Let us return to Whitman and his Leaves of Grass. Where Leaves matches the Gita is in the expansiveness of it; Krishna's long recitation of the phenomenon of the natural world and his underpinning of them, find its counterpart in Whitman's inclusivity. Whitman simply keeps stating that he is this and he is that: just to bring something into his orbit is for Whitman to become it. There are similarities with the Tao Te Ching, as Carpenter pointed out; which is a quiet thing that also insinuates itself into your soul, quite unlike the drama and passion of the Gita. Both Lao Tzu and Whitman strike me as speaking of life after enlightenment, rather than the path to it, as in most Hindu and Buddhist texts. But Leaves is as different from the Gita as it is from the Tao; it has little history (in the West at least) of being read intentionally as a religious text. With the Gita we have to work hard to subtract out the religious and the cultural, but w, butbbbith Leaves Whitman does not inadvertently obscure his message with the religious language of his time; instead he deliberately obscures it through poetical device. Once we know this Leaves can be read, as we have done, as a text in Pure Consciousness Mysticism. We still are left with one cultural influence on his work: Leaves is indisputably American, representing probably all that is best in the truly American impulse: expansive, generous, brash. It nods in respect to its European roots, but moves on, in contrast to Nietzsche, for example, who attempts to shoulder the crushing burden of Europe's decay.
Krishna codified the mysticism of the Vedas, and added his own special something to it, in his sometimes harsh and uncompromising advice to Arjuna to fight. What does Whitman add to our understanding of mysticism? Something quite new, and relevant to our time, I would say: democracy. Democracy was unknown to Krishna: he was a prince, Arjuna was of the warrior caste, and Krishna speaks openly as being the creator of the caste system, the horrors of which we include under the broad heading of feudalism, and try to consign to the past. The industrial and social revolutions that lead to post-civil war America in the 19th Century made democracy a reality, and Whitman is its poet. At the time of writing the term democracy has possibly lost some of the optimistic associations it had in Whitman's time, and clearly Whitman's use of the word democracy is not as a description of a specific form of constitution or governmental and electoral apparatus: it is about its root impulse. Democracy for Whitman had its basis in love, but meant something practical too — a recognition of one's fellow citizen from which springs the willingness to listen, to participate, to debate, and to accept the community's decisions, without which the best legislated constitution in the world has no meaning. Democracy for Whitman also gives each person a value that the feudal structures deny, and he is quite clear that the religions that arose in feudal times have had their day and must give way to something new.
What could democracy mean in the context of mysticism however? Clearly the issues of mysticism cannot be decided by voting, any more than an individual can seek election to the eternal and infinite through a mandate from his or her community. No, the relevance must lie in the availability of it. Krishna insists on a devotion to his person (or perhaps through his person) which is a route still open to those who have a strongly developed and instinctively devotional nature; Mother Meera and many others are available as a modern equivalent (though it would be misleading to suggest that she encourages devotion to her person). But it is not really in keeping with the ethos of our time, for it places the object of devotion on a pedestal long since tarnished by autocratic abuse. Whitman is honest about himself as mystic: he is a rare being, and rare will be those who really understand him, but nevertheless, he excludes no-one, and finds that the sun shines on the prostitute as much as on him, that waters glisten and rustle for her as much as for him, and his words glisten and rustle for her as much as for anyone. Everybody has access to his expansivity and deathlessness, if they can but partake of Leaves.
But how can you partake of Leaves if you don't know what you are looking for? Whitman's only pedagogy is the hypnotic effect of his recitations, he offers us no route or method to join him: just a jump across an unbridgeable abyss.
Harding offers us the bridge. He shows us directly the expansive and eternal nature of our beings, in front of our noses. There is no moral elevation, intellectual illumination, or devotional practice involved: we just have to work at it, to see what we are looking out of. There is no need for difficult terminology either, or abstract philosophical concepts: what we are looking out of is plain English for the unmanifest. Harding's truths are not hidden by a furtive old hen, they are plain and stubbornly in yer face, as modern youth might put it, and there is a manifest democracy in his followers too, perhaps due to Harding's lack of emphasis on improvement of the individual. This cuts out the speculation, often rife amongst communities of seekers, as to who is making best 'progress'; instead, with his emphasis on 'seeing' one's infinite nature right now as the space for all that is manifest, one tends to embrace others in something of the neutral Whitman fashion.
Pure Consciousness Mysticism however requires only that an individual identify with the infinite and the eternal; no particular route to it is better than any other, even though Whitman's and Harding's democratic approaches are more in tune with the times than the devotional. Our discussions of nature mysticism do suggest the possibility that the devotional impulse (for it is as perennial as the grass) might be appropriately directed towards nature. Nietzsche, as we shall see in the next chapter, may have realised this when he said that to blaspheme against nature was the only blasphemy now. It is hard however, to see how a pedagogy can be built from Whitman's tree, Jefferies' sky, and Krishnamurti's daffodil, other than the silence it can engender in one. I also know from personal experience that love of nature is different to the devotion for a guru, and that both can be equally intense. I would like to leave it as an unanswered but very important question in Pure Consciousness Mysticism, how to make a pedagogy from the love of nature, other than to suggest we consider the silence and sublimity of nature; that Jefferies' idea of our human form as a distillate of nature be pursued, and that nature be seen as simply a joyous manifestation of the unmanifest. It is important, perhaps even urgent, to develop a nature mysticism because of the disrepute that devotion has fallen into and because of the ecological problems of the planet.
1References for Chapter Two: Whitman
Bucke, R.M. Cosmic Consciousness - A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, Olympia Press, London, 1972
2 Zaehner, R.C. Drugs, Mysticism and Make-Believe, Collins, London 1972, p. 60 and p. 63
5 Burroughs, John, Whitman: A Study, London 1894
6 Carpenter, Edward, Days with Walt Whitman, London: George Allen, 1906
7 O'Connor, William Douglas, The Good Gray Poet - A Vindication, New York: Bunce and Huntingdon 1866
8 Underhill, E. Mysticism - The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, UK, 1993, p.192 and p. 255
9 James, W. The Varieties of Religious Experience, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1986, p.87
10 Allen, G.W. The Solitary Singer A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1985, p.ix
11 Burroughs, John, Whitman: A Study, London 1894, p.41
12 ibid p. 35
13 ibid p. 36
14 Bucke, R.M. Walt Whitman, Philadelphia, 1883, p. 42
15 Whitman, W. Leaves of Grass, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 1990
16 Bucke, R.M. Walt Whitman, Philadelphia, 1883,p. 50
17 ibid p. 29
18 ibid 1883, p. 55
19 Burroughs, John, Whitman: A Study, London 1894 p.41 p.49
20 ibid p. 50
21 ibid p. 51
22 Carpenter, Edward, Days with Walt Whitman, London: George Allen, 1906, p. 5
23 ibid, p. 15
24 See for example the plates in The Gospel of Ramakrishna
25 Chandmal, Asit, One Thousand Moons - Krishnamurti at Eighty-Five, New York: Abrams 1985, pages 54-57
26 Carpenter, Edward, Days with Walt Whitman, London: George Allen, 1906, p. 18
27 ibid, p. 27
28 O'Connor, William Douglas, Three Tales. - The Ghost, The Bronze Android, The Carpenter, Boston: Houghon and Mifflin, 1892
29 O'Connor, William Douglas, The Good Gray Poet - A Vindication, New York: Bunce and Huntingdon 1866, p. 8
30 Carpenter, Edward, Days with Walt Whitman, London: George Allen, 1906, p. 30
31 Lawrence, D.H. Studies in Classic American Literature, London: Penguin 1977, p. 173
32 ibid p. 139
33 Whitman, Walt, Specimen Days, London: The Folio Society, 1979, p. 240
34 Lawrence, D.H. Studies in Classic American Literature, London: Penguin 1977, p. 184
35 May, Robert M., Cosmic Consciousness Revisited, Element, 1991
36 McGinn, Bernard, 'The Language of Love in Christian and Jewish Mysticism' in Katz, Steven (Ed.) Mysticism and Language, Oxford University Press 1992, pp 202 - 235
37 Carpenter, Edward, Days with Walt Whitman, London: George Allen, 1906, p. 43
38 Krishanmurti, J. The Only Revolution, New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1970, p.97
39 Abrams, Sam, The Neglected Walt Whitman: Vital Texts, New York, London: Four Walls Eight Windows 1993, p. 59
40 Mercer Dorothy, 'Walt Whitman on Reincarnation' in Vedanta and The West, IX Nov/Dec 1946
41 Rolland, Romain, Prophets of the New India, London, Toronto, Melbource, Sidney: Cassell and Co., 1930, p.273
42 ibid, p. 285
44 Chandmal, Asit, One Thousand Moons - Krishnamurti at Eighty-Five, New York: Abrams 1985, p. 21
45 Nambiar, O.K. Maha Yogi: Walt Whitman - New Light on Yoga, Bangalore: Jeevan Publications, 1978, p. 30
46 ibid, p. 236
47 Chari, V.K. Whitman in the Light of Vedantic Mysticism, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976
48 Sachitanandan, V. Whitman and Bharati: A Comparative Study, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras: The MacMillan Company of India Ltd., 1978
49 Bucke, R.M. Walt Whitman, Philadelphia, 1883, p. 61
50 Whitman, Walt, Specimen Days, London: The Folio Society, 1979, p. 118
51 Thoreau, Henry, Walden and Other Writings, Bantam, 1962, p. 16
53 ibid, p. 56
54 ibid, p. 17
55 ibid, p. 30
56 Krishanmurti, J. The Only Revolution, New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1970, p.24
57 Chandmal, Asit, One Thousand Moons - Krishnamurti at Eighty-Five, New York: Abrams 1985, p. 19
58 Lawrence, D.H. Studies in Classic American Literature, London: Penguin 1977, p. 117
59 Lawrence, D.H. The Rainbow, London: Penguin, 1988, p. 78
60 Isherwood, Christopher, Ramakrishna and his Diciples, London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1986, p. 269
61 Crisp, Quentin, 'The company of strangers', The Guardian, 2/3/1995
62 Chandmal, Asit, One Thousand Moons - Krishnamurti at Eighty-Five, New York: Abrams 1985, p. 64
64 Harding, D.E. On Having No Head - Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, London: Arkana, 1986, p. 1; also in Hofstadter, Douglas, and Dennett, Daniel (Eds.) The Mind's I, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1981, pp. 23 - 24.
65 Sangharakshita (Dennis Lingwood), The Taste of Freedom, Glasgow: Windhorse Publications, 1990, p. 9
66 Harding, D.E. On Having No Head - Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, London: Arkana, 1986, p. 43
67 Harding, D.E. The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1979
68 Harding, D.E. On Having No Head - Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, London: Arkana, 1986, p. 50
69 Harding, D.E. Head Off Stress - Beyond the Bottom Line, London: Arkana, 1990, p. 6
70 Nambiar, O.K. Maha Yogi: Walt Whitman - New Light on Yoga, Bangalore: Jeevan Publications, 1978, p. 248
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