the YV.

What is first and foremost compelling about the YV’s dialogue form is its inherent sense of liveliness and immediacy. In place of a straightforward, system-building form of communica- tion, there is a life-like exchange of ideas. Indeed, because an audience is present, an entire atmosphere of exchange is captured, and cooperative enquiry depicted as a source of pleasure and learning generally as one of the best and most important activities of life. As a listener, one may be able to identify not only with certain answers that are given but certain questions that are asked. And at least implicitly, there is an invitation to join the conversation - indeed, a sense that in listening one is to some degree already participating.

The dialogue takes place, of course, in the court of the palace of king Dasharatha, Rama’s father. The list of guests who gather to listen to the inspired conversation include all the ministers and servants of the royal household; great sages from across the world; various animals including “caged birds” and “horses of the royal stable;” semi-divine beings such as celestials and

81 J.A.B. van Buitenen, Tales of Ancient India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959). 82 Wendy Doniger, “Echoes of the Mahabharata: Why is a Parrot the Narrator of the Bhagavata Purana and the Devibhagavata Purana?” in Purana Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jain Texts, ed. Wendy Doniger (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 31. 46

“heavenly musicians;” and last but not least the chief of the netherworld and the king of heaven himself (20). Valmiki at one point indicates that all of nature - including not only the birds and beasts, but even the sun and the air - listens intently (199). What we have, then, is a representa- tive gathering of virtually all of creation. Here the “atmosphere” is, as it were, the literal atmosphere, and dialogue is more than a source of pleasure, more than an exchange of ideas: Vasistha’s instruction of Rama is presented as the supreme event in the world, one worthy of universal attention and of concern to all created beings. There is the implication that not only those present at the court hear the exchange; even those outside of earshot are somehow involved.

Valmiki makes a point of describing the reactions and even activities of the assembly members, and this is one of the most important ways in which a sense of immediacy is generated and maintained. For example, following Rama’s opening speech, in which he expresses grave doubt about the possibility of happiness, the benefits of wealth, and the different stages of life, as well as a desire for instruction in a better means of living, Valmiki describes the audience’s response:

All those who had assembled in the court were highly inspired by the flaming words of Rama’s wisdom, which is capable of dispelling the delusion of the mind. They felt as if they themselves has been rid of their doubts and deluded misunderstanding. They drank the nectarine words of Rama with great delight. As they sat in the court listening to Rama’s words, it appeared as though they were no longer living beings but painted stat- ues – they were so still with rapt attention (20).

Here and elsewhere the assembly is said to listen with total attention. Valmiki states at one point that “pin-drop” silence prevails among the members of the assembly (326). Moreover, the members perform religious rituals upon waking, greet and prostrate themselves before Vasistha upon arriving at the court, and at day’s end, continue to discuss and contemplate the teachings. It is said that King Dasharatha and the royal ministers have for the time being completely abandoned 47 their usual preoccupations and pleasures, “intent on absorbing the teachings of the sage” (199).

This is another way in which the proceedings are given a premier importance. Those present are seen to orient every part of their lives around the discussion.

Perhaps more than anything else, what lends a sense of liveliness and immediacy to the discussion is the impact the teachings are seen to have on Rama himself. In one particularly striking example of this, the day’s proceedings come to an end and all retire to bed - all except

Rama, who is too inspired to go to sleep. Contemplating the teachings of the sage, he asks:

“What is this world-appearance? Who are all these different kinds of people and other beings?

How do they appear here, from where do they come and where do they go? How did this cosmic illusion arise in the first place and how does it come to an end?” (199). He goes on to ask, “Oh, when will my mind be pure and when will it rest in the supreme being? When will my mind rest in the infinite even as a wave is re-absorbed in the ocean?… When will I be blessed with equal vision?” (200). The next morning, Vasistha, as he does multiple times throughout the book, checks on Rama’s progress, ensuring that the teachings are making a sufficient impression on him. “O Rama,” he asks, “have you deeply contemplated the teachings I have communicated to you? Did you reflect over them during the night and have you inscribed them on the tablet of your heart?” (201). Rama responds: “Lord, I have indeed done just that. Giving up sleep, I have spent the whole night meditating upon your enlightening words, endeavoring to see the truth that the words pointed to. Thus I have enshrined that truth in my heart” (Ibid.). Both Vasistha’s questions and Rama’s answers can be seen as functioning to prompt the reader, too, to critically consider his or her own response to the teachings. 48

Staying up all night contemplating is one thing, but Rama’s final response goes far beyond an active contemplation of teachings, far beyond any ordinary state of awareness. He is, in the end, overwhelmed by a spiritual energy, and, ceasing to ask questions, enters spontaneously into an “ocean of bliss,” becoming established in the “highest state of self knowledge” (481). He goes so deep that the sage Vishvamitra must remind Vasistha that he still has a job for him to do - destroy the oppressive demons - and politely request that Vasistha “bring him back to body consciousness” (485). This Vasistha does by himself assuming a subtle form and entering into

Rama’s heart and gently stirring him, and in the meantime announcing, “O Rama, this is not the time to rest! Get up and bring joy to the world. When people are still in bondage, it is not proper for the yogi to merge in the self!” (487). This image of a total meditative absorption is one we will return to; for now, it requires no real commentary except to say that in its vividness and power it cannot but have a profoundly suggestive impact on the listener, who, as mentioned earlier, is to identify him or herself with Rama.

Dialogue in the YV is depicted as an activity that is ongoing, indeed practically never- ending. This is a point of ironic playfulness and exaggeration in the text. To begin with, between Rama and Vasistha, there are many instances when Rama asks a question he already knows the answer to, or Vasistha continues to discourse even after his student appears to have attained a full state of self-realization. At one point, for instance, Rama asks about the nature of self-knowledge, and Vasistha replies, “Rama, you know all this already. Yet, in order to make it abundantly clear, you are asking about it again” (340). At another point Rama claims a triumphant attainment, saying “What is to be known is known, what is to be seen is seen, we are filled with the supreme truth, thanks indeed to the nectarine wisdom of Brahman, imparted by you,” 49 before adding, “However, for the further expansion of awareness, I ask again…” (394). Later,

Rama again claims to have become “established in the transcendental state.” However, he adds,

“Yet, there is no satiety: though I am satisfied, again I ask you [this question…]” (470). Not long thereafter, Rama falls into a state of samadhi, reaching the highest possible state of self knowledge (481). But still Vasistha wakes him, Rama asks another question, and the dialogue goes on. In the same way, at the very end of the book, the dialogue seems to come to an end: Vasistha remains silent and there is cheering and celebration among the assembly members. But then Va- sistha, like a senile old man telling the same old story, starts up again, beginning another lengthy discourse with “Once again I declare the supreme truth to you…” (713). One suspects that some of these instances of continuation might reflect a redaction process of some decades or centuries, in which dialogue sections continued to be added. Nevertheless, one could cut the examples in half or more and still the theme would be a definite and important one.

The other major way in which this ironic emphasis comes out is in dialogue between already liberated persons - including enlightened sages and gods - who seem to feign ignorance for the purpose of entering into a mutual exchange of ideas or stories. In one such example, the creator Brahma himself is at one point wonderstruck and puzzled by creation – his own creation.

He calls on one of the suns in one of the solar systems, seeking an explanation of the nature of manifest reality. The sun says, “Surely you know the truth, Lord; yet since you commanded me to answer your query, I say this” – and he proceeds to explain the nature of creation. Brahma then asks the sun about his role as the creator. The sun explains, “Lord, you have no wishes, nor any motives of your own. Naturally, there is no need for you to do anything. What benefit do you derive from creating the universe? Creation of the universe is surely a motiveless pastime 50 for you!” (110). In a similar example from one of Vasistha’s autobiographical accounts, the sage asks a question of the enlightened crow Bhusunda. Bhusunda replies, “O sage, you know everything, yet you ask this question in order to cultivate the eloquence of your servant” (353). Bhus- unda’s answer in itself is not important here. But in both examples above, there is a playfulness that accompanies the request for conversation. None of these interlocutors need to ask questions or give answers, but do so anyhow - as if it were fun to possess transcendent knowledge and continue to play with it in the realm of duality.

In its very liveliness and ongoingness, what the dialogue seems essentially to do is model the life of enquiry itself - to represent the supreme importance of a desire to know and a willingness to engage in an active and sustained investigation of reality. This point has been made about the Platonic dialogues. While a full comparison of these two dialogue forms is beyond our scope or intention, a brief comparison on this particular point may prove helpful. David For- tunoff proposes that what one finds in Plato is not so much an ‘education’ as an “educational model.”83 In his view, the most important point about the dialogue is, in a way, the dialogue itself, and there is a sense in which the content discussed can never quite match in significance the activity exhibited.84 For Fortunoff, the dialogue’s preeminent lesson is not in a particular view of life but in a particular way of life.85 Similarly, Michael Sugrue suggests that Plato’s dialogues do not necessarily teach you anything - not, anyway, if it is a firm or definite answer one is looking for.86 Instead of just supplying an answer, they provide a means by which an answer might be

83 David Fortunoff, “Dialogue, Dialectic, and Maieutic: Plato’s Dialogues as Educational Models,” The Paideia Project Online (Boston, MA: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, 1998), 4. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., 7. 86 Michael Sugrue, Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues. Audio Lectures. Course 463 (Teaching Company), lec. 16. 51 obtained. In this respect, the dialogues “point away from themselves” - not toward communion with a text but to the “living voice,” as Sugrue calls it - to a living process and a living interaction.87 Neither critic is stating that the philosophical content of these dialogues is unim- portant. What they are suggesting is that whatever ostensible message there is in these dialogues, it may not ultimately be able to compete with the didactic value or persuasive power of the me- dium itself.

It seems to me that the same point holds for dialogue in the YV. Perhaps the most important point about dialogue here is that it is built on and sustained by the initiative of the disciple - by his willingness to enquire and openness to accept instruction. Rama obviously says less than his teacher, but his questions are foundational to the very proceeding, being that on which the entire conversation depends. Indeed, it is implied that Rama is as wise for asking question as

Vasistha is for giving answers. The crowd celebrates Rama’s opening speech because they know that he is possessed by a powerful desire to know, and that the questions he will ask are, as if inevitably, going to reveal not only heretofore undisclosed aspects of the universe but ultimately the supreme Consciousness itself.

Without Rama to help “cultivate his eloquence,” Vasistha would have nothing at all to say. In the Hindu tradition generally, the guru does not give instruction - may not speak at all - except to a qualified disciple who will be capable of comprehending his subtle message. This perhaps explains why one finds in the Upanisads a powerful prayer for qualified students; the guru has no occupation unless he has competent students to teach.88 In the first chapter, I con-

87 Ibid. 88 Taittiriya Upanisad 1.4. Some of the verses of the prayer include: “Students, may they come to me, flock to me, rush to me; may they be controlled; may they be tranquil... As waters flow down the slope; And the months with the passing of the days; So, O Creator, from everywhere, May students come to me! Svaha!” 52 sidered the “confirmative” aspect of Vasistha’s instruction - how for a disciple such as Rama, it almost did not matter what his teacher said - a simple nod might be enough to elicit a final realization. What is interesting in the present context is that Vasistha’s ability to address Rama’s concerns and answer his questions appears taken for granted. Vasistha’s total knowledge can in fact be understood as symbolic. Of what? Of the absolute availability of an answer when one is wanted badly enough.

Whatever drama there is in the YV surrounds not Vasistha but his student. If the assembly members seem to judge the dialogue even before it has begun, it is because of the exceptional purity of Rama’s dispassion - the ‘unmixed’ quality of his longing for a full understanding. In what sense is it exceptional? In the sense that it lacks any immediate worldly precipitate. Rama does not come to a state of dispassion because he is faced with having to fight an unwanted battle, like the warrior Arjuna; he does not come to a state of dispassion through repentance for having indulged his sexual lusts, like the sage Kandu;89 he does not come to a state of dispassion after having experienced a nightmarish series of personal disasters, like the noble king

Harischandra.90 As Vishvamitra says, Rama’s desire for enlightenment results not from a “cir- cumstantial cause or an utter disgust,” but from “pure discrimination” (30). Prior to his depres- sion, Rama was faced with no agonizing or hellish circumstance; he had been leading the care- free existence of a young man of fortune and royalty. All that happened to him is that he began to question, “What do people call happiness and can it be had in the ever-changing objects of this world?” (8).

89 Cornelia Dimmitt and J.A.B. van Buitenen, eds., Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978), 258-262. 90 Ibid., 274-286. 53

It is hard to overstate the point about enquiry illustrated here. That beings gather from far and wide to listen to the conversation suggests that the very balance or stability of the universe somehow depends upon the enquiring seeker, without whose initiative and desire to know the unmanifest universe would remain altogether hidden from view and be as good as non-existent.

In Vedic theology, the divine world depended on the human world - specifically, on human beings’ performance of various rites.91 The universe was imagined as a place of reciprocity between the divine and mundane elements. In a not dissimilar way here, the divine being seems dependent - not on rites, but on speculation. Here, God needs not man’s sacrifices, but his scru- tiny. God, or Consciousness, depends on someone who will bother to look into Its existence - and thus reveal Its nature.

Altogether, then, what the YV’s dialogue form seems to do best is model a sort of method of procedure appropriate to the aspiring soul. While Vasistha is in the ostensible position of authority here, there is an important respect in which it is the student and not the teacher who holds the spotlight. One is challenged not to answer like Vasistha but to ask like Rama. Ask as

Rama asks, and a full realization cannot be in doubt - so seems to be the idea. In its very vividness, the dialogue seems to reach out into the world of the reader, influencing him or her not only while the discussion proper goes on but even, perhaps, long after it has ended. As we saw earlier, the activity of critical investigation does not stop for those immediately involved in the day’s proceedings. Nor, by implication, is it to stop for the reader after he or she closes the book. The dialogue here points to something to be realized in life, to a living quest. It is implied that whatever answer is to be had must be searched for and found in the individual person’s own life.

91 William K. Mahony, The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 107. 54

Here, it may be that one need only decide to sincerely enquire into - and vigorously engage in discussion about - the true nature of reality, to have gotten the main message. 55

Chapter 4: Direction in Indirection

God is the answer, but what is the question?

- The Talmud

Having looked at the major modes of instruction and how they operate, we move now to a discussion of what the YV does and does not teach. The latter is in some ways the easier of the two to identify, and so we will start with that.

What it does not teach is a saving or liberating knowledge. In my judgment, it assumes that there is no such thing - that at an advanced stage, even the finest knowledge is not liberating but binding. In the first chapter, we saw how Vasistha tends to be evasive and enigmatic in his teaching style. He regularly contradicts himself and denies the plainest of realities. His goal is evidently not for Rama to adopt some new philosophy; just the opposite, he does not seem to want Rama’s knowledge to stabilize whatsoever. When, as we saw in the third chapter, he checks with Rama on his progress, his goal does not seem to be to reinforce Rama’s thinking as to reinforce the importance of his own independent, investigative efforts. The last thing he seems to be after is a consolidation of knowledge.

Indeed, for the listener, as for Rama, there is an important respect in which to listen and think you “get” it is to be more bound than ever. It is to be like the demon Virocana in the famous story from the Chandogya Upanisad.92 Here, the gods and demons have decided to investigate the “self,” having heard that it is the source of fulfillment and power. The gods send Indra and the demons send Virocana as representatives to receive instruction on this most subtle subject. The teacher, Prajapati, accepts them as students and soon teaches them that the self is like a

92 Chandogya Upanisad 8.7-12. 56 body beautifully adorned and reflected in water. Indra and Virocana accept the teaching and leave, their hearts content. Virocana heads back triumphant. He shares the great truth with his fellow demons, who thereafter exalt the body. No doubt ever enters his mind. Indra, on the other hand, does not make it far. Overcome by doubts about what he has heard, he returns to

Prajapati, expressing grave doubt. Prajapati therefore gives him a new teaching, which he accepts. But again, it is not long before Indra is back, dubious. Indra has finally come and gone numerous times - and lived with Prajapati for more than two centuries - before he finally gets the answer that satisfies him.

The story illustrates that there is work for the student to do - that an uncritical acceptance of teachings may leave you worse off than you were before. What it also illustrates is that a certain amount of perplexity is a good per se. As we have seen, much of what the YV teaches may confuse more than clarify, seeming at times like nothing if not designed to confound. The stories are probably the best example of teachings that mystify or bewilder, depicting as they do onto- logical possibilities that are completely counterintuitive - such as multiple dimensions and parallel universes - and blurring altogether the distinction between real and unreal. In general, they remain mere entertaining interludes until one comes to grips with what they at bottom and all too troublingly imply: that reality in itself may be more fantastic than our wildest imagining.

It is not that perplexity itself is the point, but rather, as Chidvilasananda has discussed, that perplexity can lead to - indeed often precedes - a deeper understanding. In a talk called “The

Wisdom Sacrifice,” she makes the point that it is often when things make the least sense that a person is ready for a breakthrough. She talks about how her own guru seemed to wait until she was fully anchored in misunderstanding before fully correcting her. The point is that perplexity 57 is unavoidable, and that it can be a sign of relative advancement. “We think the yoga of wisdom is something to be understood. No!” says Chidvilasananda. “It is that which we cannot understand.”93 This, in Chidvilasananda’s language, is the true “sacrifice,” the real letting-go: allowing for an experience of a reality that transcends one’s limited views and concepts about it.

A few brief points relevant to a comparative theological perspective might be made here.

Insofar as the YV has a theology, it seems question as opposed to answer based. Often religious traditions are built around an answer or set of answers, truth-statements that themselves can be objects of faith. By contrast, the YV does not seem to offer any final answers. It appears skepti- cal about the possibility of such answers. Its view seems not too far different from that related by the famous parable of the Buddha, in which the man determined to find definitive answers to the questions of being is compared to a man with an arrow in his back demanding to know who shot him and why before he will pull it out.94

What is both interesting and provocative, on a related point, is that it is an incarnation of

God himself who here assumes the image of the enquirer. At first this seems backward, even in a tradition known for flexible ways of relating to the supreme divinity. But perhaps Valmiki thought that nothing was worse than a God who incarnated in order to give all the answers; pref- erable was a god who modeled a certain way of life but did nothing to lessen the human being’s role in creation.95 Certainly there could be no better way of amplifying the sublime significance of spiritual seeking itself.

93 Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Kindle My Heart, vol. 2 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 153. 94 Sources of Indian Tradition, ed. Ainslie T. Embree, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 100. 95 Incidentally, this theology comes close to Frye’s ideal, or that theology he inherited from William Blake, in which God was not a demagogue who demanded submission but a Creator who fashioned after himself mini-creators, designed to act, think, and create freely. See Northrop Frye, On Education (Mark- ham, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1990), 211. 58

A Jewish or Hasidic perspective would see questions themselves as a means of relating to

God. Elie Wiesel tells a story about a young man not unlike Rama, with grave doubts about the purpose of existence. The young man too seeks the help of a master:

Help me, Master. I need your advice, I need your support. My distress is unbearable; make it disappear. The world around me, the world inside me, are filled with turmoil and sadness. Men are not human, life is not sacred. Words are empty–empty of truth, empty of faith. So strong are my doubts that I no longer know who I am–nor do I care to know. What am I to do, Rebbe? Tell me, what am I to do?

Woe unto me. I am unable even to study. So shaky are my foundations, so all-pervasive my uncertainties, that my mind finds no anchor, no safety. It wanders and wanders, and leaves me behind. I open the Talmud and contemplate it, endlessly, aimlessly. For weeks and weeks I remain riveted to the same page, to the same problem. I cannot go farther, not even by a step, not even by a line. What must I do, Rebbe, what can I do to go on?

The Rebbe invites the young man closer and says:

You must know, my friend, that what is happening to you also happened to me. When I was your age I stumbled over the same obstacles. I too was filled with questions and doubts. About man and his fate, creation and its meaning. I was struggling with so many dark forces that I could not advance; I was wallowing in doubt, locked in despair. I tried study, prayer, meditation. In vain. Penitence, silence, solitude. My doubts remained doubts. Worse: they became threats. Impossible to proceed, to project myself into the future. I simply could not go on.

Then one day I learned that Rebbe Shem Tov would be coming to our town. Curiosity led me to the shtibl, where he was receiving his followers. I entered just as he was finish- ing the Amida prayer. He turned around and saw me, and I was convinced that he was seeing me, me and no one else. And strangely, I was able to go home, open the Talmud, and plunge into my studies once more. You see, the questions remained questions. But I was able to go on.96

The master does not answer the young man’s questions. He does not really teach him anything.

All he tells him is that he too has struggled with doubt, and that, somehow, as a result of coming

96 Elie Wiesel, Somewhere a Master: Hasidic Portraits and Legends (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 11-12. 59 into contact with this master, he was able to “go on.” Somehow, sure answers were not needed; somehow the questions themselves were enough - or the knowledge that others too were asking them. What is true here also seems largely true in the YV – that what a person needs to find fulfillment is not the infallible truth but perhaps only the image of one like him possessed of the same doubts and asking the same questions.

A final point here concerns that which a religious tradition considers condemnable. For answer or belief based traditions, there is a notion of “heresy,” defined generally as “belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine.”97 Needless to say, the YV has no such notion.

But it has something closely approximating it. For the YV, what is, if not heretical, then indefen- sibly foolish, is failing altogether to enquire into oneself and into the nature of the universe.

When Vasistha compares people to “walking corpses” (267) or to “donkeys in human garb”

(490), it is invariably because they are complacent, accepting the world as it is, uncritically, and conceiving of no possible reality beyond that relayed to them by their senses. In their eyes “this samsara is a solid reality,” says Vasistha, an attitude which is the direct cause of their suffering

(681). Heresy or folly in the YV, then, is not so much as absence of right understanding as an absence of right interest or concern, an absence of inquisitiveness. The fool is not asking the questions and coming up with the wrong answers. He is just not asking the questions. He fails to “recognize the truth though it is in every cell of his being,” (474) as Vasistha puts it.

What the emphasis on enquiry has to do with is the theme that you must make your own journey - that there is no substitute for an independent investigation of ultimate matters, that, as

Walt Whitman puts it, “you must find out for yourself.”98 Here I would like to bring in some

97 Oxford American Dictionary. 98 Walt Whitman: Selected Poems, ed. Harold Bloom (Library of America, 2003), 84. 60 points made by T.W. Fowler in his Advanced Teaching Techniques. Fowler talks specifically about “indirect teaching,” defining it as “an approach to learning in which the learning process is inquiry, the result is discovery, and the learning context is a problem.”99 It is employed in order to teach what he calls “higher level behaviors,” behaviors that are learnt and not taught. The approach passes responsibility for learning to the student, who is given “stimulus materials” with which to interact. What he learns from the materials, remarkably, is a behavior different from the stimuli used. His response, as Fowler says, “goes beyond the information given.” In other words, this form of instruction gives the student the tools he or she needs, but as learning at this level depends almost entirely on the initiative, willingness, and competency of the individual, success is by no means certain.

My view is that the YV’s teachings need to be seen in just this way. The forms of instruction we have looked at - discourse, story, and dialogue - can be understood as varieties of “stimulus material.” To define them as such is to reinforce the point that they may not contain any for- mula for liberation. The YV does not teach enlightenment itself. It teaches the implements of enlightenment. These implements call for a response that goes beyond them. They are meant to be engaged, to be interacted with, yielding nothing to a passive response. So, when Vasistha tells

Rama that neither of them exist and that their conversation is not really taking place, the listener can hardly just signal a thumbs up. When the adventures of “non-existent” princes are told, the listener can hardly just nod his or her head in concurrence. When enquiry itself seems to be what is taught, the listener can hardly just sit back and relax. If Vasistha likes to suggest that merely listening to the contents of the scripture is sufficient to realize enlightenment, it may be because a

99 By T.W.Fowler & G.C.Markle, Advanced Teaching Techniques. University of Cincinnati: College of Engineering. Article on-line. Available from http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~pffp/fft_index.html 61 nonparticipative approach on the part of the listener is virtually impossible to maintain: you might be sitting there thinking, “yeah, get on with it - give me the answers I am looking for” - when before you know it, you are totally gripped by a certain phrase or image or question, and before you know it again, someone is waking you up out of your own state of meditative absorption.

In the end, what the YV offers might be categorized as not a “first” but a “second” education - that is to say, an education not in facts and information but in the nature of being, an education on the unmanifest as opposed to the manifest universe.100 The “higher level behavior” the

YV is concerned with is one that is neither taught nor learnt; indeed, is not a behavior at all. It is what remains when behaviors altogether cease. As Mercea Eliade describes it, the state of samadhi is profoundly paradoxical and almost completely indescribable. It is not a “mere hypnotic trance,” which is “only a paralysis of the mental flux.”101 It represents a “rupture of plane on a cosmic scale,” and an “assimilation to pure Being;”102 it represents the very “geometric point” at which there is a contradictory coincidence of the divine and the human, of being and nonbeing.103 Rama’s state of samadhi at the close of the book is an image of perfect and complete human fulfillment - an image not so much of a person who has found the answer, but an image of a person who seems somehow to have embodied and become it. This image is the frankest and boldest statement to be found in the book. Perhaps it is only fitting that it is a statement of silence.

100 Swami Shankarananda, Happy For No Good Reason (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004), 4. 101 Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 78- 9. 102 Ibid., 94-5. 103 Ibid., 95. 62

Conclusion

For a thoroughbred, a slight prod is enough; Flog a common horse, it won’t run.

- Tukaram

As a way of concluding, what I want to do is reiterate my basic point about indirect instruction, but do so firstly in the context of a question that may linger in the reader’s mind, and secondly with reference to another educational resource - this one not on indirect instruction specifically, but on related concepts of critical thinking and active learning. The question is: If the

YV assumes that a final or perfect knowledge is basically unattainable, what motivation does it offer for an active pursuit of understanding? Put differently, if the explicit goal or end result here is a state of total mental quiescence, why not start out there - why not enter into silence at the soonest point possible?

My intention here is in part to address the issue of a bias against rational argument or rational endeavor that may seem to characterize either the book itself or my analysis of it. It is not that there is no such bias. Vasistha explicitly advocates the abandonment of ideation and re- moval of all thought, saying that liberation consists in a perfect detachment from any such repre- sentational objectification (192). However, that bias needs to be understood in its context. It might be compared to the statement from Frye cited earlier that knowledge is something to be

“gotten rid of.” The statement makes a point, but is basically ironic, standing in stark contrast not only to the content of Frye’s work but to the sheer size of it. And of course getting rid of knowledge presupposes having it in the first place. In the same way, the YV seems hardly to be advocating a complete disavowal of conceptual involvement. Even more than Frye’s, its size works against it - the book being again one of the largest in the world. It seems to me that the 63 antithetical content of the book works to undermine its own intellectual allure, works, that is, against the very power of its arguments and the persuasiveness of their illustration. More specifically, it works against the listener’s urge to take hold of the positive or assertive content of the book as the operational key to enlightenment.

For John Bean, a teacher’s chief task is, first, to awaken the student to the existence of a problem, and second, to try to make that problem seem compelling and worthy of investigation.104 He talks about the power of a well-designed problem to stimulate even an un- motivated student, and how engagement with a problem seems natural and self-fulfilling.105 The sort of problem the teacher gives the student is an “ill-structured” one - that is, a problem or question that lacks an obvious or definite answer and thus demands a proposition justified by reasons and evidence.106 While this type of problem forces the student to undergo an unenjoy- able, trying process of propositional trial and error - while it plunges him or her into the inherent complexities of knowledge - Bean implies that it ultimately constitutes the teacher’s greatest gift to the student, the very ‘ill-ness’ of the problem allowing for a process of critical investigation and discovery that is improving and potentially transformational. In a sense, the problem itself

‘teaches’ the student more than the teacher him or herself ever could have. Give the student an engaging, compelling problem, implies Bean, and you have done most all of what you can for them.107

104 John Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Ac- tive Learning in the Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 2. 105 Ibid., 2-3. 106 Ibid., 3. Bean takes the notion of an “ill-structured” problem from J.G. Kurfiss. 107 This does seem to be the main idea in Bean, but I admittedly overstate it somewhat. The reader should know that Bean’s book is full of literally hundreds of suggestions concerning ways in which the student might be more engaged in their learning process - many of them more pragmatic than problematic. 64

In my view, the YV is problem based in this sense. As we saw in the last chapter in our discussion of heresy or folly, the YV assumes that the basic problem is the failure to see there is any problem - to fail to see that existence is essentially problematic, that in one’s own being one embodies a great problem. The YV’s ‘problem’ is the problem of being itself: this is its exclusive concern, its quintessential or primordial “ill-structured” problem. There is no denying that the YV offers a proposition in response to this problem: it states that being is fundamentally one, that the different parts of the universe share the same source or finally are the same supremely subtle entity. However, as we have seen, it also undermines this statement in various ways, emptying it of any obvious descriptiveness and making it almost pointless to submit to or accept.

This proposition appears as the primary object of the YV’s instruction. But in fact it is a kind of decoy, insofar as it only appears to give the student the answer; or better, a lure insofar as it in- trigues the student with an incredible hypothesis; or better still, a carrot insofar as it does somehow eventually lead the student to the truth. But the still more important point is that the text recognizes the very perenniality of the problem. Forgoing the work of trying to offer, justify, and defend propositions - determined to go beyond theory - it focuses its educational energies elsewhere.

Where, exactly? In an effective illumination of the problem itself. The YV’s basic pedagogical commitment, in my view, is to disclosing the problem of being in all its awesomeness.

As we have seen, what it does is illustrates this problem in different ways - logical, imaginative, dialogic. It seems unrelenting in its effort to sustain the student in wonder at being itself, to inspire the student to feel that any activity other than investigating the very purport of existence would be by comparison uninteresting, unexciting, and sterile. Everything else is exhaustible, it 65 says, but this is inexhaustible. In a word, it makes the problem of being mesmerizing, irresisti- ble.

But if the problem itself shows no sign of ceasing, what incentive can there be for trying to know at all? In Bean it is implied that a sincere engagement with a problem is, while trying, inherently fulfilling as well. It is morally or spiritually improving almost irrespective of the particular answer one comes up with as a result of or at the end of the process. The perspective that must ultimately be explored here is whether a problem may not carry its own solution inside itself - a solution not to the particular problem but to the general, a solution to the very problem of problems, as it were. In sharing the problem of being directly - in trying to make that problem live - it may be that the YV is, after all, actually giving the student the answer. It is just that he or she has to unwrap it and look inside.

The question becomes one of whether seeking itself may not be a kind of finding, whether there is not a sense in which the want of an answer is the answer itself. In Narada’s

Bhakti Sutras, to be moved by a sense of absence or lack - to be ardently or desperately searching for some answer - is itself indicative of a spiritual enlivenment. It seems to me that what the

YV tries to do is to inspire a deep want of understanding, to arouse or enkindle the very energy of enquiry itself. For, enlightenment here appears not as a function of some deliberate self- entrancement but of a deep and profound engagement with the enduring problem of life itself - appears as a state beyond states that overpowers a person in the midst of a sustained effort of critical investigation, in the context of a sincere and powerful effort of knowing. Indeed, it may be that enlightenment ‘hits’ when that very energy peaks or climaxes - not when a person’s desire to know collapses in futility, but when it becomes so active or excited that a person can no longer 66 conceive of what else it was he or she had been looking for. Ultimately, it is as if the energy of enquiry itself starts to take the shape of an answer - to a question one knew not how to ask, to a question one was perhaps incapable of asking.

In other words, the YV assumes that the real challenge is to sustain enquiry, but assumes too that something amazing happens when you persist in your quest, when you prolong your search. This is best illustrated in the “Story of the Philosopher’s Stone” - the final story Vasistha tells Rama. The story is brief and goes as follows: A villager, while walking in the forest, loses a copper coin. He begins to search for it. He searches for days and days and continues searching even after his fellow villagers start to mock and scorn him. The man never finds his copper coin.

What he finds instead is something far more valuable - something of infinite value: a philosopher’s stone with the power to grant all his wishes. “Look at this mystery of maya, O Rama,”

Vasistha comments as he concludes the story. “The disciple looks for one thing but obtains something else!” (434).

For the YV, this is the basic condition of spiritual seeking: one searches without knowing exactly what it is one is after. The journey is characterized by risk and uncertainty. It is as if even the best of seekers must blaze a trail through the dark wood of samsara knowing neither that there is a far side nor that one is heading for it. There seems to be some correlation between means and end, but one cannot finally link the two. Still, the point is that as long as the search goes on, progress of some kind is being made. And what ultimately happens is that one discov- ers something that totally exceeds one’s expectations. Enlightenment comes a surprise, almost as if it had a life of its own. A Kashmirian sutra has reality constituted by “reciprocally adapting” 67 subject and objects;108 in these terms, enlightenment would have to be seen as definitively on the side of the latter, an almost singularly transcendent initiative, known only once had.

In closing, a point of comparison might be made. Often in Hindu literature, the high point in a story is the moment when the supreme divinity reveals his or her true nature. The literature contains many such marvelous acts of self-disclosure. One thinks of the many visions of

Shiva or Kali, or episodes such as Markendaya’s travels inside the body of Hari. In the Bhaga- vad Gita, of course, the climactic moment is Krishna’s self-unveiling - a particularly spectacular case in point. Often these visions are terrifying and awe-inspiring. However, the YV appears exceptional in locating the climactic moment in the person of the student or seeker. Here the transcendent occurrence is not when the teacher reveals his true nature but when the student realizes his - when Rama goes inward and becomes quiet. In the end, it might be said that what one finds in the book is not ‘Vasistha’s yoga’ but Rama’s yoga - and, putting it optimistically, one’s own yoga.

108 The Doctrine of Recognition: A Translation of the Pratyabhijnahrdayam, trans. Jaideva Singh (Al- bany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 50. 68

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