Indian
Philosphy
by
Brahmasrii
Dr K C Varadachari
MY
PHILOSOPHY
The
evolution of one’s philosophy is almost synchronous with the evolution of one’s
personality or rather its maturation. The broad outlines of the development of
one’s philosophy however are conditioned by more factors than one. The very climate
of one’s traditional and cultural situations mould the formation of one’s
philosophy. Not all are called upon to accept the challenge of these hereditary
conditions in the changing situations such as have faced the modern world and
in India.
The
east that was content to accept the traditional interpretations and act
accordingly through a millennium of undoubtedly provocative changes had at long
last to rise up and seek a new way of living its old life and this is above all
one revealing fact in the attempts that have been made during the past half a
century - the meeting of the East and the West, the
intelligent appreciation of the good in both and an
active intelligence that makes the blend a real organic synthesis useful not
merely for the East or the West but for the Global world that we have grown
into. The critical estimations of our reactions-the traditional reactions to
the shocks administered by global science, global economics and strategies for
health and warfare not restricted to meteorology, have in recent times produced
quite a good amount of direct and sincere thinking of our metaphysical
assumptions, a new. Old dichotomic and dialectical theories have been forced to
meet with the transcending factors which refuse to oblige their interpretations.
Thus those who have been both in the age-the age of transcendent change-such as
our present, have been forced to examine presuppositions and question our
postulates and never under any cover accept then as axioms or proofs.
These
forces have had their main say and man is seeking a philosophy for man rather
than a truth about reality. This is the most ancient problem when man was
confronted by physics his discovery of himself became important. Not because
reality exists for him,
but because the reality he knows depends upon what he is.
The
problem about the nature of the external world-its reality or unreality, its
relativity and so on are subject to the most important factor-the individual
who arrives at the solution to the problems. There is clearly the need for
inspecting the instruments of our knowing as a preliminary to the attempt to
know or understand the nature or reality-the objective world as well as the
subjective. The basic discovery is then the discovery of the nature of the individual
who is claimed to be the knower, for whom this knowledge is necessary. This led
to the psychological inspection of one’s nature, one’s ways of knowing reality
or whatever confronts him in his life. The sensory world known through the
senses are undoubtedly about the most clear and sensory knowledge began to
occupy a very large canvass in one’s thoughts. These fragmentary knowledges
through the senses however were discerned to be limited activities of the mind
behind and useful for all activities in the world-catering to the body which
seems to be made part of it so to speak. The inferential modes of connecting or
linking up experiences that have been
seen to recur opened up a wider world for action and the
knowledge of this phenomenal world became extended. There it stopped. Man is
not merely a being who senses and acts with his body, but a dreamer-a new world
opens up to one in this vast domain of independence and still more the vast
sleep-consciousness in which all the senses find their sleep and yet renew
their power and ability to act. Man is multi-personal, his waking, his dreaming
and his and his sleep awarenesses are new frontiers to his being and unless be
integrates these three his knowledge itself falls into three irreconcilable,
mutually stultifying experiences. The integration of the physical or mechanical
(jagrat), the emotional (instinctive) (svapna) and the su-supti (deep sleep) is
the basic necessity for being able to be a knower of Reality. This integration
was envisaged by the seer of the Mandukya Upanishad and he called this
integrated being-the fourth, turiya which pervades and suffuses all the others.
The sensory itself would undergo changes even as the dream would open up
extra-sensory or manasa-possibilities and the susupti would reveal the basic
ground of human integrative oneness-the calm that abides.
All
these are facts which have to be experienced and that is the most important
fact about the literature that speaks the language of attainment or experience
or intimate awareness. The path towards this integration is not limited to the
cogitations of the mind, but rather the attainment of this integration at the
level of superconsciousness (turya). This has been said to be the process of
becoming unified in oneself and getting over the processes that have divided.
This has come to be known as Yoga: the yoking of the triple forms of the person
(purusa), which have got divided and into apparently irreconcilable dualities
and trinities. Yoga became the one great preoccupation for philosophical
understanding not the mere cogitations or the logistics or even ennobling
dialectics. This is a strictly scientific methodology to arrive at that real
awareness which is known as self or atman or Brahman because it is vaster than
the three severally as well as jointly taken.
To
one who has arrived at that awareness of oneself as an integrated person alone
is possible that
vision of the Kavi who sees beyond the three, and who
sees Reality as it is in itself as from eternity yatha tathyato arthan
vyadadhat sasvatibhyah samabhyah).
It
is clear that to depend upon our senses alone or along with the reasoning
process that connect these sense observations themselves could hardly lead to
our apprehension of the world out of which much is left out as meaningless for
our immediate human needs. The individual psychology of today is in pretty
difficult condition and does not go with our physical sciences. With both out
of tune, our knowledge today is unenviable condition. Thus when the ancient
opening is available it is best to explore this methodology of integration of
the human person-who becomes a real self capable of integrated knowing –leading
up to real and ultimate knowledge – absolute knowledge so to speak.
The
seer having been attained as the Rsi, Kavi, Drasta, His knowledge becomes the
pramana. This in fact is the aptajnana without illusoriness or fragmentariness
or negations.
The attainment of aptajnana may be considered to be the
attainment of real experience (anubhava). Not all experience is capable of
being the carrier or bearer of the true nature.
The
wisdom that comes from exercising this ‘experience’ that has reached its
fullest integration is something that transcends the world values and instils
the dynamism of eternal values.
There
is an ancient myth-and myths of this higher world order give us transcendent
clues to the inner knowledge of this world itself. It is not only to Plato we
owe this recognition but to the ancient seers of the Upanishads and the
Puranas.
Every
one must have the double fold knowledge of this world and yonder. Some called
this the knowledge of the life and death. The Upanishads indeed have spoken of
avidya and vidya (knowledge of works and knowledge that leads to freedom) as
both necessary; they have also spoken of the knowledge of birth and non-birth
also (sambhuti and asambhuti). Both
have to be known in order to gain the status of freedom
from death and immortality.
The
myth that refers to the moon and the Sun as the two eyes of God refers to the
twofold vision of the world of man through the Moon (symbolic of knowledge
through manas) and world of Gods through the Sun (symbolic of knowledge that is
of the atman or dhi). The great gayatri mantra of the Vedas speaks of this
higher knowledge from Savitar as the dhi. Later thinking may have reduced this
dhi to the status of the Samkhyan buddhi which is the mirror of the soul in
Prakriti or matter. The knowledge of the Moon-knowledge or manasa-knowledge has
to be interpreted in and through the sun-knowledge which is of the eternal. The
Moon-eye which is said to be the left eye is outward turned (paran chikhani)
whereas the sun-eye the right eye ought to be in turned (pratyak) and develop
the inner vision in dhyana – the path of the dhi (dhiyana): thus the twofold
knowledge procures the fullest meaning of the outward world and the inner
worlds-and thus we are enabled not merely to state that one is the shadow of
the other or merely an inversion or perversion of the other (vivarta) but also
as the majesty
of the inner Light world as it has manifested even to the
very eye of the mind. Thus the myth of two headed Janus is in a sense repeated
in the myth of the twofold eye of the divine. Greater than the two eyes a third
eye also has been spoken of – the third eye not always of anger or fire of
destruction but that which reveals a transcending of the solar worlds too-for
such is the Infinite, unfathomable, that sustains the worlds of light (Sun) and
the Moon (shadows).
This
integration of the world-consciousness with the higher world consciousness,
alone can confer a vision that is eternal verity.
A WAY OF LIFE FOR THE MODERN MAN
There
are many ways of living and as many as there are men. However broadly speaking
there are two ways alone, one is to live according to Nature and the other is
to live according to Spirit. Human life is not capable of adjusting wholly to
the one or the other. By nature one may means the uncultivated, ill
disciplined, desire and instinct driven person. This has been one view from the
earliest times. The other view about nature considers that it was a
paradisiacal state of utmost equality of all men, out of which flowed the
feelings of rationality of all men. In any case men did not seek liberty, for
the community gave ample scope for harmony without it. Liberty comes in only when one wishes to
equalize himself with others or seeks fraternity which he does not get from
unequals. In any case, what we discover is that Nature has two faces, the face
of strife and struggle for the elementary needs
of life, and the other face that looks forward to an era
of peace undisturbed by the other face.
When
the face of strife and struggle was sought to be overcome by this ideal
presented by the face of equality and fraternity, there arose what we call the
period or age of nature and culture. Culture itself has been an unceasing
struggle to enthrone the values of quality and fraternity and freedom to arrive
at this peaceful paradisiacal state. In other words, it is a continuous process
of overcoming the forces of divisiveness with the power and force of the ideals
of spirit which is the other face of Nature. Ancient Indian thinkers described
this as the struggle of Para-prakrti or higher Nature against the force of the
apara-prakrti or lower Nature. One may not straightaway equate this higher
nature with God or the Absolute nor equate the lower Nature with the Earthy
material which we are determined to yoke to human needs. They also helped us to
understand that the Higher Nature is in a state of equilibrium, whereas the
lower Nature is in a state of inequilibrium or disintegration and division.
This is a state of Anarchy (as Mathew Arnold would say) whereas the former
would be the state of perfection of
Culture, culture itself being a process tending towards
the higher Nature.
The
modern man or rather man living in the modern world is placed in an
advantageous position today than ever to meet the demands of our higher nature
which we apprehend in the form of our ideals of civilization or spirituality.
This is due to the fact that several religious have already prepared the
grounds for the perception, cultivation and habituation to the ideals of
religion and spirituality-each in its measures and also each in a broad sphere
of taming the instincts of pugnacity, separatism, egoism and brutal way of
living not only with one’s own family members but also with neighbours and
aliens. Religious injunctions have prohibited many uncivil way of behaviour in
or public life, but have moulded rather slowly the inner and personal life. In
some cases it has been otherwise, in one’s personal life one has indeed been
restrained and self-controlled but in the mass or in public life many have run
amok if not wild, unleashing the most reprehensible types of animal behaviour,
of which even animals would be ashamed. The wars have shown how out of the
environment of fear and revenge men have
yielded to the temptations of inglorious behaviour. Man
has not been able to transform his animal nature, sublimate it in any way except
that by and large he has succeeded in enforcing criminal law and less
successfully the civil laws. During the periods of national panic whether
internal or external, these decencies have been suspended, though not the law
of the jungle, yet man is untamed in parts, rational in a few, and the
application of rationality in all spheres of human behaviour, personal or
social, individual or collective has been tardy and perilous. Therefore has it
been claimed that the two, the higher and the lower Natures, are dialectically
opposed to each other even as been God and devil, and there is hardly any
possibility of bringing about harmony between the two. Most religious wisely or
unwisely have hastily fostered the oppositional view of these two natures, so
much so they have vowed to exterminate the lower nature, though the process
they adopted to exterminate it have been precisely the manner of the lower
nature. Higher brutality is but a lower one draped with the signs of the higher
it is wolf in sheep’s clothing, the brute in the robes of sainthood.
Two ways were open, one that meant withdrawal of man from
the society following the laws of the lower nature and the other was to
struggle with the forces of the animal with the help of reason, dialectics, and
bring about a mental change in social thinking. The former led to the cult of
the monk and the monastery, in every religion, and the other to the academies,
institutions of education, ashrams, viharas, where righteous thinking, higher
rationality that showed the values of cooperative living, purposive
self-control that brought about social change. Renunciation was tried to be
yoked to educational techniques, indeed education was taken over by the
monasteries and monk (sannyasins and fakira) so much so rationality was made to
suit the monastic will. In fact with all the will to bring about a change in
human nature by transforming its sensate and animal nature, it had inculcated
the dogma or axiom of renunciation of social life or societal life as the sine
qua non of spiritual liberty or freedom or even rationality. However with the
enlarging of the spheres of activity of the monks, monk ethics and social
psychology said to be ethics of a higher Nature or spirituality more and more
began to take the shape and
form of the lower nature. As Shaw said the
Christianisation of the barbarian only led to the unexpected result-the
barbarizing of the Christian. No wonder the present self-revelations in
political and national life all over the world has revealed most disturbingly
this fact-that instead of eradicating corruption even the institutions pledged
to do it have become subtle centres of spiritual corruption. This is one of the
major factors disturbing the modern intellectual. It has unfortunately led to
the conviction that human nature is by nature corrupt and despite heroic and
martyric efforts to bring about lasting change towards divine life, it tends to
revert to its animal basis as more secure for its continuance. The realistic
hedonistic revulsions against the idealisms of the utopian monks and saints is
one major characteristic of the modern mind in disillusionment.
Though
the enthronement of rationality in political and social life is continuously
being attempted, yet the results have been appallingly poor if not paradoxical.
Where there is more reason at work the forces of irrationality have gained
ground with simulacrums of reason.
The renunciation of argumentum baculum or War is of
course a major triumph for the values of reason. The table might bring about more
mutual understanding and secure some kind of peace. However not all are agreed
on this procedure. It makes two to keep peace but only one to break it. Thus we
are compelled to go beyond the ordinary dilatory tactics of the round-table
reason or parliamentary debate because self-interests dominate over true
justice or reality or truth. Truth is not a compromise of standpoints, it is
something that arises out of the intuition that develops and grows and is
awakened into being through these processes. However human character demands a
change of approach of attitude towards its own well-being. When this becomes
the habitual way by being constantly chose as such, despite gravest
provocations then we can conceive of a time when it could become universal.
The
Modern man has been offered as I said many ways – the Gandhian Way of life, dedicated to
non-violence and reasoning, a total abjuration of the ways of violence which he
designated as animal reversion: the Aurobindonian
Way of supramental
Transformation which involves the bringing down a
superior mind or super-mind into almost every human being so that he begins to
think and act in terms of the laws of the supermind or cosmic consciousness: a
way of life as expounded by the Sri Ramakrishna-Vivekananda order, taking up
the service of humanity as the service of God in man. Other ways of life are
also propounded so that man can live and move not as an alien in the world nor
as a victim of cosmic and social circumstances, with which he finds it
difficult to reconcile. Not all the poets and martyrs seem to have any effect
on the instinct of tyranny that works through all institutions without
exception. The discovery of the soul of man or search for it has been an
eternal one, it came to one person here and one person there in early times,
but the problem is confronting every one simultaneously now.
Science
has made this possible. What is there in a soul? Bernard Shaw’s work on a Black
girls search or Dr Jung’s search by a Modern Man are not just theoretical propositions
but critical situations of the modern man with his mind in torment wrestling
with unknown forces that parade as solutions. The scientific
pragmatic age has produced astounding problems of
knowledge and technology and has made an earlier appeal to God almost
impossible. We are today either atheists or agnostics. Man has been made to
feel that within him alone lies his salvation whether there are gods or God.
This dependence on one self on personal commitment to live rationally and
peacefully with one’s neighbours with the minimum of needs fully attained - not
at all impossible as he thinks it – is absolutely the one thing that the modern
man cares for. All else may be moonshine. The way of life according to science
forward-looking, pragmatic and growing must be all sufficient to him. However
the limits of science are found in the human personality itself – the serious
problems of post-life or after death, the conscience within that seems to throw
a shadow of itself on the future after life. But these may be exceptional to
some men at present, it was a very common problem or enigma in the past – in
the lives of the monks and sannyasins or the escapists so to speak. This
science has not yet been able to solve, not to speak of undertaking to face. The
world is too much with us: death poses no problem for it appears to be solution
to
problems not only regarding oneself but also of others as
well. Liquidation of opponents even like the liquidation of unfits would be as
it has been a quick solution.
This
is surely cynical solution. Religion promises that men enter a greater life
after death and a more lovable world would be their new home. God indeed has
been said to reign there. Whatever the religion it has been at pains to reveal
that a good life, a life of virtue and character maintained through all kinds
of trials will lead to a world of happiness and release or freedom from all the
sorrows that befall the good here. We have come to regard that this hope is
perhaps a sheer wish-fulfilment idealization. Have we any other? except to
strive to make this world itself a godly world – but that is precisely the
problem and challenge to the modern man. Short lived hopes just melt away when
the lower nature quietly but ruthlessly has its way of shattering them.
The
only way then open to us is to find out a method by which the lower nature can
automatically be controlled and also reveal the future of man after his life
is over. Death may have its terrors but life has revealed
it so much that we would rather welcome the regions of death. The spiritual way
precisely promised to unravel this mystery. The past of many religions however
has not provided a rational or even a reasonable account of it. Most ended in
the dreams of the poet who merely extended the pleasures of this world thinking
that he has sublimated it with profuseness. Poetry is no substitute to
realization. It may not even be considered to be an expression of the genuine
and authentic realization.
The
technique of linking oneself with the core of Reality that embraces both the
life and the death is perhaps the only way. Yoga is said to be the description
of this process of linking one with that central Reality. So far in the history
of Yoga the paraphernalia of preparations for this linking have been more
ardently cared for than the actual linking itself. None of the so-called yogas
or means of connection with God has actually brought about the same. Neither
selfless works, nor deep thought processes or intellections, nor mere devotion
helped. Nor have mere change of nomenclatures helped. Ritual mysticisms
have not produced the results. The yoga today has been
reduced to a theatrical operational method – so much so it has become the
bye-word for self-hypnotisms or megalomaniacal behaviour. All sorts of supra
normal miraculous things are claimed for it. This has been rather unfortunate.
A
way of union with the Ultimate Reality discarding all these paraphernalia or
miracle-mongering or claims will have better chance of bringing about a change
of real attitudes or of consciousness itself. This is precisely what the new
method of Rajayoga propounded by Sri Ramachandraji of Shahjahanpur has done.
The process is scientific, verifiable, easy and simple. It is the special
method by which the divine consciousness or ultimate thought force is
transmitted into the heart of the seeker after union, that produces the
illumination of both the here and the hereafter. This is transmission of the
supreme or ultimate consciousness which is presumed to be the primal cause. It
is that which makes both the birth and the death each of which is noted as the
real to which one flies. It is that which makes for the transcendence of the
dialogue between death and life which has been the
source of play for some but misery for most. This
transcendental thought-force called Prana or life itself is capable of bringing
about the proper moulding of the lower nature in terms of its own nature which
is the highest and thus confer on the human organism, inclusive of the senses
and the mind a peace and calm. The goal is not just a kind of thoughtlessness
or a feeling of Void or nothingness (sunyata) but the experience of real being
beyond thought itself, individual, cosmic and even supra cosmic. This is
possible because at the bottom of all this creation, this mind and ego are one
with that by which they all live and move and have their being, but which they
know only unconsciously and grossly. Once the human organism is made responsive
to this inner deep and fundamental Real Being by the introduction or ingression
of the Ultimate then they become responsive slowly but surely to the Reality
which has been uniformly experienced as the peace that passeth understanding
and is verily Godliness. The Ultimate Being does not refute science or matter
but makes it the vehicle for its own supreme functions which are of the highest
Nature, Peace, Reality, Harmony and
efficiency that does not bring down the return of the
gross condition.
This
is a method without dogma or ritual, a religion of the pure Spirit that does
refute matter which is but its nether form.
It
appears that this could be done with all human beings who feel the call of the
higher nature and train themselves with the help of the persons who know this
art of bringing down or introducing this highest Spirit into their hearts.
Om Tat Sat
(End)
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