It is said that transpersonal psychology "proceeds on the assumption that human beings possess potentialities that surpass the limits of the normally: developed ego" (Washburn, 1988: V). Based on examples from philosophy, religion, and aesthetics, this essay proceeds to prove an assumption that human beings possess potentialities that surpass the limits of normally developed cognitive functions, like remembrance and recognition.
In cognitive psychology remembrance and recognition are functions or mental abilities useful in coping with life, and getting what one wants in life (biological values: adapting, survival, reproduction). Therefore, in egoic perspective remembrance and recognition help in dealing with the world at large.
In existential or psycho-therapeutic perspective one can remember traumatic conditioning, double binds, recognize unconscious drives and feelings, the life plan Or script etc. On existential level remembrance and recognition are factors of a reflective recollection on the meaning and aim of life. One superposes various stages and parts of his/her past, making a balance sheet of life.
Remembrance and recognition in a meditative and therapeutic context can serve in resolving the experiences possibly related to past incarnation(s) - if such an option is involved - i. e. in breaking "the spell of past karma".
On the transpersonal levels remembrance and recognition serve not to make up life-history and to maintain the egoic identity of "my family, my life, my personality", but rather to disentangle one from the partiality of "my-ness", considering the interplay of individual and generic. In this way one can recognize the comon exemplified (or denominator) in his/her existence - how individual life situations articulate anew the main stages in the life of man (or woman) in general. With the inner reflective freedom one can recognize the "other" (transpersonal) self, or the "eternal witness" of Vedic seers. In a transpersonal setting remembrance and recognition can also be related with the aesthetic experience, and the "aesthetic way" appears to be a specific path to the transegoic stage.
As egoic functions remembrance and recognition help to strenghten ego-boundaries. In a transpersonal perspective they are functions of transcendence. The egoic and personal bring the feeling of isolation, contingency, and finally a tragic sense of life (I against the world, destiny, gods...).
Transpersonal perspective opens the mind for the realization that one exists as a web of mutually conditioned relationships - that man is related to the totality of existence (experience of the Boundless), and that (after all) this relation is positive. While developing the ego, such conditioning and connection are constricted, or repressed, in order that the personality can deve1op (as a subject with integrity, and self-will), and survive (as a self-reliable entity).But once the ego is developed and is strong enough, one can move to transpersonal levels, which seem like (or resemble) regression, or pre-egoic structures (possible confusion is related to the "pre/trans fallacy" as explained by Wilber).
Mann said that if transpersonal psychology "can develop analytic categories that permit us to see the commonalities as well as the divergencies among the many ways of approaching the absolute, it will have greatly enriched the human community" (Mann, 1984: 119). In this line we proceed to analyse different contexts in which we find elaborations of remembrance and recognition that speak in favour of the transpersona1 perspective. Analysis that follows should be labeled as "transpersonal" - i. e., "commited to the possibility of unifying spiritual and psychological perspectives" (Washburn, 1988: 1).
Remembrance in Plato
Myth can be understood as a solid memory of metaphorical occurences, and situations from illo tempore (primordial time - therefore it begins: "long, long time ago..."). Myth-telling and later, recital and drama, help man to recollect and remember these occurences, and to recognize the same pattern repeating in his life, in actual time (Oedipus killed his father on the road - in public trafic people kill each other in accidents, or anger, daily).
It is a process of double recognition: in myth and drama man recognizes the patterns of happenings which he remembers from his, or other peoples lives, and in his, or other people's lives, one recognizes the pattern exemplified in myth or drama.
With Plato's theory of anamnesis (remembrance, recollection) we leave aesthetics and approach epistemology, we part with poetry and drama, and enter philosophy. In the former case, remembering meant keeping in memory what has been told and retold in tradition. With Plato, remembrance and recollection refer to a special faculty and protohistory of the soul, "recollection of the things (i.e. ideas:— D.P.) formerly seen by our soul when it traveled in the divine company" (Phaedrus, 249 b.). This means that the soul (phyche) has seen and known something before birth, and after birth it has forgotten this knowledge. But, why?
There are two reasons: one is prenatal, the other postnatal. In The Republic (620) Plato explains, in the myth of Er, that before the souls are reborn (incarnated) each has to drink from the River of Forgetfulness (Lethe). As they drink they forget everything they have seen and known in the world beyond.1) New oblivion or forgetfulness adds to this after birth. "Because every pleasure and pain has a sort of rivet with which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it down and makes it corporeal, accepting as true whatever the body certifies" (Phaedo, 83).
However, under the guidance and help from philosophy, the willing soul can remember its knowledge (noesis, episteme), and recognize its true identity, and independence from the body.
The main point is that this knowledge is actualy nothing new for the soul - it is potentially there all the time, but obscured by ignorance which is oblivion. The same goes for the independance and identity of the soul. It is pure and free from becoming and decay. But, obscured by emotions, it accepts "as true whatever the body certifies", and is excluded from the "fellowship with the pure and uniform and divine". The main task of philosophy is, therefore, not to impart some new knowledge, really unfamiliar to the soul, but to help it to remember. Ignorance is oblivion, knowledge is recollection, "learning is just recollection (anamnesis)" (Phaedo, 72—76).
Without help the "pregnancy" of the soul (holding this memory) is only a potential, because, under oblivion, the soul is the willing prisoner of the body.
"Every seeker after wisdom knows that up to the time when philosophy takes it over, his soul is a helpless prisoner... and wallowing in utter ignorance. And philosophy can see that the imprisonment is ingeniously effected by prisoners own active desire, which makes him first accessory to his own confinement" (Phaedo, 82).
The possibility of liberation from this confinement rests upon three factors. The one is anamnesis,the other is philosophy, or guidance by a philosopher, and the third are sensible objects. The third factor (sensible objects) is important, because (in the dualism of his idealism) Plato ascribes a double role to the sensible world. On the one hand it deludes the soul, keeps it in ignorance and bondage, as a source of pain and pleasure of the body, on the other hand it serves (as help) in recovering knowledge.
"... We acquired our knowledge before our birth, and lost it at the moment of birth - but afterwards, by the exercise of our senses upon sensible objects, recover the knowledge which we had once before . . ." (Phaedo, 75).
However, only few people retain an adequate rememberance of that, and "when they behold here any image of that other world, (they) are rapt in amazement, but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is no radiance in our earthly copies of justice or temperance or those other things which are precious to souls... But of beauty. I repeat that we saw her there shining in company with the celestial forms: and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense" (Phaedrus, 250).
So, the easiest and most accessible way to anamnesis is: by way of sight and love for beauty. Giving this special credit to beauty, Plato is not willing to single out art as a primary source in remembering the idea of beauty. In Symposion, Diotima explains that ascending course to beauty starts with the perception of beauty in forms, and then in souls and deeds, institutions and sciences. "He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love... when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty... a nature which in the first place is everlasting, knowing no birth or death, growth or decay (Symposium, 210—211).
For Plato, aesthetic experience is, therefore, not exclusively related to art. Beauty is first perceived (aisthesis) by the sense of sight, and later only by noesis. Love (eros), on the other hand, is not exclusively an emotional relation between the sexes (actually, Plato speaks about love in a homosexual context), but an instinct or drive which - through cultivation and contemplation - finally, leads to the recollection of the idea of beauty.
These rich metaphors and imagery will inspire Platonism and Gnosticism.
Recognition and gnosis
Being born, man "falls" or is "thrown" into the world and the body. The soul forgets her original habitation and identity. She is overwhelmed with desires and worldly cares, being engaged and involved, more and more. Gnosticism speakes of "sleep", "drunkness" and "oblivion". Man is dispersed, and divided, by cravings and cares. He is engulfed by the noise of the world, by the fear, hope and disapointment. This is the "world of darkness, utterly full of evil... full of falsehood and deciet... A world of turbulence without steadfastness, . . . a world in which the good things perish and plans come to naught" (Jonas, 1963: 57).
In Gnostic dualism the opposition between "this world" and "the other world" is, perhaps, greater than in the philosophy of Plato. The duality of light and darkness, of good and evil, coresponding to the duality of the two worlds, is greater than the Platonic duality of ideas and "shadows", since darkness is the essence and power of kosmos. There is no mediation and resemblance which one can find between the ideas and the "shadows".
Even the light in this world is really darkness - "black light" (Jonas, p. 58). In such a world there is no beauty; and, if there is, it is not there to remind of the idea of beauty (to help remembrance - anamnesis), but to keep man in oblivion and ignorance, to show its ugly back and outcome, at the end. In order to regain and remember knowledge, gnosis, man needs help and a "call from without". "The call is uttered by one who has been sent into the world for this purpose and in whose person the transcendent Life once more takes upon itself the stranger's fate: he is the Messenger or Envoy - in relation to the world - The Alien Man" (Jonas, 75-63). This redeemer was in Christian Gnosticism identified as Jesus Christ.
Gnosis is insight, immediate vision of truth. Man who has gnosis knows from where he comes and where he goes; he can remember his true identity and understand his present condition. Jonas summarized contents of the call (or gnosis) as follows: "the reminder of the heavenly origin and the transcendent history of man; the promise of redemption,... and finally the practical instruction as to how to live henceforth in the world..." (1963, p. 81).
This call has to help man,or initiate his self-recognition as (or through) remembering. This knowledge (gnosis) is effective in the sense that it is sufficient for salvation and the ascent of the self (pneuma), back to its origin (Divine light).
To be reminded means to be reawakened for the knowledge of oneself, to regain, through remembering, the forgotten knowledge of One's true identity, to recognize that man in the world is not at home, because he is "not of this world." He is an alien, a stranger, unprotected, who does not understand the ways of the world, nor the world understands him.
"The stranger who does not know the ways of the foreign land wanders about lost; if he learns its ways to well... the distress has gone, but this very fact is the culmination of the strangers tragedy. The recollection of his own alienness, the recognition of his place of exile for what it is, is the first step back; the awakened homesickness is the beginning of the return" (Jonas, p. 49-50).
For Gnosticism, suffering in the world is not an expiation for sins, but a reminder2) - that the man has been thrown into the world. Suffering gives a thrust toward recognizing his pneuma (self), and his otherworldly origin. There is some basic agreement between Plato, Gnosticism, Abhi- navagupta and Proust - that forgetfulness is inborn, and due to the relation with the body, to the cares, anxietes, and the hustle of life. For Plato, remembrance and recognition enable us to regain the perceptions from the world of ideas, and for Gnostics, to aknowledge otherworldliness.
Among modern writers, Marcel Proust had the feeling that man is either reincarnated, or that he is other-worldly. He sees that the obligations of moral life, or strivings toward perfection, are hard to explain if we consider only this one life. Contemplating after the death of Bergotte, he says — it seems that we enter life under a burden of obligations already fixed in some previous life. There is no reason, he says, that we should be kind and good-hearted, and there is no reason for the artist to be obliged to start or polish his work for the twentieth time, since - once he is dead - the admiring his work would arouse will mean nothing to his dead body (in many cases the public will not even notice its perfection, nor admire it). All these obligations - he adds - are not sanctioned in this life, and seem to belong to a different order, to some other world, completely different from this one. And we have these laws in ourselves, without knowing who has inspired our being with them (Proust, La Prisonniere, I. 246).
However, in Gnosticism we find extreme dualism. There are not only two worlds, but two gods and two selves, as well. One God is the creator God, responsible for this world, the other is the unknown God, yet to be recovered at the end of the time. One self is the self of the world (psyche), the other self (pneuma) is not from here, and it is not of this world. The transcendence of the other world, and the unknown God, do not stand in any (positive) relation to the sensible world, and the pneumatic self has no relation to the psychic self. Therefore, Jonas calls this teaching "acosmism" - the main values being beyond cosmic origin and significance.
Every culture must confront itself with the principal relation of man with the world, and with the relation of past, present and future - in individual existence, and cosmo-historical time. These are basical questions which also determine the possible answer to the question: what is the meaning of life, how is man supposed to use his time and power available in this life. Gnosticism proudly announces - "the knowledge of who we are, what we become, where we were, where into we have been thrown, where to we hurry, where from we are redeemed, what birth is, and what rebirth" (Clement of Alexandria: Excerpta ex Theodoto, 78. 2,in Jonas, 1963: 334).
Throwness, forlornness, and homelesness, can be found as subjects in Existentialism, especially in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit.3) Also, the theme of the alien, stranger and emigrant can be found in the writings of the 20-th century authors, like Camus (The Stranger) and M. Crnjanski (Migrations, The Novel on London). The best description of the world (as if) made and governed by the bad god Demiourgos, can be found in Kafka's novels and novels of disident writers from Eastern Europe (Solzenyitsin, Shalamov, Kundera). While in Gnosticism the man is thrown into a kosmos as nature (physis), here man is thrown into a kosmos of social and political relations (state, polis). Both are governed solely by power.
However, in Gnosticism there is still gnosis, the other world, and an asumption that man can save himself and return to real, eternal light and life. In modern literature there is no Call (save to the trial or prison), no open doors, no meaning, no promise, no faith, no knowledge - only absolute contingency.
"This makes modern nihilism infinitely more radical and more desperate than gnostic nihilism could ever be... That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with his contingency and the objective meaninglessness of his projected meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation" (Jonas, 1963: 339).
For the modern man, there is neither Gnostic knowledge (gnosis), or Christian faith (pistis), neither possibility of ascent,4) or salvation; only will to power and class~struggle.
Among the modern writers, Nietzsche5) and Proust proclaimed that only aesthetically world and life can be justified. For them, art and aesthetic experience were important as gnosis was in time of Gnosticism, or faith in Christian times. To be saved by, or through art, was a life credo of some modern artists. Since aesthetic values do not need any transcendental support, it seemed that art can survive the downfall of the "inteligible world" of philosophy, and the "death of the God" of religion.6)
The 'aesthetic way'
Art was not calling upon knowledge (gnosis), or faith (pistis) - aesthetic wonder was sufficient - its message was valid even when philosophy and religion were corrupted. Even when man lost faith in ideas and gods, he still could wonder - being in front of a work of art, in a meadow full of flowers, meeting a creature, or being in love, could perhaps, be a sufficient reason to live (even if one is without hope, faith, or meaning of a trandscendent kind).
"I pay my homage to Shiva the omniscient-poet, who created all the three worlds, and thanks to whom people are able to attain aesthetic bliss by watching the spectacle of the play that is our life in this world", says Bhattanayaka, Indian aesthetician. In Trika Shaivism we find an original contribution — the "aesthetic way", a possibility to attain liberation not only through purification and perfection in ethic, noetic, ascetic or devotional values, but through aesthetic contemplation - in peace (santarasa) and wonder (camatkara) attained in aesthetic contemplation.
However, this was not a result of nihilism, a reaction to a downfall of religious or philosophical order, but introduced beside them - it was introduced out of plenty, not because of want.
With Proust we see that art and aesthetic experience were a last refuge in the wasteland — for Abbinavagupta and his predecessors it was a matter of choice. For Gauguin and Van Gogh art was the last resort - something to hang on after everything else has failed.
Abhinavagupta often quotes Vijñanabhairava, a work which can be considered as one of the best expositions of the aesthetic (or should we say "ecstatic") way of Trika Shaivism. In Vijñanabhairava there is no principal difference between aesthetic experience related to work of art and experience of relish, joy, or expansion in front of a beautiful landscape. The same principle is present in Chinese and Japanese "aesthetic way", exemplified in the tea ceremony,7) in the contemplation of plum and cherry blossoms (contemplation in front of the tree, or contemplation of a picture, with a poem on the margin), or in garden contemplation - of a garden which is "not real", (but abstract - sometimes even without flora), and is, therefore, a work of art, and, at the same time, an object of natura naturata.
In India, this principle was present in performing arts. Cosmic play (lila) in Kasmir tradition includes the drama of life and drama as a stage performance; therefore, aesthetic bliss is possible while watching play in life and play on stage.8)
However, to look upon life as (a part of the cosmic) play, for most people is possible only after meditative training. It is easier to obtain this experience through poetry or drama. Abhinavagupta - and other aestheticians from Kasmir - explain this factor (in modern parlance known as "aesthetic distance") in a similar way: as generality (sadharanya) of art presentation. This presentation creates beyond the space of personal interest and concern, and - at the same time - gives the recipient an opportunity to remember his personal experiences and moods, to recognize them in events of drama, and to identify with main personalities. "Generality is thus a state of self-identification with the imagined situation, devoid of any practical interest... of any relation whatsoever with the limited self, and as it were impersonal (Gnoli, 1969: XXIII1).
The aesthetic experience is, therefore an invitation to the recognition (pratyabbijña) of the higher impersonal self (atman), it points to the same goal as meditative experience,9) which can also be realised in an aesthetic setting beyond art.
However, this happens under certain conditions, which, also, explain why people, generally, do not attain liberation during, or after aesthetic experiences. Plato said that the aesthetic experience governed by eros (love for beautiful bodies) should gradually lead to the recogni- tion of the idea of beauty. To this, Gnoli (1968: XLVII) adds citations from Theologia Platonica of Proclus, where the wonder10) that appears in aesthetic and mystic experience, and the astonishment of the soul in front of beautiful and sacred, are compared. The cessation of ordinary world, of the limitations of everyday experience, and practicaly oriented functional consciousness, is related with wonder and amazement. We cannot say what is the cause and what the effect - non-ordinary or non-worldly (alaukika), and wonder (camatkara) are in a synchronic relation: without wonder everything is just ordinary, worldly (laukika), and in ordinary we cannot recognize the non-ordinary (alaukika) without wonder (camatkara, or vismaya). According to Abhinavagupta, camatkara is consciousness without obstacles (vighna). It is the consciousness of a subject "who is finessed in the vibration (spanda) of a marvellous enjoyment (adbhutabhoga)" - Abbinavabharati, (trans. by Gnoli, 1968: 60). This consciousness cannot be intentional and it is the result of tuning (turning on), or rezonance with a certain vibration. This is possible for the sahrdaya, ("one with a heart"), who is sensible and possesses the consent of his own heart.
These traits we also find in blissful moments (moments bienheureux) of Marcel Proust: bliss and wonder, cessation of obstacles, non-intentionality fine tuning of the personality to the ecstatic, extemporal vibration. For Marcel Proust, these blissful moments were not related (for the most part) to the works of art, but to the superposing of remembered and actual impressions. Of the eleven principal moments, listed by Shattuck (1964: 70-74), one is related with work of art (septet by Vinteuil). This puts them close to dharanas from Vijñanabhairava. For example, with dharana 49 we are reminded of the first blissful moment (madeleine sequence, Proust, 1934: I, 34-36), related to the taste of tea and cake, and the exquisite pleasure: "When one experiences the expansion of joy of savour arising from the pleasure of eating and drinking one should meditate on the perfect condition of this joy; then there will be supreme delight" (Vijñanabhairava, verse 72).
Recognition of the extemporal self
For Proust, blissful moments are generally a blending of past and present. However, there is one exception - moment related with "the steeples of Martinville" (Proust, 1934: I, 138—140) does not include any memory. The sequence begins with the enigmatic "call" from various impressions to decifer the meaning of happiness related with them. While riding to Martinville, on one of the turns the two steeples appear glowing in the sunset. Full of joy, Marcel feels that this glow seems to contain and conceal some meaning.
This reminds us of dharana 51: "Wherever the mind of the individual finds satisfaction, let it be concentrated on that. In every such case the true nature of the highest bliss will manifest itself" (Vijnanabhairava, verse 74).
However, the prevalent pattern of Proust's blissful moments is the super- posing of past and present, while dharanas are mostly related with the present. But the difference is superficial - the means are different, the goal same: to tune in with pure time (eternal now, paradox of time without transiency), and recognize one's extemporal being.
In Time Regained Proust says that he could not contemplate solely on actual experience, since he could not apply his imagination - his only faculty for enjoying beauty - in actual situation. In order to apply imagination, he needed the superposing of present with past experience. Thus, connecting past experience (remembered and imagined), with present time, he could "immobilize" and "isolate" pure time - he could recognize "this being" (cet etre) that feeds upon the "essence of things".
Blissful moments are based on non-intentional, involuntary remembering11), while voluntary remembering is governed by sound (practical) aim12). The common feature of blissful moments and camatkara is - overcoming time and obstacles. This brings bliss.
"The so-called supreme bliss, the lysis, the wonder, is therefore nothing but tasting... of our own liberty", says Abbinavagupta (Abbinavabharati, in Gnoli, 1968: XLIV).
Through lengthy volumes Marcel is repeatedly challenged to solve the enigma of happiness related with blissful moments. In the last volume (Time Regained) he understands that these moments are blissful because he is free from the anxiety and doubts concerning his future (will he be a writer, is he "losing" time). He gains time (free from transiency), and certainty, which make him indifferent to death. Finally, he recognizes in himself "this being" (cet etre), which belongs to the extempore order, he recognizes the common source of the past and thepresent. That being is also beyond the anxiety related with future, represented by transiency and death. Beside wonder, recognition of this "other self" is the second precondition for attaining liberation through aesthetic experience.
Colpe (1980: 40-1) related Proust's idea of liberation from time, with the Gnostic notion of immortality, and the recognition of everyday self and the extemporal "this being" (cet etre), with the recognition of the psychic and the pneumatic self in Gnosticism. However, Proust has greater affinity and affection for this world than any Gnostic. He accepts as genuine its call to confront the mystery of beauty and destruction, love and pain, wonder and despair, being and death. For him, these are not distractions, or a negative hint for a "call from without". Mostly, the call to solve the enigma is received from the beauty of the world: the steeples of Martinville, the three trees in Hudimesnil, the azure sky of Venice, or the sound of a spoon striking against the plate.
But, how should we understand the concluding part of Time Regained, the matinee at Guermantes which follows the last blissful moment? After a long intermission Marcel meets his aged friends, and recognises them only with considerable effort, realising the destructivness of time. Beckett (1978: 57), and Shattuck (1964: 38, 111) consider this as proof that blissful moments have failed, that death is not indifferent ("because it sets limit to one's human capacity to create"), that time was not regained, or recovered, but only obliterated (for a while), and now strikes back with the load of years, and the "powder" of old age, covering hair, and faces of his acquaintances with ashes of time.
Confronted with this dance macabre Beckett and Shattuck gave up the meaning and importance of blissful moments, and were willing to surrender to oblivion (oubli) the hardly won recognition (reconnaisance) of the extemporal self (after all, we have to wait for the second coming of Christ, who will bring apokatastasis).
Perhaps Abhinavagupta would have understood Proust better. For Abhinavagupta the essential nature of the self (atman) is hidden owing to the innate forgetfulness (moha). The purpose of pratyabhijña13) (recognition, reconaissance) is to remove this forgetfulness concerning atman.14) In Isvarapratyabhijña-vimarsini he says that recognition (pratyabhijña) is the unification of the two experiences: remembrance (samarana) and perception (anubhava) - quoted by Kaw (1967: 145). For Abhinavagupta and Proust the power of remembrance (smarana-sakti) supports the view that atman (cet etre) is permanent and extemporal.15)
Did Proust understand the "dolorous synthesis of survival and anihilation", or his bliss failed him at the end? Perhaps he would have found familiar the following lines:
"In this way, if the aspirant imagines that the entire world (or at least Guermantes world - D.P.) is being burnt by the fire of Kala-agni and does not allow his mind to wonder away to anything else, then in such a person the highest state of man appears" (Vijñanabhairava, verse 53).
Perhaps Kala-agni - the personification of total conflagration at the end of time - presided at Guermantes matinee, even though Lilian Silburn translated this verse some sixty years after this matinee.
The "Aesthetic way" and the transpersonal connection
If moral perfection, or purification in terms of ethics, may be considered as the "way of ethics", and higher insight, or purification of understanding as the "cognitive way", then the "aesthetic way" appears as partially independant approach to the same goal of transpersonal realization. Striving toward beauty and perfection as intrinsic values that lead one beyond worldliness (Plato), the aesthetic wonder which transports consciousness beyond obstacles, and brings recognition of the self tuned with the eternal vibration (Abhinavagupta), the blissful moments which bring to the fore atemporal self (Proust), all these constitute the orchestration of the main theme - that the lustre and tragedy of life, the self-affirmation, resigning and self-transcendence, are consumated in the tremendous ecstasy that opens the transpersonal horizon for the individual.
Aesthetic contemplation is possible only when the personal and egoic involvement are cast aside, whereas, at the same tune, identification and empathy have the cathexis of the transformed eros, resulting in wonder and exitement, free from transiency, death, or sorrow. If related with a transpersonal perspective (and Abbinavagupta, Proust and others give directions and examples for that) the aesthetic experience opens one for the trans-egoic horizons, which seemed remote, and even non-existent, from the egoic, and personal perspective.
The "aesthetic way" stands as a "middle way" - between the complete alienation of the world of Gnosticism, and the craving, never satisfied thirst, of the egoic level. However, a permanent passage from egoic to the transpersonal level is not a matter of one-time aesthetic contemplation. It can be a matter of a lifetime, and more than often it includes a difficult passage varioussly named (encounter with the shadow and the archetypes, differentiation from anima/animus, the dark night, regression in the service of transcendence etc).
Under certain conditions remembrance and recognition can instantly - as in camera obscura - change the perspective, and switch the egoic to transpersonal. But, as we see with Proust - and in some other cases - this may not be a permanent change of level. Therefore, we have to discriminate between aesthetic contemplation (as a kind of peak-experience), and the "aesthetic way" as a component of an overall process of self-transformation. In the first case it is a preview, or foretasting of the juice (rasa) of the transpersonal integration. One could say that tea in the tea ceremony (chanoyu) has the 'taste' of the transpersonal, as do madeleine cakes for Proust.
NOTES
l) This differs from the later interpretation, by Vergillius (Aeneis), who says that the souls forget the suffering beared in former lives, and then are willing to live again under the sky (i.e. to be reborn).
2) Therefore, Gnosticism could explain the suffering of the innocent (and the good life of the vile - who are not reminded). If Dostoyevski were a Gnostic - and not an Orthodox Christian - perhaps he would have found an answer for his question (why the suffering of an innocent child?), since suffering is not an expiation for sin, but a reminder (and even innocent have to be reminded). However, "reminding" seems to be more painful (or tragic) for some prsons.
3) Jonas (1963: 320-340) gives an extensive comparative analysis of Gnosticism, Existentialism and Nihilism in the concluding section or his book. Taubes (1954): 155—172) has written a comparative study of Gnostic and Heidegger's notions from Sein and Zeit.
4) Metaphors of ascent have been changing: for Plato "wings of the soul"; in Gnosticism, ascending through the spheres of the seven planets; with John Climacus, climbing the 1adder (spiritual growth). Now ascent means becoming rich and/or powerful, or having a successful career (climbing the ladder of social strata).
5) In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche says that only art can overcome the terror and absurdity of life; only with the help of art man can endure the absurdity of existence; life and world are justifiable only as aesthetic phenomena.
6) Even if art cannot survive, we can be sure that soap-operas will survive.
7) Tea ceremony is a sophisticated aesthetisation of an ordinary event, blending ordinary (preparing and drinking tea) and non-ordinary (highly stylized manners and conversation), integration of life with ritual, slowing down and becoming attentive to details, leaving aside the hustle, cares and anxieties of everyday life, in order to open the mind and heart to the mystery of eternal now, and to the ineffable meaning that "lies beneath the surface" (yugen). For further analysis of yugen, see Deutsch (1975).
8) However, this does not mean that the autonomy of art is obscured. "Abhinava likes to insist on the autonomy of a work of art, on the fact that it is sui generis and need have no object corresponding to it in the real world" (Masson and Patwardhan, 1969: 51).
9) Masson and Patwardhan (1969: 2l) state that Bhattanayaka was perhaps "the first person to make the famous comparison of yogic ecstasy and aesthetic experience". He comments the opening verse of Natya-shastra (a classic on art of drama, ca. VI cent. A.D.) and states that drama should help people to understand the insubstantiality of wordly objects. The idea was also later developed in the aesthetics of Japanese Noh theatre (although in a Buddhist context).
10) The notion of wonder (ekplekseos) - in writings of Plato and Proclus - seems to be different from the wonder (thauma) which is for Aristotle the beginning of philosophy (Metaphysica, 982 b), and both are (somewhat) different from aesthetic wonder (camatkara), as developed in Kashmiri tradition.
11) It is strange that Shattuck (1963: 69-75) - who made a careful analysis of these moments - underestimated the importance of involuntary remembering in blissful moments. He makes a summary of their pattern as follows. First, "Marcel is always in a dispirited state of mind, bared, even tired at the time of their occurrence". Second, "he experiences a physical sensation, which comes unexpectedly..." Third "the sensation is accompanied by a clear feeling of pleasure and happiness which far surpasses anything explained by the sensation alone". Fourth, all these "lift Marcel steeply out of the present", and the past event is "remembered, recognized and asimilated into the same binocular field of vision with the present event". Fifth, "the first three components reach out to form a link not only with the past, but also with an event, or development in the future". The sixth element is a variable response to the experience that follows it. Shattuck (1964: 40) mentions the distinction between involuntary memory and conscious recognition, but in a different sense. He puts this involuntary memory of the blissful moments in opposition to the conscious recognition of Marcel's vocation as a writer, and his task of writing. This recognition is - for Shattuck - not the recognition of the extemporal self (which makes death indifferent), but recognition of the vocation and task awaiting him (in time left) before death.
12) Free association in psychoanalysis combines involuntary remembering with a practical aim. The patient has to remember some past experiences (emotional conflicts) in order to recognize their conversion into present symptoms; this frees him from past (conflicts) and from present (repetition of symptoms). The same pattern can be found in Indian meditative traditions. One has to remember previous lives in order to recognize the relationship between unresolved tendencies and his present life. With that he is liberated from karma, or the necessity of (further) repeating incarnations.
13) Separate schools in Kashmir Shaivism developed around the notion of pratyabbhijña (recognition), whose main representative was Utpaladeva (10th cent.), and around the notion of vibration (spanda), whose main representatives were Vasugupta and Kallatabhatta 9th cent.). "According to Utpaladeva, the soul is bound because he has forgotten his authentic identity and can only achieve liberation, the ultimate goal of life, by recognizing his true universal nature" (Dyczkowski, 1987: 17).
14) A note for those familiar with Vedanta. Atman in Pratyabhijña school slightly differs from atman as understood in Vedanta. In Pratyabhijña atman is a synonym for Maheshvara (Great Lord, ultimate reality), and an individual self, while in Vedanta atman is an individual self, identical with brahman.
15) We leave aside the "status" of Proust's mysticism, defined by R. C. Zaechner as "nature mysticism" (in Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, and Drugs, Mysticism and Make-believe). Besides, for Zaechner, intentions of Proust seem to be - basically - religious: to transcend death and mortality, although in non-theistic terms of "nature mysticism". For us, Proust is one of the major modern contributors in articulating the transpersonal perspective in terms of the "aesthetic way."
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