To Be in Communion with our Social Selves
“Religious distress is at the same the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress.”
Karl Marx
“Idealism always accuses materialism of being concerned only with the physical body, with material desires, of ignoring the spiritual side. However, even the religious experience is itself limited in its capacity to address the spiritual. We must go beyond it to satisfy the spiritual needs of human beings.
Globalisation is driving the hunger for material goods and luxurious consumption to extremes. Cheap imitations of costly gadgets and clothes are now widely available. This craze thus engulfs even the poorest sections of society. Status and life’s fulfilment are measured by the number of ‘latest’ ‘branded’ gadgets and dresses one owns.
Simultaneously, the religious sphere too is thriving. The numbers thronging temples, churches and mosques greatly increase year-by-year. Youth form a large share. Poojas, yagnas, prayer meets, urs, pilgrimage — each and every ritual is multiplying. Apparently, all of this stand in contradiction to the galloping greed for material goods. Yet, in its essence, there is a striking similarity. Religion too is being consumed, much like a commodity. The thrust is on the ostentatious. There is less religiosity and more of glitter and pomp. The grander the better. Religious ceremonies are now ‘event managed’. Even the private act of prayer must be embellished with the latest accompaniments — flashy idols, LED lamps, 3D photos and more. This showiness is prominently seen even among those who lay claim to superior spirituality; a Sri Sri, for example.
Despite this booming, hedonistic, consumption, spiritual and material satisfaction remain out of reach. The more the greed for goods and fervent prayers, the greater the alienation. A dull feeling of lack remains and grows.
Dissatisfied with this state of affairs, an increasing number of people search for real spiritual solace. Often, this leads them to meditation. Meditation and the spirituality it promises is certainly more welcome than the religious commodities being peddled today. At the minimum, it can be a thankful diversion from the crass commercialisation of the spiritual. Even for the non-religious, meditation can give peace of mind, mental relaxation. For the religious minded it offers ‘godly bliss’. Neuroscience gives scientific understanding of the brain activity triggered off by meditation and explains its positive outcome. However, even this peace of mind, spiritual solace or religious bliss, is still problematic.
Meditation demands a withdrawal into oneself. This is a precondition, even if it’s only for the duration of meditation. Obviously, that cannot be sustained by those who lead an active life. The moment they return to that life they will be assailed by all the conflicts, tensions and needs of their ordinary existence. The state of affairs from which solace was sought through meditation awaits them. For arguments sake, let us assume that an individual who has attained meditative bliss will now be able to face up to this impassively. Even then, the material, social reality that gave rise to tensions and stress remains. All that has been achieved is the mental respite of an individual. Forgetting the contradictions of society, even if everyone were to achieve this state of mind, it would still be the respite of individuals. But the individual can only exist in union and contradiction with society since the human is a social being. Therefore, a sustained spiritual respite, either for an individual or for all, as individuals separately, is an impossibility.
Meditation allows one to attain a state of mind of feeling one with all others, with the world. Neuroscience demonstrates that this emerges from the promotion of activity in a specific region of the brain and the simultaneous muting of activity in another region related to self-reference. However, this state of mind, this sense of communion, would abruptly end the moment that person returns to his or her class, caste, gendered existence. To give an example, a capitalist may be in communion with his workers in the meditative state. But he cannot be so in normal conditions, while remaining a capitalist. To achieve such communion in real life, he must cease to be a capitalist. But that too won’t be a solution. So long as that society remains capitalist, this individual ceasing will only lead to the closing down of his factory. The condition of labour of that group of workers will be eliminated. They and their dependents would be thrown into misery. Rather than joining him in communion, they would be cursing their ex-boss.
To sum up, meditation can ease mental stress, grant spiritual bliss and give a sense of communism. But it cannot give a lasting resolution since it avoids addressing the material, social sources of stress and conflict. Besides this, in its Brahmanist version, it also suffers from a basic flaw.
Brahmanism presents meditation as a means for the ‘atma’ to become one with ‘paramatma’. It argues that one’s ego and desire are obstacles hindering this union. They must be eliminated. Therefore, the process of meditation advanced by Brahmanism is one in which desires are given up. This must finally lead to the elimination of ego itself. In this state of mind there will be no ‘I’ separate from the ‘paramatma’. The sense of ‘I’, as a separate entity, will be revealed to be a product of ignorance. The realisation that ‘I’ is only a part of ‘nirgunabrahma’ will be achieved.
For Brahmanism, the ego is a creation of ignorance about the ‘atma’ and its indissoluble relation with the ‘paramatama’ as a part of it. The ego is seen as the root cause of all emotional, psychological, spiritual problems. Its elimination is a pre-condition for the attainment of supreme bliss. Meditation is advanced as a means to achieve this. As noted earlier, neuroscience actually does show how meditation causes significant decrease in brain signals from regions associated with self-referential, egoistic thought. But, rather than proving Brahmanism’s claims, this scientific knowledge only goes to refute it. At the minimum, it shows that self-referential, ego-centred thought is brain activity. It has a material base. Therefore, it is not an illusion that has emerged from the identification of ‘atma’ with the physical body, as explained by Brahmanism.
What if the existence of this specific region in the brain and its activity is itself the product of such illusion? Can’t we then assume that not only self-referential brain activity but even the brain region where it takes place can eventually be transformed through meditation?
Science has identified regions in the human brain not seen in other animals. It has shown how they were later growths that came through evolution. Unlike animals, social and cultural practices have played a major role in the further evolution of humans and their brains. Engels’ points out the role of labour in this process. As a result of all this, the human brain has evolved into a complex, differentiated organ. Correspondingly, specific brain regions and types of brain activity have emerged, including those related to the ego. Every organism distinguishes itself from everything else, animate or inanimate. If it doesn’t do so, material existence, the reproduction and thriving of the species, would be impossible. Self-awareness has its roots in this. The human ego is an advanced type of self-awareness. It is structured and deeply influenced by social existence. It has evolved with the development of human society.
It is evident, then, that the elimination of the ego, as demanded by Brahmanism, is neither possible nor advisable. It is an inseparable part of human existence and consciousness. That does not mean that we should not concern ourselves with the ego. The human essence is an ensemble of social relations. One’s ego too invariably carries the imprint of these relations. In the present world, private property, exploitation and the relations of domination and oppression they give rise to, anchor the ego in selfishness. This definitely is a shackle on social consciousness. It hinders the struggle of radical change. We must address this through developing social awareness and consciousness. A sense of commitment to society, to the people, must be developed in close relation to the struggle to transform the society. This is not elimination of the ego as proposed by the one-sided viewpoint of Brahmanism. It is its transformation. It is the subordination of the self to the larger interests of the people. Selfless service to the people replaces self-seeking.
Controlling the mind through concentration, withdrawing one’s consciousness from sensory impulses, is necessary for advancing to the meditative state. However, the matter cannot be simply left at that. Brahmanism conceives lack of mental concentration as a products of the mind’s ‘fickleness’. The mind is pictured as a monkey on a fruit tree, jumping from branch to branch. Its ‘fickle’ nature is said to arise from attraction to external objects. To overcome this, one must control and concentrate the mind in order to draw the consciousness away from external objects and sensual desires towards the internal essence, ie the ‘atma’.
Evidently, in this perception, the ‘fickle’ nature of the mind is simply treated as an altogether negative characteristic to be rid of. Is that correct? If we examine the functioning of our mind we can trace out chains of thoughts. They usually lead us away from what we were thinking of at the beginning. Each thought is linked to the preceding and succeeding ones, somehow or the other. I hear a song. That leads my thoughts to the occasion when I first heard it. This reminds me of a person who was there. I then recollect a novel we were talking about. That brings to memory a character in that novel. I notice some similarities between that character and the person now sitting near me and so on. I started from a song heard in the past and ended up with the behaviour of somebody in the present.
All of these thoughts were either memories or immediate perceptions. One led to another through something they shared — either a context, outcome or characteristic. Within the brain these associations were made through synapses. A synapse is the connection made between brain cells. The brain has millions of brain cells. Most of them remain unused during the lifetime of an individual. But even the small share in use have the potential for a huge number of synapses. This is the material basis of the mind’s ‘fickleness’, its jumping from one thought to another. For Brahmanism it is simply a negative trait.
On the contrary, this quality of the brain and consequently, of the mind, lies precisely at the very base of human creativity and innovation. It has given humans immense capacity to go beyond perception and conceive of entirely new things. A computer functions with pre-set programmes. Even those with artificial intelligence function within some boundaries. But the human brain has no such limitation, other than its physical one. It can make totally new associations and come up with unique insights. The same objective reality can be subjectively appreciated and represented in diverse forms. The associative capacity of the brain gives us the ability to make abstractions. A large number of particularities can thus be subsumed under a universal category. Ironically, the very quality of the mind damned as negative by Brahmanism has allowed the conceptualisation of its own precepts! To sum up, we must certainly be able to concentrate our minds when required. But this must not be taken up in an absolutist manner, denying the positivity of its roving nature.
Whether ego or mind, in both the cases, Brahmanism projects a one-sided view that originates from its idealism. It is incapable of grasping the material basis of mental phenomena. Though, nowadays, it often tries to ‘prove’ its claims by drawing on advances of science, its arguments only serve to contradict itself. Even its highest claim about having the best understanding of spirituality, falls flat.
Marxism does not deny the spiritual side of humans. But it negates views that bracket the spiritual solely with religious belief. This Marxist position is substantiated by neuroscience. Electrical stimulation of a particular region of the brain brings up a state of mind identical to religious/spiritual feelings. The material underpinning of religious spirituality is thus revealed. Simultaneously, we are also educated that the religious experience is something real. It is not mere illusion or a product of ignorance as argued by rationalism. Marxism considers it to be a part of the spiritual mind of humans. Communion with fellow beings, morality, consciousness, the aesthetic sense and the contemplative mind, all of these too are part of the spiritual. It is inseparable from the social existence of human beings. It is not something given, some unique, permanently set human quality, but a product of historical development. The religious experience is only a particular form of expression of the spiritual.
One can surely prepare a long list of the negative fallouts of religious thinking. Yet, it is also undeniable that it has performed two positive roles, right from its origins till now. One was (is) as a moral adjudicator, serving the needs of maintaining, promoting and reproducing social cohesiveness and stability. The other, as a rationaliser, helping to make sense of the contrariness of human existence and its end in death. Thus, it has played a major role in the development, shaping and sustenance of humanity. Yet, it has not remained the same in its content or manner of expression throughout the ages. A very significant, qualitative change took place with the emergence of class society. Various types of social divisions such as class, caste, gender etc., exploitation and private property, shattered the material, social and spiritual communion of humanity.
In primitive societies, the rationalising role of proto-religions primarily dealt with the nature/human contradictions through worship of nature, animism and ritualistic magic. Forces of nature, animals, trees, mountains and so on were attributed super-human powers and worshipped. The aim was either to mitigate their life threatening powers or draw-out their supposed life-enabling qualities. In their moralistic role these beliefs addressed the needs of stability and cohesiveness of specific tribes vis-a-vis others. Kinships, blood relations, moral codes and so on were defined through totems and taboos.
Unlike this, in class societies, the dual role of religion must address sharp social contradictions. Most fundamentally it must deal with the harsh reality of the increasing aggrandisement of the few at the expense of the vast majority and the oppressions accompanying this. The social communion lost in real life must be recreated as a transcendental union mediated through some omnipotent power named as god, vital force or Brahmanism’s nirgunabrahma. As Marx noted, it must function as the ‘heart’ of a ‘heartless’ world. This is the strength as well as fundamental weakness of religion as a provider of spiritual solace in class society.
Religion certainly does offer solace in a world made inhuman by exploitation and all sorts of oppression. But, the more it does so, the more it becomes a prop, a legitimisation of this inhumanity. In the beginning, a new religion too may be suppressed by the ruling class. But that changes when it gains wider acceptance among the people. The rulers themselves start associating with it and become its believers and patrons. Over time it becomes a consciously sustained tool which helps keep the masses subdued and thus serves the task of maintaining the existent ruling order. Social divisions get replicated within it. It thus suffers an erosion in its capacity to be a salve for despairing minds. The conditions are thus prepared for a new interpretation, a new savant or a new belief system. Its roots lie in the spiritual, theological, philosophical crisis of the extant religion, all of which, in turn, have some very material undercurrents. The new religion too invariably follows the same path as its predecessors. The ‘heartless’ world can never really yield space to a ‘heart’ offering solace.
Idealism always accuses materialism of being concerned only with the physical body, with material desires, of ignoring the spiritual side. However, as seen above, even the religious experience is itself limited in its capacity to address the spiritual. We must go beyond it to satisfy the spiritual needs of human beings.
In his ‘Thesis on Feuerbach’, Marx criticised mechanical materialist thinking for failing to address the ‘active side’ of human existence. By this he meant mental activity, the inseparable relation between consciousness and human practice. He pointed out how this lapse has been capitalised by idealism to present itself as the sole representative and proponent of the mental, thinking side. Lenin, in his notes on dialectics, had made a similar observation. He noted how idealism has emerged from material life. It grasped one aspect of reality and then took it up in a one sided manner, thus cutting it off from the flow of life and causing it to shrivel up. Incidentally, this also shows that idealism is not just humbug. It has identified and tried to address a real aspect of human existence, even if it does so in an upside down manner, denying the primacy of matter.
These insights of Marxism help us understand the material base of the spiritual. For members of a primitive tribe, communion was conceivable only with others of the same tribe. Beyond that, no one was even worth consideration as humans. Today, such an attitude would be considered inhuman. Even if only at the conceptual level, all of humankind is now granted the right to a human existence. And this acceptance itself brings out in sharp relief the denial of minimal human conditions for billions of people by a tiny section. That evocative picture of Ayan Kurdi, washed up dead on a beach but bringing to one’s mind the playful time he could have spent on it, speaks volumes of the possible and its cruel denial. The cry of revulsion and anger, the tide of empathy that swelled up, showed us the immense dimensions of spiritual oneness thirsting for expression, as well as the material barriers choking it.
All religions teachers have talked about the power of love. Love for one’s fellow human beings is indeed powerful. But, as an African-American saying reminds us “When hunger steps in through the door, love flies out of the windows”. There is resignation to the cruel truth of the lives of the poor in these words. There is also pain, bitterness, at the enforced loss of love, of humanness. There is wrath. Should we soothe this spiritual dissatisfaction with mystic retreat into oneself or should we fan it up to energise ourselves in burning anger? We must hit out, hit hard, against the inhuman conditions of the existing world that deny us spiritual satisfaction. We must end this wretchedness. Only then can we proceed towards achieving ‘peace of mind’, the full blooming of human faculties, material and spiritual, to live as social beings — in communion with our fellow beings, our social selves.
(From the collection ‘Critiquing Brahmanism’, Foreign Languages Press, Paris and Kanal Publication Centre, Kochi. A new edition, with an introduction by Vara Vara Rao, is being published in January 2023.)