What if Beauty Is the Meaning of Life?
A few weeks ago, I hosted a conversation between Rupert Sheldrake and Bernardo Kastrup about the nature of the cosmic mind. Many people seemed to have been eagerly anticipating such a dialogue between these two well-known critics of mechanical materialism. I can understand why. For many years, both of them have been presenting a different view of reality in which consciousness takes a more central role, but they do so from different perspectives. Rupert is a biologist with a strong focus on empiricism, while Bernardo mostly turns to philosophy and physics to present his ideas. As expected, bringing them together led to a thought-provoking and inspiring exchange.
In some respects, their views showed subtle differences, but they mostly found common ground. For example, both of them consider the ground of being to be a form of consciousness. Even more so, they both agreed that this essential consciousness underlying all reality could also be described as a divine cosmic mind, which expresses itself within everything in creation.
As the moderator of the conversation, I refrained from injecting my own thoughts or reflections on these matters. However, afterwards, one particular element kept me thinking. So, in this addendum to the video, I would like to offer my personal perspective on a specific topic that came up at the end of the conversation: “Why is there such a multiplicity in existence?”
Out of context, this might seem like a somewhat bizarre question, but it was a logical follow-up given that Rupert and Bernardo had presented the underlying consciousness of existence as an inevitably holistic and integrated principle. That is to say, they both acknowledged that consciousness tends to be unified within itself. Perhaps this element might not be self-evident to many people, but to understand what they were getting at, just think of your own consciousness. It is filled with emotions, thoughts, memories, concepts, passions, and a variety of other inner stirrings. However, upon reflection, you notice that all of them are ultimately made up of the same “stuff” or “fabric.” Of course, words like “stuff” and “fabric” feel inadequate to describe our consciousness, but whatever consciousness consists of, it is clear that its various expressions — ranging from rational considerations to heartfelt experiences — eventually all have the same essence. So, even though your consciousness expresses itself in different “mental modalities,” it also always remains a unified whole.
This gives rise to an interesting philosophical conundrum: if consciousness underlies everything in existence and if it tends to be integrative, then why do we see such multiplicity around us? Why does the ground of being not simply remain one unified field of flowing consciousness? Why does it express itself in such an enormous variation of forms? Why does it bring about such an infinity of elements in existence, from billions of plants and animals on earth to a dazzling array of stars and planets in the universe?
An age-old philosophical debate
This question has been discussed in various religious and philosophical traditions for many centuries, and one specific historic debate that I find very relevant in the context of contemporary discussions on these matters is the debate between Advaita Vedanta and Kashmiri Shaivism. Though both are non-dualist strands of Hinduism, they had some core differences.
Advaita Vedanta is often better known among Europeans and Americans interested in Indian forms of non-dual thinking. The famous 8th-century Adi Shankara was one of its important proponents. According to his teachings, there is a cosmic conscious mind behind everything, and this divine core is the only true reality. Everything we perceive around us is nothing but ephemeral phenomena. Our eyes and minds perceive them as “real,” but ultimately they are illusions behind which the formless and changeless essence of existence is hidden. And if we want to escape the trappings of these illusions, we should focus our attention solely on this underlying reality.
However, because of Advaita Vedanta’s contemporary popularity, it is often overlooked that not all Hindu philosophers upheld these views. People like the 10th-century Abhinavagupta, for example, criticized the classical teachings of Advaita Vedanta. He was a proponent of Kashmiri Shaivism, a lesser-known Hindu school of thought that arose in Kashmir — hence “Kashmiri” — and of which the foundational scriptures often referred to the God Shiva as the image of the one essential divinity underlying all existence — hence “Shaivism.” According to Abhinavagupta, we do not find ourselves trapped in an illusion at all. Quite the contrary, he proposed that true non-dual teachings also accept the existence and reality of everything we normally perceive around us as reality because that is the “plural” form of the divine, as opposed to its “singular” form, which is beyond all shapes, concepts, or imaginations. As such, one encounters a more trinitarian concept in Kashmiri Shaivism instead of a strict monism: one aspect of reality is the cosmic divine mind in its transcending and formless unity, but another aspect of reality is the divinity as it is expressed in the multiplicity. And the last aspect is the eternal dynamic “vibration” of the back and forth between these two modes of existence of the divine.
So, within Kashmiri Shaivist teachings, true non-duality exists in the overarching whole of these three facets. There is no opposition between true reality and false illusion. Rather, the two modes of expression of the divine — unformed and formed, implicate and explicate, pure mind and solid matter — are both real modes of the divine. Differently put: the singular essence at the core of existence cannot do anything else but express itself in the multiplicity of reality. Truly seeing the non-dual whole thus implies embracing the back and forth between the divine in its expressed mode and the divine in its singular essence.[1]
Back to the initial question
Reflecting on the nuances in this old debate between two different schools of Hinduism can shed extra light on the insights that Rupert and Bernardo shared during their exchange. Because when I asked them “Why is there such a multiplicity?”, they offered some interesting reflections, but in the end, they did not address the core issue.
Rupert explained that we simply have to look around to realize that the cosmic mind manifests itself in amazing abundance, from billions of species crawling on the face of the earth to vast numbers of galaxies in the universe, and as such, he concluded that the “sheer creativity or multiplicity seems to be one of the attributes of God or of Ultimate Reality — and not just in the sense of a creation in the beginning, but of ongoing creativity in every realm in the cosmos, in biology, in human culture, and in human minds. It seems to be inherent in the entire cosmic process.” But why that is so, he admitted he did not know. “It just seems to be part of the nature of things,” he concluded.
Subsequently, Bernardo offered the view that “if nature is a field of subjectivity, then there is an impetus to action which is best describable as a will — not the Freudian will to pleasure nor the Nietzschean will to power, [but rather] a raw non-metacognized will to self-knowledge.” From this perspective, creation can be seen as ultimate reality’s effort to try to grasp what the essence of its own existence is about. “And then it so happens — whether set up or not — that a species evolves on planet Earth (and probably on countless other planets as well) that has developed higher-level mental functions. As a result, nature can contemplate itself. Through our eyes, the subjectivity of nature can look around and say: ‘Oh! this is me. This is what’s happening and what I am doing.’ So, through our consciousness God becomes more meta-cognitive and more self-aware.” However, even though this did address the question of why the cosmic mind expressed itself in a form of “creation” (and thus did not remain enclosed within itself forever), all in all, it did not answer the question of why there would be such abundance and multiplicity in existence.
This is where Kashmiri Shaivism might bring in a very useful perspective. It can help us to explain not only why everything exists but also why existence is so diversified. As such it can tie both Rupert and Bernardo’s answer together. In fact, the way in which it can do so is a logical consequence of another element that Rupert had already brought up: the classical Hindu concept of Sat-Chit-Ananda. Sat is being, chit is consciousness, and ananda is blissfulness. It’s often referred to in Hindu sacred literature like the Upanishads as a description of the fundamental attributes of Brahman, the divine essence that pervades the whole Universe. That is to say, within most strands of Hindu philosophy, the all-pervading divinity of Brahman is considered to be something that always was and always will be (sat), which is conscious of the whole of reality (chit), and which resides in a state of blissfulness forever (ananda).
From this perspective, Rupert and Bernardo had predominantly focused on the sat and the chit part of the cosmic mind, since they had mostly delved into the relationship between existence and consciousness. Considering their respective philosophical and scientific interests, this should not come as a surprise. As a result, however, the element of ananda was brought in far less. Rupert very briefly referred to it at the end of the conversation, but it deserved more attention since it can add an extra — and very profound — layer to the initial question.
Why does the divine express itself in multiplicity? Why doesn’t it stay unified? Why does it need two modes of existence: one beyond all form and one of innumerable diversity? From a perspective that includes the “anandic” aspect of reality, the answer to these questions could be formulated like this: it does so because that is the only way to express its blissfulness. Bringing about an infinity of beauty — the playfulness of colorful flowers in a field, the intensity of lightning and thunder, the marvel of sunrise and sunset, the fragility of the wrinkles on a grandmother’s face,…— also allows the possibility to infinitely revel in all of that beauty. For the ground of being does not just want to express itself to become conscious of itself, it also wants to express itself in beauty in order to experience the joy and blissfulness of witnessing beauty.
This is why the Kashmiri Shaivist refusal to designate everything we perceive as mere illusion is so important. The multiplicity around us is not to be derided if it is the necessary expression of the divine to be able to experience its inherent blissfulness through its manifestation in beauty. The two modes of the divine — formed and unformed — are real, and exactly because they are real, the dynamic of going back and forth between these two modes brings about an energy of universal beauty, much like the negative and positive poles of an electromagnetic field bring about an electrical current.
Of course, this “anandic” aspect of the divine cannot do without the other two essential attributes either. Without something truly existing, its beauty cannot be perceived. Neither is there any perception without a consciousness perceiving it. Beauty thus only comes into existence when it is perceived or experienced. If something merely is without anything or anyone being aware of its existence, it does not matter at all how beautiful it might be. However, the moment it is perceived or experienced, its beauty is realized (in both senses of the word). And the perception or experience of beauty is always something blissful. Perhaps we could even say that blissfulness is the experience of beauty.
So, the inherent tendency of the cosmic mind to express itself in multiplicity seems to stem from the fact that there is an underlying will (i.e., a direction of consciousness) toward the blissful state of experiencing beauty, and the multiplicity itself is nothing but the multiplication of this underlying principle. Differently put: The divine ground of being does not only express itself in a creation, it expresses itself in an infinite amount of creations because that brings about the possibility of infinite blissfulness through experiencing every tiny aspect of that creation.
In many contemporary spiritual circles where a lot of emphasis is placed on the non-dual nature of reality (sat), it is common to describe the essence of reality in terms of consciousness (chit). And although I wholeheartedly agree with many of the contemporary philosophies that express this idea, I think it is very crucial that we do not lose sight of the concept of ananda either. What the multiplicity of everything around us seems to imply is that the conscious being behind it all apparently wants to bring about as much beauty as possible. It does not just want to sit there and be conscious of everything, so to speak. It wants to dance and sing for joy.[2]
The meaning of life
All of this is not merely a matter of metaphysical speculation or abstract philosophy. If it truly is a sensible view of reality, it bears much significance for our personal lives as well. Even more so, it leads us to the heart of yet another grand and age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?”
If the divine unity expresses itself within the multiplicity in order to bring about the consciousness of beauty, then we are part and parcel of that dynamic. From a cosmic perspective, we might seem like nothing but insignificant specks of dust in the winds of constant change, but our lives are of great importance nonetheless. We are part of those elements in the cosmos that not only make up the beauty of the whole but are also capable of perceiving that beauty — and thus revealing it.
So, if creation is the result of the cosmic mind desiring an eternal flow of beauty, our lives — which, inevitably, are part of that creation — only seem to make sense if we submit ourselves to that very flow and if we partake in the beauty-creation that underlies all existence. That is to say, we are called to perceive the beauty in the divine ground of our being, to embrace it within ourselves, and to express it within our lives. We are called to enjoy all the beauty that surrounds us and to let it overflow to all of creation in a never-ending circle of blissfulness
Many sages and prophets have made it clear before. To express beauty and to experience beauty — in one word: to love — that might be the very essence of why we are here.
Notes
[1] For a more thorough exposition of this debate between Kashmiri Shaivism and Advaita Vedanta, see this interesting video of Filip Holm on his Let’s talk religion channel.
[2] Which, of course, might bring an image of Shiva as Nataraj (i.e. “the Lord of dance”) to mind.
