World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

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ment seen in its precursors, such as the bhakti tradition. Bhakti, a thirteenth century religious resistance movement, exists historically together with a history of oppression. It is these intermingled historical trajectories of women's empowerment and disempowerment vis-à-vis spirituality that fascinates and speaks to different sorts of sacred spaces that sustain and oppress simultaneously.
The notion of the sacred may, at one level, be individually constructed and also given a certain status as a universal a priori. Thus, multiple sacred spaces may be possible, rather than a few holy iconic correct experiences. Complex rather than simple principles may be the basis for a multiple hermeneutic of the divine feminine. This would allow for an informed, critically chosen construction of a personalized sacredness rather than a constant disputation with the institutional constructions of the divine feminine. Daly, in choosing a separate space for analysis and elevation of the feminine, may have elevated the location of woman in time and space beyond the complexity of the cultural reaches of experience. Ruether examines this separation of male and female spaces critically and obverts Daly's framing of male spirituality as 'generically evil.' This is not to ignore the importance of Daly's kind of analysis of religious power in institutions which, is most often patriarchally constructed, has inherent value towards deconstructing tradition. However, the complexity of analysis required goes beyond simple dichotomies of good and bad; male and female; east and west.
In the Indian tradition, the texts and practices relating to women's spirituality seem at first contradictory. On the other hand, a number of positions are proscribed along a continuum of possibilities of worship that may not be as restrictive as the Judeo-Christian tradition. A number of religious or spiritual perspectives form the basis of everyday experiences for women. The degradation of female empowerment by monastic and legal practices historically resulted in prohibitive laws that govern family practices and directly affect the lives of women. The contradictory codicils of Manu and Narada, the chief law givers, have been debated heatedly over the centuries and at the present time have implications for the reforms of family law currently being considered.
The bodily experience of spirituality, be that in the form of stigmata, trance states, or other manifestations, takes us into a complex relationship between transcendence, spirit, body and materiality. In a number of interviews conducted with women seen by local communities as possessing a range of spiritual powers, I have determined that the intentionality of the woman begins with a desire for a numinous experience of the divine feminine. This on occasiron leads to lead to a transcendence of duality which was described in various ways. At times this resulted in spirit manifesting through corporeality, as in the case of stigmata or trance states. If the body is
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