Indian Identity
Page 24
The prescribed medical treatment for ‘insanity’ did not have the desired effect. Finally, he was taken to his village home where his worried mother had him ministered to by both an exorcist and an Ayurvedic doctor. Slowly, he regained his normal state of health. To safeguard the apparent gains the family arranged his marriage, a step, which I know from professional experience, is even today considered as the best antidote to threatened or actual psychic breakdown. Of course, as far as Ramakrishna was concerned, there was never any question of the marriage being consummated. From the very beginning, in relation to his girl bride, he saw himself either as a woman or, in his ecstatic state, as a child. In the former case, the husband and wife were both girlfriends (sakhis) of the Mother Goddess while, in the latter, the wife was envisioned as the Goddess herself.
At the age of 24, Ramakrishna, now accompanied by his wife, returned to Calcutta to resume his priestly duties at the Kali temple. There was a relapse in his condition, though in an attenuated form. Whereas his initial visions had been untutored and spontaneous, intiated by the passionate intensity of his longing for darshan of the Goddess, during the next eight years he systematically followed the prescribed practices laid down by the different schools of Hindu mysticism. The disciplines were undertaken under the guidance of different gurus who were amazed at his natural facility and speed in reaching the goal of samadhi, a capability they themselves had acquired only after decades of strenuous effort.
First, there were the esoteric meditations of Tantra, fierce and fearful, under the tutelage of a female guru, Brahmani Bhairavi. This was followed by the nondualistic way of Vedanta, of concentration and contemplation techniques which seek to discriminate the Real from the Non-Real, a discipline without the need for any divinity or belief in God, till in the attainment of the samadhi all distinctions between I and the Other vanish. Then there were the various ways of Vaishnava mysticism, full of love and devotion for Rama or Krishna, the incarnations of Vishnu, and of Shakta mysticism where the supreme deity is Shakti, the primordial energy and the great Mother Goddess. All of these, the Vaishnava and Shakta ways, are essentially affective, and to which he felt personally most attuned. Whatever the discipline, his mystical genius was soon recognized by laymen and experts alike. Disciples gathered. Pandits—the theologically learned—came to visit and to partake of his clear insight into the whole gamut of Hindu metaphysics, a product of lived experience rather than scriptural proficiency; in any conventional sense, he was more or less illiterate. Ramakrishna would convey this experience simply yet strikingly through devotional songs, Puranic myths, analogies, metaphors, and parables fashioned out of the concrete details of the daily life of his listeners. Most of all, they were attracted by his riveting presence, even when he absented himself in ecstatic trances many times a day, with a few lasting for several days.
The samadhis did not now come unbidden but when his constantly receptive state crossed a certain threshold either in song or abandoned dance, in contemplation of a natural phenomena or absorption in the image of a divinity. He had become both a great teacher and a great mystic without losing his childlike innocence and spontaneity, which extended well into his final days. At the end of his life, dying of throat cancer, his disciples pleaded with him to ask the Mother Goddess for an easing of his disease so that he could eat some solid food rather than continue to subsist on a little barely water which had been his only nourishment for six months. Ramakrishna reluctantly agreed. On the disciples’ inquiry as to the fate of their request, Ramakrishna answered: ‘I said to the Mother, “I canot eat anything on account of this (showing the sore in his throat). Please do something that I can eat a little.” But the Mother said, “Why? You are eating through all these mouths (showing all of you).” I could speak no more for shame.’24
In my attempt to understand the meaning of Ramakrishna’s inner states, let me begin with Ramakrishna’s own version of his experience. Anthropologically speaking, I shall start with the ‘native’s point of view’ on the phenomenology of mystical states.
Although Ramakrishna had successfully practised the ‘higher’ Vedantic disciplines of monotheistic, soul-mysticism his own personal preference was for devotional, theistic mysticism of the Vaishnava and Shakta varieties. Ultimately, of course, both roads lead to the same destination. The impersonal soul of the Vedantic seer and the God or Mother Goddess—the primordial energy—of the devotee are identical, like fire and its power to burn. At first one may take the neti, neti (not this, not this) road of discrimination in which only Brahman is real and all else is unreal. Afterwards, the same person finds that everything in the universe, animate and inanimate, is God himself—he is both the reality and the illusion of the Maya. The negation is followed by an affirmation.
Ramakrishna felt that the classical disciplines of Yoga were very difficult to follow for most human beings since the identification of the self with the body, which these disciplines seek to undo, was too deeply embedded for any easy sundering. For those who could not get rid of the feeling of ‘I,’ it was easier to travel on the devotional path where one could instead cherish the idea that ‘I am God’s servant’ (or child, or friend, or mother, or lover, as the case may be). He illustrated this point through the example of the monkey god Hanuman, symbol of dasa (servant) devotionalism, who when asked by Rama, by God, how he looked at Him replied, ‘O Rama, as long as I have the feeling of ‘I’, I see that you are the whole and I am a part; you are the Master and I am your servant. But when, O Rama, I have the knowledge of truth, then I realize that You are I and I am You.’25
Even the passions—lust, anger, greed, inordinate attachment, pride, egoism—which have been traditionally held as obstacles to spiritual progress, do not need to be vanquished in devotional mysticism. The vairagya, the renunciation or rather the depassioning, can take place equally well by changing the object of these passions, directing them toward God rather than the objects of the world. ‘Lust for intercourse with the soul. Feel angry with those who stand in your way toward God. Be greedy to get Him. If there is attachment, then to Him; like my Rama, my Krishna. If you want to be proud, then be like Vibhishana [Ravana’s brother in the epic of Ramayana] who says, “I have bowed before Rama and shall not bow to anyone else in the world.’”26 Devotional mysticism does not demand an elimination of a sense of individual identity, of I-ness, which can instead be used to progress along the spiritual path. Thus in vatsalya devotionalism, the attitude of a mother toward God, Ramakrishna gives the example of Krishna’s mother as the ideal to be emulated. ‘Yashoda used to think, “Who will look after Gopala (Krishna’s name as child) if I do not? He will fall ill if I do not look after him.” She did not know Krishna as God Udhava said to Yashoda, ‘Mother, your Krishna is God Himself. He is the Lord of the Universe and not a common human being.” Yashoda replied, “O who is talking about your Lord of the Universe? I am asking how my Gopala is. Not the Lord of the Universe, my Gopala.’”27
Ramakrishna’s preferred mystical style did not need ascetic practices, yogic exercises, or a succession of ever more difficult meditations. What it required of the aspirant was, first, a recovery of a childlike innocence and freshness of vision, a renunciation of most adult categories. ‘To my Mother I prayed only for pure devotion. I said “Mother, here is your virtue, here is your vice. Take them both and grant me only pure devotion for you. Here is your knowledge and here is your ignorance. Take them both and grant me only pure love for you. Here is your purity and here is your impurity. Take them both Mother and grant me only pure devotion for you. Here is your dharma (virtue) and here is your adharma. Take them both, Mother, and grant me only pure devotion for you.’”28 And at another place, ‘Who can ever know God? I don’t even try. I only call on him as Mother…. My nature is that of a kitten. It only cries “Mew, mew.” The rest it leaves to the Mother.’
Being like a child in relation to the Divinity does not mean being fearful, submissive, or meek, but of existing in the bright-eyed confidence of con
tinued parental presence and demanding its restoration when it is felt to be lacking or insufficient. ‘He is our Creator. What is there to be wondered if He is kind to us? Parents bring up their children. Do you call that an act of kindness? They must act that way. Therefore we should force our demands on God. He is our Father and Mother, isn’t He?29 Being a child, then, meant the joy of total trust, of being in the hands of infinitely powerful and infinitely beneficient forces. The power of this total trust is tremendous; its contribution to reaching the mystical goal vital. One of Ramakrishna’s illustrative stories went that Rama who was God Himself had to build a bridge to cross the sea to Lanka. But the devotee Hanuman, trusting only in Rama’s name, cleared the sea in one jump and reached the other side. He had no need of a bridge.
But perhaps the most important requirement of devotional mysticism, in all its varieties, was the intensity of the aspirant’s yearning to be with God, whether in the dyad of mother-child, or as friend or as servant, or as lover. The longing had to be so intense that it completely took over body and mind, eliminating any need for performing devotions, prayers, or rituals. Ramakrishna illustrated this, his own yearning, through the parable of a guru who took his disciple to a pond to show him the kind of longing that would enable him to have a vision (darshan) of God. On coming to the pond, the guru pushed the disciple’s head underwater and held it there. After a few seconds he released the disciple and asked, ‘How do you feel?’ The disciple ansered, ‘Oh, I felt as if I was dying! I was longing for a breath of air!’ ‘That’s exactly it,’ said the guru.30 Like other kinds of mysticism, affective mysticism too has its developmental stages. Devotion (bhakti) matures into (bhava), followed by mahabhava, prema, and then attainment of God in the unio mystica. Since the distinctions between bhava, mahabhava and prema seem to me to lie in their degrees of intensity rather than in any fundamental qualitative difference, let me try to understand the nature of only one of the three states, bhava, a term which Ramakrishna uses constantly to describe states of consciousness which preceded his visions and ecstatic trances.
Literally translated as ‘feeling,’ ‘mood,’ bhava in Vaishnava mystical thought means a state of mind (and body) pervaded with a particular emotion. Basing his illustrations on Hindu ideals, Ramakrishna lists the bhavas in relation to God as shanta, the serenity of a wife’s devotion to her husband, dasya, the devoted submissiveness of the servant, sakhya, the emotion of friendship, vatsalya, the feeling of mother towards the child, and madhurya, the romantic and passionate feelings of a womam toward her lover. Ramakrishan felt that the last, symbolized in Radha’s attititude toward Krishna, included all the other bhavas. Indeed, the discourse of passionate love is conducted in many bhavas. At times idealizing the lover makes ‘me’ experience the loved one as an infinitely superior being whom I need outside myself as a telos to which or whom ‘I’ can surrender and obey in dasya. At other times, there is the contented oneness of vatsalya as the lover becomes as a babe on the breast, not in quiescence, a complacence of the heart, but in voluptuous absorption and repose. At yet other times, there is the serene tranquillity of shanta, the peace of the spouses in an ineffable intimacy, a state which the eighth-century Sanskrit poet Bhavabhuti lets Rama, with Sita asleep across his arm, describe as ‘this state where there is no twoness in response of joy or sorrow/where the heart finds rest; where feeling does not dry with age/where concealments fall away in time and essential love is ripened.’31 Besides the compulsions of possessive desire, all these bhavas too are at the core of man’s erotic being.
Vaishnava mysticism, being a mysticism of love, does not consider awe as a legitimate bhava in relation to the Divine. Thus there are no feelings of reverence, of the uncanny, or of mystery. Nor are there the degrees of fear associated with awe where, in extremity, terror and dread can reign. Awe is perhaps the central bhava of what Erich Fromm called authoritarian religion. Vaishnava devotionalism, on the other hand, would consider awe as an obstacle in the mystical endeavour. It distances and separates rather than binds and joins.
I am aware that Ramakrishna’s immersion in the various bhavas at different times in which he even adopted their outward manifestations can make him appear an outrageous figure to unsympathetic and prosaic observers. Practising the madhurya bhava of Radha towards Krishna, he dressed, behaved, and lived as a girl for six months. At another time, going through the dasya bhava of Hanuman, he attached an artifical tail to his posterior in an effort to resemble the monkey god. When living in the motherly bhava of Yashoda toward Krishna, he had one disciple, who felt like a child toward him, lean against his lap as if suckling at his breast while the mystic talked or listened to the concerns of his other disciples.
I have mentioned mahabhava and prema as the higher, more intense states of bhava which most aspirants never manage to reach. Mahabhava shakes the body and mind to its very foundations, and Ramakrishna compared it to a huge elephant entering a small hut. Prema, on the other hand, which makes visions of the Divine possible, was in his analogy a rope by which one tethered God. Whenever one wanted a darshan, one had merely to pull the rope, and He appeared.
Psychologically speaking, I would tend to see bhavas as more than psychic looseners that jar the soul out of the narcissistic sheath of normal, everyday, self-limiting routine. They are experiences of extreme emotional states which have a quality of irradiation wherein time and space tend to disappear. We know of these feeling states from our experience of passionate love where, at its height, the loved one’s beauty is all beauty, the love canot be conceived as not being eternal, and where the memories of all past loves dim so precipitately as to almost merge into darkness. We also know bhava from our experience of grief which, beginning with a finite loss, irradiates all the world at its height. The world becomes empty, and all that is good is felt to be lost forever. We even know of the quality of bhava from states of extreme fear when the smallest sound, the minutest changes of light and shade, the quivering shapes of objects in the dark, all take on an air of extreme menace. The threat becomes eternal, with nary a thought that it might ever end.
Bhava, then, is a way of experiencing which is done ‘with all one’s heart, all one’s soul, and all one’s might.’ The bhava fills the ecstatic mystic, as it did Ramakrishna, to the brim. He is not depleted, and there is no need for that restitution in delusion and hallucination that is the prime work of insanity. In a bhava, Ramakrishna rekindled the world with fresh vision, discovering or rather endowing it with newfound beauty and harmony. Bhava animated his relation with nature and human beings, deepened his sensate and metaphysical responsiveness.
Bhava, then, is creative experiencing, or rather the ground for all creativity—mystical, artistic, or scientific. The capacity for bhava is what an ideal analysis strives for, an openness toward experiencing, a capacity for ‘experiencing experience’ as Bion would call it. All the other gains of analysis—insight into one’s conflicts, the capacity to experience pleasure without guilt, ability to tolerate anxiety without being crippled, development of a reliable reality testing, and so on—are secondary to the birth of the analytic bhava. Of course, the analytic bhava, the total openness to the analytic situation manifested in the capacity to really free-associate, is not simply a goal to be reached at the end of analysis, but a state to strive for in every session. In the language of the traditional drive-defence analytic model, if we divide defences into creative and uncreative, the latter by definition pathological, then the capacity for bhava is perhaps the most creative of defences and needs a place of honour beside and even beyond sublimation.
From bhava, the ground of mystical creativity, let us turn to darshan, vision, the mystic’s primary creative product, his particular nonmaterial creation or mystical art. Ramakrishna’s explanation of visionary experience is simple, heartfelt, and sensuous. ‘God cannot be seen with these physical eyes. In the course of spiritual discipline (sadhana) one gets a love’s body endowed with love eyes, love ears, and so on. One sees God with these love
eyes. One hears His voice with these love ears. One even gets a penis and a vagina made of love. With this love body one enjoys intercourse with the soul.’32
In my own explorations, I prefer to use the religious term vision rather than its psychiatric counterpart hallucination for the same reason that I have talked of mystical ecstasy rather than of euphoria, namely the connotations of psychopathology associated with psychiatric categories. The distinction between the two, though, is not very hard and fast, their boundaries constantly shifting. Both can be produced by severe depression or manic excitement, toxic psychosis due to exhaustion or starvation or sensory deprivation or simply a febrile illness. What is important in distinguishing them is their meaning and content and not their origin.