Advaita and Synteresis/Synderesis: The Spark from Tripura Rahasya

 

What makes or made advaita an intelligible religious philosophy that you could investigate?You could have been born into it of course and have been surrounded by its adherents some of whom seemed ennobled by its teaching.  They impressed you and made it seem a path that to follow even if the ramifications of its epistemology seemed opaque.  You heard the teachings, revolved them in your mind and in the depths of quiet meditation they sunk into your spirit giving a life meaning and direction.

The curious thing is that philosophers who deal in arguments continuously have rarely taken up religious faith on that basis.  Some impulse deeper than that has moved them towards God by whatever name you call him/her/it.    They feel that it is the natural direction, they are at home in it.   Having found themselves involved their natural predilection for clarification begins to be felt. This is the surface play of their minds and separate from true attainment which outruns the mind.

Many years ago I found myself in the presence of the sage of Kanchi.  There was a small group taking his darshan.  I had no idea of his eminence in the world of Vedanta.  From behind the picket fence where he sat with his entourage he took questions.  Then one of them addressed me saying ‘announce yourself’.  I thought he said ‘enhance yourself’ and showing my puzzlement it was explained that I should tell my name and country.  Which I did.  ‘Have you a question for Swami?  I asked: ‘Should I continue my studies? (of philosophy).  Swami replied: Please continue.

Now I was several yards away from where he sat and when he made that gesture peculiar to Indian body language of turning the upheld palms of his hand outward meaning ‘carry on’ I felt a distinct push against my chest which made me almost stumble backwards.

That’s the sort of thing that you don’t argue with, a finger in the chest saying ‘wake up’.  At the same time the ruminative mind wants to chew the cud of argument.  For me this passage from ‘Tripura Rahasya’ is that steel meeting flint.

56-63. “The mind is truly abstracted in sleep. But then its light is screened by darkness, so how can it manifest its true nature? A mirror covered with tar does not reflect images but can it reflect space either? Is it enough, in that case, that images are eliminated in order to reveal the space reflected in the mirror? In the same manner, the mind is veiled by the darkness of sleep and rendered unfit for illumining thoughts. Would such eclipse of the mind reveal the glimmer of consciousness?

“Would a chip of wood held in front of a single object to the exclusion of all others reflect the object simply because all others are excluded? Reflection can only be on a reflecting surface and not on all surfaces. Similarly also, realization of the Self can only be with an alert mind and not with a stupefied one. New-born babes have no realization of the Self for want of alertness.

“Moreover pursue the analogy of a tarred mirror. The tar may prevent the images from being seen, but the quality of the mirror is not affected, for the outer coating of tar must be reflected in the interior of the mirror. So also the mind, though diverted from dreams and wakefulness, is still in the grip of dark sleep and not free from qualities. This is evident by the recollection of the dark ignorance of sleep when one wakes.

Now in many respects ‘Tripura Rahasya’ is a philosophically zany document seriously infected by subjective idealism which would claim that we are directly in contact with mental objects.  ‘We perceive our perceptions’ was Sankara’s rebuttal.  The line between wakeful perception and dream is blurred.  Even so the insights of advaita shine through and dispel this mental virus.

Later in my reading of Advaita I would come across the same argument in the ‘Upadesa Sahasri’ of Shankaracarya his only non commentarial book.  I have posted extensively about this.  Follow the topic links.

Sintering in welding involves bonding together.  It can be traced back to a common root in old German with ‘cinder’.  I wonder if it might not be cognate with ‘synteresis’ /also ‘synderesis'(soul spark: Greek) or the spark from the divine that leads the soul to recognise the good, the dharmic.  This is the first event in the journey to the source.  The philosophical ruminations keep the fire going though in many ways they may be damp second rate fuel.

 

Tantra, Yantra, Mantra.

I used an expression in my previous post, 'noetic map', an ungainly locution I freely admit and without excusing it let me plead for its retention. It has some flavour of 'mind maps' those doodles which Tony Buzan writes about,
mind maps
that have both a mnemonic and inspiriting effect. There is also in it, but expanded to a lifetime, the Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo. Frances Yates in her The Art of Memory has written about it. (cf. Yates)
If your soul is your way of living the world then there are events, pictures, poems, memories, books that point like finger-posts towards areas in one's soul. Using Bergson's image of the inverted cone (cf:memory cone) that area is a conic section as it were.

By Tantra, Yantra and Mantra states of consciousness are accessed and goals are attained. According to the Saundarya Lahiri even the fascination of women can be achieved without the use of expensive unguents and aftershave. It requires a gold or lead plate with Yantra (mystic diagram) and bijas inscribed to be worn and to be worshipped for 6 days with 1000 repetitions of stanza p.d.and an offering of tri-madhura or cooked rice. The stanza is a Bollywood dance routine:

Damsels in hundreds, with their locks dishevelled, their saris flying off their figures, their girdles bursting asunder with force, their silk garments slipping down, run after a decrepit, ugly and impotent man who falls within the range of Thy (Devi) side-glances.

The use of visualisation is well developed in Buddhist and Hindu iconography but there are also the standard literary tropes such as the mirror and all its elements which are used in the explication of cosmology in Tantra and Vedanta. In both the Tripura Rahasya an ancient Sanskrit work and Upadesa Sahasri by Shankara the 'mirror' as metaphor is used extensively. That must be the subject of another post.