Razor’s edge, catharsis and Rasa

Today when I was practising with a woman in my Individual Program, we came to a practice which she was hesitant about doing to begin with but which emerged as something she loved and wished to keep doing once we did it together.

On the surface this appears to be a good thing-surely when we find something we like it is okay to keep doing it! The consideration when we are in Rasa philosophy and practice is that we are invited to take care that it does not become a cathartic process. This is why artistic practice as spiritual inquiry was referred to as a razor’s edge path. All of its attributes like pleasure, creativity and sensuality can either bring us to an expansive unity with Consciousness or keep us ever more strongly in our personal narratives.

Cathartic philosophies are altogether different in their approaches. For example, Greek tragedies are examples of cathartic philosophy where the “purging” of emotions is held as the liberating process. There is of course immense power and beauty in a cathartic tradition as is evident in Greek literature and philosophy.

Indian Rasa philosophy invites “transcending” or stepping out of, personal narratives, including the story of the self, to experience the nature of Reality as sensation. Sensation is not the feelings and emotions we have narrated into stories, it is of the nature of our senses and our multi-sensorial embodied experience of Reality. Both Greek and Indian traditions use archetypes and artistic content, but the approaches are fundamentally different.

Rasa inquiry begins with the willingness to leave stories at the doorway of the cave. It is the wisdom of the cave that then illumines our reality at all levels. Therefore it is a completely nonlinear and non-instrumental inquiry. We do not inquire to solve or cure something but because we are called to dance in the cave. J Krishnamurti calls it choiceless action- the inquiry is the movement of one’s yearning that seems to have no meaning, purpose or solution, and yet calls incessantly in the very depths of our being.

When we “own” Rasa archetypes in a personal sense, at best we can enjoy the finite story we have created out of these infinite sensations. In so doing we bypass the invitation to infinity and the wisdom to move in the unknown which is what ultimately is the Divine or the fullness of Reality.

The razor’s edge requires ferocious presence, attending and energy. It also asks for play, and this is why it is an artistic practice. It invites us to approach the Divine archetypes in the spirit of discovery and play, so that we do not “become” Gods and Goddesses but we “play” them and through that we discover how their Rasas or sensation constellations move in our own beings and how that illumines our lives with new insights and teachings.