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| 1963 World's fair Bubbleator |
If we take the bare expression, "I am that" [Tat Tvam Asi], we shall probably note a certain difference between the tone in which it must have been uttered long ago by the Eastern Yogi and the tone in which it is uttered today by the Western devotee of imagination. There would be a difference of emphasis. For the Yogi, desirous of advancing further along the path of wisdom, the important thing is, or was, to feel "I am that"—there is indeed such an entity as I myself and I can find it by looking at the outer world. That is his discovery. For the Westerner, on the other hand, as he develops his imagination, the novel experience is to feel "I am that." There was never any doubt of there being an entity called "I," he feels, but the great discovery, the advance in wisdom, is the realization that this "I" is not shut up inside this physical body as if in a kind of box, as he had naturally supposed. No, it is out there in the flower and the stone. "I" am not merely this seer but the seen. I am that.It was Burgeon, was it not, that called it the "Hoti" (that) sphere in the 20s when he was warring with Lewis? Burgeon has such a remarkable stability to what he knows. Of course, he had the luxury of being excused from the friction of the world that would require adjustments. I think he called it the friction of the unrepresented.
--Owen Barfield, Romanticism Comes of Age27-28
Both Burgeon and the Sadhu sitting in the jungle know that they and the Tiger are the same. Burden, Barfield's double, thinks "ah… that is perfectly true from a neurological perspective, but the Tiger refutes that point of view when he eats your brains". Burgeon's glimpse of the truth about the Hoti sphere has had no survival value until now, and the fiction of separation with the literal has been with us ever since consciousness evolved the sense of self. Which is very much longer than the existence of Homo Sapiens, if Antonio Damasio is right about animal consciousness.
Literalism and separation are well dug in.
Hi John:
ReplyDeleteI just got to your blog post from your response on the Barfield site. I don't understand Barfield's interpretation of "I am That" at all. It sounds like Steiner, whose Gita interpretation is as close to the opposite of what the Gita is about as I've ever seen (I've read about 20 other commentaries). the "I" in "I am That" has nothing to do with the separate self, the abstract center of thoughts, feelings, sensations, beliefs of the modern individual. It refers to an infinite Awareness within which both the lived, or phenomenal world and all the abstract, conceptualized worlds of western theology, western philosophy and global modern science exist. This awareness is not a phenomenon; it is not, by definition, an appearance, it is That by which any appearance can appear, if you will. Both Barfield's and Steiner's interpretation of the yogi woudl not be possible without an unstated assumption of some kind of lesser evolution of the yogi, or so it seems to me:>)))
Don (http://www.blogger.com/profile/13741454531338054082) sent me this note:
ReplyDeleteHi John:
I just got to your blog post from your response on the Barfield site. I don't understand Barfield's interpretation of "I am That" at all. It sounds like Steiner, whose Gita interpretation is as close to the opposite of what the Gita is about as I've ever seen (I've read about 20 other commentaries). the "I" in "I am That" has nothing to do with the separate self, the abstract center of thoughts, feelings, sensations, beliefs of the modern individual. It refers to an infinite Awareness within which both the lived, or phenomenal world and all the abstract, conceptualized worlds of western theology, western philosophy and global modern science exist. This awareness is not a phenomenon; it is not, by definition, an appearance, it is That by which any appearance can appear, if you will. Both Barfield's and Steiner's interpretation of the yogi woudl not be possible without an unstated assumption of some kind of lesser evolution of the yogi, or so it seems to me:>)))
On an earlier page, Barfield described the phrase "Tat Tvam Asi" as one given to the disciple. The paragraph following the passage quoted also state that he is describing in the western case, a "poet philosopher" trying to transcend the "normal consciousness", not any sort of adept master who is near achieving the unity. The eastern counterpart is also at this starting point.
ReplyDeleteSo what does Barfield have to say about the actual achievement of this ultimate unity? For the advanced westerner, the language of the passage is largely identical, except when the "I" is used, but it isn't anything less than the infinite that has some sort of connection with the particular location of the asthete's body. In the western case it is the "I" of the "I am" that lies deep within Coleridge's base of Imagination- a transpersonal connection with the infinite (God)- whose light shines from within due by grace of the Holy Spirit.* This is the "realization of the inwardness of the Divine Name" (SA p 171)- the "I AM" that resides within us after the incarnation (in Barfield's account).
I have not seen Steiner's Gita interpretation nor studied Steiner to comprehend what he does and does not understand about eastern traditions.
My thumbnail above is what I think Barfield believed is possible for devotees coming from the western tradition. This is not unity with some wise fatherly fellow in the sky who takes a personal interest in affair of particular individuals. Post Kantian God who can only be described in self negating statements as Lao Tso described Tao. If God is all, then it is a blaspheme to subject him to any categories whatever. This is the unity of Being and not Being since God is not even subject to the category of existence. So less than a unity with an unmanifest- the infinity of the unrepresented.
So if I am wrong and the passage intended a description of masters, the yogi would be in contact with the same I AM, and so there is only the deepest respect for the distance from the personal self that is being attempted by the sadhu.
In any case, the master and the disciple have same difficulty refuting the Tiger's argument.
*Coleridge: "The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and the prime Agent of all human Perception, as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM." As quoted in What Coleridge thought p. 74.