The apocalyptic dangers of self-interest

Photo: Lorna Sim

An invocation that is not a consecrated action (Yagna) brings calamity to the king

And leads to degradation of humanity into barbarism.

-Natya Sastra text on ritual dance

Recently I have been watching the Netflix documentary series on food. Much of the series presents things we already know about the industrialization of food and water and its devastating impacts on environments and life. I sensed the ancient Natya Sastra warning of the descent into barbarism in the mountains of plastic that litter Earth.

I reflected on the legacy that many ancient cultures left for us in mystery, wisdom (including dance and Natya Sastra), temples that invite inquiry even tens of thousands of years after they were made, and the generosity of the intent of these peoples to communicate that which connects and uplifts. And then I thought of what we might leave when our times come to an end and what that legacy will say about our intention and spirit…

Central to ritual action is the invitation of Yagna—a state of consciousness that is cleansed of self-interest. Indeed, ritual invocation could be experienced as the constellations of this cleansing for it cannot occur with the same linear consciousness that births self-interest.

Self-interest is the essence of a transactional and mechanistic consciousness. It is founded on the enduring question, “What is in it for me?” This question is the basis of separation, and of the emergence of self that thrives on duality, linearity, and domination. All of us have this consciousness within us, and it is also what shapes our macrocosm in the times in which we find ourselves.

As it is pervasive, we assume that self-interest is benign and only becomes demonic in the actions of others. We judge profit making businesses and politics as the cause of our problems and absolve ourselves of any role in the macrocosmic situation. In our own everyday lives, we feel helplessly enslaved to the profit-making paradigms and largely surrender to these.

Or we may oppose these paradigms and feel self-righteous in our outrage. In this also we gain heroic status and a tribal belonging.

This is not to judge either of these expressions of our consciousness for none of us are “above” the Reality of our consciousness and its movement in our lives and bodies. It is merely to invite reflection and inquiry into how any duality separates and reinforces self-interested action that contributes to the general calamitous march of our times.

Yagna or consecrated action holds a space of multi-dimensional reflection and experience. It rejects no dimension of Reality and allows a body-led and experiential intelligence of how to find one’s unique and connected expression amid the churning around us. In this alignment we receive intelligence that brings us within Reality, not as stewards and managers, but as participants on an equal basis with bees, insects, and plants.

Consecration here is the invocation of that which has always been—the Deities or the archetypal intelligence. Dance or Natya itself is an expression of this dimension of Reality. It expands our narrow and contracted sense of self towards its primordial essence. We are as old as the universe and our bodies and consciousness carry that Truth. It is that Truth that saves us from the Hubris of assuming that we create Reality with our paradigms and narratives.

Dance, astrology, and many other invocations offered this experience of the “long past” as a material sensation in our everyday lives. The past is not to trap us in nostalgia, because we encounter these in the immediate presence of body-led rituals which reignite its pulsation within and without. The invitation to honour ancestry, Earth, constellations, and Body all hold the honouring of the ancient movements that lead us to this moment of manifestation and expression. It is wondrous, humbling, expansive and deeply connecting.

The Yagna constellation rinses self-interest, even if it is only for the duration of the invocation. We taste what it is to be free of our constricting and transactional consciousness, its intricate, cunning, and pervasive hold on us and on the ways in which we have narrated our Reality. Yagna does not offer us a template of selflessness, because this holds the danger of self-righteousness which feeds the same reservoirs of self-interest. This is possible because Yagna is essentially a “performance” or artistic invocation.

We dance Yagna with a sense of play, adventure, inquiry, and discovery, free of goals and ambitions. What nourishes and supports our participation in Reality will be revealed to us, not as an ideology but as intimate tastes and sensations. The paradox at the heart of Yagna is that it is the intimate that renders us cosmic, it is the subtlest of sensations that reveal how the clouds guide us and how birds teach us. It is in the simplest and humblest expressions that wisdom swells.

The ancients all over the world recognised the apocalyptic dangers of self-interest. In invocations of Nature around them, they expressed their homage to all life and to the continuum between human and Nature. In dance there are many invocations of animals, trees and plants that locate an intelligence and teaching in a confluence of consciousness. These invocations level the hierarchies of Hubris and allow us to bodily experience the wonder, beauty, strength, and wisdom of Nature that generously and eternally offers ways of belonging and connection.

The warning of Yagna seems to signal that self-interested approaches unleash a brutality that robs us, not just of our humanity, but of our place within Nature. Dance as Yagna may well be the ancient gift to find our way back into Reality and Nature. And what is more, we can do this with enjoyment, pleasure, creativity, and expression!