Justin Michael Hewitson

Mystics and philosophers across the ages have interrogated ideological systems to reveal truth and the praxes that ensure a good life. The 2019 debate “Happiness: Marxism vs Capitalism” between Jordan B. Peterson and Slavoj Žižek exemplifies the perennial quest to link consciousness with a source of lasting happiness. This essay first deconstructs Peterson’s responses to Žižek regarding the biblical devolution of consciousness and religious belief. The second half addresses Žižek’s appraisal of Indian mysticism per the Nazi regime’s misuse of the Bhagavad Gītā contrasted with P. R. Sarkar’s exegesis of the text’s Tantric philosophy. This essay concludes that as Christianity’s religious narrative denies spiritual transcendence, it struggles to stand the philosophical test of James’s spiritual pragmatism.

Śiva Tantra’s legacy of secrecy and inter-traditional assimilation has left its common spiritual origin almost indiscernible. Its roots continue to spread across “sectarian boundaries” and “spiritual” spaces. This essay first introduces a comparative survey of Tantra’s contested historical origins and transformations. This broad appraisal of Tantra’s etic routes and emic roots reveals a picture of Śiva’s hybrid presence in India’s spiritual life. The second section examines the Aryan migration/invasion theory, Vedic religious developments, and the linguistic transformations which inform Sarkar’s account of Śiva as Tantra’s first Sadguru to teach the universal science of spiritual sādhanā “meditation” in 5500 BCE. The concluding section discusses Sarkar’s position, in light of Tantra’s roots, that the tradition is “neither a religion nor an ism” but a “fundamental spiritual science”.

This article proposes an evolution of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental epoché by integrating P. R. Sarkar’s Tantra sádhaná, which engages ipseity as both the subject and the object of consciousness. First, it explores some of the recent philosophical and scientific obstacles that confound the transcendental reduction. Following this, an East-West trajectory for Husserl’s first science of consciousness is examined by combining Sarkar’s 3 shuddhis in pratyáhára, effecting an experience of noumenal consciousness. Combining Husserl’s phenomenology with Sarkar’s spiritual praxis reinvigorates the transcendental epoché and emphasizes practice in a field both undermined by logical positivism and dominated by the scholasticism of Husserl’s protégés. Furthermore, the efficacy of an East-West approach is contextualized in view of Husserl’s admiration of Buddhism and Sarkar’s cognitive cosmology.