Nearly four thousand years ago (according to some of the more conservative estimates), ancient Hindu mystics composed the oldest known texts in any Indo-European language, the Vedas. At the center of these texts lie what are known as the four great Vedic statements, one of which is reproduced in the title of this post.
The words, "tat tvam asi," appear in a dialogue (in the Samaveda) between a father and his son about the connection between an individual (in this case, the son) and the world around him. Simply, they mean, "you are that," but their implications are immense. Consider:
In the beginning was only Being,
One without a second.
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that...
As bees suck nectar from many a flower
And make their honey one, so that no drop
Can say, "I am from this flower or that,"
All creatures, though one, know not that they are that One.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.
From the Changdoya Upanishad, ch. 6, trans. by Eknath Easwaran
in "The Upanishads" (Petaluma, California: Nilgiri Press, 1987)
To these mystics, everything that exists is rooted in Brahman, the One true Being, who alone has existed eternally and from whom all other things draw their own existence. Essentially, because I am made from and filled with the exact same essence of all creation, there is not one thing in all of creation ("living" or otherwise) over which it could not be said of me, "You are that."
The dogs, sleeping on the couch next to me? "You are that."
The grass out in the yard (which is in dire need of being mowed)? "You are that."
The wood stashed in my garage for future building projects? "You are that."
And let's be clear here...
This isn't just some symbolic gesture, like shouting "I am Spartacus!" or those comments that pop up whenever some tragedy happens ("We are all [fill in the blank] now"). According to the ancient Hindu sages, I relate to the grass in the way I would relate to my arm if I'd lost it somehow and then happened to come across it, laying on the ground somewhere.
Of course, all of my experiences tell me otherwise. They tell me that I am an individual human, I am unique and distinct even from my own fellow humans, much less the grass outside. Sure,
Neil Degrasse Tyson* might say we are all made of the same basic molecules, that "the universe is in us," so to speak, but my experience tells me that "I" am still quite distinct from "you" or "that over there".
However, according to the Vedic texts, that's exactly the problem.
The fact that I perceive myself as different, that I feel like me and not like the wood in my garage, is actually due to my own ignorance, my own blindness.
And it gets worse
The mystics teach that the world around me, full of all of these separate and unique things, is actually an illusion -- an illusion that is created and sustained by me. So long as I feel (and believe myself to be) separate, my mind participates in that delusion by presenting me with a world that matches what I believe, like some complex, life-long hallucination, a self-inflicted prison that feeds both off of and into my blindness.
It has taken us quite a bit longer, but it seems that Western Philosophy is slowly beginning to arrive at some rather similar conclusions.
Epistemology, the study of how we actually "know" things, is a conversation we have been having with ourselves since the days of the early Greek philosophers (around the 5th century B.C.). Unfortunately, rather than more precise understanding of the process of "knowing," the intervening millenia between then and now have brought only increasing levels of skepticism as to whether we can actually know anything at all.
The fly in our collective ointment, as it were, lies in the troublesome concept of objectivity -- that is, the degree to which we can know an object as it actually is.
Think of it this way: imagine a horse (yes you... go ahead... I'll wait...). Now, if I asked you to describe that horse, it might be different in some ways from the one I imagined, but there would probably be some basic qualities on which we'd all agree.
Some examples:
four legs with four hooves
a mane and a tail
hair all over
a long snout
Now, suppose your imaginary horse was involved in a terrible accident (NOTE: the horse is imaginary, no animals were harmed in the creation of this post) and had to have one of its front legs amputated. You love this horse and decide not to put it down, but the trouble is it no longer conforms to one of the basic qualities we ascribed to all horses.
So, is it still a horse?
Suppose this is a very unlucky horse and is involved in a whole series of accidents which leave it hairless and result in the dramatic shortening of its snout and the complete loss of its tail (don't go all sentimental, here, remember he's just imaginary).
Would it still be a horse then?
Our instincts say, "Of course!" However, in order to say that we have to agree, though we may not be fully aware of it, that there is something about a horse (or grass, or even a human being, for that matter) that goes beyond what we can perceive with our senses (seeing, hearing, etc.). That -- whatever it may be -- is what the horse is, its essence, as it were.
So, we can call your imaginary horse a "horse", even though it may no longer look or sound like one, because there is some essence, some "horse-ish-ness" that it still possesses.
However, according to some of the most recent philosophy, that's exactly the problem.
It's a problem because it puts us in the uncomfortable position of perceiving that a horse is a horse on the basis that it possesses some quality that, by its very nature, we cannot perceive.
And it gets worse.
The philosophy of post-structuralism argues that when we perceive some object -- whether a thing, like an apple, or an idea, like "love" -- our act of perception actually changes that object.
[T]hough English-speakers don’t assign gendered labels to inanimate objects, many other languages distinguish between masculine objects and feminine objects. A bridge is masculine to Spanish-speakers and feminine to German-speakers, so in one experiment Spanish-speakers described bridges as big, dangerous, strong, and sturdy, while German-speakers described bridges as beautiful, elegant, pretty, and fragile.
According to this way of thinking, we are incapable of perceiving objects outside of the countless historical and personal primers we all carry inside us, like the effects of the language we speak, our past experiences, or our cultural environment. Those primers are so deeply entrenched in us that they color, distort, and can even fundamentally change the objects we perceive.
To return to our earlier example, I'm not simply incapable of perceiving what makes your horse a horse. I'm incapable of perceiving "your" horse at all.
If we apply that, as we must, not just to horses but to all human experience, we wind up right back where we were with the mystics, where the world we perceive is actually a world of our own creation.
-~@~-
Now, if this was a traditional "Christian" blog, I would probably now segue into "Three reasons why that way of thinking is dumb," but, remember, this is not a traditional Christian blog.
So, instead, allow me to present:
Three reasons why that way of thinking is not dumb:
1. If we were to transcribe this strand of thought, that we create the world in which we live, into the Christian worldview, that wouldn't actually be a terrible way of thinking.
True, we presuppose the existence of a Creator-God who spoke all things into existence, and who currently holds all things together by the word of his power; but we also hold that humanity was created in and imbued with the
Imago Dei, the "divine image".
In that vein, we speak about our moral impulse as derivative of the character of God, we speak about our rationality as a picture of God's perfect mind, but what do we do with this massive aspect of the Divine personality, the impulse to create?
I think we might find a clue in the book of Genesis:
Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
Genesis 2:19-20
This passage has always fascinated me, especially when we think of it in the context of other incidents of "naming" in the scriptures.
What does it mean when God changes Abram's name to Abraham or Isaac's name to Israel or Saul's name to Paul? Doesn't the change of name mark some deeper change of identity? (As a side note, isn't that why we take up the name "Christian" when we are converted?)
So, in the Biblical understanding, the task God sets before Adam isn't some cutesy
"lets-see-what-silly-things-he-might-say" type of game, like the ones we play with our own children. Instead, He is inviting Adam to participate in
the creation of the identity of these animals.
Moreover, as one who makes some attempt at gardening, there isn't a Spring that goes by where preparing the soil, sowing the seeds, and watching the sprouts of new life come forth don't bring to mind God's commands that we should
cultivate the land.
When we realize that we get the idea of "culture" from that concept of "cultivation," the implications get even broader.
What about art? Isn't that a form of creation? What about architecture? What about urban development and city planning? Can't we say that ALL our efforts to build society are, in some small fashion, participating in the creation of the world in which we live?
However you feel about their conclusions, could it be that these wildly disparate groups - ancient Hindu mystics, and post-modern philosophers - have sensed within themselves this lingering vestige of their Maker?
2. It reminds us of the prevalence and the power of our self-delusions.
The degree to which we are able to see what we want to see, or to keep ourselves blind to what we do not want to see, is a theme that resounds throughout all of Western culture, let alone scripture.
Here, we might think of
Oedipus, berating an old seer -- who accused him of killing the king (his father) -- for being
blind, all while believing his parents alive and well in some other city.
Or, consider this passage from the Gospel of Luke:
As [Jesus] drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.”
Luke 18:35-42
Now, who was truly blind, the beggar or those who told him to be silent?
3. It reminds us that something is wrong in our world, and pushes us to find a solution.
The natural rhythms of life make it so very easy to just put our heads down, busy ourselves with the tasks and plans that are immediately before us, and work our way from day to day without any real sense of the larger picture around us. Like people who sleepwalk, we shuffle around in our private existence, almost completely unconscious of how we are affected and shaped by the world in which we live.
We buy things we don't need and don't really know why.
We have conflict with others for reasons we cannot explain over things that were never that important until this particular moment when suddenly - and inexplicably - they mean the world to us.
We numb ourselves - to what we're not quite sure - with TV and food and vacations and even parties with friends.
We are uncomfortable in silence. So, we seek out noise at all times, through the phone or the radio or the TV or games.
We scoff at - and insulate ourselves against - things that make us feel sentimental or small or dependent on others.
In our, albeit rare and fleeting, moments of clarity, we know instinctively that something is not right, but we have no idea how to change it.
The Hindu texts tell us that we are blind to the true source of meaning and life in this world. The philosophers tell us that we are stuck in the contrived -- and often oppressive -- social and cultural constructions of our society -- as well as our own minds.
The Bible tells us that they are right.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way:
...the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers [read: "all of us"**], to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
II Corinthians 4:4
What is the problem? We are blind to the true source of meaning and life in this world.
By whom are we blinded? The god of
this world (whether you want to think of that phrase as denoting a real, spiritual entity, or the "spirit" [or defining reality] of the world and culture in which we live, the point still holds).
-~@~-
Of course, the solutions we offer to this particular problem are quite a bit different.
For the ancient Hindu mystics, the solution is to find some way, through meditation and inward contemplation, to spur one's own mind into the realization of his "oneness" with all Being.
For the post-structuralist philosopher, there really is no solution except to abandon the concept of absolutes, and focus on what feels right in my specific context (which, then, can and
should change as my context changes).
For believers, I'll continue quoting Paul:
God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
II Corinthians 4:6
Simply, our solution is not one
we perform, which -- as one who often feels stuck in the middle of his own self-delusion -- strikes me as pretty
good news.
-~@~-
But here's the kicker:
Does the fact that we arrive at different solutions mean we must ignore our common insight about the problem?
Rather, if we understand and, what's more,
embrace that commonality, wouldn't that be a better place from which to start a conversation (rather than, say, a sales pitch)?
Isn't foolishness on our part to refuse to do this?
__________________________
*Seriously, check out that Neil Degrasse Tyson link
** Even believers don't fully escape this blindness, hence the need for faith (for believing in the continued goodness and faithfulness of God, even when we cannot see how they could be true in a particular situation). We will all spend the rest of our lives praying some form of the father's prayer in Mark 9, "I believe! Please, help my unbelief." (vv. 21-24)
