Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 5 Number 2, August 2004
Special Issue: Jacques Derrida’s Indian Philosophical Subtext
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Grinshpon,
Yohanan. Crisis
and Knowledge: The Upanishadic Experience and Storytelling
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp. 146. £ 35.00
American University of Sharjah, U.A.E
In Crisis and Knowledge: The Upanishadic Experience and Storytelling, Yohanan Grinshpon explores the relation between the philosophical “contents” and storytelling “contexts” of Upanishadic texts. In contrast to the interpretations of Western commentators, the “margin-dweller” of Upanishadic criticism, Grinshpon argues that the metaphysical philosophy of the Upanishads cannot be reduced to “contents” and studied without consideration of the lives and experiences (or contexts) of Upanishadic characters if we want to understand the full import of early Indian religious literature. The “crisis” of the books title refers to the experiences of the men and women of Upanishadic tales who are not only pulled toward a higher knowledge of the self by their Indian heritage, but also, as the stories themselves reveal, pushed in this direction by the crises of their daily lives and a corresponding sense inferiority, which in turn instills a desire for transcendence. After all, as Grinshpon demonstrates through the close reading of well-known stories, Upanishadic knowledge consists of the experience of an “essential otherness,” an inner space not reduceable to logical discourse as represented by the text’s philosophical contents. He shows that the “reality and otherness of the Upanishadic universe is transmitted, above all, by the storytelling and narrative of the Upanishads” (117), which unlike philosophical content portrays the actual embodiment of Vedic knowledge.
Grinshpon brings to the Upanishadic stories a modern appreciation for their dialogical contexts. The Upanishadic heroes do not simply expound upon knowledge through “great sayings” (mahāvkyā) in an historical void, but rather find themselves engaged in an interpersonal environment that elicits their stories through the force of real life conflicts. Over five chapters and an epilogue, the author explains the value and effectiveness of an approach to the Upanishads he calls a “good-enough reading.” This reading shows how the “therapeutic metaphysics” of the Upanishads relies on stories told through individual characters trying to alleviate or resolve a crisis. The early chapters of the book provide an historical overview of the interpretive approaches usually taken by margin-dwellers, and then in contrast explain how the personal crises of various heroes underpin their “contextual metaphysics.” Stories covered in the book include those of Upakosal, Maitreyī, Niciketas, and Satyakāma. “The more adequate the reading of the story—the more lively, complex, and full the context—the more anchored the reading. Thus, for example, reading Maitreyī’s story as a tale of conflict unfolding between husband and wife separately seeking access to ‘immortality’ may be powerful enough to make a contribution to understanding the apparently abstract teaching of Yājňavalkya concerning the transcendence of duality, etc.” (103). In Upanishadic storytelling, then, personal crisis leads the hero to a sense of inferiority, which in turn causes him to aspire for excellence, thereby guiding the character and reader toward the full meaning of Vedantic knowledge (or metaphysics). An under-reading of the text, Grinshpon argues, obstructs the metaphysical hermeneutics of the Upanishads.
The difficulty of Grinshpon’s argument hinges on the fact that Upanishadic knowledge transcends discursive thinking. Indologists such as Max Müller, among other margin-dwellers, did try to develop approaches for understanding Upanishadic thought from within, but in most cases these approaches centered on philosophical contents and involved an under-reading of the stories themselves. By chapter five, Ginshpon’s analysis becomes more detailed, focusing particularly on the great saying Tat tvam asi (That thou art). This saying refers to what M. Hiriyanna calls the “happy identification” of atman and Brahman (114). But even Hiriyanna, as Grinshpon notes, under-reads the context of the great saying, namely the relation between in the protagonist speaker (Uddālaka) and his son (Śvetaketu). “He even strips Tat tvam asi of its immediate philosophical environment, which consists of the repetitive reference to the subtle (anima) essence underlying the entire world. Śvetaketu, the son driven away from home and returning there imbued with a sense of superiority, challenging his biological father (Uddālaka) and defeated in turn (by his father) in a Vedic context, is totally forgotten in standard expositions of the most famous occurrence of the Upanishadic philosophy and teachings” (114). By preventing the reduction of Upanishadic knowledge to mere content, Grinshpon believes the stories help to induce in the reader an experience of Upanishadic otherness. He thus wants us to read the Upanishads as a mixed (philosophical/artistic) genre, one that combines discursive thinking and sublime experience. In essence, Crisis and Knowledge implicitly advocates a close reading that includes aesthetic experience (rasa) in addition to analytical thought.
The essential otherness of Upanishadic narratives, then, depends on the ability of the story to elicit in both character and reader an experience of transcending the ordinary mind (buddhi) and reaching the transcendental self (purusha). Sanskrit poetics, not discussed by Grinshpon, describes such an experience in terms of aesthetic rapture (rasa) induced by the power of suggestion (dhvani), which from a Western perspective falls outside the domain of discursive thinking. Indian religious literature thus integrates philosophy and poetry. The philosophical “contents” consist of great sayings such as Tat tvam asi, and the poetic contexts consist of dialogical conflicts that induce in the characters an “heightened contact with duality. In terms of the narrative, the drive to unity is a resolution of conflict. The transcendence of duality, conceptualized on the margin as a purely theoretical matter, is presented in correlation with the storytelling of conflict and its resolution. The Upanishadic stories are full, whole, and complex, and, as such, conflict underlies many of them. Thus ‘knowledge’ or the transmission of knowledge is often, in the narrative, resolution of conflict” (118). Throughout the book Grinshpon does an excellent job of legitimating this kind of close reading of the Upanishads, and especially in the example of Tat tvam asi. Although he emphasizes that the Upanishadic contexts remain largely a mystery to contemporary margin-dweller, he implies in the epilogue that the under-reading of the Upanishadic stories may be associated with lesser developed states of consciousness.
While Grinshpon does not speculate on the relation between philosophical contents and their storytelling contexts in terms of consciousness, a further explanation of the type of transcendence associated with the twin aspects of the Upanishads may involve an understanding of the two kinds of Vedic knowledge, the higher (parā) and the lower (aparā). As Grinshpon puts it, the “higher is that by which one realizes the ‘imperishable’ (aksara) . . . . Lower knowledge consists of the four Vedas and the science of phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology, metrics, and astrology” (125). The good-enough reading of Upanishadic storytelling developed here suggests that lower knowledge comes through the reader’s focusing on the philosophical contents, while higher knowledge comes through the reader’s identification with the storytelling contexts. Furthermore, lower knowledge may be associated with temporary transcendental consciousness (savikalpa Samadhi), while higher knowledge may be associated with transcendental consciousness stabilized during daily activity (nirvikalpa Samadhi). In other words, what Crisis and Knowledge seems to suggest is that the embodiment of Vedic knowledge in Upanishadic storytelling corresponds to the living experience of higher knowledge (parā), while the philosophical contents correspond to the intellectual abstractions of a lower knowledge (aparā). While commentators, particularly in the West but also in India, have dwelled mostly on the latter, Grinshpon offers the approach of a good-enough reading through which we all may begin to experience the former.