The Four Quartets

The Epigraph

Although logos (universal consciousness) is common to all, most live as though they had an individual wisdom (consciousness) of their own.

The proper sense of this epigraph is important because it introduces the primary concern of the Four Quartets, the connection between individual and universal, temporal and eternal. Interpretations of the epigraph are typical of interpretations of the poem as a whole. A few examples will prove instructive. Derek Traversi misreads the line as "a reasonable truth is . . . the common possession of men, whose lives in fact can only be lived significantly in common, in recognition of their essentially social nature" (91). Some interpretations are better than others, but Heraclitus' epigraph undoubtedly asserts more than Traversi's social implications.

For Julia Reibetanz, "[t]he problem that the first fragment broaches is . . . the opposition of individual wisdoms to that of higher Wisdom available to all men" (20). Reibetanz's reading is more helpful, but she unfortunately rends a dichotomy between the higher and lower wisdoms, and in doing so divides the epigraph's sense of unity implicit in the word "common." Because logos is common to all, a universality always exists, and, therefore, there can be no real opposition. Others reading the line from a conventionally religious position, take the word "logos" metaphorically rather than literally to mean the focal point around which all human action revolves (Gish 97). To read the epigraph as a metaphor, unfortunately, is to miss Heraclitus' profound commentary on the literal relationship between the individual and the divine.

Grover Smith's more liberal translation of the Heraclitian fragment-"Although there is but one Center, most men live in centers of their own" (251) is among the better interpretations. Heraclitus says there is only one logos or center of intelligence-analogous to the foundational field of existence Maharishi calls pure consciousness or pure intelligence-but people mistakenly see only their own, individual centers. This misunderstanding of the part for the whole is what Vedic Science calls pragya-aparadh-the mistake of the intellect-the mistake of believing that an individual consciousness imbedded in time, rather than an eternal, unified consciousness, is the true nature of existence. Reading the line in this broader sense, that there is a primal state common to everyone, suggests that the relationship between logos and individual wisdom is not adversarial, as Reibetanz has suggested; it is simply that the interconnectedness of such a relationship has been lost. An example from modern physics will help clarify what Heraclitus means by a "logos common to all."

A commonplace exists that Einstein's greatest disappointment was his failure to prove his unified field theory. In 1967 Professors Weinberg and Salam began to make inroads to redress that disappointment. It was in that year they introduced a theory unifying the weak and electromagnetic forces, two of the four fundamental forces governing physical nature. Seven years later, in 1974, "supersymmetry" was born,

a profound mathematical symmetry principle capable of unifying particles of different 'spin,' i.e., force fields and matter fields-providing the mathematical basis for completely unified field theories. During the past several years, the application of this principle has led to the development of completely unified theories of all the fundamental forces and particles of nature based on the heterotic string. (Hagelin 74-75)

What a unified field theory establishes is a fundamental, non-changing, eternal, source for all phenomena, or in Heraclitus' terms a "common logos." It verifies what Vedic Literature has long avowed, the existence of a unified field of pure consciousness as the basis of all life, a field from which all temporal phenomena emerge. The existence of this field has been further corroborated over the past thirty years by millions of people who experience that common, eternal field of pure consciousness during the practice of the Maharishi Transcendental Meditationsm technique. The discovery of the unified field in physics, the descriptions from Vedic Literature, and the experiences during the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique demonstrate a profound interconnectedness between time and eternity and a universal or common source for all existence.

Because this common source lies at the basis of all the Laws of Nature-those laws involved in the organization of every aspect of creation-direct experience of this source has enormous value to everyone. Repeated experience of this source of life, Maharishi predicts, will put an end to the violation of Natural Law, all problems, and human suffering that Eliot depicts as the wasteland. When the full potential of Natural Law is enlivened in cosmic consciousness-the first of the "enlightened" states that Maharishi clearly defines as the seven states of consciousness3-complete harmony with the environment and full support of Natural Law ensues. This is life completely free of mistakes in which eternity is breathed into every moment of ever-changing time.

Hence, it is essential to comprehend the intimate relationship between Heraclitus' "logos," what Eliot will simply call eternity, and "individual wisdom," or Eliot's time-bound existence. In affirming that there exists a "logos . . . common to all," meaning a logos located everywhere and available to everyone at all times, Heraclitus is neither being superficially philosophical nor casually mystical; he is in his aphoristic style simply describing the true reality of existence. Analogous to Heraclitus' logos, Vedic Science calls the source of life pure consciousness, the eternal fountainhead from which everything springs, always exists, and is no further away than one's own Self-eternity that has been lost in the maze of time. The logos of the epigraph, then, holds the same philosophical value for Heraclitus as does Eliot's own "still point" discussed in Burnt Norton further on.

The second Heraclitus' quote in the epigraph is complementary to the first:

The way up and the way down are one and the same,

a paradoxical statement that at first seems the coinage of an absurdist, which neither Heraclitus nor Eliot were. They both, however, loved paradoxes that accentuated for them the incongruities of life. Paradoxes also abound in Vedic Literature and quantum physics, disciplines in which Heraclitus' statement makes perfect sense. From the perspective of the unified field, the way up and the way down are [indeed] one and the same because everything in creation at the ground state is an equal distance from everything else. I might have said an equal distance in time and space, but on this most fundamental level, time and space exist only in potentia. This equal distancing can even apply to manifest, solid objects if the measurement (if infinity could be measured) is taken at an object's deepest level, at its unified field. The cactus in Arizona, the olive tree in Greece, and the mango tree in India, all separated on the physical level, are homogeneous at their common source, with no lapse in space or time.

Practitioners of the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation technique also prove daily that distance in either time or space is only a concept. Mentally starting from the field of greatest activity, entrenched in time, they experience ever deeper, less active states of consciousness until they transcend the least excited state of activity and reach the unbounded, eternal field of pure consciousness-a self-referral state of pure potential-from which all other levels of existence find their origin (Maharishi, 1966, pp.44-53).

The process of bringing the attention to the level of transcendental Being (pure consciousness) is known as the system of Transcendental Meditation.

In the practice of Transcendental Meditation, a proper thought is selected and the technique of experiencing that thought in its infant states of development enables the conscious mind to arrive systematically at the source of thought, the field of Being.

Thus, the way to experience transcendental Being lies in selecting a proper thought and experiencing its subtle states until its subtlest state is experienced and transcended.

Ostensibly the two Heraclitian aphorisms, one about intelligence and the other about direction, differ from Eliot's concern in the Four Quartets with time and eternity, but all three ideas converge, as at a Roman crossroads, at the point of interconnectedness where concrete individuality and abstract universality meet, where all roads begin and all roads end, where time and eternity cannot be distinguished, a point Eliot will make again and again in each of the following Quartets.

[Content][Introduction]

The Four Quartets [The Epigraph] [Burnt Norton][East Coker][The Dry Salvage][Little Gidding]

[Appendix][Reference][Home]

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