The Worship of Art, The Art of Worship

I believe I have commented somewhere in blog-dom past (probably in response to Mohanty’s “Feelings, Poetics, and Religion”) on the fact that I find aesthetic experience to be intimately linked to religious experience. As such, I seem to have found a kindred spirit in Donna M. Wulff, who, in “Religion in a New Mode: The Convergence of the Aesthetic And The Religious in Medieval India” argues for an abandonment of the religion-art dichotomy characteristic of western academia whist grappling with matters pertaining to South Asian. I agree that the dissolution (or at least softening) of this dichotomy is essential to more viable appreciation for religious and aesthetic phenomena in the Indic context. After all, is the association between religion and art so foreign to us? Do snakes not enter “trance” states due to music? Was sufi poetry not born of mystical experiencing? In fact, all religions known to us incorporate music in some way shape or form. Is the inspiration and/or expression of art and music so separate for us? I agree wholeheartedly with Wulff that we overlook the religious significance of various artistic phenomena (music, architecture, dance) due to an inappropriate theological bias. We thus often conflating religion with doctrine, eclipsing the role of art in the religious process.

Wulff compares the aesthetic theories of Abhinavagupta , Kasmiri Saiva (10th-11th century), and Bengali Vaisnava Rupa Gosvami, from 16th century Brindavan (author or “Bhaktirasamrtasindhu”) in order to demonstrate the inextricability of religion and aesthetics in the South Asian context. She actually goes as far as the Taittiriya Upanisad (“some fifteen centuries before Abhinava”) where the term “rasa” is associated with bliss. However, despite my agreement with her overarching argument, I am tempted to regard this piece of “evidence” with scrutiny. After all, is there any mention of aesthetic theory in this Upanishad? The mere use of the term “rasa” is insufficient given the age and breadth of the Sanskrit language: words have necessarily assumed other meanings, and various nuances. I am therefore uncertain that Wulff’s invocation of the Upanishad is entirely appropriate.

However, I find her argument based on Abhinava’s theological predilection most compelling. She writes that, according to Kashmiri Saivism, ajnana is the fundamental cause of human suffering, and that the sole goal of life is absorption into the fullness of Siva’s divine being which occurs when once has transcended one’s limited, individual view of reality. This ultimate state is personified, in this school, as the deity Shiva. However, much like in Advaita, Samkhya, and other soteriological schools, one is faced with the dilemma of how the practitioner transitions from individual ego consciousness into this luminous intelligence (prakasa) and ultimate fullness (purna) which is divine consciousness and the ground of absolute being. How indeed may we venture into unmediated consciousness (anupaya)? Discourse on Aesthetics offers both a similar crisis and a parallel solution. How does one leave one’s individual self, refraining from identifying with individual emotion, in order to experience “unembodied” rasa?

Rasa, much like metaphysical reality, purportedly transcends the time and place of the particular. In karuna rasa, one is not individually sad, not does one fixate on a particular experience of sadness. Indeed, when one experiences rasa, one does not experience one’s individuates self, for, rasa is not localiszed in that self. It is as slippery as the ‘absolute consciousness’ of object-less knowing as purported by these various metaphysical schools. Rasa is therefore necessarily alaukika (supra-mundane) or lokottara (transcendent). Both the yogic and the aesthetic experience result in timeless bliss. I greatly appreciation her cross-examination of our unreflexive tendency towards segregating aesthetic experience form the religion variety. Both, conveniently, occur just outside of the threshold of language, therefore what can possibly be ‘said’ to effectively dissociate the two? Indeed Abhinava is carefully to distinguish aesthetic experience and religious experience to a certain extent, yet they both result in bliss, which is, as far as I understand, wholly unified. However, as Wulff points out: “Although he does not say so explicitly, Abhinava seems to imply that such experiences, like the tantric meditative practices that they closely resemble, are effective means of attaining this ultimate realization” (678). But why does he not say so? Why indeed does Abhinava appear to tiptoe around this convergence of the aesthetic and the religious? Was it so obvious to him that he thought it not worth mentioning, in the way, for example, that we wouldn’t mention the invention of the ‘television’ set in any discourse on the phenomenon of ‘youtube’? Was it perhaps too taboo, in the sense that a secular scholar of religion would only ever allude to visions he may have experienced? But was he not an overt Saivite, having even authored metaphysical discourses such as Trantraloka? Clearly his essential outlook on reality can not be factored out of his writing on aesthetics. Could it be that he did not in fact associate the two to the extent to which Wulff purports? Although I don’t know why he doesn’t say so implicitly, I can’t help but think that someone so entrenched in religious thought would be able to suspect this outlook whilst engaging in aesthetic theory.

Gerow and Aklujkar, for example, argue against the parity of the aesthetic and the religious experience on the basis that the ‘transience’ of the former is wholly incongruent with the ‘permanence’ of the latter. However, I fully agree with Wilff that various religious trance states along the path of liberation, too, are ‘transient’. So, their argument becomes invalid. Experiences of rasa are like windows out of causality which permit one brief glimpses into the timeless grounds beyond the confines of samsara. So, too, are yogic trances. They don’t last, but may provide insight into “the lasting”. I agree, too, that this does not result in the deification of art, but, rather, in the recognition of art’s transformative potency, a potency which can move the individual even into the realm of religious experiencing.

As Wulff points out, rasa is clearly an intensely religious term for the Vaisnava Bhakta Rupa. Wulff tries to argue, though, that his conception of bhakti is fundamentally aesthetic, however, I am not convinced of this. All of the examples of “aesthetic” dramatizations used are enactments of the life and feats of mythical deity Krishna. Indeed one is meant o witness these plays over and over again, enhancing one’s experience each time, but we cannot ignore that these are religious plays, and so the aesthetic experience itself is an act of piety. For Rupa, rasa is clearly devotional first and aesthetic (if this is indeed a second category) second. His conception of rasa is not, in my opinion “fundamentally an aesthetic one”, for, even thought he prescribed the gradual refinement of aesthetic appreciation through repeated encounters with the artistic medium, he advocates the use of an overtly religious artistic medium. However, I don’t think this fundamentally opposes the kind of experiencing Abhinava describes. Both thinkers clearly envision an experience which compromises conceptions of individuality and selfhood. Both allude to the attainment of bliss. But is watching a play or listening to music not quite distinct from performing ritual? Is mantra not music? Must it not be chanted? To what extent, then, is musicality - and perhaps, by extension, art in general, divorced from religiosity? These issues will surely not be resolved in the course of one blog entry, however, it is clear to me that both religion and art are common denominators to all human cultures, neither of which exhibit any obvious empirical utility, and both of which are vehicles for elation and transformation. I can’t help but feel that the aesthetic experience must be ties to the religious experience, and vice verse, since they both appear to be tied to the human spirit.