Bakhai and Siddhartha

1. Citing passages, page references, and edition, identify and discuss passages in Bakkhai and Siddhartha that suggest mysticism and passages that suggest pantheism.

Pantheism is the belief that everything is God and that God is everything. God is not only inside the world, He is the very world process and this provokes the view of the natural process as divine. In the Bakkhai, Euripides reveals the concept of pantheism through Agave as she is enraptured by Dionysos. An example of this is seen when Agave is blind to her son, Pentheus, and kills him.

"But foam dripped on him from her frothing mouth, while her eyes spun randomly in their sockets. She was inhibited by her god, who ran loose and wild in her mind. She could not think, much less listen to her son. Gripping his left arm just below the wrist, and planting a foot on his chest, she ripped her wretched son's limb from his socket, with an awful strength not her own, but the god's gift to her. (53)

Dionysos possessed and controlled Agave. She was given the strength to devour her son, which would not have been possible without Dionysos in her. This shows Dionysos' power to be in all things. Dionysos shows her control over Pentheus when he convinces him to dress in disguise in order to see the women. Pentheus fell into Dionysos' possession when he decided to first go into the forest to see the women. Then, Pentheus comes out wearing the disguise of a woman so that the Bakkhants don't see and kill him.

In Siddhartha, the concept of pantheism is shown when Siddhartha experiences his enlightenment at the river.

"He could no longer distinguish the different voices-the merry voices from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each otherÐ'... They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together as the world." (135)

Throughout the story, Siddhartha is turning to several beliefs and people in order to reach his enlightenment. Yet, in the end he found that his enlightenment was in all things, he just had to be ready to accept it.

"This stone in stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha." (145)

When he tried to explain this to Govinda, words were not adequate. It needed to be known that God was in everything, not in these words or in any action.

Mysticism is the belief of having a personal encounter with the divine,