Doctor Strange, Vedic Mysticism and Theory of the Absurd: Finding the meaning of life

‘Doctor Strange’ is the latest movie in Marvel’s superhero series. Much praise is being heaped on the movie mostly for Benedict Cumberbatch’s acting skills, the characters’ witty conversations and the film’s neat visual effects. But as I was watching the movie, I also realised that the movie has caught up with some of my fellow Indian audience for an entirely different reason —  the glorification of ancient oriental mysticism.  A dear friend sitting next to me, who is unabashedly a fan of our PM Modi and believes in all the ‘good’ that the RSS represents in our society, was furiously nudging at my elbow every time the words Vedic, Sanskrit, Chakras and Meditation were mentioned in the film. I must confess at one point I could almost see his astral body looking smugly at me with nostrils flaring and saying: “You see? This is the power of ancient Hindu science.” Now I don't have a problem with this kind of thinking. It is important to understand, learn and respect ancient systems of knowledge; as long as it is done with a scientific perspective. The problem, however, is when one thinks with a Brahminical perspective — which is trying to find the basis of our scientific opinions in Puranas and Dharmasastras rather than in life and social practice accompanying it. And when I say ‘Brahminical’, I do not refer only to caste but to all the self-proclaimed inheritors of what is presumptuously called ‘Indian culture’; that is to say, all those who think the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan way and believe plastic surgery existed during our ancient times and ‘rahu’ and ‘khetu’ mentioned during grahanam (eclipse) are nothing but harmful infrared and ultraviolet radiations.   Coming to philosophy which is somewhere between science and theology, as Bertrand Russell famously wrote, the film’s core is based on two important philosophical questions: what is the meaning of life? And what gives it this meaning? I do not profess to answer these questions, but only discuss Albert Camus’s rich philosophy of the ‘Absurd’ to better appreciate these questions and the film. Briefly, the film is about a brilliant doctor whose last name, quite serendipitously, is Strange. He is ‘religiously’ rational to the point of being arrogant and furiously ego-centric. In a freak car accident, he suffers permanent nerve damage in his hands. With no cure, he gets increasingly frustrated and profoundly reflects on the meaning of his life. Desperate, he seeks help in ancient oriental mysticism. He meets The Ancient One, who is the leader of a mystical warrior group who have pledged to defend our universe from other evil universes. One of her students Kaecilius wants to be immortal like her and wants to disturb the natural law of birth and death and live beyond time. As way of resolution, the ancient one convinces Doctor Strange that — death gives meaning to life —  and anoints him the new guardian of the universe and destroy Kaecilius.  What is the meaning of life? In ‘The Stranger’, Albert Camus gives us a character who is forced to reflect, reflect on his life and utterly reflect on the meaning of life. About the same time Camus wrote ‘The Stranger’, he wrote a philosophical essay which one might take as a theory that accompanies ‘The Stranger’ and perhaps explain it. It is called the ‘Myth of Sisyphus’. Sisyphus was a character in Greek mythology; he was condemned by the gods to a truly pointless task. He had to roll a rock up a mountain and when it got to the top it would roll down of its own weight. He would have to do it again and again. This is a symbol of what Camus refers to famously as the ‘absurd’. The notion of the absurd is a special notion. The absurd is really a metaphysical thesis. It is, to put it very bluntly, a confrontation; it is a confrontation between the rational human mind, the mind that deserves and demands justice; that which expects the universe to be comprehensible; and what Camus calls in a phrase that he borrows straight from The Stranger ‘an indifferent universe’. The truth is, the world does not care.  Does death give meaning to life? In ‘The Stranger’, Meursault says that it is death that makes life absurd. There is a long soliloquy where he considers his death penalty and the ways in which it might be less absurd. For example, if they gave him a one in a million chance to escape. But the idea that death makes life absurd, which is of course an ancient view that goes all the way back to the Greeks, is countermanded by the story of Sisyphus himself. Sisyphus is immortal. What makes his life absurd is the fact that he is condemned to a lifetime of futility. But if that lifetime of futility in fact is an immortal lifetime going on for all eternity, I think we will agree that that makes it not less absurd but rather more absurd. One might say that it is a kind of blessing in life that we don’t get a chance to get totally bored. There have been several interesting attempts to draw sketches of immortality in which the almost inevitable outcome is at a certain point boredom and futility – a sense that it is the same thing over and over again.  Finally, then is ‘The Ancient One’ right? The idea that death needs to be absurd gives rise to another consideration too that there is a sense in which we expect our lives to add up to something. As Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament tells us quite bluntly this is ‘the vanity of the vanities’, it doesn’t. What Sisyphus and Ecclesiastes both give us is a picture of life where we have all of our aspirations and ambitions our joys and our achievements but ultimately in the end it amounts to nothing. That is the absurd. To put the conclusion rather bluntly, life is the meaning of life. It is not anything outside of life, and it is not even necessarily any particular content of life or way of life. It is just life itself.