Phenomenology and the Structure of Desirability

Abstract

The post-structuralist rejection of both the text as an autonomous entity and the self as a wholeness present unto itself stems primarily from an intellectual approach to life and literature that neglects the finer feeling level of human perception. This level is central to Vedic literature (Veda means pure knowledge), which arranges the human faculties in order of increasing subtlty from the five senses to the mind, intellect, ego, and self (or pure consciousness).¹ At its finest level of functioning, the intellect is experienced as a mode of feeling, which may also be described as intuition. The finest level of feeling is love or devotion, which unites the self and other, the absolute and relative.² As a unifying force, feeling is closely related to memory, that quality of consciousness which enables it to be self-referral while remaining open to the mind and senses. The Manduka Upanishad classifies consciousness into three ordinary states — waking, sleeping, and dreaming — plus a higher, fourth state called transcendental pure consciousness, a self-referral state in which consciousness has no object other than itself.³ By linking oppositions such as subject and object, inside and outside, past and present, feeling and memory allow us to be open to the unity of transcendental consciousness and the diversity of the other faculties at the same time.