Emotional Relationship Between Man and His

EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
man AND HIS MAKER

It has been stated that the basis for our need to love lies in the experience of separateness and the resulting need to over come the anxiety of separateness by the experience of union. The religious form of love, that which is called the love of God, is psychologically speaking not different. It springs from the need to overcome separateness and to achieve union.

The dominating note of Indian religious poetry in the medieval period is that of an ecstasy, a longing of the devotee for union with God and to merge his identity in the Godhead. “In no other period of Indian History one finds so many saints and poets in different parts of the country, speaking different languages and dialects, (the utmost number of languages and dialects are found in India, when compared to any other country in the world); practising divergent rituals, belonging to different religious orders and yet behaving almost in an identical manner in their approach to God and the Bhakti Movement accepted all that suited its emotional need.

The images of the venerable sages sitting quietly like a still unflickering flame is being replaced by a ‘Mad Lover’ which is indeed the most conspicuous and the most recurrent imagery in the medieval religious poetry. It is indeed marked by a wild frenzy, an abundance, an excess – ‘a madness’ –the saints behaved so differently from the traditional social norms that the orthodox and the worldly wise called them ‘Mad’. But the common man was attracted towards them because of this ‘madness’ and it was this madness which the poets portrayed with great feelings and the saints themselves welcomed. It will be hardly an over­-statement to describe the medieval Indian Religious Poetry as the poetry dominated by the spirit of this ‘MADNESS’ which could also be understood in the light of ‘obsession’ ‘possession’ or a strong urge for belongingness too.

This word ‘mad’ I or ‘crazy’ attained a new connotation, in almost all the Indian Languages in the medieval period–Which is an evidence of the recognition of ‘madness’ as a significant element in spiritual life.

Bhakti movement was the movement of common people by and large, and it grew out of the emotional requirement of the people, of the common man who found himself everywhere in chains. He suddenly revolted against the conventions. The movement along with its protestant features, also voiced the joy of a liberated spirit. There was an abundance of emotions, emphasis on music and dance and poetry as mode of worship, a discovery of the poet, and beauty of the language of the people. The God of the Bhakti movement is no longer a transcendent and immanent reality beyond all comprehension and senses. It is a God close to the heart of the common man. At times the God or the deity appears as a child, at times as a friend, and more often as a lover longing to meet his beloved.

This relationship between MAN and his MAKER i.e. GOD, which begins with Love, submissions and then reaches a height which passes all the human understanding and this obsession or possession is often labeled as ‘madness’. Thus the intention is to bring out this common thread of emotions which from tine immemorial has been underlying every warp and woof of devotional music irrespective of caste, creed, faiths, nations, languages and cultural differences. It is this language of emotions which enables the seeker to seek Him and thus get the ‘Param-Anand’ which he longed for – and it is this language of emotions which could bind the hearts in this land, all across the sea and beyond.

Manikka Vasahar, the greatest of the Tamil Saiva Poets, who flourished in the tenth century says in one of his verses.

He filled in every limb
With love’s mad longing; and that I
Might climb
These whence is no return
He showed His beauty, made me His,
Ah; me
When shall I go to Him?

Someone not familiar with the historical facts relating to the emergence of Nayanmars of Tamilnadu would be tempted to see a direct influence of the Sufis on this verse, which no doubt provides remarkable similarity with the expressions common in Sufi Poetry.

Jalaluddin Rumi, the greatest of the Muslim mystic poets writes.
…..Its not (merely) one madness I have     midst the
sorrows of love;
nay but madness on madness on madness
and again ‘I have never desired reasons since
thou mad’st me mad;

This madness is an emotional stage of mind and need not be traced to any theological source, even though it was later given theological explanations.

Although we do not find any parallel to this state of mind in the ancient Indian religious literature, it was not altogether unknown in Greece. The final example comes from Euripides ‘The Bacchae’, where we find the Theban women leaving their spinning and their weaving ‘stung with the maddening trance of Dionysus’. Even Plato later declares that ‘the greatest blessings came to us through madness.’ He in one of the first to make a distinction between the ordinary madness caused by human illness and the other that ‘comes by a divine release from the ordinary rules of life’.

Guru Nanak makes a similar distinction which means
Some call me wild, while other that
I am out of step (with the world)
Some call me a mere man, forsaken and woe begone
But I am mad after my King, my God
And I know not of any but my Lord.

The madness of saints is expressed, in a language which is similar, if not identical, with the language of love poetry or of Bacchie experience. That is why the Persian Sufi poets express their frenzy through the imagery of wine, and Indian poets through those of varying intoxicants.

The ‘song of songs’ which is a collection of love poems from the Bible, and are often called even the ‘songs of Solomon’ has often been interpreted by Jews a picture of the relationship between God and his people, and by Christians as a picture of the relationship between Christ and  the Church, also echoes this love and its intoxication.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of
his youth, for thy love is better than wine.
…..I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
and, his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and
His banner over me was love
Stay me with flagons, comfort me
With apples; As I am sick of love.
Similarly my beloved is mine, and I am       his….

Annamacharya was the first notable composer in Telugu to handle exotic strain in devotional poetry. He writes:

‘The doe eyed lady’s heart is
a creation of the God of Love,
designed to nourish
the passion of the Lord.’

and at another place he writes:

Watching you from the roof top,
I long for your love
and spend my days in sighs
Venkatesa,
Where have you gone
all the while?
Tossing on the jasmine bed
I spend sleepless nights
Singing for you
Kabir also says something like this
When I was proud, thou wert not in me
now that thou art in me I am not proud
now thou and I have become one
seeing that we’re both one – my mind is satisfied.

Within the framework of Bhakti the theme of union appears in various forms. The realization of the divine nature of the individual soul is the basis of the experience of oneness with God. This experience becomes a part of poetry only when it is expressed in imagery at love and friendship; but the idea of total merger or identity with God is a common phenomenon in Hindu thought and Indian Religious poetry but not in Islamia Tradition.

The idea of separation of human soul from God, developed into a love symbolism where soul assumed the image of a mad lover. ­The union is the goal, and the joy of the union is ineffable. But poetry lies in the process of the union rather than in the union itself. Once the union is achieved, everything including poetry ceases to ‘exist’. Therefore, both in Sufi poetry as well as in the Bhakti poetry it is the theme of longing and waiting for God, the theme of one’s journey towards the beloved which dominates.

Poetry is born out of such a feeling Shah Latif says ‘The seas of separation roll And drawn each single separate soul’, and so Radha of Vaishnava poetry asks ‘when our soul is one, why has God made our bodies separate? And this is why Radha goes out in dark rainy nights, Sassi is perished in the trackless deserts and Mira left her home, Chaitanya wept, trembled and rolled on the ground of Brindavan and al-hallaj danced in his fetters to the place of execution and Rumi celebrated the incident in haunting rhythms.

Thus in knowing-the slave attains a new majesty, and the mad lover as he approaches his beloved, is filled with a joy like of which he has never experienced. He waits and longs for a final movement which forms the subject of one of the finest decade of mystic union.

Thus we see that Bhakti speaks a universal language with common urge for belongingness, identity, union, expressing its emotional and mad state of mind which was spoken from time immemorial and is still relevant solidifying the relationship of the Creator with his best creation i.e. MAN.