Indian Poetics — Theorizing the Creative Principle

A. K. Awasthi,
Professor of English & Chair,
Dr. Hari Singh Gour Central University, Sagar (MP)

 

When wise men affirm that spirituality is an experience, they assume that they are dealing with the abstract and metaphysical. They claim that mental activity is only a condition. They also distinguish spirituality from materiality. But what intrigues the rational judgment is that any experience, realization, attainment or becoming happens only in the mind, never outside of it. But mind is a material reality and anything taking place there will carry its property along. However, any production of the mind may contain any degree of fineness but it would be born of material entity nevertheless. Mind is only an enclosure in the material body. The mind feels anything in the form of ideas (dhyan). This is what mental activity is. The question arises, what is that phenomenon, which fills in the mind just to make mental activity possible? What is its nature?

The Heaven of Freedom

 

What is that method? One, that can ensure, if not partial acceptance, a grudging inclusion in category of rational animals? One, which a Hamlet can display while his mind moves independent of routine consciousness? Well, it is often this quest, which may ensure one’s departure from the coterie. Excessive display of emotion may attract attention of ‘normal’ people as much as lack of any. And undue pondering over this or other idée fixe, is likely to play with common-sense.

Where mind is without fear
… Into that heaven of freedom…
Let my country awake!

As civilization progressed, human beings garnered means of evaluating others. This ability to read others has been held in high esteem. You must have come across such a sentence at least a dozen times: ‘ The guilty would often wilt under the scrutiny / gaze of a king/ judge.’ Even though the great book commands one not to judge, ordinary men conduct everyday business only by evaluating others. It takes a lot of practice to switch off this mental process, at least from being discernible.