Chapter 9
IN ALTERED WORLDS
In this chapter, we will attempt to trace the range of phenomena with which art was associated among primitive peoples. We will begin our journey with initiation rites – a topic we've mentioned several times and one that has generated extensive literature. We will rely mainly on the above-mentioned fundamental research of V. Ya. Propp's Historical Roots of the Wondertale.
Initiation rites were known to practically all peoples of the world during the period of hunting ideology's dominance. This ritual was undergone by girls and boys who had reached a certain age. Initiation was performed in the forest, in a ritual house of zoomorphic appearance: the door of the house was associated with the mouth of the animal which symbolized the house. The boy's entry into the house was understood as his being swallowed by the totem. When he emerged into the world again, it was as a man – a qualitatively different being born during the ritual and expelled by the house-animal. The stay in the house was conceived as a metamorphosis in the totem's womb. The man was supposed to remember nothing about his former existence as a child. Even his name was changed to a different one, a man's name. The boy's former identity was considered dead, and relatives mourned him as if he had truly died.
During initiation, boys endured terrible tortures. These practices might include cutting strips from the back, removing a finger, beatings with sticks, fire torture, or placing a raw sheepskin on the head, which, as it dried, caused excruciating pain (Chinghiz Aitmatov described this exotic torture in the novel “And the Day Lasts Longer Than a Century”, preserving the motif of memory loss but detaching the action from the initiation rite). Many boys did not withstand the tortures and perished.
“To account for the meaning of these atrocities, researchers have noted that they were meant to train young people in absolute obedience to their elders, that future warriors were tempered in this way, and so on. The natives themselves have sometimes explained them as a desire to reduce the population, because a certain percentage of children would perished as a result of these “dedications”. None of these explanations seem convincing. Apparently, these atrocities were supposed to 'paralize the brain', so to speak. Their long duration (sometimes weeks) and the hunger, thirst, darkness, and horror that accompanied them were together supposed to call forth a state the initiate would consider death. They cause temporary insanity (facilitated by consumption of various poisonous drinks) so that the initiate forgot everything in the world. He suffered such memory loss that after his return he did not remember his name, did not recognize his parents, and so on; and perhaps he really believed it when he was told that he had died and come back as a new, different person”.[82]
However, the meaning of memory loss and temporary insanity is much broader and immeasurably more important. It was during this state of mental dissolution that initiates established their critical connection with the world of spirits. Schurtz believed that the moment of insanity was the moment of acquiring corresponding abilities. Frobenius understood the meaning of this phenomenon in the same way. It is precisely in a state of insanity that the boy undergoing the rite meets with the spirit and receives gifts from it. Gifts from the world of spirits – this is the meaning and purpose of the initiation rite.
For instance, in one very interesting tale in Boas's collection, the hero gets to the wolves. All the wolves, bears, and otters are summoned, and every honor is shown to the visitor.
“Then the wolves suddenly brought in a corpse. They wrapped it in a wolf skin, put it by the fire and began to dance around it and beat time. Then the dead man got up and started to stagger. But the more they sang, the more confidently he began to move, and finally he started running exactly like a wolf. And the leader of the wolves said, 'Now you see what happens to the dead, we turn them into wolves. ' These wolves teach him the dance of the wolves. 'When you return home, teach the people our dance'”. They give him a magic arrow whose mere aim is enough to kill the game without firing a shot.[83] This example, among other things, provides an explanation of Yaga’s magic gifts.
This myth also explains the ritual. We now understand the purpose of leaving for the realm of the dead to meet the totemic ancestor-master”.[84]
The state of insanity represented a journey to the death realm to acquire magical gifts. And these gifts are power over animals and... art. In this case, the art of dance is the most ancient of arts. Considering that during this developmental stage, art represented the sole form of creative activity, we must recognize that creativity itself was understood as a gift bestowed from the world of spirits – the realm of death. The magic flute or self-playing gusli in fairy tales are always gifted by a being from the otherworld. In fairy tales, playing these otherworldly instruments invariably produces one of four effects:
Everyone sleeps.
Everyone cries.
Everyone laughs.
Everyone dances.
This strongly resembles mass hypnosis.
“The prince began to walk along the bridge, tapping with his cane, a jug jumped out and began to dance before him; he gazed at it and fell into a deep sleep” – says the fairy tale. Not only music but also dance and movement possess this sleep-inducing power. Rhythm induces sleep states (suggesting that rhythm itself – the capacity to construct semantic series – was regarded as a spirit-bestowed gift).
Shamanism is the most ancient form of religion, closely linked with totemism. Shamans perceived the spirits with whom they “entered into connection” as evil spirits. The fact that a spirit serves the shaman spoke only of the shaman's strength, not of the spirit's kindness. And poetic inspiration among many primitive peoples was considered to come from evil spirits.
According to Massé, among the Bedouins – a nomadic people who created remarkable poetry,[85] there were people called “kahin” (soothsayer), who composed verses called “saj”. Saj consisted of short, choppy lines, characterized by jagged rhythm. Judging by the description, they were generally incoherent, typical shamanic verses. And the Bedouins firmly knew that it were evil spirits that inspired saj in poets. According to Massé, saj was composed in a state of frenzy, often by women.
When Muhammad first received prophetic revelation and encountered the angel Jibril, his immediate reaction was fear that he faced an evil spirit. The presence of saj-form verses in the Quran provided Muhammad's detractors grounds to question the divine origin of his revelations.[86]
The creative arts – poetry, music, and dance – were thus understood as gifts bestowed from the world of spirits (moreover, the world of evil spirits), and to master them, it was necessary to go to the realm of death. By the way, the famous Castalian spring, according to Greek beliefs, was located at the entrance to the underworld. And the Scandinavians called poetry the mead of Odin. The transition to the realm of death could only occur in a state of insanity. To achieve this, boys during the initiation period were subjected to horrifying tortures, which, among different peoples, were generally the same. The idea that one could make a journey to the realm of death by means of a persistent pain ordeal did not arise accidentally. The following excerpt can perhaps shed some light on the emergence of this phenomenon.
“The chopping and tearing apart of the human body play a huge role in many religions and myths; they also play a big role in wondertales. <…> N. P. Dyrenkova’s work “Reception of the Shamanic Gift According to the Views of the Turkish Tribes” provides excerpts from a vast body of material showing that the experience of chopping and slicing up the body and sorting the insides is a necessary condition of shamanism, and it precedes the moment when a person becomes a shaman. Among the Turkic tribes of Siberia,[87] the procedure of hewing the body was exactly the same: it is performed in a state of hallucination. Here are a few excerpts from such materials. The Yakut shaman Gerasimov told the ethnographer A. A. Popov how he became a shaman. Suddenly (while searching for a lost deer) he saw three ravens in the sky; he felt a blow on his back and lost consciousness. Then “spirits” came to him and began to torture him. “He was beaten with ropes and straps; reptiles dug into his body. He was dipped in blood clots, he choked on blood, he had to suck the breast of a terrible old woman, his eyes were poked out[88] [see above on blindness], his ears were drilled into, his body was cut into pieces and placed in an iron cradle”, and so on. According to the records of many researchers and observers, the future shaman of the Yakuts “experiences all the tortures of having his head cut off and his body sliced up and cooked”.[89] The Teleut shaman Koyon (rabbit) began her shamanic practice after having a vision. “Several people were cutting her body into pieces at the joints and putting these pieces in a pot to cook. Then two more people arrived. They again cut her flesh, gutted her body, and cooked it”. This is a typical picture of the shaman’s visions prior to taking up his shamanistic functions. One may ask why all the shamans hallucinate in the same way and why the images of these visions sometimes correspond in the smallest detail (being cooked in a pot, etc.) to the practice of the rite in America, Africa, Polynesia, and Australia on the one hand and to the material found in wondertales on the other.[90]
Thus, there exists a certain mental state, steadily accompanied by a powerful pain ordeal.[91] This represents a distinct altered state of consciousness – precisely the state that endows the shamans with their “supernatural” abilities.
Shamanism emerged alongside initiation rites, seemingly at a time when these rites were beginning to lose their original significance. Here dismemberment is replaced by finger cutting, “dying” is replaced by the portrayal of dying, etc. And the state that was previously accessible to all now becomes accessible only to shamans. This particular state – perceived as insanity by observers – became linked in collective consciousness with the origins of dance, music, and poetry. It seems that this is precisely the state of consciousness that we call mythological.
In our model, the Japanese samurai ritual of hara-kiri also goes back to the pain ordeal of the initiation rite and is associated with an altered state of consciousness. Chan (Zen) meditation played a significant role in the upbringing and spiritual life of samurai (we will later talk about the connection between Chan and the martial arts of Wu-Shu, as well as about the connection between Chan practice and the pain ordeal of the initiation rite).
Only samurai had the privilege of leaving life through hara-kiri. If we recall that vital force, according to the teachings of Chan masters, is located in the abdominal cavity, with its concentration being the navel, which Chan-Buddhist adepts contemplate during seated meditations, if we recall that it is precisely the stomach that samurai cut open, if we recall that cutting, dismemberment, extraction of entrails was widely used in initiation rites, and that according to some conceptions widespread in the East, what the soul is concentrated on before death is what it will incarnate into in the next birth,[92] then the picture acquires certain completeness.
In our model, initiation rites appear, however, when the mythological form of consciousness had already ceased to be the only and main one,[93] much later than the emergence of language. We can establish language's approximate birth period by identifying the latest possible moment of its emergence. This moment is the emergence of drive hunting (corralling) for mammoths. Such hunting required precise coordination of hunters' actions, and this could not be achieved without the presence of language (the only animals possessing the art of drive hunting (pack hunting) – wolves – acquired the required skills over millennia; wolves have a fairly strongly developed system of sound signaling). Neanderthals lacked mammoth hunting skills. Yet 30,000 years ago, a momentous encounter occurred on Mount Carmel where Neanderthals and humans gathered around a shared fire. And the brain mass of the humans who warmed themselves by this fire, as the latest scientific data show, was no less than that of any of our contemporaries.
Drive hunting for mammoths emerges within a countable number of centuries. Almost simultaneously with the first traces of drive hunting, the first “contracted” burials of skeletons appear.
“...Contracted burials appear as early as Mousterian times and are spread throughout the entire stone and bronze ages. They are not the only form of burial; alongside them there are also burials in the usual position of the deceased – extended, sitting, and even vertically standing (with earth tightly packed around them) skeletons. But contraction continues through many epochs, breaking off rather sharply at the boundary of the bronze and iron ages, when a number of other changes in society were taking place...
Contraction of skeletons in ancient burials has long been linked with the position of the embryo in the mother's womb. We think this is correct. Moreover, the red ocher with which contracted skeletons are usually sprinkled should, we believe, be considered not as a symbol of fire, but as something else. After all, if they wanted to symbolize fire, they could have placed an actual fire near the buried body or sprinkled hot coals on the grave – practices that are sometimes observed. Might this red coloring symbolize blood? After all, the embryo dwells within a crimson womb. Contraction was achieved artificially: the people burying the deceased either tied the limbs of the corpse or cut the joints in order to give it the desired posture of a fetus in the womb.
The idea of turning the deceased into an unborn embryo is connected, obviously, with the notion that the dead person can be born a second time. Therefore, he should be given the posture of readiness for this event. Ethnography gives us many examples of beliefs in the transmigration of the soul, in the rebirth of a person after death into one or another creature living on earth. In this, animistic and totemistic representations of early hunting cultures were closely intertwined. Humans did not distinguish themselves from nature but experienced complete integration with it. A vivid indicator was the preparation of the dead for the second birth in some new form (perhaps, human again).
In the abundant fairy tale fund of all peoples, there are many plots related to shapeshifters, half-humans-half-animals, animals speaking in human language, or humans understanding the language of animals. In many fairy tales, the antiquity of time is determined by the indication that 'then people still understood animal speech'. This indirectly connects to the belief that humans could transform into animals and then, after changing form again, return to human shape. Such a cycle of the soul was supposed, obviously, to contribute to the mutual understanding of humans and nature. Speaking animals, trees, birds, fish in the fairy tales of all peoples of the earth, the partial anthropomorphism of different links of nature is the legacy of that long era when humanity believed in reincarnation, in the second birth, after the life left the body of the deceased. This was thought of quite realistically: the deceased continued to live on earth in some other form...
...The Mousterian contracted burials laid the foundation for some semi-conscious representations about the possibility of humans to be reborn again in human or animal form (the ritual of turning the dead into an embryo was supposed to facilitate his second birth)”.[94]
Thus, belief in reincarnation emerges concurrently with language during the Mousterian period. This belief is closely linked with totemistic cultures, shamanistic practice, and initiation rites. However, we know that belief in reincarnation is connected with Buddhist beliefs. Buddhist traditions foster meditation practices and psychospiritual training techniques that, according to many scholars, target specific altered consciousness states[95].
It is noteworthy that the famous Christian thinker of the 3rd century, Origen, put forward the concept of “profane” and “deep” layers of the Gospel teaching. According to this concept, the deep layer of Christ's teaching, open only to the initiated apostles, represented the doctrine of reincarnation. In Origen's opinion, there are indirect indications of this in the text of the Gospel. Origen was accused of heresy. But:
“...the medieval Russian culture of silence... had its deep philosophical foundations, going far back into the depths of history. If we discard terminological peculiarities, we will see a striving to understand human nature and gain knowledge by an inner path. And further – an analogy with the teaching of yogis and Zen... Despite the difference in paths – an amazing deep commonality – where did it come from? This could become the subject of special research. In the historical plane, we see two foci – Buddha and Christ, from which waves of inner knowledge spread through direct penetration into continual streams.”[96]
The state of enlightenment for Buddhists, the state of “descent of the Holy Spirit” among Christians, and shamanic ecstasy. If the state of enlightenment (but not the Chan or Zen state of satori) and the state of “descent of the Holy Spirit” are close mental states (if not one and the same), then the shamanistic state of consciousness is clearly different from them. And primarily in that in the training systems of yogis, Buddhists, and Christian saints, the pain ordeal is explicitly absent. Traces of it remain in the practice of asceticism and exercises, as well as in the piercing sensation experienced by the “enlightened”. Augustine described the ecstasy that seized him during prayer with the words “fiery joy”. Fieriness is a constant characteristic of Christian ecstasy, just as constant as pain for shamans.
During initiation rites, every participant – without exception, regardless of background – experienced ecstasy and spirit communion through tortures; by contrast, yogic or saintly enlightenment comes only to those dedicating their entire lives to preparing for such insight. Christian monks used asceticism and mortification of the flesh, flagellants – also self-flagellation, but this is not the main thing in their preparation, although it is precisely here that traces of the initiation rite are visible, as, indeed, in the crucifixion of Christ. One of the profound differences between Christian and Buddhist practice (we mean traditional Buddhism) from shamanic practice, in our view, is in the role of ethics.
It is unthinkable for Christian sainthood not to be virtuous, just as it is inconceivable for a Buddhist to violate the ethical teachings of Sakyamuni. Buddha's moral teaching reflects the morality of farmers. The God of the New Testament is also an agricultural god. For example, Yuri Frantsev wrote about the connection of the cult of Christ with agrarian cults of vegetative demons.[97]
Thus, the transition to agriculture and the resulting sharp expansion of the ecological niche led to the discovery of a fundamentally new altered state of consciousness – one unattainable through drugs (which were often taken by shamans and soothsayers but never by Christian and Buddhist monks).
The ecstasy of the shaman is combined with insanity, often with aggressiveness. Drugs cause aggressiveness in people intoxicated by them. By contrast, both the Christian “descent of the Holy Spirit” and the Buddhist enlightenment entirely lack aggressiveness or dramatic external manifestations.[98]
Thus, between these two altered states of consciousness (varieties of mystical consciousness), there is an immeasurable qualitative gap. This profound difference is reflected in the relationship between cult practices and art. Shamanism relies on dance and rhythm to achieve ecstasy, just as dances were integral to initiation rites. The practice of shamanic ecstasy is therefore organically connected to external rhythms and the principle of semantic series. This explains the cult of art characteristic of the “shamanic” epoch: art was inseparable from ritual, with dance and poetry believed to originate from the world of spirits.
As for Christian attitudes toward art, we find an example in Saint Augustine, who in his “Confessions” argued that art is sinful. However, in Augustine's opinion, art is not so much sinful in itself as our ability to enjoy it is sinful. Augustine reached this conclusion after observing that the more skillfully actors on stage convey the sufferings of an innocent person, the more pleasant it is for viewers (and for Augustine himself) to watch them, that is, the egoistic desire to empathize turns out to be stronger than love for one's neighbor. Others' sufferings on stage, ultimately, bring joy, and this joy is sinful for Augustine, since not joy, but pity and only pity should they evoke. However, the essence of the problem of art's sinfulness turns out, in our opinion, to be much deeper than Augustine thought. More fundamentally, art originated from the same altered states of consciousness that shamans and initiates experienced – states that Augustine's framework couldn't accommodate. The ecstasy known to Augustine, in our model, was of a completely different nature.
Somewhere between the shamanic and yogic states of mystical consciousness lies the state of enlightenment achieved by adepts of Chan Buddhism (Zen Buddhism). In connection with the intermediate position of Chan enlightenment, we will examine it in more detail.
Chan Buddhism arose in China in the 5th-6th centuries as a result of the fusion of certain concepts of Mahayana Buddhism and traditional Chinese religious and philosophical teachings. In fact, Chan Buddhism retained almost nothing from Mahayana Buddhism. Instead, it organically incorporated many concepts from Taoism.
Here is how Academician Vasily Alekseev reveals the Tao and the person living according to the laws of the Tao (the work of E. V. Zavadskaya “Wise Inspiration” is quoted):
“Tao-zero wanders in the realm of the great zero, nests in emptiness... The greatest Tao – in darkness and silence”, “Great Tao is fog”, “Tao is inexhaustible, all-encompassing”, “Tao is mystery, it is hidden, it is the gates of all matter; it can act in the world, but does not dwell in glory, perishes from attachment to the worldly”. “To enter Tao in the bondage of the world is impossible, the core of Tao – the highest liberation from worldly logic”. “Tao, ridiculed by a fool, is the highest Tao”. “Within its depth dwells the Tao-man; to comprehend Tao wash your heart, whiten your Spirit, suppress your human significance: Tao is expressed in foolishness, comparable to insanity; one enlightened in Tao is seemingly dark, one equated with Tao is seemingly in ashes, one entered into Tao is seemingly departed”. “Tao-man knows neither good nor evil, neither true nor false, lives joyfully where for an ordinary person to live is painful; he is comparable to a valley (spacious and bright)”. “Tao-man does not need human approvals, he is lonely among people, he is opposite to them and is a model to the world, he reduces himself to outward poverty, chooses for himself the last place, he is a holy fool, his being is insanity (for ordinary people); he, like Tao, floats, wanders, seeking nothing, but does not demand back, produces, but does not accumulate, is foolishly simple and primitively unrefined, wildly insane, 'acts little, but walks a great path'”.
The most important thing for us in the above statements by Alekseev is the persistent likening of a person who has known the essence of Tao to a holy fool, to a madman. Let us note this: in Taoism, once again, we encounter the state of insanity, already familiar to us from the initiation rite and shamanic ecstasy. A normal person cannot comprehend Tao: the essence of one of the most famous postulates of Taoism boils down to the idea that one cannot talk about Tao with scholars, they are hindered by earthly, false knowledge, while “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”.[99]
Notably, the Tao-man does not know the difference between good and evil. In the system of Taoism, ethical problems exist only at the profane level. And a distinctive feature of a person “enlightened in Tao” is wild-insane behavior, that is, aggressive behavior. Note that in Taoism, the aggressiveness of behavior in a state of enlightenment and the ignoring of ethics go hand in hand.
Besides the similarity with Taoism, the emotional-psychological features of Chan reveal a similarity with the folk holiday.
Characterizing the psychological aspects of ancient Chinese festivals, M. Granet writes:
“Winter festivals possessed an intensely dramatic character. A state of extreme excitement prevailed universally. According to eyewitnesses, even in Confucius's time,[100] all participants resembled madmen – suggesting they felt themselves illuminated by divine spirit. Exorcists, literally called 'madmen', played a crucial role in these events. Dances accompanied by clay drums brought participants into states of ecstasy, which they intensified further through intoxication”.[101]
We've previously noted that the state called “enlightenment” (Wu, Da-Wu, Dun-Wu, Da-Jue) – the core of the “Chan experience” and the primary goal of Chan religious psychotechnology – essentially constituted a transition to an altered state of consciousness (ASC) qualitatively different from “normal” everyday awareness. Psychophysiologically, Chan “enlightenment” manifests as a deeply emotional, ecstatic experience of unified being, transcending oppositions and closely resembling the material-bodily unity experienced during carnival celebrations, as described by M. M. Bakhtin.[102]
It's particularly important to emphasize that during “enlightenment”, a fundamental restructuring of mental processes occurred, awakening both the spontaneity and irrationality of “natural” behavior – elements typically suppressed during socialization – and igniting in the individual the orgiastic frenzy, ecstatic possession, and “madness” characteristic of ancient Chinese festivals.
When the “great enlightenment” (Chinese Da-Jue, Japanese Satori) descends upon Chan Buddhists, they begin performing acts entirely unacceptable by ordinary standards: they erupt into wild laughter which, in Lin-ji's vivid expression,[103] “shakes heaven and earth”; they emit deafening exclamations that, according to Chan texts, could render listeners “deaf and blind for three days” or even cause them to faint; they use profanity and make indecent sounds; they burn sutras and images of Buddhist deities. Lin-ji himself, upon experiencing “enlightenment”, struck his temporary teacher Da-yu (to whom Huang-bo had sent him for training) three times under the ribs, then returned to his original mentor Huang-bo and slapped him across the face. Such behavior would have been unthinkable among patriarchs of other Buddhist schools.
While Chan “enlightenment” is not pathological – and despite their seemingly “insane” conduct, most Chan mentors maintained sound mental health, as did carnival participants – the methods used in Chan Buddhism to restructure “normal” mental patterns were so radical that they occasionally caused genuine psychological disturbances in students, collectively termed “Chan disease”. This condition bears some resemblance to the professional affliction of shamans – “shamanic disease” or “shamanic hysteria”– common in archaic traditions. It's worth noting, however, that in Chan Buddhism such disorders were exceptions rather than the rule, and experienced mentors knew effective treatments when they occurred.
The extreme radicalism of Chan psychotechnology – which differed fundamentally from the Hindu and Buddhist yoga practiced in other schools – connects it to the “shamanic technique of ecstasy” closely associated with ancient Chinese festival traditions which, as Granet's description suggests, incorporated these techniques as essential elements. Historical records indicate that male shamans (nan-wu) specialized in exorcism rituals in ancient China, inducing trance states through rhythmic sounds and exhausting dance.
The “technique of ecstasy” employed by Chinese shamans is characterized by dynamism (sharp bodily movements), radicalism (deliberately breaking down ordinary mental structures), and rapid achievement of the desired consciousness state – all within a single ritual. We've already noted Chan psychotechnology's equally radical nature. What distinguishes Chan practice is its insistence on spontaneous, instant enlightenment – a principle Lin-ji forcefully advocated – setting it apart from schools favoring gradual, sequential approaches to spiritual attainment.
Chan psychotechnology also uniquely combines passive (seated) meditation borrowed from Indo-Buddhist practices with active, dynamic forms of psychophysical influence: monotonous group walking, “meditation” during physical labor (nu-qing), pushing, pinching, striking, and similar techniques. Particularly close in their psychophysical parameters to shamanic ritual dances are the “martial arts” (wu-shu) practiced in Chan monasteries as effective psychotraining methods aligned with the Chan ideal of instantaneous comprehension of ultimate truth through active engagement – wrestling, boxing, fencing, and similar disciplines.[104]
Chan Buddhism is an ideology that has exerted and continues to exert a colossal influence on art. Therefore, we allowed ourselves to cite an extensive quote from an article by N. V. Abaev, the author of several works on the theory and practice of Chan Buddhism. This passage shows how Chan practitioners entering altered consciousness exhibit what appears as insanity to outside observers – manifesting as uncontrollable laughter and violent actions.
We saw earlier that in shamanic practice, similar behavior is the result of the influence of external rhythms and is accompanied by a pain ordeal. Shamanic practice neglected ethics.
N. V. Abaev notes that Chan Buddhism employs external rhythms extensively – through wu-shu movements and other dynamic psychophysical techniques. Wu-shu dances inherently embody aggression, reflecting their martial origins. It is interesting that contemplation of wu-shu can lead not only to mystical, but also to creative enlightenment: “The famous artist (Wu Tao-zi) after watching the sword dance of the military leader Pei Min, as soon as the latter finished, grabbed a brush and in an instant completed (his painting) – it was as if he was helped by God”. (Zhu Jin-yuan. Tan-chao Minghua nu. About famous masters of the Tang period. “Wang Shi Hua Yuan” vol. 3. Shanghai, 1932).[105]
Here is what E. V. Zavadskaya writes about the role of ethical categories in the structure of Chan Buddhism:
“According to the teaching of the Chan mentor Huang-bo (9th century), there are three stages of ethical behavior. At the lowest, people follow prescriptions hoping for a reward. At the middle, prescriptions are carried out without any calculation for benefit. This is the stage to which many Christians aspire, thinking that nothing higher exists. But Chan recognizes a third stage: the absence of any thought about the moral and immoral.”[106]
“A special group of philosophical categories in Hui-neng's system[107] consists of ethical concepts: good and evil, enlightenment and ignorance, enlightenedness and unenlightenedness, etc. Such a series of oppositions is considered by the author of 'The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch' (Hui-neng) only at the profane level. Virtue and merit, transgressions and delusions are attributes of the phenomenal world and all of them are neutralized at the level of the Absolute.[108]
We see that the role of ethics in the preparation of Chan Buddhist adepts is not comparable to the role of ethics in Mahayana Buddhism and even more so in Christianity. This follows inevitably from the concept of “sudden enlightenment” – a state potentially accessible to anyone, adept or novice alike – just as initiation rites granted all participants “communion with spirits” through tortures, regardless of individual disposition.
As for torture and the pain ordeal, here is what I. V. Abaev writes in the already mentioned article:
“...paradoxical dialogues, which revived the archaic form of verbal dueling in Chan Buddhism, acquire exceptionally important significance. The main goal of dialogues between Chan 'mentors' and their students was to cause a 'breakthrough to enlightenment' in the student by driving him into a desperately hopeless situation. Therefore, the dialogues had a sharply dramatic character, pouring out into veritable duels, in terms of the intensity of the struggle not inferior, according to Chan authors, to 'fencing with real swords'. There is no exaggeration in this comparison and, moreover, in relation to some cases, it can be understood not figuratively, but literally. For example, the 'mentor' Shi-gong tested his students 'at the point of an arrow': he aimed at them with a bow and demanded an immediate answer. If we consider that various martial arts were cultivated in Chan monasteries – particularly the famous 'Shaolin school of wrestling' that originated in the Shaolin-si monastery and included training with various cold weapons – it becomes quite plausible that real swords might have been used in these teaching interactions. In Lin-ji's school, at least, 'mentors' very often used wooden monastic staffs, and their students tried to block the blow and even sometimes fought back, if, of course, they dared”.[109]
“It has already been noted that in the psychophysiological aspect, Chan practice in some ways returns to the culture of the primitive, to initiation rites.[110] It is also important to note that in Chan Buddhism, the symbolism of ancient mysteries was recreated in the most general schematic features. Each Chan adept before his 'breakthrough to enlightenment' – which meant his transition to a qualitatively different level – had to experience a symbolic death, the sign of which was chaotic mental states ('great doubt'). 'Great death' (da-si) was followed by 'great awakening' (da-zi) to a new life, when the order of things destroyed by 'great doubt' was restored.”[111]
Thus, in the psychophysiological practice of Zen, one can find three significant elements: first, the custom of tortures (both verbal and physical); second, the practice of shocking (where 'mentors' grabbed students by the chest, stunned them with a cry of 'hē!', stealthily crept up and beat them with sticks, or suddenly asked absurd questions that students had to answer under threat of beating);[112] and third, traces of ideas about the death and resurrection of the adept undergoing training. Let us recall that in the initiation rite, the initiate who entered the building where the ritual of initiation took place was thought to be swallowed by the animal ancestor and came out of the building only after reaching ecstasy, a state of “communion with spirits” which was presented as an act of birth of a qualitatively new being with a new name, new memory, etc.
It is very interesting that, generally speaking, Chan “mentors” did not reject seated meditation. The founder of Chan Buddhism, Bodhidharma, understood spiritual practice only as seated meditation, devoid of visual images. In our model, all elements linking Chan “enlightenment” with shamanic ecstasy share one key feature: the use of external rhythms to influence the practitioner. And it can be observed that in the systems known to us that induce altered states of consciousness, those that employ external rhythms typically disregard ethics. Conversely, ethics holds paramount importance in systems that produce altered states without using dynamic forms of psychophysical influence – that is, without relying on external rhythms. Yet it is precisely the first group of systems – those using external rhythms – that fosters the rapid development of art.
The poetry of peoples at a primitive stage of development still enchants us to this day – it was then that myths and songs were formed, which Homer summarized,[113] it is to those forgotten times that the origin of epic cycles dates back. The teaching of Chan gave such a powerful impetus to the development of painting, poetry, and calligraphy that echoes of it can be found in the most unexpected places: in the prose of the prominent American prose writer J. Salinger, the German prose writer H. Hesse, in the philosophy of the forerunner of existentialism Kierkegaard, in Matisse's painting, in Mahler's music, in A. Schweitzer's philosophy of life.[114]
Interestingly, in recent decades in the West, a sharp increase in drug consumption (drugs are connected, as we have already mentioned, with shamanic practice) was accompanied by a surge of increased interest in Chan Buddhism in the Japanese variant (Zen), as well as the emergence of psychedelic art, that is, art generated by drugs. Psychedelic music, with its heavy, dominant rhythms, appears to be a “secondary wave of spirit-world gifts” – echoing those bestowed upon humanity in pre-shamanic eras. This music's aggressive, psychologically disruptive qualities and its relationship to specific altered consciousness states are unmistakable. It is known that psychedelic art emerged following the appearance of the drug LSD.
Seventeen centuries ago in China, something similar was happening. In connection with the Taoist teaching on longevity, a fashion for hallucinogenic potions (yao) appeared. The most famous of them are the “cold food powder” (another name – “powder of five stones” and “magic mushroom” (lingzhi). Adherents of the “Wind and Flow” (Fengliu) style – famous poets, artists, and calligraphers (Xie Lingyun, Wang Xi Zhi, Bao Zhao, Gu Kaizhi, and other “celebrities”, as adherents of the “fengliu” style were called), constantly used elixirs. This had a detrimental effect on their psyche. According to L. E. Bezhin, celebrities were often visited by painful visions, with which the thought of suicide was not infrequently connected.[115]
Scholars reasonably interpret the fantastic landscapes in Chinese “wandering poems” of that period as hallucination-induced visions. Cao Zhi wrote:
Having thrown away
The earthly husk
Piercing the fog,
I rushed into the sky.
I fly
Over Lake Dinghu...
(interlinear translation from Russian poetic translation by L. Cherkassky)
“...and it seems this is not just a product of creative fantasy – this flight, like those described by his fellows, he saw more clearly than simple imagination would allow”.[116]
E. V. Zavadskaya, who dedicated a special work to the study of the aesthetics of the “magic mushroom” (Lingzhi),[117] believes that the hallucinogenic effect of the mushroom was perceived as spiritual enlightenment, and that engagement with this stimulant was akin to the psycho-physical practice of Chan Buddhism.
Thus, the “enlightenment” achieved by Chan-Buddhist adepts was akin to the effect of hallucinogenic stimulants. In our model, this is another confirmation of the intermediate nature of Chan practice.
We have already said that both shamanic ecstasy and the enlightenment of Chan adepts were accompanied by insane laughter and violent aggressive outbursts (”enlightenment” of a Buddhist hermit is accompanied by a smile, as is the “enlightenment” of a Christian saint). Folk holidays (carnival) were also accompanied by the element of laughter. Many researchers have spoken about the sacred nature of this laughter (Bakhtin, Propp, Abaev, Sofronova, and others). In one of his most impressive stories, the writer, Nobel Prize laureate Pär Lagerkvist turned to the cult of Apollo (the novel Sibyllan, “The Sibyl”). He recreates the picture of the process of divination and draws attention to the fact that in some frescoes Apollo was depicted with an idiotic smile. A drunken idiotic smile is also found in some depictions of Dionysus. The cult of Dionysus is associated with carnival, with bacchanalia, sometimes turning into bloody frenzied orgies (according to myth, it was the bacchantes in a state of “sacred madness” who tore Orpheus apart).
The cult of Apollo is associated with soothsayers. Apollo is the god of art. Earlier, we cited A. F. Losev's work stating that Apollo was specifically associated with everything structured and ordered in the world – which, in our model, includes semantic series.
Thus, aggressiveness, “sacred insanity” and intoxicants share a surprising kinship with semantic structuring of reality, prophetic abilities, and artistic creation. And with this same complex, the laughing principle is connected: laughter or a smile. We are interested in the connection between laughter and the rapid breaking of mental structures.
As Abaev's analysis demonstrates, shamanism employs techniques for radical disruption of established mental patterns. It also uses laughter – wild, insane laughter accompanies the shaman's ecstasy. We have already mentioned that a Chan-Buddhist adept laughs insanely and commits aggressive acts in a state of enlightenment. The state of insanity, accompanied by wild laughter, was associated with death during the time of initiation rites – with death and new birth.
In the system of autotraining, published by Vladimir Levi in the book “The Art of Being Yourself”,[118] one can find exercises for relaxing the facial muscles. Those who have achieved relaxation of the facial muscles know that in a relaxed state, the face stretches into a smile. Thus, the expressionless smile on the face of Buddha turns out to be connected with the technique of meditation. The result of using the technique of meditation in Mahayana Buddhism is a gradual transition to an altered state of consciousness. And the gradual transition is accompanied not by wild laughter, but by a smile.
In Chapter 2, we suggested that the comic effect in literary parody is associated with a sudden disruption of the hypnotizing rhythm, that is, with a sharp transition from a hypnotic state of consciousness to an ordinary one. Judging by the behavior of shamans and Chan adepts, not only a sharp transition from an altered state of consciousness to an ordinary one is accompanied by laughter, but also the transition from an ordinary state of consciousness to an altered one. Only in the latter case, laughter is characterized by observers as “insane”. “Insane laughter” means essentially that the connection between laughter and mental illnesses has been recognized since ancient times.
Mental illnesses lead to an altered state of consciousness. It is known that holy fools often suffered from epilepsy. In Russia, holy fools were treated as “God's” people. In the Chinese tradition, epilepsy appears as a “high disease” associated with the state of “enlightenment”.[119] And some forms of epilepsy known to medicine turn out to be connected with bursts of causeless laughter.
It is known that laughter accompanies other types of mental disorders as well. The relationship between religious-mystical consciousness and pathological mental states warrants dedicated investigation. Another worthy subject for special research would be the connection between altered states of consciousness induced by religious practices and those states we term “poetic inspiration”.
We have seen that various methods of mental reorganization, adopted by followers of different teachings, lead to different altered states of consciousness. In the Chinese tradition, it was customary to compare not just the texts of works of art, but the very nature of the corresponding inspirations. “The inspiration of Li Gonglin is not very elevated” – this is how the outstanding artist, calligrapher and art historian Mi Fu spoke about a major contemporary artist.[120] So, Mi Fu believed that there are different types of inspirations.
Inspiration yields a complete world-model where everything interconnects, pulses with life, every element serving a purpose, nothing extraneous. And the essence of this model is determined by the nature of inspiration, by the myth which, like a hidden spring, drives the model.
In chapter 5, models created in a state of “shamanic” inspiration were presented (this applies to a greater extent to M. Tsvetaeva and to a lesser extent to M. Svetlov). The mythological level of these models is the level of fairly primitive shamanic representations.
Now we will try to identify other types of inspiration that generate models whose mythological level has a more, so to speak, Christian-Buddhist character.
ANALYSIS 1
O sky, sky, you will appear in my dreams!
It cannot be that you have gone completely blind,
And the day burned out like a white page:
A little smoke and a little ash!
(O. E. Mandelstam, 1917)
We have already mentioned earlier that according to V. Ya. Propp, blindness goes back to invisibility, inaccessibility. An inhabitant of the earthly world becomes blind in the world of spirits. Conversely, spirits from the otherworld become blind when entering our earthly realm. The sky does not see the human in the world of Mandelstam's verse. But the human also sees the sky only in dreams. The sky is inaccessible to humans, therefore it does not see them. The sky represents a lost realm, accessible solely through dreams, only during night. The sky connects to night through blindness's darkness.
But the sky is also expanse, it is Light. And this light turns out to be inaccessible – during the day. Consequently, in this model, day and light are not the same thing. Light is inherent in the sky, and therefore inherent to sleep and to Night (“Light – as the ancients conceived it – is not completely identified with the sun. Therefore, in the mythology of different peoples, there is a known duality: along with the deity of sun and light, there can exist a special god of the Sun, as a celestial body”)…[121]
Day without Light is mere emptiness. It consumes itself, paradoxically producing light, as the spent day yields to night – and to true Light. Burning brings light. At the same time, only a little smoke and ash remain from the day itself. Smoke, ash – the opposite of light, as day is opposed to light. The insignificance, transience of smoke and ash is the natural essence of the day deprived of light. The lost sky and the day that burns out to enable its return are incommensurable entities. However, it was not always so. The human cannot believe in the blindness, inaccessibility of the sky. He has not yet become accustomed to its loss. All this is an interpretation of the myth of the lost Paradise.
Mandelstam contrasts two worlds – the real world and the lost world. But if in Tsvetaeva and Svetlov, the world opposed to the real was perceived as the world of death, and it was precisely the inversions of this world, its transformation into the world of life, that evoked a specific mental state in us, then in Mandelstam the world of the sky is not connected with death. It is rather a cradle, forever lost, but not forgotten. There is no juxtaposition of life and death, although the moment of “inversion” is present here too (day turns into darkness, and night – into light). The world set against reality – the world of the sky, the world of the primeval cradle, is also connected with life.
This is a different mythological level, qualitatively different from the level presented in Chapter 5.
ANALYSIS 2
The reveille sounds... from my hands
Ancient Dante falls,
On my lips the begun verse
Unfinished becomes silent –
The spirit flies far away.
Familiar sound, living sound,
How often you resounded
There, where quietly I developed
In a long-past time.
(A. S. Pushkin, 1829)
Reveille is the signal for waking up. Reveille sounds on the border between sleep and wakefulness, night and day, darkness and light, active life and night visions. Reveille can sound either in the morning to wake soldiers or in the evening to signal bedtime. We believe that Pushkin means the morning reveille, since in this verse it is a “living sound”. It is unlikely that going to sleep would be associated with a living sound. In addition, the reveille signal causes a sharp, sudden change in psychological state. A loud sound can wake a person up, but is unlikely to instantly put him to sleep. Therefore, in our analysis, we will proceed from the assumption that the reveille in the verse is a signal for awakening.
LEVEL OF SEMANTIC SERIES
The seme of silence saturates the following images: 1) unfinished verse, falling silent on the lips; 2) quiet development; 3) long-past time (something ancient is distant in time, and just as distant sounds reach us faintly if at all, so memories of ancient times come to us quietly); 4) ancient Dante (the word “ancient” contains the seme of oldness, antiquity, and we have already spoken about the connection between antiquity and silence).
The following images of the verse are saturated with the seme of freedom: 1) the spirit, flying away as far as it wants; 2) quiet development. The seme of awakening can be found in the images of reveille, living sound.
The seme of sleep permeates the images of the tome of Dante falling from the hands, the flying away spirit; the quieting verse. The seme of life is contained in the images of quiet development and the sound of reveille, the living sound. The seme of inconspicuousness is contained in the image of quiet development. In it, one can also find the seme of naturalness.
MYTHOLOGEMIC LEVEL 1
The sounds of reveille cause awakening. Waking up is associated with “dawn” – which is one of the most powerful archetypal images, saturated with the seme of life, birth. However, in this model of the world, awakening is very similar to falling asleep, dying, or transitioning to some other mental state, different from wakefulness: the falling tome, the verse interrupted mid-word, the flight of the spirit – a typical set of images saturated with the seme of sleep or death (the birth of verse – as well as music – is saturated with the seme of life, fertility, and the death of music or verse at the archetypal level goes back to cosmic catastrophe, disintegration).
The spirit flies away to a non-existent illusory world, inaccessible to humans in the normal state, to an unreal world. Like the sky in Mandelstam's verse, this unreal world in Pushkin's verse is not the world of death, but the world of the primeval cradle, the primary source, the world of the lost beginning.
The following semes are associated with this world: life, silence, antiquity, naturalness and freedom (the last two semes are connected with the image of quiet development: quiet development is an inconspicuous and free development, not distorted by external influence and not distorting the natural order of the surrounding world with its course; development in itself, independent, as in the mother's womb).
The seme of naturalness bridges quiet development and the image of reveille: reveille is a natural sound in the world of quiet development; it is familiar and living. The seme of freedom connects the world of quiet development with the flying spirit. Antiquity (remoteness in time) binds the world of the primeval cradle and the ancient tome of Dante. The seme of silence links the world of the primeval cradle with the unfinished verse, frozen on the lips.
In Pushkin's verse, two worlds are depicted: the world before the signal of awakening and the world into which the poet's spirit penetrates after the signal, and the second world sharply replaces the first. However, it is interesting that the world which we will conditionally call “the world before awakening” as opposed to “the world after awakening” manifests itself in the following images: 1) reveille; 2) ancient Dante; 3) unfinished verse. Each of these images is semantically connected with the unreal world of the primeval cradle, as was shown above. Thus, the world before awakening, consisting only of components semantically connected with the unreal world of the primeval cradle, suddenly itself begins to acquire an unreal character.
The free flight of the spirit turns out to be a journey from one illusory world to another, equally illusory. But these worlds differ from each other: only the second world has the seme of freedom.
The only reliable support in that shaky mirage, into which the space of the verse has turned before our eyes, the only familiar ground is the sound of reveille. This sound is saturated with the seme of life, vigor, but this sound's dual nature fundamentally diverges from the duality characterizing other images in the analyzed verse. Reveille is a signal, a border between two worlds, a bridge thrown across the abyss. Reveille is a brief real moment between two non-existent worlds.
The spirit's journeys through illusory worlds transcend temporal constraints. Time itself stops at the moment of return to the world of the primeval cradle.
The sound of reveille, by virtue of being a sound, possesses temporal extension. Behind the sound of reveille emerges a third world in the verse model – one with genuine temporal dimension. This world is merely hinted at in the poem: the real earthly world. We intuitively recognize this third world as ephemeral – inheriting the transitory nature of the reveille sound that serves as its emblem. It exists as a kind of island doomed to disappear in a sea of non-existence, a rhythmically emerging and vanishing bridge between two unreal worlds.
This structure strikingly parallels Buddhist reincarnation doctrine, which portrays earthly existence as a momentary flash within infinite cycles of rebirth.
MYTHOLOGEMIC LEVEL 2
The reveille signal is the boundary between day and night. The moment between day and night is a frontier, insurmountable for inhabitants of the spirit world. And the spirit, hearing this signal, flies far away – to itself, to its world, until the next midnight. The departure of the spirit naturally entails the death of the verse (the night nature of art was shown earlier, when we discussed poetry being perceived as a gift from spirits).
MYTHOLOGEMIC LEVEL 3
Until now, in the verses we have analyzed, we have inevitably encountered inverse symmetry of real and unreal worlds. Sometimes they switched places before our eyes. But always one of the two worlds remained (or became) the real world.
In Pushkin's poem under analysis, we unexpectedly encounter a fundamentally different construction: what is contrasted is not the real world with the unreal, but one unreal world with another, substantially unreal. One altered state of consciousness is juxtaposed against another, both removed from ordinary awareness. Moreover, the transition to another consciousness in the verse is shown as the death of creativity. It is precisely the death of the verse and the falling from the poet's hands of the tome of Dante that precedes the transition to a state characterized by a feeling of naturalness and freedom.
Why did the poet need to show the death of the verse?
We consider the text as a complete model of the world, a living body in which everything is interconnected. This approach to poetic analysis precludes the possibility of random or accidental imagery. What seems random at the profane surface level should find explanation as we delve deeper into the text. We have already revealed the similarity between the ideas about the world in the model of Pushkin's poem and the Buddhist model of the world. The identification of the next level of the verse is based on the further development of this theme.
Earlier, a brief characterization of Taoism was given – a teaching closely connected with Chan Buddhism. Chinese thought understands Tao as a kind of primary principle permeating the Universe. The form of Tao's activity is non-action.
By non-action is meant activity that does not violate the natural course of events determined by Tao – the primordial principle. If a chip is carried away by a current, then it floats, although it does not do anything itself to float – such is the natural order of things, determined by Tao.
A person who has comprehended Tao is like this chip. His actions do not interfere with anything, they are natural, for they are subordinated to Tao. From the outside, the actions of a Tao-person look like non-actions, for they are dissolved in the natural order of things, and therefore not visible.
“Quiet development” in the world of the primeval cradle is very reminiscent of Taoist non-action. The quietly developing poet develops by himself, not being subjected to influences from outside and not disturbing the natural order of things with his development. Therefore, his development is inconspicuous, quiet. This is how a child grows in the mother's womb.
But only a person who has comprehended Tao can live according to the laws of Tao. In order to comprehend Tao, one must destroy oneself as a personality, erase the boundaries between one's individuality and the world around. Only in this case is it possible to reach Tao. Since creativity is an individual process, comprehending Tao requires suppressing creative potentials. Taoists and Chan Buddhists highly valued creative inspiration, believing that through creativity the poet expresses Tao.
But poetic enlightenment and mystical enlightenment, though they seemed somewhat close, were not commensurate. Mystical enlightenment was the ultimate goal. Poetic, creative enlightenment was viewed as a step toward mystical enlightenment.
And if we look carefully at the text of Pushkin's verse, we will see in it a mysterious reflection of the described Taoist ideas that penetrated into the Russian Lyceum context. Indeed, the signal of reveille causes the death of the verse, which freezes on the lips, and the poet transitions to a state of “quiet development” so similar to Taoist non-action.
Moreover, in order to immerse oneself in this altered state of consciousness, it was necessary to kill the state of consciousness associated with structuring representations of the world into semantic series – a state associated with creative activity.
It is interesting that in Taoist texts, the moment of enlightenment and comprehension of Tao is often connected with awakening. It is described as awakening in the model under consideration as well. Moreover, awakening becomes possible thanks to a sound from the material world.
Only through phenomena of the world, possessed of a dual nature, can one immerse oneself in the depths of one's “Self”.
Bashō had a haiku with similar problematics: “Old pond. A frog jumped in. Splash of water”.
The famous researcher of Zen Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki, wrote regarding this haiku that only through the jump of the frog (a phenomenon of the material world) can one enter the realm of timeless time, similar to the old pond, in which nothing happens[122]. And in Pushkin's poem, as mentioned above, time as such does not exist, and awakening is connected with a phenomenon of the material world – the sound of reveille – and turns out to be an entry into the realm of timeless time.
It seems that using the method of semantic series, we were able to identify three types of inspiration, each of which generates remarkable verses and, nevertheless, qualitatively differs from the others. This difference lies in the peculiarities of the altered state of consciousness inherent in a given type of inspiration. Each type of inspiration generates its own mythologemic structures and, consequently, has an analog among mystical altered states of consciousness, with which the corresponding type of inspiration is somehow connected.
We are aware that the three types of inspiration identified by us are equally legitimate and, of course, do not exhaust the entire diversity of types of inspiration. We focused on these three types because, in our opinion, they can form a kind of initial coordinate system in which the subject can then be investigated, taking into account that any poet should in principle have access to all types of inspiration.
The first type of inspiration is Tsvetaeva's. The mythologemic structures here present a clear opposition between the real world and the world of death – a different existence perceived as an attractive and mysterious force connected with enigmatic vitality: dangerous, alluring, and inaccessible. The analog of the first type of inspiration is shamanic ecstasy and initiation rites. These practices gave rise to the idea of an ancestral spirit realm whose inhabitants possess supernatural abilities: they control the elements, ensure hunting success, and regulate human life of people – thereby becoming a source of life themselves.
The second type of inspiration – Christian in nature – we observed in Mandelstam's work. His quatrain also presents a clear opposition between two worlds: real and unreal. However, unlike in Tsvetaeva's work, the unreal world – the sky – connects not with death but with light and life. The very fact of its loss suggests that this world once belonged to the poet, with the sky functioning as a primeval cradle. The analog of Mandelstam's inspiration, in our view, is the altered state of consciousness that gave rise to the concept of afterlife as super-existence. For Mandelstam, the choice lies not between death and life, but between ordinary life and a more luminous, eternal life.
And, finally, in Pushkin's work we discover the third type of inspiration – Chan-Buddhist in nature.
As with Mandelstam, Pushkin's world of the primeval cradle lacks any “mortal” coloring and emerges as a realm of absolute freedom. Yet what opposes it is not the real world, but another unreal one – equally disconnected from the semantics of death.
With Pushkin, we encounter not ordinary consciousness contrasted with altered states, but rather two different altered states in dialogue with each other.
How did Taoist ideology find its way into Pushkin's poem? Is this merely coincidental? We firmly maintain that nothing in a poem can be accidental – all parts and details must interact meaningfully at some level, like cells in a living organism. Verse's structural anatomy remains a largely uncharted territory. While we make no claim to have fully investigated this subject, our analyses clearly demonstrate the profound interconnectedness within the organism of verse. Human consciousness generates an organism-like system with its own internal coherence. Though the exact verse-generating mechanism eludes us, we recognize that when operating correctly, it admits no random elements. Every element subordinates itself to a governing principle.
Have we fully uncovered this principle? We cannot make such a claim, as we cannot be certain that all levels of the verse have been revealed. Readers will observe how each deeper level illuminates the verse's meaning – rendering it tangible and unveiling new semantic dimensions. Future explorations of deeper levels will inevitably yield different interpretations. But just as each level we uncovered enriched rather than invalidated previous readings, future discoveries will likely expand our understanding rather than overturn it.
However, further exploration of verse's depths will require different analytical methods. As for the method of semantic series – whose application and exploration of possibilities has been the focus of this work – we believe that at the stage of creating a typology of inspirational states of consciousness, if not the method, then the authors have (for now) exhausted their capabilities.
SVERDLOVSK, 1981-1985