Twenty years or so ago, I wrote a series of articles about affinities between the wisdom of Shakespeare and the wisdom of Hinduism. All the essays appeared in the British journal, Self Enquiry, and were fairly widely read. While I was in India recently, my house suffered severe water damage due to a burst pipe. So many books and manuscripts were irretrievably lost! During the clean-up, I came across my old copies of Self Enquiry, all of which are intact.
I would write these articles somewhat differently now, but I thought they might be of some interest, at least to some readers. I intend to post only this one, unless there is interest for me to post more. (For those with an interest in Shakespeare's works, I refer you to my article, "Caliban Explained," which is recent. To access it, simply google the title along with Thomasdorsett.)
SHAKESPEARE AND BHAGAVAN
Editor's Note: Bhagavan (Ramana Maharshi) loved to listen to readings from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats and so on. He enjoyed them all and brought out their inner significance by a few words of comment at once apt, penetrating and revealing. Once he said, "Shakespeare the Self wrote this so that born again as we, he might enjoy it." Bhagavan was surprised to learn that Emerson had made a statement to the same effect." (Excerpted from Ramana's Muruganar by A.R. Natarajan, published by Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning, Bangalore.)
1.
The ego is an illusion, maya. It is a great good; without it there would be no Shakespeares. It is also a great evil; without it there would be no Hitlers. The ego, evolution's tool, blindly created by genes, has allowed human beings to survive longer and better. All the great achievements of humankind--and there are so many!--have been achieved by people who are convinced, by means of their consciousness of (supposed) individuality, that they are separate from the environment--and thus are able to make, love and wonder.
The ego, however, is also the tool of ignorance. When people feel unconnected to the world, they are capable of causing much mental and physical suffering. Hamlet and Auschwitz; without the ego, neither would have been possible.
Wisdom and love teach us that peace comes when the ego is transcended. Very few have wholly transcended their ego, however; for those very few it no longer exists. Buddha and Jesus are two outstanding examples--the former, who became completely enlightened, the latter subsumed under the reality of God--two culturally distinct ways of viewing the same phenomenon. In our own era, an outstanding example of complete transcendence of individuality is Ramana Maharshi, who, known before his moksha as Venkataraman Iyer, became one with the Self at age 16.
Ramana Maharshi, Bhagavan, taught that separation is not ultimate. The ego, which imagines itself to be an independent actor, is unaware of the unseen strings. Bhagavan said it best:
The difficulty is that man thinks he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power that does everything and he is the tool. If he accepts that position, he is free from troubles. Otherwise he courts them. (1)
How this statement of Bhagavan subverts the cult of individualism; how his teachings flout illusion, however disguised as so-called common sense! Many people have realized that all images of God are merely that--images; this has led some to conclude that God is dead. Very few people are aware, however, that the ego, from a cosmic perspective, is as illusory as the images of God it conceives. Although the average Westerner--even the average Easterner--clings to illusion, science, in contrast, has in many respects come close to the teachings of Ramana Maharshi by undermining the ego and all its creations. What the ego believes to be solid--a table, for instance--is in reality a phantom, a swirl of subatomic particles. We feel the atomic bonds which make it appear solid; it is, however, mostly empty space. What the ego believes to be an individual is no less a phantom, a concatenation of nerves centered in the brain, a thing. Many books point out the consistencies between Hinduism's school of non-duality, (advaita), and the implications of modern physics, for example, the most recent book by Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life, excellently reviewed in a previous edition of Self Enquiry. (2)
Science at its most profound is consistent with Ramana's teaching; what about art? This is a largely unexplored area. What about the parallels between advaita and the center of the Western literary canon, Shakespeare? It is the purpose of this essay to bring these similarities to light.
Shakespeare, the creator of so many diverse characters--no one has ever created profounder literary characters than he--might not Shakespeare best be viewed as a champion of individuality? Having created great characters with such exuberance in an age that began to see individuality as the highest good; might not even Shakespeare be excused for not seeing beyond? Didn't he view the individual as the primary arbiter of human destiny? Didn't he view the individual as the "doer?" A close reading of Hamlet, arguably the best play ever written, has taught me otherwise, as the following analysis will show.
2.
Hamlet's problem is his ego. Things haven't been going well in his life, to say the least. Events--that is, his ego's interpretations of them and reactions to them--have made him miserably depressed. With Hamlet's first soliloquy of the play, Shakespeare establishes that the problem is in himself, in his reaction to events, and not in the events themselves:
Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! Oh God! God! (3)
What exactly is Hamlet's problem? His mother has married his father's brother, approximately two months after his father's death. He has been very close to his mother; she dotes upon him. His father, also named Hamlet, was a fierce warrior. We can infer that he never had a close relationship with his son. Hamlet mentions that his father was "so loving to my mother" (4), but not in the entire play is there any reference of his father ever having been kind to him. (The only reference of a male being kind to Hamlet in his youth is of Yorick--we will discuss this episode later in this essay.) Hamlet, in his first soliloquy which gives so much information about his state of mind, mentions the close relationship that his father and his mother had. Now he berates his mother for her speed to "incestuous sheets" (5), i.e. her marriage to Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet does not recognize the marriage, so in his mind the union of his uncle with his mother is incest. But we can't escape a deeper meaning here: Hamlet might also be referring subconsciously to his own desires.
Freud used Greek tragedy to illustrate his theory of the Oedipus complex. It is Hamlet, however, not Oedipus, who, at least in my opinion, best illustrates that complex. It is not a post-Freudian anachronism to suggest that Hamlet has subconscious sexual desires for his mother. Shakespeare indicates this with the classical setup: a distant father, a close--perhaps too close--mother and a sensitive son. The Great Bard thus anticipates Freud three centuries before the Viennese doctor lived.
We can now begin to appreciate why Hamlet hates Claudius so vehemently. Claudius has done what Hamlet subconsciously would like to have done: kill his father and have his mother for himself. This dynamic was certainly present since The Prince of Denmark's childhood. The little Hamlet, jealous of his father, must have felt very vulnerable and inferior from being in competition with a distant, very powerful man. When Hamlet makes the following negative comparison between his father and Claudius, we can now see that he also might be referring to himself:
So excellent a King that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr. (6)
To have an uncle that has killed Hamlet's father would be bad enough; but for Hamlet, on a subconscious level, to view himself as the murderer of this father and usurper of the throne, is intolerable indeed. The depressed Hamlet can't even bring himself to commit suicide; this might help explain why Hamlet can't bring himself to kill Claudius either, since on a deeper level he identifies with him. If he can't kill himself, he can't kill Claudius.
The moral order has been violated; the regicide must be avenged. But Hamlet, who believes he must set things right, cannot; at this point of the play there is no solution. There is no place for his aggression to go, so he turns it against himself. It is not surprising that Hamlet has become suicidal: his self-loathing ego desires its own destruction as the only possible release from its torment.
This interpretation is not new. However, it only partially explains Hamlet's problem. Hamlet believes that evil times have come. He alone feels responsible for setting things straight, this is hubris. His burden of responsibility is greatly increased by his guilt. He must act, yet cannot. Like Atlas, he feels the world's burdens on his shoulders with no possibility of laying them down:
The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite,
that ever I was born to set it right! (7)
Hamlet is now in the position of the figure at the base of the temple tower in Ramana's Maharshi's famous parable:
Take for instance the figure at the base of the Gopuram, the temple tower, which is made to appear as bearing the burden of the tower on its shoulders. Its look and attitude picture great strain while bearing the very heavy burden. But think. The tower is built on earth and it rests on its foundation. The figure is part of the tower. Is it not funny? So is the man who takes on himself the sense of doing. (8)
Hamlet sees himself as the doer; this is his real tragedy. The wisdom of the East sees through individuality; this is perhaps why the East has not developed tragedy as an art form as extensively as the West.
3.
When Hamlet realizes that the ego is nothing--or at least almost nothing--he transcends himself and acts without difficulty. After his transformation, the moral order inside him is effortlessly restored. Hamlet doesn't accomplish this, the Self--to use Bhagavan's terminology--accomplishes it through Hamlet. Once he knows he is not the doer, Hamlet is at peace.
Hamlet's transformation occurs in the fifth act. In the second scene of this act, during his dialogue with Horatio, Hamlet refers to his torment in the past tense:
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
that would not let me sleep. (9)
Hamlet is referring to how he felt on board the ship en route to England. Unbeknownst to him, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two lackeys, have a letter which instructs the English to kill Hamlet immediately after the letter is read. Hamlet, in the darkness of the ship, feels completely lost:
...Methought I lay
worse than the mutines in the bilboes. (10)
...that is, "I thought I lay in a worse condition than that of shackled mutineers." Yes, it was worse than being shackled--In the pit of the ship, according to my interpretation, Hamlet experienced what is now called a "fear-death" episode. (Something very similar happened to Ramana--see my article, "The Near Death Experiences of Ramana Maharshi," by googling my name and the title of the article.) It is a moment of terror that either kills you, or transforms you and makes you stronger. From this hell, Hamlet begins to act. He suspects foul play. Rosencranz and Guildenstern are asleep; he sneaks into their cabin and reads the letter. He destroys it and writes a new letter, which will send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths instead of him. He acted "rashly"(11), as he puts it, but this action has saved his life. Referring to this incident, he speaks the following lines, crucial to our interpretation:
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall. And that should lean us
There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Roughhew them how we will. (12)
Hamlet has completely changed: he realizes that what we imagine to be free will is only a detail--perhaps even an imaginary detail at that--of the work which divinity is accomplishing through us. The Self is the doer, not the individual ego!
Hamlet has faced death in the previous scene, also crucial to our interpretation. The grave digger, digging Ophelia's grave, has identified the skull of Yorick, who watched over and entertained Hamlet in the latter's youth. Hamlet had loved him. Now all that is left is a hideous skull, which Hamlet addresses at length:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio--a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hang those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get yo to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour (face) she must come--make her laugh at that.
(13)
Yorick is the only person Hamlet ever mentions as having been kind to him during his early years. We can infer that his mother had doted on him during his youth--after all, she still does throughout the play--but there is no reference to this. By this economy of means, Shakespeare not only indicates that Hamlet's early youth had been lonely; he also indicates that the Yorick episode is not a casual encounter with death, merely for theatrical effect. It cuts Hamlet to the quick. He now faces the fact that the body must die, that the ego must die, no matter how lofty its philosophising. The ego, the body--both are nothing. Hamlet has come very close to Ramana Maharshi's view of life and death.
Destiny, however,has not yet run its course. The king plans to kill Hamlet and make it look like an accident. Hamlet is to dual with Laertes, an accomplished fencer, for the court's entertainment. Hoatatio, Hamlet's erudite companion, suspects foul play and warns him not to accept the challenge--Laertes, after all, has his own revenge to accomplish, Hamlet having killed his father. Hamlet is not afraid, even though Laertes is an expert fencer. Hamlet's feeling of invincibility is not to be attributed to a post-depression manic state, for he has reason to feel worthy of the challenge. When Horatio tells him point-blank that he will lose the wager, Hamlet replies:
I do not think so. Since he went into France I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds. (14)
Horatio still tries to dissuade him. But Hamlet is ready to let things happen as they will. At this point, he says the following words, which are most important:
There's special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is 't to leave betimes? Let be. (15)
Ramana Maharshi could have used the exact same words. As a matter of fact, he almost did use the same words as a young man in response to his mother, who begged him to give up his life as a sage and return home:
...Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent. (16)
Hamlet wasn't fit to be king for most of the play. The irony of the play--and life is sometimes like that--is that the enlightened Hamlet is killed just after gaining the ability to be a great ruler.
4.
Shakespeare is arguably the most profound and greatest writer who ever lived. As the eminent scholar, Harold Bloom, wrote in The Western Canon: "Shakespeare is to world literature what Hamlet is to the imaginary domain of literary character: a spirit that permeates everywhere, that cannot be confined. A freedom from doctrine and simplistic morality is certainly one element in that spirit's ease of transference...Shakespeare has the largesse of nature itself..." (17). "There is more of Shakespeare himself in this play than in any of his others," (18), the critic G.B. Harrison wrote in his introduction to Hamlet. Shakespeare created a literary world of many astoundingly complex, diverse personalities that parallels the great diversity of personalities found in life. I am convinced that he realized, from his pinnacle of creation, as Hamlet's transformation indicates, that real personalities are no different: that is, just as Shakespeare stood above his fictive creations, he realized that Shakespeare's Shakespeare, as it were, stands above non-fictive ones. Something else has, was, and is creating them all--call it God, destiny, genes and environment, the Self, or what you will. Shakespeare's favorite character learned this fact by a great struggle; is it too much to say that Shakespeare, Hamlet's creator, struggled and finally knew it as well? I think not. Shakespeare transcends Shakespeare, just as Hamlet transcends Hamlet, just as Venkataraman Iyer transcended himself and became Ramana Maharshi.
In Hamlet occurs the famous play within the play, when Hamlet strives "to catch the conscience of the King," (19). By the end of the play, Hamlet becomes an actor within an actor, as it were, when he realizes that he has only been playing a role. Shakespeare knew, as Ramana Maharshi knew, that "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," (20). Ramana uses the same imagery in a passage where he tells his followers that it is not necessary to renounce the world to find peace--one can continue in one's role, provided that one comes to the realization that it is a role:
It is like an actor. He dresses and acts and even feels the part he is playing, but he knows really that he is not that character but someone else in real life...Nothing that the body does should take you from abidance in the Self. Such abidance will never interfere with the proper and effective duties the body has, any more than an actor's being aware of his real status in life interferes with his acting his part on the stage. (21)
As one can tell from this passage, what is mot important is not the insight that one is merely playing a role, but gong beyond one's role. Without this self-transcendence, realizing that one is only an actor is apt to lead to cynicism and despair. Shakespeare knew this well, as the famous lines of the despairing Macbeth attest:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets an hour upon the stage
And then is seen no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (22)
Macbeth is horribly trapped; his hell entails the loss of all illusions while remaining ignorant of what more than compensates for this loss--wisdom. The state of ego-despair is so painful that one is very likely to do horrible things--from committing suicide to committing genocide--in the attempt to relieve it. Pity those like Macbeth, in despair over their supposedly meaningless roles! Their numbers are certainly not decreasing in the present age, during which true spirituality is proving to be more elusive than ever.
Yet like the Prince of Denmark, before the last act of Hamlet and like the King of Scotland in the last act of Macbeth, one is closer to the truth than Polonius or Banquo could ever imagine. Although despair is both dangerous and always ready to strike the unwary--all it takes is a little learning to change a worldling into a wretch--at least the Macbeths of this world are wise enough to realize, albeit painfully, that the ego is nothing. However, once one identifies not with the self but with the Self, as Hamlet seems to have come very close to doing, true peace and joy arise: "Then the world becomes the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within you," (23). Joy is always just one insight away! Why then, do we continue in our ignorance, like Hamlet before the last act of the play?
Nearly everyone one encounters, unlike the transformed Hamlet, is lost in the roles that the Self has provided; nearly everyone is exceedingly ignorant of the great and timeless truth of advaita Hinduism, which Ramanan Maharshi embodied and taught. How satisfying it is to know that the most profound writer of the West was in basic agreement with one of the most profound sages of the East! Shakespeare knew what life is about; Ramana Maharshi knew what life is about. I ask you, dear reader, why don't we?
Notes
1. Thus Spake Ramana (Tiruvannamalai, Sri Ramansaraman 1989) 35
2. Heimer, Hans, Book Review: The Web of Life (London, Self Enquiry, Summer 1997) 66-71
3. Shakespeare, The Complete Works, G.B. Harrison, ed (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Wold, 1952
Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, lines 129-132
4. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, line 140
5. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, line 157
6. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, lines 139-140
7. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.v, lines 189-190
8. Thus Spake Ramana, 35-36
9. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Avt V, sc.ii, lines 4-5
10. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 5-6
11. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, line 6
12. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 8-11
13. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V. sc.i, lines 202-216
14. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 220-222
15. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 230-235
16. Videlcassette; The Sage of Arunachala Asrama, 1992
17. Bloom, Harold, The Western Canon (New York, Riverhead Books, 1994) 50
18.Shakespeare, 884
19. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 111, sc.1, lines 633-634
20. Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 11, sc.1, lines 139-140
21. The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, ed. Osborne, Arthur, (Tiruvannamalai, Sri Ramanasramam, 1993) 92
22. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, sc.v, lines 19-28
23. Thus Spake Ramana, 82
I would write these articles somewhat differently now, but I thought they might be of some interest, at least to some readers. I intend to post only this one, unless there is interest for me to post more. (For those with an interest in Shakespeare's works, I refer you to my article, "Caliban Explained," which is recent. To access it, simply google the title along with Thomasdorsett.)
SHAKESPEARE AND BHAGAVAN
Editor's Note: Bhagavan (Ramana Maharshi) loved to listen to readings from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats and so on. He enjoyed them all and brought out their inner significance by a few words of comment at once apt, penetrating and revealing. Once he said, "Shakespeare the Self wrote this so that born again as we, he might enjoy it." Bhagavan was surprised to learn that Emerson had made a statement to the same effect." (Excerpted from Ramana's Muruganar by A.R. Natarajan, published by Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning, Bangalore.)
1.
The ego is an illusion, maya. It is a great good; without it there would be no Shakespeares. It is also a great evil; without it there would be no Hitlers. The ego, evolution's tool, blindly created by genes, has allowed human beings to survive longer and better. All the great achievements of humankind--and there are so many!--have been achieved by people who are convinced, by means of their consciousness of (supposed) individuality, that they are separate from the environment--and thus are able to make, love and wonder.
The ego, however, is also the tool of ignorance. When people feel unconnected to the world, they are capable of causing much mental and physical suffering. Hamlet and Auschwitz; without the ego, neither would have been possible.
Wisdom and love teach us that peace comes when the ego is transcended. Very few have wholly transcended their ego, however; for those very few it no longer exists. Buddha and Jesus are two outstanding examples--the former, who became completely enlightened, the latter subsumed under the reality of God--two culturally distinct ways of viewing the same phenomenon. In our own era, an outstanding example of complete transcendence of individuality is Ramana Maharshi, who, known before his moksha as Venkataraman Iyer, became one with the Self at age 16.
Ramana Maharshi, Bhagavan, taught that separation is not ultimate. The ego, which imagines itself to be an independent actor, is unaware of the unseen strings. Bhagavan said it best:
The difficulty is that man thinks he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power that does everything and he is the tool. If he accepts that position, he is free from troubles. Otherwise he courts them. (1)
How this statement of Bhagavan subverts the cult of individualism; how his teachings flout illusion, however disguised as so-called common sense! Many people have realized that all images of God are merely that--images; this has led some to conclude that God is dead. Very few people are aware, however, that the ego, from a cosmic perspective, is as illusory as the images of God it conceives. Although the average Westerner--even the average Easterner--clings to illusion, science, in contrast, has in many respects come close to the teachings of Ramana Maharshi by undermining the ego and all its creations. What the ego believes to be solid--a table, for instance--is in reality a phantom, a swirl of subatomic particles. We feel the atomic bonds which make it appear solid; it is, however, mostly empty space. What the ego believes to be an individual is no less a phantom, a concatenation of nerves centered in the brain, a thing. Many books point out the consistencies between Hinduism's school of non-duality, (advaita), and the implications of modern physics, for example, the most recent book by Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life, excellently reviewed in a previous edition of Self Enquiry. (2)
Science at its most profound is consistent with Ramana's teaching; what about art? This is a largely unexplored area. What about the parallels between advaita and the center of the Western literary canon, Shakespeare? It is the purpose of this essay to bring these similarities to light.
Shakespeare, the creator of so many diverse characters--no one has ever created profounder literary characters than he--might not Shakespeare best be viewed as a champion of individuality? Having created great characters with such exuberance in an age that began to see individuality as the highest good; might not even Shakespeare be excused for not seeing beyond? Didn't he view the individual as the primary arbiter of human destiny? Didn't he view the individual as the "doer?" A close reading of Hamlet, arguably the best play ever written, has taught me otherwise, as the following analysis will show.
2.
Hamlet's problem is his ego. Things haven't been going well in his life, to say the least. Events--that is, his ego's interpretations of them and reactions to them--have made him miserably depressed. With Hamlet's first soliloquy of the play, Shakespeare establishes that the problem is in himself, in his reaction to events, and not in the events themselves:
Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! Oh God! God! (3)
What exactly is Hamlet's problem? His mother has married his father's brother, approximately two months after his father's death. He has been very close to his mother; she dotes upon him. His father, also named Hamlet, was a fierce warrior. We can infer that he never had a close relationship with his son. Hamlet mentions that his father was "so loving to my mother" (4), but not in the entire play is there any reference of his father ever having been kind to him. (The only reference of a male being kind to Hamlet in his youth is of Yorick--we will discuss this episode later in this essay.) Hamlet, in his first soliloquy which gives so much information about his state of mind, mentions the close relationship that his father and his mother had. Now he berates his mother for her speed to "incestuous sheets" (5), i.e. her marriage to Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet does not recognize the marriage, so in his mind the union of his uncle with his mother is incest. But we can't escape a deeper meaning here: Hamlet might also be referring subconsciously to his own desires.
Freud used Greek tragedy to illustrate his theory of the Oedipus complex. It is Hamlet, however, not Oedipus, who, at least in my opinion, best illustrates that complex. It is not a post-Freudian anachronism to suggest that Hamlet has subconscious sexual desires for his mother. Shakespeare indicates this with the classical setup: a distant father, a close--perhaps too close--mother and a sensitive son. The Great Bard thus anticipates Freud three centuries before the Viennese doctor lived.
We can now begin to appreciate why Hamlet hates Claudius so vehemently. Claudius has done what Hamlet subconsciously would like to have done: kill his father and have his mother for himself. This dynamic was certainly present since The Prince of Denmark's childhood. The little Hamlet, jealous of his father, must have felt very vulnerable and inferior from being in competition with a distant, very powerful man. When Hamlet makes the following negative comparison between his father and Claudius, we can now see that he also might be referring to himself:
So excellent a King that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr. (6)
To have an uncle that has killed Hamlet's father would be bad enough; but for Hamlet, on a subconscious level, to view himself as the murderer of this father and usurper of the throne, is intolerable indeed. The depressed Hamlet can't even bring himself to commit suicide; this might help explain why Hamlet can't bring himself to kill Claudius either, since on a deeper level he identifies with him. If he can't kill himself, he can't kill Claudius.
The moral order has been violated; the regicide must be avenged. But Hamlet, who believes he must set things right, cannot; at this point of the play there is no solution. There is no place for his aggression to go, so he turns it against himself. It is not surprising that Hamlet has become suicidal: his self-loathing ego desires its own destruction as the only possible release from its torment.
This interpretation is not new. However, it only partially explains Hamlet's problem. Hamlet believes that evil times have come. He alone feels responsible for setting things straight, this is hubris. His burden of responsibility is greatly increased by his guilt. He must act, yet cannot. Like Atlas, he feels the world's burdens on his shoulders with no possibility of laying them down:
The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite,
that ever I was born to set it right! (7)
Hamlet is now in the position of the figure at the base of the temple tower in Ramana's Maharshi's famous parable:
Take for instance the figure at the base of the Gopuram, the temple tower, which is made to appear as bearing the burden of the tower on its shoulders. Its look and attitude picture great strain while bearing the very heavy burden. But think. The tower is built on earth and it rests on its foundation. The figure is part of the tower. Is it not funny? So is the man who takes on himself the sense of doing. (8)
Hamlet sees himself as the doer; this is his real tragedy. The wisdom of the East sees through individuality; this is perhaps why the East has not developed tragedy as an art form as extensively as the West.
3.
When Hamlet realizes that the ego is nothing--or at least almost nothing--he transcends himself and acts without difficulty. After his transformation, the moral order inside him is effortlessly restored. Hamlet doesn't accomplish this, the Self--to use Bhagavan's terminology--accomplishes it through Hamlet. Once he knows he is not the doer, Hamlet is at peace.
Hamlet's transformation occurs in the fifth act. In the second scene of this act, during his dialogue with Horatio, Hamlet refers to his torment in the past tense:
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
that would not let me sleep. (9)
Hamlet is referring to how he felt on board the ship en route to England. Unbeknownst to him, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two lackeys, have a letter which instructs the English to kill Hamlet immediately after the letter is read. Hamlet, in the darkness of the ship, feels completely lost:
...Methought I lay
worse than the mutines in the bilboes. (10)
...that is, "I thought I lay in a worse condition than that of shackled mutineers." Yes, it was worse than being shackled--In the pit of the ship, according to my interpretation, Hamlet experienced what is now called a "fear-death" episode. (Something very similar happened to Ramana--see my article, "The Near Death Experiences of Ramana Maharshi," by googling my name and the title of the article.) It is a moment of terror that either kills you, or transforms you and makes you stronger. From this hell, Hamlet begins to act. He suspects foul play. Rosencranz and Guildenstern are asleep; he sneaks into their cabin and reads the letter. He destroys it and writes a new letter, which will send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths instead of him. He acted "rashly"(11), as he puts it, but this action has saved his life. Referring to this incident, he speaks the following lines, crucial to our interpretation:
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall. And that should lean us
There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Roughhew them how we will. (12)
Hamlet has completely changed: he realizes that what we imagine to be free will is only a detail--perhaps even an imaginary detail at that--of the work which divinity is accomplishing through us. The Self is the doer, not the individual ego!
Hamlet has faced death in the previous scene, also crucial to our interpretation. The grave digger, digging Ophelia's grave, has identified the skull of Yorick, who watched over and entertained Hamlet in the latter's youth. Hamlet had loved him. Now all that is left is a hideous skull, which Hamlet addresses at length:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio--a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hang those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get yo to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour (face) she must come--make her laugh at that.
(13)
Yorick is the only person Hamlet ever mentions as having been kind to him during his early years. We can infer that his mother had doted on him during his youth--after all, she still does throughout the play--but there is no reference to this. By this economy of means, Shakespeare not only indicates that Hamlet's early youth had been lonely; he also indicates that the Yorick episode is not a casual encounter with death, merely for theatrical effect. It cuts Hamlet to the quick. He now faces the fact that the body must die, that the ego must die, no matter how lofty its philosophising. The ego, the body--both are nothing. Hamlet has come very close to Ramana Maharshi's view of life and death.
Destiny, however,has not yet run its course. The king plans to kill Hamlet and make it look like an accident. Hamlet is to dual with Laertes, an accomplished fencer, for the court's entertainment. Hoatatio, Hamlet's erudite companion, suspects foul play and warns him not to accept the challenge--Laertes, after all, has his own revenge to accomplish, Hamlet having killed his father. Hamlet is not afraid, even though Laertes is an expert fencer. Hamlet's feeling of invincibility is not to be attributed to a post-depression manic state, for he has reason to feel worthy of the challenge. When Horatio tells him point-blank that he will lose the wager, Hamlet replies:
I do not think so. Since he went into France I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds. (14)
Horatio still tries to dissuade him. But Hamlet is ready to let things happen as they will. At this point, he says the following words, which are most important:
There's special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is 't to leave betimes? Let be. (15)
Ramana Maharshi could have used the exact same words. As a matter of fact, he almost did use the same words as a young man in response to his mother, who begged him to give up his life as a sage and return home:
...Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent. (16)
Hamlet wasn't fit to be king for most of the play. The irony of the play--and life is sometimes like that--is that the enlightened Hamlet is killed just after gaining the ability to be a great ruler.
4.
Shakespeare is arguably the most profound and greatest writer who ever lived. As the eminent scholar, Harold Bloom, wrote in The Western Canon: "Shakespeare is to world literature what Hamlet is to the imaginary domain of literary character: a spirit that permeates everywhere, that cannot be confined. A freedom from doctrine and simplistic morality is certainly one element in that spirit's ease of transference...Shakespeare has the largesse of nature itself..." (17). "There is more of Shakespeare himself in this play than in any of his others," (18), the critic G.B. Harrison wrote in his introduction to Hamlet. Shakespeare created a literary world of many astoundingly complex, diverse personalities that parallels the great diversity of personalities found in life. I am convinced that he realized, from his pinnacle of creation, as Hamlet's transformation indicates, that real personalities are no different: that is, just as Shakespeare stood above his fictive creations, he realized that Shakespeare's Shakespeare, as it were, stands above non-fictive ones. Something else has, was, and is creating them all--call it God, destiny, genes and environment, the Self, or what you will. Shakespeare's favorite character learned this fact by a great struggle; is it too much to say that Shakespeare, Hamlet's creator, struggled and finally knew it as well? I think not. Shakespeare transcends Shakespeare, just as Hamlet transcends Hamlet, just as Venkataraman Iyer transcended himself and became Ramana Maharshi.
In Hamlet occurs the famous play within the play, when Hamlet strives "to catch the conscience of the King," (19). By the end of the play, Hamlet becomes an actor within an actor, as it were, when he realizes that he has only been playing a role. Shakespeare knew, as Ramana Maharshi knew, that "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," (20). Ramana uses the same imagery in a passage where he tells his followers that it is not necessary to renounce the world to find peace--one can continue in one's role, provided that one comes to the realization that it is a role:
It is like an actor. He dresses and acts and even feels the part he is playing, but he knows really that he is not that character but someone else in real life...Nothing that the body does should take you from abidance in the Self. Such abidance will never interfere with the proper and effective duties the body has, any more than an actor's being aware of his real status in life interferes with his acting his part on the stage. (21)
As one can tell from this passage, what is mot important is not the insight that one is merely playing a role, but gong beyond one's role. Without this self-transcendence, realizing that one is only an actor is apt to lead to cynicism and despair. Shakespeare knew this well, as the famous lines of the despairing Macbeth attest:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets an hour upon the stage
And then is seen no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (22)
Macbeth is horribly trapped; his hell entails the loss of all illusions while remaining ignorant of what more than compensates for this loss--wisdom. The state of ego-despair is so painful that one is very likely to do horrible things--from committing suicide to committing genocide--in the attempt to relieve it. Pity those like Macbeth, in despair over their supposedly meaningless roles! Their numbers are certainly not decreasing in the present age, during which true spirituality is proving to be more elusive than ever.
Yet like the Prince of Denmark, before the last act of Hamlet and like the King of Scotland in the last act of Macbeth, one is closer to the truth than Polonius or Banquo could ever imagine. Although despair is both dangerous and always ready to strike the unwary--all it takes is a little learning to change a worldling into a wretch--at least the Macbeths of this world are wise enough to realize, albeit painfully, that the ego is nothing. However, once one identifies not with the self but with the Self, as Hamlet seems to have come very close to doing, true peace and joy arise: "Then the world becomes the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within you," (23). Joy is always just one insight away! Why then, do we continue in our ignorance, like Hamlet before the last act of the play?
Nearly everyone one encounters, unlike the transformed Hamlet, is lost in the roles that the Self has provided; nearly everyone is exceedingly ignorant of the great and timeless truth of advaita Hinduism, which Ramanan Maharshi embodied and taught. How satisfying it is to know that the most profound writer of the West was in basic agreement with one of the most profound sages of the East! Shakespeare knew what life is about; Ramana Maharshi knew what life is about. I ask you, dear reader, why don't we?
Notes
1. Thus Spake Ramana (Tiruvannamalai, Sri Ramansaraman 1989) 35
2. Heimer, Hans, Book Review: The Web of Life (London, Self Enquiry, Summer 1997) 66-71
3. Shakespeare, The Complete Works, G.B. Harrison, ed (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Wold, 1952
Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, lines 129-132
4. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, line 140
5. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, line 157
6. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.ii, lines 139-140
7. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 1, sc.v, lines 189-190
8. Thus Spake Ramana, 35-36
9. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Avt V, sc.ii, lines 4-5
10. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 5-6
11. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, line 6
12. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 8-11
13. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V. sc.i, lines 202-216
14. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 220-222
15. Ibid., Hamlet, Act V, sc.ii, lines 230-235
16. Videlcassette; The Sage of Arunachala Asrama, 1992
17. Bloom, Harold, The Western Canon (New York, Riverhead Books, 1994) 50
18.Shakespeare, 884
19. Ibid., Hamlet, Act 111, sc.1, lines 633-634
20. Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 11, sc.1, lines 139-140
21. The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, ed. Osborne, Arthur, (Tiruvannamalai, Sri Ramanasramam, 1993) 92
22. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, sc.v, lines 19-28
23. Thus Spake Ramana, 82
I ask you, dear reader, why don't we?
ReplyDeleteIt is the Self and the Self alone that enables this seeing, and the Self and the Self alone that disables it.
If it is destined to happen it will happen.
If it is not destined to happen it will not happen.
Therefore it is sometimes best to remain silent.