Buddhist Romanticism

Schleiermacher is the only one of the five to recommend specific
meditative reflections for inducing a feeling of Oneness, reflections that
were primarily exercises of the imagination. As we will see in Chapter Five,
one of his recommended exercises was to imagine stripping away every
aspect of one’s self to the point where nothing is left. Only then is there
room for the infinite plenitude of the universe to appear where one’s false
attachments had previously been. Another exercise worked in the opposite
direction: To look at every facet of the universe with an eye to realizing that
everything that has ever existed or will ever exist in the world outside is
already present within oneself right now.
In each case, though, Schleiermacher noted that the simple performance
of the exercise was not enough to ensure an experience of infinite Oneness.
The Infinite itself also had to act, entering into the empty vessel. If it didn’t,
one simply had to try to maintain an attitude of open receptivity and
acceptance until the propitious moment of Infinite grace arrived.
Schlegel and Novalis had another way of inducing an experience of
Oneness that they mentioned only in their private letters, and not in their
published works. That was their opium tincture. (As for the other three
writers, I have found no clear record as to whether they used opium or not.)
It would be a mistake to attribute the Romantic cult of Oneness to opium
use—after all, ideas about Oneness were rife in the scientific and
philosophical culture of the time—but still, the fact that opium was
available and that these two writers were using it to put themselves in what
they called an “Indian state” explains a great deal about their
unquestioning confidence in Oneness as a Good Thing.
When in 1802 Schlegel had completed a drama, Alarcos, that was poorly
received, he mentioned in a letter that the work would have been better if
only he hadn’t run out of opium while writing it. Other passages in his
writings and Novalis’, however, give the impression that their tincture was
not always in short supply. One is Schlegel’s essay, in Lucinde, extolling the
virtues of “pure vegetating,” which we will discuss in Chapter Four.
Another is the passage in Novalis’ novel, The Novices of Sais, defining love
as a desire to become liquid:
“Whose heart does not leap with joy,” cried the youth with
glittering eye, “when the innermost life of nature invades him in all
its fullness! When the overpowering emotion for which language has
no other name than love, expands within him like an all-dissolving
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