4.3 From Shiva Seal to Samkhya
Last modified 05/26/2008
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One of the most confusing aspects of the Axial Age is the way it appears
as a brief interval in a larger history of outstanding cultures. We need a
concept of what we can call 'relative transformations', to express or describe
the way in which various elements of prior culture are suddenly amplified or
reshaped during the Axial period. Thus monotheism isn't really an invention of
the Axial Age. The basic conception had been gestating for a long time, and yet
suddenly during the Axial interval the seeds of universal monotheism emerge to
become a series of world religions. In some ways the Old Testament reflects this
seeming contradiction. Although its sagas have very problematical historical
status, the chronicle from Abraham to Moses up to the period of the kingdoms of
Israel/Judah shows the way ( we must be wary of the mythological backdating of
these histories) that the idea of 'god' was a prior emergent cultural religious
system, one suddenly transformed during the Axial interval into a literature and
a socio-political movement. This relative transformation of something that was
already there better expresses the complex effect of the Axial Age. At first
this insight can lead us to some perplexity as to what the Axial interval is
really about! But in fact we see that the whole process is something far larger
than the elements of culture and religion indicated in the localized streams
flowing across the Axial period boundary. It is a mysterious abstract system at
work, driving the evolution of civilization.
This perspective is especially clear if we examine the history of Indian religion, one of the most mysterious and complex streams of culture in world history. The evidence of, for example, the Shiva Seal (check the term in Google search for an image of a meditating yogi) dating back to the third millennium BCE shows us that the complex spiritual practices that characterize later Buddhism/Hinduism already existed millennia before the Axial Age. And yet, once again, with elegant precision the Axial interval repackages the elements of Upanishadism spawning Buddhism as a world religion emerging from inchoate beginnings to become a world religion, and this in almost uncanny sync with the emergence Occidental monotheism. We are left disconcerted by the way in which a theistic and atheistic (if it can be called that) set of religions emerge in parallel with clear Axial signatures. We are driven to attempt a higher synthesis of primordial concepts that can stand above these contradictions in the realization of the Axial Age. It is significant to consider the breadth and diversity of Indian religion, taking by way of conclusion (or as an indicated starting point for study!) the case of the classic Samkhya, a spiritual philosophy with a clear sourcing (or relative sourcing) in the Axial Age. This complex system of thought at once naturalistic, dualistic, and transcendental unwittingly yields a clue to the mystery of the subject matter of Indian religion in its insistence on an at first contradictory 'spiritual naturalism'. Its cogency lies in the way that even spiritual phenomena express the movements of nature, and this without the reductionist fallacies that characterize modern scientism. We should take our cue from this to see that even the spiritual histories of religion take their place in the productions of greater nature. |
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