CHAPTER THREE

RELIGIOUS PRACTICE AND POETIC EXPRESSION

As indicated in the preceding chapters, medieval philosophy and theology in the West and the East were concerned with two kinds of experience: one associated with the intellectual exploration of and identity with the unconditioned Absolute, the other with the spiritual endeavour to effect a union of the human and the divine or the conditioned Absolute. Dr. Radhakrishnan has observed that "the central 'problem of Christian Platonism or any mystic religion is the reconciliation of the two presentations of the Supreme, the Absolute One without distinctions and attributes, and the personal God who knows, loves and freely chooses." 1 This reconciliation may be accepted as the philosophicalor theological problem; but mysticism itself is the spiritual experience which poses the problem for inteIlectual analysis. Professor Zaehner has described mysticism as 'the realisation of a union or a unity with or in (or of) something that is enormously, if not infinitely, greater than the empirical self.' 2 In the emotive definition of Miss Underhill, "It is the name of that organic process which involves the perfect consummation of the Love of God: the achievement here and now of the immortal heritage of man. Or, if you like it better-for this means exactly the same thing-it is the art of establishing his conscious relation with the Absolute." 3 It will be noticed that whereas Zaehner attempts a general definition of mysticism as either a union or a unity, Miss Underhill defines it as a process or art with but one end in view, her basic assumption being that "the perfect consummation of the Love of God" and a "conscious relation with the Absolute" are identical and the only aim of mysticism. Zaehner's definition allows, but Miss Underhill's does not, for different types of mysticism. According to Dasgupta there are several kinds of Hindu mysticism corresponding to the karma, jiiäna, and bhakti yoga mentioned in the last chapter, as weIl as the Buddhist

I Rädhäkrishnan, Bastern Religions and Western Thought

type of NirvälJa.4 However, these may all be logically reduced to the two main categories of the intellectual and the emotional employing varying spiritual disciplines which aim at either an identity or unity with the formless, unconditioned Absolute, or a union with the conditioned Absolute as a loving God manifested in the unique incarnation of Jesus Christ or in the many avatäras of Vi~Q.u und 5iva. It is important to be ar these two forms of mysticism in mind when studying Hindi bhakti poetry, because they form the groundwork of the sagUlJa märga associated with the principal avatäras, Rärna and Kr~Q.a; and the nirgulJa märga which deals with the unconditioned Absolute. The mystical art or process varies with the goal of the mystic. When it is the unconditioned Absolute, the way of the mystic is the via negativa of the pseudo-Dionysius, the Cloud oi Unknowing, and the neti of the Vedänta. The mind must be emptied of all conceptions of the Absolute as having qualities or attributes - the analogies for the desired end of unity with the Absolute must employ the language of men, but it eschews the more concrete associations of mundane affairs such as historicalor legendary persons, places and events. When the focus is the conditioned Absolute manifested as a loving God, the aim of the mystic is union with an incarnation as Jesus, Räma, or Kr~Q.a through the mind dwelling on the scriptural or legendary ac counts associated with these incarnations. The spiritual exercises of saint and ascetic in the religious orders of medieval Europe had developed gradually through the centuries from the precepts and practices of the early Fathers of the Church. But under the influence of such mystics of the twelfth century as the Augustinian Richard of St Victor, and the Benedictine St Bernard of Clairvaux, there was a conscious effort to systematise both the theory and practice of mysticism. This effort was considerably helped by the scholastic eagerness to exploit the possibilities of the basic Areopagite tenet of "hierarchy", which reinforced and deepened the Platonic conception of stages in the climb to perfection. And so the mystic's progress through conversion or the awakening of the self, purification, illumination, and union came to be accepted in Western mysticism as the standard description of the mystic way that ends in the unitive life. But within the framework of this standard description "the Benedictine mystics of the twelfth century in their writings

4 See Däsgupta, Hindu Mysticism (Chicago/London, 1927; New York, 1959).