Indian
Philosphy
by
Brahmasrii
Dr K C Varadachari
Earlier
epochs have perhaps witnessed the glorious manifestation of religious and
mythical structures and sculptures and brought out what goes by the name of
spiritual architecture and culture But it is well known that round the world we
can perceive the derelict remnants of religious art and culture from Maya and
Aztecs to Bali and Angkor vat not to speak of the demise of culture in the most
civilized belts of humanity in Asia and Europe. A peep into the past may
provide a depressing sensation albeit not meaningless. Mankind unconscious and
conscious has seized this failure and today has brought into being an atomic
age or Nuclear age and with its global pervasion and industry has
provided a new environment that challenges the laws of
the past cycles and recurrences. Today nothing is just recurrence of the past.
The masks are different indeed. But even here one may see how freedom has
forged the weapons of freedom for freedom of the spirit bringing out the need
for real creative peace and a new consciousness which is unlike the frog-in-the
well consciousness with its limited sovereign domains.
It
is to this new possibility of consciousness working on cosmic scale and power
that Sri Aurobindo calls attention. Instead of this age being called a nuclear
one it is also psychically a supramental one. The supermind is not represented
in any one single avatara as in the past but in each and every one
striving for real concrete freedom of the world and oneself.
There
have been undoubtedly some who have felt that history is meaningless and man
must learn to get out of this meaninglessness. Some apophatic theologians think
so, and Berdyeav includes Indian philosophers with their entire lack of
interest in history among them. They consider that this is a maya (an
illusion). Berdyeav himself considers that history has
meaning as a tragedy of humanity except for the Supreme historical event of the
Crucifixion of Jesus which alone can make man transcend the historical. But
these are perhaps to peg spiritual form to a single event which because of its
significance beyond all space and time, has meaning to such as feel the triumph
of the spirit over time or history. However all these attempts reveal the fact
that whether the Spirit pushes humanity towards to itself in all its
significance or pulls humanity towards itself in order to grant it significance
in its struggle and satisfaction in the attainment, it is to a factor beyond
and in history that they call attention. Whether it occurs only once or many
times depends very much an the weakening of the spiritual force and the
necessity to lift up the movement out of its routine orbit to one that lists a
higher value for the sake of whirls the lower is willing to die and die once
for all.
A
study of history from on integral point of view has been developed in another
place1.
The meaning of progress has also been developed by me in another
1 A
Critique of the Philosophies of History
series of lectures2. Here I am showing or rather
attempt to show how we can look at history both as significant and spiritual
and show also how the spiritual and the material-biological work in unison for
the constant production or creative result of unending experienced of saccidananda:
Existence – Reality, intelligence – Idea and Bliss-fulfilment in freedom for
each and for all.
2 Human
Progress
PHILOSOPHY
AND LIFE-I
There
is a growing realization amongst philosophers that Philosophy and Life at the
present day are somehow divorced from one another and the main drift of late
has been in the director of drifting way from one another. We have known at
this end of India
that Universities even and Governments have been giving left-handed treatment
of Philosophical studies. It is said that ‘Philosophy has divorced man from
life’s pursuits and has depleted the vitality and energy of individuals from
the promotion of human welfare’. This attitude has not a little to do with the
anti-intellectualist bias of political theories and also philosophies of the
Bergsonian school. In the name of realism there has been an attempt going along
to put down the study of philosophy. That Philosophy has not made for the
betterment of the state or country, and that it has acted as a lure to mere
word-quibbling and slovenliness of
action is a criticism that has been made through out the
past few years with a constancy and perseverance that even philosophers believe
that there is much truth in that criticism, and the weak amongst us have
already succumbed to this slogan. What is wrong with Philosophy that it should
have shrunk to this measure of contempt, repression and ridicule? In what has
it failed? It is up to Philosophers to discover the underlying causes of this
great and pathetic fall.
We
have Philosophers anxious undoubtedly to contribute to world-thought, but who
have somehow contrived to get it into their heads the notion that it must be a
restatement of past philosophies. This is important, for whilst a restatement
of Philosophy in terms of ancient thought to which all the people have
accustomed for centuries has the initial advantage of appeal, it need not
because of that turn out to be truth. All the same, the failure of Philosophy
to encourage an indigenous and fundamentally agreeable doctrine to the mass of
people will lead to its own debacle. The failure of Modern Philosophy in India has been
not a little due to the strangeness of the doctrines and to the novelty of
the contents, however much comparative religion and
philosophy might seek to discover correlations. Thus Indian Philosophy has to
go to its own ancient roots if it has to succeed at the present time, and yet
it does not succeed. The reason is the failure that it has registered in the
course of life of Man in our country. Thus a paradoxical situation has arisen.
“By the fruits shall a tree be judged”.
Thus
we find that Philosophy if it has to be loyal to the cultural situation cannot
but refer to its own ancestry. And if it did, it will only meet with the
disaster that will overtake it despite this incidence of alien cultures and
ideas. The position is one of unrelieved gloom. Just as it is with political
renaissance and resurgence, so it becomes imperative that there should happen
an incarnation of an adequate genius to the new situation, who would synthesise
in himself both the ancient and the eternal, and the temporal and the present.
We
would have to state our problems of Philosophy with sincerity and clarity. What
are the problems of Philosophy and what relevancy have they
to the immediate and remote problems of life? Philosophy
aims at a world-view, and unless this world view taken in the abstract and the
most universal eternal manner it cannot be adequately representative of the
truth. But then this world-view need not be the welterchanuung, a
life-view. Unless they synchronize, or unless the one follows logically from
the other, there is only a remote chance of philosophy governing the life and
conduct of people. It is true that without intelligence and planning, life must
find its end sooner or later. Either we plan our civilization or we shall
perish. But this planning must proceed from the most adequate view of reality
and influence the relationships so that they could be ordered logically and
successfully. A Philosophy that does not aim at bringing about a synthetic view
or organic view of the entire factors of the world, which does not guide us in
conduct and which engages itself in querulous and garrulous discussions as to
the most unimportant aspects of reality courts an early demise. The fact is
that without a logical system of ordered thought, no action can successfully be
performed, but whether this logical ordering can be called truth is a different
matter. For
we can, as Bertrand Russell claimed, have logical
groupings of facts or fictions as many in number as we will, but none of them
need be truth, that is, none of them need be the most exact and correct logical
theory of Reality. The political theories of Marx and Hitler are logical
theories put into practice with ruthlessness and consistency, but they are not
because of their expediency or efficacy as such truth. Indeed the psychological
factors which Hitler has put into execution with remarkable success show that
we can by constant and consistent effort condition a people in their thought
and behaviour so as to make it impossible for them to think otherwise or see otherwise.
This is the psychological influence of Philosophy on Life. The world is mostly
governed by these pageantry of thought and behaviour, because they are
conditioned by these for a considerable time, intensely and uniformly and
consistently.
But
this effective doctrine of conditioned reflex, despite its utility, is not at
any rate what a philosopher really bent upon knowing the real constitution of
the world can permit himself to exploit or to submit to.
doctrines of realism and idealism have had changing
fortunes but they have not ceased to take interest in the specific problems of
how we know and what we know and how we know and what we know. The nature of
mind, the nature of matter, the nature of relations, the nature of the content
of knowledge, the knowing, the positive evidence of growth and progress, the
end of man and his life, the rules governing his moral life and social life and
religious life, all these fall into the purview of Philosophy. All these have
to proceed from the ideal conception of their relationships or integral unity
of these relations, so as to yield deductions as to conduct. The truth about
the Kantian theory lies in the postulate of the need for deduction from apriori
synthetic Judgments of the three kinds, according as they fall within the
Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of
Judgment. This is because the Reality from which all activity, of cognitive,
conative or moral and religious life and aesthetic enjoyment proceed from the
Unity of it. This Unity is important, for without this world-view of Philosophy
or true view, that does not undergo deformation in consequence of temporal
conditioning, because it is uniquely implied in
the structure and nature of the Integral Truth-view,
there can possibly be no activity, no progress.
The
application of the Integral eye-piece, so to speak, to the problems of the
immediate situation is what is demanded from us in our moral life as well as in
our social and political existence. The idea of a fluxional system of change
without consistency, of chance that cannot be explained in any manner except
through the cry of ignorance, the non-mathematical view so to call this, is
utterly un-satisfactory and cannot be a profitable role for Philosophy. Indeed
if Philosophy undertook this role it would be acting as a fifth-columnist.
Romanticism in Philosophy, Utilitarianism in ethics, and mysticism in
psychology are all such efforts which make Philosophy discreditable. Philosophy
cannot and must not forsake the realm of rationalism, and logical unity, but
this unity of logical understanding must be forced to undertake the effort of
deducing all facts from the nature of the totality of life and being. Can
Philosophy ever gain this force of pure Existence on the plane of life that
surges with emotions? Is it not a far cry to seek to govern all life from the
basis of this
abstract life and being? Life and vitality are not seen
to flow from this abstraction.
PHILOSOPHY
AND LIFE - II
Writing
in the latest number of the Philosophy1, Dr C.E.M. Joad pleaded for the
return to the classical tradition in philosophy. The classical tradition
according to him lies in the application of the principles of philosophy to
life, even as Plato and Aristotle did. The fact that their theories may not
have been true did not make them forbear from applying the principles of which
they were convinced to the conduct of life itself. In other words, their
ethical interest in life was greater than their purely metaphysical interest.
It is all right to speak about the need for knowledge for knowledge's sake, but
it is imperative in knowledge itself to get its sanctions and embodiment in the
living tissue of civilization. Thus politico-ethical interest dominated their
thought. If we further enquire into this tendency to apply the discoveries of
thought to the plane of action,
1 October
1940.
we find that it has been the one surest knowledge,
knowledge that has arrived at that certainty of a workable proposition,
knowledge which cannot but seek its realization in the concrete world of human
experience. It is only the abstract and theoretical interest in discovering the
unities and constancies in the changing and fluctuating phenomena of the outer
world and human life that precluded any application of these discovered
principles to the ordinary conduct of the world. As a matter of fact, this
abstract tendency of the theoretical interest went so far as to urge a complete
separation from the application of those theories to practical conduct that has
led to an anti-podal movement in both. It is true that disinterested discovery
of principles is and should continue to be the fundamental purpose of
philosophy and science, but it is equally urgent that these principles should
be obliged to render account to the phenomena of life and conduct so that they
should not lose sight of their matrix of expression and loyalty to the earth.
It
is a pity that the cooperation between the ideal and actual has been wanting,
as we can witness in the constant opposition raised between the two. The earth
and our life refuse to be moulded in the pattern of our
interests. They reject the claims of thought to dictate to the world. This is a
important fact, and reveals the impossibility of applying the ideals of
philosophy to fact. If the ideals of philosophy are not other than the ideals
of science, which is pure and disinterested knowledge verifiable by experience,
then science which has at present landed us through its discoveries in the
present age of scientific self-slaughter, and philosophy which is unable to
stem the tide of the progressive applied science, cannot be helped. On the
contrary, it is very well recognized that philosophy and science are different,
though they both seek knowledge, the one of the terrestrial and the other of
the eternal which includes the terrestrial. The ideals of philosophy then
embrace the ethical and the religious and cultural values more than the mere
science, and thus grant a direction to the discoveries and inventions.
The power of knowledge is granted by science as method, as Yoga is said to have
done. But it is quite different when the ends are not the ends of wisdom. Yoga
even might go astray, might lead to chaos in conduct and to reaction in social
action. Thus mere knowledge that is not
governed by knowledge of the fundamental unity of all
life under the life of spiritual values is a foundation concept with which we
have to begin to apply ourselves to the task of restoring the classical
tradition in philosophy.
It
is no less true of all true religious and mystical consciousness that the
enlightenment or revelation or vision leads immediately to the fulfilment in
conduct of that which that vision imports. The command of God or the Vision to
execute in the temporal context the intuited truths of the supramental vision
is an imperative, a sacred calling which the mystic or the religious seer
cannot even think of disobeying.
It
is said of Buddha that at the moment after his enlightenment, he was tempted to
give up all contact with the world, and escape into his own supreme Nirvana.
"Once, Ananda, I was
staying at Uruvela on the strand of the river Neranjara under the ayapala
fig-tree, immediately after I had attained the highest insight (sambodhi).
Then, O Ananda, Mara the evil one came where I was; he stepped
forward to
my side and standing by my side, Mara the evil one said to me: Into Nirvana
shall now, Lord, the holy one enter, into Nirvana the blessed one; now, Lord,
it is time far the holy one to enter into Nirvana."
"After that speech, O
Ananda, I said to Mara, the evil one, as follows: 'I shall not go into Nirvana,
thou evil one, before I have monks as hearers, wise, disciplined, experienced,
well-informed, who possess the doctrine of salvation, who have the calm corresponding
to the doctrine of salvation not until these themselves, after commencing their
teaching office, impart, proclaim, teach, determine, explain, expound, correct:
not until they have suppressed the protests of others which can be suppressed
by the aid of the doctrine of salvation..!
This
is so even in the case of those who have affirmed that to live here is living
death, is illusion which must be got rid of. This is a precious inconsistency,
precious because without it the knowledge of the superterrestrial cannot even
filter into our consciousness, and form the basic foundation of our abstract
speculation on the eternal as contra-distinct from the temporal and the
phenomenal.
Such indeed is the vitality of the mystic vision that
cannot but be the voice of the eternal, a voice not in the wilderness but a
voice which is capable enough and profound enough to find resonance and
acceptance in the minds and conduct of the living mass of humanity.
The
only question is whether we can speak of applying the results of philosophy to
the conditions of our life-time and thus influence a radical departure from its
set and slavish habit. If it were so what are the discoveries which we have
made which can in some measure he made to so influence the direction and end of
the human existence and culture. Are we sure that we have arrived at a workable
unity in our knowledge of philosophical problems? What with the babel of
tongues in philosophy, with its ‘multifariousness of opinion' about problems,
of subject, object, substance-attribute, the nature of the subject and the
nature of the object, the knowledge of other minds, whether viewed from the
pluralistic or the monistic or realistic or idealistic or organistic or
evolutionary standpoint or the pragmatic or humanistic standpoint? Our problems
having received diverse opinions, our attitude being undetermined and
confused, thanks to the marvellous changes in the
knowledge of the external universe, and the continued apprehension that they
are not capable of giving us any final truths even regarding the nature of the
physical world, we are in the words of Sir S. Radhakrishnan "hastening
confusedly to unknown ends."
The
counsel of Dr. Joad that it is better to apply certain principles assured to us
and then to seek to find out the deficiencies even as the a priori thinker
of the type of Plato did, is no better than the pragmatic claim to put into
execution hypothesis based undoubtedly on axioms of supreme certitude. Indeed
it is perhaps worse. We find that the theory of aristocratic difference between
the ordinary man and the philosopher who alone must be made to govern the
country or the state is not acceptable to the democratically minded. And in a
democracy then the race-aristocrat, or intelligence aristocrat or the expert
has no chance of being heard. Nor are the methods pursued by these thinkers
likely to bear a fruitful result. The total regimentation of consciousness of
all individuals their lives and their bodies, to a set routine of emotional
unity, however efficient in itself, is not going to make for the liberation
of intelligence from its own fugitive and insular and
isolated condition, which at least is the agreed goal of all philosophers.
Nazism and communism have striven to implement the psychological truth in the
method of conditioned reflex just as much as the ancient Manu and the
law-givers of India
are alleged to have done with such conspicuous success in regard to the
homogeneous unity of culture called Hinduism. That it is necessary to condition
the consciousness of the individuals all through the world by a systematic,
consistent, and uniform method of substitution of universal ends in place of
the narrow parochial and patriotic motives must be conceded if life should
evolve to a better order and plane. Can these be done by pure persuasion all
the time? Should not the means be of the same order as the end mystics of all
ages have affirmed. Sattvatas. Buddha and Gandhi for instance? The essential
trouble is distrust of human motives and the configuration of these known as
the personality-factor. Psychology is going to govern mankind more than
philosophy. The Mein Kampf is a closely reasoned study of the psychology of the
crowd. Nothing less than the application of the truths of psychology to
the conditions of the human situation is needed at the
present moment. The science gives us laws, but not the ends. The ends may be
anything. As Professor Watson declared, we can make a child either an idiot or
a genius, by applying the different environmental conditions. This is the trust
of Plato, Nietzsche, Manu, Buddha, Hitler and Lenin too among our foremost
thinkers. In the ends have these people differed, not in the means. The
greatness of the prophets lay in the ideal trend of their psychological
applications, the philosopher and seer in them has shown the movement of the
inner purpose of mankind.
The
philosopher, however, finds it difficult to admit the absolute truth or ideal
construction and application of these ideals to the conduct of life even during
temporary periods. The philosopher has to bend the world and its forces to the
ideal of his thoughts and visions. He cannot step down truth to the level of
compromise which really surrenders the ideal. The implacable intolerance of the
Jesuits, much admired by many, the unbending pursuit of the truth of the
sastras on the part of the orthodox, the belief that cannot put up with any
diminution in its strength, have always gained
admiration and then approval. The psychology of
admiration has always been based on the strength and uniformity of pursuit on
the part of the follower which despite ridicule and repression has won at long
last respect and a place under the sun. Compromise is impossible on the plane
of universal values of human life, and these may be not what we are agreed
upon. Liberty,
in mind and body and movement in speech all these may be greatly needed for
development of the personality. But are we certain about the modicum of liberty
which whilst pursuing its helpfulness to personality does not infringe upon the
total social context? In the excellent book Civilization by Clive Bell,
he declares "Superstitious ages are inevitably cruel: one of their
superstitions being, invariably, that pain is good as a means, a doctrine which
commends itself especially to those who are ashamed to confess that they deem
it good as an end. After all, the sadism of civilized eccentrics may be nothing
more than a relic of barbarism" (p. 118 Pelican ed). There are two kinds
of superstition, perhaps a natural biological pre-rational state when the
superstition was a normal device of the mind to escape from the collapse of its
action, and the
other and second kind of the modern dictators which is an
attempt to bring back to the rational mind, in its confused state the solace of
the superstitions of the former age. The effective advertisement of the ancient
superstition engenders unconscious vibrations, and loyalties spring up to this
root-reaction of atavistic behaviour. The patriotic impulse which is sought to
be awakened by theories of race, of culture, of religion all betray this appeal
to the pre-rational unity of the consciousness, which has long since, lain
dormant and hidden under the fine manners and platitudinous exterior of our
rationality. Thus it is impossible to create myths and manners and mysteries as
of old, nor even to appeal to the past in the same wav as is being done by
dictatorial psychology. To succumb to this pseudo-philosophical jargon of
patriotism and other isms is to forsake the firmest foundations of our life. An
accurate and piercing analysis of the triple ends of life shows that some kind
of adjustment is constantly needed between the forces of freedom, equality and
brotherhood of man, on the plane of reason and not on the plane of mere emotional
life or instinctive ends. "Common sense and a respect for realities are
not less graces of the spirit
than more zeal", says Professor T. H. Tawney (p.249 Religion
and Rise of Capitalism. Pelican ed). But this respect for realities is not
to be confused with the compromise formulas. There need be no betrayal of the
rights of reason whilst we accept to apply the eternal principles in the
conditions of the temporal. The philosophic dichotomy so constantly praised and
pursued between the eternal and the temporal requires a firm and complete
repudiation. Pluralism is the life and function of reason, but it is not
certainly separativism or isolationism. Our realistic outlook tolerates and
worships difference in functions as enriching the unity of its structural
pattern, but it does not permit the isolated existence of any fact whatever
without explanation. The unity that is striven after is at the basis of our
interrelations, perhaps in the form of a inchoate organic unity, not indeed in
the form and structure of the actual typical organism which we know, but the
archetypal foundational plan of a unity. But to make it real and expressive of
the dynamic, it can never be the permanent static concept of the Absolute,
which knows no progress and permits none. The individuals should seek to
rediscover on the plane not of myths
and mysteries and superstitions of patriotic unity and
identity and relationships, but on the broad and universal basis of equality
and freedom of life of reason, the unity of the Organic. There is no compromise
if reason is that which pleads; there is always a faulty compromise when the
terms are those which belong to two different planes. Compromise must be such
that it never surrenders to specious pleas. Thus it is that we find that religious
seers have always surrendered or compromised with what apparently are to us
serious lapses, but have refused to yield on points which to us appear as
unimportant and not fundamental. This apparent inconsistency in their
activities and decisions, has not a little provoked uncomfortable feelings on
the part of their disciples. Philosophers if they would but conjure up such a
vivid sense of the important and the essential, will undoubtedly be able to
carry their ideals into practice and execute their dreams on the canvass of the
temporal. But such a faculty or ability or purposiveness is incident on the
fundamental quality of intellectual sympathy with the real and the objective
situations in the light of their possibilities. The eternal possibilities in the
womb of the present may be indeed
possibilities that have been engendered by the past of
our life on the terrestrial plane, but it is the something more, the dire
alternative of skipping back to the ancient and the atavistic behaviour that
more often than expected has assailed mankind after every huge and terrific
effort to jump it over. The alternatives which psyche-analysis has promised
have not the power to shew us anything that might be profitable to human
evolution or shew the possibility of the ingression into the terrestrial scheme
of the ideals which have been struggling for an embodiment. The theory of
emergent evolution with its unpredictable emergence of novel and the unexpected
has not been able to even make guesses at the future. What with the demolition
of the logic of causality with its strict predictable future, there has come
into being chaos or novelty. The giving up of the concept of finality has added
to our troubles. We have now to restate our principles of causal continuity.
Can we? The doctrine of suddenness has not been altogether sanctioned by the
study of our pioneers in spiritual and prophetic consciousness. The study of
the mystical consciousness shews nothing more than the feeling of peace, a
transformation of the consciousness
and the attitude to life as a whole, novel in itself but
not capable of giving us a new philosophy. The cultural patterns of their
environment have afflicted their rational cosmology, and we find them to be
purely speculative if not merely unnecessary for the growth and development of
human life. What to them is fundamental is the feeling and realization of
oneness of all life, the togetherness of their existence which is ultimate and
inexplicable by any human terms or logical terms. The aesthetic feeling or
reaction of total pleasure or essence of pleasure, rasa, this is the
summit of their consciousness. Thus we find that whilst there exist great
divergencies in their cosmological theories, on one point, namely the
relationship of the individual to the total All, (God), there is no divergence
whatsoever. There is a functional and foundational unity, a unity that realises
even an identity at some points of deepest intuition, so much so one is enabled
to speak those wonderful words "So hamasmi" "Tat-tvam-asi".
"There is nothing else." Does this peak of intuitive realization bear
the existence of the world, can it render itself in the figures of the
objective? Can we ever project this inward and interior vision, non-sensuous
and ecstatic
into the temporal and the manifold changing, transient,
clash of colour, race, interests and instincts? The application of the
philosophical principles must be then realistic and not idealistic, for to
speak of the idealistic trend of life might be right but not the idealistic
application. No doubt "the practical man" with his business habits
ingrained in him, counting his shillings and pence and looking eagerly at the
market conditions does not represent our ideal of turning philosophers into
practical men. In the words of G. K. Chesterton "A man must have his head
in the clouds and his wits wool gathering in the fairyland." whilst he
applies himself to the task of extricating the world from its barren practical
mindedness, for the practical man is a creature of the circumstances and
creatures of the mere animal desires cannot be expected to take an idealistic
view which demands competent execution. The lunacy of the practical and the
economic is too much with us. It is undoubtedly high time that utopians take
their turn. It is always the impractical man who has made the impossible
possible. Thus the unpredicted comes into actual operation due to the faith in
his vision of that one man. Laugh the world may its fullest. But the man with
his faith in his wonderland has made the impossible, the
unpredictable came into existence. Because verily he is the master of that
secret unity of the vision and the real here, the vision that is an
impossibility far the ordinary man with his practical-mindedness with his mind
enclosed within the particular facts incompletely linked together without that
saving knowledge of the progressive movement inherent within them requiring
just that amount of faith to stimulate the achievement of result. This saving
knowledge is the vision, the imperative of the prophetic insight, that promises
despite all calculations to the contrary, the realization of it in terms of the
temporal which according to definition is ruled out. The vision is never wrong,
it is the definition of the relationship between the temporal and the spiritual
and the eternal that is verily wrong and requires a recasting. When therefore
the emergent evolutionists, moral evolutionists, creative evolutionists speak
about the unpredictable nature of the creative activity, it is perhaps true of
the lower species, but looked at from the point of view of the prophet and the
seer here too we have the predictive possibility. It is the two-fold
instruction of the path of prophetic insight that it
points out only two ways, the way of death and the way of
light, the one pointing out the summit in clearest language and the other
showing the results of defeat of light, and the peril our consciousness is in.
Is all this untrue even from the philosophical standpoint? Not so if we view
the dialectic of Hegel from the standpoint of the realist or the evolutionist.
It was Sir Radhakrishnan who beautifully said that the "evolution happened
in the animal, it has to be willed in the human." Moral responsibility to
choose the good, the religious responsibility to be dependent on the Highest
Ideal or God we know who albeit may be conceived even in the manner of
Ahura-Mazda as fighting for the restoration of the Good, the mystical
responsibility not to yield to the lower and the comfortable path of mere acceptance
of the present conditions, all these show that man cannot, must not keep
quiet--He must take sides in this activity of life for the sake of the triumph
of the vision, which he has been vouchsafed. It was said: "If thou canst
not be a saint of knowledge, be thou at least its warrior" and aptly. The
Philosopher cannot now refuse to choose to act. It is perhaps to instruct this
great truth the Lord in the Bhagavad Gita says "even a little of this
knowledge makes you cross over great fear." svalpamapyasya
dharmasya trayate mahato bhayat.
Thus
we find that whilst the application of the finding of philosophy to current
problems of the world cannot by any means be final, yet to start on this work
is all to the good and indeed imperative. The laws discovered by the sciences
have a neutral or ambivalent nature capable of being used or misused. Thirdly
we cannot speak about the unpredictability of the future with any sense, as
that is to lose sight of the ability of the saving knowledge achieved by mystic
and religious and philosophic insight to plan and save humanity and lift it up
to the higher levels of consciousness. The fundamental vision must be there to
be dynamic and imperative in a total sense, than the mere economic imperative,
or emotional imperative or geographical or racial imperative or moral
imperative even. It is the total-imperative of the knowledge of Organic Unity
of Spirit that can further life's progress and achieve it. The faith in the Purna
the fullest, in the All, the sarva, in the Ekam, the Unity of
all, in the Light and transcendent Reason, it is that which makes the
philosophic utopian, the most practical. The failure of
Plato, Socrates and others is grand. It is immortal. It
is their faith that must find a dynamic content for it is that lack which made
their failure possible. Reason is and must be enthroned. But greater than
reason is the Life of Spirit, that fundamental solace of human relationships in
the universe. Thus we return to the beginning. Philosophy must be rescued from
airy nothings. Its most abstract truths must be and perhaps are truer than the
less abstract which are untrue alike to truth and to abstractness. The gain
that we have registered in philosophy so far has been negative, critical. It
has not yet found the positive, the constructive. Even the so-called
constructions have an air of mechanical patched-up affairs. There is no life or
movement possible nor could life and movement be breathed into them, as Christ
is said to have done in regard to the birds he made of mud.
A
synthetic or organistic standpoint, or rather a total stand-point of the
Spiritual which embraces ail the terrestrial and the cosmic, temporal and the
fluxional must be our one aim. In which case action is implicit in that dynamic
totality, and life becomes an emergence out of this totality in complete
harmony with its total
nature. Life then becomes transformed, even divine in the
true sense of the term. It would be perfect action, spontaneous, and
self-fulfilling or rather self-manifesting in the whole as also in parts. The
specious doctrine that the imperfection of the parts is consistent with the
perfection of the whole will not find a place in it. Is this a possibility at
all, it may be asked? Let our seers answer.
MESSIAH
AND THE MONK
In
a thought provoking book entitled OBJECTIVE SOCIETY, Everett Knight has posed a
problem of great interest in typology and its consequences to social
understanding. His concern has been the extraordinary situation to which
academicians have arrived having built themselves a way of looking at Society
objectively that is to say detachedly. The scientific out look has been to look
at the world contra-subjectively and this has led to the hypostatising of
categories galore which have hardly objective existence though they have all
been invented or discovered in the course of the necessity for assuming or
presuming an objective world independent of the subject or his experience. This
detachment from subjectivity and attachment to objective reality as if it has
nothing directly bearing on the life of the individual or his ethic or politics
or in one word, his religion, has been a phenomenon which
should make one shudder about the future of man. This
tendency of the mind to cloister itself and build up an ivory tower is the
essential characteristic of the monk. Sri Aurobindo called it the ‘ascetic’
detached from the world and away from the world in all ways except perhaps in
the forced prison of the world and all its tormenting changes that change
nothing at all. That this monk cult should have invaded the scientific mind and
the academies is the one distressing factor even when such men do indulge in
the study of society and so on.
The
Messianic type of person however there is in this world: he perceives the world
to be the object of his work and needing change according to his pattern of
thinking or planning or reasoning. He sees that the world as he lives is an
ethical field for his struggle and conquest for reality. The unreal world of
the past is to be replaced with the dynamic reality of the future. Always we
have had men who saw that the world requires to be changed and shaped according
to great ideals. He is no pessimist who knows that the world needs change but
is ineffective to do it as he knows not the know how of things. The know-why of
things needs to be necessary for the know-how and since the know
why is beyond his rationality and perceptions, the know
how is delayed and thus the pessimist is the arrested messiah. Ideological
messianism we have always had and utopian messianism is also what we have had.
Science however has been able to promise messianism its help but what with the
indeterminacy and the threat to human life itself not to speak of its being
incapable of integration with values ethical and religious it appears that
messianism is bound to find itself in difficulty. Further both monk and messiah
are anti-rationalistic and emotional or sentimental. Thus these two are said to
be antithetical to the rational spirit which smothers all action.
The
struggle today is not between the Monk (the otherworldly human) and the Messiah
(the this-worldly futurist) but between thought and action. Thought has been
said to be the cause of action, and a rational or thoughtful person always
plans his action and then acts. The intellectual in being truly intellectual is
at the arrested level of objective knowing rather than getting involved in
action. His Olympian attitude is of course much appreciated though it is
exasperating to find one whose doubt is so omni pervasive an element of his
existence that his existence itself requires to be
questioned. Of course the doubter must exist according to Des Cartes for his
thinking is nothing but doubting, However it is to the credit of those who have
seen through the flaw in this ‘detachment’ and pre-planned activity of as
Bergson says of perception this ‘virtual action’ itself is said to be action, a
sort of behaviour and reckoned even by psychologists as such, to claim that
action there is which verifies the rightness of the thought or the doubt and
such action is of course cooperating in the field of real knowledge. We always
find this integration of thought and activity in the very process of
cognitivity, and the arbitrary division of thought from activity in cognitivity
itself not to speak of life is an abstraction of the most disastrous order
which has led to the present stalemate in philosophy as well as politics and
other areas of human existence. Pragmatism was right in insisting that
knowledge is or becomes truly knowledge when it is acted and action is the test
of the rightness of knowledge. This was the truth insisted upon by the Indian
Realistic logicians and organists and personalities that action is what is
intended in all knowledge and the verification of this
intention is indeed itself knowledge-acting towards truth
and reality.
The
present tendency in university education is precisely to debar this and develop
an objective outlook that is arrested at perception what does not develop into
perception at all for perception requires an perceptive mass of activity and
knowledge which is excluded in the temples learning.
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
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