Life Experience And Self Transcendence

Doris Lessing, a Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist,persistently crosses borders of all kinds in her work and life. Breaking away fromconventional fetters, she has never stayed fixed within any genre or locale. Her worksrange from racial discrimination, male-female relationships to survival crisis. Theexploration of consciousness is a pivotal part in her literary career. She helps peoplerelieve all pains like despair, violence and madness which fragment life beyond repair.By combating the negative aspects of life at all levels, she strikes a delicate anddynamic balance between inner world and outer world, the interpenetrating andintegrating of which aims at perfection of acts, perfection of understanding andperfection of self.It is the Sufi thoughts that help her attain that balance. Sufism emphasizesconsciousness development through meditation. It encourages people to endure lifehardships, abandon vanity and purify soul to achieve selflessness and become close toGod. Lessing’s admiration for Sufism does not mean her being lost in the marsh ofmysticism, nor does it mean her affiliation to Islam. What she admires is WesternSufism since her positive involvement in the world and social responsibility make herSufi thoughts different from classical Muslin Sufism. Not indulged in irrationalism,she strives to find an illuminating spiritual path based on reality. Western Sufism isnot a doctrine but a practical method of detaching from linear mode of thought to amore intuitive perception. Provided with new ways of looking at life and havingachieved peace of mind in chaotic reality, Lessing demonstrates optimism in herfiction. Western Sufism has shaped her thinking. Though it is not the only way tounderstand her fiction, it helps us appreciate her works of art.This dissertation, with a close look into four of Lessing’s novels—The GoldenNotebook, The Summer before the Dark, The Memoirs of a Survivor and TheMarriages between Zones Three, Four and Five—reveals Lessing’s Sufi wisdom andconfirms that Sufism is the critical factor to her success in the art of characterization, innovation in narrative and representation of theme. Her Sufi-like characters, inparticular life experience, suffer and seek alone and ultimately reach the essence oflife and find their spiritual home. They experience from madness to sanity, fromlosing self to finding self, from inner disequilibrium to equilibrium, from selfconfinement to self transcendence. Lessing depicts for us a Sufi path to fulfill freedomand development.Lessing elaborates on her characters’ inner realm, which is expanded andexternalized under the influence of Sufism. The Golden Notebook, despite beingwritten before she encounters Sufi thoughts, manifests her resonance with Sufism.Her belief in self-salvation is in conformity with Sufi tenet of “self-discovery andself-development”. Her sketch of the character’s schizophrenia in the form ofnotebooks is different from her contemporary writers in that she aims not at mentalbreakdown itself, but at finding a way to save people from division. Her optimism isconsistent with Sufi faith in spiritual growth and mystical transformation. TheSummer before the Dark marks Lessing’s mystical turn. The dream parallels thejourney. Mind and body are equally emphasized. The choice of freedom and returnhighlights character’s dilemma and struggle. The inner-space fiction The Memoirs of aSurvivor, as her representative work of Sufi thoughts, adopts many Sufi elements, bywhich Lessing probes the character’s changes of cognitive style and living conditionsin Sufi transcendental experience. Compared with the expansion of inner realm in theform of dreams in The Summer before the Dark, The Memoirs of a Survivor morevividly describes the inner growth by likening the inner world to the world behind thewall. In outer-space fiction The Marriages between Zones Three, Four and Five, thezoned-off inner world symbolizes various levels of consciousness on Sufi ladder toenlightenment. The character’s ascending to higher zone explicitly expresses thetheme of self transcendence. The diachronic analysis of these four novels presents thegradual influence of Sufism on Lessing’s fiction. It also demonstrates that her shiftfrom realistic writing to fantasy writing is not for straining after novelty, but forfurther expressing characters’ inner development. Sufism helps Lessing broaden hercharacters’ inner realm. More importantly, it provides a salvation road for people in psychic crisis.This dissertation falls into six parts including introduction and conclusion.Introduction makes an overview of Lessing’s experience, her novels and relatedcriticisms. It then examines Sufism and the feasibility of exploring Sufism inLessing’s fiction. At last, it introduces the significance and organization of thedissertation.Chapter One concerns itself with the breakdown-unity-breakthrough model ofself-consciousness in Lessing’s postmodernist work—The Golden Notebook. Lessingcarefully probes the intertwined layers of consciousness of a modern intellectualwoman Anna by intersecting the realistic novel Free Women with Anna’s fivenotebooks.“Free woman” Anna is not free. Her writer’s block, disillusionment ofpolitical faith and frustration in love drop her into emptiness and nihilism. As a femalewriter, a Leftist, a divorced woman and a single mother, she feels repelled by theenclosed society, which intensifies her alienation. The gap between ideal and realityresults in her breakdown and madness. Influenced by Sufi maxim “creativity out ofdestruction”, Anna gives up her old thinking patterns and turns to positive elements inlife. She gets the final psychic integration that restores her creative power and makesself-consciousness breakthrough—self-worth is not measured by heroic feat, everyoneis a “boulder-pusher” who contributes to the progress of whole human beings. Themeaning of life lies in indomitable will to live.Chapter Two is a study of Lessing’s realistic novel The Summer before the Dark.Kate, a middle-aged housewife, completely loses herself in playing the roles ofsupportive wife and nurturing mother. Her midlife crises caused by her aging, herhusband’s disloyalty and her grown-up children leaving home have gone beyond thebiological category and familial circle, extending to social, political and culturaldomains. Her summer journey launches her process of self-awakening and promotesher to take a meaningful reconciliation with her world psychologically, physically andbiologically. It is a Sufi path for self-knowledge and illumination. With growth of herinner self, she gradually recognizes the degree to which she is restricted by biologicaland societal forces. She tries to break free of the life-roles and values she has earlier chosen and keep equilibrium in the conflicts between mind and body, alienation andinvolvement, authentic self and societal roles. Her final returning home is inagreement with Sufi maxim “return from exile”. The outward returning home meansinner return of authentic self. Lessing presents Kate’s consciousness in dream format,memory and introspection. The fable-like seal dream is used as a Sufi teaching storyto bespeak Kate’s innermost feeling and prepare her for soul purification.Chapter Three illustrates how to survive through balanced consciousness inLessing’s inner-space novel The Memoirs of a Survivor. In imminent humanannihilation, Emily operating on one-dimensional mode of survival is destined tofailure. The Narrator, through Sufi meditation, successfully finds in her flat anotherworld behind the wall. With a Sufi teacher’s responsibility and love, she leads Emilyto self-knowledge and rebirth in the world behind the wall. The outer world and theworld behind the wall respectively correspond to rational and non-rational levels ofconsciousness. The chaos in “impersonal” room and the oppression in “personal”room separately incarnate confusion in reality and Emily’s distressing childhood. TheNarrator traces human spiritual division to its source, seeks balance between outer andinner realms and finally keeps peace of mind. The inner realm takes on a rich andharmonious garden as she achieves enlightenment of life. The world behind the wallappears truer, displaying a Sufi salvation road from chaos to order, from depression tofreedom. It also reveals Sufi way of life “be in the world and not of it”: individualshould abandon shackles of old conventions, develop potential on the basis of realityto achieve spiritual elevation and sublimation.Chapter Four explores Lessing’s space fiction—The Marriages between ZonesThree, Four and Five. It depicts an ideal prospect of consciousness fusion andevolution. The order from the mysterious Provider commanding that the gentle Queenof Zone Three Al·Ith marry brutal warrior king of Zone Four Ben Ata promotes theconsciousness interpenetration between the peaceful, contented matriarchal ZoneThree and the warlike, poor patriarchal Zone Four. The couple experience from initialhatred to soul-reaching and self perfection. The aim of the marriage lies not only inindividual changes, but also in evolution of all people in all zones. It encourages people to eradicate confinement and estrangement, understand and respect each otherand promote cross-cultural communication. Al·Ith descends to Zone Four and at lastascends to Zone Two, the process of which corresponds to the motif of descent andascent. Zone Two filled with souls represents the Oneness with all beings. Al·Ith is inpursuit of ideal and self-transcendence and acquires cosmic consciousness with aharmonious unity of self and universe.Based on the analysis in these four novels, the dissertation concludes: Sufithoughts have positive influence on Lessing’s fiction. Her Sufi-like characters facespiritual sufferings actively, quest for truth with intuition and achieve spiritual rebirth.Concurrently, Lessing breaks traditional linear, singular narrative with multi-layeredstructure and transcends temporal-spatial limitations, through which she expresses herunique understanding of irrational mentalities and encourages people to re-recognizeself and the irrational world. Though Sufism itself has some defects, Lessinginternalizes its positive elements with dialectic views. In the employment of Sufithoughts as a kind of life philosophy out of Islamic mysticism, Lessing pursuesmeaning of life and holds faith and optimism in self-salvation and self transcendence.Her application of Sufi thoughts is a great contribution to the literary field, her artisticcharm makes a lasting interest among readers and her responsibility as a writer leadspeople to find true essence of life.