The epoch making Deconstruction theory of Derrida has deconstructed all accepted religious, philosophical and metaphysical fundamental beliefs. Following the idea of the absence of absolute truth of Hegelian philosophy, Derrida’s deconstruction has abolished all the hypothesis and beliefs which remained as the edifice of spirituality or religious mysticism.
We in the world of science can today belief and disbelief the logic behind anything good or evil. The more we tend to believe something irrespective of physical science or religious, natural or supernatural, the more we shape our knowledge according to the assumptions that have shaped all the principles. Scientists today claims that Big-Bang is the starting point, we too agree with the same in one point, but we also know that, that is too based on the assumptions and can be hypothetical too. Nobody knows what exactly had happened before the Big Bang. Religion is just a concept, a philosophical concept to make the world better, to make the human more humane for the sake of world, and community (Lord Krishna to Arjuna). There is no difference between the idea of words as signifier and the image as signified and the concept of God and its omnipotence existence. The structure is the same. The concept of spirituality, one’s being spiritual is not physical. Now, if we talk about the link between mysticism or religious spirituality and the idea of Deconstruction, we are actually working on the base of same metaphysics.
When Derrida says there is nothing except word he merely doesn’t mean the presence of letters, along with the words there come meanings, concepts and many iterating images. The words like dharma, the Lord Shiva, the Lord Vishnu or the Lord Brahma, bring many heavens and hell, numbers of deaths as a result of sin and the Hindu’s concept of re-birth in case the individual is truly religious. All these are the lessons, first orally transmitted through generations and later collected by the kings and communities for different purposes. Those which have been through oral transmission and have remained only as concepts are far away from physical or concrete reality. It is no wonder that the idea which is based on assumptions and hypothesis always lead us towards mysticism and nihilism.
Now let’s take a Biblical account. The sole dependency of Christian myth on the spirit which is from God is not only equivocal but also trapped in controversies and incomplete in itself. ‘The first thing in the world was the word and the word was God’ and we might understand the things freely given to us by God and interestingly we bestow that knowledge and wisdom which is not taught by any physical being but taught by the spirit, the spiritual truths. The all religious doctrines of all ages around the world are not out of natural phenomena and the personification of gods and goddesses with various attributes are nothing but the representation of different natural energy (spirit), where the human being can’t make any change of it. The fundamental principles of accepting mystic attitudes of all the representative agencies of nature as God or supernatural spirit are same as the fundamentals on which the entire binary of signifier and sign are believed and formed by the structuralists.
The mystical questions regarding God, time, universe; whether they had a beginning in time and whether it is limited in space or not and many other things have been through extensive examination by the philosophers throughout the ages.
This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked:
“What did God do before he created the universe?” Augustine didn’t reply: “He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.” Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe. (The Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking) So, when we believe in a spirit or spirits, the god as omnipotence creator, the concept of heaven and hell and the question of whether or not all these concepts exist are really questions of metaphysics or theology.
Derrida’s arguments regarding religious mysticism and deconstruction revolve around some of his concepts like, justice, hope, messianism and messianicty, determinants (loose or strong).
Derrida’s arguments regarding religious mysticism and deconstruction revolve around some of his concepts like, justice, hope, messianism and messianicty, determinants (loose or strong).
Derrida says that what gives deconstruction its movement is "constantly to suspect, to criticize the given determinations of culture, of institutions, of legal systems, not in order to destroy them or simply to cancel them, but to be just with justice, to respect this relation to the other as justice." Justice has always been the ethical drive behind deconstruction. It is what deconstruction affirms. To understand deconstruction, we need to know what deconstruction is not. Derrida is no nihilist "every deconstructive analysis is undertaken in the name of something, something affirmatively un-deconstructible." He tells us that while religion, like law, is deconstructible, faith, like justice, is "something that is presupposed by the most radical deconstructive gesture. You cannot address the other; speak to the other, without an act of faith, without testimony." In other words, to speak to another is to ask the other to "believe in me" or "trust me." Such faith, says Derrida, is "absolutely universal." And this universal structure of faith is an un-deconstructible that Derrida calls the messianic structure or messianicity. This messianic structure, or messianicity has everything to do with faith. Indeed, Derrida confesses that "there is no society without faith, without trust in the other." But messianicity is no more to be confused with messianisms than is justice to be confused with law. Like law, (which is the identification of the structure of the justice), messianisms are an identification in time and history of the messianic structure. Messianisms say that the Messiah has appeared at this time, in this tradition, in this person, with this name.
It is not that easy to get the proper and established definition of mysticism in general term. The very idea of mysticism is itself a composite unified whole of various spiritual and sublime experiences in one hand and some enlightening state of mind, which is more abstract and not concrete. The application of deconstruction on these experiences can only be a creation of void to fulfill the realized whole. Again, here we use the power of negativity to say what deconstructed mysticism is by saying what it is not. We must consider the fact that each and every instance whether physical or metaphysical is not the subject beyond image or concept (the concept of that particular image.) When we look into the heart or introspect to feel the enlightenment or nirvana or moksha, we cannot visualize the state of being enlightened without the very idea or image of the nirvana itself. The problem lies here is this that Buddha always talks about how to attain nirvana without saying what nirvana is. The same thing is applied in case of Hindus ‘moksha-prapti’ and all. Though, it is simply not possible to deconstruct the nirvana without deconstructing the process of attaining it. The very absence of something which is not nirvana or moksha allows us to be in nirvana state of mind. Suppose, if we long meditate to feel the absence of everything within us, and thus by allowing our body and soul (as Hindus and Buddhist philosophy defines it separately) to be isolated from all worldly being, all kinds of pleasure and sins; this absolute realization of these absence leads one individual towards fulfillment of moksha or nirvana. The word nirvana itself is not determinate and cannot be deconstructed. The deconstruction is nirvana, the process or a state of mind created by the absence of nirvana itself, for which the individual meditates or waits. One thing we must consider that there is the difference between nirvana or mokhsa and attainment of it. In fact, the word ‘nirvana’ remains outside of the whole process.
So far we have acknowledged that the Derridean idea of deconstruction is principally structured on the belief of deciphering the present meaning with the help of absence. Mysticism has its wide application in Romantics also. One of the most prolific philosophers and political orators Edmund Burke, who actually lived in the Age of Reason, but has provided a foundation for Immanuel Kant and the later Romantics through his empiricism and Romantic writings. Burke has given a beautiful interpretation of sublime and beautiful in his book A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of Sublime and Beautiful (1757). According to Burke the sublime experience is universal and varies in degrees on the basis of one’s individual ability of aesthetic judgment. When he talks about the experience of sublime through the absence of actual terror supported by beautiful at the end is near to the Derridean concept of Deconstruction to create the presence through absence. According to Burke, the sublimity is not terror or actual danger, but a mystic possible danger, and because of its untrue possibility, it is also followed by a beautiful state of mind. Now, what we find the similarity in the mystical state of individual through a short time sublime experience and the evoke of this experience only by the absence of actual danger; the danger (or the possible danger), which is the root of sublime, itself is nothing but the whole of iterating experiences. The same experience is deconstructed as it varies from individual to individual and can also reverse if the perceiver fails to grasp the ideal experience. Means it is very much possible that the deconstruction of this sublime feeling can lead to a feeling of blunt experience and can also lead the person to a never returning shock. In that case the individual will also not feel the post experience i.e. beautiful.
These are some of the possible instances and examples where we can establish a close link between the theory of Deconstruction and the prevailed notions of mysticism in religious doctrines and romantics. The more we tend to feel the actual experience, the more we are apt to away from it to experience it actually. It seems more nihilistic and impasse in relating it to our general life experience, but our inner experience is always hidden from the visible surface, so as with the truth.
Dipak Bora
Dipak Bora
