Tuesday 23 February 2016

Upanishad,Bergson, Otto, Yeats


In the beginning all this was but the unmanifested (Brahman). From this that emerged the manifested. That Brahman created Itself by Itself. Therefore It is called the self-creator.
That which is known as the self-creator is verily the source of joy; for one becomes happy by coming in contact with that source of joy. Who, indeed, will inhale, and who will exhale, if this Bliss be not there in the supreme space (within the heart). This one, indeed, enlivens (people). For, whenever an aspirant gets fearlessly established in this unperceivable, bodiless, inexpressible, and unsupporting Brahman, he reaches the state of fearlessness. For, whenever the aspirant creates the slightest difference in it, he is smitten with fear. Neverthless, that very Brahman is a terror to the (so-called) learned man who lacks the unitive outlook.
(from Taititriya Upanisad II.vii.1)

This I think is the direction that Bergson is going in Two Sources. We have to move away from the instinctive basis of tribal morality towards the enthusiasm of the religious ground of fearless universal love. The instinctive arising out of the self-protection of the group gives way to personal joy. The rational won’t do that for us, nor will the irrational. I’m with Otto and the non-rational. When however the rational goes to work on the instinctive and begins to de-legitimise it nothing much is left to guide those without a religious sense. The healthy functioning of society is in danger.

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THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. 
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
(written in 1919, from Michael Robartes and the Dancer)


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