Indian
Philosphy
by
Brahmasrii
Dr K C Varadachari
The
modern types of political life and indeed no one can escape from coming to
grips with it leads us to accept a philosophy that could in a sense take
cognizance of both the individual detachment and messianic aspiration. The cry
that the academies should be free from the emotional and other factors entering
into the field of political or social life shows the voice of the Monk: the
refusal to participate in life to be able to carry on work of the most abstruse
and obtuse types is considered to be necessary preparation for life itself so
far as the students themselves are considered, but not in respect of the adults
who are in charge of the academies themselves. The division of labour has been
carried too far: it has also meant that the academies
unfortunately do not care for the dynamic social
situation which demands a messianic zeal that would develop perceptions of the
new world, dreams that demand to be realized. That is one of the reasons why
the academies have become the bye-word for snobbery and scholarship and
antiquarianism. These charges are rather harsh and the anti-intellectualism
that has pervaded both the fascist and communist types of minds which are
socialistic in a sense of being concerned with society which awaits to be
conserved or transformed and organized, is mainly due to the slogan of
objectivity, which is the principle of cat on the wall which has been played
assiduously and cultivated unconsciously by all concerned with education of the
youth.
In India this
danger has to be averted before it ripens into a rigidity that this tradition
of the monk or ascetic is strong is clear: it is the basic dynamism if one may
speak of it as dynamism at all, of Mayavada. The Messianic role itself was
turned into a monkish business: messianism helped monkhood and this is precisely
what Everett Knight has not canvassed. The Indian mind has seen the two types:
the mystic and the
religious: the religious and the secular, and has striven
to resolve the conflict by an appropriate adjustment of human psychology. The
mystic need for cosmic or supra-cosmic freedom and perception of the Oneness of
the world is like messianism, for the mystic not merely attains but seeks to
communicate his vision to all so that all can participate in that experience,
that world. His cry of liberation and Union
with all is a basic individualistic-cum-cosmic urge voicing forth its most
urgent demand for values to be realized in this world itself. However it is a
cry which embraces the option: if possible here if not in Heaven or the cosmic.
The religious type is that which engages itself in a series of acts of devotion
which are designed to reveal the dependence of man or soul on God. The
self-surrender inherent in religious devotion is the seeking of absolute
dependence on that supreme person who alone can reveal one’s own true nature
and emancipate it from all bonds, of life, of imperfection, of sin and
ignorance. This twofold typology is helpful in the mystico-religious search for
ultimate or Absolute Reality. However it has been shown that the mystic is not
afraid of the impersonal experience of liberty and as such may
hasten to deny the deity which alone can grant it the
union which is the passionate embrace of the Infinite. The two routes were
well-known to the ancient Upanisadic seekers or seers, who described them as
the seekers after vinasa and the seekers after Sambhuti.
Or
again in a different typology as the seekers of avidya and the seekers after
vidya, meaning the scientists who devote all attention and life to the
discovery of the laws of the areas of reality instead of the cardinal principle
of Reality as a whole and integral. The Vidya seekers are those who seek the
absolute apart from the world and not as controlling, sustaining, supporting
and leading the world of souls and Nature to a greater evolution.
The
typological disjunction however is a fact that occurs in the world of history
or evolution itself. Indeed it is not merely ideological. It is one of the
great truths of Marx that he gave blood and life to the bloodless ballet of
impalpable categories of Hegelian Dialectic by the messianic drive of the
economic homeostasis. So too we find again the embers of religious fanaticism
have
been lit and racialism has also through the emphasis on
apartheid and self-government of the under-developed and the underdeveloped
peoples have put the dialectic in a war of life and death. Thus one can hardly
be a scholar merely for he is being dragged into the fray of events and cannot
escape reflection and action. However it is one of the facts of our day that
academic insulation cannot last long: monkdom is forever gone: forces of life
are in total warfare: science and ethics are in moral grips with one another.
The Messianic temper is more in the climate or the day and whilst it is time it
is for the rationalistic monk to see the light and guide himself and the
messiah to the haven of a possible universe, for the messiah is bound to fail
in the long run leaving a slogan of rich timbre.
TIME
AND SPACE AND REALITY
The
calculation of time has been of hoary ancestry. It is possible to see that
there has been a rational in the measurement of time. The basic needs for
improvising a measure are (i) the necessity for its being easily measured unit,
(ii) the necessity for its being universally objective (iii) the necessity for
evolving a type of absolute measure practically useful and absolute in a sense
though it may be relative too.
The
relation between measurement that is spatial movement and time which is
duration taken for an event to happen has been well known. Velocity of a body
is measured by the distance between the points to be traversed or taken as
space and the duration or time taken to traverse it. d/t = v. So too t = d/v
and d=v*t. Time is the interval duration or duration taken to traverse a distance
at a particular uniform speed. Three things then have to be fixed for this
purpose. What is
that event or phenomenon which can be observed as the
points for the distance? This is provided by the interval between sunrise and
sunset. Whether the earth moves round itself or the Sun moves round the earth,
the fact of sunrise and the absolute uniformity of the phenomenon makes it an
objective fact, universal to all peoples. The next step was to observe the
equal duration of the night time and day time. Thus all concepts depended on
the division of time into day and night having about the same duration.
The
second fact that was brought to the notice of the ancients was equally
striking. The Moon which is an object of great interest to man revealed the phenomenon
of regular waxing and waning. The fullest brilliance and wholeness was seen as
the culmination of the waxing. The same period was observed for the waning
which started with the fully moon culminating in the total disappearance of the
Moon and his subsequent appearing which was designated as the New Moon. These
two periods were sound to be on the reckoning of the days and nights about
equal, each period comprising of 15 daytimes and 15 night times. Both periods
thus comprised 30 daytimes and 30 night
times. The total was thus 60. This was about exact though
it was recognized also that it was less than the 60 by approximately one night
or day time.
Thus
we find that the day time was divided into 30 parts or ghatikas (as in a
fortnight) and the night time was also divided into 30 parts. The total day
comprised 60 ghatikas. (this was again subdivided to make 60 vighatikas for
each ghatikas: Similar is the division of the hour into 60 minutes and the
minute was divided into 60 seconds. This shows the influence of the lunar
monthly reckoning on the divisions of time regarding the hour and minute as it
has been shown to be in respect of the Indian time measure of ghatikas and
vighatikas.)
A
third kind of measure was also thought of. This was in respect of the Solar
revolution so to speak. The Earth goes round the Sun. Or rather it was found
that the sun moves northward and southwards of the central line called the
equator. The time taken is measured by two major halves such as the northern
path and the southern path.
Ancient Upanisadic thought has called the Uttarayana the
northern path of the Sun and the daksinayana the southern path of the sun.
This
is a year (samvatsara). The number of lunar rotations during this period was
found to be 12. The number of fortnights (full moon and new moons included) is
24. The Seasons which are previously reckoned as four each comprised 6 new
moons and full moons combined. The number of days was found to be 360
(including both day times and night times). This number is approximate as in
the case of the number of days in a month.
Broadly
we can see that 24 is the number in relation of the moon (fortnights) to the
Sun, 12 being the half we find that the hora or hour system of reckoning adopts
the 12 and 24 as well as 6 as the unit of time. Thus there are six seasons in
Indian year. Twelve months in the year and each day has 24 hours.
However
the two systems based on 12 and 24 on the one hand and 15 and 30 on the other
must have come to a clash. The adoption of a unitary duration as
not effected. The mixture of both the reckonings is seen
in the calendar times we have as also in the clock time.
Thus one day = 24 hours = 60
ghatikas
One hour – 60 minutes
One ghatikas – 60 vighatikas
30 days (about) – One month
12 months = One year = 24
fortnights
6 seasons = one year
The
result is that the two systems are not uniformly followed even by them. The 12
and 24 and 60 get mixed up. There is however a clear enough attempt to link up
the earth-moon-sun movements in order to give us a measure of time which is at
once easy, objective, observable.
This
is the traditional basis of time measures such as day, month, and year taking
the relationship between Earth and its own rotation or sunrise and sunset, the
relationship between the Moon’s rotation round the earth calculated in terms of
earths self-rotational days (or in terms of the waxing and waning of the moon
itself), and the rotation of the earth round the Sun (or the northern and
southern passage of the sun with reference to the equator).
These time measures are objective and not subjective and
indeed it is possible to conceive that other planets and their corresponding
movements might also be included. Thus we can see that the number twelve refers
to the 12 year Cycle of Jupiter, round the zodiac, and 30 year cycle of Saturn
round the zodiac or Sun. The ancient do not seem to have thought of the outer
planets which have been since discovered. The 84 year cycle of Uranus is
interesting, so too the neptunian and plutonian years.
Thus
our clock time may be considered to be traditional well established linking up
the mathematical uniformities demanded by all for conversion purposes. Though
mechanical there is no doubt that later the relativistic scheme was accepted as
not only useful but necessary and true. The criticism of Bergson that this
mathematical time is practically useful but not real does not illegitimise the
nature of time itself as having both an objective measurability and subjective
experienceability which need not coincide. All persons especially the
astronomers were aware of the fact that the sunrise at 6 a.m. at one place need
not be sunrise at another place to the East or West of that place.
Similarly the time on the earth at 6 a.m. Standard earth
time and need not be 6.00 a.m. Martian or Venusian or Lunar time. Thus time
whilst being relativistic does not abolish itself or render itself illusory.
The
divisions of time as pointed out earlier have a hoary tradition and mankind has
through its astronomers and scientists accepted this fact. We may devise a
centum or metric system for time also. That would verily be arbitrary having no
connection with real time as measured by the Earth’s diurnal rotation, lunar or
solar measures1. The rationality and objectivity of measures of time
cannot be disputed. The divisions of time have theoretical as well as practical
foundation. We have tried to show how astronomical factors which do influence
our organic and mental lives have determined the twelve fold, twenty four fold,
six fold, thirty fold and sixty fold divisions. These have been synthesized or
integrated in a sense but one can see that this has not happened fully since
the consistent use of the twelve and twenty four or the thirty or sixty
1 Celestial
Influence: Rodney Collin, Vincent Stuart. London.
has not be effected. A unified theory on this matter has
not been achieved.
Now
we turn to the organic time or living time. Biological changes take place
regularly time is reached in terms growth of the organism, such as ovulation,
insemination, embryonic development and birth, maturation, old age and death.
The fruition of course of each life unit reveals its trying to perpetuate
itself in its progeny through which its own life seems to be continued.
Observing the processes of growth it has been found that they bear relation to
the astronomical times that we have discovered. Some of these processes
regularly are related to the astronomical phenomena of day-night times, bright
fortnight-dark-fortnight times, the seasonal times and so on. Indeed not merely
the linkage with the three major factors of our terrestrial life such as Earth,
Moon and Sun, but also the planetary times seem to determine the organic
factors, Obviously the ten-month time for conception and birth is also a
factor. However it was held that on this basis there was a time when they had a
ten-month year but it was discarded rightly for the development of foetus has
been seen in the case of extraordinary
personalities to have taken twelve lunations, and not
ten.
The
other factor corresponding to a cycle of lunation is of course the woman’s
menstrual periods-monthly periods as they are rightly correlated. That there is
a connection between the lunar cycle and the organic changes within the body of
the grown up female or procreative function seems to be indicated. Mental
changes at this period do correspond to heightened imagination, impressibility
and other factors which are either canalized into creative work or procreative
erotic life.
The
duality of birth and death corresponds with the light and night of the day. The
near duality of waking end sleeping times is another correspondential point
between the earth’s diurnal rotation and organic life’s two conditions. This
duality is further seen in the two major seasons (uttarayana or birth of plants
and so on and the daksinayana or aging and death of plants).
Organic
time is closely linked up with the psychological time also. The dualities of
pain and
pleasure, sukha and dukha, is linked up with the duality
of sita and usna (cold and heat), and further is gain (labha) and loss
(alabha), victory (jaya) and defeat (apajaya), Mind itself is shown to be
dialectical in its oscillations between the two concepts of being and non-being
having and not-having, immanence and transcendence, and so on. Paksa and
pratipaksa (subject and contra-subject) is a basic determinant of all thought
processes that progress towards apprehension and comprehension of reality.
The
two moments of time, of thought, of feeling, of becoming, all reveal a basic
diunity (unity of two). Thus the creative time of Bergson though conceived
psychologically reveals twofold frenzy which he brings out in his Two Sources
of Morality and Religion implicit though it has been although in his earlier
works. Upwards ascent and downward descent katabolic and anabolic processes are
the very nature of time. But how to correlate these with the organic time or
astronomical or clock time that is the question. This is undoubtedly difficult
but not insuperable.
Duration itself has the characteristics of twofold
process. The interlacing of these two processes is what we witness in the
organic life. This is a fact to which Bergson did not pay sufficient attention.
Despite his earnest pleading for an intuitive language he had himself begun to
apply the mechanical analogies of the lower order dialectic. The recognition of
the existence of many dialectics according to the grade of being that is
necessary Dialectic or dialectical thinking of two-fold frenzy or integrative
disjunctive unity or conjunctive duality all these apply to the basic
interdependence of the reality systems.
Time
is essentially linked up with space in the mechanical and astronomical systems.
Time is essentially linked up with the twofold processes of organic life and
mental life. The unity of the reality systems is seen in the interdependence of
these process and movements. Space itself becomes the organism within which
time incorporates itself. Surely these are closed or finite systems, we cannot
hazard to say anything about open systems. Since space itself undergoes changes
or transformations duration also does. Thus though it has been recognized that
time is a
measure relative to the point of references and time may
also be considered to be diverse yet it is clearly a case that time is an
enduring element in experience.
To
evolve an absolute time means to have a measure that is taken from the most
inclusive system of Reality as a whole. But it may well be asked whether it has
the dimensions of past, present and future that we grant to time or the
dimensions of past, present and future that we grant to time or the dialectical
frenzy or moments or space. In a sense the very unity of space and time and
motion or growth that we have makes time a kind of substance or dravya which
has properties of its own in conjunction with space and motion and growth. Thus
logically absolute time seems to a contradiction. However if we can discover an
absolute velocity of light or assume it, it may be just possible to think of an
absolute time though this would mean time that is capable of being used to
measure all other times such as the terrestrial, astronomical, evolutionary and
organic and mental and intellectual. Such a concept was evolved for the Cosmic
time of Brahma which is almost said to be the centre of reference for all
measures of all bodies both in terms of their motions
and growths and organic processes. Brahma Kalpa thus is
the concept of absolute time and this was found to be capable of being
discovered in terms of the individual‘s psychic time in samadhi translated
usually as trance but really it refers to the union with Brahman of the
individual soul or in other words when the soul realizes its life or time in
terms of the Brahman (the soul and self of the whole universe and all souls)
round whom it moves (salokya) and taking the same form (sarupya) and by having
gained that union of inseparable movement or enjoyment (sayujya).
Timeless
existence refers to this ultimate absolute relationship in which the usually
conceived temporal patterns do not occur. One experiences as it were a kind of
absence of time itself. The changeless state is said to be the timeless state
and one almost presumes that both space and time cease to exist when one enters
the ultimate Reality status. However it is seen that this is the source of all
time and space and as such status has within itself both or all three processes
in suspension. Thus we have a trinity of the space-time-motion (change)
corresponding to the Alexandrian space-time-deity, the last perhaps implying
both
movement change and growth and evolution in one world,
which emerge it appears when space and time integrate or rather which are
recognized as the ground of or abstractions from movement itself, Kala or time
is coeval with reality and is nearer to it than space.
Indian
thought has thought of space (akasa), time (kala) and dharma (motion or law of
all being) an essential the reality. They are capable of being related to the
other triplicity sattva, rajas and tamas. Tamas is space, Rajas is time, Sattva
is the Dharma or law of being or it is possible to think of rajas as motion and
sattva as time. But these are not necessary at all.
SPIRITUAL
FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURES AND CIVILIZATION
The
symposium proposed is an attempt to claim that all cultures and civilizations
have a spiritual foundation. It is unlikely that all cultures and civilizations
have a spiritual foundation. That they ought to have a spiritual foundation if
they have to survive or have the capacity to grow fully is another point.
Further the world culture is having dubious meaning as some sort of training
into a pattern of life that has been decided upon by a community. We know that
of late ethnologists and anthoropologists have been studying primitive culture
and have indeed been anxious to preserve such cultural traditions.
Civilizations too are institutions which have for the individual and his
community provided certain lines of development for their continuance and
persistence and perpetuation. Both cultures and civilizations do not therefore
have a definite connotation as being valuable. They are just pattern which have
been forged as desirable and are relative to the needs
emphasized by the community as a whole.
Culture
as refinement is quite a different thing and is what character is to an
individual. However we know that culture and civilization have to be
differentiated as high or low by the direction of the ends or goals that they
have placed before them selves. Indian thought has basically analysed the human
goals and indeed men move or are rather moved by one goal and can be
typologically distinguished from others. There are thus men moved by
wealth-motive (acquisitive), and there are men who are moved by desire for happiness
(hedonistic) and comfort. The modern cultures which have been growing are
centered in the business of integrating these two basic motives through the
concept of power of procuring both for every man. Our civilization is less in
respect of psychic development than in respect of material welfare and comfort.
Our sciences which are the wheels of modern culture (as in ancient times crafts
have been) have shewn that the goal of man is well-being. We are quite a long
way from our ancient ideals of right-living and free-living and free-living.
Indeed there is today a
growing consciousness for a righteous world.
Righteousness then does not inherently a fact of either wealth or happiness.
Those who speak as if material prosperity will ipso facto bring in the age of
righteousness or justice and those who speak of happiness as the just goal of
man are finding that we want a different goal to be superposed to control the
wealth and comfort incentives. But the clarity of perception as the nature of
dharma or righteousness or dharma is not yet had. Righteousness or justice is a
term which is bandied about as if it is but a form without matter, and that
matter is to be supplied to it by wealth and desire for happiness or objects
which procure them and the means required to procedure the objects of this
category.
Man’s
true culture or development takes place when he passes through these
satisfactions of cravings of his nature, and he has come to realize the
necessity for knowing himself as an independent personality, free from the
incessant dependence on the wealth-happiness cycle. Most of our modern trends
of thought and culture are aiming at the proper distribution and production of
this cycle of artha and kama. Dharma has
come to mean just means of this distribution. However the
human individual is getting himself pushed into all sorts of institutional
formations both cooperative and collective and has become at once the person to
whom justice is being done and who will have to be the individual who will mechanically
get it in the process and realize it also. It is in this process of squeezing
the individual into all sorts of procrustean patterns, that man discovers his
own real nature as different from all that had contributed to his pleasure and
comfort. Bondage to these being the one thing that enforces his compulsory
loyalty to them, he seeks to find himself by freeing himself from these ends of
life, wealth and happiness.
It
is verily a triumph to say that no until one has become aware of one’s bondage
to the ordinary and common ends of life wealth, power and happiness (in more
trenchant terms, wealth, wine and women), will one really arrive at that
culture which is the process of releasing the individual or oneself from the
thraldom that appears as justice. In a civilization in which there is hardly an
attempt to bring about this awareness but every attempt is made to encourage
the bondage to the
‘basic’ needs of life, such as the above, not to speak of
increasing the quantum of such supplies of ‘basic’ needs or the minimum of
them, as decided by social justice, there is hardly any doubt that it will have
to awaken with a rude shock and terror at the self-defeating nature of its
enterprise. History is strewn with the derelicts of such cultures and civilizations
as of individuals. The moral that one can draw from the of the historical
cultures and civilizations is that without the vigilant subordination of
wealth, wine and women, or artha and kama, to the supreme aim of continuous
liberation of the self from its dependence on these, there is bound to be a
collapse of our civilization also.
Liberation-incentive
is as strong and firm in man though it comes to full force only when maturity
of experience arises. The liberation incentive expresses itself firstly
negatively as vairagya or renunciation, which is a result of discrimination
which is not got merely by study but by painful experiences. Without this basic
revolution from the lower ends of life there is hardly any possibility of even
taking up the higher ends of life. The latter does not even enter the view of
man.
In a sense the liberation-incentive is closely tied up
with the need to discover oneself. This is the beginning of a conscious culture
and a self-directing civilization.
So
far mankind has been advancing unconsciously impelled and governed and reason
has entered into the several phases as a handmaid colour wants. The time has
come for a self-directed conscious evolution. May be it may be necessary to go
higher up in the scale of our consciousness and demand the operation of a
disinterested reason and higher than reason which is purely spiritual with its
directives of truth, intelligence and liberty gotten delight, not depending on
objects other than that highest self or God.
Till
now there have been god-centered cultures and civilizations. But the gods
themselves have been stepped down to the level of our wants. A culture that
does not step down God to the level of man but brings up to the level of God is
a truer culture and such a civilization is a truer and happier civilization.
The march of true civilization constantly discovers
through its mighty and pioneer spirits the drive towards the Ultimate God. This
is a continuous inner history of mankind, lived through its luminous self
realizing selves, who constantly free man from his physical and mortal chains.
To
such a band Sri Ramana belonged. All honour to Him.
“CONCEPT
OF MAN AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF
EDUCATION IN EAST AND WEST”
NATURE OF MAN
Any
philosophy of education would very much depend upon the concept of what a man
is. There are many views about what man is, though there seems to be a large
amount of agreement as to what the spiritual part of him or the soul-aspect is.
The person whose education it is with which we are concerned is an embodied
creature or spirit. There seems to be no doubt about the actual condition of
the consciousness he has. It is limited or conditioned, ignorant in many
directions, and partial or fragmentary knowledge is all that he gets. There is
also a wide area of agreement in respect of the knowledge that is got by him
through his sense-organs and through his logical abilities. The purpose of
Indian thought is to liberate man from his
fragmented existence or knowing by a radical shift from
the sensory or inferential processes to the utilisation of the spiritual or
direct cosmical or, as the Modern Sage Sri Aurobindo styles it, the integral
immediate knowing by the self. Even here though there have been some
differences as to the theory of knowing between the Vedantic Schools, there is
no doubt that mystical knowing – a knowing or grasping of the unity in
diversity without annihilating the diversity but granting a more secure reality
to the diversity in the Unity – is what can be a fundamental educable ability
in each individual.
Man
is an evolving being. The word ‘evolving’ may mean just the process of
continuous ascent to higher and more adequately adapting form of living. This
is certainly not the idea behind much of Indian Thought – by which I refer primarily
to Vedantas. But there is no doubt that if evolution is the process of growing
out of or manifestation of the immanent spiritual nature gradually from the
veils of ignorance and material formation, the soul as spiritual regain its
nature, as a fully conscious or universal consciousness which is indeed also a
consciousness both subjectively to freedom from Nature and its ignorance (mukti
or
moksa) and objectively of Nature (the bondage that it
was). Jainism and Buddhism also are agreed about this ‘transcendence’ or
‘conquest’ which is incognitive terms known as knowledge (Jnana). To know
Nature itself as a field of Divine Action which is only action done in the
knowledge that All in the Nature and Souls is of the Divine is the end. There
are several points of coincidence between the Medieval East and West or the
traditional East and the traditional West. The emphasis on self-discovery or
the discovery of the self as the spiritual entity which ought to be freed from
the Nature or body or be the intrinsic value of itself which has been lost in
the pursuit of Natural ends, is a point of great importance.
We
have to reckon three entities, Universal, the Individual and Nature or God,
Soul and Nature. The inseparable relationship between these three is accepted
by the Visistadvaita of Ramanuja and all that we are aware of is that these
inseparable relationships have to be interpreted rightly. A wrong emphasis on
any one or the other of the categories due to preoccupations with one or the
other of the categories has led to a lot of confusion and delusion. The
individual qua individual is seized with the
purpose of becoming aware of the Universal, central to his meaning and
existence or his ‘self’ and of knowing himself as the expression or function or
dharma or prakara of the Universal Spirit. The intimate conviction that the
individual is charged with the purpose of discovering within himself the
Universal Spirit for which purpose he acts in a cosmic manner that is in a
disinterested self-surrender to the Divine as the Visva or the All, leads him
to the realization that he is the body of the Divine. Education in this
consciousness is to draw out the essential principle of Divine Oneness or the
One abiding, supporting and controlling Deity in All in oneself. Monotheism
reconciles itself in the Polytheism of the other individuals because it begins
to perceive that the One Divine can and indeed does appear and indeed exists as
the many Gods.
Universal
Religion is possible only when men begin to realize that God is One who is also
many or having infinite personalities or functions, each of which is infinite,
indescribable or holy. As with our Idea of the Concrete Universal Godhead
realized by all sages and mystics, despite differences of language and
experience, as real and necessary for individual
realization and freedom from intestine conflict and World-Freedom and Peace, so
also the realization of the identity in nature as functions of the One Divine
Spirit or God or Brahman is a necessity. This is again possible only when each
soul is considered to be an end in itself as Kant put it because it is
‘eternally seized or indwelt by God’. As such is a bhagavata (having the
Divine), and not merely as a means. In the West also this same idea is
deep-rooted and the Political life of the West (and its instrumental theory of
Nature as means) reveals that recognition. Indian thought can grant this inward
respect for all individuals and to life itself a deeper character and greater
amplitude. There is not much fundamental difference in the ideas but in the
technique of realization. The beliefs in the possibility of transformation of
Matter itself as capable of being (and holding that it is always such) and
instrument of the Divine and a field for the manifestation of the Divine is
dominantly pursued by the West, and Hegel has given it a great impetus. For
Hegel Nature is Objective Spirit; State is the temporal Absolute, the
individual is a means for the Realisation of the Absolute
in the temporal and the objective. This is a lesson which
East might take in order to explain an immanent transcendence possible and open
to the soul, whereas the West must realize that the world is not an end in
itself nor even the conquest of Nature but the means for the living realization
of the Souls as one supreme body of the Universal, spiritual and essentially
valuable to the Divine per se. Collective life directed towards the
exploitation of Nature and pursuit of needs of the body-physical, which mystic
thought in East and West has shown to be a deviation of the pursuit, does not
but lead to a sharing of the world at best. It has of course brought up
problems of distribution and population etc., which have to be solved in a
collective rational way. Those problems whilst urgent from the point of view of
the ordinary man need of course a global vision and perception and reasoning
freed from the prejudices of the individual or national and racial kinds. The
Universal however is not exhausted by the collective security means and
measures. It promises a new dimension to being itself which would liberate it
from the pursuit of distributions and exploitations for pleasure, more the
knowledge. If we shall certainly know man as
a peculiar and significant unity of the Nature and God,
for the realization of their significant and eternal unity or inseparability,
it would reveal man to be not merely a creature torn between the two but also
to be a synthesis and fulfilments as the child of the Divine pair. The
reconciliation of Nature and God in Man, through the perception or awareness of
the Divine in Nature and in all other souls as their significance and meaning,
is a truth that may be characteristically and in different ways and traditions
be shown to seekers. This does not abolish the unique qualities of the
traditions but lifts up the possibility of a universal intelligent
understanding of world tradition.
The
Universal’s participation in a collective effort by individuals aware of and
vigilantly acting in and for the universal values of the Divine who gives
meaning to Nature and the individuals is an education which would enfold the
twin truths of drawing out the spiritual and the universal immanent in each and
the evolution of the natural by a gradual process of transmutation and
translation of the individual and the hedonistic organizations or organs so as
to take over the universal functions to which he is the heir.
East and West have agreed on certain fundamentals so far
as the mystics are concerned. Whilst the emphasis on the monotheism and the
monistic view have been dialectical poses opposing the polytheism and
pluralism, this real opposition has and can be overcome when the reason of each
individual synthesizes in the spirit of the Mystic Wisdom of the Vedanta and
Plato that the real monism must enfold and describe the pluralism, and
monotheism should explain and grant strength to Polytheism. Rational Mysticism
in education which suggests the universal of our problems is, it appears,
capable of doing the job. But a large metaphysical and psychological
understanding must be a prelude; and teacher’s needs must have this supreme
qualifications. Educational Psychology has to be grounded not so much on
science of physiology as on axiology.
There
is no opposition between the East and West, though during the period after the
advent of Science there has been preoccupation with Nature and Economics and
the appreciation of the poverty of individuals which, it was discovered, it is
necessary to relieve. The preoccupation with the spiritual was that
the real sufferings of the people were thoroughly
forgotten. This is as much a snare as the mother preoccupation with the Natural
or the individual. Our present condition is that we are preoccupied not so much
with the individual as such but which his very existence, his survival.
Intelligent people have discovered that this cannot be solved by a programme of
economy or politics, and were faced with the problem of hope in the ultimate
global wisdom of all men. Does Religion (and Education) promise this? So far
the religions have not; on the other hand, they have developed new impervious
ideologies and have had recourse to the most extravagant myths. A new
educational theory must start over again the process of liberating the
individual from old and stagnant but no less impervious ideologies and make him
the seer of the universal, and the embodiment of the universal. This is the
substantial freedom that education can encourage to discover and practice.
I
agree with the view that we have no doubt that doctrinal differences may exist
and be held if viewed in the right perspective, and all that men and teachers
of the unesco can do is to supply this fundamental and
foundational pattern: Man is the body (particular,
individual, function) of the Universal Spirit (Ultimate, Brahman, God, Truth,
etc.). So is the Nature (the World, Matter, Energy, Field). The Process is the
realization of the Universal by the individual (embodied in Matter or Nature).
He is the meeting place or junction of the Universal Nature and Universal
Spirit. He grants significance and objectivity to both. The three are
inseparable – a triunity. Nature is dependent, instrumental, objectivity of the
Universal Spirit. All men are equally, though uniquely, bodies or functions of
the Universal Godhead. They have a dual responsibility, not only to act in and
for the Divine but also for the welfare and unity of all others of whom they
are aware through Nature at first and through God at the end and in fullest
realization.
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
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