Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Sat, 18 Jul 1998 05:07:15 +0100
Given the recent talk about Mysticism and Idealism and A and
Not-A, this bit of text by Joe Campbell seemed particuarly relavent, so
I
thought I'd share it:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
THE ONE THUS COME (from *The Mythic Image*)
The word "yoga" is from the Sanskrit verbel root *yuj*, meeaning
"to yoke, to join," to yoke one thing to another. What is to be joined
through yoga is consciousness to its source.... Or to recast the idea in
terms of the lunar and solar light: What is to be joined is the
reflected
light of the sub-lunar temporal consciousness to the timeless solar
source
of the light and of all consciousness whatsoever. Such aim would seem to
be essentally that expressed in the words of Saint Paul: "It is no
longer
I who live, but Christ who lives through me." (Galatians 2:20)-- except
that in the usual Christian view, no one is to believe he is in any
sense
*identical* with Christ.
For here, as in all three of the great Levantine faiths sharing
the Biblical concept of divinity (Judaism, Christianity and Islam),
where
the godhead is regarded as a trancendental personality outside of and
ontalogically distinct from his creatures, a logic of duality is
maintained, and the religious aim is not to achieve an experience of
*identity* with godhood but to establish and maintain a *relationship*
of some kind by virtue of membership in a social group believed to be
supernaturaly endowed: the Jewish race, the Christian church, or the
Mohammedan *Sunna*.
The aim of the Indian yogi, on the other hand, is a realization
of
identity, and the key phrase, the guiding thought to this experience is
that announced in the *Chhandogya Upanishad*, as taught by the sage
Aruni
to his son: *tat tvam asi*, "thou art That"-- you, my son, are already
yourself the light of consciousness, the ground of being, the bliss in
truth which you wish to know.
Expressed in algebreic terms, if we let X stand for that mystery
of being beyond catagories [very Kantian termenology]... and A for
"you,"
Aruni's son (ie. oneself), then the message of Aruni's teaching might at
first seem to be A=X. However, on second thought, since it is obvious
that the "you" intended cannot possibly be the temporal, named,
ephimeral
appearance whith which, in one's daily consciousness, one identifies
oneself, the mediation appropreat to the contemplation of that mere
effect
of maya would be, rather, *neti,neti*, "not this, not this"; for which
thought the appropreat algebraic formulation would have to be A not= X,
"Thou art NOT that." And so we arrive, in effect, at the apparently
absurd
formulation A not=/= X (A does not, in the temporal aspect, yet does in
the immortal, equal X), as the clue to the mystic secret.
Moreover, this thought is to be applied, not just to oneself,
but
to everything whether on earth, in heaven, or in hell. The yogi is to
penetrate and cast aside (as the serpent sheds its skin) the whole
phenomenality -- forms, names and relationships -- letting only that
which
shines through all as undiferentiated consciousness remain to his
contemplation.
Pick up, for example, any object at all. Draw menatly a ring
around it, setting it off from the world. Forgetting it use, forgetting
its name, not remembering that it was made or how, or that names are
given
to its parts; not knowing *what* it is, but only *that* it is, simply
regard it; and so then: What is it?
Anything at all, any stick, stone, cat or bird, dissoceated from
every concept this way, will seem to be as a wonder w/o "meanning," a
begining and an end in itself-- like the universe, "thus come"
(*tahagata*). The Buddha is called the "One Thus Come," Tahagata, and
"all
things are Buddha things." Or as James Joyce states in *Ulyssese*: "Any
object, intensly regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptable
eon of the gods." For contemplating it thus we are thown back upon our
own
pure state, as subject to an object, each then the aspect of a mystery
"thus come":
You light the fire;
I'll show you something nice,--
A great ball of snow.
(Zen Haiku by Basho)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In Pirsig-speak, we go from pre-intellectual to intellectual
(the
realm of the knife) and back to unity, now post-intellectual because
it's
a unity again, but w/ the benifet of having made the journey. (In this
sense DQ is a "5th level" above IntPoVs. But it is also the ground out
of
which all these paterns are symultaniously arrising, the way Magnus
tends
to see it.)
Or in Hegelian-speak: We go from immediat ("mediate": to go
between/divide) "in-itself" (implicitly unified) to mediated "for
itself" (which is discribed as the subject "ruthlessly tearing itself
appart" [knife!knife!]) and then to "in-and-for-itself" where we are
again
a unity but now explicit and self-conscious.
But (just to complicate things) Hegel layes another layer over
this. The mystic's unity is in-and-for-itself in-itself -- it's only
implicit because it cant be communicated or is trying to symbolically
express something "beyond catagories" (as is the case w/
mythology/religion; Hegel deals w/ Jesus as a symbolic example the
actual
unity of mortal man and "The Absolute"). So it cycles around again
until
it becomes in-and-for-itself for-itself in Hegel's own philosophy.
(Well,
he wasn't very modest, anyway. The guy had cutzpu.)
Confused? I think I am.
But there's my responce (not my answer) to the DQ question.
(Answers tend to stop thought; this should be seen as an attempt to push
thought forward.)
(Forgive the lengthy quote from Campbell, but he just capselates
things so much better than I can.)
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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