سنڌي ورچوئل لائبرري

CHAPTER V PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)

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Was Shelley a Mystic?

It is a fashion with some writers loosely to label as mysticism anything in Art a Literature that is out of the common of challenges the old order. This confusion of ideas is responsible for Shelley being reckoned by some among the mystic poets. An American writer, evidently not content with Shelley being designated as a mere mystic, goes to the length of calling him “a true Hermetist and Theosophist.”[1] Oliver Elton believes that Shelley “had or came to have, some of the qualities of the saint.”[2] For my part, I should like to apotheosise him, if I could.

It is curious that these writers neither define the terms they use nor substantiate the statements they make by facts derived from the life or the writings of the poet. Recently, however, Barnefield has attempted a study of what regards as Shelley’s mystical experiences, and has quoted evidence from the poet’s own work.[3] In my opinion, however, he has failed to prove his point. What he has succeeded in establishing is that Shelley was, to use the language of Psychical Research, was subject to “mental vertigo, sudden sinkings, faintings and swoons,” and saw strange apparitions shortly before his death.[4]

I do not think that anyone, who is acquainted with the Proceeding of the Society for Psychical Research, will fail to recognise much that is exactly similar in Shelley’s experiences. The case of Mrs. Piper watched under test conditions and ably discussed in the Proceeding, by Frederic. W. H. Myers, Richard Hodgson, and Sir Oliver Lodge among others, offers a close parallel to that of Shelley. But psychical phenomena, however fascinating, do not constitute mysticism. They are, as I have said elsewhere,[5] incidental to mysticism, but by no means an integral part of it. For, they are rooted in the senses, subtler no doubt than the physical, but still of the nature of senses. They may be due to a rapturous exaltation of the [senses, transfigured by imagination as in the case of Keats; the senses, so to say, create a glorified vision of what they perceive. Or again, the senses may create visibly a scene which might be a mere projection of the imagination, as once happened in the case of Shelley. This experience not being mentioned by Barnefield, I shall briefly describe here.

After Byron had been reading aloud the lines about a lady’s breast fro Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’, Shelly fell into a reverie and saw a vision of a woman with eyes in place of nipples.[6] Now this is a purely subjective experience; its objective source is apparent.

I am prepared to admit that Shelley had in him the makings of a mystic. Had it not been for his untimely death, he would probably have attained to illumination. He was gifted, even like a mystic, with a highly sensitive organism, which eventually would have made a rich response to the facts of the spiritual world. Towards the end of his life, he began to realise the inadequacy of the existing order of things to satisfy the inner man. Consequently dejection and despondency began to steal upon his soul. He saw the ultimate frailty and evanescence of all earthly things, which found pathetic expression in his shorter poems. He is blasted by disappointment even like his ‘Alastor’. And we are told by Peacock that Shelly, at this period of his life, used often to repeat to himself the former’s lines from Sophocles:

“Man’s happiest lot is not to be,

And when we tread life’s thorny steep

Most blest are they who earliest free

Descend to Death’s eternal sleep.”

Further, like the mystic, Shelley felt most deeply the power of love. But, as Clutton-Brock truly remarks,[7] he made too much of sexual love, mistaking it for that divine love which comes only from absolute abstraction from all that is sensuous and earthly. His early idea of paradise was a place in which passion would be always new, and yet always perfectly satisfied; still an appetite, yet not subject to the laws of appetite.[8] He sought the gratification of his hankering after the Ideal Beauty in the form of a woman, who would be at once a sister, a friend, a leader of men, and a soul-mate. This quest forms the theme of ‘Alastor’, and of ‘The Revolt of Islam’. In ‘Epipsychidion’, he relates how his whole life has been spent in seeking “the shadow of that idol of my thought.” He does not understand that his insatiable thirst for the ideal woman is nothing but the stirring within him of love for that Archetypal Beauty, of which all outwardly earthly beauty is but a symbol. Rumi, than whom none better understood the psychology of the budding mystic, referring to this quest, exhorts the aspirant thus:

“Love felt for outward forms,

Has as its real object neither the woman’s face nor form.

Whatever is beloved is not a mere empty form,

Whether your beloved be of earth or heaven.

Whatever be the form you have fallen in love with–

Why do you forsake it the moment life leaves it?

The form is still there; whence, then, this satiety?

Ah! Lover, consider well what is really your beloved.

If a thing perceived by outward senses must still love it;

And since true love should increase constancy,

How can constancy fail while form abides?

But the truth is, the sun’s beams strike the wall,

And the wall only reflects that borrowed light.

Why give your heart to mere colds, O simpleton?

Go, seek the source of light which shines always!”[9]

Further, Rumi says that an aspiring soul may hanker after this woman or that, but in the end, he is bound to be drawn to the “Queen of Beauty and Love”. For,

“Woman is ray of God, not a mere mistress,

The Creator’s Self, not a mere creature.”[10]

Rumi has also a kind word to say with regard to excessive impulse to sexual love in the case of specially gifted men like Shelley. It is wise, he argues, to keep to the golden mean; but the mean is always relative. What is excess in one man is moderation in another. And especially, he who is goaded by love for the Ideal Beauty, though he does not for the moment understand its real nature, is not subject to the outward law.

“Though the path of the mean is wisdom,

Yet is this same mean also relative.

The water which is insufficient for a camel

Is like tan ocean to a mouse.

Whose has four loaves as his daily allowance?

Whether he eats two or three, he observes the mean.

But if he eats all four he transgresses the mean,

A very slave to greed, and voracious as a duck.”[11]

Shelley is now in conflict with himself. His love impulses are unsatisfied, and yet his ardent desire, for Ideal Beauty remains.

“To many mortal frames I rashly sought

The shadow of that idol of my thought,

And some were fair– but beauty dies away:

And some were wise– but honeyed words betray.”[12]

He is beginning to awake from the dream of life, and hopes to rear on the “wreck of his hopes” a larger hope, but it is too late. He descends to an untimely grave. In his ‘Essay of life’, he asks “What is Love?” and the answer is: “Ask him who lives, what is Life?” Indeed, the conviction had now dawned on him that

“However much we describe and explain love,

When we know truelove, we are ashamed of our words.

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,

But love unexplained is better.”[13]

Shelley dies in a state which the Hindu mystic calls ‘Vairagya’, the “Exhaustion of the outward-leading forces of love, and revulsion from attachment to perishable forms of beauty.”[14] He is beginning to hear the call of the Eternal, and realise that Ideal Beauty alone could bring satisfaction and rest. And had he lived, he would have, according to the Hindu mystic, passed within the ‘four portals’ that lead to true knowledge, viz. dispassionate calm of mind, reflection, contentment and association with the mystics.[15]

“In the Bhagavad-Gita, Prince Arjuna questions Lord Krishna regarding the fate of a soul like Shelley’s, which “floats ’twixt earth and heaven’ and Lord Krishna thus replies:

“He is not lost, thou Son of Pritha![16] No!

Nor earth, nor heaven is forfeit, even for him,

Because no heart that holds one right desire

Treadeth the road of loss! He who should fail,

Desiring righteousness, cometh at death

Unto the Region of the Just, dwells there

Measureless years, and being born anew,

Beginning life again in some fair home

Amid the mild and happy. It may chance,

He doth descend into a Yogin’s[17] house

On virtue’s breast; but that is rare! Such birth

Is hard to be obtained on this earth, Chief!

So hath he back again what heights of heart!

He did achieve, and so he strives anew

To perfectness, with better hope, dear Prince!

For by the old desire he is drawn on

Unwittingly.[18]

Shelley’s Philosophy of Life:

Although Shelley was not a mystic, his philosophy of life, in spite of its general vagueness and rather speculative character, bears certain affinities to that of the mystic. This perhaps, is due to his being “one of those men who are temperament born Platonists.”[19] I shall here pass under review some of the salient features of his faith.

(1) God:

No one now seriously holds the view, which at one time was the fashion, that Shelley was an atheist. In his youth he essayed to prove the non-existence of God, but his negation was solely directed against a “God of human error,”[20] a personal God who is popularly conceived as “a venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an earthly king.”[21] Even as early as ‘The Revolt of Islam’, he believed in the existence of a Supreme being. In the Preface, he states: “The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself.”

As a matter of fact, Shelley’s view was that of the Hindu mystic, who affirms that God in His pure essence is beyond the sphere of our knowledge, and even our conception. “He is unknown to those who know, and known to those who do not know.”[22] Nevertheless, God is implied in every experience, for every object in the world is grounded on Him. Shelley often attempts to reduce this Unknowable Being to the terms of the intellect. In doing so, he conceives of Him as beyond and above the world, but also within; at once immanent and transcendent. He is the One eternal substratum of the Many. He is “That beauty in which all things work and move.”[23] He “penetrates and clasps and fills the world,”[24] both as Love and Beauty.

But more frequently Shelley speaks of God as Light. He is “the light of Life,”[25] the ‘Universal Sun’[26] who “sustains the world from beneath and kindles it above.”[27] One who is acquainted with mystical literature cannot fail to notice that to the mystic God is not merely Beauty and Love, but above all, Light. God is light and the source of light, says Rumi in his Masnavi. In the following lines, he speaks exactly like Shelley:

“If the light of the Beloved did not sustain me,

How could I have consciousness of the past and future?

His light kindles me from right and left, from above and beneath,

It rests as a crown on my head, as a collar round my neck.”[28]

(2) The Universe:

The universe, according to Shelley, is but the ceaseless flux of Being. Though it maintains itself unchanged in appearance, it is being renewed every moment. It is like a stream that is sustained in its flow by ever new waters. In consequence of the rapid succession of Being, Spirit of Nature,[29] is one continuous vibration, an infinite growth, tending unconsciously upward to nobler development, purging itself of what is mean and base.’[30] The ‘Witch of Atlas’ prophesies the coming of a being who is to combine in himself the noblest characteristic of the two sexes. His arrival will usher in a new era, full of harmony and peace.

(3) Unity of Life:

Like the mystics, Shelly is conscious of the essential unity of the world and of all life. The underlying spirit is the same through out the universe. It only assumes different names and forms. It is the one in the Many, and survives all change and decay. All diversity has its origin in the human mind, “I, you, they are not signs of any actual difference…but merely marks employed to denote the different modifications of the one mind.[31] Rumi echoes the same thought:

“O You, who are above ‘we’ or ‘I’,

There is neither ‘we’ nor ‘I’ in sober truth.

It is you alone who pervade the being of all men and women,

When man and woman become one, you are that One!

When their union is dissolved, still you abide!

You have made these ‘we’ and ‘I’ for this purposes,

To wit, to play chess with thyem by yourself.

When these ‘we’ and ‘I’ shall become one Soul.

When they will be mingled in you, the Beloved.”[32]

(4) Love:

Shelley regards Love as the central and ever abiding principle of all things. It is “That light, whose smile kindles the universe.”[33] By it alone can one transcend the limits of personality and expand oneself to become the Self of all.[34] Like Plato, Wordsworth and other mystics, Shelly held that the human soul, in its pre-natal state, held converse with the Ideal Beauty, for which reason, in its sojourn on earth, the sight of beautiful things stirs it much more deeply than anything else. His love I all-embracing. It extends to all things, living as well as lifeless. Prometheus is the spirit of this type of love. He hates the spirit of evil and hate and like the Buddha and Christ, wishes “no living thing suffer pain,”[35] and will not curse even his persecutor. For, as the Buddha say:

“Evil swells the debts to pay,

Good delivers and acquits;

Shun evil, follow good; hold sway

Over thyself. This is the Way.”[36]

(5) Immortality:

We find in some of Shelley’s poems occasional hints of a belief in pre-existence and re-incarnation.[37] But, on the whole, he is more inclined to a faith in impersonal immortality, a faith which Tennyson characterises “as vague as all unsweet.”[38] His heart craved for the reemergence of the individual in the ‘general Soul’. There are many references to this “desire of the moth for the star,”[39] in his poems, but in a more pronounced degree in ‘Adonais’. He believes Keats to have become after death “a portion of the Eternal.”[40] Nay,

“He is made one with Nature: there is heard

His voice in all her music, from the moan

Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;

He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,

Spreading itself where that are Power may move

Which has withdrawn his being to its own;

Which wields the world with never-wearied love,

Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.”[41]

Now this is exactly the faith of the Hindu mystic. But he holds that impersonal immortality is possible of attainment only by a man who, like the Buddha, is fully awakened from the dream of life. For him, when death comes, there is no more the wheel of birth and death. He enters into the Universal Self, “like the streams into the ocean, leaving behind him his name and form.”[42]it is not, says the Hindu mystic, the falling of the drop into the infinite ocean; it is the whole ocean, becoming free form the fetters of ice, returning from his frozen state to what he is really and has never ceased to be, to his all-pervading eternal, almighty nature. Of such a one it is said, “He rises not nor sets. He neither is nor is not. He is not I; he is not thou. He shines in the sun. He rules over the world and dissolves it. He creates it anew. As either and as air, he supports all. As the earth, he bears the various races of living begins on his broad breast; as grasses, as groves, and as creepers, he gives forth the seeds and fruits that nourish. Whatever, indeed, appears, he becomes all that.”[43]

(6) Religion:

Formal religion, “Faith, and Obscene worm,”[44] was Shelley’s abhorrence. It was to him the source of all evil, and the cause of dissensions among mankind. It is the multitude of creeds and sects that calls forth the curse in ‘Hellas’:

“Be those a curse on them whose creed

Divides and multiplies the most high God.”[45]

Shelley, however, had no quarrel with religion per se. what he hated was the undue stress laid upon the non-essentials of religion, having their root in authority and deriving their sanction from dogma. His guiding principle was: “There is one road to peace and that is truth…..”[46] This is quite in accord with the Hindu Mystic’s rule of life, viz. “There is no higher religion than Truth.” Like the Persian mystic, Shelley held that “The ways of God are as the number of the souls of men.”[47] He believed that even in the grossest superstition as in the highest truth, the underlying impulse and aspiration is the striving after the pure and the good. It is, therefore, better not to disturb the faith of the ignorant, but to let them continue in their natural state, until they are advanced enough to grasp and appreciate abstract truths. The Bhagavad-Gita says, “Let not a wise man unsettle the mind of the ignorant.” And lastly, Rumi in his inimitable way has illustrated this truth by a very beautiful story. Moses once heard a shepherd praying to God as follows: “O God, show me where you are, that I may clean your shoes, comb your hair, mend your clothes, and fetch milk and curds.” Moses was scandalised and rebuked him, saying that God was a Spirit and needed no such ministrations. The shepherd was abashed at his rebuke and tearing his clothes; fled away into the desert. Then a voice from heaven was heard, saying:

“Why have you scared my servant away?

Your office is to reconcile my people with me,

But not to drive them away from me.

To each person have I allotted peculiar forms,

To each have I give peculiar usages.

I regard not externals nor language,

I look into the interior and the heart;

I look at the heart if it be humble,

Though the words may be the reverse of humble;

How long will you flirt with words and forms?

A burning heart is all I want.

Kindle in your heart the flame of Love,

And burn up all subtle thoughts and expressions.

O Moses, lovers of fair rites are one class,

But they whose hearts burn with love are another.”[48]

Conclusion:

It is evident that Shelley was no mystic, and yet in his views of life, he made a striking approach to the mystic. Like the latter, his gospel was the worship of beauty and truth, which did not concern itself with the forms and creeds of religion. He was essentially a poet, and as such, he saw life and the world through a haze of imaginative glamour. Nay, he was a celestial poet, whose soul was consumed with contempt for all that was the earth, earthy. In his impetuous hankering after the ideal, he succumbed sometimes to the ways of a voluptuary, but maintained an unsullied soul. Like Ben Johnson’s lily of a day, he was the plant and flower of light. He toiled not, neither did he spin; yet the world is full of his glory.

“A voice like flowers and music sweetly blended,

A fragile form but beauteous as Apollo’s;

A soul of light by the three Graces tended,

Eye like young Dian’s, when the deer she follows

Over the emerald lawns and sylvan hollows,

Such wert thou, Shelley, minstrel heaven-descended.”[49]

 

 

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[1] Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer by Charles Southeran.

[2] A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830.

[3] The Psychology of the Poet Shelley by Edward Carpenter and George Barnefield.

[4] The Psychology of the Poet Shelley by Edward Carpenter and George Barnefield.

[5] See Chapter I.

[6] See Dowden’s Life of Shelley. Volume II.

[7] Shelley: The Man and the Poet by A. Clutton-Brock.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Masnavi.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Masnavi.

[12] Epipsychidion. 267-270.

[13] Rumi: Masnavi.

[14] Yoga-vashishtha.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Patronymic of Prince Arjuna

[17] Mystic’s

[18] Chapter VI. Eng. tr. by jSir Edwin Arnold in ‘The Song Celestial’.

[19] Platonism in Shelley by L. Winstanley in ‘Essays and Studies’ by Members o The English Association. Vol. IV.

[20] Essay on Christianity.

[21] Essay on Christianity.

[22] Kena Up. II. 3.

[23] Adonais LIV. 2.

[24] Epipsychidion. 103.

[25] The Revolt of Islam. V. 51.

[26] Jane, Invitation. 69.

[27] Adonais. XLII, 9

[28] Masnavi.

[29] Queen Mab. I. 264, 275: Daemon. I. 186.

[30] Queen Mab.

[31] Essay on Life.

[32] Masnavi.

[33] Adonais. LIV. 1.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Prometheus I. 305

[36] ‘The Light of Asia’ by Sir Edwin Arnold.

[37] See, e.g. Cenci, Act. IV. Scene I.

[38] In Memoriam.

[39] Posthumous Poems: ‘One word’, II. 5.

[40] Adonais. XXXVIII. 7.

[41] Ibid. XLII.

[42] Prasna UP. VI. 5.

[43] Yoga-Vashishtha.

[44] The Revolt of Islam. V. 1·8.

[45] Prologue to Hellas. 178-179.

[46] Julian and Maddalo 347-48.

[47] Rumi: Masnavi.

[48] Rumi: Masnavi.

[49] E. V. Kenealy.

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