Shape of Ancient

HERACLITEAN MONISM AND INDIAN THOUGHT

The Ionian tradition in philosophy culminated with Heraclitus, who, since antiquity, has been regarded as the most difficult of the pre-Socratics. Timon of Phlius called him "the Riddler" (D.L. IX.6), a sobriquet that may have led to the more common title, "the Obscure." He was born into an aristocratic family in the Asian Greek city of Ephesus. "He grew up," says Diogenes Laertius, "to be exceptionally haughty and supercilious." As a sign of his arrogance, it is recorded that he resigned to his brother a hereditary 'kingship" (or residual ritual kingship). He wrote a book which, says Diogenes Laertius, was deliberately couched in a difficult style so that only the most educated classes could read it. His book seems to have begun with an insistence that no one at all would understand it. It featured scornful criticism of major Greek cultural figures including Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus.

Heraclitus is said not to have formed a school or taken disciples, but to have dedi- cated his book as an offering in the Temple of Ephesian Artemis. This tradition, like that which holds that Pythagoras's home was dedicated after his death as a temple of Demeter, shows the strange symbiosis of goddess religion and protophilosophy that prevailed at that time and place. Heraclitus's book-by its own force and by circum- stantial channels not known-later produced a line of disciples, or advocates, or inter- preters, who called themselves Heracliteans. It is not known whether any of them was ever a face-to-face student of Heraclitus.

Late in life Heraclitus is said to have withdrawn from human society, living as a moun- tain hermit on wild grasses and plants-much like a forest yogi in India. An outrageous story records that he died buried in bovine excrement, trying to draw excess liquid from his body by that means. He may have died in about 480 B.c. or not long after.

Heraclitus's educational background is not known, but it is clear that he was influ- enced by Milesian monism, especially in the process-oriented version of Anaximenes, and by Xenophanes, who may have worked out his doctrine before leaving Colophon for the west. Responding to these influences and others from abroad, Heraclitus ushered in a new age in thinking of the Problem of the One and the Many. In line with his Milesian heritage, he was fundamentally a monist:

“ Listening not to me but to my account it is wise to agree that everything is One. (Fr. si) “

But exclusive emphasis on the One had gone beyond the point of attributing underly- ing order to the Many and had ended by subordinating the Many to the One, prepar- ing for Parmenides' annihilation of it. Heraclitus sought to rectify this situation by restoring balance between the One and the Many:

“ The One is made up of the Many and the Many are made up of the One. (Fr. to) “

And Plato confirms that, according to Heraclitus, reality was both One and Many (Soph. 242d). Mediating between the One and the Many along lines suggested by Anaximenes' hints of process-monism, Heraclitus developed the position that the per- manent element in nature is change: The unity of things is the unity of an ongoing process, not the unity of a static Other.

The emphasis on process-as-unity leads, in the context of a metaphysics of being, to elusive and paradoxical modes of expression. The metaphysics of pure Being would be consummated in the next generation by Parmenides, whose solution involves a kind of metaphysical projection onto the universe of principles which would in time come to be called the "Laws of Thought": the Law of Identity (that A is A and A is not not- A), the Law of Contradiction (that nothing can be both A and not-A at the same time), and the Law of the Excluded Middle (that every entity in the universe is either A or not-A). Parmenides' universe is the embodiment of these principles; Heraclitus's is the deliberate negation of them all. It features antilogical assertions that breach in one way or another all three of the so-called Laws of Thought, though the emphasis is on paradoxes which reject the Law of Contradiction, for example:

We both are and are not. (Fr. 49a)

According to Aristotle, Heraclitus generalized this point, saying that all things both are and are not (Mer. 1012224). This style was characteristic of him, as in the following:

That which is in opposition is in concert, and from things which differ comes the most beautiful harmony (Fr. 8)

The way up and the way down are one and the same. (Fr. 60)

In terms of metaphysics, Heraclitus's central postulate is his emphasis on change, not on things themselves. Things that are constantly changing are not susceptible of definition, since a definition which applies one moment will not apply the next. Since things lack definition, every kind of metaphysical declaration is compromised. (As Aristotle said, "Nothing is true of what is changing" [Mer. 101027-8].)

Following the tradition of his Milesian predecessors Thales and Anaximenes, Heraclitus chose to image forth the Oneness of things through the universalization of one element which seemed to have an analogue of cosmic process built into it:

This cosmos . .. always was and is and will be one everlasting Fire, kindled in meas- ure and in measure quenched. (Fr. 30)

The process-fire-retains its identity, while the matter undergoing it-the fuel -- is constantly changing. In expressing this dualism of the One, Heraclitus echoed the sen- timent which Aristotle found paradoxical in Xenophanes:

While moving, it is at rest. (Fr. 842)

The combination of sameness of overall structure and constant change of substance is also the point of the famous observation:

It is impossible to step into the same river twice. (Fr. 49a)

Heraclitus provides an ultimate image of instantaneous and irresistible change as the inmost essence of "things":

The lightning bolt steers all things. (Fr. 64)

Similar ways of thought had been explored in India also, perhaps earlier. Heraclitus's response to Xenophanic monism is remarkably parallel to the early Buddhist response to Upanisadie monism. The early Buddhists, like Heraclitus, presented process and lack of fixed essence as counterarguments to the monistic rejec- tion of experience. Comparisons between Heraclitus and early Buddhism have been made before, as early as the eighteenth century. A more recent author than that points out that in the Mabavagga (I.rar) the Buddha "compares the existence of beings to the candle-flame that is renewed every instant," and also employs (1.123) "the analogy of the river which is never the same for two moments."" The Buddhist doctrine of anatman or not-self (Pali anarta) confronted the Upanisadic emphasis on arman or self, as did such statements of Heraclitus as "We both are and are not," which occupied the position that Parmenides would, presumably later, denounce as "that on which mortals wander knowing nothing" (fr. 6.4-5). In fact, Heraclitus's thought bears close resem- blance not only to the flux philosophy of early Buddhism but to the "middle position" -between yes and no-expounded later in the Buddhist tradition in the Prajftaparamita Sutras and the Madhyamika school.

Heraclitus describes reality with a concept that was to become standard in Mahayana Buddhist terminology: Plenum-Void. "Fulness and emptiness," says Heraclitus, "are the same thing" (fr. 65). "God is . . . fulness/emptiness" (fr. 67). Elsewhere he foreshadows the Avatamasaka Sutra's doctrine of the infinite inter- penetration of entities:

The wise is one thing; to understand the Intention which drives all things through all things. (Fr. 31)

It is not only in Buddhism that one finds rich Indian parallels to Heraclitus. In the Vedas and Upanisads the images that Heraclitus features recur typically. The Rg Veda, for example, teaches the ultimacy of fire as a symbol of the One:

That which is One the seers speak of in various terms: they call it [among other things] Fire. (RVI.164.46)

Elsewhere fire is said to contain all gods (i.e ., all parts of nature) and to manifest each of them in turn as its process unfolds (RVV.3.1). In the Mundaka Upanisad (II.I.t) fire is seen as the source and goal of all things. Heraclitus's image of the lightning bolt as the force behind the process of change, creating and annihilating identities instant- aneously and ceaselessly, also has strong Upanisadic parallels. The Kausttaki Upanisad declares, "in the lightning flash is truth" (IV.a). The Katha Upanisad says that all things in the universe are set in motion by "the great fear of the upraised thunderbolt" (11.3.2-3).

In fact, parallels between Heraclitean fragments and Upanisadic passages are uncannily easy to find. In explaining, for example, where his philosophy came from, Heraclitus announced: "I searched myself," or "I investigated myself" (fr. 101). The Katba Upanisad accounts for its teaching on the Self (arman) in a phraseology that sounds similar: "Some wise man, seeking life eternal, with his eyes turned inward saw the Self" (II.r .: ). Another passage suggests that Heraclitus sees the human self in terms of the Mesopotamian idea of macrocosm-microcosm correspondence:

You could not in all your going find the ends of the soul, though you travelled every road, so deep is its meaning (loges). (Fr. 45)

Countless Upanisadie passages parallel this remark. The Chandogya Upanisad, for example, says:

As far as the space of the universe extends, so far extends the space within the heart. Within it are contained both heaven and earth, both fire and air, both sun and moon, lightning and the stars. (CUVIILt.3)

This discourse resembles that of pantheistic hymns. The description of the god who contains the whole universe is applied to the individual human self. It expresses the Mesopotamian idea, based on astronomy, that the microcosm is a duplicate in miniature of the macrocosm; this idea in turn may lie behind the correspondence theme of Hinduism which would become dominant in the symbolism of the tantric schools.

Another striking parallel is the image of the cosmic child-god. The Orphics describe Dionysus as a child playing with a ball, a mirror, and a pair of dice, and ran- domly arbitrating world events as he does so. Heraclitus echoed this, saying:

Time is a child playing a game of draughts; the kingship is in the hands of a child. (Fr. 5a)

A very similar image is found in a later Hindu book, the Visnu Pundna, where we read:

Visnu, being thus manifest and unmanifest substance, spirit and time, sports like a playful boy. (VP 1.a)

The Vigu Purina does not belong to the early period that would be most relevant to Heraclitus, but there are signs of an earlier stage of this imagery in India which likely predates both Heraclitus and the Orphics. In the Chandogya Upanimad the winning throw at dice is called krita, and the commentators add that the sides of a die are marked with the numbers 4, 3, 2, and 1, and are called, respectively, krita, treta, duapara, and kalt. These four terms are the names of the four recurring ages in the Hindu myth of cycling time; the correspondence suggests traces of a myth in which historical ages proceeded from a dice game played by a time-god.

Overall, the general ambience of Heraclitus's fragments could not be more recep- tive to comparisons with India. Scholars have multiplied out-of-context parallels end- lessly:

These and other parallels between Heraclitus and various Indian texts, while they embody many of the repeated themes and motifs of ancient thought, do not constitute an argument for diffusion. One serious argument for diffusion has been presented, however, by M. L. West in his book Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. "The Brhadaranyaka Upanisad alone," West declares, "throws more light on what Heraclitus was talking about than all the remains of the other Pre-Socratics together." This claim rests primarily on a correspondence in the respective treatments of the process of trans- formation in nature and the afterlife. Anaximenes had described the process as one of rarefaction and condensation. Air thickens to mist, mist thickens to rain, rain thickens to earth, earth thickens to stone-then back again. Heraclitus is in the tradition of Anaximines, yet his description of the transformation sequence is quite different and, in terms of Greek evidence, unaccountable.

Heraclitus's view of the patterns that natural transformations follow is known pri- marily from a long passage in Diogenes Laertius (IX.9) that probably goes back to a book by Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor, who often wrote with the actual pre- Socratic books on his desk. According to this source, Heraclitus's view of natural change was that the process goes from fire to water to earth to water to fire. Other evi- dence tells us that, for Heraclitus, the fire state represents soul, so the sequence can be read as: soul to water to carth to water to soul. It is, in other words, not merely inter- change of material elements that is involved; the fate of the human soul, its destiny after death, is also regulated somehow by this process.

As Heraclitus puts it, each elements is said to "die into" the next stage of the process.

To souls it is death to become water; to water it is death to become earth. From earth comes water, and from water soul (again). (Fr. 36)

One other Greek document contains a similar system, and it is an Orphie fragment (OF 226):

Water is the death of soul ... and from water comes earth, from earth again water, and from it the soul restored leaps to the aether.

In both the Heraclitean and Orphic fragments the sequence from fire to water to earth to water to fire is anomalous in terms of the Greek tradition, which is characterized by Anaximenes' condensation-rarefaction principle leading from air to mist to cloud to water to carth to stone. The intimate involvement of the soul in this process of natural interchange is also anomalous in the Greek tradition, and seems to suggest a doctrine of reincarnation in the process of nature.

But in the Upanisads this description of the process is commonly found. In the Brbadaranyaka Upanisad, for example, Yajnavalkya expounds a system of elemental transformations in which fire is considered the prime element and is declared to change directly into water (BU III.2.to). The Kauttaki Upanisad also teaches a cyclic inter- change of elements with fire leading off the cycle and each element described, as in Heraclitus, as "dying into" the next, this the Upanisad calls the "dying around of the gods" (KU II.12). In the Chandoga Upanisad also, Uddalaka, who may have taught at Taxila in the northwest of India, describes the process from fire to water to earth:

['The One] "thought: May I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth fire. That fire thought, May I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth water . .. That water thought, May I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth food [plant food-earth element]. (CU VI.2.3-4)

In the Upanisads, as in Heraclitus, the fate of the soul is bound up with this process. The Chandogya Upanisad explains this linkage in what is called the Doctrine of the Five Fires, though it might more accurately be called the Doctrine of the Five Stages of Fire, fire being seen, as it was seen by Heraclitus, as the basis or ground for the system as a whole. The five stages of the process are twofold in application; as cos- mology they describe the processes of nature, including the change of seasons and the flux of forms; as eschatology they describe the path taken by the soul which is to be reincarnated after the death of its previous body. When a soul (representing the fire ele- ment) is ready to be reincarnated, it is said to change into rain and rain down into the earth, then grow out of the earth transformed into plant food, which represents, in ancient Indian philosophical discourse, the earth element; the food, being eaten, is transformed into semen, which is traditionally understood in this context as represent- ing the water element; being sown in a womb, the semen becomes a person, or soul, again. The sequence, as in Heraclitus and the Orphic fragment, is from soul to water to earth to water to soul.

That the Orphies held a doctrine of reincarnation at some time is certain; that Heraclitus did so is likely on the basis of certain fragments and, even more so, on the basis of this Indian comparison, Both the Orphics and Heraclitus seem in fact to have held a doctrine of the process of reincarnation that was spelled out in the early Upanişads.

In both Heraclitus and the Upanisads the process from fire to water to earth to water to fire is only part of a larger system. In the Upanisads it is involved in a system of two "paths": the Path of the Gods (devayana) and the Path of the Fathers (pitryana), or the path of the sun and the path of the moon. In Heraclitus the transformation of elements is bound up with a doctrine of two "exhalations" rising from earth to heaven.

Heraclitus's doctrine is told in a somewhat confused form in a passage of Diogenes Laertius, who begins with an attempt to interpret Heraclitus in terms of Milesian con- densation process, inserting Anaximenes' mist phase to force the comparison to work:

For fire by contracting turns into moisture, and this condensing turns into water; water again when congealed turns into earth. This process he calls the downward path. (D.L. IX.g)

Heraclitus's downward path then is the same that Uddalaka described in the Chando- gya Upanisad. It is in the process of return from the earth phase to the soul phase that the exhalations and paths enter:

He [Heraclitus] reduces nearly everything to exhalation from the sea. This process is the upward path. Exhalations arise from earth as well as from sea; those from sea are bright and pure, those from earth dark. Fire is fed by the bright exhalations, the moist element by the others.

The bright and dark exhalations seem involved with the sun and moon respectively, as Diogenes Laertius proceeds, without clear connection, to speak of the places occupied by these luminaries which are probably the destinations of the two exhalations:

The moon, which is nearer to the earth, traverses a region that is not pure. The sun, however, moves in a clear and untroubled region and keeps a proportionate distance from us.

The doctrine of exhalations, like that of transformations, concerns the fate of the soul after death. Aristotle tells us that the exhalation is a stream of soul-stuff rising from carth to sky. The solar/lunar distinction seems to have something to do, then, with dif- ferent destinations that the soul may rise to when "exhaled" from its body at death. The exhalations also seem to demarcate some cosmic stations:

Day and night, months, seasons and years, rains and winds and other similar phenomena are accounted for by the various exhalations. Thus the bright exhalation, set aflame in the hollow orb of the sun, produces day, the opposite exhalation when it has got the mastery causes night; the increase of warmth due to the bright exhalation produces summer, whereas the preponderance of moisture due to the dark exhalation brings about winter. (D.L. IX.so-n)

The bright exhalation of souls goes to the sun and produces day and summer and dry- ness; the dark exhalation of souls goes to the moon and produces night and winter and wetness.

This very doctrine-or one uncannily similar is expounded in both the Chandogya and the Brbadaranyaka Upanisads (CU V .: o.3-8, BU VI.2.9-12"4) by a teacher of the Kshatriya, or secular ruling class, named Pravahana Jaivali; in both cases the doctrine is taught by the Kshatriya teacher to a member of the Brahmanical or reli- gious ruling caste. Deussen described it as the "chief text that sets forth the doctrine of transmigration, on which all subsequent texts are dependent."" In terms of the history of religion, it represents a rejection, by Ksatriya intellectuals, of the ritual-dominated religious practice of the Vedic Brahmins.

In terms of the overall development of Hinduism, this is not only a chief text of "transmigration" but also marks a crucial stage in the development of meditation prac- tice. It has been powerfully argued that the distinction between those who will go into the afterlife by way of the fire (the Path of the Gods) and those who will go by way of the smoke (the Path of the Fathers) involves the pre- or protomeditational practice known as "interiorization of the sacrifice." In the early Vedic period the figure known as the brahman-priest "watched silently over the entire drama to make sure that every- thing was done correctly,"16 meanwhile running through the ritual mentally, motion- lessly imagining the actions and silently reciting the text, while the other priests were performing it physically. If he perceived errors or omissions in the performance, he cor- rected or compensated for them ("healing" the rite) in his mental rendition. Without a brabman-priest's mental performance, the rite was regarded as deficient."?

In the age of the Brabmaner (say, 1000-8oo a.c.), this interior performance was extended to other worshippers. It is here that the distinction between the two paths arises, In the case of a wealthy devotee endowing a rite, the question arose how he would gain for himself the reward, since it is not he but the priests he has hired who actually perform it. "According to Brahmanic ritual theory, the sacrificer ransoms the merit of the sacrifice through the giving of sacrificial gifts (daksina) to the priests who perform the ritual. . . . Through the agency of the daksina, the sacrificer [or sponsor] acquires the fruit of his sacrifice . . . "" This approach, "where," as Oldenberg put it, "the motif of heavenly reward for generous patrons of the priests stands in the foreground,"" is said to lead to the less meritorious but still desirable Path of the Fathers.

He who attains to the far more valuable Path of the Gods, on the other hand, prac- tices the interiorization of the sacrifice rather than, or in addition to, endowing its per- formance by others; sitting separate from the officiating priests he performs the sacrifice mentally, like the brabman-priest, motionlessly imagining the actions and silently reciting the words. This "interior" performance attained the same merit as the dramaturgical performance done by the priests.

The distinction may have begun as a kind of legalism, but it acquired deep reli- gious meaning. The interiorization practice has been suggested as an origin, or early stage, of meditation, which was about to become the center of religious life and thought in the Upanisads. "Vedic ideologies centered on the interiorization of the sac- rifice," says one scholar, ". . : [led to] the [Upanisadic] idea that the sacred flame burns within ... "> The interior sacrifice became known as "the fire [ceremony] that leads to heaven" (Kapha I.13)". Interiorization thus led to an overall revision of the Vedic doc- trine of sacrifice: "To these priests and others, the true sacrifice took place not only in the outer world, but also within the individual human spirit itself." "[T]he individual person's own inner being was the true sacrificial arena . .. ""

In the early Upanisadic communities the concept of interior sacrifice was general- ized to the entire life of the spiritual seeker. "What people call the 'sacrifice," accord- ing to the Chandogya Upanisad, "is really the disciplined life of a seeker of sacred know !- edge.""! As the trend toward interiorization gained momentum, "such a mental sacrifice is said to bring even more desirable results than does the performance of the large pub- lic rite." Specifically, the interior sacrifice produces at least three times as much merit as the traditional exterior sacrifice." In time the rite performed within the mind (man- asaryajna) could be practiced by any contemplative; the age of meditation had arrived.

Those who have not imbibed this doctrine and who believe that Brahmanical ritual practice, rather than a special kind of "knowledge," is the center of religious life, will, after death, enter not the Path of the Gods but the Path of the Fathers, on which they will rise to the level of the moon, but not higher, and in time rain down again, become food, be eaten and transformed into semen, be implanted in a womb, and be reborn. Here is the version of the deveyine, or Path of the Gods, given in the Brhadaranyaka Upanişad by Pravähana Jaivali:

People here on departing from this life separate in different directions .. . (BUVI.a.a). When someone dies they carry him to be offered in the funeral fire . . . Those who know this (doctrine) as such and those too who meditate with faith in the forest on the truth, pass into the light (of the fire), from the light into the day, from the day into the half-month of the waxing moon, then from the half-month of the waxing moon into the six months during which the sun travels northward (summer), from these months into the world of the gods, from the world of the gods to the sun, from the sun into the lightning (fire). Then a person consisting (born) of mind goes to those regions of lightning and leads them to the worlds of Brahma where they live for long periods, Of these there is no return. (BU VI.13-15)

Heraclitus's bright exhalation corresponds closely to this Path of the Gods. In Heraclitus's version it is bright and made of soul; in the Upanisadic version it is made up of soul and light. Heraclitus's bright exhalation produces day and summer and goes to the sun; the Upanisadic version produces day, the fortnight of the waxing moon, and summer, then goes to the world of the gods and the sun. The Upanisadic path has more stages listed than the Theophrastean summary of Heraclitus's doctrine, but the two versions need no special pleadings or adjustments to make them agree with each other.

The situation with the dark exhalation and the Path of the Fathers is similar. The Upanisadic author writes:

But those who by sacrificial offerings, charity, and austerity conquer the worlds, they pass into the smoke (of the funeral fire), from the smoke into the night, from the night into the half-month of the waning moon, from the half-month of the waning moon into the six months during which the sun travels southward (winter), from these months into the world of the fathers, from the world of the fathers into the moon. Reaching the moon they become food. There the gods, as they say to king Soma, increase, decrease, even so feed upon them there. When that passes away from them, they pass forth into this space, from space into air, from air into rain, from rain into the carth. Reaching the earth they become food. Again, they are offered into the fire of man (sexuality). Thence they are born in the fire of woman (birth) with a view to going to other worlds. Thus, do they rotate. (BUVI.2.16)

As Heraclitus's dark exhalation is dark, so the Path of the Fathers enters not the light but the smoke of the fire. Heraclitus's dark exhalation produces night and winter, and probably goes to the moon; the Path of the Fathers proceeds from night to the fort- night of the waning moon to winter; from winter, it goes to the world of the fathers and from there to the moon. Heraclitus's version omits two stages (waning moon, world of fathers) but is otherwise in agreement. From the moon, of course, the soul enters the process from soul, to water, to earth (food), to water (semen), to soul again.

Heraclitus's bright exhalation seems to be a version of the Vedic-Upanisadic Path of the Gods, his dark exhalation, of the Path of the Fathers. It seems that "the Riddler" had some contact with the Doctrine of the Five Fires. Assuming that he would not have incorporated a doctrine that he did not understand, he may be presumed to have had some familiarity with the central doctrines of Upanisadic Hinduism. The Doctrine of the Five Fires connects intimately to the doctrines of reincarnation and karma, and to the practice of meditation. Indeed, this connection resonates not only through the cen- ter of the Upanisadic religion but also through the center of Heraclitus's cosmology.15

This extraordinary parallelism is a strong and clear link between a pre-Socratic thinker and an Upanisad. It amounts to a scholarly "proof"-meaning the most rea- sonable interpretation of the evidence as it currently stands. The Heraclitean system of five transformations and two exhalations has not been accounted for historically by any other approach. Until the evidence changes, it should stand that elements of Heraclitus and of the Upanisads came either from each other or from an unknown common source.

Why is this stunning piece of evidence ignored by Western scholars of the pre- Socratics? Sometimes in their confrontations with Heraclitus they seem to be begging for something like this to clarify problems in the corpus. Is the scholars' refusal to look at non-Western evidence the reason Heraclitus is known as such an enigmatic and "rid- dling" thinker? One scholar observes that Heraclitus's thesis about fire "has a tradi- tional Milesian ring," and that Heraclitus's "physical science [is] of a standard Milesian type." So far, it seems, Heraclitus would be no problem. But "he also advanced an idio- syncratic theory of man and of the human soul; and the fragments contain the rem- nants of an unusual theology."> It is the "idiosyncratic" theory of the soul and "unusual" theology which make him difficult. And the intrusion of Indian elements into these areas of his thought can account for them.