LOURENS MINNEMA

TRANSCENDENCE IN 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 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 , Christianity, and Islam are striking when compared to Hinduism or . These Indian religions seem 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 Culture 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 , 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 , 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 , 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 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 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 and to criticise from above—or, rather, from beyond—the mundane world of sinful practices, it also allowed monotheists to identify the divine from beyond as the only, universal, and 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 ” 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 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 represented by the mundane centre or to the absolute or ). Apart from collectively participating in the realm of the divine by attending the local , 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 , 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).

Judaism and especially Christianity continued their own Axial roots, but they were also strongly influenced by Hellenism. The emergence of Islam, in turn, marks the Axial breakthrough within the tribal setting of Arab . All these monotheistic religions display similar Axial patterns of religion, stressing and bridging the gap between the transcendent and immanent realms in their particular forms of universalism. What about the Axial breakthrough in Hindu- ism? How similar or close is its pattern to that of Western religions? Historico-Cultural Shifts in the Hindu View of the Human Being The emergence of a newly developing self-awareness of the human being as a morally and individually (and spiritually!) responsible being in a broadened and deepened sense of the word within the ancient Indian culture was cast in the religious language of early Hinduism. Crucial within the long-term changes in Hindu anthropology from the early Vedas to the philosophical doctrines of karma (“causal” action) and moksha (ultimate liberation) are the Upanishads.

What human beings can do, in the early Vedas, is to try to please the with sacrifice and praise, but they cannot be certain of the impact of their human ef- forts. Julian F. Woods points out that this human impact increases dramatically “when the priests gain control of the gods by their knowledge of the ritual. A new sense of power thus emerges in the Brahmanas, reinforced, in part, by a magical tradition that received orthodox approval in the Atharvaveda” (Woods

90 TRANSCENDENCE IN HINDUISM

2001: 2).3 The sense of being in control of one’s destiny is still limited, of course, first by the fact that it only regards the priests and, second, because the priests still have to perform the sacrifice knowingly.

Although accountable for what he does, the individual does not control his own destiny, until the rise of the doctrine of karma, which holds each indi- vidual personally responsible for his own destiny, due to a causal connection between past behaviour and future conditions of that same person in previous, present, and future lives. The individual no longer needs to please the gods or the priests but to cultivate moral and spiritual self-discipline to develop the self-consciousness of a spiritual being who is rewarded for his self-discipline and self-knowledge. Woods states: The first textual evidence of a movement in this direction was the appropriation, by Varuna, of the role of dispenser of divine justice (for example, Rgveda 1.24.9). Other gods subsequently assumed this function. This line of development eventually led to the idea of the Divine Grace of or as a reward for the conduct of the devotee. (Woods 2001: 3). The law of karma belongs to the immanent realm; the experience of ultimate liberation (moksha) transcends this realm of causal action and rebirths.

Transcendence as a Spiritual Experience in Hinduism The Mystical Experience of Transcendence in the Upanishads The Upanishads represent the ascetic tradition on the level of philosophy, stressing ultimate freedom, absolute knowledge, and monistic identity of the immortal self with the Absolute, in a tentative rather than in a systematically consistent way. The Upanishads are a collection of esoteric texts covering a long period in time (roughly 600-200 BCE) and reflect a shift in philosophical outlook away from collective ritualist knowledge to individual mystical knowledge (Olivelle 1998). Both the individualization and the internalization of religion are characteristic of the ascetic movement of Shramanism.

Previous to the Upanishads, the Brahmanas had already turned their attention away from ritual action as such, in favour of the knowledge needed to equate the power of the mantras (brahman) inherent in ritual action with the sus- taining cosmic power of the sacrifice and of the . By the time of the Upanishads, this knowledge of brahman was individualized by cultivating an ascetic lifestyle of retreat from society into the forest, and was internalized by identifying one’s (deeper than individual) inner immortal self (atman) as this

3 He adds: “The desires (kama) themselves are one’s own, but they are fulfilled not directly, but mediately through an esoteric knowledge of the general order of the world over which one would otherwise have little or no control.”

91 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 22 (2012) 1 all-sustaining cosmic Self (brahman). On the one hand, the gap between the individual and his outer world has deepened. The outer world now includes ul- timate reality or an absolute reality that is far beyond both the visible and the invisible worlds of the immanent realm. This transcendent reality is called brahman—named after the power inherent in rituals. On the other hand, the gap between the individual and his inner world has deepened. The inner world of the individual now includes a cosmic permanent self that extends far beyond the individual emotions, the mind, and the ego of the psychosomatic empirical realm. This internal transcendent reality is called atman. In the monistic world- view and mystical experience of the Upanishads, individual and located cons- ciousness is a manifestation of universal consciousness pervading the physical and psychosomatic world. Realising the identity between one”s immortal self and the cosmic Self is considered to be a liberating form of knowledge. The gap between and transcendence is overcome by leaving the world- ly realm of immanence behind entirely. The Upanishads and the Hindu doc- trine of ultimate liberation (moksha) represent an example of radical transcen- dence that is more radical than its monotheistic parallel, salvation by God, be- cause in the spiritual experience of moksha, human beings lose their individu- ality to an Absolute without attributes. The Dramatic and Aesthetic Experience of Transcendence in the Mahabharata Epic Gradually, the monistic worldview of the Upanishads was pushed aside by older polytheistic and newer henotheistic tendencies. This is illustrated by the Mahabharata epic. The epic’s world is a tragic world within the wider per- spective of a dramatic worldview, “dramatic” in the sense that reality is the result of an enacted achievement that has to be fought for continuously. But this “within” requires further explanation. The tragic world of human affairs is juxtaposed with the dramatic world of cosmic affairs as an entirely different, transcendent perspective on the immanent outlook. Juxtaposition means a lack of tension and conflict between the two. What is tragic on the historical level is simultaneously dramatic on the cosmic level. The point is that one should not equate the historical with the cosmic level. Instead, one should maintain both of them while keeping them apart. This juxtaposition is comparable to Bhish- ma’s description of as upholding beings apart (Hiltebeitel 2002: 204). The potential or logical conflict between the two worlds or perspectives is “solved” by keeping them apart. The conflict is not solved but transcended by shifting from one perspective to the other without creating a short circuit. Such a cosmic transcendence of the conflict is, of course, also one way of solving the conflict, in the sense that one is liberated from its compelling inevitability. In its own right, the potential or logical discrepancy represents a real clash. But taking one perspective at a time reduces its impact to the extent that a conflict can be denied or neglected.

The epic’s beginning touches on the cosmic origins of its main characters 92 TRANSCENDENCE IN HINDUISM while shifting to the historical level. That is to say, the main human characters are presented in the epic as sons and daughters or manifestations of aspects of gods, , and demons. Bhishma is Dyaus incarnate, Yudhisthira is the son of Dharma, Arjuna is the son of Indra, Draupadi is Shri incarnate, Dur- yodhana is Kali incarnate, Krishna is Vishnu incarnate, Vyasa is Narayana incarnate (Sukthankar 1998: 62ff.). The ending of the story appears to consist of one tragic ending on the historical level, which culminates in the disaster of total war and destruction—of the eighteen armies, only nine souls survive, the five Pandavas with Krishna on one side, and only three minor warriors on the other—and another, dramatic ending on the cosmic level that makes the main opponents in heaven equal and puts the story in an entirely different frame- work. The terror of time and history is confirmed in the story’s first ending, de- nied in its second; it is overcome by temporarily recycling it. Whereas the his- torical arrangement of the Kurukshetra war manifests a linear pattern that ends in a disaster for virtually all agents involved, the cosmic rearrangement of the war, its outcome, and its warriors manifests a circular pattern of re-balancing exchange, reversal, and eternal return. But this cosmic rearrangement does not consist of the elimination of evil on the historical, linear level; it consists of the elimination of the opposition itself between good and evil, beyond the histor- ical level.

The juxtaposition of a historical, linear level and a cosmic, cyclical level is e- voked by the literary device of framing (cf. Doniger 1998: 7-18). The classical Indian appreciation of a literary work is different, however, from classical Ar- istotelian appreciation. For Aristotle, Edwin Gerow argues, poetry culminates in a learning experience caused by the alteration of emotions, whereas for An- andavardhana, poetry culminates in a taste experience caused by the evocation of emotions (Gerow 2002). That is to say, Aristotle’s catharsis is viewed in terms of process, whereas Anandavardhana’s rasa is viewed in terms of result. Aristotle is focused on dynamics, direction, and an integration of action, whereas Anandavardhana is focused on permanence, presence, and an integra- tion of response. Gerow seems to draw on Richard Schechner when pointing out that, unlike the Greek play, the Indian play “goes nowhere”4 but, instead, while manifesting movement in all directions (backwards, forwards, circular) on the surface, reveals the constant presence of the transcendent whole that is always immanent in the fragmentary parts and amidst hostile experiences. In

4 Schechner 1985: 141: “This view of the difference between causal chains and braided relations also helps explain why Western theater develops from crises that are then the business of the performance to resolve, while drama, and much con- temporary Indian theater, ‘doesn’t go anywhere.’ It’s not supposed to go anywhere; it’s not a ‘development-resolution’ kind of drama but an expository, synaesthetic, and play- ful set of variations much more akin to the Indian raga system of music than to anything Aristotelian.”

93 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 22 (2012) 1 the light of this all-encompassing result, the process becomes illustrative but also decorative, illusory, and ultimately negligible.

This juxtaposing approach is very characteristic of Hinduism, according to Madeleine Biardeau and Jan C. Heesterman. Biardeau argues that the three goals of kama, artha, and dharma constitute one pole, the one goal of moksha constitutes the other pole of that fundamental bipolarity which has become the very structure of Hinduism (Biardeau 1989: 32-40). Heesterman argues that the brahmin priest who started to incorporate the values of asceticism within society came to represent absolute, transcendent authority cut off from the so- cial world, while the sacral king came to represent the social world (Heester- man 1985: 108-27). The brahmin priest came to represent the transcendent pole as opposed to the immanent pole of the sacral king. This fundamental jux- taposition of radical transcendence and immanence has been characteristic of Hinduism ever since. While Biardeau stresses the complementarity of the jux- taposition, Heesterman stresses its inner conflict. The Moral Experience of Transcendence in the Bhagavadgita The Bhagavadgita, similarly, separates radically ultimate freedom from social responsibility, and then combines them. While human responsibility (in the sense of being accountable to one’s group for living up to its social expecta- tions of one’s devotion to duty) is a moral issue, freedom is a metaphysical one. Responsibility plays a crucial role on the social level of worldly activities, whereas freedom means being freed from these worldly activities altogether on the spiritual level of cosmic identity with the Absolute (brahman). The ulti- mate freedom of one’s eternal self (atman or purusha) remains detached from the social responsibility of one’s empirical self while allowing the empirical self to fulfil its specific caste duties and to identify with them on the social level of worldly activities.

Krishna’s metaphysical concept of desireless action enables him to widen the scope of pure knowledge to include pure action. In the Gita, Krishna, the one Lord of the universe, is both radically transcendent and energetically im- manent (15.16-17) (Hill 2001: 345). Whereas Krishna’s transcendent aspect is entirely beyond action, his immanent aspect works on behalf of the universe. In Gita 18.59, it is Arjuna’s own material nature that compels him to fight; in Gita 18.60, it is his own karma, born of his own material nature; in Gita 18.61, it is Lord Krishna’s creative power of illusion (maya).

Comparisons and Conclusions The first part dealt with the historical experience of transcendence as a cultural phenomenon during the Axial Age; the second part discussed the mystical ex- perience of transcendence in the Upanishads, the dramatic and aesthetic exper- ience of transcendence in connection with the Mahabharata epic, and the moral experience of transcendence in the Bhagavadgita. 94 TRANSCENDENCE IN HINDUISM

All these experiences of transcendence—the historical, the mystical, the dra- matic and aesthetic, and the moral experience of transcendence—have their equivalents in the monotheistic religions.

In the monotheistic religions, the historical experience of transcendence is widely considered to be connected to the exposure to a much larger world than the local villages and towns, an exposure to empires and universalistic world views—the Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian empires in the case of Judaism, the Roman empire in the case of Christianity, and the Byzantine and Persian empires in the case of Islam.5

The mystical experience of transcendence is connected to increasing degrees of individualization and internalization at the expense of the collective ritual and social practices. Judaic phrophets like Jeremia proclaim that God does not want ritual circumcision but a “circumcision of the heart,” that is, inner con- version instead of outward ritual behaviour and social compliance. Christianity stresses love and compassion while abolishing most Judaic rules and rituals. Islam considers the individual to be personally and solely responsible for his salvation, excluding a mediating role for others, and it underlines the impor- tance of the intention when engaged in ritual .

The dramatic and aesthetic experience of transcendence is present in the im- portance that monotheistic religions ascribe to history. History is the realm where God and humankind meet, clash, struggle, and ultimately come together. The historical drama can take on apocalyptic proportions. The future beyond history is sketched in imagery appealing to the aesthetic imagination, as the messianic kingdom, the establishing of a kingdom of justice and peace, or as heaven and paradise versus hell.

The moral experience of transcendence is in the monotheistic religions con- nected to the utopia of an ideal society, envisioned in the visions of the proph- ets and saints, expected at the end of history, and a normative guideline for in- dividual believers who try to fulfil the heavenly will of God as embodied in the , in the sermons and exemplary life of Christ, and in the Quran and ex- emplary life of Muhammed.

Hinduism reveals its own underlying Axial pattern of transcendence that differs from the monotheistic patterns. In the first instance, one might be tempted to conclude that a category like “immanent transcendence” fits our de- scription: the absolute reality of brahman in the Upanishads is immanent in the inner world of human beings, the gods in the Mahabharata epic are repre-

5 For a critical assessment of the connection between axialism and empire, see Pollock 2005.

95 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 22 (2012) 1 sented by their human counterparts in the Kuru dynasty conflict, and Krishna is energetically present in the recreation of the mundane world.

In the second instance, however, one realises that such a category of “im- manent transcendence” does not do justice to the extent to which “transcen- dence” in monistic and dualistic forms of Hinduism, in contrast to polytheistic and, to a lesser extent, henotheistic forms of Hinduism, is by definition “rad- ical transcendence”—”radical transcendence”, that is, as opposed to and juxta- posed with the illusionary mundane reality, “transcendence” at the expense of “immanence” and separated from it. Hindu consists as much in dis- connecting “transcendence” from “immanence” as it consists in combining the two. The Absolute reality of brahman and Krishna is radically beyond the mundane world. The cosmic Absolute is radically beyond attributes, and the inner Self is radically beyond individual characteristics. Both are beyond an- thropomorphic projections such as “the wholly other” encountered in the stranger. I would add the observation that they are not beyond one anthropo- morphic projection: that of “consciousness”; but to call “consciousness” a projection instead of “the projection screen” betrays my outsider’s perspective, not the Indian insider’s perspective that sees my perspective as a distorted view of brahman, the encompassing and underlying Absolute reality of which my state of mind and ideas about reality are part and parcel, instead of the other way around.

“Radical transcendence” is not included in but juxtaposed with “immanent transcendence” in Hinduism. The two poles of “radical transcendence” and “immanent transcendence” constitute two levels of reality and two levels of spiritual experience. Holding the two apart together is what Hinduism is all about.

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