Recovering a Psychology of the Sacred, for Human Survival, Well being and Bounty: An “Indigenous “Perspective.
KalyanKumar Chakravarty
India.
It is necessary, in a search for an antidote to the current crisis of civilization ,to go beyond the idea of a Kantian Ego Cogito, Leibnizian Monad , a Freudian homo natural or a Hegelian and Marxian man, carrying an absolute telos to live by reason , for material progress . This will help humanity re discover forgotten values that are homo logic rather than hegemonic, ultimate and companionate rather than proximate and power centric, based on a concord rather than divorce of nature and culture. The psychology of the sacred , nurtured by communities trans generationally across the world, is inclusive in acknowledging theindelible solidarity of life forms and the right of all cultures to co exist in their in appropriable otherness. It embodies a sense of the numinous behind the world of immediate sensations and discrete phenomena , inter dependent, non dual identity that is both immanent and transcendent. It conceives the world as a pattern of relationships and a theophany, replete with creative yearning and zest. It reveals inherent proportions and rhythms, underlying casual variations in form, created in the stress of world’s evolution ; and neuro mental structures ,connecting micro and macro systems of “sacred” and “profane”,phenomenal and noumenal ,creation and procreation, emanation and resolution.
It is necessary to recover this alternative perception of the world in order to bridge knowledge with experience and wisdom, cognitive and marketable use of language, measurable shapes and immeasurable ideas, collective langue and individual parole. It will enable humanity to understand its multi linear evolution , polysemous expressions , functional unity , and its banishment from a pervasive, affective , sympathetic presence permeating and animating the universe. It can help humanity exorcise the nihilism stalking civilization as cognitive divides between wholes and parts, sciences , arts, philosophy and politics; advance from the thought to the un thought; arrest the engulfing tide ofclimate change , violence , bio cultural reductionism, technification, homogenization and extinction ;monoculture of seeds, trees, organisms and the mind ; move to a species based consciousness ; and create a low carbon, no waste, harmonious society. A non extractive covenant with nature and a sense of shared future of communities will be a logical outcome of a psychic realignment of humanity with its sacred mission of transformation and self fulfillment . Humanity will then recall the forgotten unity of the signifier and signified, sensible and intelligible ; put itself in tune with nature in its manner of operation rather than with its physical detritus ; start treating itself as a part rather than weaver of the web of nature ; and hold nature sacred and inviolable instead of destroying its irreplaceable resources.
It is proposed to examine the relevance and efficacy of the Indigenous , including Indian approaches to the psychology of the sacred for halting and reversing the suicidal course of human civilization today.