76 Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 may be mystics, but mysticism is a private, intense experience not communicable in everyday language and not of political relevance.” Jantzen’s assertion that mysticism is inexpressible and politically irrelevant fails to account for the active, public, and political potency of women saints like Akka Mahadevi. Far from being private or beyond articulation, Akka Mahadevi’s poems actively challenged patriarchal structures, critiqued socio-religious hierarchies, and redefined spiritual devotion in a manner that was both subversive and political. Her refusal to conform to societal expectations expressed through her rejection of marriage, her wandering asceticism, and her radical devotion to Lord Shiva was not a retreat into inexpressibility but a deliberate, vocal defiance against the male-dominated structures of both religious orthodoxy and worldly power. Akka Mahadevi’s words demonstrate that mystical experience can be a radical act, using poetry as a means of defiance, agency, and transformation. 6 The Desperation and Intimacy of Devotion The rational critique of the conventional social expectations and norms of society stems from a spiritual conviction that these social platitudes do not even have a remote connection with the ultimate nature of the consciousness which she calls her Lord – Chennamallikarjuna. The subtlety of the transcendental experience of the divine makes it beyond the reach of a perception that is caught up with grossness and rigidity. Akka Mahadevi (2010, 155) hints at the subtlety of this experience in quite eloquent and poetic terms: Like treasure hiding in the earth Like taste hiding in the fruit Like gold hiding in the stone Like oil hiding in sesame Like fire hiding in the tree No one can see Chennamallikarjuna – The Brahman hiding in yearning. The poem contrasts different concrete images from the physical world with the abstract reality of the transcendent. As the fruit, stone, sesame, and tree are tangible, the yearning of the devotee is also felt as an experiential reality. As there are physical properties that are subtle in these objects, there is definitely the Brahman or the divine implicit in the yearning of the devotee. In a way, the poet is saying that it is the divine itself that transforms as yearning in the devotee. The devotee who feels this yearning so deeply in her heart can take refuge in the thought that the intense pain of yearning that shakes her from the core is a drive from the transcendental divinity within her, pushing her towards a realm of a mysterious dimension of infinitude. The phrase “no one can see” is also significant in this poem. The entire experience is contrasted with the apathy of the social world that is indifferent to this experience. The world of phenomenality is all that society can perceive and accept. Whereas in the Vīraśaiva (Sa. “heroic worshipper of Shiva”) tradition, to which Akka Mahadevi belonged, devotion was often expressed through the relationship between linga (Sa. “form that represents Shiva”) and anga (Sa. “part or a limb”). Linga represents the divine principle, while anga, meaning the devotee’s body, signifies the embodied soul that seeks union with the divine. The anga is always one with the linga; or rather its separate existence as an individual entity is an illusion, and the spiritual sadhana is mainly aimed at burning this illusion in the fire of Bhakti. The experience of the divine in the innards of one’s being happens in a very intimate space and it has penetrative insight that cuts through all the chimera of the world (Akka Mahadevi 1973, 75): I saw in you, Lord white as jasmine, The paradox of your being In me Without showing a limb. We can discern wonder, awe, and respect in these words. She is awestruck with the “paradox” of the Lord’s being in her subjective world without any physical proof. This is the feminine world of devotion, mystery, and magic that turns it back on the crude logic of the phenomenal existence. To be in that space also requires profound intelligence and courage. As Arundhati Subramaniam (2024, xxvii) points out, “as one travels into the subterranean realms of the self, success lies in a dynamic readiness, a vibrant stillness”. For one who is ready for this dynamic stillness, without the troubles of constant logical questioning, a dimension that is impossible to access or decipher through logic becomes available as the most intimate and personal experience that one can have. The subtlety of this experience also makes the devotee very desperate. One of the reasons for the enduring appeal of the poetry of the Bhakti saints is the way they conduit all the precarities of the human condition. While the devotee forsakes all the sureties of the social world, she enters a space of liminality that is of immense and unbearable vulnerability. Even as she lives a life founded on the firm faith
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