The Shadow and Karma
by Antonio T. de Nicolas
The Biocultural Research Institute
St. Augustine, Fl.32080
The word, Karma derives from the Sanskrit verbal root kr.,"
to do, make, act, perform." Karma is the nominative
singular form of the neuter noun karman, which means act, action,
performance. From a grammatical point of view, karman refers
to the direct object in a sentence, the recipient of the action
the verb indicates, the beneficiary, for whose sake the action
takes place. Karma, therefore, in and of itself is the
Switzerland of language: neutral. It must be indicated by other
means to whom it belongs and in which way it belongs. And here
is where problems begin to raise their heads. The Classical Texts
of India (the original source of this model) provide us with two
options: We may decide to ascribe the action, karma, to
the "I" or self, and then pain (duhkha) will
follow, or we may ascribe it to the a-perspectival "not-I,"
the "THAT," by-passing thus the mechanisms of the "I"
identity. Someone must be identified as the owner of the action
mentioned in the sentence. This "some one", in all probability,
will be the shadow as attested by our life experience and the
surrounding culture in which we live. It is, threfore, important
that we discover an alternative.
The interpretation of Karma, moreover, carries its own
shadow. Karma is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as, "
the sum of a person's actions in one of his successive states
of existence,{ regarded as} determining his fate in the next."
Karma is also interpreted as inherently evil, since all
action leads to suffering, or as binding the doer to the wheel
of transmigration. Thus karma has been linked to the idea
of reincarnation (punar janma) even though their Sanskrit
etymologies are unrelated. Hindu scholars deny this interpretation,
for karma to them means only ritual action, and it is not
linked to rebirth. And yet, the doctrine of karma and reincarnation
is hinted at in the Upanisads at the time when Buddhism and Jainism
were making the same claims. At least Sankara thought so in his
Brahma Sutra. By 200 B.C. the Dharmasastras used these popular
beliefs to control society, in a way reminiscent of Christianity.
Acts that are good produce good fruits (phala) and good
future births. Buddhism popularized life regression techniques
linking memory to states of meditation or ritual performance.
The Laws of Manu asserted soon that if one kills a brahman
then one will be reborn as a dog, a pig, a camel, a goat, a cow,
a sheep, a deer, a bird, an untouchable, or of mixed race. Thieves
are reborn as spiders, snakes, lizardes, fishes and so on through
the flora and fauna, to regulate through mass psychology the caste
system, the legal system of rewards and punishments and even the
civility of the populace. But something seems to be missing from
this account. Is there no way out from the cycle of samskara
(the residue of action), from the wheel of determinism (samsara)?
Of course we know there is more to the story. There is also moksa,
nirvana, liberation. Even more, moksa, nirvana,
liberation are possible in this very life through body manipulations.
The fact that it is so, as affirmed by the Scriptures and verified
by modern neurobiology, and the fact that this "wisdom"
of the ancients has found a contemporary echo in the discourse
currently held by the hard sciences of physics and biology requires
that we give karma a second glance. Were the ancients right,
and is Science only now catching up?
The Shadow and its Origin.
Take this simple English sentence: " I love you." Say
the same thing in Spanish: "Te quiero." Try it now in
Gujarati ( Modern Indian Language derived from Sanskrit): "Tamara
upar prem karu chu," ( tamara upar -on you , prem -love,
karu chu - I make). Notice how in Spanish and Gujarati the "language
game" involved is different from that of English. While in
the former the action-"love" is emphasized, in English
the "I" takes over, and the sentence is meaningless
without it. In other words, the experience of "I", the
identification of the agent of love, is essential to the sentence
either as an originator or an agent of the verb, love. In philosophical
terms notice that while there is a sensation, "love,"
this sensation is reduced. through attribution, to the experience
of an "I" who is the agent of the action, i.e., agent
and action form an ontological unity. In this sense biology (verb/sensation)
and culture (language/ontological interpretation) are at war.
If they are not separated and the user of language is not aware
of their separation and the other multiple options available,
their unity in a false interpretation is the cause of all our
human suffering. The removal of this suffering is the aim of the
Classical texts of India. The possibility that this goal is at
hand has already found voices of agreement in modern Western Philosophy
and in neurobiology and physics.
Each culture, each linguistic game is a devise to repeat a picture
of reality from which the language user cannot escape, for the
language "repeats it inexorably," proclaimed Wittgenstein.
In his Logical Investigations he writes: " When we
read this word "I" without knowing who wrote it, it
is perhaps not meaningless, but it is at least estranged from
its normal meaning." The point is not that language uses
"I" or "mine" or "this" or "that,"
i.e., atomic entities, but rather that the language games we use
force on us an ontological unity that we superimpose on their
source: the epistemological sensation. This false superimposition
and its correction is the goal of all Eastern philosophies, disciplines,
and Scriptures. Or as the great Indian philosopher Sankara (A.D.
788-820) wrote: " this faulty superimposition (adyasa)
is the presupposition upon which are based all distinctions of
practical life, of the Vedas, {in the religious and ritualistic
senses}, between the conditions of knowledge, objects of knowledge
and the authority of Scriptures." As we all know Sankara,
well ahead of our modern times, wrote the best analysis
of this superimposition in his Brahma Sutra Bhashya: " It
is a clear fact that the object and the subject, whose respective
areas are the concepts of Thou and I, and whose natures are opposed
to each other as much as light and darkness, are irreconcilable.
So also their respective qualification.." Yet, Sankara continues,
language functions in such a way that we can only make meaningful
statements by " superimposing upon the subject the qualities
of the object and vice versa... and this is false (mithya)...
Thus mixing reality with unreality by saying things like: 'That
I am' or ' this is mine'." Even more, "knowledge, cannot
operate without the sense of "I" or "mine"
superimposed or united with the body and the senses... Nor does
anyone act without having the aspect of the self , "I",
superimposed on the body."
The superimposition of language on statements like "this is mine," or "I am in pain," is not the obvious explanation that these statements do not refer always to the same subject or object, but rather that they do not necessarily refer to any subject or object at all, even though at times they do. Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations makes the same point when he indicates that any decision on identity making has no one factual answer but rather depends on a great variety of criteria for determining personal (or other) identity. It is up to every language user to decide which criteria to employ. The simple use of terms like "I" or "mine" does not prescribe in any way which criterion to use, for it presupposes none." It is entirely up to us to decide the type of game we are going to play with sensations-terms so that we may decide, even while suffering the pain, which "candidate" we wish to have as sensation owner." This advice from Wittgenstein is essential if we are interested in the "varieties of human experience," but principally if we try to translate or interpret other cultures. But in this particular case of the study of karma, not knowing the language game Sanskrit plays with these identity terms would be fatal and lead to more suffering.
In Classical Indian writings like Samkhya or the Bhagavad Gita or Sankara's Commentaries on both, the greatest linguistic sin is the ahamkara, literally the I-maker. While the most favored modality of speaking of one self in the world is the anahamvadi. literally the modality of not-I speaking. The reason is simple. Underlying all speech and all experience Indian Classical Texts are based on the upanishadic experience of : "Tat tvam asi," ( THAT, you are) which means, as Sankara would explain, that only Brahman is real; the world is improperly called real or is false (mithya), the atomic individual self, the "I", is properly speaking Brahman and that the source of all human misery is due to the fact that we incorrectly decide to impose our individual "I" or self on karma, action, leading us to all kinds of misery.
In Sanskrit the personal pronoun
aham (I) is used to bring out an artificial and temporary
emphasis on an activity whole that otherwise would lack identification.
It is a contrived superimposition. Nor is aham necessary
in Sanskrit for the simple reason that the personal suffix to
the verb is sufficient to specify the agent. Individuation is
established for the sake of clarification: aham yaje (it
is I who sacrifices) as opposed to yaje (I-sacrificing).
By using aham the speaker establishes an artificial identity/individuation
of any and all particulars, as if to "create the impression
of" or "as if" the individual had an ultimate ontological
unity-identity with karma-the activity as a whole.
The anahamvadi, literally not-I speaking, is the modality
of speech in which the speaker talks "as if" the not-I
were speaking, as if karma/action as a whole passed through
him (in the instrumental case) in every speech act. It is this
modality of speech that the Gita ascribes to the agent of light
(satvikam) who allows the cosmic ritual of karma
to play itself out through its body. While the other two gunas
(psychological structures of emotions), rajas (passion)
and tamas (dullness) are more in tune with the shortsightedness
of the ahamkara and are expressed in the dative case, for
these people have no knowledge of how things "hang together,"
they are in the darkness of avidya, ignorance. Thus if
the individual subject was to be understood as material instrument
by which the action was affected, he was expressed in the instrumental
case. If he was to be understood as a partaker of the action karma,
interested in the result he was expressed in the dative case.
It is obvious that the favored modality of dealing in the world
is the anahamvadi, the not-I speaking.
It is clear, therefore, that first
person discourse, I-discourse, is not a function of language but
rather of the intentionality, language game, of a culture. In
English "I" names a person, an agent, a particular speaker,
whose standpoint is irrevocably within a concrete historical situation
and whose presence, through language games, its bewitchment, and
self-mediation is his/her personal history, his/her biography.
Aham, in Sanskrit, has no personal history, no biography, but
rather a kind of superimposition, a momentary lapse of attention,
on the activity karma-whole. In consequence aham cannot
be internally identified , as "I" can, with the utterance
origin or with the agent of a speech act, or if done, it is only
by mistake and ignorance (avidya). Thus the epigram of
Indian Classical texts is understood as: ihamutrarthaphalabhogaviragah
( here and everywhere (ihamutra) {act} detached (viragaha)
from the emotional attachment (bhoga) to the fruits of
action (phala-artha) . Notice that neither objects, subjects
or actions are to be avoided, but only acting for the sake of
the results, that of course bring to life, subjects, objects and
the rest.
All this is well and good, but given the fact that we identify
with "I" and that through repetition (habit) the experience
of "I" has become our identity card in all modern languages
and a biological given, how is it possible now to correct this
biological error, even if we understand that it is a mistake?
Are these biological structures of "I" capable of being
destroyed, bypassed or neither? And anyway, is not one language
game as good as another? Why should we play around with our structures
of identity? Wouldn't this be dangerous, perhaps impossible, or
lead to delusion or brain damage? Yes you are right to put up
these objections and we could go on talking for another thousand
years, except for one thing: that what we call 'I", our identity,
the hero of our own biography, is not only false (mihya)-
a mistake of interpretation, but even more radically, this "I"
has no substance, is totally mortal, and is our greatest human
delusion, for it is born out of The Shadow, the actual source
of all our suffering.
The Shadow
Let us, therefore, start from the beginning: What is The Shadow?
How does The Shadow appear? Why is it the source of suffering?
Contemporary developments in physics and neurobiology have provided
us, through experimentation and empirical verification, a new
model of being in the world of which I will be able only to sketch
the profile. Studies such as Paul MacLean's discovery of the triune
brain, and following that, the conclusions drawn from the Biocultural
Paradigm yield startling insights into the nature of our human
intelligence systems: namely the fact that we are not as unified
cerebrally as we think we are. What these studies have shown is
that we humans are not composed of one brain, one mind, one self,
one soul, one inner reality, but rather these "realities"
are the products of the "inner someone" who objectifies
itself as a self, an I, by the mere fact that it thinks in a particular,
accidental way. What we call the "I", the self, is not
an objective reality, but rather the presupposition on which all
our realities are grounded: It is a fixed viewpoint, a point of
view , an interpolated focus around which experience is structured.
In other words, the "brain" we develop as children through
our interaction with our culture determines the "pilot"
through which our interpretations of life, the world, ourselves
etc. develop.
According to neurobiology, the
perceptions/sensations of the right hemisphere of the neocortex
are holograms of sensation, large pictures, undifferentiated sensations.
Each brain, in dealing with this input "objectifies "
it through a delayed mechanism in the brain itself. This delayed
mechanism creates the fixed viewpoint, the structure of identity
known from time immemorial as " The Shadow," the homuncular
"I," our individual identity. But the fact that this
identity varies from brain to brain and culture to culture, depending
on which brain the culture considered primary, and that the left
brain, because of its ability to give names, concepts and language
to experience has exercised an imperialistic dominance over the
others, has had dramatic consequences for all of us. For one thing
the experience of "That" has been reduced to brain disorders,
or to a large extent suppressed or persecuted to the point of
either oblivion or atrophy, while the experience of "I"
has become so narrowing of the human psyche that every attempt
has been made to distort its fixity pharmacologically. Meanwhile
large testimonies of the experience of "That" as we
find them in the Classical texts of India, for example, remain
opaque to the "I"-predominant readers.
This dramatic development in the acquisition of our primary brain,
or pilot, is possible for the simple reason that "sensation"
precedes " interpretation," or in Classical terms "That"
precedes "I," continuity precedes discontinuity, from
the continuous we come into the discontinuous to move on to the
continuous again, and immortality precedes mortality. Ironically
enough we have inverted the tables in our culture, and no matter
who deals with the problem of identity, religion, philosophy,
psychology or psychiatry, the humuncular experience of "I"
is taken for granted and its objectification has become our sacramental
source of knowledge. If, That precedes I, the question remains:
how does this take place? In technical terms then, how would the
world read, feel, if it could be experienced by by-passing the
fixed filter of The Shadow, the self, the I?
Well, here is where the Yogas come in. But remember, something more than thinking is involved here. While the right hemisphere of the neocortex has direct access to "That," the left brain lacks this direct access, for all its inputs come directly from the right side of the brain which the left brain translates into concepts, abstractions and a language which covers its false origins. The left hemisphere works in isolation, not necessarily subject to the general rules and interests of the integrated brains answering to the organic source of all life, and it can even turn the tables on the rest of the brains and reverse or even cancel the natural order of the other brains or even their origin, That. What we call history is the description of this process, only that we objectified it outside of ourselves.
Concluding Remarks
Were it not for modern science and neurobiology, much of the wisdom
of Asia, the right brain predominant cultures, and our own neurobiological
inheritance might have been lost forever. We can read those Classical
texts now with less effort for the simple reason that Science
today, our source of sacramental knowledge, gives credibility
to this ancient wisdom. Understanding, however, in this case is
not sufficient, though it is a good start. The experience of "I"
is at risk. But if you look around, the culture has already decided
to change it pharmacologically, for the modern experience of "I"
is insufficient. On the bright side of the question, we have established
that the experience of "That" precedes the experience
of "I", and were we able to bypass our own identity,
we would be able to experience "That" in a much more
rewarding manner. For it is not action, karma, that determines
our past and our futures, but rather the structure of self identity
through which we translate all experience and action. And finally
if we take the advice of the Bhagavad Gita that : " He who
thinks himself to be the agent (of action) is wrong," (XVIII,
l6) and dedicate our efforts to correct our images of the body,
sensation and interpretation bypassing the humuncular "I"
and its narrow doses of sensation, then a much larger world of
sensation would be open to us, for our sensations are in direct
proportion to the size or portion of "That" that we
let filter into our biological systems. How to do this, by which
disciplines the "I" is bypassed in favor of the experience
of "That," is the karma of the mystics or simply
of those who want to live getting more than the "I"
supplies.
Notes
1. For a complete bibliography on karma see: Chapple, Christopher.
Karma and Creativity. Albany: State University of New York
Press. l986.
2. On Sankara see: de Nicolas, Antonio T. " The Unity and Indivisibility of the Self (Brahman)" in Main Currents in Modern Thought. Vol.29.n4, l973.pp.l30-l37.
On The Bhagavad Gita see: de Nicolas
Antonio T. "Audial and Literary Cultures; The Bhagavad Gita
as a case study." in Journal of Social and Biological
Structures, London: Academic Press Inc. l982 5, 269-288.
--- Avatara: The Humanization of Philosophy. N.Y.: Nicolas-Hays
l976.Distr. Samuel Weiser.
--- The Bhagavad Gita. Maine: Nicolas- Hays l990.Distr. Samuel
Weiser.
3. Great sins of translation have
been committed not following the language game of Classical Indian
Texts. For example: Studies on the Rg Veda are not aware that
the language and mental faculties used are "right brain"
only and that what is opposed in the text is imagination and fantasy,
the sacrifice and magic, the rishi and the magician. Equally when
we come to the Gita or Samkhya we forget, when translating, that
manas is not the mind, a faculty, the way we understand
it. Neither in the Gita or Samkhya the manas is a faculty, but
one more of the senses, the sixth as they call it and that, therefore,
to translate "buddhi" as intellect is meaningless,
for this is a right brain faculty more in tune with imagination
less fantasy, I-less. Similarly we can see at a glance that a
text like the Rg Veda is more kinesthetic brain dominant than
the Gita who is audial-limbic, or any Mahayanic Text of Buddhism
which are predominantly right brained and therefore whould be
understood, interpreted,in those terms and not in the left-brain
predominant fashion of Christian-Jewish texts like the Bible or
the Catechism.
4. On Biology and Religion see: de Nicolas Antonio T. The Biology
of Religion: The Neural Connection Between Science and Mysticism.
Tokyo: International Buddhist Study Center. l990.
Comfort, Alex.I and That. N.Y.: Crown Publishers l979
5. On Biocultures see: Colavito,
Maria M. The Heresy of Oedipus and the Mind/Mind Split: A Study
of the Biocultural Origins of Civilization. Lewiston,N.Y.:
The Edwin Mellen Press, l995.
--Gazzaniga, Michael S. The Integrated Mind.N.Y.: Plenum
Press,l978
-- MacClean, Paul. "On The Evolution of the Three Mentalities
of the Brain," in Origins of Human Aggression. Ed.
Newman,G.N.Y. Human Sciences Press,l986.
-- Pearce,Joseph Chilton.Evolution's End. San Francisco:
Harper Collins,l992