Transition, forever G.N. Devy Special issue with the Sunday Magazine From the publishers of THE HINDU TRANSITIONS : September 12, 1999 Table of Contents The Hindu Business Line Frontline The Sportstar Home
That change is the only permanent truth of life seems to have been the ultimate conclusion of all human experience. Nature changes, from season to season as well as from place to place. The body changes from moment to moment. Human society changes from one historical epoch to another. It has been the experience of human life that everything in it and surrounding it keeps changing all the time. Ibsen believed that even Truth changes every eight or ten years. It has been an old philosophical question as to whether one can stand in the same river twice, because even if the stream may seem to be the same, the water in it is not. Transition, therefore, is recognised as the ultimate and absolute condition of existence.
Yet the human mind seems to agitate against change in every possible manner. An enormous amount of our psychic energy has been expended in every age and every clime in conceptualising a gigantic machinery of the absolute and the imperishable. If the sensory experience tells the intelligence that change is the essence of existence, the imagination keeps creating various motions of the changeless. This dialogue between the kshara and the akshara pervades all areas of human activity, sacred and secular, private and social, natural and cultural.
One does not know when or why man posited the notion of god. However, in whatever form this notion is manifest - personified, impersonal, totemic or as energy, - the divine is universally recognised as free from the natural laws of transition. In fact, to find an escape from the condition of perpetual transition seems to have been the ideal set before human beings by various religions. This ideal, which every human being knows is never attainable, seems to fulfil one's profound craving for bringing the natural processes of change to a halt for once and forever
At the back of the sensory perception of transition is the philosophical notion of Time. Had man not created and acknowledged Time, there would have been no possibility of perceiving transition of any kind at all. Philosophers have debated from ancient times as to whether Time is created by human cognition or whether it exists independent from it as an autonomous phenomenon, whether it is absolute in essence or merely relative. However, these are all, and without exception, only philosophical positions with axiomatic value. They can be debated but cannot be proved as scientific truth or dismissed as errors of thought. The truth of the matter is that the body, and, therefore, human consciousness, is trapped within so much that is "the other," including the phenomenal world, that the human mind has to create some, and at least notionally permanent, reference points to map out the field of consciousness. Time and Space are the two universally employed reference points. Once Time is conceptualised, the perception of transition becomes an inevitable corollary.
Yet, the concept of Time by itself cannot account for the perception of transition. Whether such a notion existed or not, the body is bound to grow old in its progression from birth to death. Similarly, matter and all material objects, go through a cycle of manifestation and dissolution. The cosmic and celestial phenomena too clearly show histories of creation and decline. And finally, communities and larger social groups keep vibrating along the dynamics of history.
One likes to believe that it was as an escape from the fear of dissolution, death and the inexorable flow of all transitions that the ancient Greek philosophers created the idea of the Ideal world. In the Ideal world of Plato and Aristotle, all worldly objects had a model, the original single object of which all worldly objects are perishable and inadequate copies. This duality between the Ideal and the Actual provided the context for Aristotle's theory of Mimesis, a theory of transition that can derive its sanctity only from the intransient.
In Indian philosophy too, stillness and poise are given the most central place. The highest knowledge is where all cognitions dissolve into the Shanta, the silence that passes all understanding. It is the condition where the mental apparatus of perceiving transitions drops off and submits itself to a detachment par excellence, which will relegate all transitions into the realm of the non real. Indian philosophy, even of aetheistic school, expected the highest sensory enjoyment, the aesthetic, to culminate in the Shanta-rasa. Cities like Abhinavagupta tell us that after all the turmoil and epoch-making war of the Mahabharata, the epic really derives its greatness from its capacity to evoke the shanta. The Upanishads and the Gita spend a considerable amount of philosophical thought on describing the akshara, the imperishable principle completely unaffected by transitions. Thus, from ancient times the dichotomy between the knowledge of transition collected by the senses and the desire to free the mind from fragmented existence have occupied the central place in man's encounter with Existence.
The prerogative to conceptualise eternal Time is not that of the philosopher's alone. Ordinary people, throughout human history, have agitated against the transience of the body and matter by actively generating folklore related to immortality and eternity. In this universal space of folklore reside all our ghosts, genie, snakes that live for centuries, nymphs, gnomes, rakshasas, gandharvas and all para-psychic beings that defy the laws of death. In fact, the Unconscious is at once gripped by the fear of death, even the mysterious wish for death, as well as is gifted with the ability to churn out the dreams of immortality. Among the lesser mortals such dreams are sustained through their subscribing to the collective fund of myths, legends and folklore of immortality. For those who are seen as strong persons, they are internalised so that these persons strive to attain immortality through their action. The most serious challenge to this wish-fulfillment comes, however, not from the intellect that knows its impossibility but from the nature of social organisation.
The needs of the body such as hunger, sleep and sexual desire create man's dependence on other human beings. The ability to use language, and the unique shape and functioning of the human brain create the possibility of vocalising and formalising the human inter-dependence. Family, clan, community, society are the progressive stages of the vocalisation and formalisation. These social structures inevitably give rise to the structures of authority and power. In their turn, such authority structures tend to result in distribution of patterns of labour necessary for survival and defence. And finally, that distribution generates within the human mind the desire to change the established hierarchies of power. Each step is logically connected with the other. The total result is that, unlike all other animal species, the human species shows a marked craving for social mobility. Revolutions are brought about, wars are fought, history is made and also continuously unmade, technologies are developed - all out of this very basic craving for effecting social mobility. In fact, progress and change are seen as positive social values by all human societies.
Thus, if the religious and philosophical ideals for man postulate the intransient and the immortal as the highest order of being, the political and social ideals for man sing the glories of change and dynamism. Human life is caught between these two, between the knowledge accumulated by the senses and that flowing from intuition, between the political and the religious. Nowhere else does this conflict come through as dramatically as in the making of John Milton's epic Paradise Lost. In it, Christ is the poetic figure for the intransient, the immortal and the eternal. As against this, Satan is the prophet of political change and historical dynamism. Satan causes the beginning of the human history, saddled with the unconscious desires and the sensory experience. Christ redeems man from it, making him free from the terror of transience. Milton found both these heroic. To choose between politics and religion was as difficult in his times as it is in ours.
This impossible choice is the very condition of the human existence. It may be probable for a Savitri to bring a Satyavan back from the fold of death, or an Orpheus to lure a Euridice away from it. It may be possible for an artist to think of a Phoenix that will defy the laws of nature altogether. However, the logic of the human body, the history of its genes, and the Time-Space bind within which it lives, make transition an inescapable reality. The nature of social organisation and the innate political wisdom make transition not only inevitable but even desirable. The fear of death, the body's attachment to itself and to the material world make transition a feared and oppressive thought. One's adjustment with the order of things makes transition a mere imagined phenomenon. The clash between these various pulls on man's senses and mind make human existence what it is. We need them all: the longing for transition for re-ordering the manifest world, the intuition of the permanent for possessing the kingdom of experience by more than mere senses. The absence of either of them will be the mockery of the other.
Yet the human mind seems to agitate against change in every possible manner. An enormous amount of our psychic energy has been expended in every age and every clime in conceptualising a gigantic machinery of the absolute and the imperishable. If the sensory experience tells the intelligence that change is the essence of existence, the imagination keeps creating various motions of the changeless. This dialogue between the kshara and the akshara pervades all areas of human activity, sacred and secular, private and social, natural and cultural.
One does not know when or why man posited the notion of god. However, in whatever form this notion is manifest - personified, impersonal, totemic or as energy, - the divine is universally recognised as free from the natural laws of transition. In fact, to find an escape from the condition of perpetual transition seems to have been the ideal set before human beings by various religions. This ideal, which every human being knows is never attainable, seems to fulfil one's profound craving for bringing the natural processes of change to a halt for once and forever
At the back of the sensory perception of transition is the philosophical notion of Time. Had man not created and acknowledged Time, there would have been no possibility of perceiving transition of any kind at all. Philosophers have debated from ancient times as to whether Time is created by human cognition or whether it exists independent from it as an autonomous phenomenon, whether it is absolute in essence or merely relative. However, these are all, and without exception, only philosophical positions with axiomatic value. They can be debated but cannot be proved as scientific truth or dismissed as errors of thought. The truth of the matter is that the body, and, therefore, human consciousness, is trapped within so much that is "the other," including the phenomenal world, that the human mind has to create some, and at least notionally permanent, reference points to map out the field of consciousness. Time and Space are the two universally employed reference points. Once Time is conceptualised, the perception of transition becomes an inevitable corollary.
Yet, the concept of Time by itself cannot account for the perception of transition. Whether such a notion existed or not, the body is bound to grow old in its progression from birth to death. Similarly, matter and all material objects, go through a cycle of manifestation and dissolution. The cosmic and celestial phenomena too clearly show histories of creation and decline. And finally, communities and larger social groups keep vibrating along the dynamics of history.
One likes to believe that it was as an escape from the fear of dissolution, death and the inexorable flow of all transitions that the ancient Greek philosophers created the idea of the Ideal world. In the Ideal world of Plato and Aristotle, all worldly objects had a model, the original single object of which all worldly objects are perishable and inadequate copies. This duality between the Ideal and the Actual provided the context for Aristotle's theory of Mimesis, a theory of transition that can derive its sanctity only from the intransient.
In Indian philosophy too, stillness and poise are given the most central place. The highest knowledge is where all cognitions dissolve into the Shanta, the silence that passes all understanding. It is the condition where the mental apparatus of perceiving transitions drops off and submits itself to a detachment par excellence, which will relegate all transitions into the realm of the non real. Indian philosophy, even of aetheistic school, expected the highest sensory enjoyment, the aesthetic, to culminate in the Shanta-rasa. Cities like Abhinavagupta tell us that after all the turmoil and epoch-making war of the Mahabharata, the epic really derives its greatness from its capacity to evoke the shanta. The Upanishads and the Gita spend a considerable amount of philosophical thought on describing the akshara, the imperishable principle completely unaffected by transitions. Thus, from ancient times the dichotomy between the knowledge of transition collected by the senses and the desire to free the mind from fragmented existence have occupied the central place in man's encounter with Existence.
The prerogative to conceptualise eternal Time is not that of the philosopher's alone. Ordinary people, throughout human history, have agitated against the transience of the body and matter by actively generating folklore related to immortality and eternity. In this universal space of folklore reside all our ghosts, genie, snakes that live for centuries, nymphs, gnomes, rakshasas, gandharvas and all para-psychic beings that defy the laws of death. In fact, the Unconscious is at once gripped by the fear of death, even the mysterious wish for death, as well as is gifted with the ability to churn out the dreams of immortality. Among the lesser mortals such dreams are sustained through their subscribing to the collective fund of myths, legends and folklore of immortality. For those who are seen as strong persons, they are internalised so that these persons strive to attain immortality through their action. The most serious challenge to this wish-fulfillment comes, however, not from the intellect that knows its impossibility but from the nature of social organisation.
The needs of the body such as hunger, sleep and sexual desire create man's dependence on other human beings. The ability to use language, and the unique shape and functioning of the human brain create the possibility of vocalising and formalising the human inter-dependence. Family, clan, community, society are the progressive stages of the vocalisation and formalisation. These social structures inevitably give rise to the structures of authority and power. In their turn, such authority structures tend to result in distribution of patterns of labour necessary for survival and defence. And finally, that distribution generates within the human mind the desire to change the established hierarchies of power. Each step is logically connected with the other. The total result is that, unlike all other animal species, the human species shows a marked craving for social mobility. Revolutions are brought about, wars are fought, history is made and also continuously unmade, technologies are developed - all out of this very basic craving for effecting social mobility. In fact, progress and change are seen as positive social values by all human societies.
Thus, if the religious and philosophical ideals for man postulate the intransient and the immortal as the highest order of being, the political and social ideals for man sing the glories of change and dynamism. Human life is caught between these two, between the knowledge accumulated by the senses and that flowing from intuition, between the political and the religious. Nowhere else does this conflict come through as dramatically as in the making of John Milton's epic Paradise Lost. In it, Christ is the poetic figure for the intransient, the immortal and the eternal. As against this, Satan is the prophet of political change and historical dynamism. Satan causes the beginning of the human history, saddled with the unconscious desires and the sensory experience. Christ redeems man from it, making him free from the terror of transience. Milton found both these heroic. To choose between politics and religion was as difficult in his times as it is in ours.
This impossible choice is the very condition of the human existence. It may be probable for a Savitri to bring a Satyavan back from the fold of death, or an Orpheus to lure a Euridice away from it. It may be possible for an artist to think of a Phoenix that will defy the laws of nature altogether. However, the logic of the human body, the history of its genes, and the Time-Space bind within which it lives, make transition an inescapable reality. The nature of social organisation and the innate political wisdom make transition not only inevitable but even desirable. The fear of death, the body's attachment to itself and to the material world make transition a feared and oppressive thought. One's adjustment with the order of things makes transition a mere imagined phenomenon. The clash between these various pulls on man's senses and mind make human existence what it is. We need them all: the longing for transition for re-ordering the manifest world, the intuition of the permanent for possessing the kingdom of experience by more than mere senses. The absence of either of them will be the mockery of the other.
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