Personification

The matter of personification is a rather interesting case. Besides the important implications in philosophy it has a lot to do with the describing methodology of religious studies. Generally the term means that non-living objects are described by human traits. In literature it is considered as a type of metaphor, referring to objects or abstractions as they have human qualities or abilities. In the modern sense it is a figure of speech with aesthetic value that is capable of describing reality in a poetic way, but definitely not describing reality in an actual way. From the point of view of the narrative theory, all descriptions are narratives, and there is no any narrative that is closer to a 'reality' in itself. This means there is no any necessary way of talking about the world, only a habitual way of talking. The narratives used in a given situation are always used because of the habit

69 There are many hypothesis' about the universe, describing it as a digital computer. The first one was Konrad Zuse in his book Calculating Space (Konrad Zuse: Rechnender Raum;Braunschweig: 1969.Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn). From these ideas emerged the theories of 'digital physics' and 'digital philosophy' created by Edward Fredkin. Some others who used the analogy of the computer to model the universe are: Stephen Wolfram, Juergen Schmidhuber, Gerard 't Hooft.

and custom to use it, not because it is more real. There is no necessary or more real way to talk about inanimate objects. If an object - like colors, ideas or physical things - is described in a way that it is endowed with certain qualities and feelings, or personified as it can accomplish actions, then it is just one type of narrative style among the many. Even if it is not common now in the daily language and seems impossible in the scientific language, that does not mean that it can have role in poetics only. And poetics in the modern sense, mainly understood as a tool of entertainment, that can not be effectively used in descriptions conveying knowledge. Our point of view about this is that different types of narratives, even poetics or rhetoric, can be used to achieve certain desired effects, and the rational descriptions have no exclusive right to describe reality or truth. The current dominant position of scientific narratives are justified because of the knowledge's close connection with power that controls society. The authority chose this kind of narrative as an ultimate expression for knowledge, the same way as before the church had the authority and it rejected every narrative that contradicted with the teachings of the bible.

The other common word to describe this phenomena is the anthropomorphism. It is any attribution of human characteristics to animals or non-living things. If we accept the concept that besides the narrative there are no human or non-human characteristics in itself, then the anthropomorphism does not start with the attribution of human characteristic to non-humans but by the appearance of the notion of human itself. There is a presupposition that the human is basically separated from other parts of the world, and we just recognize it. But this is already a specific kind of narrative. What are the basic characteristics of a human? Is it the body or the mind, or the perception and feelings are included too? The human being with its body and mind opposing the world, is only one kind of description.

To see a categorical difference take the systems of the Indian Samhkya and Yoga schools as an example. These two schools are often mentioned together as Samhkya-Yoga. The Samhkya as the philosophical system and the yoga as its active, practical part. Samkhya is a dualist philosophy, it describes the universe as consisting of two eternal realities: the Purusha, the pure consciousness, and the Prakriti, the matter. They are the experiencer and the experienced, subject and object. The whole appearing world comes to be from the interaction between the two of them. The Samkhya maintains an intermingled duality between these two qualities. We have to mention that the western kind of materialism is not typical in India. That kind of thinking only sparsely can find among the

Indian philosophies. Here the distinction of spirit an matter is also different form the western way.

First, the Prakriti is not a reality that is totally independent from the mind. All of its functions get to motion only for the sake of Purusha, even if not created by it. It starts to be only because of the Purusha is watching. Through association with Prakriti, the Purusha gains experience of the material existence. But besides the Purusha's basic function of observing - which means merely 'looking' - all the other mental functions are belong to the Prakriti as subtle material substances. All those mental categories and functions, as thinking, doubting, knowing and so on, are the creations of the Prakriti, and they belong to the material field. This is a fundamental difference from the western narratives.

The goal of the Samkhya is to realize this situation by understanding all the false notions about the Prakriti that misunderstands itself as Purusha, the real self. This means that the Purusha sees that all that happened and happens are just the performance of the Prakriti, and from this realization the Prakriti will stop its work, as a performer leaves the stage when no one is interested in her anymore.

This is the liberation for the Samhkya-Yoga. But in this sense all the knowledge and practical wisdom of the way, and even the moments of understanding and the final knowledge belongs to the Prakriti, the material side which will be abandoned in the end and not considered as real self. In this narrative the human body and thinking is not opposing but a part of nature, only the Purusha, the real mind do that.

What we would like to add to this topic, in connection with the narrative theory, is that we consider the personification as an attribute of the narrative. This means that the person-object distinction exist only inside a narrative. The world in itself neither personal nor non-personal, it comes to be like that only through the narrative. It doesn't mean that there is no difference between humans and objects, but it means that the plot of the narrative decides which element of the story can be personified. As it is a part of the storytelling, there is no any rational basis to pick up any narrative, put it in an accentuated position and treat it as the only authentic narrative in regard of the usage of personification. This can be difficult to accept at first, because we are used to think that the way of talking about persons and inanimate objects in the daily life is a descriptive process, not a creative one. But now we have to focus on the nature of the narrative as a creative process. In theory, we could use a language in limitless different ways. As far as the people around us using it in a similar way, there will be no difficulty to interact with them. And there is no any difficulty in

interacting with different parts of the world, either they are personified or non-personified. The resistance toward an unusual use of language comes from a dominant narrative which came from, as we mentioned before in chapter one, the process of colonization that tries to force only one specific instance of narrative on most cultures on Earth. This kind of narrative became the basis of the academical language and treated as the standard, normal consequently the only way to describe 'reality'. As far as we consider the reality neither personified nor non-personified, an anthropomorphic description will not add more to the world than a non-personified. It will not add an extra 'religiousness' or imaginary character to it more than any other kind of narratives. It is only a habitual use of language. If someone imagines that the personified description is actually describing reality, and it is called a delusion, then the non-personified description also should called a delusion if it is treated as truth, since the narrative is never equal with reality.

In the eyes of the academical world, if a description alters from the standard academical language then it is either treated as a merely aesthetic, 'religious' or in other cases as mere nonsense.

The 'religious' nature of the narrative here would mean that the described phenomena was basically misunderstood by the observer, and because the lack of right knowledge it was endowed with attributes that it does not posses. For example, a text that describes the eclipse as an event in which Rahu the asura⁷⁰ swallows the moon or the sun, considered as mythical and religious narrative based on the lack of right knowledge of the facts. And, of course, the fact would be the narrative of the scientific description: it is an astronomical event and the reason of these phenomena is that an astronomical object is either passing into the shadow of another body or having another body pass between it and the viewer, making it temporarily obscured. The solar eclipse caused by the Moon as it is moves between the Earth and the sun. The reason of the lunar eclipse that the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow.

The general conclusion would be from comparing the Hindu narrative to the scientific, is that the former is either came from wrong knowledge of the facts, or it serves entertainment purposes only. The misunderstanding comes from the situation of opposing narratives. During the examination of a different narrative, the elements of that narrative are taken out of it context and put into the context of a different narrative. In that the same words and sentences will gain a new meaning.

70 The asuras are one kind of deities in the Hindu tradition.

In the daily experience the Sun appears as a very bright, shining 'coin' on the sky. Most of the people does not need to have any detailed descriptions about this phenomenon during their entire lifetime. Since it is a unique appearance in our lives, it is normal to have some kind of narrative about it. But the form and the details of the narrative will change in accordance with the Sun's role in our life. One with interest in astrology or astronomy will need totally different narratives to accomplish his goal. The narratives about the celestial bodies of the so called 'modern world' are making people to be engaged in the knowledge systems of, for example, astronomy or space travel.

These descriptions, even they can fulfill their goal and can help human beings launch satellites into space, can not be considered as exclusive narratives in the human lives. The generally accepted answer to questions like: what is the Sun? or what is an eclipse? is always a scientific answer. To talk about the world and reality it seems it is not allowed to include other type of narratives. Our point is that a scientific narrative has place only in a scientific discourse, which is dealing with some objectives to accomplish, but not with reality per se. The misinterpretation of the many, so called 'religious' narratives actually comes from the misunderstanding of the scientific narratives: they are treated as descriptions of an objective reality.

Here we do not want to suggest that both of these narratives are equal and we can choose which one we want to accept. If we planning to launch a satellite we sure have to choose the scientific description over Rahu. But actually for the lives of the 99% of the people it would make no difference which one they use. And make no mistake, it would not increase our ignorance in any sense. There are unlimited scientific descriptions we are not aware of. For example, most of us have no knowledge about what is happening when we turn on the lights in our room. Where does the light come from? What is the light? Where does it go when we turn the lamp off? There are complex explanations in physics to describe it, but we don't have to know it. Or the lack of knowledge of what is happening in our body chemically, when we are falling in love does not make us more stupid, and does not hindrances us during the process. Knowing it and thinking about it probably would just make us less enjoying the moment. And a biological explanation would not describe how one feels. What can we think if we hear 'my body is releasing a lot of dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine'? Who never learned a lot about biology probably has no clue what does it mean.

We can get much clearer picture if we hear: 'Monkeys in my heart / Are rattling their cages'⁷¹.

71 Song from Gary Jules: Falling Awake

Nobody would think that there are actual monkeys in the heart, but these words really can convey information. The scientific language is not the best tool to describe the world out of a scientific situation. Still, there is a trend to use the scientific descriptions more and more in the daily life, forgetting about its original place, and thinking about it as the only narrative that can describe reality.

Everyone will describe the world with narratives they've learned through their lives. Seeing the world in a specific narrative in the whole life makes it very difficult, or perhaps impossible, to understand and to see the world through an other. In this case, as we were raised in the narratives of the modern world, the words of 'moon', 'sun', 'Rahu' and 'swallowing' are holding a totally different meaning. What we imagine during hearing these descriptions have nothing to do whit the point of view of the person who has only that kind of narrative. Although the language is a common medium that all of us has access, but the 'decoding' of the words will create the actual meaning.

There are numerous narratives in the modern life, even in the scientific world, that should be examined the same way as some religious descriptions. It is very possible to doubt some conventional truths, for example, there are other alternative narratives about the self nature of human beings. These narratives emphasize the selfless nature of the human beings, like the no-self teaching in Buddhism. If we examine the narratives about the self in our daily lives we also will find contradiction. In some cases we refer to the self as the whole body, for example, when we see a photo of ourselves we would say: 'that is me'. Sometimes we are talking like the body belongs to us, but it is not our whole self. Especially when we mention other, non physical characteristics, like the thinking or the mind. If we point on different parts of our body, probably we would say 'that is me, and that is me too'. But if a part of the body is severed from the body, although it will be still 'ours' but will cease to be 'us'. If it is attached back to the body it will became 'us' again.

In other cases we speak about the self as a mind and consciousness or as a self who possesses these attributes. If we are persistently looking for the nature of the self through the narratives, we will reach a point where we separated all physical and mental qualities from this self, and it is still there. The different object that we call a self do not possess attributes of a person in itself, but they became personified through the narrative.

In this sense we can say that the concept of the self born by merely anthropomorphizing non-personal components (the five skandhas in Buddhism). They never bear the attributes of an

independent self, but a continuous inner narrative describes them that way. This means the way the people act, live and form communities cam to be the way it is, because there is this deep-rooted persistent narrative that focuses on a self in the body. Since the self never has been pointed out, and probably it will never be recognized in itself, this is a perfect instance of the personification. Even if one accepts this as personification of non-personal elements - or examines the skandhas and find no self in them - this still not negates the fact that the people are able to act according to a self in their daily lives and this situation does not hindrance them at all in their daily activities. This means that it is possible to live a whole life with narrative that personifies a non-personal element in it. If in a community everyone shares the same concept, it will not cause any problems.

For a person who does not striving for a Buddhist enlightenment this description about the no-self has no much significance. If one wants to keep up with the daily routines, for example: work, shopping, cooking and even philosophizing, can do that in the narrative of a personal self, as far as the other members of the community has similar view. In the world, besides the narratives the people are producing about it, there is no any force that would limit the use of personification on any object of description.

Following this example we can see that in a culture that personifies a part of their life, either an object or the natural forces, can do it without any hindrance in their daily activities. Since the personification belongs to the structure of the narrative, it follows that the world in itself is not personal or non-personal. It is possible to describe any phenomena with personal or non-personal qualities. The only fact is that in every culture there are strong habits about the use of these two aspects of descriptions.

We have to mention an other important question the 'meaning of a word'. We consider the the word does not hold a meaning in itself but the meaning can be described by the word's usage in language. As we examined before in chapter one (with the example of 'idealism'), the meaning of a word can change in different sentences, and in different situations. This situation becomes interesting if we try to understand the meaning of words like 'gods', 'God', 'nature', 'world', 'universe' etc.

To point out the similarity of the lived experience in the case using two different words, we are going to examine the usage of the words bacteria and demon. We have to think about two different

To point out the similarity of the lived experience in the case using two different words, we are going to examine the usage of the words bacteria and demon. We have to think about two different