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Fire, Sun, Moon: Kundalini Yoga in John Updike’s S.: A Novel

"I am Kundalini, the energy-serpent that rises" Sarah Price Worth Critics have so far responded to John Updike's S.: A Novel (1988) by dismissing it as Updike's comic portrayal of a middle-aged WASP woman suddenly caught in the mires of obsolete Hinduistic and Buddhistic philosophies (Adams 78; Broyard 7; Schiff 89). (1) However, S. is much more than a mere humorous delineation of an American woman in search of freedom from her bondage to the world. It epitomizes a unique aesthetic transmutation of Tantra Yoga, one of India's most complex esoteric disciplines. This branch of Yoga gives radical prominence to the human body and probes deep into the subliminal psychic structures of the self. To appreciate it, one has to know Tantra-sastras and tantric philosophy in theory as well as in practice. C. G. Jung therefore cautions the Western yoga enthusiasts, "The spiritual development of the West has been along very different lines from that of the East and has therefore produced conditions which are the most unfavourable soil one can think of for the application of yoga" ("Yoga" 537). Correspondingly, the current critics' opinions about S. are rooted in their limited knowledge of this sophisticated physio-psychic branch of Yoga. But, Updike admirably meets the theoretical part of this challenge in his depiction of the protagonist, Sarah Price Worth, as an embodiment of the primal female force or Kundalini Sakti in tantric tradition. The purpose of this essay is to study S. in the light of Kundalini Yoga for a comparative evaluation of Sarah's rise to the "Serpent Power" or Kundalini. An attempt will in the process be made to first briefly illustrate the doctrinal intricacies of Kundalini Yoga and then critically examine the evolution of her consciousness through different psychic stages. It will as well be finally indicated whether Kundalini Sarah could find release from her earthly concerns at the end of the novel. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The radical movements of the sixties such as the New Left and "Counter Culture" captured America's collective imagination and created a climate of cultural experimentation and metaphysical interrogation. "The decade of the 1960s," says Sydney Ahlstrom, "was a time [...] when the old grounds of national confidence, patriotic idealism, moral traditionalism, and even of historic Judeo-Christian theism, were awash" (3). The consequent spiritual scepticism aroused among Americans an irresistible craving for alternative value systems. As a result, they looked over to the mystical Orient for the much needed spiritual solace and moral sustenance. To many of them, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam appeared to offer a variety of viable resolutions for their metaphysical and moral confusions. As a discipline of the universal import, Yoga caught up with Americans quite fast and soon several Indian gurus sprung on the American soil with their respective brands of Yoga. They preached and propagated Hindu spirituality and thereby created a "subculture" that "interfaced with a dominant American cultural matrix" (Forsthoefel 2, 1-14). As a result, several American writers and artists patronised them for their aesthetic or spiritual purposes. Updike knew of Kundalini Yoga from Bhagwan Raj neesh and his Tantra Yoga. In his interview with this author, Updike claims, "When I was a young man, in Oxford especially, but in my New York years also, I read a lot of religious books. Not just Christian, but I did read a little about Hinduism and Buddhism. So I had some knowledge of it. But when I reached it for this book-I mean, yes, Rajneesh was the way in. But then I went back and read a number of texts about both Hinduism and Buddhism and worked them into the teachings and into the novel, which made it a long glossary about yoga" (Singh 88). In fact, Updike has frequently been accused of showing women in a poor light-as mere objects of sexual pleasure (Lanchester 13). In S. …