Transcendence in Hinduism As a Cultural Phenomenon and As a Spiritual Experience1
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LOURENS MINNEMA TRANSCENDENCE IN HINDUISM AS A CULTURAL PHENOMENON AND AS A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE1 Introduction: Key Questions The broader question addressed in this article is: How close or similar are classical Indian religions to classical Western religions? Against this back- ground, I will discuss how Hinduism fares in light of this comparison. The more specific question is: What does “transcendence” mean as a cultural phe- nomenon and as a spiritual experience within mainstream forms of Hinduism? The similarities among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are striking when compared to Hinduism or Buddhism. These Indian religions seem worlds apart from monotheistic religions. And yet there are several ways in which the In- dian religions can be compared to the latter. One such way is a historical ap- proach that focuses on underlying patterns that were formed during the so- called Axial Age. The Historical Experience of Transcendence as a Cultural Phenomenon in the Axial Age The Historical Occurrence of Transcendence in World Culture Karl Jaspers was the first philosopher to recognize a long-term shift in focus within several cultures worldwide during a revolutionary period he called the Axial Age.2 Jaspers expounded the theory that the history of civilization had gone through a revolutionary period of specific cultural transformations in a number of major cultures, including Zoroastrian Iran, early Imperial China, ancient Israel, Greece, India, and the Arab Peninsula, a period of cultural breakthroughs from the emergence of Zarathustra on until the appearance of Muhammad. Jaspers called this revolutionary period the “Axial Age.” Karen Armstrong positions this cultural revolution against a backcloth of turmoil, mi- gration, conquest, and the shock of unprecedented aggression, as a spiritual re- 1 This article contains passages from Minnema 2013 (forthcoming). 2 Jaspers 1949; cf. Dux 1982, Eisenstadt 1986, Platvoet 1993, Roetz 1993, Arm- strong 2006, Hellemans 2007, Lenoir 2008. 87 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 22 (2012) 1 volution often occurring as a pause for deepening insight and liberating renew- al between two imperial-style ventures: In China, the Axial Age finally got under way after the collapse of the Zhou dynasty and came to an end when Qin unified the warring states. The Indian Axial Age occurred after the disintegration of the Harappan civilization and ended with the Mauryan empire; the Greek transformation occurred between the Mycenaean kingdom and the Mace- donian empire.... Even the Jews, who had suffered so horribly from the imperial adven- tures in the Middle East, had been propelled into their Axial Age by the terrifying free- dom that had followed the destruction of their homeland and the trauma of deportation that severed their link with the past and forced them to start again. But by the end of the second century, the world had stabilized. (Armstrong 2006: 367) Armstrong is referring to the birth of Judaism as an exclusively monotheistic religion, at first among a minority of the population and among a minority of the priests and prophets, gradually among the majority of the Jewish people (cf. Becking 2009: 9-27, Baumann 2006: 9-25; Nissinen 2000). In ancient Israel, the Axial Age pattern of religion becomes visible, sociologically speaking, in the decreasing importance of the priests and the temple ritual, and the in- creasing importance of the prophets (many of whom have a priestly back- ground) and their critical reflections on ritual and social practices, including those of the royal rulers. Previously, there had been a cultural tendency among the rulers to seek the legitimacy of religious authorities by building the temple close to the palace, that is to say, by tangibly connecting the sources of sacred power and the secular space of political power. This tangible intimacy between religious and worldly powers had now become a contested connection. Theologically speaking, the relationship between the divine and the human realms would from now on be characterised by distance instead of intimacy. A huge gap between the transcendent realm and the immanent realm was born. This gap not only enabled the Judaic (and Islamic) prophets to sketch an ideal society based on the divine will of a transcendent God and to criticise from above—or, rather, from beyond—the mundane world of sinful practices, it also allowed monotheists to identify the divine revelation from beyond as the only, universal, and absolute solution (salvation) for bridging the gap between the transcendent and the immanent realms. T.C.W. Oudemans and A.P.M.H. Lardinois describe this shift with respect to ancient Greek culture in terms of a transition from a “connective cosmology” to what they call a “separative cosmology” (Oudemans and Lardinois 1987). Their terminology is, in fact, very much to the point. An “connective cosmolo- gy” is one in which human actions, especially human transgressions, have re- percussions throughout the cosmos. For example, if I do not obey the chief of my tribe, my fellow tribesmen’s cattle may contract a disease. My boundary- crossing spreads pollution. Boundary-crossing is a source of powerful ambigu- ity, tabooing in a potentially negative or positive sense, embodying ambiguous power. A “separative cosmology” is one in which ambiguity is avoided by in- troducing abstract distinctions between categories such as transcendent and 88 TRANSCENDENCE IN HINDUISM mundane, divine and human, ideal and practical, and by isolating dimensions. This “separative cosmology” is usually considered typically “modern”—not just by Oudemans and Lardinois (who also refer to it as Cartesian) but already by Jaspers. Michael Walzer”s telling description of liberalism in terms of “the practising of the art of separation” is of interest here: Confronting this world, liberal theorists preached and practised an art of separation. They drew lines, marked off different realms, and created the sociopolitical map with which we are still familiar. The most famous line is the “wall” between church and state, but there are many others. Liberalism is a world of walls, and each one creates a new liberty. (Walzer 1984: 316) The cultural revolution consisted of the emergence, conceptualization, and in- stitutionalization of a basic tension between the immanent world and the trans- cendent world. A new type of intellectual elite developed and cultivated an awareness of the necessity to actively construct the world according to some idealist vision of a transcendent world underlying and ruling the mundane world from a qualitative distance. By independently propagating this idealist vision, the intellectual elite took a new attitude of standing back and looking beyond, of critical, reflective questioning of the actual and apparent, and of being sensitive to a reality that lies beyond that and differs sharply from the actual and apparent. The difference is thought of in terms of dichotomies like “this-worldly” versus “other-worldly,” “transient” and “apparent” versus “es- sential” and “true,” “ritual” versus “moral,” “habit” versus “choice,” “materi- al” versus “spiritual,” “relative” versus “ultimate.” Distance between the Human Being and his Inner World Since the world of experience had become a bigger one to discover and to con- quer physically and mentally, the heavens became further removed from the earth now than they had been before. The distance between the human being and his outer world increased, and, simultaneously, so dit the distance between the human being and his inner world. The heavenly Will was less easy to im- plement not just because the heavens were further away now but also because the depths of the soul were further away now as well. The gap between “the realm of the this-worldly” and “the realm of the transcendent” was felt as a tension within the person, as a longing for psychological, moral, and spiritual fulfilment. For the first time in the history of religions, the inner human self had to be converted wholeheartedly (to the transcendent will of God or Heaven represented by the mundane centre or to the absolute brahman or nirvana). Apart from collectively participating in the realm of the divine by attending the local rituals, individual hearts and minds had to be discovered and conquered in order to be saved. Collective participation became individual self-knowl- edge and conversion, empowerment became salvation, ideas became ideals, images became self-images, ritualists became believers. With respect to Israel, Stephen A. Geller stresses that the literary innovation consists of a new type of narrative linked to a new interest in personality in all 89 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 22 (2012) 1 its relations, in particular the issue of change in personality (Gellar 2000: 310). In Greece, conversion was a Hellenistic phenomenon, not yet a fifth-century BCE phenomenon. Self-knowledge, however, was already an issue in tragedy (Gilbert 1995: 22-23). An “axial” transition was also taking place in the field of Greek law, and the dramatists used their vocabulary to show its incoherence, its tensions, and its ambiguities (Segal 1993: 81; Goldhill 2003: 132-35). These developments, I would argue, indicate an increase both in terms of individual- ization and in terms of internalization. The collective value system becomes a matter of personal commitment and psychological concern. the society, not the individual, is still at stake. From Homer on and cast in the religious language of an archaic worldview, a newly developing self-awareness of the human be- ing as a morally and individually responsible being in a broadened and deep- ened sense of the word gradually emerges, and the tragic genre is, more than any other genre, symptomatic of this historical period of socio-cultural transi- tion, as Jean-Pierre Vernant argues (Vernant 1989b: 13-17; 1989a). According to Kathleen M. Sands, the historical rise in ancient Greece of the tragic genre is an expression of the rise of a moral awareness of the fundamental contradic- tion between reality and ideality, between life and human beings as they are and life and human beings as they should be ideally (Sands 2004).