The Wholeness of Perfection 
Generally speaking, the term ‘perfection’ has been understood in two different ways : as the fulfillment of one specific goal or the realisation of a multi-levelled wholeness. The distinction between the two is not an absolute one, and is rather one of difference in emphasis. That is, there is a subtle intertwining of these two somewhat differing understandings of what ‘perfection’ is.
The first way to think of ‘perfection’ is to set before oneself a specific aim and direct all of one's energies, mental, psychical and physical towards it. That desired end could be anything really : passing an exam, bringing up a daughter, painting a masterpiece, or improving one's proficiency in a certain language. On the other hand, what is called the ‘mystical way’ is related to the second understanding of ‘perfection’ : the attainment of a wholeness that encompasses various dimensions. One reads of mystics claiming (in the Roman-Catholic/Sufi/Advaita-Vedanta traditions), through their distinctive vocabulary, that they have reached ‘rock-bottom’, meaning that they have experienced a fleeting foretaste of a (com-)union with the reality that lies underneath and beyond whatever we can see, hear, and touch. The intensity of the experience fades away, but the experience itself is not forgotten. It leaves an indelible impression on the mind and the heart of the mystic, and gives her a new orientation with which she looks out at the world. The world is then no more a mere set of objects to be consumed one after the other, but is instead seen as the locus of the presence that she had experienced in that moment of supreme intensity.
The mystic sees the world with a new pair of eyes. In one sense, she sees the ‘same’ world that we do, and yet, in another sense, it is a different world from ours. For us, the world is usually a random collection of odds and ends, a blooming and buzzing confusion, an arena of misery and pain that we try to make sense of. For the mystic, in contrast, there lies the obscure but immoveable faith, that the light that had overpowered and illuminated her is the same light that shines through the various layers of our limited empirical existence. Life is no more a uni-linear and dreary sequence of objects to be possessed and discarded one after the other, but a web of multi-layered experiences patterned around a centre shrouded in unapproacheable light.
But does it all ‘make sense’? I have tried to give a summary description of how some mystics have reported their experiences, but to those who have not had such experiences, there are two, and only two, possible ways of receiving such claims. One is to simply reject all of them as the outpourings of possessed, demented, and neurotic minds. Living as we do in a post-Freudian era, this is definitely one possible reception of such claims. It is only in the last century that we have become aware of the great extent to which genuinely neurotic experiences have in the past been disguised as ‘mystical’. Hence, it is important to exercise a cautious skepticism towards such expressions; after all, there is no end to men and women claiming to be ‘god-possessed’. (The term ‘god-possessed’ itself can mean different things to different people. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was once described as being ‘god-drunk’.) However, it may not be possible to write off all such experiences as emerging from psychical imbalances. This is especially so in the case of those mystics whose lives have been so completely changed by their experiences that instead of castigating 'the world' as the locus of evil and demoniac forces, they have rather turned back to the world to truly enjoy its beauty, and exhibited through their own lives their belief that there is an elusive centre which weaves together the various strands of our lives into a harmonising tapestry which remains hidden from the direct sight of our eyes. This second reaction could therefore be to follow these mystics as our fellow-travellers on our long, weary but not cheerless journeys towards the quest for ‘perfection’. We could think of them as the fore-runners, people who have gone ahead of us into the far country and returned to tell us about it.
In other words, the mystical search for ‘perfection’ is a transfiguration and a fulfillment of what we usually mean by the term. ‘Perfection’ is no more seen in passive terms as involving a static and completed ‘I’ that simply absorbs the world to itself. This could be called the ‘accumulative’ understanding of perfection; it assumes that the ‘I’ is perfect-in-itself, and that what is missing from the picture is the other ‘I’ to be possessed or grasped. The mystical understanding, as I have described it above, subtly but surely changes this understanding of ‘perfection’. It starts not with a completed ‘I’, but beginning with an ‘I’ that will always remain in some sense a fragmented and broken entity directs it towards the healing vision that shines through it and beyond it and guides it towards ever-richening forms of wholeness.
But even if we are to accept what the mystics claim to have experienced, why is it not the case that all of us do not have these experiences too? Does not the very fact that only a few mystics undergo such experiences invalidate them? Although that is a powerful argument against uncritically accepting anything whatsoever that we read in ‘mystical literature’, this does not in itself show that such claims must be rejected. Take the case of John who is a fan of Richard Wagner, and who has a friend who regards himself as tone-deaf when it comes to music. Now if both of them are seated in a room and an opera of Wagner's is played on the radio, John will undergo certain experiences which he will never be able to express exhaustively in words to his friend, simply because something will always be lost in this translation of a musical experience into words. Moreover, even if John makes a sincere attempt, he might not be able to put across to his friend what Wagner's music ‘feels like’, simply because his friend has no ear for music at all. In just the same way, mystics may be those people who have developed certain human sensitivities to such a refined level that they are responsive to influences that we shall hastily, without any ‘second thoughts’, shut off from our lives. A person who is tone-deaf when it comes to music may not be able to experience any delight in an opera, but that does not in itself prove that musical excellence is non-existent. In the same way, non-mystics may be people who have consistently refused to open themselves up to a presence that was always subtly trying to draw them out-of-themselves. This whole argument does not settle either way the matter between mystics and non-mystics, but what it does show is that the mere fact that mystical experiences are rare and hard to come by does not in itself invalidate them.
But how shall we explain the fact that most mystics seem to have led pain-racked and tormented lives, lives interspersed only rarely with moments of uplifting joy? One way of explaining this is to refer to the painful awareness that many mystics share of the shattered nature of the ‘I’ : it is this awareness that lends so much pathos to the mystical path. For those of us who are not mystics, it is also our inability to look into ourselves and to realise that the ‘I’ is a project to be achieved painfully through various human experiences that sets off the mystical path as something alien, cold, distant, insane, and even dangerous. In contrast, it is their tragic sensitivity towards the incompleteness of their human search that gives mystics the aura of mental-imbalancedness. Having received the gracious presence that redeems all suffering by working through it, they are pained at the realisation that it is mortally impossible to live continually in conscious knowledge of that presence. The most that can be done is to live with the powerful memories and hope, without ceasing, that the glimmerings that shine through the dark night will blossom into the glorious resplendence of the coming dawn.
The first way to think of ‘perfection’ is to set before oneself a specific aim and direct all of one's energies, mental, psychical and physical towards it. That desired end could be anything really : passing an exam, bringing up a daughter, painting a masterpiece, or improving one's proficiency in a certain language. On the other hand, what is called the ‘mystical way’ is related to the second understanding of ‘perfection’ : the attainment of a wholeness that encompasses various dimensions. One reads of mystics claiming (in the Roman-Catholic/Sufi/Advaita-Vedanta traditions), through their distinctive vocabulary, that they have reached ‘rock-bottom’, meaning that they have experienced a fleeting foretaste of a (com-)union with the reality that lies underneath and beyond whatever we can see, hear, and touch. The intensity of the experience fades away, but the experience itself is not forgotten. It leaves an indelible impression on the mind and the heart of the mystic, and gives her a new orientation with which she looks out at the world. The world is then no more a mere set of objects to be consumed one after the other, but is instead seen as the locus of the presence that she had experienced in that moment of supreme intensity.
The mystic sees the world with a new pair of eyes. In one sense, she sees the ‘same’ world that we do, and yet, in another sense, it is a different world from ours. For us, the world is usually a random collection of odds and ends, a blooming and buzzing confusion, an arena of misery and pain that we try to make sense of. For the mystic, in contrast, there lies the obscure but immoveable faith, that the light that had overpowered and illuminated her is the same light that shines through the various layers of our limited empirical existence. Life is no more a uni-linear and dreary sequence of objects to be possessed and discarded one after the other, but a web of multi-layered experiences patterned around a centre shrouded in unapproacheable light.
But does it all ‘make sense’? I have tried to give a summary description of how some mystics have reported their experiences, but to those who have not had such experiences, there are two, and only two, possible ways of receiving such claims. One is to simply reject all of them as the outpourings of possessed, demented, and neurotic minds. Living as we do in a post-Freudian era, this is definitely one possible reception of such claims. It is only in the last century that we have become aware of the great extent to which genuinely neurotic experiences have in the past been disguised as ‘mystical’. Hence, it is important to exercise a cautious skepticism towards such expressions; after all, there is no end to men and women claiming to be ‘god-possessed’. (The term ‘god-possessed’ itself can mean different things to different people. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was once described as being ‘god-drunk’.) However, it may not be possible to write off all such experiences as emerging from psychical imbalances. This is especially so in the case of those mystics whose lives have been so completely changed by their experiences that instead of castigating 'the world' as the locus of evil and demoniac forces, they have rather turned back to the world to truly enjoy its beauty, and exhibited through their own lives their belief that there is an elusive centre which weaves together the various strands of our lives into a harmonising tapestry which remains hidden from the direct sight of our eyes. This second reaction could therefore be to follow these mystics as our fellow-travellers on our long, weary but not cheerless journeys towards the quest for ‘perfection’. We could think of them as the fore-runners, people who have gone ahead of us into the far country and returned to tell us about it.
In other words, the mystical search for ‘perfection’ is a transfiguration and a fulfillment of what we usually mean by the term. ‘Perfection’ is no more seen in passive terms as involving a static and completed ‘I’ that simply absorbs the world to itself. This could be called the ‘accumulative’ understanding of perfection; it assumes that the ‘I’ is perfect-in-itself, and that what is missing from the picture is the other ‘I’ to be possessed or grasped. The mystical understanding, as I have described it above, subtly but surely changes this understanding of ‘perfection’. It starts not with a completed ‘I’, but beginning with an ‘I’ that will always remain in some sense a fragmented and broken entity directs it towards the healing vision that shines through it and beyond it and guides it towards ever-richening forms of wholeness.
But even if we are to accept what the mystics claim to have experienced, why is it not the case that all of us do not have these experiences too? Does not the very fact that only a few mystics undergo such experiences invalidate them? Although that is a powerful argument against uncritically accepting anything whatsoever that we read in ‘mystical literature’, this does not in itself show that such claims must be rejected. Take the case of John who is a fan of Richard Wagner, and who has a friend who regards himself as tone-deaf when it comes to music. Now if both of them are seated in a room and an opera of Wagner's is played on the radio, John will undergo certain experiences which he will never be able to express exhaustively in words to his friend, simply because something will always be lost in this translation of a musical experience into words. Moreover, even if John makes a sincere attempt, he might not be able to put across to his friend what Wagner's music ‘feels like’, simply because his friend has no ear for music at all. In just the same way, mystics may be those people who have developed certain human sensitivities to such a refined level that they are responsive to influences that we shall hastily, without any ‘second thoughts’, shut off from our lives. A person who is tone-deaf when it comes to music may not be able to experience any delight in an opera, but that does not in itself prove that musical excellence is non-existent. In the same way, non-mystics may be people who have consistently refused to open themselves up to a presence that was always subtly trying to draw them out-of-themselves. This whole argument does not settle either way the matter between mystics and non-mystics, but what it does show is that the mere fact that mystical experiences are rare and hard to come by does not in itself invalidate them.
But how shall we explain the fact that most mystics seem to have led pain-racked and tormented lives, lives interspersed only rarely with moments of uplifting joy? One way of explaining this is to refer to the painful awareness that many mystics share of the shattered nature of the ‘I’ : it is this awareness that lends so much pathos to the mystical path. For those of us who are not mystics, it is also our inability to look into ourselves and to realise that the ‘I’ is a project to be achieved painfully through various human experiences that sets off the mystical path as something alien, cold, distant, insane, and even dangerous. In contrast, it is their tragic sensitivity towards the incompleteness of their human search that gives mystics the aura of mental-imbalancedness. Having received the gracious presence that redeems all suffering by working through it, they are pained at the realisation that it is mortally impossible to live continually in conscious knowledge of that presence. The most that can be done is to live with the powerful memories and hope, without ceasing, that the glimmerings that shine through the dark night will blossom into the glorious resplendence of the coming dawn.
posted by The Transparent Ironist @ 1:27 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home