Papers by Justin M Hewitson
Emerson’s polemical 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address urged clergyman to break from Christiani... more Emerson’s polemical 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address urged clergyman to break from Christianity’s doctrinal errors — specifically Unitarian dependence on miracles and its “noxious” representation of Jesus. He believed Indian monism could help restore etiolated Christianity to its former status as a pure “doctrine of the soul.” Emerson’s mature studies of India’s spiritual works are widely acknowledged to have influenced his approach to self-realization and concepts of monism. Researchers have also noted his youthful enjoyment and subsequent disdain of Romantic Orientalism; however, the links between Lalla Rookh, the Oriental fantasy by Sir Thomas Moore, the Irish Romanticist, and Emerson’s early religious dissent remain unexplored. Emerson was a fourteen-year-old Harvard freshman in 1817 when he read extensive reviews of the popular work published in the same year. He references Rookh at significant junctures in his journals and discourses. This paper explores the connections between Rookh’s first frame narrative, “The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan” (VP), which offered an early critique of religious myopia, and Emerson’s opposition to Unitarian doctrine. I examine the historiography of the New Englander’s initial intellectual engagement with Indian spirituality through VP. Thereafter I briefly analyze the intersection of VP’s religious themes with Emerson’s inaugural essays, Nature and “The American Scholar.” My conclusion details the intriguing conceptual and oratorical parallels between Mokanna’s critique of religious dogma and Emerson’s dissent in the Divinity Address. By arguing that Christians would do well to understand Indian monism, Emerson set the stage for critical spirituality in American Transcendentalism.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society, 2021
Mystics and philosophers across the ages have interrogated ideological systems in search of truth... more Mystics and philosophers across the ages have interrogated ideological systems in search of truth and the good life. Although the human desire for less suffering and more happiness stems from over a million years of our evolving consciousness, the empirical sciences have failed to quantify consciousness or uncover a source of permanent happiness. Objective studies struggle with the epiphenomenal subjectivity of consciousness even as the postmodern reification of a decentered, culturally constructed dualistic subjectivity has devalued mystical ontologies of consciousness. This episteme is changing as contemporary debates about happiness reinvoke our ancestral religious and spiritual philosophies. The sold-out 2019 debate, "Happiness: Marxism vs Capitalism," between Slavoj Žižek and
Śiva Tantra’s legacy of secrecy and inter-traditional assimilation has left its common spiritual ... more Śiva Tantra’s legacy of secrecy and inter-traditional assimilation has left its common spiritual origin almost indiscernible. Its roots continue to spread across “sectarian boundaries” and “spiritual” spaces (Gray, 2016: 1). As a ramified spiritual tradition, Tantra’s branches are uniquely hybrid, making it all but impossible to navigate the prehistorical routes it took before crossing paths with India’s other great religions. Long before Tantra appeared in texts it was transmitted directly from guru to practitioner. This transmission was mostly ignored by colonial scholars who elevated textual studies over ethnographic data, leaving the origins of Tantra hotly contested. P.R. Sarkar stakes an emic claim that Śiva codified India’s proto-yogic meditations in 5,500 BCE to create the first liberatory spiritual system in Tantra. Validating this claim is challenging, but objective studies should consider the emic routes to ancient ideas that belong to India’s oral spiritual traditions. Therefore, this essay first comparatively surveys Tantra’s contested historical origins and transformations. This broad appraisal of etic routes and emic roots reveals a picture of Śiva’s uniquely hybrid presence in India’s spiritual life. The second section examines the Aryan migration/invasion theory, Vedic religious developments, and the linguistic transformations which inform Sarkar’s historiography of Śiva as Tantra’s first Sadguru to teach the universal science of spiritual sādhanā ‘meditation’ in 5500 BCE. The concluding section discusses Sarkar’s argument, in light of Tantra’s roots, that Tantra is “neither a religion nor an ism” but a “fundamental spi¬ritual science.” (Ánandamúrti, 1994: 22). By situating Śiva well before the textual era, Sarkar vexes etic hegemonic routes and addresses some of the pathologies of excessive sectarianism that have obscured Tantra’s disciplined monistic philosophy and praxes. He recovers Śiva’s connection to ancient philosophies of path and purpose that spread across Asia into the West and establishes Tantra as a progressive route to spiritual transformation.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press... more Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 2021
Western surveys of idealism historically overlook Indian sources as scholars were unfamiliar with... more Western surveys of idealism historically overlook Indian sources as scholars were unfamiliar with Indian metaphysics and lacked appropriate exegetical translations of India’s ancient Sanskrit spiritual literature. But millennia before the (Neo)Platonists conceived their idealist arguments, Indian sages who meditated on causal consciousness produced esoteric teachings, metaphorical descriptions of abstract states, and influential philosophical ideas that shaped the ancient worldview of monistic idealism. Many Indologists argue that the Vedic religion introduced by the prehistorical or ancient Aryan migrants into Northern India catalyzed the growth of later Hindu traditions that regard Brahman (Metaseity) as the supreme ontological entity. However, P. R. Sarkar tilts the origins of Indian idealism away from this monolithic Vedic source with his polemical claim that indigenous Śiva Tantra initially existed independently from Aryan Vedic beliefs and propitiatory rites. This essay therefore interrogates the first ancient expression of metaphysics in India through a new translation and reinterpretation of the Ṛg Veda’s canonical “Creation Hymn,” mediated by Sarkar’s Tantric historiography and spiritual metaphysics. By engaging with Sarkar’s emic claim for Tantra’s spiritual and epistemic influences on Vedic thought, I reconstruct the Creation Hymn’s influential monistic ontology to explain its radical departure from the Ṛg Veda’s traditional sacerdotalism. It is proposed that monistic idealism likely originated in India and that the Creation Hymn is the first textual evidence of this philosophy infused with proto-Tantra.
Keywords
Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2014
The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture , 2020
Emerson’s polemical 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address urged clergyman to break from Christiani... more Emerson’s polemical 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address urged clergyman to break from Christianity’s doctrinal errors — specifically Unitarian dependence on miracles and its “noxious” representation of Jesus. He believed Indian monism could help restore etiolated Christianity to its former status as a pure “doctrine of the soul.” Emerson’s mature studies of India’s spiritual works are widely acknowledged to have influenced his approach to self-realization and concepts of monism. Researchers have also noted his youthful enjoyment and subsequent disdain of Romantic Orientalism; however, the links between Lalla Rookh, the Oriental fantasy by Sir Thomas Moore, the Irish Romanticist, and Emerson’s early religious dissent remain unexplored. Emerson was a fourteen-year-old Harvard freshman in 1817 when he read extensive reviews of the popular work published in the same year. He references Rookh at significant junctures in his journals and discourses. This paper explores the connections between Rookh’s first frame narrative, “The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan” (VP), which offered an early critique of religious myopia, and Emerson’s opposition to Unitarian doctrine. I examine the historiography of the New Englander’s initial intellectual engagement with Indian spirituality through VP. Thereafter I briefly analyze the intersection of VP’s religious themes with Emerson’s inaugural essays, Nature and “The American Scholar.” My conclusion details the intriguing conceptual and oratorical parallels between Mokanna’s critique of religious dogma and Emerson’s dissent in the Divinity Address. By arguing that Christians would do well to understand Indian monism, Emerson set the stage for critical spirituality in American Transcendentalism.
Comparative Literature and Culture, 2019
In “Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment and Tantric Responsibility in Michael Ondaatje’s Ani... more In “Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment and Tantric Responsibility in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost,” Justin Hewitson argues that the global mediation of suffering following human rights abuses creates the offender-victim binary. How moral judgments drive urgent peacemaking is seldom connected to long-term victimhood narratives. This psychology can exacerbate cyclical patterns of anger, exploitation, and violence by deferring responsibility. Ondaatje’s controversial novel, Anil’s Ghost, reflecting these charged accusations, refuses to settle blame on any side of the Sri Lankan conflict; instead, it offers the troubling recognition that offenders, victims, and mediators are all causal agents. Hewitson explores the text’s Buddhist and Hindu merging of detachment and responsibility as its characters, Anil, Palapina, and Ananda adopt empirical and intuitive therapies in response to the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths of suffering. It is argued that Ananda’s samādhi-like vision at the novel's conclusion projects a middle way between traumatic anger and loss via detached empathy.
This article proposes an evolution of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental
epoche´ (reduction) by inte... more This article proposes an evolution of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental
epoche´ (reduction) by integrating P. R. Sarkar’s Tantra sa´dhana´ (meditation), which engages ipseity as both the subject and the object of consciousness. First, it explores some of the recent philosophical and scientific obstacles that confound the transcendental reduction. Following this, an East-West trajectory for Husserl’s first science of consciousness is examined by combining Sarkar’s 3 shuddhis (reductive concentrations) in pratya´ha´ra (mental withdrawal), effecting an experience of noumenal consciousness. Combining Husserl’s phenomenology with Sarkar’s spiritual praxis reinvigorates
the transcendental epoche´ and emphasizes practice in a field both
undermined by logical positivism and dominated by the scholasticism of
Husserl’s prote´ge´s. Furthermore, the efficacy of an East-West approach is contextualized in view of Husserl’s admiration of Buddhism and Sarkar’s cognitive cosmology.
keywords Edmund Husserl, P. R. Sarkar, Martin Heidegger, Tantra, Buddhism, India, phenomenology, ipseity, transcendental ego, epoche´, pratya´ha´ra, reduction, shuddhis, consciousness, praxis, meditation, meta-ipseity
Conference Presentations by Justin M Hewitson
The 20th International Conference and Workshop on TEFL & Applied Linguistics Ming Chuan University, 2018
Books by Justin M Hewitson
Roots, Routes and a New Awakening: Beyond One and Many and Alternative Planetary Futures, 2021
Śiva Tantra’s legacy of secrecy and inter-traditional assimilation has left its common spiritual ... more Śiva Tantra’s legacy of secrecy and inter-traditional assimilation has left its common spiritual origin almost indiscernible. Its roots continue to spread across “sectarian boundaries” and “spiritual” spaces (Gray, 2016: 1). As a ramified spiritual tradition, Tantra’s branches are uniquely hybrid, making it all but impossible to navigate the prehistorical routes it took before crossing paths with India’s other great religions. Long before Tantra appeared in texts it was transmitted directly from guru to practitioner. This transmission was mostly ignored by colonial scholars who elevated textual studies over ethnographic data, leaving the origins of Tantra hotly contested. P.R. Sarkar stakes an emic claim that Śiva codified India’s proto-yogic meditations in 5,500 BCE to create the first liberatory spiritual system in Tantra. Validating this claim is challenging, but objective studies should consider the emic routes to ancient ideas that belong to India’s oral spiritual traditions. Therefore, this essay first comparatively surveys Tantra’s contested historical origins and transformations. This broad appraisal of etic routes and emic roots reveals a picture of Śiva’s uniquely hybrid presence in India’s spiritual life. The second section examines the Aryan migration/invasion theory, Vedic religious developments, and the linguistic transformations which inform Sarkar’s historiography of Śiva as Tantra’s first Sadguru to teach the universal science of spiritual sādhanā ‘meditation’ in 5500 BCE. The concluding section discusses Sarkar’s argument, in light of Tantra’s roots, that Tantra is “neither a religion nor an ism” but a “fundamental spi¬ritual science.” (Ánandamúrti, 1994: 22). By situating Śiva well before the textual era, Sarkar vexes etic hegemonic routes and addresses some of the pathologies of excessive sectarianism that have obscured Tantra’s disciplined monistic philosophy and praxes. He recovers Śiva’s connection to ancient philosophies of path and purpose that spread across Asia into the West and establishes Tantra as a progressive route to spiritual transformation.
Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: New Pathways of Consciousness, Freedom and Solidarity, 2021
Mystics and philosophers across the ages have interrogated ideological systems to reveal truth an... more Mystics and philosophers across the ages have interrogated ideological systems to reveal truth and the praxes that ensure a good life. The 2019 debate “Happiness: Marxism vs Capitalism” between Jordan B. Peterson and Slavoj Žižek exemplifies the perennial quest to link consciousness with a source of lasting happiness. This essay first deconstructs Peterson’s responses to Žižek regarding the biblical devolution of consciousness and religious belief. The second half addresses Žižek’s appraisal of Indian mysticism per the Nazi regime’s misuse of the Bhagavad Gītā contrasted with P. R. Sarkar’s exegesis of the text’s Tantric philosophy. This essay concludes that as Christianity’s religious narrative denies spiritual transcendence (humanity is irrevocably separated from its perfect cause), it struggles to stand the philosophical test of James’s spiritual pragmatism.
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Papers by Justin M Hewitson
Keywords
epoche´ (reduction) by integrating P. R. Sarkar’s Tantra sa´dhana´ (meditation), which engages ipseity as both the subject and the object of consciousness. First, it explores some of the recent philosophical and scientific obstacles that confound the transcendental reduction. Following this, an East-West trajectory for Husserl’s first science of consciousness is examined by combining Sarkar’s 3 shuddhis (reductive concentrations) in pratya´ha´ra (mental withdrawal), effecting an experience of noumenal consciousness. Combining Husserl’s phenomenology with Sarkar’s spiritual praxis reinvigorates
the transcendental epoche´ and emphasizes practice in a field both
undermined by logical positivism and dominated by the scholasticism of
Husserl’s prote´ge´s. Furthermore, the efficacy of an East-West approach is contextualized in view of Husserl’s admiration of Buddhism and Sarkar’s cognitive cosmology.
keywords Edmund Husserl, P. R. Sarkar, Martin Heidegger, Tantra, Buddhism, India, phenomenology, ipseity, transcendental ego, epoche´, pratya´ha´ra, reduction, shuddhis, consciousness, praxis, meditation, meta-ipseity
Conference Presentations by Justin M Hewitson
Books by Justin M Hewitson
Keywords
epoche´ (reduction) by integrating P. R. Sarkar’s Tantra sa´dhana´ (meditation), which engages ipseity as both the subject and the object of consciousness. First, it explores some of the recent philosophical and scientific obstacles that confound the transcendental reduction. Following this, an East-West trajectory for Husserl’s first science of consciousness is examined by combining Sarkar’s 3 shuddhis (reductive concentrations) in pratya´ha´ra (mental withdrawal), effecting an experience of noumenal consciousness. Combining Husserl’s phenomenology with Sarkar’s spiritual praxis reinvigorates
the transcendental epoche´ and emphasizes practice in a field both
undermined by logical positivism and dominated by the scholasticism of
Husserl’s prote´ge´s. Furthermore, the efficacy of an East-West approach is contextualized in view of Husserl’s admiration of Buddhism and Sarkar’s cognitive cosmology.
keywords Edmund Husserl, P. R. Sarkar, Martin Heidegger, Tantra, Buddhism, India, phenomenology, ipseity, transcendental ego, epoche´, pratya´ha´ra, reduction, shuddhis, consciousness, praxis, meditation, meta-ipseity