Against Apocalypse by Fred Dallmayr

Author:Fred Dallmayr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Relation Restored

The derailments I have discussed before all derive from a common source. In each case, the constituent parties are construed as fixed, self-contained substances whose nature can be determined with finality. Viewed in this manner, the encounter of substances resembles the clash of billiard balls or rather the collision of radically different, antagonistic elements. In the clamor of heightened confrontation, each party seeks to sideline, subdue, or expunge the other—which are modes of violence. Are there perhaps other forms of relation or encounter? In order to make some headway in this field, I take my bearings initially from Indian philosophy. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad contains the startling assertion that “atman” is “brahman”—where atman stands for the questioning human self and brahman for the whole of Being or for the divine (the latter taken in a nonpersonal sense). Even more forcefully, the text states: “Aham brahmasmi,” meaning “I am brahman”—which seems to suggest something close to identity.[8] But how is this possible seeing that “atman” or “aham” designates a particular entity, and brahman the total horizon of all beings? Is the antagonism of opposed substances here simply replaced by coincidence or nondifferentiation? Or is there an alternative to both identity and separation (that is, to monism and dualism)?

The Spanish-Indian thinker Raimon Panikkar has reflected extensively on this issue. As he points out in his book The Rhythm of Being, the Vedic expression remains unintelligible as long as we fix our glance on self-contained, knowable substances. As he states somewhat provocatively: “Brahman is not known by those who know, because it is not knowable [in that way]; it is not an [external] object and, therefore, cannot be an object of knowledge.” Above all, brahman is not “an abstract reality” amenable to the cogito or knowing subject. What one needs to ponder here is not an epistemic subject-object relation, but rather an ontological and experiential encounter. Brahman, Panikkar continues, is “not an object of knowledge”; but “one knows brahman in every act of cognition, when it is a flash of awakening or illumination (prati-bodha). Authentic knowing is not an epistemological activity but an ontological state.” Expressed in a somewhat different idiom: The divine “is not a question of cognition but of Being.” We cannot know the source of knowing (brahman), for then it would become simply a known object: “Nonetheless, we can be it. We can participate in brahman by sharing in Being.”[9]

As one can see, the divine-human relation turns at this point from a cognitive grasp into a participatory and profoundly transformative experience, a kind of mutual in-dwelling. Transformation here means chiefly a seasoning and purification of atman or the human self. In Panikkar’s words: “Unless and until we have discarded ahamkara or egoism, we cannot even begin to philosophize. Philosophy is not the hunting for entities and their links or causes in the critically polished field of consciousness.” Rather, “it is the opening of our purified conscious being to the self-disclosure of [divine] reality.” Only against the background of this transformative seasoning does the Vedic saying—atman is brahman—begin to make sense.

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