10/21/14
Verses 79 & 80
At the time of birth there is no existence; the one who is
born
is not in another moment; how can such a state be?
Death is also like this, and there is no birth;
everything is of the power of pure consciousness.
Like rest and motion, how can contraries such as creation,
existence and dissolution coexist in one place?
There is no validity for these three anywhere; when this is considered,
earth and such are mere words.
Free
translation:
On the eve of birth there is no existence. The emergence
from the womb is not a factual reality in a posterior moment. How can it be?
Death is also like this. Everything seems to be only by the glorious presence
of consciousness.
Rest and motion cannot happen in the same place at the same
time. Similarly, creation, existence and dissolution cannot take place
concurrently. When critically examined, these concepts have no substantial
validity. They are only words.
Nataraja
Guru’s translation:
At birth-time there is no being, and who is born
Is not there at another moment; how ever does this have
existence?
Death too is even likewise, and thus birth too is nought;
All is a flux and a becoming within the mind-stuff pure!
Contraries, like being and becoming, how could they
As creation, endurance, dissolution in one place co-exist?
For these three to pass into, there is nothing either;
Thus viewed, earth and other things are mere word alone.
Nitya
has given us yet another commentary that “says it all.” How many ways can it be
done? Of course, the preparations we have made along the way add a lot to what
we get out of each talk, and yet I can’t help feeling that there is much
essential here that must not be left out, no matter how prepared we are. Words
and their purport are dialectically lodged on the exact fulcrum they deserve,
and this is the subtlest of secrets.
Verse
78 shocks us because it reduces everything we hold dear to constructs of name
and form. Verse 79 consoles us with the assertion that consciousness in the
absolute sense is the basis for “all that is made.” Unalloyed consciousness,
then, is the reality we crave when the apparent solidity of objects
disintegrates. Verse 80 reminds us not to forget that this ground of
consciousness takes many forms we name variously, and these verbalizations have
only a borrowed reality. Consciousness is real; all else is its evolute. Even
our conception of consciousness is merely fictional. Nitya epitomizes the
evolutionary process in this way:
We
are taking these two verses together because they deal with one picture of the
world. It begins with the wonder of caitanya,
which projects from the vertical into the horizontal, becomes fully
horizontalized and truncated, and finally reaches its maximum extension, beyond
which it cannot go. Then it perishes and returns to the vertical. This
recycling is going on all the time.
Each unit of horizontal expression, then, is one more wave
of an endless series pulsing through the ocean of consciousness. They are
simultaneously glorious and distressingly evanescent.
So
is there any legitimate place for our reasoned participation in our own life?
Yes, sure. We are inheritors of creative tidal forces sweeping across the ocean
of our being, but we have lost touch with them. The jetties and shoals of existing
forms have broken our impetus into chaotic bits lacking direction. All our
energy is now focused on obtaining and tending to horizontal necessities. We
need to reclaim our authentic nature so we can allow our internal dharma-wave
to regroup and uplift our expression. Nitya puts this succinctly, reminding us
that—ideally at least—horizontal needs are just the supporting structures for
our vertical expression, which is a cumulative accomplishment over time:
When you take the vertical view,
the emphasis is not on necessity but on the achievement of values which are
considered to be desirable, values which lead to the highest good, the highest
beauty, the highest truth. Compared to that, whatever you do on a daily basis
is only incidental to the main pursuit of life, which is realization, either as
it is philosophically conceived or just generally felt within as a sense of the
purposiveness of life.
The
ubiquitous depression and despair of modern life comes from the stymieing of
any sense of purpose we may intuitively feel. We have been carefully steered
away from our dharma by our teachers, and we have learned well how to suppress
it. We are given sanitized substitutes for internal inspiration, and struggle
vainly to content ourselves with them. Philosophy and religion are all to often
made into tools to merely reconcile us to our state of socialized bondage. As
usual, Nitya puts this elegantly:
You get sidetracked in your
search either in the name of philosophy or by the actuality of the immediate
pragmatic possibilities. You err on both sides, either looking at abstractions
of things theoretically or rejecting the philosophic approach to seek immediate
validation through an interaction with the world of concrete actuality. By
examining relative points in isolation, you ignore both the concomitant factors
that caused those situations to emerge as well as how they interrelate with the
total nature of things. Because of this, when you try to correct one thing,
three other problems crop up.
Instead of going with the inner flow, we are always trying
to direct it in acceptable ways, which of course is deadly to it. The only
“acceptable flow” is one that doesn’t flow. It’s static, stagnant. Stationary
items are facts we can begin to describe. They are for all the world like
beautiful butterflies we kill and pin in a display case. No wonder so many of
us are creatively blocked!
The
Gurus urge us to cut to the chase:
You have only to recognize that
this is a wonder, this is a cit
prabhavam. You are unnecessarily kicking up the dust of skepticism, going
from one possibility to the next and forgetting the issue at hand. The issue at
hand is how to be happy, how to be at one with the totality of the situation
with which you are presented. You keep forgetting that and getting sidetracked
into the unnecessary fields of logic and philosophy.
Nitya was very fond of Bishop Berkeley’s most famous quote
about philosophers: “we have first raised a dust and then
complain we cannot see.” I’ll append its relevant context in Part III.
Nitya expands on the idea here as he valiantly strives to wake us up: “You
tamper with your life, not knowing the full secret, and make a mess of it. You
can make a mess on the side of the necessary aspects of life, or on the side of
philosophic abstractions by clouding your intellect with more and more
conceptualizations.”
Often
this is as far as we take the concept of the dust of skepticism, but it is
elaborated brilliantly in Nitya’s commentary:
Our consciousness is so
structured that it can present through the senses a certain quantitative
picture of dimensions, such as measurement, color, form and gross attributes.
Our logic can reduce those quantitative aspects into qualities and more subtle
attributes, which then get another kind of structuring in terms of
subject/predicate.
So
ultimately no one can say what is right. We can only say the senses that
perceive are also using consciousness. The mind that reasons is also using
consciousness. The linear way of thinking is also consciousness. The dialectical
way of thinking is also consciousness. In spite of the many similarities and
contradictions we see, we know they are all within the field of consciousness.
You only struggle because you want to look at parts taken away from the whole.
If you see each as an integrated part of the whole you won’t have this problem.
The two verses together reduce reality to a single binary
principle, first as an assertion of the wonder of consciousness and then by
underlining the emptiness of words. Because of the unique way they are
presented I recall both as having a searing impact on me in the original class,
and we dissected them in depth last night.
Sat-cit-ananda
is going to play a significant role in the upcoming classes. As noted before,
it is a unity with three aspects, somewhat like the Christian Trinity. Nitya
uses it to memorably describe the essence of our awareness:
Narayana Guru says about this cit prabhavam ellam [everything is of
the power of pure consciousness]. Understanding this concept is very important.
The Absolute is defined as sat-cit-ananda,
existence-awareness-value. You can think of it as the existence of a value in
terms of pure awareness, or you can say it is the awareness of the existence of
the value, or you can say it is the value of an awareness which exists. It’s
all up to you; you have your own choice in structuring the meaning. But you
cannot take away any one of the three elements. A value that doesn’t exist
cannot be a value. A value which you do not know is not a value. A knowledge
which has no value—you don’t want to know it.
Paul
really homed in on the point that cit or awareness is the crucial link between
existence and value or meaning. Awareness is precisely what gives meaning to
existence. One fault of the scientific method is that is has always tried to
divorce awareness and meaning from existence, aiming to treat the latter in
isolation. This has epitomized how one tentative solution inevitably brings at
least three consequent problems along with it.
Paul
is very appreciative that scientific reasoning has made great strides in
lifting humanity out of a morass of religious barbarism and brutality, and to a
small but significant extent that’s true. But we still have just as much or
more brutality around today. It’s just expressed differently. We feel relief
largely because we are fortunate enough to live in islands of sanity. I prefer
to think that it isn’t science or any other ism that pries back the darkness,
but the intrepidity of brave souls who have confronted the paradoxes of
existence with fresh minds. Many of them have been religious enthusiasts.
Reasoning has its value, but it can also be as binding as anything else. A
glance at the world stage should easily confirm this. As a species we are being
led off a giant cliff of mindless exploitation, coaxed along by reasonable
arguments.
Mysteriously
we have surrendered our grounded awareness to abstract ideas about existence.
This has allowed mere words to eclipse common sense. Clever prevaricators hold
center stage in politics and entertainment, including in popular spiritual
practices.
The
main class focus was on the role of words. Narayana Guru insists that
everything we think we experience is nothing more than words, the pungency of
words. Where is true experience in all this verbiage? We cannot say. Because of
our bondage to words based on abstract and half-baked thinking, we have to
reduce their grip on us before we can seek truth. The main thrust of our study
is to break down the fictional fool’s paradise we live in at the behest of
verbal abstractions and see what’s left.
Only
if we can recover the shining core of consciousness that sustains us will our
words be meaningful. Nitya was a spectacular example of someone whose words
uplifted, consoled, and educated in a transformative way. You felt his
authenticity because he was in tune with his core. Nitya knew that religious
imagery was some of the most toxic in perpetuating falsehoods, so he attacked
the core assumption of the country he found himself in:
“Jesus Christ”—is
that not just
two words? Have you ever seen him? No, you’ve just heard those words. The word ‘Christ’
was told to you, and now you love it and accept it. You have seen light and
life in it, consolation in it. It’s only a word, but saying that doesn’t take
away any of its psychodynamics. All that power still remains. If you whisper in
someone’s ear that you love them, it gives them a feeling of elation. If you
whisper you hate them it can make them miserable. Some people smile outwardly,
but inside they are repeating the negative mantra “I hate you,” over and over.
Words can have tremendous power, so you should use them carefully.
You
may not feel that way about Jesus Christ, but the principle is the same with
whatever you tacitly admire. Examine how your affections are directed to word
concepts instead of something more substantial. For Gurukula types, see how the
living reality of our gurus has been transformed into endearing ideas about
them, which we then manipulate for our convenience. There is no guru here, but
we pretend there is. Our gurus are touchstones we use to keep our fears and
doubts at bay, or, worse, to impress others. If they were present they would be
rattling our cages. That Alone is a
record of a previous cage-rattling session. If we don’t reanimate the rattle in
our psyche, our philosophy will remain just as dead as the rest.
This
was brought home to me as I sat in my alert but blissed out state in that first
class, when Nitya concluded:
It is not the earth specifically
which is under reference here, but the meaning we assign to words like earth.
We do not know earth. We do not know anything.
Can we dare to admit we don’t know anything? We have spent
a
lifetime protesting we know a lot. Much more than we do, generally speaking.
When examined, it melts away. It’s an uncomfortably naked feeling, knowing that
everything you imagine you know is a mere supposition.
Nitya
once said to a carload of us, as we drove past yet another statue of Narayana
Guru sitting in a cage next to a roadway intersection, that Indians love to put
their gurus on pedestals to worship so they don’t have to pay attention to
their words. Of course, every human does this in one way or another. Usually we
try not to make it quite so obvious.
We
are by no means meant to take this instruction as denigrating words, only as
assigning them their proper value. Our universe is made of words, but there is
another universe nearby we can access by piercing through their veil to reveal
their source. It may be just like the physics hypothesis related last week,
that our universe is a three-dimensional mirage projected from a
higher-dimensional universe. In any case, the naïve interpretation is to try to
shut out words as leading us astray. The intelligent interpretation is to use
enlightened words to recover our essence from the desert of incomprehension we
have wandered into.
Nitya
relates from a slightly different perspective the wonderful story of breaking
away from Nataraja Guru early in their relationship, and being told that words
were just vibrations of air so they shouldn’t make him unhappy. It’s a perfect
example of words being used to cure the malaise of words.
Meditating
on such stories can show us how deeply we are intertwined with words. Can they
be the substance of the creeping vine of Verse 9, reaching out to ensnare the
unwary and lead them into a hellish state? The class pondered to what extent
thinking is inextricably linked with the words in which it is expressed. A lot
of studies have looked at the subject, with mostly tautological results, as far
as I can tell. No surprise there. The consensus is that thinking is distinct
and is a precursor to word formation. If so, there is a level below verbal
thought patterns that could be accessible to anyone who takes the trouble to
enter into it. My feeling is that what we ordinarily think of as our thoughts
is basically the verbal and/or sensory level, and what are often called the
spiritual layers of consciousness are those that prefigure them. We can at
least imagine womb-time, with few if any sensory stimuli and no distinct words
yet, only the roaring and beating of the mother’s internal organs and
occasional vague noises from without once our ears have formed.
It
may seem like a waste of time to contemplate such depths, but lit up humans
speak glowingly of them, and so some of us are drawn to investigate.
Our
ineffable group contemplation led us to end with a profound meditation on
Nitya’s closing words, which it seemed sacrilegious to terminate:
There
is a mantra contained in this verse, giru
matram akum, meaning it’s only an articulated word. The whole edifice of
life is built with the bricks of words. Universities are nothing more than
places to cater these bricks and structures of words to you. You live in a
house of words gathered from your teachers, your priest, your books, your
friends, along with those of your own fabrication. If you really know this you
are already saved.
In
these two verses the Guru gives us two great mantras: cit prabhavam ellam and giru
matram akum, everything is the wonder of consciousness and everything is
only a vibration of a word. These should be enough to bring you total peace.
Part II
There
is some terrific new material in Neither
This Nor That But . . . Aum:
Verse 79
What
is time? We see the sun appearing in the east, crossing the sky over our heads,
and disappearing in the west. The locations of the sun on the eastern horizon
and on the western horizon are imaginary. As many mathematical points can be
marked on the surface of the earth, there can be as many points of location for
a sunrise or a sunset. Nobody has ever bothered to watch the entire course of
this movement. Occasionally people look up at the sky and notice a change in
the position of the sun. We have, however, only an imaginary picture of this
movement, which is not even one day long, but can be called to mind in a flash.
Thus, an instantaneously presented image is our conceptual token of time. In
this token, which we treat as real time, the seeming linear movement of the sun
is deciphered and reconceived as a circular rotation of the earth on its
imaginary axis without causing the slightest inconvenience to our mind for
converting a perceptual imagery into a conceptual computerizing in order to
arrive at a working postulate of time. Of course we do not think all these
thoughts!
St.
Augustine asks this question in The Confessions:
I heard once from a learned man that the motions of the sun,
moon and stars constituted time, and I assented not. For why should not the
motions of all bodies rather be times? Or, if the lights of heaven should
cease, and a potter’s wheel run round, should there be no time by which we
might measure those whirlings, and say, that either it moved with equal
pauses.... Or, while we were saying this, should we not also be speaking in
time?*
Why
not? Is a potter’s wheel too inefficient to mould time?
If time is the motion of things, what is the scale by which
motion is measured? If we say that time is measured by motion and motion is measured
by time, it is nothing short of begging the question. If a day is an
abstraction of the picture of the sun’s movement across the sky, what is night?
How is it that we have juxtaposed day with night when our visual images of the
two are contrary, and why do we bracket day and night into “one day”? If seeing
the sun at different locations in the sky is essential to conceive the day, why
is that requirement waived in order to conceive night?
Where
should a man stand to notice the very first ray of the rising sun? If one man
stands on the North Pole, one on the equator and another on the South Pole and
all three stand on the same meridian, do they all see the sunrise
simultaneously? If there is no simultaneity, which would be the ideal location
on which to mark a standardized sunrise? It is well known that the earth’s
surface is irregular, with mountains, valleys and oceans; if we are going to
neglect these facts and just have a mathematical approximation of time, why
should we want to give it a seeming objectivity?
What
should we consider now: time, motion, an event, or a state of existence? If we
agree to consider motion, then the motion of what? Is it the motion in space of
the whole solar system along with the motions of other constellations and systems;
or is it the motion of the earth around the sun, or the rotation of the earth
on its imaginary axis; or is it the terrestrial or aerial movement of bodies
from one location of space on earth to another; or is it the motion of the
molecules with a static body, such as a rock in which the patterns of bumps,
repulsions and attractions are so well-harmonized that for all practical
purposes the stuff of the rock will remain uniform; or is it the motion of the
electrons in their precisely ordained orbits around the nucleus; or is it the
linear rush of a subatomic particle to bump on a similar subatomic particle so
as to transform itself into a different category; or is it the wave of quantum
mechanics? In other words, do we have any count of the systems we include, one
within another ad infinitum, to conceive our notion of motion? The sensory perception
of motion in the above-mentioned models is negligible. First of all, we
conceive motion spatially and then, magically with a single stroke of
imagination, we convert that into a non-spatial concept of relative duration.
In this context, what is the physical or objective content of the word “time”?
Narayana
Guru begins this verse with a reference to the time of birth. In this case
birth can be seen as an event, an occurrence of something which was absent, or
as the motion of a thing from an invisible area to a visible one, or it can be
considered as a duration imagined by the mind in which a mathematical point is
mentally marked to understand the continuity of motion in terms of
discontinuous marks. All these three concepts are contrary to the notion of a
static state of existence. What does exist for any duration of time if the
galaxies, the solar system, the earth, bodies, molecules, and subatomic
particles do not stay at any point of time and there is no discontinuity of
motion at all?
In
such a world of flux, we are trying to set up permanent, secure riches [niches?—ed.]
for ourselves at physical, biological, psychological and social levels. The
result is constant upheavals. Origin, existence and death are equally
imaginary. To avoid tragic frustrations and to have a well- balanced
appreciation of the total perspective, the Guru, in this verse, gives us a
secret key, which is to look at the whole picture as an adorable wonder, cit prabhàvam
ellàm. As the Bhagavad
Gita (II, 29) says:
A certain person sees This as a wonder, Likewise another
speaks about this as a wonder. Another hears of It even as a wonder, but even
hearing no one understands This at all.
*
The
Confessions of St. Augustine, Cardinal Edition, 1952, p. 230.
Verse 80
From
the very first day of our recollection, we are aware of the constant sky which
has always existed over our heads. Our good earth has not changed; we have the
same sun, the same mountains and the same oceans. Each night the same
constellations of stars reappear.
How
can we say it is the same sky? When the earth is rotating on its axis and
flying at great speed around the sun, how can we say that from our position on
this space ship we are looking at the same sky? The sun and the other stars are
supposed to be burning gases and leaping flames radiating energy. Is it the
same light that falls into our eyes in two successive moments? Is there such a
thing as a beam of light? Is it not just a collective expression referring to
the bombardment of millions of photons? Has a photon any mass? No. Then how
does it become a substance? According to physicists, it is just a plain
electromagnetic wave, hv, of which h stands for Planck’s constant and v for
frequency. When such photons kick up the energy of 125,000,000 receptors, the
impact is converged to 100,000 fibres of the fovea centralis, processed in an area of 1.5 square millimeters,
and is then distributed into the relatively large area of the synapses of the
visual brain. The resultant tumult, in which hundreds of thousands of molecules
jump and dance around, is the awareness of seeing a ray of light. So when do we
see the sun or the stars, or anything for that matter?
The
Isavasya Upanishad says:
Unmoving, the One is swifter than
the mind.
The sense-powers reached not It,
speeding on before,
Past others running, This goes
standing.
In It Matarisvan places action.
Robert
Oppenheimer describes the probability pattern of the particle in the following
words:
If we ask for instance, whether
the position of the electron remains the same, we must say `No’; if we ask
whether the electron’s position changes with time, we must say `No’; if we ask
whether the electron is at rest, we must say `No’; if we ask whether it is in
motion, we must say `No’.*
If
this which describes the universe as a whole and a single particle in isolation
is the truth, it can only be described as the indescribable. Hence Narayana
Guru says, “earth and such are mere words.” The term used here for earth is kshiti.
Earth is also called dhara. Dhara means “that which gives
everything its status to exist”; Kshiti means “that which destroys everything.”
Thus, this very earth is a meeting ground of creation and destruction. In the
fictitious world of facts or the factual world of fiction, all shades of
meaning burst into reality only as a conceptual awareness. If this is
remembered, much of the mind’s unnecessary fuss and fume can be avoided.
*
J.
Robert Oppenheimer, Science and the
Common Understanding, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), pp. 42-43.
*
* *
Nataraja
Guru’s commentary:
VERSE 79
At birth-time there is no being, and who is born
Is not there at another moment; how ever does this have
existence?
Death too is even likewise, and thus birth too is nought;
All is a flux and a becoming within the mind-stuff pure!
HERE we have a verse highly reminiscent of the Eleatic
philosophy of Parmenides and
Zeno, which was later restated by Plato in the words of Socrates. It was given
to Henri Bergson in recent years to revert after centuries to this way of
thinking which boldly attempts to face and solve the innate paradox of life and
existence. The expression ‘chit-prabhava’,
which we have rendered as the ‘flux and becoming within the mind-stuff pure’,
finds full corroboration in Bergson’s idea of change and becoming in pure terms
of a ‘motor scheme’ of events in the flux of consciousness.
Birth is an event, but as it is a process coming under the
idea of becoming it cannot be understood in the static terms of a still or a
cross-section. If we want to study the growing point of plants we have to take
several cross-sections and put them together, and imagine the growth as a pure
movement in becoming, linking all the individual events considered as stills.
It is the intuition of man that is alone capable of seeing the continuity
implied in the process.
Non-mechanistic or creative thought has this cinematographic
function through its ability to piece together single events that are stills or
cross-sections into a continuous whole. Bergson excels in showing this through
almost all his writings.
The entity or organism that is subject to birth is in the
process of becoming, and it would be wrong to fix one moment in the process which
would statically fix the process and view it as a single event called birth. It
is in this sense that it is stated here that there is no being at
birth-time nor at another moment. One cannot enter the same river twice,
as Heraclitus said. Here Narayana Guru reveals a fully modern scientific
attitude.
If we should take a complementary or converse position and
think of what is born as a spiritual soul or entity, there is
another paradox that
presents itself. Seen from its own inside, the moment of birth exists in what
is called the eternal present or moment. An extraneous moment in which life
that is born could have its being, is unthinkable. The lengthened picture of
the duration of time, according to the ticking of a clock, is a product of
defective, conditioned, mechanistic thinking. There is what is called pure
time, which does not depend on the ticking of the clock or the rotation of the
earth, which latter are mere physical events, extraneous to the essence of time
as such. Spiritually speaking, one has to find living possible in unconditioned
pure or eternal time, which cannot find a moment external to itself. Physically
speaking, the process of birth and becoming cannot be fitted into a static
moment.
Existence, which is referred to in Vedanta as the second item
of the series srishti (creation), sthiti
(duration or existence), and laya (reabsorption into the original
matrix) cannot be understood to refer to a static state disjunct and distinct
from the two others, although in popular parlance this seems to be vaguely
admitted by these three words being loosely applied to one and the same
indivisible flux in consciousness. The corresponding term in Vedantic
terminology is the ‘dhara-vahika-chitta-vritti’
or ‘flowing-oil-streak-continuity’. The Vedanta Paribhasha of Dharmaraj Adhvarya deals
with this kind of stream in consciousness in his introductory section where he
treats of Vedantic epistemological principles.
Pure consciousness - when free from extraneous conditionings (upadhi)
and from conceptual attributes (adhyasa) that have their origin in the
inner organs of knowing called karana
(the instrument of knowledge or the organ of consciousness) - comes to have its
own status identical with the highest notion of the Absolute, in the light of
which ultimate Vedantic verity all events in consciousness, whether inner or
outer (i.e., conceptual or perceptual), are reabsorbed into the transparent
richness and glory of the Absolute itself.
VERSE 80
Contraries, like being and becoming, how could they
As creation, endurance, dissolution in one place co-exist?
For these three to pass into, there is nothing either;
Thus viewed, earth and other things are mere word alone.
THERE is a subtle paradox implied in being and becoming as
applied to reality. The idea of creation, the endurance of such creation for
some time, and its passing into another stage as the process of becoming is
pushed further, (which are respectively the three aspects of srishti, sthithi and laya known to Indian philosophical lore) - these three have implied
between them a paradox, just in the same way as a paradox is implied between
Pure Motion, to be thought of independently of the static state, and its own
dynamism. The Zeno paradoxes have stated and examined this philosophical puzzle
in detail from the times of the pre-Socratic philosophers. Movement has its
contrary in standing
still; and between the two the resulting notion of
Pure Motion has to be
derived, which is to be understood in terms of neither one of the two. While
brute movement and immobility are horizontal, pure movement is vertical.
We know that the philosophy of Bergson in more recent years
further elaborated and worked upon the paradoxes of Zeno and Parmenides and gave
to the world a fully scientific point of view by which reality is conceived as
in an eternal flux in terms of vital energy. Between these contraries one has
to arrive at a pure notion of motion or becoming. This can be done by
abstracting and generalizing to arrive at the essence of movement conceived
dialectically in the context of the Absolute, whereby mere tautologies and
contradictions are transcended. Motion has to be understood schematically and
in the abstract, as in mathematics where symbols or lines would represent the
pure idea.
In the Indian philosophical context the ultimate point of
reduction of reality into its philosophical components is by
the term nama-rupa
(name-form combinations); when we say that the wave is only water with a
certain outline and form with a name given to it, we only reduce it into its
ultimate terms to dissolve and merge both name and form into the matrix of the
Absolute.
The continuous process of pure becoming - which constitutes
the creative evolution of life in terms of the vital energy (élan vital), as
known to the philosophy of Bergson - admits of no static cross-section which
could be conceived as a stable basis of reality, as when we say that the earth
and other things have been created and will endure some time and pass beyond
into some unknown state of existence. Although popular religions may hold such
a view there is no ‘beyond’ into which the states could pass on. Even as we see
or imagine the process as taking place in a fully scientific sense here, these
three have at their core a paradox which cannot be explained away.
As opposites cannot co-exist without contradicting or
cancelling the verity of each into nothingness, we are obliged to resort to the
absolutist approach if any
residue of reality is to be left at all. The earth has a certain outline shape
which has first to be recognized schematically or in mathematical abstraction.
Then we have to recognize
this entity by a name so that we can communicate with one another about it. Name and
form have no actual content in themselves, but are conceptual abstractions.
Conceptualisation leads finally to nominalism.
Such a nominalistic view of reality is not unknown in
Western philosophy. The
philosophy of Peter Abelard and his followers represent just this school.
Phenomenology and nominalism in the West touch precisely those levels of
abstract speculation which
the Indian mind has attained in the Vedanta, which equates all phenomenal
appearances to name and form, of which name by itself implies form. The
simplest of mental events, without any tangible content, is all that may be
said to remain when we think of birth, creation or death, as has already been
stated in a previous verse (79).
Part III
I
didn’t write earlier about the little dog analogy, “the queer dog of
idiosyncrasy,” but I should have. It’s a great and valuable lesson. To
recapitulate:
I once visited a friend’s home in
Delhi. He had a small dog. It was only a little bigger than a squirrel, but it
barked like hell. I thought of showing my love to it, so when it came close I
patted its head. It bit my fingers! Then my friend said, “I am so sorry! I
should have told you that he can be fondled, picked up, caught by his tail,
taken by his legs, put in your lap. He does all those things. But he doesn’t
like to be touched on his head.” Once you know that, you have no more hatred
for that dog. You just leave his head alone. But if you don’t know it you
think, “How can you keep a pet which bites you? It’s a contradiction—a pet that
bites. That’s not a pet at all!” You can be reconciled to it once you know it
acts like a pet as long as you don’t touch its head. The contradiction even
becomes amusing once you know it. Then you understand it is just the miraculous
way in which this particular dog is made.
If
you know this kind of information about your wife or husband, your child or
your neighbor, you won’t have trouble. You need to know where you shouldn’t
touch them.
It was amazing how Nitya would routinely derive profound
truths out of commonplace examples from the world around him, and often lace
them with humor. This one really stuck with me, but it has never been easy for
me to put it into practice. When a friend bites you, the normal response is to
reel away and nurse your wounds. You may feel resentment or anger, furious
anger. All this clouds your ability to see how you may have accidentally
touched a trigger spot. The quicker you can let go of your hurt feelings, the
quicker you can begin to assess the hidden cause of the clash. Then you can
either avoid touching the tender spot in the future or, if the friend has
invited you to do so, begin to help them make a substantive correction. Most
people are not interested in healing their traumatic wounds, only in avoiding
letting them surface. So unless we have been asked to weigh in, this
instruction is only for our own benefit. I have found it takes the sting out
fairly quickly, and at least prevents me from exacerbating the situation with
an unfortunate response. Even more important, it helps me reflect on the ways I
respond as a wounded or otherwise conditioned person, so I can begin to heal
those myself.
*
* *
Bishop
Berkeley’s A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, pertains
well to the subject at hand. This is the beginning of the Introduction. The
dust quote is at the end of section 3:
1. Philosophy being nothing else but the study of wisdom and
truth, it may with reason be expected that those who have spent most time and
pains in it should enjoy a greater calm and serenity of mind, a greater
clearness and evidence of knowledge, and be less disturbed with doubts and
difficulties than other men. Yet so it is, we see the illiterate bulk of
mankind that walk the high-road of plain common sense, and are governed by the
dictates of nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed. To them nothing
that is familiar appears unaccountable or difficult to comprehend. They
complain not of any want of evidence in their senses, and are out of all danger
of becoming Sceptics. But no sooner do we depart from sense and instinct to
follow the light of a superior principle, to reason, meditate, and reflect on
the nature of things, but a thousand scruples spring up in our minds concerning
those things which before we seemed fully to comprehend. Prejudices and errors
of sense do from all parts discover themselves to our view; and, endeavouring
to correct these by reason, we are insensibly drawn into uncouth paradoxes,
difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us as we
advance in speculation, till at length, having wandered through many intricate
mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a
forlorn Scepticism.
2. The cause of this is thought to be the obscurity of
things, or the natural weakness and imperfection of our understandings. It is
said, the faculties we have are few, and those designed by nature for the
support and comfort of life, and not to penetrate into the inward essence and
constitution of things. Besides, the mind of man being finite, when it treats
of things which partake of infinity, it is not to be wondered at if it run into
absurdities and contradictions, out of which it is impossible it should ever
extricate itself, it being of the nature of infinite not to be comprehended by
that which is finite.
3. But, perhaps, we may be too partial to ourselves in
placing the fault originally in our faculties, and not rather in the wrong use
we make of them. It is a hard thing to suppose that right deductions from true
principles should ever end in consequences which cannot be maintained or made
consistent. We should believe that God has dealt more bountifully with the sons
of men than to give them a strong desire for that knowledge which he had placed
quite out of their reach. This were not agreeable to the wonted indulgent
methods of Providence, which, whatever appetites it may have implanted in the
creatures, doth usually furnish them with such means as, if rightly made use
of, will not fail to satisfy them. Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that
the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto
amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to
ourselves- that we have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.
4. My purpose therefore is, to try if I can discover what
those Principles are which have introduced all that doubtfulness and
uncertainty, those absurdities and contradictions, into the several sects of
philosophy; insomuch that the wisest men have thought our ignorance incurable,
conceiving it to arise from the natural dulness and limitation of our
faculties. And surely it is a work well deserving our pains to make a strict
inquiry concerning the First Principles of Human Knowledge, to sift and examine
them on all sides, especially since there may be some grounds to suspect that
those lets and difficulties, which stay and embarrass the mind in its search
after truth, do not spring from any darkness and intricacy in the objects, or
natural defect in the understanding, so much as from false Principles which
have been insisted on, and might have been avoided.
5. How difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may
seem, when I consider how many great and extraordinary men have gone before me
in the like designs, yet I am not without some hopes— upon the consideration
that the largest views are not always the clearest, and that he who is
short-sighted will be obliged to draw the object nearer, and may, perhaps, by a
close and narrow survey, discern that which had escaped far better eyes.
*
* *
Jake’s
commentary:
“Rest and motion cannot happen in the same place at the
same
time. Similarly, creation,
existence, and dissolution cannot take place concurrently. When critically examined,
these
concepts have no substantial validity.
They are only words.” (p. 722-23)
In
verses 79 and 80 is a straightforward description of our lives as we live them
in our everyday worlds.
Established in that balanced position the Guru outlined in the previous
verse, in these two he and Nitya move on to “explicate the obvious” for those
ready to listen (especially in the contemporary American context), that “fit
audience though few” John Milton spoke to centuries ago.
Nitya
opens his commentary by narrating our shared ontological understanding that can
be cognized in two different ways.
We can follow our waking experience through the day by paying attention
to our changing situations as they transform as we move along. We continuously
make decisions, plans,
and so on as the day progresses and just dealing with this flow of events can
come to pre-occupy our awareness.
A
second way of viewing our wakeful involvement is to take the long-term point of
view and consider the entire span of our physical lives as carrying a more
profound value than is explicit in those day-to-day concerns. This latter “vertical
perspective”
places the former “horizontal perspective” in a secondary category. Values
trump incidentals and thereby
assume a superior hierarchical position.
Purpose matters more than does mechanics.
Both
of these points of view, continues Nitya, require some kind of knowledge in
order to function. For the
horizontal dimension, we rely on our senses and mind, both of which can and do
selectively edit perceptions.
As Nitya points out, in addition to disregarding much sensual input, we
face the inevitable reality that they don’t begin to include what is possible
in the totality. The horizon fades
out in front of us, what goes on behind us—or if anything at all does go on—is
taken on faith, and even dogs hear what we cannot: “We circumscribe our outlook
by using only limited aspects of our senses at any time” (p. 556).
In
American education, much is made of the distinction between vocational training
and abstract philosophizing.
However impractical the latter, it is generally prized as the superior
of the two, a distinction Nitya points out that is essentially without
difference as far as the use of either.
Quantifying things, our minds use the senses to navigate the world of necessity while those of a
more philosophical bent tend to seek out the “qualitative generalizations” of
sense input thereby manipulating the abstract property of the thing. The mind
half of the mind/sense duality
we all function in is privileged and our lives made somewhat more comfortable
than they would otherwise be as a result.
Both propensities come about as a result of our dealing with our
horizontal manifest world, and emphasizing either leads us to contradictions
that cannot be explained. Nitya
cites Zeno’s paradoxes as a classic example of philosophy run amok. Logically
evaluated, Zeno points out, a
tortoise will always best Achilles in a race if the animal is given a head
start to begin with. Half the
distance between the two will always remain with the tortoise in the lead as
Achilles paradoxically overtakes it.
Philosophical logic fails because where we use it, it, too, enters a
structuring process that mimics the senses’ processes. Contradictions are
structurally built
into the system.
Struggling
with either or both systems constitutes our attempt to “understand” reality,
and we mistake the forest for the trees (or vice versa). Unable to examine single
details within
single holons at any one time, we miss the larger holonic operation and
constantly run up against the contradictions when one system interfaces with
the next one, which either contains the former or is contained by it. (As a gross
example, we insist on a
difference between inert matter and living tissue but fail to identify the
precise dividing moment or point at which one becomes the other.) “You
get sidetracked in your search
either in the name of philosophy or by the actuality of the immediate pragmatic
possibilities,” writes Nitya (p. 558), a piecemeal strategy that inevitably
leads to creating more problems that can be solved.
[Footnote: A marvelous account of this dilemma can be found in Why Things Bite Back:
Technology and the
Revenge of Unintended Consequences, (1997) by Edward Tenner.]
Nitya’s
foregoing model pretty much reveals by way of contrast the dysfunction at the
heart of the American educational system and the resulting cultural nonsense it
generates. Firmly entrenched in
the horizontal and the honoring of the abstract, words come to tyrannize with
magical powers thereby privileging those who control them. Completely eliminated
in this circular
misery are two fundamentals that chart a way out: the Absolute and our purpose
in the first place—“how to be happy” (p. 558).
The
Absolute is that which does not change and offers us the ground on which to
stand as the pragmatic and the logical worlds spin around us. Defined as sat-cit-ananda (existence-awareness-value), our awareness, says
Nitya, sits in the center as the ground for the other two and, in and of
itself, contains no duality. It
is, I think, akin to that on which perceptions and thoughts are carried and out
of which they continuously appear.
That awareness contains no duality. It comes as the other two elements interact with it,
constantly developing that horizontal manifest dimension Nitya discussed in the
first half of his commentary. As
our ground, we “know” nothing and only think we do as we move on from that
point to recognize dualities, forms, and so on. As Nitya writes, “If you examine any aspect of what is
presented in consciousness, it will show within it contradictions like
existence and non-existence” (p. 560).
If we can accept this position and live in it, we have no problems. Because
everything is a contradiction,
we can’t be surprised or annoyed when consistency inevitably breaks down: “If
you know this kind of information about your wife or husband, your child or
your neighbor, you won’t have trouble.”
But
trouble we have, especially in our outward/other-directed culture on its march
to replace what is with what ought, and
the ultimate weapon of the
crusade is words. “All that you
think and believe is words,” writes Nitya citing Narayana Guru. In our
mistaken drive to “be happy” via
the mind and senses, we privilege our powers of abstraction/philosophizing as
the royal highway to waking up, a teleology which is made up of the same
materials. We seek in words that
which cannot be found there but do locate enough solace to come back to it
again and again. We consume words
and live in a world in which they come to control us because we have granted
them the power to do so. Others
can thus (magically) “make us”
afraid, desperate, hurt, elated, in love, rejected, enraged, and so on because
of what they say about us. Having
given away our power over ourselves and granted it to others’ words, we come to
judge them by the words they use and the institutions that are dedicated to
their manufacture such as universities, the media, and government.
In
these verses, concludes Nitya, the Guru is telling us that the supreme
consciousness out of which all manifests is the real and that those irritations
we feel are merely words that we have made into tools with which to torture
ourselves. We can take them or
leave them.
