Indian
Philosphy
by
Brahmasrii
Dr K C Varadachari
KNOWING
OURSELVES
Why
should we know ourselves? This question seems to be on the lips of almost every
present day young man. There was a time when it was thought that the duty that
every man owed to himself in life was to know oneself. The Delphic Oracle spoke
but a platitude of ancient times. Today however it has became important to
raise this question again. We wish to know the world, the universe both in its
physical aspect and in its social nature so that we may be able to live more
efficiently and happily. Indeed we wish to extend the frontiers of our
knowledge so that we may be able to master the universe. The hope of science is
verily the unlimited extension of human knowledge and also the unlimited
extension of one's duration in the world. Physical immortality is a goal that
has been most attractive if not fascinating prospect. Kayakalpa of yore
achieved both by means of rasayana and yoga seems
to have had a short term but man has not ceased to
entertain the dream. In Europe the three-score and ten, and in India satamanam
or hundred years have been exceeded by certain peoples who had the good fortune
of living well till one hundred and fifty. The knowledge of oneself thus has
been not quite the problem - rather it is problem of living well during the
period of living whatever may be the duration.
Thus
the perspective of the modern man has changed. What with the invasion of the
technological age that promises the millennium of happiness in all its four
parts the very pattern of individual and social and political life has been
changing. Nothing of the past seems to be adequate to this new pattern. Call it
the phase of Kali or the phase of the lower mind or call it the birth of the
integral mind, the break up of the mind of man has been rather continuous and
speedy.
It
must be asked then how man will be under the challenge of knowing himself. The
need is, as I have said, to live somehow and hope for a better world adjusted
by the wisdom of the human head and heart. Not until this fails - and it need
not for failure is not
inevitable - will man be able to seek a meaning for himself.
The meaninglessness of life as he finds it, lives in it, and grows in it if he
can, alone will make the discovery of oneself imperative.
Many
men – including scientists – have been arguing against the threat of the
atom-bomb and such other inventions. Some have seen in this new threat an
opportunity for religious values. But it is somewhat naïve and indeed it is a
return to a kind of response that was tried previously – religion can be an
atavistic response especially when it is not capable of revealing the purpose
of human existence.
Today
we have turned our backs on the ancient goal of liberation from the human
bodily existence and the society in which we grew. Liberation today is the
liberty to have access to abundant life. Indeed very much early even it was
well known that the goal of life is meaningless to mankind unless it can
promise an abundant life here and now and God's Kingdom of happiness without
sorrow is capable of being realised here. The appeal of most modern religions
is to this aspect of life and today more than ever even the claim
for revival of religious attitude is in respect of such a
realisation of abundant life for all. This aspect may be considered to be the
contribution of west to religion. Whilst mysticism may be considered to be the
worship of the Transcendent and the longing for the perfect and eternal life
the characteristic trait of religion seems in the main to be the longing to
brine down that eternal quality or as much of it to play in the lives of men
here and promote concord, happiness even of the physical level, harmony and a
sense of humanity and rationality. This description is of course rather general
but some or the western scholars are prone to say that religion is not the
characteristic of the East whilst mysticism is its character. It is clear then
that religion must be this worldly whereas mysticism is other worldly. Religion
seeks liberation in and of this world whereas mysticism seeks liberation from
this world.
This
neat kind of distinction between religion and mysticism is not acceptable to India. The
tendencies of both are available even here, the spirit of St Thomas
Aquinas as seen in his prayer1 is about as constant
the nature or the Indian bhakta or devotee. However the emphasis on the
bringing down the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven is a call for
transformation of earth consciousness itself and the attempt of some modern
religions to fashion and shape and idealise that as the goal of man (parama
-purusartha) is much more ambitious than the love of God for the sake of going
beyond to our eternal condition or realizing our true self or merging ourselves
in the vast Eternal Being beyond all change and flux and time and space.
1 St Thomas Aquinas's prayer (quoted from St
Thomas Aquinas: Gerald Venn p.62) "O God, in whom is every consolation,
who discern in us nothing that is not your gift, grant me when the term of this
life is reached the knowledge of the first truth, the love of the highest Good.
Give my body, most generous giver of rewards, the beauty of clarity, the
swiftness of agility, the aptness of subtlety, the strength of impassability;
Add to these the affluence of riches, the influence of delights, the confluence
of good things; that so I may rejoice, above in your consolations; below in the
pleasantness of the place, within in the glory of soul and body; about me in
the delightful company of angels and of men. With you most merciful father may
my mind discover the illumination of wisdom, my efforts, the praise of triumph,
there where, with you is the escaping of all dangers, the distinction of
mansions, the concord of wills, where reigns the amenity of spring, the
lucidity of summer, the richness of autumn, the quiet silence of winter, grant
me God life without death, and joy without sorrow, there where reign supreme
freedom, true security, secure tranquility, joyful bliss, blissful eternity,
eternal beatitude, the vision, and the praising of truth, yourself, AMEN.
Despite the scientific veneer of modern man, he is
essentially living in an anthropo-centric world, man-centered rather than
God-centered life. The man-centered world of humanism has a tendency to refute
the important things, that we can realise anything and indeed we can plan our
lives ourselves and do not need to have the faith, the belief or even the help
of the highest spiritual force, namely God. If ancient sacrificial mysticism
finally sacrificed God and made results come out of sacrifice itself without
reference to gods or God, modern scientific mysticism is a revival of the same
atheistic (or even euphemistically called agnostic) attitude that dispenses
with the spiritual life of man, his God and all that it entails.
We
have always had in history the two ways of approach the theistic or
God-centered or whole-centered (Purnanubhava) science, economics, ethics, yoga,
and liberation, and attainment and the atheistic or man-centered,
part-centered, science, economics, ethics, yoga and liberation and attainment
or perfection. The latter is apakva, imperfect and never perfectible. The
process of history has been a periodically dialectical swing from one extreme
to the other. And a
third path has always been open to those who saw beyond
the God-centered world that mediated between the transcendent Reality and the
man-centered world of Nature. The discovery of the self has oscillated between
finding it in nature as part thereof, or as part of God and in either case it
meant a partial realization. The whole truth about the self is incapable of
being grasped as long as there is rightly or wrongly a dissatisfaction about
either of the above solutions. There is a transcendent sense of self-existence
that remains dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction is born not out of any
cussedness or even the feeling that man is more than man, but out of the
realisation that in nature and in society, in earth centered consciousness
there is hardly to be had the sense of existence or being or living. This
arises even when the theistic temper is on. Indeed the realisation of God
enforces the transcendence of the human and his social and natural world. That
is why to know oneself one has to know God and only when God is known as
transcendent to and not merely immanently the world and men, is there the real
possibility of a liberated existence. Pragmatic approaches or political
idealisms not withstanding the high peak
of Vedic
thought has a far-vision whereas the modern astronomical
temper too is surfeit with near-vision.
The
Vedic seers saw clearly that we have to transcend the human and the natural and
perceive both human and nature from the standpoint of the Divine. The concept
of God in tantra reveals this dynamic sacramentalism revealed in the poises of
the Divine as Being and the Divine as Power or Creativity or Mother. That it
was later expanded to cover the meaning of the extraordinary multiplicity of
posers and creations and statuses or gods and goddesses reveals how the One may
be considered to appear as the many not fictitiously but really and truly, not
for deceit and ignorance but for revelation and expression and redemption. The
Pancaratra Agama is unique in this respect in so for as it introduces a concept
of supreme import and this concept entails the realization of the five-fold
status of God - four in his descent (avatar) and one in his transcendence,
towards which all souls are being led through these descents and by these
descents.
It is the realization that the one Godhead is indeed from
which all other godheads arise - to which Sri Krsna refers significantly /yad
yad vibhuti mat sarvam Srimadurjitam eva va / tad tad evavagaccha-tvam mama
tejomsa sambhavah // X.41. and says also that all this by one part of Himself –
eka amsena - is established.
The
Divine Godhead as transcendent is the goal of man; and the realisation of that
Divine Godhead in His descents as the Creator, sustainer, withdrawer, redeemer
ruler of all, as Samkarsana, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, as the historical
descents within and among men and the world – known much more as avatars in
general usage (rudhi), whose last full descent is said to be Sri Krsna (though
others include Buddha) and in the heart and in the icon (arca), is the pathway
or how the Divine who is transcendent stoops to lead the humble seeker after
the nisseyas. The arca, harda (antaryamin), vibhava (avatar) and vyuha (cosmic
lord) form thus the leaders of man whom man can worship and serve and know. It
is these four forms that act as the Vedic Agni to take us to the Visnu, the
parama, and the Purusottama, beyond the ksara and the Aksara.
There is the worship of the temple icon which is the
perceptible outer object whose presence and awakening within the heart posits
the second descent - this is what is described as the realization of the Kingdom of God within, and capable of being so
established in the hearts of all. Yogis realize God within themselves in their
hearts, as the Inner Ruler Immortal. The realisation of God as Avatar or
historical personality with a divine mission to establish righteousness
everywhere is much more difficult. Indeed it is only the Grace of God that
makes the yogis perceive him as the Divine personality - Indeed Sri Krsna says
that ignorant men treat him as just a man not knowing his divine nature - whose
birth and activity are divine - janma karma ca me divyam. A Prahlada knew
Vamana as an avatar, a Hanuman recognized Rama, Vidura knew Sri Krsna to be the
Godhead - apart from the Rishis and Gods.
To
serve Him in the world is indeed a glorious service and leads to the
realisation of the Cosmic Deities of the three spheres of Bhur Bhuvah and Svar,
and the great trinity spoken of in the Agamas. Above it one comes across that
mysterious power called the
Mother who throughout has been present as the protecting
angel of the soul that had surrendered, and she is the Godhead who takes us
across to the ultimate Realisation of the Transcendent – tamasah parastat, tad
visnor paramam padam –the Brahma nirvana. This vision includes all that science
may seek, religion aspire for and mysticism embrace. Surrender is the path, the
method, and indeed ends in that unitive experience with God in all His fivefold
nature, integrally. Sri Krsna taught this yoga in Pancaratra, and it is clear
that the echoes of this doctrine are found in sections in all religions. We out
to be satisfied with nothing less that the ultimate that is the Indian way, the
integral way, the only way – nanyah pantha ayanaya vidyate.
MAN’S
ASPIRATION AND HIS QUEST
What
is the exact thing which man seeks and when will his seeking come to an end?
This has been one of the major problems. When he seeks to find satisfaction or
happiness in things of the world, he finds that such satisfactions have a
transient nature and further that they do not satisfy one completely. They seem
to lead one on to others than themselves. Material things, life and even
rationality or mind of imagination do not seem to be completely satisfactory
for they bear within themselves the possibility of their annulment. As the
great logicians remarked all things seem to be riddled with contradiction or
should we say be devilled by their own opposites. That is why it was seen that
the Real permanent is not to be had in the world of matter or motion or life or
mind. All things are carrying within themselves their certificates of death and
disintegration, in whatever way those two may
manifest themselves. To dismiss this as logical
sophistication and assure ourselves that whether permanent or transient life
must be for enjoyment or happiness is of course one way of escaping from the
contemplation of the future. Opportunism has a great attraction to human minds,
even though the best is sure to come to an end and the worst may take its
place. The dialectical or polar tension is a fact that life and reason
demonstrate.
Thus
man’s yearning for that which can satisfy or help fulfilment is eternal. This
yearning for that which can fulfil is usually called the quest for perfection
but then this perfection is thought of as of the order of pattern of life or of
mind or of man. Wherein lies man’s perfection or that which more truly can be
spoken of as the principle which makes one feel completely satisfied and for
ever this is the question.
It
is said that if one knows oneself that is the perfection. Self-realisation is
said to be an all-solvent of the problem eternal unrest. This self-realisation
is sought for introspectively in meditation or dhyana or Samadhi. It leads one
on to something that transcends
all thought and truth and even one's personality or ego.
Some others take self realization to be the realization of the rational self
which is in so far as it is rational, a universal self, or common self of all
on the plane of reason. Some others take it to be self – realization in the
community of human beings and institutions. Thus family, religions sects, or
church or state is that which in objective reality forms the basic means for
self-realization. One finds that the self thus socialised or communitised or
statised even when such socialisation or communitisation or statisation is
based on so called rational principles bedevils the whole process in the
dialectical see-saw and precariously imperils the self that seeks its
realisation, for every realization is followed by de-realization.
Man’s
self is not complete within itself so long as the self that knows and hugs to
is made to be what it is, a social term or ego. No other ego however eminent
can fully complete the search for the soul that is in unrest.
It
is true that man is insufficient in himself, and feels himself to be
insufficient in the world of matter and
life and mind and in society. What then is the quest for
It is a quest for that principle of completion or that which can complete the
soul when it becomes attained. Who will remove this basic insufficiency in the
individual? The very nisus at the heart of every individual is the need to
attain sufficiency. This is the power behind the religious quest. It may be
diverted to goals such as truth, consciousness or power or other men and things
or beauty even and goodness, but the measures of their being the principle of
sufficiency or completion are determined by their ability and capacity to do
so.
The
object of all religious endeavour or its ultimate endeavour is that principle
that helps completion of oneself. That is it is that which fills a person
completely occupying him in all his parts and grants a harmony of being which
no other principle or principles or a whole collection of them can fill. Thus
the ultimate object of human quest and one may perhaps add of all that exists
is the full or Purna; it does not imply that one knows or can know whether and
how it is full in itself, but that it fills to the very brim every soul that
aspires. In this sense then does the Veda use the
name Purna to the Ultimate Deity: Purnam adah Purnam
idam, where He is or God is that in full or becomes full. Therefore we have to
recognise that the object of religious quest is that filling principle to the
brim of being and thus quenches all search for anything else. This is the
meaning of self-realization which is only to be had in the Godhead and not in
one's own fragmentary or partial being or amsa. We have to find our amsi or
that which completes and restores to wholeness our being.
Such
a principle of Fullness or Purna as God is very satisfying as granting an
explanation to the search interminable in the world of life and matter and mind
and society and transcendence.
Having
thus defined the call of religious quest as the call to discover that which can
complete one's being and all wholly, it is our next business to consider
whether the objects of religion offered to us by religions are such principles.
Following the same method adopted earlier it can be shown that the
representations of God for human worship and satisfaction are incapable of
granting total satisfaction.
There are persons who would represent the Godhead in or
by some symbolic object. Trees and animals and utensils of natural phenomena
are worshipped as God. Though each one of them had perhaps saved or protected
for a while from disaster or from some calamity there developed superstitions
which have proved such religion to be inadequate to the reason and deeper
intuitions. Nor have painting and idols as representative signs of numinous
objects inclusive of wonder and awe helped to satisfy the human yearning for
completion. An ancient maxim that men become what they worship has proved such
inadequate objects to be not only the grave of all progress and attainment but
led to deteriorating effects and regress.
Religious
object by some has been stated to be the inner principle of man. The kingdom of God is said to be within. God is said to
be installed in the hearts of all creatures. To discover him and live by is
light and grace is said to be religion. It is clear that it does not provide
for the problem of completeness – attainment as the Self to be know as also the
Universal Self but
also precariously solipsistic and dependent on the life
of the body. The antaryami worship is very valuable and is the basic form for
both ethics and religion, as the centre of conscience and inner voice. But the
life of the body entails the concept of transcendence of the antaryamin in and
through and inclusive of it.
The
Religious Object is claimed to be the prophet, messiah, avatar or some leader
who by his services to mankind has got apotheosized or lifted up to the status
of the Godhead. Such men too however eminent proved unsatisfactory to the
religious consciousness which got a temporary satisfaction but had to revise
its notion of Godhead when such persons passed off leaving their footprints on
the sands of time. Their immortality is a posthumous immortality, an
immortality in the memory of a people or a nation or a cult.
Nor
is the worship of the Gods or God who had made the creation as a whole and who
runs the cosmic show sufficient and satisfying as it depends on the cosmic
process. There is a beyond creation. Thus the concept of a Creator-sustainer,
Redeemer God does
not satisfy the inmost demand for an Ultimate God whose
Being is greater than all the four forms that we have enumerated.
Therefore
that the Ultimate Transcendent beyond all our conceptions and processes is the
one all-satisfying principle, all filling principle or Person is known.
Hindu
Spiritual thought has through all ways of knowing arrived at this Ultimate
Being, beyond all perception, beyond all reasoning, beyond all minding and
knowing and even intuiting - na caksur gacchati, na vag gacchati, na mano, na
vidmo na vijanimo etad anusisyat - says the Kenopanisad.
The
Ultimate supports and elevates the lower forms of conception of its existence
or lower statuses of its own dynamic formulation to the mind of the souls.
Thus
it gives a comprehensive formulation of Deity and man's ascent from the lowest
to the Highest by sublimation and transformation of the lower to the integral
Nature of the Ultimate.
Hinduism does not reject the lower for it answers to some
fact of reality of the All existence. It in and through the lives of the souls
threads them together as the One that appears as all these manifold forms and
names and all.
Thus
the One truth or Reality that embraces all is the Highest formulation of the
Integral Hinduism.
A
CRITIQUE OF WAYS OF KNOWING
The
most interesting analysis of the ways of knowing reality and at once the most
simple is given by those who uphold the four ways of knowing: the perceptual,
inferential, analogical or correspondential, and the revelational. There are
others who hold that there are the rememberential (smrti), traditional
(itihasa), historical (puranagama) which could not be brought under the former
classifications, since these depend upon the person knowing himself but on
others and in that sense some would like to make revelational knowledge not
personal but received from some one else. But we can surely have a direct
institution ourselves and that experience may have none of the characteristics
that we have associated with other ways of knowing with regard to the
scriptural knowledge. Medicating on the scriptural revelation (Veda as such)
one lights on an experience which is unique, self-
revealing and spiritual and it is not to be identified
with the remembered traditions or even historical facts. This could be known
only in personal spiritual experience – it in that sense almost appears to be a
direct revelation of meaning even as the object is the direct appearance to the
senses or the mind in perception, or the direct awareness of the vyapti in
anumana or the direct awareness in upamana or the similarities in the objects,
present or non-present or present and non-present.
Having
regard then to the quality of our present experiences we can classify our
knowing into two broad divisions: one for self (svartha) and another for others
(parartha). This classification is accepted in Indian Logic only with regard to
inference. The svarthanumana is inference for oneself which may or may not need
all the five premises or proposition (pratijna), reason (hetu), example
(udaharana) generalization (dristanta) upanaya (application) and conclusion
(nigamana) which are needed for pararthanumana (inference for others).
Experience and demonstration of that experience are two different things. But a
complete knowing process would involve not only that we know but that we would
communicate the same knowledge to others. Else
knowledge would be incommunicable utterly. This
proposition unfortunately is widely held, though it is specially said to be
true of perception and revelation. Logicians do believe in demonstrating their
conclusions by means of proofs, even as poets believe in vividly portraying the
uncommon similarities and indeed the greatest poet is defined (perhaps not at
all quite happily) as one who is the master of a million similes, conceits and
so on.
Thus
just as there is a svarthanumana, there is a svarthupamana which is a direct
awareness of similars between any two objects or experiences, and the logician
and poet do know this: even as they have to prove and illustrate their
experiences of uniformities or invariable concomitances, and similarities in their
creations. A poet shares his knowledge of the upamiti (correspondential
knowledge) with his audience.
It
is no doubt true that this is not so easily perceived in the case of pratyaksha
and sabda. It however cannot be said that perceptive knowledge is incommunicable
or uniformulatable in terms of language: what is incommunicable or
uniformulatable in
each case is the affective state which may vary from mere
prehensive activity, pleasant or mildly present or unpleasant, to one of
intense emotion pleasant or unpleasant. Knowledge is always definite or capable
or being fully described: which may vary from mere predication which involves
the processes of recognition and comparison of qualities and generals or
universals and actions and relative non-existence or existence in space and
time to the representation of the form of the object seen in either language or
gesture or more properly in pictures or pictographs which is the beginning of
plastic arts and paintings. The latter form is surely as valid as the language
or logical propositions. The aesthetic communication is said to be an
art-product: but knowledge it is that is really being communicated by one who
wants a demonstration of it. Knowledge is known only by its being represented.
Thus pratyaksa-knowledge is communicable through arts and is for others
(parartha-pratyaksa): Whether it is properly done or not is a matter for the
tests of truth. There is a manner of real experience which eludes the
sense-organs which the art-craft reveals but mere sense experience is
communicable and verifiable
through pictographs or drawing or representation in some
form. This is not to annual the distinction annul the distinction between art
and science, doing and knowing, though no such absolute distinction could be
made between the two. Sometimes the only test of knowing is doing;
demonstrating that one knows is a part of the test. Whether we call this
verification or proof of perceptual knowledge is certainly not identical with
inference: the test is not coherence as such or correspondence as such, but a
formulation or representation which corresponds with the original object as
perceived by another (or others) who is called upon to share the knowledge. It
is because verbal formulation is symbolic representation where the symbols have
to be fully grasped by the person to whom one seeks to communicate the
perceptual knowledge of the object, that it becomes difficult to find a common
language so to speak. Where this is found as in the masters of language or
communication and in his audience or listeners who are fully equipped with the
delicate uses of words (sophisticated so to speak), the perceptual knowledge is
capable of being communicated with extraordinary fidelity. Literary artists
and poets are admired precisely for their ‘fidelity to
nature’. We call that word-painting.
Thus
it is clear that though men are aware of this distinction between svartha and
parartha it is only the parartha that is socially valuable and in a truer sense
a test of perfect knowing. Musical critics who cannot sing or songsters who
cannot sing or execute their inexpressible songs are species of
non-knowers-arrested knowers-arrested half way to knowledge of their subjects.
So also painters who cannot paint or artists who are just art-critics and
nothing more are of this category.
A
poet combines the genius of the artist with the vision of the reality which he
sees much more than the ordinary seer or observer. He observes more than the
ordinary man, who sees the peculiar identities which are not within the
province of the ordinary logician or scientist, though it would be profoundly
good for the latter to accustom themselves to see the unities and identities of
a different order, and the correspondential which is possible to a trained imagination.
The true poet is the poet of truth not merely of imagination, for
imagination is precisely a way of knowing reality beyond
the presented or rather behind the presented. It is wrong type of
sophistication which insists upon the poet being as far from reality as
possible, without knowing or even imagining that the reality to which the poet
shall conform or is obliged to conform is more truly true of reality or reveals
a fuller articulation of that Reality or reveals greater dimension or larger number
of dimensions than presented in the human tri-dimensional or bi-dimensional
reality of the pratyaksa, and four dimensional anumana (inference).
There
is therefore the well-attested experience of poets which is appealing and
satisfying and even amazingly inspiring in contrast with which the logical
intellect appears barren, unsatisfying and certainly not appealing. It is not
by adding emotion that we get the quality of the poet but by a more conspicuous
totality of understanding – the intellectual liberation from the presented and
the uniform necessary connections, it is indeed an entrance into novelty that
the Upamana-consciousness-knowing or upamiti grants. But greater than the
poetic intuition is the Divine revelatory knowledge that comes to one as the
bodying forth or
the deliverance of the Truth itself into the
consciousness; it is a liberating effect that one gets through all one’s being.
Perception gives us a liberation of a kind, anumana liberation of a different
kind, upamiti already a participation in the spiritual unity and identity of
all; but it is Sabda, the voice and meaning and even spiritual perception or
presentation of the Reality in its wholeness that is altogether surpassing in
its comprehension to the lower ways of knowing that gives us the truth. It is
thus Truth that ultimately triumphs: it is this truth that also leads to the
wide luminous expanses of the Reality (Satyam Brihat, Rtam Brihat). It is that
which makes wide the pathways of Reality. This divya anubhava is over-whelming.
This anubhava makes many pause and chew the cud of bliss: and some indeed
become so thoroughly inspired and God-mad that its inexpressibility is taken
for granted. At least the inexpressible is known to the inexpressible in
logical forms, or in forms of correspondences and sculptural and painting and
representational art.
Man
yearns for expression and the expression lags behind the reality. Reality is
more than man’s comprehension and knowledge of the dimensions of
being. Yet the Sabda claims to intimate the Reality and
asserts that one who knows the Brahman becomes Brahman. Mystic experience is of
several ranges and in each it finds the Brahmic experience verified and
enjoyed-known and entered into. The only manner by which the Sabda can be an
intimation and communication or the Transcendent Brahman or Reality is through
the Veda-seen and entered into by Rishis, the mantra-drastas. This is also the
meaning of the famous sutra of Badarayana: Sastra-yoni-tvat: The Veda is the
parartha-Sabda, the inner Veda – adhyatma yoga finds in the transcendental
experience of Unity with Brahman in whom one loses oneself utterly where in the
mind reaching returns not, nor eyes nor any sense organ or what is expressed in
another sense whom the mind nor eye nor speech reaches or return baffled and
dazzled. The Yogis reach it in their turya or fourth state or Samadhi, the
Rishis in their sublimest devotion and enjoy the supremest ecstasy, an
overflowing knowledge in its utter liberation from all limitations which the
lower ways of knowing like perception, inference and poetic fancy impose on the
ultimate knowledge. It is they in their claim to speak the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth have
given to mankind (out of their kindness so many say) Vedas in order to
demonstrate the existence of the dream of the poets, (a dream which is perhaps
far short of the Reality rather than the overworked imagination of the dreaming
poet) confirming in truth the adage that truth is stranger in fiction as seen
in the criminal stories from real life.
Thus
we should conceive of the four ways of knowing to have both the subjective or
personal (or for oneself, svartha) and the demonstrative and objective (or for
others, parartha). This will entail certain consequences. To emphasize any one
of them at the expense of the other is to miss the whole meaning of the process
of knowing.
THE
FUTURE OF MANKIND
Our
present owes its roots to scientific developments that have been taking place
at an enormous rate during the past two centuries. Above all this in an age of
electricity – whose discovery synchronized with the discovery of the planet
Uranus by Herschel. It synchronized also with the first revolution in Modern
Times of an ideology, however unplanned or unsatisfactory, “The French
Revolution that started with the slogans of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”. Thus three
events transpired together, the scientific, the astronomical and the social or
statal; and if astrology be believed, this coincidence may be due to the new or
novel action of the powers of Uranus on this planet and on the lives of men and
nations. Uranus is the planet of revolution, electricity, invention and genius.
It is the planet of unity and rebirth and Order (Rta) Cosmic and Divine. For
Uranus is Varuna. His bipolar activity –
one
on the adhyatmika side and the other on the adhibhautika side, -
yokes the present age to the Evolutionary theory. We may see in the lives of
the most brilliant discoverers and inventive geniuses that this planet Uranus
is somewhere very dominant in their horoscopes. Mystics as a rule have this
planet dominating their lives1. Equally when Neptune
was discovered there happened a clear indication that forces of a
superterrestrial nature were released on this planet to quicken the evolution
of men even to the destiny of the goods. Aerial inventions and aerial
navigation became almost a rule, and by the same token on the astral side and adhyatmic
side, we have a deepening sense of mystery of the Unconscious Unity in all,
the cosmic memory, as Jung would say, becoming a factor in the lives and
thoughts of men. It is again no queer incident in the history of the human race
that large spiritual societies guided by masters of wisdom, and godmen like Sri
Ramakrishna and others were born in India and elsewhere to key up the pace of
the transformation of man in two-fold directions, such
1 Dr. Besant, J.
Krishnamurthy, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, etc. cf. Alan Leo’s Hundred
Horoscopes.
as ‘technical transformation’ of our material environment
or rather efficient material and scientific life on the one hand and an
efficient and large spiritual unfolding on the other side. The great interest
in the psychological and psycho-analytical sciences in modern times has indeed
played a supreme part and men no longer go by the outer symptoms of disease or
personality but by the inner coherence of personality-factors. Further there
has arisen an awareness in the minds of men that an age of scientific
technocracy cannot go together with isolated and primitive thoughts and
instinctive crude adaptations to novel developments. That way leads to
disaster. A1 machinery cannot be handled by C3 minds. An earlier age when the
scientific discoveries were not made by superior and inventive minds was an age
of A1 brains with C3 machinery. Now that such a state of affairs has been
reversed, the insecurity of the modern man has become more patent. No culture
can permit itself to be annihilated by machinery, for culture is always the
dominance of mind over matter, plan over chaos, it ‘is a life-form that is the
direct manifestation of Spirit’. Mind 2
2 World in the
Making: Count H. Keyserling.
cannot rule matter unless it can probe into the secret
recesses of itself on the one hand and on the other into the secret processes
of matter. Growth in knowledge of matter is directly proportional to the
inwardness achieved by mind. For Mind and matter are in reality sustained by a
third, Absolute Spirit whose manifestations (subjective and objective) are
these. By the route of matter we shall arrive at the Spirit but these processes
cannot happen unless the route of matter is accompanied by the lower mind
according to its own route”. 3
Thanks
to the discovery of (lost or) ancient civilizations (like that of Mohenjodaro,
Ur, etc.) the new and wide distribution of the truths of all religions and
faiths, a growing uniformity in the content of knowledge of all minds, brought
about by the phenomenal growth of newspapers and other means of communication
including the radio-developments, wireless and others,
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
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