Authentic- the word of the year in 2023

Meriam Webester dictionary has pronounced “authentic” as the word of 2023.

Authenticity is a term I have always used to signal the primordial domain in archetypal wisdom. My first group course in 2023 was on the Deity Krishna and about “Authenticity as a sacred expression”. I should has said, Authenticity as THE sacred expression! The word of the year in 2022 was “gaslighting” It is no wonder that in 2023 we yearned for Authenticity amid the delusion of narratives that aim to fix Reality as meanings and ideologies. Usually such efforts lead to deception, and not just by others as we may also deceive ourselves in our anxiety for answers and definitions. We may rush to destinations simply because the unease of a shimmering Reality is unbearable.

Unease, shimmering, the collapse of the known—these are fertile grounds for a descent into our Authenticity. One of the most famous invocations of Authenticity is in the teaching of the Deity Krishna in the “Song of the Divine” (Bhagavad Gita). The teaching is set at the moment of the commencement of a fierce battle when Arjuna, the archetypal warrior and Krishna’s friend, loses heart. The teaching begins in the cosmos of the warrior Arjuna’s experience of unease, confusion, disorder, and grief. From that soil emerges the poetry of Krishna’s revelation about Authenticity.

Krishna calls it “swabhaava” which means one’s own innate and material expression. We may ignore “swabhaava” and it will render our lives an eternal battlefield within us. This was Arjuna’s plight. Even as he facesF a ferocious army in front of him, the battle that brings him to his knees is the one raging within him.

An inquiry into “swabhaava” teaches us the nature of its movement and expression. For Krishna this is an inquiry into the primordial Consciousness (Prakriti) where we experience our participation within Nature. To descend into the primordial, we must relinquish all language and narratives. The primordial teaches us our Authenticity. Language birthed from this experience of Authenticity is primarily non-verbal—birdsong, dance, painting, sculpture, and the like. Poetry or chant are verbal descriptions of these non-verbal manifestations.

For Krishna there is no space between swabhaava/Authenticity and action. Indeed, it is in action/expression that swabhaava becomes Reality. Authenticity is not an ideology or narrative, rather it is an intimate, creative and unique expression that, paradoxically, aligns with the primordial universal. So long as we are embodied, we must act, says Krishna. He points out that even He, who is Divine, must act and express the primordial in His embodied manifestation. The deeper we excavate our intimate self the closer we are to the primordial and Nature. Narratives that seek commonality work from the external, aiming to hypothesise Authenticity which we then illustrate by manifesting those “meanings” or narratives.

Meriam Webster dictionary defines Authenticity as “not false or imitation”, “true to one's own personality, spirit, or character”, and “made or done the same way as an original”. All these definitions may apply to Krishna’s invitation to Authenticity, except that He situates Authenticity in the primordial and not in the languaged and defined Reality of our mind-led lives. The “original” for Krishna is Nature, the primordial Reality. We do not imitate the primordial, but we are revealed to be the primordial. This revelation is one of matter, it must be fleshed. It unfolds through our Body-led poetic expression.

Poetic expression is not akin to the usual poetry which we have separated from all other forms of expression, thereby rendering it marginal. Here the Divine is the Poet and a poetic vision is necessary to perceive the primordial nature of Reality. A warrior, like Arjuna, is equally a poet/dancer, because poetic consciousness is the nature of Authenticity. In an authentic life, what we “do” in the world is not a profession, but it is a choiceless outpouring that is quintessentially poetic in that it is devotional, connected to and participating in Nature, and seeking to offer unconditional beauty that has nothing to do with the duality of suffering and joy.

Aesthetics is central to Authenticity. Aesthetics is another word that has been hijacked by dualistic narratives and has become associated with pleasing appearance, or artistic excellence. In its association with the arts, given the marginal role of arts in our lives today, aesthetics becomes irrelevant. It is often opposed to the functional and considered a luxury. Aesthetics as the dynamics of beauty is also a vexed proposition in our times. Beauty has become a problematic word, connected to appearance, standards, judgement, and exclusion.

In an archetypal world, Authenticity is Beauty. One of the source texts on the philosophy of aesthetics in India is the Natya Shastra, which is also the seminal dance text. Here Shringara, the archetypal sensation of Beauty, is considered the foundation of all sensations. Shringara is sometimes narrowly translated as sensuality, however it pertains more broadly to savouring of sensation. Shringara’s source is the emotion of pleasure and joy, specifically related to sensual enjoyment such as a sweet perfume or lovemaking. In its archetypal dimension, pleasure expands to unconditional Beauty as manifested in the celebratory experience of one’s own body through careful adornment. It is an intelligence that perceives Reality as an innately worthy mirror that we reflect in our own enjoyment of our embodied lives. Such a vision is the intelligence of “medha”, which is a poetic vision. Apsaras or the archetypal dancers had “medha”.

Shringara is Beauty that is its savouring. It is the savouring that reveals Beauty as a sensation and experience rather than a description or analysis. In Shringara, as in any archetypal experience, there is a dissolving of experiencer and the experience. The poetic expression of the encounter is the union of all separations.

Whether one is a warrior or dancer, Authenticity is the dance of Beauty. We embark upon an excavation of our Authenticity as Arjuna did, guided by devotion, poetic sensibility, respect for the primordial movement of Reality of which we are a part, and by relinquishing all our ideologies and narratives. Arjuna thinks his dilemma is about what he should do. Krishna, his Divine guide, reveals that Arjuna’s true quest is the eternal philosophical one—who am I. This is the quest for Authenticity which in the end is an aesthetic and expressive movement. In its essence Authenticity in the primordial realm is unconditional Beauty, revealed in a poetic expression that savours, honours and celebrates it.

Authenticity and Beauty are not ostentatious or laborious. In the Natya Shastra, Beauty is an intimate expression, in the domain of one’s own quiet enjoyment of wearing beautiful clothes, the poignancy of longing for the touch of a loved one, or the savouring of union with a lover. Authenticity is also part of this intimate world. The scent of it perfumes the intimacy of our poetic consciousness. We do not undertake to express our Authenticity because we want affirmation or status. We express it because it is choiceless.

And because it reveals how the essence of Nature, of which we are a part, is Beauty. This Beauty aches to express through us, as it does in every strawflower that quietly and simply blooms along the sides of busy highway.