The Academy
‘They have kidnapped Sophia and sold her into servitude.
Now she must do the bidding of the housekeeper.’
‘They have kidnapped Sophia and sold her into servitude.
Now she must do the bidding of the housekeeper.’
(Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Remember When, 2008)
The world described in Ann Kramer’s book seems very remote from the one that British people inhabit in 2019. As I write this review, the United Kingdom is in the midst of an unprecedented constitutional crisis in the run-up to the latest deadline (31 October) for the country’s exit from the European Union, following a 2016 referendum that revealed a severely divided electorate (only 52% of those voting supported withdrawal). Eighty years ago, by contrast, the British people were overwhelmingly united in their determination to defeat a very different kind of enemy. This involved both military and civilian mobilization, the latter including the Women’s Land Army (WLA), the subject of Kramer’s book. Although the role of the armed services was clearly critical to the war effort, I suspect that more recent generations would be unfamiliar with the equally vital task performed by the WLA (popularly known as ‘land girls’) in nourishing the nation and averting starvation. My mother, who grew up in the West Midlands and was 12 years old when war broke out, often referred to the rigours of food rationing, but I don’t recall her ever mentioning the WLA.
Starvation was regarded as a very real prospect by a government preparing for war in 1938–39, based on the experience of the First World War, when hundreds of thousands of men left agricultural work to fight overseas, leaving the country heavily dependent on imports that were in turn disrupted by the predations of German U-boats: ‘According to some accounts [by 1917] there was only about three weeks’ food supply left in the country’ (p. 5).
Thanks to the work of the WLA, British people did not starve during the Second World War, unlike their civilian counterparts in occupied Holland and France and in Germany. By 1943, the WLA was providing something like 70 per cent of the nation’s food which, together with rationing, meant that the British population were able to eat a balanced and extremely healthy diet throughout the war, even if food dishes were sometimes peculiar and more exotic fruits and foodstuffs were absent. The work of the WLA meant that Germany failed in a major objective, which was to starve Britain into submission. (p. xx; see also p. 164)
An offshoot of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association (established in 1899), the Women’s National Land Service Corps was formed in 1916 and disbanded in 1919 (pp. 1–9). When it became clear that another war was imminent, the British government realised that it would be essential to recruit women for agricultural work again, and preparations began in 1938. The highly capable Lady Gertrude Denman assumed leadership, but her initial organisational efforts were hampered by the Ministry of Agriculture. Notwithstanding the changes in female political and social status since 1918, many still regarded agricultural work as unsuitable for women. Lady Denman threatened to resign unless her proposals were implemented, with the result that the WLA was formed on 1 June 1939. It was initially part of the Ministry of Agriculture, but staffed and run by women, with headquarters established at Lady Denman’s Sussex home on 29 August, five days before war broke out (pp. 10–19). The book goes into considerable detail about the administrative complexity of the organisation, which would enlist more than 80,000 women over the course of the war (pp. 20–21).
The remaining chapters of the book explore different aspects of the WLA: recruitment and propaganda; the age and social background of the recruits; the nature of their work; the specialist sub-section known as the Women’s Timber Corps (‘lumber jills’); the pros and cons of working in the WLA; the end of the war; and reflections of recruits on their experiences. Much of the detail is fascinating for anyone with a taste for social history.
Despite the harshness and danger of the working conditions, the prejudices that they confronted (and mostly overcame), instances of sexual harassment, occasional loneliness, and the jealousy of some farmers’ wives, the land girls successfully performed an essential role with great pride, and without the level of recognition that was awarded to their sisters in the armed services. Moreover, those interviewed generally described the experience as the best time of their lives. With the majority coming from urban backgrounds, they gained new skills, independence, camaraderie, and an appreciation for the countryside. Some remained in agricultural work after the war, and there were cases of marriage to farmers.
Kramer briefly mentions that in 2007 the British government announced that a specially designed commemorative badge was to be awarded to surviving members of the WLA, in recognition of their wartime service (p. 165). The book had presumably gone to press by the time this occurred in July 2008, with over 45,000 former land girls receiving the award. Further recognition occurred in 2012 and 2014.
Features of the book that enhance the reading experience include two separate sections of colour plates, containing 58 illustrations in total; text boxes on special topics (e.g. Lady Denman); illustrative quotes from interviewees and published sources like the Land Girl magazine; a timeline; a bibliography with suggestions for further reading; and an index. The writing is aimed at a general readership, and the scholarly apparatus, although present, does not overburden the text.
The book was lent to me by a former WLA recruit, now resident in Australia. At 96 years of age, she is still as sharp as a tack, and I am grateful for many very interesting conversations with her. I was reminded that in 2017 I had bought a DVD of a BBC drama entitled Land Girls, which I had not yet watched. The book’s blurb points out that Kramer was the history consultant for that 2009 series. I have since watched it, and, although it does capture many aspects of the WLA experience as described in the book, it tends towards melodrama and is no substitute for Kramer’s written account.
The WLA had counterparts in the United States and Australia. The Woman’s Land Army of America (WLAA) operated from 1917 to 1919 and was re-formed as the Women’s Land Army from 1943 to 1947. The Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) existed from 1942 to 1945.
As a final reflection, I would like to draw attention to two aspects of the story told in this book that I think should give twenty-first-century readers particular pause for thought. The first of these concerns the sociability of the experience. One interviewee is quoted as follows:
It was a bit scary at times in the hit and run raids, but I wouldn’t have changed it. We were happy, we use (sic) to sing on our way to work, you could always hear someone singing on the tractors and we got so good. If we had two or three working in the field, which most times there were because they were big fields, you could see we were singing and if we did the actions of the song, the other one would pick it up. I remember one song was Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer, and a lot of popular songs, wartime songs, it was good. (p. 170)
Although the technological and economic factors contributing to large-scale industrial farming had been developing long before the world wars, clearly agriculture in the early 1940s was still highly labour intensive. This meant that the hardships experienced, compounded by war, were ameliorated by the support network that labour-intensive work entailed. By contrast, it is not difficult nowadays to find isolation and loneliness being listed as contributory factors in the high rate of farmer suicides. I suspect that ‘virtual’ contact via the Internet is a very poor substitute for persistent, face-to-face involvement in shared labour.
The second aspect concerns the love of the land that many land girls described, often in movingly poetic form. A selection of poems was assembled in An Anthology of Verse (1945) by Vita Sackville-West, who also wrote The Women’s Land Army (1944). A couple of these are quoted by Kramer (p. 175), for example:
Mine is the moonlight-silvered winding river,
Mine are the trees that grow, the birds that sing,
Mine are the happy woods, the friendly wild-flowers –
For, having nothing, I have everything.Mine is the splendid sun, my bridge the rainbow,
Mine are the shining darts the rain-clouds fling.
Mine are the winding lanes, the curving hillsides –
For, having nothing, I have everything.The boist’rous wind is my familiar playmate,
The beauty that dawns and sunsets bring,
The chattering streams are mine, and I am happy –
For, having nothing, I have everything.
As Kramer reflects:
One thing that seems to have united land girls, whether from town or country, was a deep love of the country itself. Those who came from the country already understood country ways and country life, but all evidence seems to suggest that women who came from the towns also developed a deep love of the countryside and missed it deeply if, and when, they returned to urban life. (p. 175)
If they were penned by an urban dweller on a day trip to the countryside, such poetic flights could be accused of romanticism or sentimentality. The land girls were not tourists, however, and were well aware of the hardships of working on the land. We must conclude, therefore, that their words express something deep.
It shouldn’t surprise us that an emotional connection with nature is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Think, for example, of the central significance of ‘connection to country’ associated with Aboriginal Australians, often described as having the world’s oldest civilization. Yet this connection has been increasingly disrupted by modern life. Industrial-scale food production is no exception, as we have become increasingly dependent on technologies that separate us from nature. Economies of scale may have produced higher yields, but have also led to monocultures, dependence on agrichemicals, destruction of habitat and wildlife, and the sort of social isolation already described above. Many of the practices of industrial-scale meat production are particularly disturbing, given that they are carried out on sentient beings. Film footage taken in abattoirs reveals a brutalising environment, as shown in the 2018 Dominion documentary.
These problems are systemic and seemingly intractable, resulting from intersecting causes like population growth, economic rationalism, and technological development. We are all caught up in them, as producers and consumers. While it doesn’t address such matters, Land Girls and Their Impact is a reminder of how much things have changed in agriculture in a short period of time, and not always for the better.
The Women’s Land Army has a Facebook page, where memorabilia of various kinds are shared.
Simon Kidd
Perth, Western Australia
September 2019
Hypocrisy and Dissent concerns a controversy that occurred in the first half of the 1990s at the Findhorn Foundation, a registered charity located in northern Scotland and considered by many to be the leading New Age centre in Europe, a counterpart to Esalen in California. My review was originally published in the August 1996 edition of Network, the journal of the Scientific and Medical Network. Other positive reviews appeared at the time. The local Forres Gazette described it as ‘a searching and sharply-observed book’. Writing in The Christian Parapsychologist (Vol. 12, No. 2, June 1996, p. 63), Canon Michael Perry summed it up as a ‘sorry tale of how an idealistic group of ecologically-motivated people turned themselves into a typical cult’.
Revisiting my review after almost twenty-three years, I realized it would benefit from an explanatory introduction. Not only was the original limited by the spatial constraints of the journal, but there have been further developments concerning the events described in the book. Other critical accounts of the Foundation have been published too, such as John Greenaway’s In the Shadow of the New Age: Decoding the Findhorn Foundation (London: Finderne Publishing, 2003), and Kevin R. D. Shepherd’s Pointed Observations: Critical Reflections of a Citizen Philosopher on Contemporary Pseudomysticism, Alternative Therapy, David Hume, Spinoza, and other subjects (Dorchester, Dorset: Citizen Initiative, 2005). The following paragraphs, therefore, are intended to provide both some context for my original review and an update.
My personal interest in the philosophy and sociology of religion began in 1988, the year of my graduation, when a friend recommended an introductory book on Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys. Over the next few years I read widely on religious topics and observed several religious groups in Ireland and the United Kingdom. My philosophical background gave a critical edge to my reading, and I was particularly keen to learn about the effects of conditioning, indoctrination, submission to authority, and so on. As a teenager I had been fascinated by the 1980 television miniseries about Jim Jones, and I later became acquainted with the outrageous behaviour of so-called gurus like Rajneesh (Osho) and Sathya Sai Baba. More salubrious was my correspondence with renowned Benedictine monk, Bede Griffiths, whom I met in 1990 at his ashram in southern India.
When I visited the Findhorn Foundation in 1994, therefore, it was more as a critical observer than a participant. The best way for me to achieve this was to enrol in the residential induction program known as Experience Week. This program typically includes team-building activities, tours of the various Foundation properties (including a ‘pilgrimage’ to the ‘shrine’ of the original co-founders’ caravan), and work experience in the gardening, homecare, kitchen, or maintenance departments. Another fixture at the time of my visit was a talk given to the group by figurehead Eileen Caddy (d. 2006), the only co-founder still resident. It was the ‘voice’ heard by Eileen that had guided the co-founders in the early days (i.e. from 1962). All in all, it was enough for me to witness in person many of the things I had heard about, and which would also be described in Castro’s book: the sort of people drawn there, the commercial ‘workshops’ on offer, the organizational structure, the daily routine, and some activities that are distinctive to the Foundation (the regular ‘attunements’ mentioned in my review, for example).
The first half of the 1990s was a time of unprecedented media scrutiny for the Foundation, fuelled by two controversial developments. The first of these was the increasing role of commercial therapies in the program. The most contentious was ‘Holotropic Breathwork’ (HB), the trade name for a therapy developed by Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, following the legal suppression of his research into the effects of LSD on psychiatric patients. It is a form of hyperventilation that induces altered mental states via changes to blood chemistry, with unpredictable results and sometimes extreme side-effects. It was introduced at the Foundation in 1989, under the directorship of Australian Craig Gibsone. Alarming effects were reported by participants and witnesses in Foundation precincts. These were known to include vomiting during sessions, and post-session disorientation and psychological disturbance requiring remedial psychotherapy. The leading opponent was Kate Thomas (d. 2017), who documented the entire episode in a lengthy chapter of the third volume of her autobiography, The Destiny Challenge: A Record of Spiritual Experience & Observation (Forres: New Frequency Press, 1992). She described how other Foundation community members had strong doubts about this experimental practice, including Eileen Caddy, who significantly failed to make her misgivings publicly known. The Foundation attempted to ban the book, but their solicitor pointed out that there was no legal case.
In a 1993 article in The Scotsman, Dr Linda Watt of Leverndale psychiatric hospital in Glasgow, who had studied accounts of HB, cautioned that hyperventilation could cause seizure or lead to psychosis in vulnerable people. The Scottish Charities Office (SCO) became involved and commissioned a report into the effects of hyperventilation by Anthony Busuttil, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Based on this, the SCO recommended suspension of the HB program at the Foundation. The latter complied officially, but authority figures exacted revenge on the dissenters. Although her position had been vindicated, Thomas was expelled from associate membership without a hearing. Her associates received similar discriminatory treatment. These events are at the heart of Hypocrisy and Dissent.
In 2006 I became involved in a sequel to the HB controversy, when I modified the Wikipedia article on HB to include sections on criticism of the practice and on the contraindications listed by Grof himself. Although I adhered to Wikipedia guidelines, I ended up in an ‘edit war’ with HB defenders, which eventually exposed broader problems with sectarianism on Wikipedia. I documented this at ‘Wikipedia and Kevin R. D. Shepherd’. The HB article no longer exists, having been subsumed into a more general Breathwork article.
The second controversial development was an increasingly expansionist policy within the Foundation, which aroused the suspicions of the indigenous populations of Findhorn and Forres. Relations with the locals had often been strained, particularly with the swelling of visitor numbers from the 1970s. Spokesman for the locals was the formidable Sir Michael Joughin (d. 1996), the chairman of Scottish Hydro-Electric, a former Royal Marine lieutenant, a past president of the Scottish National Farmers Union, and a justice of the peace. In 1992 a leaked memo revealed plans for the acquisition of land and an expansion of business operations. Although the plans were later dropped, the episode confirmed the local suspicion that the Foundation was serious about building a ‘vast city of Light’, as predicted by Eileen’s ‘guidance’. Along with Holotropic Breathwork, the planned expansion was the subject of a two-page spread in The Guardian (see Richard Boston, ‘If only the spirit could move them’, The Guardian, 11 November 1992, pp. 10–11). The article concluded: ‘In recent weeks the foundation has suffered one setback after another. The plan to launch a public company has been dropped, the holistic health centre has been abandoned, and the attempt to stop Kate Thomas’s book has failed. The foundation is under attack from without, and is divided and demoralised within. All in all they’ve got themselves into a right old mess.’ Undeterred by the setbacks, however, the Foundation was in the national press four years later, this time because of ambitious plans to establish an ‘eco-village’ (see Amanda Mitchison, ‘Invasionary forces’, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 24 November 1996, pp. 12–19).
As critics like Greenaway and Shepherd point out, these controversies sprang from the same root cause, which was the transformation of the Foundation from a small group of idealistic (if eccentric) seekers, interested in alternative lifestyles, into a commercial centre for New Age therapies. In Chapter 2 of his book (‘Transition to Managerialism’), Greenaway dates this change as early as the mid-1970s, although the formation of New Findhorn Directions in 1986 was the impetus for the ‘strong commercial drive of the Foundation of the 1990s into the new millennium’ (In the Shadow of the New Age, p. 44). He finds that this ‘growing managerial and commercial culture drew strongly on ideas and methodology taken from successive phases of “New Age California”’ (p. 44). The major influence was the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, which began in 1962, coincidentally the same year that Peter and Eileen Caddy, along with Dorothy Maclean, established themselves in the caravan park at Findhorn. Stanislav Grof was a scholar-in-residence at Esalen from 1973 to 1987.
That the commercial New Age continues to be the context for the Findhorn Foundation is confirmed by their sleek website, which describes the Foundation as ‘a dynamic experiment where everyday life is guided by the inner voice of spirit’. The website presents the official history, a simple and sanitized account that naturally omits embarrassing details that undermine such vaunted claims. For instance, the charming story that Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean received help from nature spirits in growing giant vegetables in an inhospitable environment has become the stuff of legend, but ignores the more prosaic published data about the sheltered climate and Peter’s horticultural prowess. To take another example, in mentioning that Peter ‘left the community in 1979 to work internationally’ and that he ‘came back to visit Findhorn regularly until his death in Germany in 1994’, the official history glosses over the following facts: that he also left Eileen, his third wife of five; that he later repudiated the basis for her ‘guidance’ (a skeptical turn that is justified when one takes a closer look at how the guidance was produced); and that he was sympathetic to the dissident perspective in evidence during one of his return visits.
If anyone doubts the commercial New Age context, they need only visit the relevant section of the website, where ‘workshops’ retail for exorbitant prices. Visitors can play ‘The Game of Transformation’ for four days (£500–£800) or seven (£700–£1120), or even train as facilitators over a fortnight (£2,090/£2,275/£2,465). If Celtic mythology takes your fancy, you can spend three days ‘Unfolding Your Inner Sidhe’ (£460–£720) – ‘sidhe’ (pronounced ‘shee’) being the anglicized spelling of a Gaelic term signifying a supernatural being. Seven days of ‘Christic Mantras’ will set you back £690/£840/£1110. Also available is the 28-day ‘Esalen® Massage Certification Training’ for £3610/£3890/£4160, with a further £150 payable directly to Esalen for the certificate on completion of training. (It was a familiarity with the materialistic and entrepreneurial nature of the New Age that motivated my satirical ‘I wish I knew how to be wise’.)
For detailed information about the Findhorn Foundation, Shepherd’s online articles are the most accessible. The full list is available on his bibliographic page (see ‘Findhorn Foundation and New Age’). ‘The Findhorn Foundation: Myth and Reality’ presents a good chronological overview that begins with the early years, while ‘Findhorn Foundation ecobiz and commercial mysticism’ goes into greater detail about the commercial context.
Download a PDF of the published review
Stephen J. Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation: Towards a Sociology of a New Age Community (Forres, Morayshire: New Media Books, 1996).
This book provides an important insight into the disparity between the professed ideals and the actual reality of a New Age community; namely, the Findhorn Foundation in the far north of Scotland. As its subtitle indicates, it is intended as a contribution towards a sociology of such a community. The author has meticulously collected his data and presents it with notable perspicuity in an attempt to inform both sociologists and general public alike. Its broader significance lies, I believe, in the possible implications of the case in question for our perception of similar organizations.
The Findhorn Foundation is, as sociologist Eileen Barker has noted, ‘one of the best-known of the New Age communities in Britain’ (quoted p. xi). As such, its influence is considerable, having connections with similar communities worldwide. By 1993 the net worth of the Foundation’s properties was quoted at £l.6 million, and the commercial turnover for its trading arm, New Findhorn Directions, was said to be £1.2 million.
In the light of its charitable status, its material wealth, and its obvious prestige in the New Age milieu, it is rather startling to learn something of the modus operandi of this organization. Its members claim to receive the ‘direct guidance of God’. This is a highly questionable basis for the administration of any organization, especially when one learns later in the book the basis on which the claim rests. Yet the process of ‘attunement’ is used in the Foundation to this day, and is applied to the whole spectrum of decision making. The danger, as Castro points out, lies in the sense of infallibility that such a belief provides. Its implications are very serious, as this book reveals.
The Findhorn Foundation has had numerous dissenters. In addition to its very strained relations with the indigenous populations of Findhorn and Forres, a number of those who have had internal experience of the organization, including the author, have noted the disparity between preaching and practice in a community nominally devoted to love, truth, and spiritual growth.
Several cases are presented, but the most striking one is that of Kate Thomas, who first came into contact with the Findhorn Foundation in 1988. She wrote an additional 100-page chapter for her autobiography, containing a detailed record of her subsequent experience. Thomas entered fully into the life of the community, but became increasingly disconcerted as time passed. She discovered that this supposedly spiritual centre was actually devoted to commercial therapies, and not even in a professional manner, but applied indiscriminately, often by people without recognized academic qualifications. (Castro points out that this is possible in the UK, due to the absence of the stricter legal controls which are in evidence in other European countries.) Her mildly expressed protests drew mostly hostility, from authority figures and fellow participants alike, and she was subsequently labelled, by the former group, as a ‘troublemaker’. The situation was exacerbated by her stand against the introduction of Holotropic Breathwork™ in 1989 and by the publication of vol. 3 of her autobiography (with its additional material) in 1992.
Castro reveals Thomas as a person of great integrity, who was not willing to compromise principles in the face of injustice and hypocrisy. It seems that the more the members, and in particular the leaders, of the Foundation were confronted with their misdeeds, the more wilfully they refused to face up to them. Subsequently there was a great deal of publicity, at both local and national level. Among other significant events, we learn that the SCO commissioned a report by a forensic expert at Edinburgh University into the effects of hyperventilation, on the basis of which, in 1993, the Findhorn Foundation suspended its Holotropic Breathwork™ courses.
Kate Thomas was blocked from any closer involvement with the community, and even banned from its properties. She was never given an adequate explanation, nor a public hearing within the Foundation. Similar treatment was extended to anyone who supported her, and who likewise questioned the policies of those in positions of power. Castro points out that such censorship and aversion to criticism is typical of the cult mentality.
The book brings us up to 1995, with the situation still unresolved, at least to the satisfaction of the dissenters. In conclusion, I regard this as a timely publication. It provides material for a much needed investigation into the claims and activities, not just of the Findhorn Foundation, but of similar institutions in the New Age environment. Such institutions should not be exempt from sociological analysis. But one doesn’t have to be a sociologist to benefit from the book. Indeed, it is equally relevant to a general public in need of the sort of information it provides. Such information must become more widely available, if contemporary society is to be able to make a distinction between that which is genuinely spiritual and that which only masquerades as such.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013)
The Experience of God is divided into three main parts, with a preceding ten-page ‘Introduction’ detailing David Bentley Hart’s motive for writing it. He explains that recent heated debates about the existence of God indicate a fundamental confusion about the subject. In some ways the book is a challenge to atheists to be clear about what it is that they don’t believe, a task DBH has undertaken at greater length in his 2009 Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, also published by Yale.
This is a book of philosophy, rather than theology, at the core of which is the tradition of ‘classical theism’. Stemming from Plato and Aristotle, this tradition was developed in the early Christian centuries by the ‘Fathers of the Church’ as well as pagans like Plotinus, reaching an apogee in the writings of the medieval philosopher-theologians of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Apart from the ‘Religions of the Book’, DBH says that the definition of God that he is offering is one that can be found in ‘Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, various late antique paganisms [and] even applies in many respects to various Mahayana formulations of, say, the Buddha Consciousness or the Buddha Nature, or even to the earliest Buddhist conception of the Unconditioned, or to certain aspects of the Tao’ (4). This universalism is also captured in the book’s subtitle, since ‘being, consciousness, bliss’ are translations of the Sanskrit ‘sat, chit, ananda’, which are usually combined into the portmanteau ‘Satchitananda’ (with variant spellings), a term referring to the ultimate reality, Brahman (see Wikipedia: ‘Satchitananda’). The Sanskrit terms are used explicitly in Part Two.
If there is a single guiding idea in this book, it is that God is not a being among other beings. Such an entity, if it existed at all, would be a ‘demiurge’, a supernatural creator god not dissimilar to the gods of the ancient Greek pantheon. The God of classical theism, by contrast, is the ultimate ground of existence, and therefore transcends all the entities of the universe, be they natural or supernatural. Whereas the universe is contingent and changing, the God of classical theism exists of necessity and admits of no change.
This guiding idea is elaborated in the first part of the book (‘God, Gods, and the World’), which consists of two chapters (‘“God” Is Not a Proper Name’ and ‘Pictures of the World’). A failure to grasp this idea leads to metaphysical confusion. To query the existence of God in this sense is to commit a type of category error, since the God of classical theism simply doesn’t exist in the same way that galaxies, stars, planets, rocks, plants, or animals exist. Even supernatural entities like angels, if they exist at all, are part of the created order, and therefore belong in that category of existent things (see 28–9). A condensed form of this point is made in one of DBH’s First Things articles, published in the same year as the book: ‘God, gods, and fairies’ (June 2013).
The only alternative to theistic belief, so understood, is ‘materialism’, otherwise known as ‘physicalism’ or ‘naturalism’. Although popular in modern societies, this is not due to philosophical superiority. Indeed, for DBH it is ‘indistinguishable from pure magical thinking’ (17), which some might regard as ironic. Furthermore, contemporary atheism differs from historical precedents, both by being more widespread and, significantly, because adherents are often ignorant of the classical theism to which it is philosophically opposed. Here DBH takes to task representatives of the ‘new atheism’, such as Richard Dawkins, but even philosophers like A. C. Grayling. At the very least, he points out, geneticist Dawkins should have consulted ‘some scholar of ancient and mediaeval thought’ (21) before making embarrassing mistakes about the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He cuts the new atheists some slack when he points out the many forms of religious belief that are soft targets for them, but this excuse is limited by the historical novelty of things like ‘creationism’ – it might be said that the new atheists are historically, as well as philosophically, naive (see 24–6).
Philosophy is not necessarily an antidote to such naivety, because it is as subject to fashion as any other intellectual pursuit. Analytic philosophy, especially, has tended to mimic the parsimony of modern science, the success of which is largely due to a certain narrowness of method and the limited range of questions it addresses, parameters within which it works well. The early adoption of a mechanistic model was more of an ideological commitment than something warranted either by logic or empirical discovery, but it has had an enormous influence on what is accepted as a cause. Against this, DBH argues for a more metaphysical approach, which is not anti-scientific, but which subsumes scientific causality within a higher causal framework. He rejects the idea that there is an argument between religion and science, when really the contest is between different pictures of the world: theism and naturalism.
The second part of the book (‘Being, Consciousness, Bliss’) consists of three chapters, each one devoted to an element in that triad. ‘Being (Sat)’ begins with a reflection on the origin of philosophy in wonder, and in the wonder of existence especially. This is followed by an argument concerning the nature of existence. Existent beings depend for their existence on something outside themselves: they possess ‘contingent’ or conditional existence. The idea that all existence is contingent is absurd, so there must be a form of existence whose cause is contained within itself: such is ‘necessary’ existence. Contingent existence depends on necessary or absolute existence. This is not to be confused with the question of the temporal origin of the universe. It makes no difference if the universe is eternal, or if the current universe is one in a series. What we call the universe is a system of energy being transformed from one state to another. This is a contingent form of existence, which logically requires a ground that is not contingent but necessary. Such a ground has been recognized by all religious metaphysicians as God.
The rest of the chapter draws out the implications of the foregoing, including such divine attributes as ‘simplicity’ and ‘eternity’. Several objections are considered and rejected. There is a reflection on our use of language, and especially the role of analogy (125). The analytic tradition of Anglo-American philosophy is criticised for a ‘lack of historical perspective’ and for a pervasive ‘mythology of “pure” philosophical discourse’ (123).
‘Consciousness (Chit)’ begins by recognizing the no-less-wonderful phenomenon of our awareness of being, that we experience the world through mind, including perception, abstract thought, memory, imagination, and self-awareness. Ancient philosophers did not sharply distinguish the physical and mental realms, since they conceived of nature as imbued with mind. It was only with the arrival of the mechanical philosophy of the early-modern period that matter was conceived as inert and mindless. Even so, those philosophers allowed for the reality of mental experience, their problem being one of explaining how mental and material substances interact. With the development of modern brain science came the belief that we could account for subjective mental experiences from an objective, third-person perspective. Subjective terms were demoted to the status of ‘folk psychology’. This position reaches an extreme form in ‘eliminativism’, the philosophical theory that mental experiences are illusory.
Much of this chapter is an analysis of the mind–body problem from the philosophical perspective of classical theism, as elaborated in the preceding chapters. DBH acknowledges the worthwhile contributions by neuroscience to our understanding of the brain, but points out that none of this resolves the philosophical question of the mind–body relation. For example, he devotes about five pages (162–7) to an analysis of the famous experiments carried out by Benjamin Libet in the 1970s, undermining the popular interpretation of these experiments on both methodological and metaphysical grounds. He is similarly critical of popular interpretations of Platonic and Cartesian dualism, describing instead a richer and more nuanced understanding of the human entity from classical times, and not neglecting to include non-Western traditions: ‘Consider (to take an example more or less at random) the Taittiriya Upanishad’s wonderful delineation of the various levels of mind: the material (anna), vital (prana), mental (manas), purely conscious (vijñana), and blissful (ananda)’ (169).
The main problem is, once again, a commitment to a fundamentally mechanistic ideology. Recognizing the impossibility of dealing adequately with the topic in anything shorter than a book, DBH nevertheless offers a selection of the ‘irksome difficulties that the phenomenology of consciousness creates for materialist models of the mind, and thus for attempts to devise naturalistic or mechanistic explanations of consciousness’ (172). The following thirty pages (172–203) are devoted to this task, with six ‘irksome difficulties’ being offered: the qualitative dimension of experience, or qualia (172); abstract concepts (182); reason (187); the transcendental conditions of experience (190); intentionality (191); and the unity of consciousness (197). Plotinus, Shankara, Kant, Hegel, Brentano, Dennett, Searle, and Dretske all make appearances.
A more general discussion of the difficulty in explaining consciousness follows, and various philosophical positions are considered, including those of McGinn (204), J. J. C. Smart (205), and Dennett (208). Computational theories of mind, as embodiments of the mechanistic model, are treated at length (216–25), with a focus on attempts to create artificial intelligence and the significance or otherwise of chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov’s famous defeat by the computer Deep Blue in 1997 (220).
The lengthy detour through the philosophy of mind is preparatory to DBH’s reflections on the relation of human mind to God (225–37). His purpose is to ‘accord serious consideration to the ancient intuition that the true order of ultimate causes is precisely the opposite of what the materialist philosopher imagines it is, and that the material realm is ultimately dependent upon mind rather than the reverse: that the fullness of being upon which all contingent beings depend is at the same time a limitless act of consciousness’ (227). A range of Eastern and Western contemplative and philosophical traditions are brought to bear on the matter. There are many choice quotes, but they can be summed up in the following brief statement: ‘Absolute being … must be absolute mind’ (236). An important implication is that human mind is oriented towards, or seeks fulfilment in, the absolute mind. The attainment of this end is bliss, which provides a segue to the next chapter.
‘Bliss (Ananda)’ begins with the recognition that consciousness is ‘intentional’ or directed to some end, and this implicates the concept of ‘will’. Although this fact has been interpreted by evolutionary biologists in terms of adaptation, DBH again inverts the materialist metaphysics in favour of the classical analysis: proximate objects of desire indicate an orientation of the will towards an ultimate goal. One desires something (e.g. money) not as an end in itself, but as a means to some other end, but this in turn is a means to some further goal, and so on. The classical account conceives of the ultimate objects of the will in terms of ‘transcendentals’ such as truth, goodness, and beauty, which are unified in ‘the single reality of being itself’ (243). Choice quotes from a variety of theistic traditions are again provided: Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and paganism (Plotinus) are all represented (248).
DBH responds to attempts to ‘naturalize’ ethics as a sort of ‘evolutionary utilitarianism’. Once one dispenses with the mistaken idea of God as some superlatively good being, there is no conflict between moral choice and evolutionary benefit. Conceived along the lines of classical theism, God is the source not only of being and truth, but also of goodness. Ultimately, therefore, all desire is ordered towards God, even if that transcendent good is reflected in a myriad proximate goods in the immanent realm of the created universe.
Altruism exemplifies a trait that is not exhaustively explained by evolutionary utility (257–72). Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’ is rejected as a ‘profoundly foolish metaphor’ (259), which confuses different levels of explanation (see 259–66). Ultimately, altruism attains a state of selflessness that is described by religious traditions as ‘saintly’, although the state is not necessarily confined to ‘religious’ people (see 273–4). In this context we can see that ‘the famous dilemma from Plato’s Euthyphro is not much of a problem for any of the great theistic traditions … that the entire point of Plato’s inquiry in the Euthyphro was to show that there must be some eternal principle – which he would call the Form of the Good – beyond the realm of either material nature or limited and willful deities. This is all part of an ancient metaphysical project going back at least as far as Xenophanes, which is the common heritage of philosophy and rational theology alike: the attempt to distinguish the transcendent from the immanent, the changeless from the mutable, the ultimate source from its contingent derivations’ (275–6).
DBH concludes the chapter with an extended meditation (277–85) on the nature of beauty as ‘the most exemplary of the transcendentals … No other is more obviously characterized by an almost perfect absence of utility, or possesses a power to compel that so clearly offers no gratification or profit beyond itself’ (277). Even the Thomistic tradition, which enumerates integrity, right proportionality, and brilliancy as the three constituents of beautiful things, is accused of confusing ‘the beautiful with the pretty, the delightful with the merely obliging, enchantment with diversion’ (279). Moreover, Darwinian attempts to explain beauty never move beyond a sound ‘recognition of an elementary continuity between the physiological, material basis of our likes, dislikes, pleasures, and aversions, on the one hand, and our judgments of beauty, on the other … to account for all the ways in which aesthetic desire exceeds the boundaries of the physiological and the material’ (281). In place of a materialist explanation, DBH reminds us of ‘the ancient conviction that the love of beauty is, by its nature, a rational yearning for the transcendent’ (284), with quotes from Plato, Plotinus, the Sufi poet Mahmud Shabestari, Gregory of Nyssa, Kabir, and Thomas Traherne.
The final section of the chapter on bliss (285–90), which also concludes the second part of the book, contains some of DBH’s most important reflections on his theme, which might be summarised as ‘the formal structure of transcendental desire and its presence within rational consciousness’ (285). No summary of mine, nor any selection of extracts, can do justice to these reflections, but it would also be remiss of me to exclude any reference to them. So here goes. Notwithstanding the myriad ways in which desire can be misdirected, ‘our yearning for the utmost value persists’ (286). God is both ‘the source and ground of being and the wellspring of all consciousness, but also therefore the final cause of all creation, the end toward which all beings are moved, the power of infinite being that summons all things into existence from nothingness and into union with itself’ (286). Thus conceived, ‘faith in God is not something that can ever be wholly and coherently rejected, even if one refuses all adherence to creeds and devotions [because the] desires evoked by the transcendental horizon of rational consciousness are not merely occasional agitations of the will but constant dynamisms of the mind; they underlie the whole movement of thought toward the world’ (287). At the last, the only way to avoid this being a merely logical conclusion, ‘is consciously and conscientiously to pursue the transcendental ecstasies that open the world to us to their ultimate end: to seek, that is, a vision of and union with God’ (290).
The third part of the book (‘The Reality of God’) contains a single chapter, ‘Illusion and Reality’, the first section of which (293–300) is a reflection on the ideological nature of our models of reality, concluding with the observation: ‘behind the putative rationalism of scientific naturalism there lurks an ideological passion as immune to the dictates of reason as the wildest transports of devotional ecstasy could ever be’ (300). DBH sees more continuity than discontinuity between the early-modern deistic conception of a creator God (the Intelligent Designer), on the one hand, and the Darwinian conception of natural selection, on the other: one mechanism was simply replaced by another. Rather than being a basis for return to classical theism, Darwinism was ‘simply assumed into the mechanical narrative’ (301) and we are left with conceptually impoverished disputes. DBH compares these to attempting to settle the question of Tolstoy’s existence by ‘trying to find him among the characters in Anna Karenina, and arguing about which chapters might contain evidence of his agency (all the while contemptuously ignoring anyone making the preposterous or meaningless assertion that Tolstoy does not exist at all as a discrete object or agent within the world of the novel, not even at the very beginning of the plot, and yet is wholly present in its every part as the source and rationale of its existence)’ (303).
DBH considers that materialism is no more rational than the anthropomorphic religion that it contests, and imagining that it can be defeated with logic is to misunderstand the point. In an ironic turning of the tables, he describes it as ‘an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief … it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation … not a philosophy but a therapy’ (304–5). As such, however, it ‘has a certain burden of moral proof to bear’:
it must show that the opiates it offers are at least as powerful as those it would replace. To proclaim triumphally that there is no God, no eternal gaze that beholds our cruelties and betrayals, no final beatitude for the soul after death, may seem bold and admirable to a comfortable bourgeois academic who rarely if ever has to descend into the misery of those whose lives are at best a state of constant anxiety or at worst the indelible memory of the death of a child. For a man safely sheltered from life’s harder edges, a gentle soporific may suffice to ease whatever fleeting moments of distress or resentment afflict him. For those genuinely acquainted with grief, however – despair, poverty, calamity, disease, oppression, or bereavement – but who have no ivory tower to which to retreat, no material advantages to distract them from their suffering, and no hope for anything better in this world, something far stronger may be needed. (305–6)
Popular atheism, however, along with the associated metaphysics of materialism, stands accused of more than soporific escapism. Every ideology, religious or secular, has varied effects, benign as well as malign. To regard nature as a machine, and the human organism as mechanical, underlies the ‘incapacity for astonishment or reverent incertitude before the mysteries of being’ (308). Rather than a fallible created being, open to moral improvement or even perfection, the human entity, like the rest of nature, becomes subject to technological control:
Hence certain distinctively modern contributions to the history of human cruelty: ‘scientific’ racism, Social Darwinism, the eugenics movement, criminological theories about inherited degeneracy, ‘curative’ lobotomies, mandatory sterilizations, and so on – and, in the fullness of time, the racial ideology of the Third Reich (which regarded human nature as a biological technology to be perfected) and the collectivist ideology of the communist totalitarianisms (which regarded human nature as a social and economic technology to be reconstructed). (308)
Martin Heidegger, ‘a morally problematic figure, admittedly, but not to be dismissed’, described ours as the ‘age of technology, in which ontological questions have been vigorously expelled from cultural consideration, replaced by questions of mere mechanistic force’ (311).
While ‘the age of the great totalitarianisms seems to be over’, we are left with ‘the interminable spectacle of production and consumption, the dialectic of ubiquitous banality by which the insatiable economic culture of the late modern West is shaped and sustained … what a Marxist might call the “ideological superstructure” of consumerism’ (312).
Late modern society is principally concerned with purchasing things, in ever greater abundance and variety, and so has to strive to fabricate an ever greater number of desires to gratify, and to abolish as many limits and prohibitions upon desire as it can. Such a society is already implicitly atheist and so must slowly but relentlessly apply itself to the dissolution of transcendent values. It cannot allow ultimate goods to distract us from proximate goods. Our sacred writ is advertising, our piety is shopping, our highest devotion is private choice. God and the soul too often hinder the purely acquisitive longings upon which the market depends, and confront us with values that stand in stark rivalry to the one truly substantial value at the center of our social universe: the price tag. So it really was only a matter of time before atheism slipped out of the enclosed gardens of academe and down from the vertiginous eyries of high cosmopolitan fashion and began expressing itself in crassly vulgar form. It was equally inevitable that, rather than boldly challenging the orthodoxies of its age, it would prove to be just one more anodyne item on sale in the shops, and would be enthusiastically fêted by a vapid media culture not especially averse to the idea that there are no ultimate values, but only final prices. In a sense, the triviality of the movement is its chief virtue. It is a diverting alternative to thinking deeply. It is a narcotic. In our time, to strike a lapidary phrase, irreligion is the opiate of the bourgeoisie, the sigh of the oppressed ego, the heart of a world filled with tantalizing toys. (312–13)
When it comes to claims of religious experience, DBH urges a cautious but positive approach. Such experience is necessarily subjective, and a healthy skepticism is not out of place. At the same time, he does not accept the claim that experiences of this nature must prove themselves at the court of scientific method. Once again he inverts the metaphysical priorities: third-person objectivity is derivative, dependent at a fundamental level on first-person insight. As in other areas of life, assessing another’s claim to religious experience will depend on context, on how well we know that person, and so on. Hume’s argument against all reports of miracles may encourage us to be skeptical, but we needn’t accept it as conclusive for all cases. DBH regards it as ‘a rather feeble and circular argument in a great many ways, and it amounts to little more than an assertion that what is exceptional is incredible because it is not ordinary, and that ostensible miracles are to be disbelieved on the grounds that they would be miraculous’ (317).
Reductive scientific attempts to ‘explain’ religious experience in terms of physiology miss the point, because it would be surprising if such experience did not have a physiological correlate:
It is precisely because mental states rest upon a physiological foundation that all the established contemplative traditions insist that one must undertake physical disciplines, many of them quite ascetic in nature, if one is to detach one’s mind from the distractions of daily existence and penetrate the surface of normal perception, to see what may be found in the hidden depths of things. (320)
A corollary is that the search for God, ‘if it is to be successful, must be conducted in a manner fitted to the reality one is looking for … what one is seeking is a particular experience, one wholly unlike an encounter with some mere finite object of cognition or some particular thing that might be found among other things … an ever deeper communion with a reality that at once exceeds and underlies all other experiences’ (320).
Given what has been said about the God of classical theism, it should not be surprising that the major theistic traditions speak in comparable terms of seeking God within, and also describe similar experiences undergone by the contemplative (several examples are provided on 322–5). The search is, therefore, ‘empirical’ (see 324) and ‘rational’ (see 325) in a fundamental sense of both terms. Taking a cue from Evelyn Underhill, DBH posits that materialist thinking is in fact ‘a form of barbarism, which so coarsens the intellect as to make it incapable of the high rational labor of contemplative prayer … [and] the facile convictions of the materialist can appear positively childish, even somewhat “primitive”’ (325). Our age confuses technological advances with wisdom, whereas the former may actually hinder the development of the latter:
We excel in so many astonishing ways at the manipulation of the material order – medicines and weapons, mass communication and mass murder, digital creativity and ecological ruination, scientific exploration and the fabrication of ever more elaborate forms of imbecile distraction – and yet in the realms of ‘spiritual’ achievement – the arts, philosophy, contemplative practices – ours is an unprecedentedly impoverished age. (326)
The book concludes with reflections on Plato’s allegory of the cave in The Republic, ‘the greatest metaphysical allegory of Western tradition’ (329). We inhabit a world of illusion, from which we must struggle to escape, climbing out of darkness and ignorance toward the light of truth. That ascent may now be more difficult than ever, ‘because of all the vital things we have forgotten’ (328).
Late modernity is, after all, a remarkably shrill and glaring reality, a dazzling chaos of the beguilingly trivial and terrifyingly atrocious, a world of ubiquitous mass media and constant interruption, a ceaseless storm of artificial sensations and appetites, an interminable spectacle whose only unifying theme is the imperative to acquire and spend. It is scarcely surprising, in such a world, amid so many distractions, and so many distractions from distraction, that we should have little time to reflect upon the mystery that manifests itself not as a thing among other things, but as the silent event of being itself. (329)
* * *
This book was a pleasure to read. DBH writes lucidly and with style. He is a master of turning a phrase, indicating his deep familiarity with both his subject matter and with the English language. The book itself is attractively presented, a plain white cover reflecting the logical simplicity of the ‘God’ of classical theism. Neither could I fault the editing, a factor that cannot be taken for granted nowadays, even from university presses. There are fourteen pages of endnotes, some of them substantial. The eight-page ‘Bibliographical Postscript’ is a very useful guide to further reading, as well as demonstrating DBH’s latitude. The fifteen-page index is a similarly welcome addition.
In terms of subject matter, I found the book appealing on several levels. First, my own philosophical formation at University College Dublin was influenced by classical theism, with a strong emphasis on the history of Western philosophy from the Pre-Socratic thinkers, through the high-point of Athenian philosophy, followed by the Hellenistic period, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and modernity. I have come to a greater appreciation of this broad historical approach with the passage of time and exposure to other ways of doing philosophy. Another recent influence was Pierre Hadot’s notion of ancient philosophy as a ‘way of life’. I was, therefore, ‘primed’ for The Experience of God.
Second, from the time of my postgraduate studies in Dublin, I had also broadened my interests to include the philosophies of other cultures, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. I paid visits to the Buddhist centre in Dublin, which happened to subscribe to Tibetan Buddhism. I was introduced to the writings of Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk who wrote books with titles like The Marriage of East and West, and who later settled at a Christian ashram in southern India. We exchanged several letters and in 1990 I visited him at the ashram, which, incidentally, was called Saccidananda (also Shantivanam, Tamil for ‘forest of peace’). Later I became familiar with other modern spiritual giants, such as Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi, and Meher Baba. It was gratifying, therefore, to discover DBH’s universalist tendencies, perhaps partly the result of his own Eastern Orthodox background.
Third, DBH avoids several potential pitfalls of the universalist approach. Rather than a superficial eclecticism, there is a rationally coherent account of the classical theist position, constructed from first principles, as it were, and without prioritizing any one creed. The examples provided from different traditions are illustrative and supporting, without overburdening the argument. At the same time, he is not content with a merely logical compulsion, but draws out the moral and experiential dimensions to classical theism, as I have tried to demonstrate in the synopsis provided above.
DBH’s approach contrasts with that of the so-called Traditionalist School associated primarily with René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon. Thinkers in this school likewise believed in a universal truth underlying the various religious traditions, although they preferred to call it the ‘perennial wisdom’ rather than the ‘perennial philosophy’. They also insisted, however, on the necessity for affiliation to one of the ‘normal traditions’, which has potential drawbacks, such as Guénon’s support for the Hindu caste system (see Kevin R.D. Shepherd, ‘Investigating Perennial Philosophy’; also his ‘Ken Wilber and Integralism’, which takes a critical look at another problematic claimant to perennial wisdom).
Another pitfall to be circumvented is the approach of Aldous Huxley, who published a book with the title The Perennial Philosophy in 1945. Unfortunately, Huxley confused genuine mystical experience with drug-induced states, advocating the use of mescaline in his 1954 sequel, The Doors of Perception (see the first article by Shepherd above). Although there has been a perennial resort to artificial means of inducing altered states of mind, this is not condoned by the mainstream theistic traditions, which tend to prefer abstinence and a contemplative disposition. Popular writers like Huxley had a disastrous influence on the hippies of the 1960s and subsequent New Age movement, but DBH’s classical theism avoids this problem.
A fourth appeal of The Experience of God is that it demonstrates the relevance of the classical theist position to the contemporary philosophies of science, mind, and religion. There is no doubting the breadth of DBH’s learning, but it also has depth. His familiarity with the broad, rich history of metaphysics enables him to contextualize the development of modern science, the discoveries of neuroscience, and the rise of popular atheism. I believe his approach also shows how impoverished philosophy can be when it neglects historical and intercultural dimensions in favour of a preoccupation with language and argument.
The Experience of God will be of interest to the educated general reader with an interest in philosophy. Some background familiarity with philosophy would be helpful, although not essential. I think it should be required reading for philosophy students, especially those in analytic philosophy departments, who might benefit from understanding that the history of philosophy is not just a source of dated philosophical arguments and ‘thought experiments’ but has a rational coherence as a way of life.
Simon Kidd
Perth, Western Australia
January 2019
A review of
(London: Collins, 2012)
Introductory comments
Given the seriousness of its subject matter, it might seem insensitive to joke that I couldn’t put this book down, but in truth The Fix is a highly readable account of the hydra-headed reality of contemporary addiction. Author Damian Thompson, a journalist with a PhD in sociology, and himself a former alcoholic, describes with disarming candour the ‘addictive desires’ to which he is subject, and which he believes are far more common than most of us would like to admit. Indeed, it is precisely the prevalence of such desires that makes them a target for those whose job it is to manipulate us into consumption of one form or another, and this is really what The Fix is about.
The science of addiction
The book doesn’t present any groundbreaking research. The perspective is more sociological than neuroscientific, although brain chemistry is central to the story, and Thompson’s exposition of it is lucid and interesting. He points out that the scientific jury is still out on the precise causes of addiction. Although the role of neurotransmitters – such as dopamine and the opioid system – in reinforcing certain behaviours is well understood, there is less certainty about what causes some people to cross the line into debilitating addiction, while others evade this outcome. One thing that Thompson is adamant about, however, is that addiction is not a disease.
As an alcoholic, Thompson attended the AA 12-step program and is open about the benefits he received from it, but he attributes the success of the method to the ‘remarkable power of peer-group moral support’ (p. 34), despite – rather than because of – its adoption of the ‘disease model’ of addiction. For Thompson, the disease model is pernicious, because it removes ‘will’ from the picture. Not that his tone is moralising – he recognises the adverse circumstances that can lead to some forms of addiction – but he favours an account, more traditional in my view, that sees addiction in terms of habit formation. In this context, he approvingly cites psychologist Dr Stanton Peele, who ‘argues that AA preserved the temperance movement’s message of total abstinence – deeply rooted in American Protestant society – while relieving guilt by naming illness rather than sin as the cause of addiction’ (p. 44). Thompson finds the jargon of addiction specialists to be fuzzy and superficial: ‘They’ll use a term like “compulsion” without exploring the philosophical questions it raises about free will’ (p. 43); and he accuses them of a circular logic: ‘heavy drinkers who give up alcohol of their own accord … cannot have had the disease and were therefore never alcoholics in the first place ‘(pp. 35–36). The problem, of course, is that there is no diagnostic test for the ‘disease’ of addiction, unlike cancer or tuberculosis.
Countering the disease model, Thompson presents both anecdotal evidence and the results of large-scale research. In the former category is his account of Robin and James, friends from similar backgrounds who both drifted from alcohol to hard drugs. But while Robin gradually turned his life around with great effort, James committed suicide. Thompson points out that if Robin had died during his addiction phase, as nearly happened, the specialists would have felt vindicated in attributing his fate to a disease. Since he recovered through his own efforts, however, the conclusion must instead be that he never had the disease.
The disease model is not supported at an epidemiological level either, as extensive US government research conducted with Vietnam veterans demonstrates. Fearing a massive public-order problem caused by thousands of heroin-addicted GIs returning to American cities, the government commissioned a study of 400 users who described themselves as addicted. What they found, however, was that 88% of the subjects kicked the habit once they returned to civilian life. It seems very likely that it was the extreme circumstances in Vietnam, coupled with availability and peer behaviour, that was the cause of the addiction. Once the circumstances changed, for most of the soldiers the addiction was overcome. For Thompson, this identifies a key factor in addiction, which he describes as the ‘availability hypothesis’. Following Professor Michael Gossop, a leading researcher at the National Addiction Centre, King’s College, London, he describes different ‘dimensions of availability’: physical, psychological, economic, and social. The Vietnam GIs ticked all of the boxes.
Chapter 3 takes a closer look at the science of addiction. The role of dopamine is discussed, as is the opioid system, which contains the brain’s morphine-like compounds (endorphins). The former seems to have more to do with desire (wanting), and the latter with pleasure (liking). The surprising fact for me was that the former is stronger than the latter – our bodies reward wanting more than liking, although the latter plays a role in the former. Grafted onto this schema is what Thompson calls the Go and Stop impulses. The Go impulse is very primitive and we share it with animals. Dopamine is central to this urge. The Stop impulse is associated with the frontal lobes and is highly developed only in adult humans – it helps us to manage the Go impulse by reasoning about the consequences of immediate reward. I might observe that, if we leave out the technical vocabulary, none of this would have been news to the philosophers of the ancient world, who developed reasoning about desire to a high degree.
The point about the brain chemistry is that the same chemicals are involved in any form of addiction, be it ‘substance’ or ‘process’ addiction. The effects of different ‘recreational’ drugs on the brain may vary, and can be observed in addict behaviour (pp. 60–63), but ‘dopamine is still the master drug’ (p. 63). It plays a role in fastening onto ‘cues’, and here Thompson links the rarer experience of addicts to our everyday experience. The physiological effect of cues has been understood at least since Pavlov, but the point here is the continuity of the experience – ‘ordinary’ and ‘addictive’ represent different points on the same spectrum, and that is significant to the case that Thompson is making: ‘the brain’s reward circuits don’t necessarily distinguish between supposedly innocent and supposedly dangerous pursuits … addictive behaviours are accompanied by physical changes in the brain – whether or not they involve drugs’ (p. 65).
This brings us to the heart of the argument about brain chemistry and addiction, and it recalls what was said earlier about the will and habit formation. The following key passage is worth quoting in full:
Why does science have such a hard time getting to grips with the phenomenon of addiction? In a nutshell, because human brains, as opposed to animal ones, can instruct the body to perform an almost infinite number of voluntary (and therefore unpredictable) actions. And, contrary to the beliefs of disease-model advocates and the huge therapeutic industry, addictive behaviour is essentially voluntary. Addicts may be influenced by their disordered brain chemistry to make bad choices, but they are choices nonetheless. (p. 67)
For Thompson, addiction is a disorder describing how ‘people choose to do things that are not in their best interests … addicts are those who consistently seek damaging short-term rewards’ (p. 70). He doesn’t rule out an inherited predisposition, since, for example, alcoholism is known to run in families, but unlike a genetically inherited disease, no one has isolated a specific gene for alcoholism, and Thompson isn’t sanguine about the prospects of finding one: ‘since addiction consists of complex sequences of voluntary acts, such neurological reductionism is a waste of time’ (p. 70). Here he anticipates much of the theme for the remainder of his book. Hard drugs are not physically, psychologically, economically, or socially available to most of us, but there are many other substances, objects, and processes that are, and the producers of such things have a very strong interest in getting – and keeping – us hooked on them.
The chapter concludes with some semantic considerations that emerge from the science. First, ‘the old distinction between “psychological” and “physical” addiction is misleading’ (p. 72). We can be physically addicted to something, meaning that its consumption or repetition is reinforced by changes in the brain, but it is nonetheless reversible if the behaviour changes. Second, ‘dependence’ can mean different things. A diabetic may be dependent on insulin, meaning that he will die without it; but a heroin addict will not die without heroin. Thompson urges that ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’, though not scientific terms, ‘can be used unambiguously because they correspond to discrete urges governed by different brain mechanisms … [and] we can say with some confidence that, increasingly, our wanting urge is overwhelming our liking urge’ (p. 72). He argues that corporations have become very adept at manipulating our environment ‘to make us as greedy as possible’ (p. 73).
The business of addiction
Chapter 4 links what has already been said about brain chemistry and the availability hypothesis, with what we know about evolutionary biology, and applies this knowledge to our contemporary world, with some historical examples that lend support to the argument. A key paragraph is the following:
In evolutionary terms, we essentially have the brains and bodies of hunter-gatherers. Our biochemistry has changed a bit in response to our dramatically altered surroundings, but not nearly enough for us to be able to adjust to them without damaging ourselves. Most people don’t reach the point of becoming addicts; but this mismatch between our bodies and our environment is the fundamental problem of addiction, and it is common to all humanity. (p. 76)
The biological goal of evolution is survival, and the mechanism that drives it is pleasure. Pleasure rewards the behaviour that increases our chances of survival. The problem is that our brain chemistry keeps pushing us towards those pleasurable experiences after our biological needs have been met: ‘We have no way of switching off the hunter-gatherer instincts inherited from the mammals that preceded us, which have developed over hundreds of thousands of years’ (p. 79).
Technology plays a central role in the struggle for survival. Thompson defines technology as ‘an infinite number of tools, crafts and techniques that, thanks to scientific discoveries, have the potential to make life more bearable for us’ (p. 80). Technology ‘allows us to achieve greater rewards for less effort … [it] pushes the work-to-reward ratio in the direction of rewards – and usually short-term rewards at that’ (pp. 80–81).
Problems begin when – due to urbanization, industrialization, and capitalism – we arrive at a situation of unlimited availability. The well-known example of sugar is given: useful in the form of occasional fruit for hunter-gatherers, but positively dangerous in the quantities that we are now consuming it. This brings us to the concept of ‘addictive epidemics’ (p. 87). Heroin addiction among Vietnam GIs was an example of this, and Thompson provides others, such as the eighteenth-century ‘Gin Craze’ in London – the ‘first recorded epidemic of drunkenness in history’ (pp. 84–7); and, in the same century, the epidemic of opium smoking in China (pp. 89–92). In both cases, the epidemics involved a combination of technological developments and other social factors, leading to ‘availability’ in the senses discussed earlier.
Moving on from heroin, alcohol, and opium, Thompson points out that addictive urges needn’t involve ‘substances’ at all, and he gives the examples of casinos and strip clubs, both being cases where the thrill-seeker ‘is endlessly teased with cues that signify sudden wealth or a glorious sexual encounter’ (p. 93). It’s not important that the customer knows deep-down that these expectations are unrealistic, since his brain chemistry leads him to ignore the long-term consequences in favour of a ‘short-term buzz of excitement’ (p. 93).
For Thompson, there is no tidy explanation of what tips people over into self-destructive behaviours, but he asks us to step back and remind ourselves of the big picture:
The only things limiting our ability to stimulate ourselves to the point of frenzy are our fragile biology and our common sense. Western society has moved beyond the point where addictive epidemics can easily be distinguished from everyday behaviour; the dynamics of addiction and the dynamics of the free market simply have too much in common. (p. 94)
Dramatically illustrating this point is the example of the German pharmaceutical company, Bayer, which commercialized the drug diamorphine in 1898, marketing it as a syrup for ‘coughs, colds and “irritation”’ (p. 95). It was trademarked as Heroin, ‘to indicate its “heroic” properties’ (p. 95). (Diamorphine had first been synthesized by an English chemist in 1874, but Bayer led commercialization after Felix Hoffmann independently re-synthesized it.) Although they had been searching for a less addictive form of morphine, they ended up producing a substance that was more addictive, and then making it readily available with dreadful consequences. We now know that once demand has been created, limiting supply becomes ineffective, because addicts will switch to other substances, and even to non-substance forms of addiction:
Addictive behaviours aren’t necessarily locked on to specific things: in a world where there are practically limitless pleasurable experiences on offer, obsessive behaviour becomes promiscuous: it can grab hold of any object or activity that promises us a hit. (p. 98)
Most of the rest of the book applies this argument to various modern forms of addiction. Chapter 5 is devoted to sugar, which Thompson points out shares some of the psychoactive properties of ‘recreational’ drugs. Lab tests at Princeton University indicate that sugar induces cocaine-like reactions in rodents (pp. 107–8). Beyond the substance itself, however, is all of the daily behaviour that surrounds it, and which surrounds our consumption (and over-consumption) of food in general: ‘the food industry not only engineers food that exploits our natural preference for sugar, fat and salt, but also grabs our attention when we’re not eating, employing cues that awaken our wanting instinct’ (p. 123).
Chapter 6 considers the social phenomenon of binge drinking. Public drunkenness has become more prevalent, even among women, and its effects are graphically portrayed not just in the traditional media but on social-media platforms like YouTube. The ‘narrowing of the alcohol gender gap … [means that] women are now exposed to changes in brain chemistry that had previously been restricted to men’ (pp. 134–5). A large part of this chapter is autobiographical, but Thompson draws out the implications, describing himself as ‘a fairly typical casualty of an environment saturated with my drug of choice’ (p. 141). He goes on to link the social change in drinking patterns to the related ingestion of recreational drugs, which are being synthesized at an increasing rate, and often available at low cost on the Internet. The acceleration of the process makes it virtually impossible for the authorities to keep up. The conclusion is a pessimistic one:
Government scientists are scrambling desperately to classify these drugs and warn young people of the dangers of taking them. But the underground laboratories, and their new digital sales departments, are too far ahead. It’s a lost cause. (p. 150)
Chapter 7 takes a look at the converging problem of prescription medication. Drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, designed to treat ADD and ADHD (controversial diagnoses in their own right), have become widely prescribed, particularly in the US. These stimulants have been adopted as cognitive-enhancing drugs, particularly by students who are under pressure to perform, and they are traded accordingly. The social pressure on students to drink, at parties or in clubs, has resulted in widespread self-medication, often involving carefully-planned sequences of alcohol, amphetamines (legal and illegal), painkillers (e.g. codeine), and tranquilizers.
What we’re confronting here goes further than a blurring of the boundary between legal and illegal drugs. Also evaporating are the distinctions between the legal, inappropriate and unlawful use of medicines, plus the difference between medication and self-medication. (p. 159)
The pattern doesn’t necessarily end with graduation either, but can be carried over into a high-pressure workplace. Research indicates, however, not only that the drugs are damaging, but that they deliver no long-term cognitive enhancement. In the case of such self-medicating high achievers, Thompson suggests that ‘it might be worth checking on the state of their brain chemistry in a few years’ time’ (p. 171).
The next two chapters take us beyond substance abuse to forms of non-substance addiction, such as ‘gaming’ (Chapter 8) and pornography (Chapter 9), both being areas where computer technology has created unheard-of forms of addiction.
The title of Chapter 8 (‘Gaming, the new gambling’) is a succinct summary of its content. A watershed event was the passing of a law in the US in 2006, making online betting illegal and preventing any company from providing it there. People who had been addicted to online gambling switched instead to online gaming, and gaming companies recruited programmers from the now-illegal industry. The switch would have been relatively smooth for them because, as Thompson points out, the two activities employ similar ‘reward dynamics’ (p. 174). He describes them with an evocative phrase: ‘brain-hijackers with transferable skills’ (p. 180). Supporting this claim is a statement from an anonymous Silicon Valley gaming company CEO:
We design an environment in which losses are insignificant and there are regular reassurance mechanisms. Then we make modifications to that environment and monitor which combinations of punishment and encouragement keep users playing for longer. We engineer the game very precisely to keep players enjoying it for the longest possible time, and we use complex software to help us monitor what the entire installed user base of players is doing with their copy of the game. (p. 181)
Who are these players? Thompson points out that ‘it isn’t just children who are getting trapped in cyberspace’ (p. 176). There are adults who spend hours in front of a screen tweaking their online personas (avatars), purchasing virtual real estate, furniture, and clothing, and interacting with other avatars in an immersive virtual world (e.g. Second Life). Corporations take male and female preferences into account and tailor their games accordingly. Furthermore, not only has the ‘traditional’ gaming market mushroomed, but a host of other software applications has been ‘gamified’ (p. 177), including email, Twitter and Facebook. That such applications are now installed on multiple platforms (smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers) means that we are increasingly bombarded with visible and audible notifications that give us a buzz of excitement.
Although games and social media technologies might appear trivial by comparison with some forms of addiction, Thompson believes we are facing ‘yet another social epidemic, born out of the marriage of marketing and reward-responsive brain chemistry’ (p. 183). He numbers ‘300 internet addiction clinics in China alone, catering to some of the estimated 17 million game and internet addicts in that country’ (p. 188).
A troubling implication of this burgeoning online interaction is that ‘relationships in the real world will resemble those in the digital one: transitory, accelerated, pragmatic associations that provide a hit of narcissistic reassurance rather than lasting bonds between close friends’ (p. 194). If this sounds far-fetched to some, Thompson concludes, consider that ‘by the end of 2011, Facebook was being cited in a third of divorce cases in the UK’ (p. 195).
Chapter 9 tells a similar story, but this time it is digital pornography that is of concern. Men are more prone to this addiction, but women are affected. It is a difficult area to research, but the available data ‘suggests that the sexual appetites of countless millions of people are being manipulated in ways for which there is no historical precedent’ (p. 196). Of all the addictions that Thompson describes in the book, ‘it’s the one that comes closest to panicking the experts’ (p. 198).
By contrast with the pre-digital version, digital porn has become increasingly explicit, in response to the jaded appetites of consumers. This includes a ‘drift towards violence and cruelty’ (p. 204). Furthermore, although porn has always taken advantage of new technologies, the Internet has made it available on an unprecedented scale, frequently without cost, and to children as well as adults.
Thompson cites psychiatrist Norman Doidge, whose 2007 book, The Brain that Changes Itself, has made popular the idea of ‘neuroplasticity’. For Doidge, ‘internet porn is addictive in roughly the same way as drugs’ (p. 211). In the mid- to late-1990s, he noticed that some of his male patients complained of problems with normal sexual performance, and he ascribed this to brain rewiring, brought on by repeated bursts of dopamine in response to explicit pornographic images. The business side of porn may not be as systematic as online gaming, but the effects on the brain are just as pernicious, if not more so.
The examples provided by Thompson demonstrate that this problem is affecting males of all ages and backgrounds, with publicised cases revealing the collection of hundreds of thousands of illegal images. This is one of the instances where addiction reveals obsessive-compulsive traits. Like other forms of addiction, internet porn exploits loneliness, and masquerades as an antidote to it. It is a case of the progressive replacement of people by things, in this instance by increasingly hard-core images.
The title of the final chapter (‘Deliver us from temptation’) has religious overtones, perhaps reflecting Thompson’s academic and professional background – his PhD was in the sociology of religion, and he has been religious affairs correspondent of The Daily Telegraph and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald.
In this chapter, we return to the big picture, to get some sense of what we are confronting. Regarding legalisation of drugs, Thompson points out that the resulting changes to lines of supply would not provide any remedy for addiction. Furthermore, technological changes mean that the boundary between legal and illegal drugs has become blurred, and, in any case, many abused drugs are already easy to get hold of (e.g. Adderall, Ritalin, codeine).
As a way of understanding addiction in the 21st century, Thompson adopts the pyramidal model proposed by Dr Adi Jaffe, a former addict and dealer turned academic psychologist. According to this model, the pyramid is divided into thirds: the bottom third represents ordinary people whose addictive impulses are ‘difficult, but not impossible, to excite’; the middle layer consists of ‘vulnerable individuals whose natural reaction to stress is to search for a fix’; at the top are those we consider addicts in the real sense, ‘with their wide-open “wanting” pathways who are capable of developing an all-consuming obsession with anything from candy bars to sadomasochistic sex acts’ (p. 237). In the light of the preceding chapters of his book, Thompson proposes that we are witnessing an upward trend within this pyramid:
More of us find ourselves in the category of addict or the intermediary layer of vulnerable consumer. More of us are at risk than ever before of developing crippling addictive behaviours. Ignoring potentially harmful temptations involves significantly more willpower than it once did. (p. 238)
If, as Thompson argues, addiction is not caused by brain malfunction, but rather the opposite – ‘addictive behaviour, influenced above all by the available supply of addictive substances and experiences, can sometimes cause brain abnormalities’ (p. 238) – then the social implications are enormous.
Thompson refers to ‘the sudden disappearance of political and cultural obstacles that limited the geographical spread of particular addictive products and practices’ (pp. 240–41). These include the fall of the Berlin Wall, hi-tech globalization, migration, organized crime, and long-haul travel (which ‘has changed the attitude of students and young professionals towards mind-altering drugs, which they have seen consumed in developing countries as part of the natural rhythm of life – or so they like to think, in their romantic way’, pp. 244–5). The changes are too rapid to be described as ‘generational’ and they place a huge burden on our psyches:
One way or another, everybody in the Western world has to confront the quickening of desire. It’s true that many people can’t afford to pursue more than a few of those desires. Most of us, however, face an intensity of temptation that we can only intermittently resist. Managing those temptations draws deeply on our psychological resources: it can dominate our thoughts and swallow up our time. (p. 246)
The modern consumer society only exacerbates this burden, since it is ‘partly fashioned around our inability to exercise willpower’. Indeed, our livelihoods often depend on ‘other people’s vulnerability to temptation’, which implies that we are all implicated: ‘The multiplication of choice, the expansion of the free market and the stimulation of greed are so tightly interwoven as to be almost indistinguishable from each other’ (p. 258). The result is that the ‘addictive personality … is fast becoming the default personal style of disoriented modern citizens’ (p. 259).
The medical model may appear to lighten the burden by making us think that ‘addictions are not so much the product of our actions as something we are unlucky enough to have acquired’ (p. 247), which Thompson describes as ‘a recipe for learned helplessness’ (p. 249), but it will not help us in the long term. In the final analysis, he believes that ‘addiction is a disorder of choice, and we’re not doomed to carry on making bad choices to the point of helplessness’ (p. 259):
Perhaps we need to rediscover the vigilance that protected our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The quicker we are to spot the technological tricks that manipulate our “wanting” impulse, the greater will be our chance of resisting them. That’s if we want to, of course. (p. 260)
Concluding comments
The Fix is written for a general audience, although the influence of Thompson’s background in sociology is detectable. With minimal use of scientific jargon, he makes a plausible case for the continuity between extreme forms of addiction, which we might all recognise, and the more mundane experience of giving in to temptation, whether the object of our desire be food, prescribed medication, or digital distractions. Furthermore, he suggests that our contemporary way of life is pushing us into addictive-type behaviours.
A recurring theme in the book is that addiction involves the progressive replacement of people by things. This is particularly evident where addiction intersects with obsessive collecting (a form of OCD), but it is not limited to such cases. Even the people in an addict’s life often become a means to the object of his addiction. And addicts often end up alone in their bedroom or sitting room, whether they are addicted to alcohol or gaming.
Describing himself as a former addict, he refuses to accept the ‘medical model’ that claims addiction is an incurable disease. Although he acknowledges the role of ‘situation and context’, and agrees with Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, 2000) that we tend to ‘overestimate the importance of character traits’ (p. 88), his description of addiction as a ‘disorder of choice’ is entirely compatible with traditional accounts of habit formation.
We know from their writings that ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle well understood the human psyche to be a battleground between competing influences. Notwithstanding the power of irrational forces, they regarded rationality as the defining characteristic of human beings, and they claimed that the ordered psyche was one in which the irrational was submitted to the rational. Ancient philosophical schools, such as the Epicureans and the Stoics, developed a sophisticated understanding of desire and emotion, including a hierarchy of different kinds of pleasure, and they elaborated exercises to help students strengthen the will against temptation. Their goal was eudaimonia, often translated as ‘flourishing’, in the sense of a fulfilling human life. They were concerned with ‘normal’ desire, rather than the extreme of addiction, though doubtless they would have seen the two lying along a spectrum, with the latter being the developmental endpoint of a dissolute life, one in which there was no attempt to subjugate the lower desires.
Thompson, perhaps judiciously, doesn’t bring such historical considerations into his account, which is generally factual and descriptive rather than moralizing. I believe it is significant, however, that he leaves open the door to what the ancients have to teach us. Although no stranger to addictive desires himself, he refuses to shirk responsibility for his own poor choices in the past. Rather, he returns, like the escaped prisoner in Plato’s cave allegory, to help liberate his erstwhile fellow captives, and warn against complacency in a world increasingly governed by desire.
I
This is the third of Kevin Shepherd’s books describing Shirdi Sai Baba. The publication history includes Gurus Rediscovered: Biographies of Sai Baba of Shirdi and Upasni Maharaj of Sakori (1986), and Investigating the Sai Baba Movement: A Clarification of Misrepresented Saints and Opportunism (2005). There are also some online features, including ‘Shirdi Sai Baba and the Sai Baba Movement’, which can be located via the author’s full bibliography.
Biographical Investigation is the first book that Shepherd has devoted solely to Shirdi Sai Baba. This is his most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date, with 340 pages of text, including an Appendix on ‘Narasimhaswami’s Life of Sai Baba’. Plus over 700 annotations, a bibliography, and a comprehensive index (the entry on Shirdi Sai Baba is four pages long). The 34-page index is substantially longer than the index appearing in Warren’s Unravelling the Enigma, and is of closely comparable extent to that found in the Sai Baba coverage by Rigopoulos (published by SUNY Press, with an index of 32 pages).
Biographical Investigation is well illustrated with many old photographs (and paintings) of interest, both in the text and in plates. There are 81 chapters, ranging between one and fifteen pages in length, many of these comprising descriptions of devotees who came into contact with Shirdi Sai Baba. This material affords an insight into the character and behaviour of the enigmatic mystic.
I should make clear that my own academic background is in philosophy, and not the history and sociology of religion, although I have maintained a nonspecialist interest in the latter for almost thirty years. I first read Gurus Rediscovered towards the end of the 1980s, and it was clear to me even then that Shepherd’s approach was a scholarly one, very far removed from devotional and other popular idioms, an appraisal that appears to have been confirmed by academics in the field.
For instance, in his 1993 The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi (an adaptation of his 1987 doctoral thesis), Dr Antonio Rigopoulos referred to Gurus Rediscovered as a ‘ground-breaking work presenting Sai Baba as a Muslim and a Sufi adept … thus countering the “Hinduizing” tendency of all past Indian authors’ (xxvii). Another academic, Dr Marianne Warren (d. 2004), also converted her doctoral thesis (1996) into a publication, Unravelling the Enigma: Shirdi Sai Baba in the Light of Sufism (1999, revised edition 2004). Warren notably says of Rigopoulos that although he ‘acknowledges the saint’s Muslim Sufi aspect, he does not pursue it, and never academically questions the obvious Hindu bias in his assessment and interpretation of Sai Baba’ (p. 18). In contrast, she writes: ‘Prior to Shepherd, the perennial question was whether Sai Baba was Hindu or Muslim, with most of the secondary writers emphasizing the Hindu interpretation. Shepherd was the first author to question this Hindu bias and to redefine the broad “Muslim” category, dividing it into the orthodox Islamic law or sharia and Sufi mysticism … Shepherd observes many links between Sai Baba and the strong Sufi tradition in the Deccan. He notes that since his death, the saint has been totally embraced by the Hindus and that in the process the Muslim minority in Shirdi has been eclipsed’ (p. 15).
Both Rigopoulos and Warren were followers of Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011), whose own career is relevant to research on Shirdi Sai. Ratnakaram Satyanarayana Raju assumed the name of the Shirdi saint in the 1940s, the latter’s celebrity in India having been on the increase since his death in 1918. Unlike the aforementioned academic authors, Shepherd has always distinguished the original Sai Baba from his namesake, who claimed to be a reincarnation of the faqir. Shepherd plausibly described Sathya Sai as an opportunist, in his detailed book Investigating the Sai Baba Movement (a work still not assimilated by some academic commentators, who merely cite Gurus Rediscovered because that earlier and much shorter book was mentioned by Dr. Warren and Dr. Rigopoulos; the lack of appropriate reading is all too obvious). Shirdi Sai Baba was an impoverished faqir who lived in a dilapidated mosque and begged for minimal daily sustenance, while Sathya Sai Baba was an ostentatious commercial guru who acquired considerable wealth and who claimed an ability to perform dramatic miracles.
The reputation of Sathya Sai Baba became tarnished by strong allegations of fraud, sexual misconduct, and collusion in murder. Warren recorded the consequent shift in her own outlook, as found in her ‘Author’s Preface’ to the revised 2004 edition of her book (pp. xvii–xviii). In his online ‘Marianne Warren and Shirdi Sai Baba’, Shepherd relays that Warren intended to go further in writing an expose of Sathya Sai Baba (a draft introduction is available here), but she died before this was accomplished. Chapters 79 and 80 of Shepherd contain information on the so-called ‘Sai Baba Movement’ and Sathya Sai Baba respectively.
Shepherd now represents a significant aspect of the argument concerning Sufi dimensions of Shirdi Sai Baba. In an earlier work, Shepherd has already addressed certain confusing comments of Warren. This issue has implications for orthodox and unorthodox forms of ‘Sufism’, variations in usage of the term majzub, and familiarity with alternative sources (Investigating the Sai Baba Movement, pp. 49–58).
In his new book, Shepherd again outlines some revealing differences of approach (Biographical Investigation, pp. 41–2, 345–6 n.34). His presentation further diverges from Warren by giving far more attention to the liberal attitude of Sai Baba towards Hinduism. Shepherd closely details events in relation to Hindu devotees. In fact, his book strikes an unusual balance between coverage of the Hindu devotees and information about the Muslim followers and contacts. This is a refreshing feature difficult to find elsewhere.
II
Biographical Investigation analyses various source materials, including those of Dabholkar, Narasimhaswami, V. B. Kher, and other influential Indian devotee writers. Significant contrasts and complexities emerge. There are also chapters describing encounters between Sai Baba and specific individuals.
Shepherd writes that his objective is ‘to probe diverse sources and materials on Shirdi Sai Baba, in an attempt to fathom the nature of events in his biography’ (p. v). He is not concerned with miracle stories, and says that his own inclination is ‘to pursue historical details, insofar as these can be charted’ (p. vi). As we shall see below, his use of specialist historical research provides an informative background to the life of the Shirdi saint. More significantly, perhaps, he supplements the ‘canonical’ Sai Baba literature with references from another corpus of source material: published works by writers associated with Meher Baba that have been generally obscured by the Sai Baba canon (see Chapter 9, ‘The Meher Baba Literature’, for a detailed discussion; and p. 256 and Chapter 70, for further examples).
As far as basic historical facts are concerned, there is no evidence for the pre-Shirdi phase, other than what Sai Baba himself said. His habit of using figurative speech means that such statements are difficult to accept at face value. Estimated dates for his birth range from 1836 to 1858 (see p. 4). His original name is unknown. The early Shirdi period remains largely obscure, despite some ingenious reconstruction by Kher. ‘Detailed coverage only applies to the last decade or so of this biography, from circa 1910’ (p. 4). The sources for this period nevertheless have drawbacks that include conflicting versions of the same event and a tendency to hagiography. ‘A century after his death, there are different versions of his life in evidence. These include scholarly accounts and devotee epics, pronounced variations and disagreements, and the complication of a mythology devised by Sathya Sai Baba’ (p. 40).
The date of Sai Baba’s arrival in Shirdi is uncertain, with alternative chronologies being favoured (see pp. 7–8). That means the 1850s or 1868–72. In this village of Maharashtra, the population was predominantly Hindu. Sai Baba eventually settled in a dilapidated mosque. ‘For a long time, many of the Shirdi villagers continued to regard Sai Baba as a stranger, and as a mad faqir’ (p. 18).
A following gradually developed, which included many Hindus. Sai Baba was not eager to convert people to his own views. He was not a preacher, but instead a retiring and eccentric ascetic. He was unpredictable in his reactions to diverse visitors, many of whom sought material benefits.
A daily routine evolved that included a begging round (see Chapter 66). At the mosque, visitors arrived for darshan (a Hindu term for meeting). In his last years, Sai Baba would ask affluent visitors for a monetary donation or dakshina. A crucial point is, however, that all dakshina monies were redistributed to those in need by the end of the day – there was no accumulation of wealth (see Chapter 52). Sai Baba also redistributed much of the food that he begged. The abstemious nature of his lifestyle is rather striking.
Hindu visitors substantially outnumbered the Muslims. The Hindu devotees imported elements of their own tradition, including the ceremonial worship known as puja and arati. Shepherd’s book has considerable detail culled from numerous sources. There were strong variations in Sai Baba’s response to individuals. Several chapters reveal this. Consider, for example, Chapter 61, which is entitled ‘Swami Narayan and High Teaching’.
Tozer (or Thoser) was a civil servant who first visited Sai Baba in 1910. He later became a sannyasin and was known as Shri Narayan Ashram (or Swami Narayan). Interviewed by Narasimhaswami in 1936, his testimony included the following statement: ‘Many people who approached [Sai] Baba cared for material things only, and hardly any came to him for the highest spiritual benefit of Atma Nishta’ (quoted on p. 238). Narayan also referred to a spiritual experience gained at Shirdi. ‘Sai Baba conveyed to him, without any words, the feeling that all differences were unreal, the one reality underlying all else’ (p. 239).
Narayan reported that Sai Baba was ‘mostly silent’ when he first encountered him in 1910, just before the increase in visitors from Bombay commenced. The latter trend resulted in Sai Baba ‘being pressed into new habits and ways; devotees, to suit their own taste, forced numerous forms and observances’ (quoted on p. 239). Narayan also observed that Sai Baba employed parables when communicating with the crowds that flocked to see him, in contrast with the ‘few direct and plain words’ that he spoke to Narayan and some other individuals. Shepherd comments: ‘There was no doctrine, no system, no set of religious practices to be followed, no meditation agenda, no Vedanta, no Yoga’ (p. 240).
Two other contacts were Meher Baba (Chapter 69) and Upasani Maharaj (Chapter 78). Merwan Irani (1894–1969), later known as Meher Baba, achieved a significant reputation in India and abroad, but ‘is not mentioned in most accounts of Sai Baba’ (p. 269). A Zoroastrian born at Poona, in 1915 he came into contact with Sai Baba, after Hazrat Babajan had prompted him to visit Shirdi. It is evident that Babajan knew about Sai Baba, and held him in high regard, saying cryptically that Sai possessed a ‘key’ which she herself could not give Merwan (p. 269).
In later years, Merwan (by then known as Meher Baba) was critical of the devotee attitude towards reputed miracles of Sai Baba. ‘This has been mistakenly understood by some as a negative reflection upon Sai Baba. Confusion about this subject is pronounced. In reality, Meher Baba acknowledged Shirdi Sai as the leading spiritual master of his time’ (p. 271). Shepherd also remarks that when Merwan visited Sai Baba and Upasani Maharaj (at the Khandoba temple), there were at Shirdi ‘three men who became legends in their lifetime’ (p. 271).
The chapter on Upasani Maharaj (1870–1941) is brief. The author informs that a compressed account cannot do justice to the complexity of events relating to this figure. Shepherd explains that a separate book on the subject is in preparation. Meanwhile, he refers the interested reader to his ‘preliminary’ attempts at biography of Upasani in two earlier books, one of these being Investigating the Sai Baba Movement. Upasani arrived at Shirdi in 1911, and thereafter stayed for a few years at the deserted Khandoba temple, following the instruction of Sai Baba.
Chapter 70 profiles Gustad Hansotia, an atypical follower of Sai Baba. As a Zoroastrian who settled in Shirdi, he was distinct from the rest of the population, which was either Hindu or Muslim. Gustad was entirely neglected in the Sai Baba literature until the 1986 publication of Gurus Rediscovered (see p. 272; and p. 390, n. 631). The present reviewer can add that, seven years later, the well known book by Rigopoulos included a very fleeting reference to Gustad in an annotation of three lines, and solely deriving from Australian poet Francis Brabazon, one of Meher Baba’s devotees (see Rigopoulos 1993, p. 219, n. 178). Warren’s contribution in this respect is more substantial, but her data is derived from Shepherd’s Meher Baba: An Iranian Liberal (see Warren 1999, pp. 112–13; and p. 128, n. 40, where she gives the copyright date of 1986 instead of the publication date of 1988). Shepherd has since devoted a chapter to Gustad in Hazrat Babajan: A Pathan Sufi of Poona (2014).
During his teens, Gustad became dissatisfied with orthodox Zoroastrianism. Living in Bombay, he first visited Shirdi in 1910. He was deeply impressed by the faqir, and thereafter visited Sai Baba every month. In 1918 Gustad left his employment in Bombay and moved to Shirdi. His only possessions were a bedding roll and a trunk. Gustad had no accommodation and slept on a verandah, with permission from the owner. Sai Baba at first ignored him, but Gustad ‘accepted this, not having any status complex’. Two months passed before the faqir ‘acknowledged his presence, as though he had just arrived’ (p. 273). Enduring much travail, but in the process getting closer to Sai Baba, Gustad remained at Shirdi until the saint’s death in October 1918, being one of the coffin bearers at the funeral.
Shepherd pointedly remarks: ‘Gustad Hansotia was forgotten in all the standard versions of Sai Baba. The fact remains that Gustad is the only man known to have been in close contact with four of the most famous twentieth century mystics in Maharashtra, namely Sai Baba, Upasani Maharaj, Hazrat Babajan, and Meher Baba’ (p. 276).
The demise of Shirdi Sai was attended by an increase in what Warren’s Sufi paradigm disapprovingly called the ‘Hinduizing’ influence, to some extent associated with the influx of Hindu visitors from Bombay beginning about 1910. Shepherd does not disagree with this complaint, but nevertheless adopts a different approach to some materials. One discrepancy in the format of Warren was to promote the Hinduizing lore of Sathya Sai concerning Shirdi Sai. Shepherd evidently perceived the anomaly, but deficient assessors assumed that Warren was superior (and therefore correct) because she was an academic and he a citizen author.
Uninformed persons (e.g., some Wikipedia editors) failed to grasp that Warren herself eventually repudiated the extravagant lore created by Sathya Sai. The disavowal occurred after the year 2000, and after her lengthy book was published. This factor contradicts her supposed accuracy, and was a cause of acute embarrassment to her. Shepherd now provides far more information about Shirdi Sai and his devotees than did Warren, and without the disconcerting concessions to miracle lore likewise found in Rigopoulos.
A preoccupation with the miraculous is also found in some Indian devotee accounts. This factor boomed in the career of Sathya Sai Baba, whose claim to be a reincarnation of the charismatic faqir assisted the confusing popular image of Shirdi Sai as a miracle worker. According to Warren, Shirdi Sai ‘demonstrated many miraculous powers’ (Unravelling the Enigma, p. 29). Shepherd, in contrast, finds proof that Shirdi Sai did not claim miracles (Chapter 41). He emphasizes that we may gain a more accurate picture of events if we examine the Shirdi saint in a different way: ‘It is possible to approach Sai Baba in a more rational spirit without reducing his significance’ (p. 204).
III
Like the equally enigmatic Hazrat Babajan (d. 1931), Shirdi Sai Baba resists straightforward categorization. Both of these entities favoured the description of faqir in relation to themselves. Other terms that have since been employed for Sai Baba include ‘Sufi’ and ‘guru’, which may be too generalizing, concealing rather than revealing nuances. Shepherd emphasizes that ‘some flexibility is required in the effort to comprehend him’ (p. 2).
A context for Shirdi Sai’s renowned religious liberalism is afforded by the syncretism between Bhakti Hinduism and Sufism that occurred in Maharashtra over centuries (see p. 3 and Chapter 6). The attire of Sai Baba was that of a Muslim faqir, and he spoke the Muslim language of Urdu. However, Sai Baba was reticent on the issue of his religious affiliation, and was not concerned to promote himself in religious terms. His predilection for allusive speech (Chapter 17) is a complication for straightforward assessment. He did not give discourses, and preferred stories.
One of the key factors in comprehending Shirdi Sai is his relationship to Sufism (on page 22, for example, Shepherd describes him as ‘an independent Sufi’). The significance of this subject to Shepherd may be gauged from the fact that the longest chapter of his book (‘Faqirs, Sufis, and Majazib’) is devoted to this topic (see pp. 22–37). By drawing on the scholarship of specialists such as Richard M. Eaton and Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, he underlines the complexity of the religious situation in India between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries: ‘This neglected subject can serve to illustrate the marginalised sectors of independent Sufi mysticism existing in the Deccan’ (p. 26). Shepherd’s use of this material is in contrast to the interpretation of Warren.
Shepherd complains that a tendency of Warren was to associate Shirdi Sai with Sufi Orders (see pp. 22, 36, 63; also p. 35 for a similar observation about Rigopoulos). The term ‘Sufi’ could often designate a member of an established Order, involving a penchant for orthodox beliefs and political assimilation to a ruling elite. Among such established Orders, there was a trend towards accumulation of property and prestige, and also the hereditary transmission of leadership roles. In other situations, ‘Sufi’ could mean an independent liberal mystic trying to avoid persecution by a ruling elite. ‘The variations in Sufi role can be striking; in this respect, the word Sufi is a blanket term covering many dispositions and beliefs’ (p. 27).
Such historical context may help to explain certain statements of Sai Baba appearing in the notebook of his Muslim disciple Abdul Baba (see Chapter 5). This largely Urdu text was neglected for over eighty years, a casualty of the Hinduizing process. Warren deserves credit for commissioning a translation of the notebook, which is included in her own 1999 book. Apart from confirming the deep familiarity of Sai Baba with the Islamic and Sufi traditions, the Urdu notebook evidences that the saint was critical of those he described as ‘false pirs and faqirs’.
Any attempt to do justice to Shepherd’s detailed treatment of these matters would add to an already lengthy review, and instead I refer any interested reader to the relevant Chapter 7. However, I should mention that Shepherd pioneered the association of Sai Baba with the majazib (singular: majzub), a factor astounding some Eastern and Western academics who read his early work Gurus Rediscovered. Warren reacted, and tried to reduce his credibility on this point, regarding him as a rival to her own Sufi-based theory. However, her arguments in this direction are not convincing, and even less so, her attempt to demean Shepherd’s early criticism of Narasimhaswami (a criticism deriving from Meher Baba, and in part relating to the subject of miracles).
In his new book, Shepherd again argues for the relevance of the majazib to his subject, but not in any unqualified manner. On the one hand he acknowledges Sai Baba’s affinity with the majazib in the ‘independence from religious doctrine’ (p. 19) and the faqir’s ‘aloof, disconcerting, and unpredictable’ behaviour (p. 24; see also p. 35). On the other hand, Shepherd finds that the label is ‘very inadequate for specifics, merely amounting to a well known significator of abstracted God-absorption’, and that it ‘fails to qualify the diversity of temperament in evidence … Different types of majzub (including superficial imitators) are discernible in the process of liberal Sufism’ (p. 35).
Therefore, although the term majzub is ‘evocative’ (p. 35) and the majazib ‘are a useful reference point in the study of unorthodox Sufism’ (p. 36), Shepherd finds that ‘the subject lacks definition’ (p. 36). ‘To some extent, Sai Baba can be viewed as a faqir exemplar of the tangent from “orthodox Sufis,” a trend which goes back many centuries in both Indian and Iranian milieux. It is not necessary to describe him as a majzub, that term having become a popularised label denoting eccentricity. Furthermore, some academic commentators have mistakenly treated the majzub role as an indication of clinical madness’ (p. 37).
The emerging profile is one of an unorthodox ‘Sufi’ whose tolerance of Hinduism was exceptional. ‘Distinctive figures like Shirdi Sai Baba, Hazrat Babajan of Poona, and Tajuddin Baba of Nagpur were mystics living well outside the network of Sufi Orders. Criteria conventionally applied to Sufi Orders do not work for such exceptions’ (p. 35).
There are widespread misconceptions as to what Shirdi Sai Baba taught. The significant Chapter 73 in Biographical Investigation counters the confusion. For instance, Sai Baba did not teach Vedanta. However, he was ‘a supporter of reincarnation, a theme mentioned frequently in the sources’ (p. 294).
Chapter 77 ventures a commentary on the scenario of Nath Yogis versus Sufi Orders. To the best of my knowledge, this treatment is unprecedented in the Sai Baba literature. Shepherd here employs reference to the significant research of Professor Carl W. Ernst. The point is being made by Shepherd that Sai Baba bypassed preoccupations strongly associated with both the Naths and the Sufi Orders, religious contingents whose rivalry persisted over centuries in India. ‘Sai Baba ignored the practices favoured by the Nath Yogis and a number of Sufi Orders’ (p. 312). The angle of realistic interpretation is here very different to earlier speculations of Charles White, a 1970s innovator of ‘Sai Baba movement’ theory whose influence proved confusing.
INTRODUCTION
In an earlier post I published a review of a book by independent author, Kevin R.D. Shepherd. As part of his citizen publishing project, Shepherd has recently updated his 1986 biography of Hazrat Babajan of Poona in a completely new book. This is complemented by three online articles, one of which is referred to below. The other two are ‘Hazrat Babajan, A Pathan (Pashtun) Sufi’ and ‘Hazrat Babajan’. What follows is my review of the new book.
REVIEW
Kevin R.D. Shepherd, Hazrat Babajan: A Pathan Sufi of Poona (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 2014).
1. Introduction
That significant spiritual events need be attended by some preternatural sense of the numinous, or by outward ‘signs’ and ‘miracles’, are common enough expectations, if we are to go by the offerings of the mass media, or the ostentatious exploits of some contemporary ‘gurus’. Our extroverted society has a preference for the sensational, such that we commonly fail to notice the subtle or understated. In the latter case, even when our interest is piqued, perhaps by some pre-existing element of celebrity, we tend to focus on the outward aspect to the detriment of the inward. Such a course may be appealing to aggregate tastes, but it arguably results in a situation of misunderstanding that, at best, perpetuates confusion.
The life of Hazrat Babajan challenges many of the assumptions we might harbour about so-called spiritual matters, and this life is brought to us through a new biography by independent British writer, Kevin R. D. Shepherd. His latest offering supersedes his earlier monograph (1986a), which was the first annotated book-length treatment of the subject. This new work clarifies a number of points and takes into account some publications that have appeared in the intervening decades. Furthermore, given that the task of a biographer is to engage sympathetically with his subject, while maintaining a critical stance towards sources, Shepherd arguably sets a precedent for engaged research that avoids the twin pitfalls of academic insularity, on the one hand, and popular sentiment, on the other.
When Hazrat Babajan died at Poona in Maharashtra, India, on 21 September 1931, thousands of Muslims and Hindus are reported to have attended her funeral, the procession being described as ‘a tremendous affair, never accorded to any dignitary or royalty in the annals of Poona.’ (2014a: 95) Her tomb endures as an object of veneration to this day. Yet this elderly Muslim woman, reputed to have been over a hundred at the time of her death, had never preached, let alone expounded any doctrine or system; nor had she claimed affiliation with any religious group. Collating the data from extant sources, and situating it within the socio-political context of nineteenth and early twentieth century Afghanistan and India, Shepherd elucidates the significance of this remarkable life.
2. Critical Evaluation of Sources
Shepherd takes a critical approach to the sources, particularly in his astute sorting of historical from hagiological data, and his understanding of the complex factors involved in reporting and documenting obscure events. If one incorporates the literalism of the devotee mindset, and the dogmatism of sectarian authors, then one has a perfect storm of interpretative complexity. This is the sort of situation that scholars are supposed to negotiate, but their efforts are not uniformly productive. Shepherd’s approach contrasts with those of devotees and sectarians on the one hand, and compensates for scholarly lacunae on the other.
But a life is always more than a set of ‘facts’. It is, rather, the context for those facts that endow them with significance. Furthermore, an awareness of context, and an ability to elucidate it interpretatively, sets one biographer apart from another. This hermeneutic exercise is not divorced from the facts, but must take them into account. This is true of all historical and biographical research, but it is especially important when the subject is as enigmatic as Hazrat Babajan.
The earliest published biography of Babajan was written by Dr Abdul Ghani, a medic and devotee of Zoroastrian teacher Meher Baba, although two years earlier Charles Purdom had included some information about her in a book about Meher Baba (Purdom 1937). Ghani’s compact account ran to ten pages, and was published in the Meher Baba Journal in February 1939, eight years after the death of the subject.
An early example of the tendency to neglect facts is Paul Brunton (the pen name of Raphael Hurst, 1898-1981), a British journalist with an interest in the occult, whose ‘A Search in Secret India’ (1934) became a bestseller. In late November 1930, Brunton had a brief verbal interchange with Babajan, through an unnamed interpreter, whom Shepherd identifies as Jal Irani, a brother of Meher Baba, who was assisted by the Muslim devotee Abdulla Jaffer (2014b: n. 34). This was only one of the omitted facts. Shepherd points out that Brunton’s version of Babajan’s life is inadequate and relies on the unsourced interpretation of a Bombay Parsi named Khandalawalla.
The late Dr Marianne Warren (d. 2004) made various factual errors, including her statement that Babajan ‘gave darshan’, a Hindu term with implications of homage, a practice to which the saint was notably averse. She erroneously attributes joint authorship of a document on Babajan to Meher Baba, perpetuating a confusion that originated with the latter’s devotees, when they reprinted Ghani’s earlier biography, along with his supplement on purported miracles, in a booklet bearing Meher Baba’s name along with Ghani’s on the title page (Warren 1999; Shepherd 2014a: ‘Appendix 1: Drawbacks in Miracle Lore’; and 124, n. 1).
In his doctoral dissertation, James Richard Newell devotes a chapter to Babajan, but claims that:
‘Aside from a few scattered references, the main sources of information on the life of Hazrat Babajan are hagiographic (Ghani 1961; Ramakrishnan 1998; Kalchuri 1986). As a result, the authors tend to emphasize her karamat, or miraculous powers.’ (Newell, 2007: 85)
Shepherd responds to this in an online article:
‘[Newell] lists only three sources, namely Ghani, Ramakrishnan, and Kalchuri. Purdom is not mentioned, and nor is Shepherd (the British contingent were bypassed in this American assessment, but did actually exist). Ramakrishnan (with editor Kantak) is not actually a separate source to Ghani, but merely of convenience to those who could not access the original Ghani articles (plural) appearing over seventy years ago. A minor consideration is that one of those articles (the biography) is abridged in Ramakrishnan. As stated above … the misunderstandings adhering to the Ramakrishnan publication (reprinted in 1998) are substantial. I should add that Dr. Newell is clement in his judgment of the “hagiographic” sources, and does commendably indicate that factual information can be found in them. Kalchuri applies a strong poetic gloss to some accounts he mediated. I have myself complained elsewhere of embellishing tendencies in Kalchuri’s work, but this does not annul the factual content that is discernible.’ (2014b: n. 23)
By contrast with some other academics, Newell is sympathetic to his subject, and is also sensitive to the religious context. He points out that although Babajan’s shrine was
‘appropriated by representatives of the Chishtiyya order soon after her death, or perhaps even as her death was seen to be imminent … it was only by virtue of their affection and reverence for her that they wished to be associated with her, there is no record of her voicing such an affiliation herself … Babajan’s popularity was not inspired by her institutional affiliation or bloodline, but rather, by her personal magnetism, her austerities as a faqir, and her state of mind, which was understood by her followers as an ecstatic state of divine absorption, of majdubiyya [attraction to the divine].’ (Newell, 2007: 80)
He goes on to distinguish between the state of ‘divine absorption’ found in some mystics, and the contrasting state of mental derangement found in people who are described as ‘mad’. For Newell, close examination of the facts points strongly to Babajan’s inclusion in the former category, and he is clearly critical of any attempt to apply a Western paradigm of mental functioning to such individuals, citing the work of academic specialists to support this case (see also Donkin, 1988). He concludes:
‘Babajan’s choice to live in the open, on little food, was the conscious act of will of a faqir, and these austerities themselves led to her absorbed state, not the other way around; not an unbalanced mind resulting in the condition of one who could not care for her own needs.’ (Newell, 2007: 81-2)
Shepherd is in basic agreement with this position, although he has reservations about the use of terms such as majzub, which were often applied to a range of entities, resulting in a conflation of meanings.
3. Contexts for Interpretation
Apart from a critical appraisal of sources, throughout the book Shepherd establishes a positive context for interpreting the life of Hazrat Babajan. One example is the topic of fana-baqa, Sufi terms for the mystical process of ego annihilation followed by stabilization of consciousness. There are indications that Babajan underwent this complex process with the aid of both Hindu and Muslim preceptors.
She is also known to have made ecstatic utterances implying a unity with the divine, a tendency that attracted criticism and even hostility from orthodox Muslims, who would have regarded such declarations as heretical. Shepherd elucidates the context for this in the intellectual formulation of wahdat al-wujud or ‘unity of being’, associated with Andalusian mystic and philosopher, Muhyiuddin Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240). He points out that this teaching ‘gained a strong profile in the annals of Indian Sufism’ (2014a: 41), with the qualification that Babajan ‘was nothing of a systematic expositor … [being] completely unconcerned with promoting any doctrine’. (2014a: 42)
Babajan was often referred to as a faqir, a term deriving from an Arabic word for ‘poverty’. In fact, this seems to have been the only appellation she applied to herself. A core meaning of faqir is a mendicant dervish living on alms, but this has been broadened to include Hindu holy men, and is sometimes even a byword for ‘beggar’. In 1931 Winston Churchill referred disparagingly to Mahatma Gandhi as a ‘one time Inner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir’. (2014a: 78) The term also became popularly associated with abilities of a supposedly occult nature, such as snake charming, lying on nails, and walking over hot coals. In his account of the meeting with Babajan, Brunton wondered: ‘Is it possible that … this haggard and huddled figure contains the soul of a genuine faqueer with wondrous powers?’ (2014a: 93). It was captured in a line from T. S. Eliot’s Macavity the Mystery Cat (published in 1939, five years after Brunton’s ‘Search’): ‘His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare.’ There are also mystical interpretations of the word.
Shepherd says that the ‘basic element of Babajan’s situation was faqiri, the faqir lifestyle and outlook’ (2014a: 76), but with certain qualifications. Although she gained a reputation for healing, and certain ‘miracles’ were attributed to her, she did not claim occult powers herself or resort to extroverted ‘stunts’. She did not adopt exhibitionist postures. Unlike some of the entities in this category, she did not take drugs. The example of her wasted finger (2014a: 65; 141, n. 58) was not a recognised exercise in mortification. In Shepherd’s view, she exemplified faqiri in its original and most essential form: ‘The basic faqir mode demonstrated by Babajan was the ideal of simplicity and abnegation, keeping no gifted money for herself, and abstaining from acquiring possessions.’ (2014a: 78)
There were several Sufi orders in India in Babajan’s time, and her self-description as faqir places her within the Sufi tradition, although she typically made no claims about the latter, presumably not having any need for categorization. She is known to have appreciated qawwali, a form of music often involving the recitation of Sufi poetry. In India it was favoured by the Chishti order. For Shepherd, however, Babajan represents ‘the basic form of Sufi vocation, going back centuries before the dervish orders of the medieval era (and when more women were in evidence as scholars and ascetics)’. (2014a: 96)
Shepherd devotes a relatively lengthy chapter to ‘Women and Sufism’. This is a topic where the life of Babajan is very useful and instructive, as historical records are markedly sparse for female Sufis. One notable exception was Rabia al-Adawiyya (died c. 801), whose life has been studied by British scholar Margaret Smith (1994). Shepherd refers to the latter’s claim that the development of Sufism within Islam presented women with the opportunity of attaining sainthood. Babajan was independent of any order, but her upbringing as a female Muslim would clearly make her sympathetic to the mystical dimensions of the religion. Significantly, she always referred to herself in male terms, and this stance could be interpreted as a demonstration of equality. It is also fitting that the name Babajan has male and female connotations.
An interesting parallel to Babajan is found in the life of Fatima bint Ibn al-Muthanna, one of the female teachers of Ibn al-Arabi:
‘Fatima was an ascetic over ninety years old, and reputedly possessed a “pink and fresh” complexion. She lived at Seville, in a situation of “extreme poverty, feeding herself from the waste that the people of Seville left outside their doors.” She apparently had no home until Ibn al-Arabi and two other of her disciples constructed a reed hut for her use.’ (2014a: 106; quotes are from Claude Addas)
Shepherd also refers to the role of aristocratic female sponsors of Sufism, specifically describing the cases of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahanara (1614-81) and his granddaughter Zebunnisa (1638-c. 1702), who were, respectively, sister and daughter to the doctrinaire Aurangzeb. These liberal-minded women suffered at the hands of their zealous relation, whereas Babajan escaped any such fate by giving up her aristocratic status.
Shepherd analyses Ghani’s claim that Babajan possessed the characteristics of a qalandar: ‘It is obvious that Babajan’s very unusual career posed Ghani with a dilemma of description for which no adequate terminology existed.’ (2014a: 97) For Shepherd the attribution is unsatisfactory, especially given what more recent scholarship tells us about the qalandars.
‘The qalandars were definitely a male phenomenon, arising from a mendicant impulse that contrasted with the settled and affluent milieu of “moderate” Sufism represented by the hospices or centres.’ (2014a: 98)
Qalandars denied the relevance of formal religious observances, and their antinomianism could be extreme, tending to bizarre behaviour and even a libertine lifestyle. The trend was widespread in the middle ages; qalandars were sometimes assimilated to Sufi orders.
‘In some aspects of her career, Babajan did sequel the early qalandar itinerant spirit of independence from the khanaqah system spread by the Sufi orders. That system was associated with a doctrinally hidebound “orthodox Sufi” establishment. Babajan’s early contact with a Hindu teacher is reminiscent of the medieval qalandar tendency to affinity with Hindu ascetics, which took varied guises. She was discernibly in affinity with the wahdat al-wujud teaching, as demonstrated by her gnostic reveries (or ecstasies) that were unwelcome to orthodox Muslims.’ (2014a: 102)
Babajan was not antinomian. She was clearly an ascetic renouncer, not a libertine. In view of her female role, Shepherd believes she ‘can be described as an unusual faqir and neo-qalandar, living completely outside the Sufi orders favoured by orthodoxy and royalty.’ (2014a: 116)
This is perhaps as close as we can get to a ‘final verdict’ from the author. More information on the qalandars can be found in his ‘From Oppression to Freedom: A Study of the Kaivani Gnostics’ (1988a), and his recent Web article goes into greater detail about the similarities and differences to conventional Sufism discernible in Babajan’s life.
Babajan left behind no organized teaching, which arguably made her legacy more resistant to cult or sect formation.
‘Babajan did not take on disciples. There was nothing resembling the initiations and “teaching master” persona celebrated in the Sufi orders. Those who got close to her did find that a form of instruction or guidance was in process, but this was not declared or explained. Babajan did not ask for people to gather near her, and sometimes she was not responsive, preferring to be alone. There was local talk of miracles she had performed, but she herself was indifferent to this factor. The miracle lore evolved as a substitute for comprehension of her lifestyle.’ (2014a: 61)
4. Concluding Comments
‘Hazrat Babajan: A Pathan Sufi of Poona’ will be of interest to scholars and general readers alike. Demonstrating a genuine sympathy for his subject, and a subtle understanding of her context, the author makes an original contribution to the literature, and moreover one that sidesteps the sectarian and ideological influences that have at times afflicted researchers. In the end, perhaps it is fitting that an independent writer should be the one to elucidate the life of an independent Sufi, especially when some academics fail in their role as guardians of rigorous scholarship. Future researchers may have cause to thank Shepherd for his contribution to their labours.
NOTE: A PDF of this review is available here.
Bibliography
Brunton, Paul
1985: A Search in Secret India. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser. Originally published in 1934.
Donkin, William
1988: The Wayfarers: Meher Baba with the God-Intoxicated. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press. Originally published in 1948.
Eliot, T. S.
1939: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. London: Faber and Faber.
Ghani, Abdul
1939: ‘Hazrat Babajan of Poona’ in Meher Baba Journal, 1(4): 29-39. Published as an eBook by the Avatar Meher Baba Trust in 2011.
Newell, James Richard
2007: ‘Experiencing Qawwali: Sound as Spiritual Power in Sufi India’. Online doctoral dissertation (accessed 23 August 2014).
Purdom, Charles B.
1937: The Perfect Master (London: Williams and Norgate).
1964: The God-Man (Crescent Beach, SC: Sheriar Press).
Shepherd, Kevin R. D.
1986a: A Sufi Matriarch: Hazrat Babajan. Cambridge: Anthropographia Publications.
1988a: From Oppression to Freedom: A Study of the Kaivani Gnostics. Cambridge: Anthropographia Publications.
2014a: Hazrat Babajan: A Pathan Sufi of Poona. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
2014b: ‘Hazrat Babajan, Faqir of Poona’. Online article (accessed 6 December 2014).
Smith, Margaret
1994: Rabi’a: The Life & Work of Rabi’a and Other Women Mystics in Islam. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Originally published in 1928.
Warren, Marianne
1999: Unravelling the Enigma: Shirdi Sai Baba in the Light of Sufism. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
If materialism is defined as the theory that all that really exists is matter, then how does the materialist explain how matter thinks and feels; categorizes and explains; questions and asserts; imagines and hopes; and believes and doubts? Is it not paradoxical that matter should be able to wonder about itself, define itself, describe itself, and objectify itself?
Or has the materialist got things the wrong way around, by abstracting the concept of ‘matter’ from the objects of experience, and then reifying it into some stuff that is supposed to explain that very experience? Doesn’t the materialist presuppose the very thing that needs to be explained? Why doesn’t the materialist take ‘awareness’ to be the fundamental given? Can there even be ‘matter’ without awareness?
Philosophy is being honest about what one doesn’t know.