Meltdown Bhāṣya: Verse 1.1.1 (Part 5)

The jealousy of God

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The jealousy of God

Ultimately, it is precisely the monotheistic god of western tradition that Land attempts to take to task. In the sixth chapter of TFA, titled ‘The rage of jealous time’, he speaks at length about what he calls “one of the few religious thoughts to be found in the history of Western monotheism” — the “jealousy of Jahweh” (Land, 1982b, p. 92). It is this concept of jealousy — a refusal to share, coexist, or tolerate equivalence — that he seems to see as being the fundamental characteristic of divinity, and even something which might supersede it; jealousy is inseparable from violence, which in the case of the proto-Urian form of this worldview, was “historically rooted in national chauvinism” which was then “sublimed into cosmological intolerance of a divinity” (p. 92). In the end, it matters not whether the god serves the genocidal designs of the tribe or the tribe seeks to cleanse the earth of his competitors for his sake; the status of the elect is complicit with the solitude of the four-lettered one. But what reigns above both, according to Land is “the sovereignty of [his] jealous wrath.” (p. 93). In his thinking, a god that would control himself is no god at all because he submits his jealousy to being, thereby rendering himself lesser in glory than the sun; such a god must needs hate himself more than anything or anyone else ever could, and thus must have ‘scurried’ forth to a “squalid death on the cross” (p. 93).

Jealousy necessitates an implicit polytheism wherein some gods can feel threatened by others — like Indra-deva’s attempt to submerge Vraja out of jealousy for Govardhan and Śrī Kṛṣṇa — or a robust demonology. The exaltation of “jealous rage” as “sovereign” is also problematic. Jealousy is fundamentally an adulterant of the purity of wrath and ultimately loses to it. Nowhere is this basic fact more self-evident than in the tale of Śrī Narasiṁha Bhagavān. Hiraṇyakaśipu’s (‘the golden-haired one’) jealousy and all of his plans were rendered utterly meaningless by the golden-maned Lord’s divine wrath, an infernal sun being utterly obliterated by a supernal one. The king of the Daityas (the children of Diti) was reduced to but a macabre ornamentation of blood and entrails upon His golden form, his death but an addition to the infinite glories of that Lion-faced Lord. And yet this anger was, at its core, an outpouring of the purest sort of love, and it is by this love that the Lord allows Himself to be bound, whether by Prahlāda-mahārāja or Mother Yaśodā. Jealousy is fundamentally parochial, and it is parochiality that Land so despises. Śrīman Nārāyaṇa, on the other hand, is the all-pervading one (Viṣṇu), the one whose army is everywhere (Viṣvaksena), the one who resides in the fires of the Vedic sacrifice (sthita āhavanīyādi-bhedena makha-yājinām), and is the fire of time (Kālavaiśvānara) itself; kāma (eros), if it is to truly be a universal power must ultimately lead to one end — Death (God). And as if to demonstrate His unquestionable sovereignty once and for all, the Lord states: "Among the Daityas, I am the great devotee Prahlada and of calculators, I am Time; among quadrupeds, I am the lion; and among birds, I am Garuda [the eagle]." (BG 10.30). Because sovereignty (or kingship) has never been about the harsh edge of the black sun alone. The true king is the king of fertility. As we have already mentioned Viṣṇu’s associations with Bhū-devī and the janitrīḥ, let us think instead of Śrī Rāma and His wife, Śrī Sītā-mā, who was found in the furrows of the earth at Her father, King Janaka’s yajña. Śrī Kṛṣṇa Himself also displayed an incomparable virility when He multiplied Himself during the Rāsa as well as later on, to disport with His 16,108 wives. Moreover, this great sovereignty in service of the greater Death (God), holds dominion over the lesser, bodily death, as we can see in the 124th sarga of the ‘Yuddha-kāṇḍa’ of the Rāmāyaṇa (Shastri, 1952), wherein Indra-deva brings the army of Śrī Rāma back to life at His request and fills the fertile earth with food for them, despite it being out of season. One hand of the king bears the āyudhas (weapons of war — śankha, cakra, gadā) while the other promises freedom from fear and frith to those who seek His shelter (abhaya mudra).

It should be noted, however, that Land (1992b), following in Bataille’s footsteps, makes a distinction between love and desire:

“By tapping into the deep flows of history Bataille ensures that intensity is no longer thought of as anticipated perception, but as the ecstasy of the death of God, delirial dissolution of the One:

Above all no more object. Ecstasy is not love: love is possession to which the object is necessary, at once possessor of the subject, and possessed by it. There is no longer subject = object, but a 'gaping breach' between one and the other and, in the breach, the subject, the object are dissolved, there is passage, communication, but not from the one to the other, the one and the other have lost distinct existence [V 74).

Desire responds to the cosmic madness pulsed out of the sun, and slides beyond love towards utter communication. This is a final break with Christendom, the disconnection of base flow from the terminal sentimentalism of Western man, nihilism as nakedness before the cyclone. Libido no longer as the energy of love, but as a raw energy that loves only as an accident of impersonal passion.” (p. 119)

To us, this distinction seems merely one of intensity, not quality. To explain it in our terms, it is a sectarian distinction, one born out of Land’s tendency to ‘advaitic śāktism’ (which we will explore below). Of course kāma and prema are two different things, but just as there is an earthly Pradyumna and a heavenly Pradyumna, kāma itself also exists on two planes and serves as the linking road between them both. Impersonalism is but the blinding (ir)radiant glory of irrepressible Divine Personage for those who lack the eyes to see. Afterall, passion, which comes from the Latin meaning ‘to suffer’, comes from the same root as both the English fiend and the (seemingly rare Vedic) Sanskrit verb pīyati (‘to insult’), which seems to be used as a formula in mantras related to Agni-deva stating that some revile him, some praise him, but the supplicant worships his body (RV 1.147.2; or “person” as per Wilson, 1888). On the other hand, several Sanskrit words for love (preman, prīti) or lover (prīya/ā) come from a root (prī) which spawned a whole host of words, including some which are cognate with their English equivalent — friend. In God, however, these distinctions are, in a sense, washed away. Certainly, those who love Him and are by Him beloved can attain the greatest freedom without losing their Self because they love His body or person. On the other hand, those who insult and hate Him, still meet their ends at His lotus-like hands find their self (ego) annihilated and rejoined with the splendour of the impersonal Absolute. They become the perfect human sacrifice to divine glory, wracked with the most exquisitely sublime and incomprehensible torments as they meet their end in the liminal space which lies between the worlds, rent apart by His golden claws and flashing fangs. This, then, is the “nakedness before the cyclone” of His lightning-nails: He shears off the clothing of the Self, that is, the flesh which clads it like a suit of clothing, and renders It fit for sacrificial consumption by Himself. It is through the extermination of their falsely individuating ‘self’ (ahamkāra), which they prized above all else, that these haters are able to experience the “ecstasy of the death of God, delirial dissolution of the One” into His impersonal effulgence. In the end, we might well call this philosophy of Land the pinnacle of Dānava-dharma.

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