Embodied consciousness in tantric yoga and the phenomenology of merleau ponty

RELIGION and the ARTS Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 www.brill.nl/rart Embodied Consciousness in Tantric Yoga and the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty* James Morley Ramapo College of New Jersey Abstract Yoga, the ancient inter-religious thread running through all Indian Spirituality, shares a remarkable congruence with twentieth-century phenomenology But this conjuncture is not based on a common aspiration of “transcendence from the world,” as argued by previous comparisons Instead, by applying the more advanced Existential Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to the more indigenous Tantric stream of yoga, it will be shown that this congruence occurs in just the opposite direction of immersion into the very “flesh of the world”—the lived human body as homology of the cosmos Yoga may offer phenomenology a much-needed somatic contemplative praxis, as much as phenomenology may offer yoga the basis for an appropriate theoretical articulation Keywords Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology, somatic spirituality, Tantric yoga I Introduction S hortly after my graduate training in phenomenological psychology, personal circumstances made me a frequent visitor to India I was not, like many Western travelers, staying in ashrams or five-star hotels but was actually living amongst middle class Indians to whom I was related by marriage During my many extended stays, I was through good fortune introduced to a renowned authority on yoga and we developed a warm relationship where I was exposed to yoga practice in the best possible way As my yoga practice developed I grew perpetually astonished by the correspondence between yoga and the existential-phenomenology of my graduate training—a serendipitous *) I wish to express special thanks to my friend and fellow pilgrim, Richard Kearney, for his encouragement and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/156852908X270980 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 145 discovery upon which this essay will be based But one of the most remarkable aspects of my accidentally privileged access to ordinary Indian life has been my visits to rural village settings—the so-called “real” India here, I had the opportunity to witness such phenomena as exorcisms, spirit possessions, traditional healing practices, and daily rituals, which added another dimension to my understanding of the place of yoga in Indian spiritual life In other words, I came to see that there is, for lack of a better term, a concrete “folk yoga” far more primordial and archaic than the Sanskritized or formal versions of yoga we find in Western bookshops In due time I came to appreciate this other less literate, more down-to-earth dimension to Indian spiritual practices—equally yogic but with another more somatic focus that is best described as Tantric Ahead I shall strive to illustrate how this Tantric dimension of yoga and the particularly incarnational version of phenomenology expressed by Merleau-Ponty both share a profound commonality that may be mutually illuminating II Yoga and Phenomenology: Towards a Secular Spirituality Perhaps the original inter-religious movement, the practice of yoga is an ancient approach to personal spiritual development that eschews dogma, creed, and institutionalization Originating in the religious trance technologies of Neolithic culture, Mircea Eliade describes yoga as “a living fossil, a modality of archaic spirituality that has survived nowhere else.”1 Indeed, in India we find one of the few civilizations whose religious continuity was unbroken by foreign conquests as such invaders, and new religious movements alike, were merely absorbed into the massive “spiritual laboratory” that is pluralistic India In fact, the Ellora caves bear physical testimony to this ecumenism Few places on earth demonstrate such open acceptance of multiple religious standpoints For, instead of defacing or carving over each other’s previous stonework, each generation of artisans at Ellora respectfully left their predecessors’ work untouched he remarkable sculpture of Shiva at Ellora is profoundly exemplary of exactly this spirit of “unity within diversity”—the Indian eco-religious contribution to humankind, and a worthy ideal for any age where we see the symbols of three religions almost playfully flowing together (sanga) into a common image Here the Hindu deity Shiva is represented in the form of a stick-wielding teacher whose 1) Eliade 361 his text is an unparalleled masterpiece of yoga scholarship 146 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 earrings reflect Jainism while his right hand expresses a Buddhist hand gesture (dharma mudra) Clearly the message is one of respect and reverence to all approaches to spiritual knowledge (fig 1).2 Figure Shiva Lakulisha Figure (Cave 29), c 700 CE Stone carving Ellora, India Photograph: James Morley Moreover, throughout the Ellora and Adjanta caves—Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain—we see figures assuming a common body posture, which should not be overlooked Nearly all prominent carved figures maintain the seated meditation position called the lotus posture or padma-asana, the emblem of yoga practice 2) I wish to thank Mary Anderson for her graciously detailed explication of all of these Ellora and Ajanta cave sculptures, and for referring me to the following two texts: Gupte and Mahajan 216, and Dhavalikar 82–3 he authors point out that this statue has strongly mixed influences especially South Indian Chola sources I was referred to this inter-religious interpretation through local folk tradition and maintain that the Jain ear symbolism reflects a specific South Indian Jain ritual of piercing the ears of children shortly after birth Also, one finds earrings to be ubiquitous to Jain imagery J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 147 Indeed, one of the remarkable continuities that may have sustained India’s pluralistic spirituality is the practice of yoga, common to all Indian religions While thematically permeating nearly all dimensions of Indian art and literature reaching back into the Harappan Indus river culture (4000–3000 BCE), it was not until Patanjali (150–200 CE) that yoga received a formal written status as a discipline in its own right, distinct perhaps from the other schools of philosophy and religion of ancient India In his classical Sanskrit Yoga Sutras, Patanjali appears to have sifted through the religious systems of his time and culture (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Samkhya, and even Tantrictribal) to assemble the most effective contemplative techniques available at the time into one integrated approach he Yoga Sutras can be viewed as a practice manual that is theologically agnostic and, in contemporary terms, pluralistic in a way that offers the paradoxical possibility of a “secular spirituality”—that is, a point of view which is neutral in matters of religious doctrine (or belief or non-belief) and serves as more of a practical applied developmental psychology than a metaphysical or religious system From this it is no wonder that yoga finds widespread popularity in a contemporary postmodern culture that is increasingly a planetary “interculture” where entrenched forms of institutionalized religions are viewed with claustrophobic suspicion by the new cosmopolitan and media-savvy middle classes hese same middle classes seek contact with the archaic dimension denied them by the alienated lifestyles of industrialized civilization Most importantly, yoga is a system of contemplative practices that emphasizes the somatic incarnate domain of human experience neglected by the religious mainstream So while being the most ancient of all psychological systems, yoga is simultaneously the holistic health paradigm of the future, a practical yet contemplative health practice.3 Another recourse for the religio-phobic yet psycho-spiritually inquisitive is a version of contemporary academic philosophy which also maintains a secular, though admittedly somewhat intellectualized approach to human knowledge his is phenomenology Like yoga, phenomenology affirms the domain of subjectively lived experience and promotes a meditation method that maintains neutrality towards belief systems Yet, one of its distinctions is that while the Western academic world generally maintains a secular distance 3) For an excellent survey of contemporary yoga as it has disseminated across Western culture, see de Michelis For a descriptive account of contemporary yoga culture in yoga ashrams within India itself, see Strauss 148 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 from religion in favor of the physical sciences, phenomenology maintains an openness towards the possibility of a hermeneutically (interpretive) engaged approach to religious experience, i.e a point of view that allows one to undergo subjective religious experiences while also maintaining an autonomous detachment from any particular system of belief.4 It is in this way that phenomenology affirms a pluralistic openness to multiple subjective standpoints—not just that of the physical sciences he comparison, of course, goes deeper, and ahead I shall speak to how, across culture and history, this remarkable correspondence takes place and how this association is based on a common movement away from each other’s respective mainstream orthodoxies towards a unique emphasis on human embodiment III Nirodaha and Epoche—Convergent Meditation Strategies Previous authors have also commented on the correspondence between yoga and phenomenology but only on the basis of a point of view that assumes a shared transcendental idealism hese readings have rightly stressed Patanjali’s comprehensive definition of yoga—namely, “the suspension (nirodaha) of the whirlpools of the mind, such that the true seer may come forth to see the world as it is”5—as a meeting point between the two traditions By applying the meditation method of nirodaha, the yoga practitioner strives to disconnect or “put into abeyance” the cognitive, perceptual, and emotional habits (samskaras) that distort one’s experience of the objects of world Correspondingly Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement at the beginning of the twentieth century, differentiated phenomenology from 4) While slightly predating the phenomenological movement, William James’s Varieties of Religious Experiences represents this style of inquiry followed by the scholarship of Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, and, of course, the many recent endeavors of our editor Richard Kearney 5) he translation is my own rendering of Yoga Sutras 1.2 and 1.3: “yogaha chitta vrittri nirodaha; tada drastuh svarupe vasthanam.” Barbra Stoller-Miller more conventionally translates these sutras as: “Yoga is the cessation of the turnings of thought; When the thought ceases, the spirit stands in its true identity as observer of the world” (29) here is a long 1600-year commentary tradition of vigorous debate regarding the grammar of these famously subtle and enigmatic fragments he crucial issue here is the word nirodaha often translated as “ceasing,” “stopping,” or “ending.” Specialists such as Ian Whicher argue at great length against such translations He claims that nirodaha is a much more subtle meditation construct in a way that supports my rendering as “suspension.” See Whicher, “Nirodaha.” J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 149 the naturalistic materialism of his time by calling for a “return to the things themselves”—the world as it gives itself to experience without judgments or metaphysical presuppositions about the reality character of the objects of the world Husserl employed a radical meditation method which he called the epoche, which is an “‘inhibiting’ or ‘putting out of play’ of all positions taken toward the already-given objective world.” He also calls this methodological epoche a “parenthesizing of the Objective world” (Cartesian Meditations 20–1) his is a refusal to take for granted any assumed beliefs or doubts regarding the ontological status of any object or world So, despite being severed across history and culture with no discernable intellectual links whatsoever, we find here a remarkable correspondence between phenomenology and yoga; but because all previous comparative studies6 have assumed the commonality between yoga and phenomenology to be a shared transcendental idealism, i.e both meditations leading towards a consciousness suspended outside the body and beyond the sensory world, it is important to note that this idealist model of comparison can only apply to Husserl’s version of intentionality as expressed in the earlier stages of his career For in his later mature philosophy Husserl developed in the direction of a less cognitive and more corporeal form of intentionality best articulated by his successor, Merleau-Ponty, as will be discussed below Because these studies only appropriate this one, problematical, viewpoint of Husserl’s phenomenology they also, reciprocally, perpetuate an exclusively transcendental or idealist reading of yoga philosophy Furthermore, this idealism supports the conventional appropriation of yoga by the more formal orthodox “Sanskritized” (higher caste) Indian systems of interpretation7 and restricts access to other less intellectualized “folk” dimensions of yoga practice 6) Paranjpe and Hanson; Puligandla; and Sinari In all of these articles Husserl’s model of a transcendental ego was compared to the yogic notion of samadhi as a mutual transcendence from the world It appears that these authors did not appear to have access to the more recent translations of Husserl’s later works which I am citing here as evidence of an alternative non-transcendental reading of Husserl’s phenomenological project and yoga In fact, samadhi, the developmental goal of yoga, can be interpreted, as does Whicher, as a restoration of the senses, not a departure from them It is an immersion into a direct experience of the world unmediated by socialized typifications that is made possible by yoga practice Also, for his full text see Whicher, Integrity I have myself written on this issue in a previous article See Morley, “Inspiration and Expiration.” 7) Few discussions of India can overlook the issue of caste M.S Srinivas described a pattern within Indian culture where communities would strive to raise their caste status by miming the lifestyles of the higher priestly Brahmin castes Upward mobility was achieved by abandoning their rustic nature-goddesses’ tribal cults for such mainstream deities as Shiva, Vishnu, 150 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 While the value of these readings cannot but be appreciated, I find it necessary to assert that there is another non-idealist reading of the yoga and phenomenology convergence his would be a reading that corresponds with the more tribal, archaic, or Tantric roots of yoga that has hitherto had a very limited voice in academic discussions of yoga In strong contrast, I suggest that it is actually the overcoming of transcendental idealism that distinguishes both yoga and phenomenology from their respective mainstream traditions and that this is the common basis for not only a mutual exegesis but also a radically embodied approach to spirituality Such an approach may give voice to the marginalized esoteric traditions latent within so many religious traditions and perhaps more clearly elucidate these spiritualities, which, while marginalized to the academic and theological fringes, have occupied the very inter-religious heart of so many world religious systems IV Merleau-Ponty’s Articulation of an Ontology of Embodiment Taking up the later Husserl’s discovery8 of the somatic foundation of experience, Merleau-Ponty bolstered this insight with the discoveries of gestalt psychology to challenge any claim to sense experience divorced from form or meaning In the same stroke, his more clearly articulated thesis of the or Krishna along with priestly vegetarianism, Sanskrit chanting, and conventional temple practices his is not unlike how lower middle-class Westerners will alter their church and political affiliations, or purchase certain consumer products and labels to appear more affluent It has become my own observation that this Sanskritization may be a factor in how yoga is represented to Westerners and Indians alike When yoga is constructed through higher-caste culture, this other rustic tribal aspect may get sifted out of play As tribal and lower-caste culture continues to be downplayed and depreciated across India, I wonder if we need to recover from the tribals and the agricultural castes what my friend Siddhartha calls an “earth yoga” that would have a more explicitly ecological and ethical orientation See Srinivas 8) Towards the end of his life Husserl’s thought took certain turns, which did not at all correspond with the stereotypes of his thought endemic to the secondary literature hese late texts (only published in German in 1951 and translated into English in 1989) reveal a philosopher who is keenly concerned with the experiential body as the ultimate point of contact between consciousness and nature He states that every object, perceived or imagined, is in some kind of spatio-temporal orientation to the perceiver’s body Only through one’s living-body can the experienced world become constituted: “ all that is thingly real in the surrounding world of the ego has its relation to the body.” He goes on to say: “Furthermore, obviously connected with this is the distinction the body acquires as the bearer of the zero point (null punct) of orientation, the bearer of the here and now, out of which the pure ego intuits space and the whole world of the senses hus each thing that appears J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 151 “primacy of the phenomenal world” undoes any idealist endeavor to locate truth apart from directly lived experience in a manner that was even more explicit than Husserl’s latter writings In this way, Merleau-Ponty’s ontology attempts more explicitly to circumvent both the idealist and materialist traditions of the European metaphysical traditions has eo ipso an orienting relation to the body, and this refers not only to what actually appears but to each thing that is supposed [imagined] to be able to appear” (Ideas Pertaining 61) hus, for Husserl, the entire spectrum of possible experiences, perceptual or imaginary, is rooted to this corporeal “zero point” which is “the bearer of the here and now.” From this we can see how Husserl’s notion of the transcendental does not entail an isolated disembodied ego extended at a distance above the lived world of perceptual experience—as implied in the previous comparative studies—but, instead, corporeal experience is itself, for Husserl, the transcendental ground his spatial zero point of the body coincides with Husserl’s understanding of a temporal zero point, namely the impenetrable upsurge of the “now” point that perpetually slips from reflective articulation All consciousness is, for Husserl, immersed in the ongoing temporal stream, but unlike the Newtonian constructions of objective linear time independent of consciousness, Husserl shows us how, given the phenomenological standpoint in lived experience versus the natural attitude of materialist scientism, consciousness is the upsurge of temporality itself For Husserl the living present, which is the carnal presence of the body, is a spontaneously self-generated act, it “is the absolute beginning the primal source, that from which all others are continuously generated In itself, however, it is not generated; it does not come into existence as that which is generated but through spontaneous generation It does not grow up (it has no seed): it is primal creation” (Internal Time 131) his is the body as the consciousness of nature itself Yet when phenomenology reaches this “seedless” primal source or ‘zero point’ it is also at something of a dead end for reflective discourse and language his somatic ground, though discovered by phenomenological reflection, cannot be explored through that very same act of cognitive reflection Like the dog chasing its tail, there is perpetual slippage between reflection and corporeal life So, despite discovering the importance of corporeality, any attempt to build on this insight is impeded by the use of conceptual academic terminology to describe embodied experience, as it resists such articulation he main point, however, is that this “primal source” is not necessarily an ideal one which is transcendentally set apart from nature but is instead one that is grounded in nature via the very flesh of the human body As an aside, it is remarkable how Husserl’s metaphor of “seedlessness” (above) is also similarly employed in the Yoga Sutras (1.25, 3.50) and their commentary tradition his “seedless” unconditioned state is referred to in such terms as samadhi, iswara, or purusha in contrast to the conditioned state of everyday ignorance (avidya) and its corollary of chronic dissatisfaction (dukha) his “seedlessness” is a point of personal development where one is no longer influenced by the conditioning mechanisms set in karmic motion by the “seeds” of past deeds (samskaras) nor is one compelled by desire for the future fruition of the seeds of ones present actions Such seeds are “burned” (cleansed) into this unconditioned vantage point, a freedom (kaivala) that is the ultimate goal of yoga practice 152 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 hrough a combined appropriation of gestalt psychology’s insight that the ideal and the material are holistically fused within a figure-ground cohesion, Heidegger’s existential understanding of “worldedness,” and the psychoanalytic insight that culture is grounded in somatic affectivity, Merleau-Ponty represents the most forward edge of the phenomenological movement To quote him, “he perceived world is the always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value, and all existence his thesis does not destroy either rationality or the absolute; it only tries to bring them down to earth.” Further, he says: “he perceiving mind is an incarnated mind” (Primacy of Perception 13) his is not only a unity in the Heideggerian sense of Dasein or Being-in-the-World, but it is a bodily being-inthe-world In his latter works Merleau-Ponty tried to develop an entirely new ontological nomenclature to convey this insight, which comes closer than any previous European philosophy to addressing the dilemma of ontological dualism by affirming the primacy of sensory-somatic experience First, it is important to review Merleau-Ponty’s use of the word “body.” he “lived body” or “phenomenal body” is not the same thing as the objective body as constructed by the physical sciences or allopathic medicine “[W]e must think of the human body (and not consciousness) as that which perceives nature which it also inhabits” (hemes 128) he lived body is sentience itself, it is my personal spatiality, the body to which I am born, fall ill, desire, nurture children, age, and die It is my flesh and blood existence, it is mine as much as it is the common form taken by all humans his lived body is the fulcrum or lexicon of all human experience It is neither subject nor object, purely mental or purely physical, nor can it be sufficiently comprehended through the traditional philosophical categories of immanence and transcendence Like Freud’s unconscious, it can never be fully grasped through reflection; it can never be caught in the act of living because, similar to nature itself, it is the concrete basis for all such reflection hen, unlike the psychodynamic unconscious, it is not just a repository of “representations” or merely a linguistic “defilé of signifiers” but is “feeling itself, since feeling is not the intellectual possession of ‘what’ is felt, but a dispossession of ourselves in favor of it, an opening toward that which we not have to think in order that we may recognize it” (130) his “disposition” or “opening” is a pre-rational or pre-categorical modality that founds rationality but is not reducible to it Merleau-Ponty criticizes Cartesian constructions of consciousness as pure nothingness (for-itself ) in dualistic opposition to non-consciousness or pure being in-itself Whereas much Western rationalist philosophy views the alterity between such dialectical opposites as an J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 153 unbridgeable chasm or separation, Merleau-Ponty reverses this dualist reasoning by articulating this alterity as itself the corporeal “hinge” between thing and idea, subject and object, even self and other hus, the empty gap between subject and object becomes the living conduit out of which the two emerge To further escape the problems inherent to dualism, idealism and materialism, Merleau-Ponty believed that a new metaphysical terminology was necessary to sidestep the dilemmas built into the language of “subject” and “object.” He described our situation as one of entrelacs or the interlacing of a closely woven fabric.9 Putting aside even the psychological terminology of “consciousness” and “phenomena,” he endeavored to describe, again, what lies between the self and the world, the between out of which both are contingent and derivative He called this “between” the “chiasm,” “flesh of the world” or “brute being.” He also describes it as a dehiscence or opening-up that is always the already unfolding quality of existence his is a new understanding of the phenomenological concept of intentionality that was already nascent in Husserl’s late works V Turning “East” for Corroboration on the heme of Embodiment To reiterate, Merleau-Ponty’s thought strives to bypass the tradition of metaphysics that assumes either an absolutely ideal or material world (or a dualism between the two) through the idea of a third term of the “lived body,” or what he later calls the chiasm or “flesh of the world.” his is to serve as a new ontology that would take us out of the Western or European tradition of metaphysics From here it would seem natural to turn to other non-Western traditions for corroboration on an approach to existence that is positive towards the phenomenon of embodiment But this search can disappoint Despite its many obvious distinctions from the European style of philosophy and religion, much mainstream orthodox Indian thought, as a whole, has strong idealist tendencies.10 9) I should mention that one of the meanings of tantra is “loom” or “weave,” implying, of course, the inter-woven tapestry of the cosmos—and the homologous body-cosmos dynamic 10) here was much more cultural diffusion between India and the classical Mediterranean world than most scholarship has previously acknowledged homas McEvilley’s research, based on physical archeological evidence, makes a persuasive case for how mainstream Vedantism and Buddhism were very likely influenced by the idealism of Plato and Aristotle 154 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 It is even more disappointing to learn how poorly the body fares in this worldview (including some aspects of mainstream yoga) For example, while Buddha taught of a middle way between extreme ascetic denial of the senses or decadent surrender to them, in the end, incarnation is for so many Buddhists and Hindus a misfortune to be overcome or a dream from whence we should wake Rarely would conventional Buddhists, or Vedantists, explicitly affirm incarnate existence At best, these institutionalized South Asian traditions respected the body as the “vehicle” through which enlightenment may be achieved, but this is only a benignly neutral affirmation of embodiment not unlike the mainstream Judeo-Christian affirmation of the body as the “temple” of the soul—but never synonymous with the soul itself Having said this, it is also true that in South Asia there also exists an esoteric yet living tradition that affirms the human body more than any other known religious tradition—Tantric yoga It is here that Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology of embodiment, and yoga generally, can find a more appropriate point of mutual corroboration VI Jivatma: Towards a Phenomenological Explication of the Tantric Approach to Yoga While India may be the world’s “spiritual laboratory,” from the Tantric perspective this laboratory is specifically located within embodied consciousness (jivatma).11 As it was primarily an oral tradition, specialists on Tantrism12 concur that a clear definition of this movement is extremely difficult to artic- It is acknowledged that there was a vigorous trade in luxury goods between India and the post-Alexandrian Hellenic kingdoms and later the Roman Empire In fact, there were fusion Greco-Buddhist kingdoms in Bactria (present Pakistan and Afghanistan) that greatly impacted the rest of India He also demonstrates, on the other hand, a cultural diffusion between Tantric Indian yoga and certain Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Orphic-Dionysian Greek spiritualities—perhaps even influencing medieval Christian mysticism, Jewish Kabbalism, and Islamic Sufism It seems the wind blew both ways and McEvilley’s work has profound implications for mutual cross-cultural understanding See McEvilley, he Shape of Ancient hought, “he Spinal Serpent,” and “An Archeology of Yoga.” 11) he Sanskrit word Jiva usually refers to “individual life” or self.” Jivatma or Jiva-mukta could also be understood “living as individual mortal flesh while also simultaneously a fully realized immortal being,” i.e., a collapse of the individual-cosmos bifurcation We have here a concept very much in keeping with Merleau-Ponty’s project to circumvent dualist nomenclature 12) Here I refer to the recent research of White, he Alchemical Body J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 155 ulate and scholarship in this area is only in its beginning stages Nor will space permit a satisfactory definition to be offered here Yet, in broad strokes, Tantrism could be understood in historical terms as (1) a mode of experience rooted in archaic matriarchal shamanism, and (2) an identifiable medieval movement (starting in the seventh and eighth centuries) involving alchemical/medical strategies for transforming the body to achieve salvation hough having declined into esoteric secrecy over the past few centuries, Tantrism remains today, in often fragmented cultural forms, intermingled with mainstream Jainism, Himalayan Buddhism, various Hindu cults, and Chinese Taoism Even contemporary Hatha yoga, as we know it in the health clubs of today, is rooted in this tradition Like phenomenology, Tantrism embraces the sensory world as the true reality and rejects any metaphysical system that asserts the primacy of another ideal transcendental realm In turn, the bodily consciousness takes on heightened focus Sir John Woodroffe13 describes the Tantric approach to the body in this way: “here is nothing in the universe which is not in the human body.” Further, “Whatever of mind or matter exists in the universe exists in some form or manner in the human body ‘What is here is there What is not here is nowhere’ ” (Woodroffe 50, emphasis mine) Moreover, the human body as the crown of creation is to be explored as a microcosm of the universe David Gordon White describes “a particular attitude on the part of the Tantric adept toward the cosmos, whereby he feels integrated within an all-embracing system of micro-macrocosmic correlations” (Introduction 8) hrough conscious embodiment (jivatma) the forces of nature cannot just be abstractly studied at an objective distance, but existentially lived, engaged, and immersed into through meditation practice— the goal of Tantric yoga In this sense, Tantric yoga is not merely a subjective psychology, but a radical approach to the study of external nature and the cosmos.14 his paradigm of the body as a homology of the cosmos, or as a microcosm of the macrocosm—in Merleau-Pontean terms, the “flesh of the 13) Sir John Woodroffe was a British high court judge in Imperial Calcutta who was one of the first Europeans to take up Tantric scholarship and yoga practice His translations and commentaries remain important resources 14) But this could not be accomplished by academic means alone Like the psychotherapeutic relationship, a personal long-term individualized relationship with a teacher was found to be essential to this pedagogical process See hompson for the visionary chapter “Of Physics and Tantra Yoga” where he discusses the implications of Tantric meditation practice as a potential form of scholarly research and pedagogy 156 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 world”—is a conception of embodiment that is no dualist “temple of the soul” but a perspective of the human body as the very source of divinity itself as much as it is a science of nature Several cosmological themes stand out as Tantric here is the emphasis on the feminine aspect of divinity and nature Tantric goddesses are not one-dimensionally maternal, nor delicate angelic consorts, but also beings of profound sexual-spiritual power In contradistinction to the West, sexuality itself is associated with feminine activity (prakriti) while masculinity (purusa) is viewed as not quite passive but neutral in that it is only initiated into activity by the feminine forces hroughout rural India we see evidence of Tantrism in everyday religious icons that invoke the feminine fertility of the earth—typically symbolized through serpents (nagas) Such imagery richly proliferates across rural India, as can be demonstrated in the naga devi figure we see on the external wall of a small seaside shrine just outside the temple town of Gokarna (fig 2) Figure Gokorna Naga Devi, c 1990–2007 Oil painting Small Sea Temple, Gokorna, Karnataka, India Photograph: James Morley J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 157 As much as Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology stresses the dehiscence of “lived body,” Tantra evokes a corresponding notion of the “subtle body” understood as layered in sheaths or envelopes that, like serpent skins, are shed as embodied consciousness develops forward into more complex dimensions and forms Below we can see a very typical Tantric shrine located deep within a cave (guha) on a seaside hill outside of Gokarna (fig 3).15 he Shiva lingam is in the foreground and the goddess is in the background To the side lies a coiled snakeskin offering, a ritual representation of one of Shiva’s animal vehicles— the serpent Again, such imagery is ubiquitous across India Figure Cave Temple (interior altar) Gokarna, Karnataka, India Photograph: James Morley 15) his is the same cave (guha) referred to by Richard Kearney in the introduction to this volume Photo by the author, June 2007 158 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 One hesitates to discuss Tantric “subtle body” concepts of chakras, kundalini energy, nadi points, and esoteric ritualized sexuality—so many of which have been profoundly misunderstood by popular culture in the West his is not for prudish reasons but because these matters deserve a more sustained and detailed clarification than can be offered here But briefly, from a phenomenological standpoint, one need not conceptualize chakras and nadi energy channels in literal terms as material natural phenomena but appreciate them as meditation templates to assist the practitioner in coming to terms with one’s lived body hese were to be “imaginative” pedagogical tools to be used in conjunction with mandalas, yoga postures (asanas), breath control (pranayama), and chanting to achieve practical, contemplative awareness of the spatial internal dimensionality16 of the lived microcosmic or even mesocosmic body But, by saying that this “esoteric physiology” is best understood in “imaginary” terms does not diminish its significance It is through phenomenology’s appreciation of imaginary experience that such somatic constructs may be liberated from the criteria of literalism, and be better elucidated and contexualized.17 Here I evoke Husserl’s famous passage “fiction is the source whence the knowledge of eternal truths draws its sustenance,” as well as Richard Kearney’s many works on the centrality of imagination to both religion and philosophy.18 Certainly, more detailed future studies in these matters would be of mutual benefit to both yoga practitioners and academic phenomenology Finally, the very idea of ritualized sexuality simply does not translate very well into Western representational thought and is especially ripe for misun- 16) Neurologists use the technical terms of “exteroception” to describe the senses directed to the external environment (sight, touch, hearing, etc.) while the terms “proprioception” and “interoception” refer to internal bodily senses Proprioception refers sensory experience of muscular, tendon, and joint movements—usually associated with the sense of “balance” or “spatial coordination” generally Interoception is the sensation of one’s internal organs such as the experience of headaches, chest pain, digestion, and breathing Normally we are only aware of such internal senses when we fall ill Yoga practices such as moving postures (asana) and breath control (pranayama) teach one to live these internal senses with as much attention as we give to the exteroceptive senses Yogic esoteric physiology may have served as imaginary templates for the further refinement of these internal somatic senses Here again, the theme of the interior cavern (or guha) emerges 17) For a treatment of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to imagination, see Morley, “he Texture of the Real.” 18) Husserl, Ideas I 184; see Kearney, he Wake of Imagination, and more recently, he God Who May Be J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 159 derstanding Even in rare instances when certain traditional Tantric sects may have actually employed ritualized sexual conjunction (maithuna), these acts only occurred after prolonged periods of ritual and liturgy where any eventual sexual contact was brief, symbolic, and impersonal—not at all synonymous with what is commonly understood as simple “sexual pleasure.” Typically, this “cosmological sexuality” is relegated to the domain of symbolism In the Tantric Buddhist temple painting seen in color plate 7,19 for instance, we find a classic depiction of Tantric creative cosmology he female ( prakriti) figure’s head is thrown back with arms flailing in erotic ecstasy as the Buddha ( purusa) sits in motionless contemplation despite the activity of his consort We see halos of color radiating out from their conjunction One can witness such symbolism at any contemporary Hindu Vedic wedding ceremony where the groom takes the liturgical form of a diety such as Shiva, and the bride takes the imaginary form of the cosmic feminine force (Shakti) both replicating the dynamic cosmic interplay of existence itself Still, the centrality of sexuality to Tantric creation spirituality can’t be overlooked.20 he many goddesses of the Ellora caves could not but move the onlooker to notice their aesthetic of cosmic sexuality 21 Merleau-Ponty speaks in almost Tantric terms when he writes that “sexuality is co-extensive with life.” And further: “here is an interfusion of sexuality and existence, which means that existence permeates sexuality and vice versa” (Phenomenology of Perception 169) 19) Photo from Sangacholings Gompa, above the village of Pelling, West Sikkim Taken by the author in 1996 20) During our visit to the Ellora caves, Richard Kearney asked one of our guides about the existence of any Tantric imagery he guide, delighted by this rare request, proceeded to demonstrate a richly detailed panorama, discretely carved in small detail, depicting a cacophony of sexual acts performed by the deities Certainly, these Hindu sections of the Ellora caves were profoundly influenced by the popular Tantric movements of their time 21) Several goddess figures expressed feminine features so pronounced that many previous onlookers were provoked into literally reaching out to grasp and touch the carvings as can be seen by the hand-worn breasts in the photograph below One wonders if this was the intention of the stone carvers In any case, as we seek forms of worship beyond the patriarchal representations of mainstream theology, Tantrism may offer a glimpse into alternative visions of the sacred that are inclusive of both male and female embodied numinousity Photo by author, June 2007 160 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 Figure Yakshi Siddhayika, Jain Mother Goddess (Jain Cave 32), c 1000–1300 CE Stone carving Ellora, India Photograph: James Morley VII Conclusion Despite its recognition of the limits of language, phenomenology remains paradoxically trapped in an abstract representational methodology for pursuing its goal of articulating corporeal experience Merleau-Ponty’s attempts at elucidation (as well as hermeneutics, deconstruction, so on) can only resort to language and interpretation because, as one writer says, “it is the only game in town” (Fish 355) Of course, the obvious next step would be a phenomenological methodology based on body experience apart from language But how would one systematize such a procedure? Tantric yoga, like Merleau-Ponty’s existential-phenomenology, is an experiential ontology but, unlike phenomenology, yoga would bypass academic J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 161 discourse in favor of direct psycho-physical meditation practice transmitted through a personal relationship between a teacher and a student hough phenomenology prides itself as “a return to the things themselves,” it could learn a great deal from the methodology inherent in somatic yoga practice hen again, yoga’s focus on direct practice may have led to many misunderstandings of the meaning of yoga such as the reduction of yoga to physical exercise, or extreme asceticism he seeming reluctance of traditional yoga practitioners (especially Tantric) to develop an autonomous systematic academic discourse may be the reason why it so often comes to us as an appendage to larger religious systems.22 An example of this is the tendency on the part of so many commentators to interpret the otherwise deliberately ambiguous yogic term Ishvara not as “teacher, guide, or ideal” but as “transcendental deity,” thereby fixing Patanjali’s sutras onto their own theological systems To suggest that phenomenology is the conceptual system best suited to yoga is to risk turning yoga into just this sort of appendage or, even worse, another Orientalism that interprets Indian thought solely in terms of European constructs Yet, despite this risk, I hope I have demonstrated in this brief initial sketch the possibilities for such a true mutuality Phenomenology needs a somatic methodology that can go beyond academic language and yoga needs a language that will not violence to the lived somatic experience of contemplative practice Works Cited de Michelis, Elizabeth A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism London: Continuum, 2004 Dhavalikar, M K Ellora New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2003 Eliade, Mircea Yoga: Immortality and Freedom Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969 Fish, Stanley Is here a Text in his Class? he Authority of Interpretive Communities Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1980 Gupte, Ramesh Shankar and B D Mahajan Ajanta, Ellora and Aurangabad Caves Bombay, India: D B Taraporevala Sons and Co., 1962 Husserl, Edmund Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology Trans Dorian Cairns he Hague, the Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977 ——— Ideas I: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology Trans Boyce Gibson New York: Collier Books, 1962 22) Such as the way Vivekananda presented yoga to the West as inseparable from Hinduism 162 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 ——— Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution Trans Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989 ——— he Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness Trans J S Churchill Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1964 Kearney, Richard he God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001 ——— he Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988 McEvilley, homas “An Archeology of Yoga.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics (1981): 44–77 ——— he Shape of Ancient hought: Comparative Studies of Greek and Indian Philosophies New York: Alworth Press, 2003 ——— “he Spinal Serpent.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 24 (1993): 67–77 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice Phenomenology of Perception Trans Colin Smith London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962 ——— he Primacy of Perception, and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics Ed and intro James Edie Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964 ——— hemes from the Lectures at the College de France, 1952–1960 Trans John O’Neil Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970 Morley, James “Inspiration and Expiration: Yoga Practice through Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of the Body.” Philosophy East and West 51.1 (2000): 73–82 ——— “he Texture of the Real: Merleau-Ponty on Imagination and Pscyhopathology.” Imagination and Its Pathologies Ed James Phillips and James Morley Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003 Paranjpe, A and K Hanson “On Dealing with the Stream of Consciousness: A Comparison of Husserl and Yoga.” Asian Contributions to Psychology Ed Anand C Paranjpe, David Y J Ho, and Robert W Rieber New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988 215–31 Puligandla, R “Phenomenological Reduction and Yoga Meditation.” Philosophy East and West 20.1 (1970): 19–33 Sinari, Ramakant “he Method of Phenomenological Reduction and Yoga.” Philosophy East and West 15.3–4 (1965): 217–28 Srinivas, M N he Cohesive Role of Sanskritization and Other Essays Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 1989 Stoller-Miller, B., trans Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: he Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali New York: Bantam, 1993 Strauss, Sarah Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts across Cultures Oxford, England: Berg, 2005 hompson, William Irwin Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture New York: Harper and Row, 1973 Whicher, Ian he Integrity of Yoga Darsana: A Reconsideration of Classical Yoga Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1998 ——— “Nirodaha, Yoga Praxis and the Transformation of Mind.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 25 (1997): 1–67 J Morley / Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 144–163 163 White, David Gordon he Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996 ——— Introduction Tantra in Practice Ed David Gordon White Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press 3–38 Woodroffe, John [Arthur Avalon] he Serpent Power: Being the Sat-Cakra-Niupana and Paduka-Pancaka 1919 New York: Dover Publications, 1958  ... understanding of the place of yoga in Indian spiritual life In other words, I came to see that there is, for lack of a better term, a concrete “folk yoga? ?? far more primordial and archaic than the. .. (null punct) of orientation, the bearer of the here and now, out of which the pure ego intuits space and the whole world of the senses hus each thing that appears J Morley / Religion and the Arts... neutral in that it is only initiated into activity by the feminine forces hroughout rural India we see evidence of Tantrism in everyday religious icons that invoke the feminine fertility of the earth—typically