Possession, immersion, and the intoxicated madnesses of devotion in Hindu traditions

This study isolates a set of ideas from the large corpus of information on possession and unmāda in Indian literature and culture. I trace the history of the concept of unmāda from the Āyurvedic texts (ca. 3rd–7th centuries C.E.), where it is an undesirable condition, to the later nondual Śaiva yoga traditions of Kashmir (ca. 10th–11th centuries C.E.), wherein the state of intoxicated devotion (bhaktimada) became a goal of practice (sādhana). In Āyurveda, although some symptoms of unmāda such as supranormal strength seem to be desirable, the condition caused by divinities that transgress the permeable boundaries of the human body warrants medical treatment ( pratinis&dotbelow;edha) and/or is categorized as pathology ( unmādanidāna). The medical treatises explain that possessing (samāviśant) divinities invade humans and cause unmāda, which must be eradicated. In the later heterodox dualistic Śaiva yoga context (ca. 8th–9th centuries C.E.), samāveśa and āveśa mean a controlled type of possession by mostly female divinities that one attracts in order to extract their power (śakti) and assimilate their intoxication (unmatta, mada). Thereafter, in the nondual Śaiva yoga traditions of Kashmir, both unmāda and the associated notion of possession are again reformulated with radically different and positive significations. SamAveSa means immersion in the ocean of absolute consciousness. To attain this state of consciousness, the kula-yogi engages in transgressive behaviors to transcend limitation by ethical norms. Non-initiates see this kind of behavior as an undesirable type of unmāda. But samāveśa can be understood as a desirable state that is sweetened by an intoxicating or mad devotion (bhaktyunmāda ). The yogi becomes “totally soaked” by his intoxication (unmāda) from immersion (samāveśa ) in the blissful ocean of consciousness. Whereas the dualistic medical perspective pathologizes all types of unmāda, the dualistic and nondualistic Śaiva traditions expand the semantic field of this term to include their respective goals of practice (sādhana ). Drunk in his devotion to Śiva, the yogi appears like an ordinary madman though in fact he is an extraordinary madman. Using both textual and ethnographic evidence, I show the protean nature of possession and unmāda throughout the history of these Hindu traditions.