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ONE HUNDRED VERSES OF SELF - INSTRUCTION
ATMOPADESA - SATAKAM
PREFACE
The one hundred verses of this book have their original
in Malayalam verses from the pen of Narayana Guru himself. Narayana Guru's earliest writings were clothed in a mythological language depending much on the Gods or Goddesses of what is sometimes called the Hindu Pantheon, including Shiva, Vishnu, Subrahmanya or Kali. Even in those, the case for Advaita Vedanta could be seen showing itself from behind, as it were, the thin superficial veneer of a conventional style evidently adopted by him for the purposes of the common devotee to whom he had necessarily to address himself in those temple-movement days. Later years gave a more positivist orientation to his writings, getting rid even of the esoterics implied in his Shiva-Satakam (One Hundred Verses to Shiva).
We see him in this present work attaining to a philosophical context of Self-realisation rather than that of adoration of any deity, steering clear of local or traditional colorations. He approximates thus for the first time to the open and dynamic style of the Upanishads themselves where the teachings centre round the absolute value called Self or the Atman and not any God to adore as hitherto. An open reference to the Upanishads could even be found in Verse 14. This work of the Guru thus emerges early in his writing career, fully echoing the spirit of the Upanishads, where the centre of interest of value moves, as it were, from an outside locus into the domain of the Absolute Self. The limitations of the understanding of the devotees to whom these verses had to cater, however, kept him within the limits of a religious scriptural form without gaining a fuller status as an open and critical philosophical work as revealed only later in such works as Brahmavidya-Pancakam and the Darsana-Mala, which are the more finalized fruits of his life of contemplation of the Absolute from all the three perspectives of cosmology, theology and psychology. Even the voice of obligation, in which a certain course of behaviour, faith or understanding,
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whether ethical or religious, is not transcended here. It is in fact a confection in which the Upanishadic teaching is treated also as a way of life. Such a way of life has a fully open and dynamic character, instead of being closed or static as in hide-bound religion or ethics.
The reader could profitably read the essays by the present commentator, 'Presenting the Philosophy of a Guru' which enable him to enter in the further implications of this work, which is meant to be both a scriptural composition recommending a way of life as well as the clarification of the highest problems of Advaita Vedanta itself.
It would be helpful for the reader also to remember that the cryptic language which comes to evidence in almost every natural group of verses inevitably yields up their secret when subjected to a structural analysis which we have recommended many times elsewhere. Esoterics will become lit up to have a fully scientific status when subjected to such a schematic scrutiny. If the verses or the comments should still retain a certain strangeness from conventional norms, the excuse could be found perhaps in the attempt to lay the foundations of a type of literature fully emancipated from the possible prejudices and mental conditions belonging to limited spheres of time or clime. Conventions cannot be respected side-by-side with an open, scientific or universal outlook.
NATARAJA GURU.
INTRODUCTION
ONE HUNDRED philosophical verses constituting a wisdom text of rare value written by the Guru Narayana (1854-1928) in Malayalam are presented here for the first time in a modern English translation with suitable comments by one of his disciples.
The text is entitled Atma-Upadesa, which means 'teaching about or of the Self'. The subject of the work is contemplative self-realization or knowing oneself as better understood in the Socratic context as pertaining to the central problem of wisdom itself.
Instead of being in the form of a dialogue between a teacher and a pupil, as is more usually the case either in India or in ancient Greece, the two counterparts involved in the wisdom-teaching situation are brought more unitively together here by the Guru. This is perhaps more consistent both with the matter and the method of the unitive wisdom treated in this 'century of verse' or satakam as it is named here.
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The poet Bhartrihari has similar verse-sequences known in the Sanskrit tradition. Sankara's Atma-bodha and Upadesa Sahasri are also kindred compositions. Highly reminiscent of this form of writing too, are the works of Tamil poets such as the Tevaram (Garland of God) and Tiruvasagam (Holy Sentences) of the Nalvars (Four Saints) so popular in South India. The Bhagavad Gita, also a song and a science at once pertaining to the Absolute, does not fall outside the class of composition intended by the Guru in this instance. The present composition is thus a wisdom-discourse addressed to or about one's own self. Further, as we shall explain presently with reference to the text of the very first verse, the author has in mind a work of a scriptural or canonical status wherein he seeks to present a revaluation of the whole field of wisdom It is meant to be both scientifically precise and capable of being chanted as an elevating scripture like the Vedas themselves by the less strictly intellectual or merely academic votary of 'Self-knowledge'.
The nature of the opening verse calls for some preliminary remarks. There is a tacit Sanskrit convention which requires that the first words should indicate succinctly the content, relation and subject-matter of the whole work, and indicate clearly the kind of approach and the nature of the problems envisaged. It is usual also in works of a serious kind in India, either to bow down to the Guru or to invoke God or some principle representing the Absolute or the Most High in one form or another. In Kalidasa's 'Sakuntala', the very first verse has been subjected to a most elaborate scrutiny in the light of such a convention. It is also permitted to omit addressing a definite member of the Hindu pantheon by name and to allude only indirectly (as in Sakuntala) to some hidden principle, representative of the Absolute, according to the author's original concept. Buddhist works refer to 'the Enlightened One' in various forms. Sankara's 'Viveka Chudamani' begins by invoking his Guru's name.
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The Guru Narayana is able to conform to these tacit conventions in a manner which both conforms and by-passes its demands in a delicate and distinctive middle way which is all his own. The first letter with which the work begins is the vowel 'A' which, according to the Gita (X. 33) represents the Absolute. The pointed reference in the first verse to repeated prostrations to the Absolute, subjectively and objectively conceived at once, fulfils the requirements of an initial invocation without doing so in any closed theological or deistic sense. The dignity of philosophy is not compromised by the demands of any theology which might not be fully in keeping with the 'free critic' that a man should correctly consider himself to be.
The purpose and scope of the work, as also the central question, the problem or the doubt it confronts us with as a
whole, requires to be clearly indicated also according to classical Indian convention. Here too the Guru satisfies this tacit requirement masterfully. One notices here that the central substantial core in oneself, referred to in the opening verse, lends itself to be considered both as the subject-matter as well as the object-matter of the philosophy of the Guru at one and the same time. Duality is thus not only avoided but unity established by means of a neutral normative notion of the Absolute which is adorable in, through and by oneself.
The neutral unitive Absolute, irrespective of any cosmological, psychological or theological bias, thus occupies a central place in the work. The task that the Guru places before himself in the ninety-eight intervening verses, is to arrive once more, after facing all relevant problems, at the hundredth verse, at a unitive and neutral concept of the Absolute.
A close vision of the Self would be the compensation for the strenuous effort that the study of these verses might have cost the student when he finally is able to put the book down and see everything in it in its perfect perspective and symmetry.
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The luminous and illuminating Self conceived thus non-dually is not merely of passing academic interest. It must hold the centre of all human interest when all other interests have given place to better ones in the spiritual progress of man. The Adorable Absolute Value would be represented by the Self, while it would banish philosophical doubts of a merely intellectual order.
Such are some of the initial ideas with which we have to launch our study of this philosophical masterpiece of our time. It lends itself as the basis of a new world outlook, which is neither Eastern nor Western, neither ancient modern, neither academic nor religious, neither pragmatic nor sentimental. 'Let the Guru be praised for such an open and dynamic outlook', is the note of prayer with which shall ourselves enter here into the actual task of translation and comment, in a spirit of leisurely detachment. We shall adhere as near to the original text as permissible without making readability suffer, and we shall comment generally and textually item after item, giving Eastern or Western references, thus bringing the discussions into line and up to date.
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VERSE 1
Rising even above knowledge, what within the form
Of the one who knows, as equally without, radiant shines,
To that Core, with the eyes five restrained within,
Again and again prostrating in adoration, one should chant.
THIS sequence of verses, as the first verse here indicates,is a contemplative hymn or sacred scripture intended by the Guru to be sung or chanted, like the Vedas, the Quran or the Psalms of the Bible. It concerns the Self, which is to be located neither inside nor outside the contemplator. Self-knowledge is to be sought introspectively with the outward-going interests restrained and directed inwards in terms of consciousness, which can be said to be both subjective and objective at once.
A mere academic interest or intellectual curiosity alone will not suffice for the task of Self-realization. A whole-hearted interest is needed. Ecstasy and wonder are only to be expected normally in the appraisal of such a high human value. An attitude of ceaseless adoration is therefore recommended so as to attune the mind to the implicit central notion which is the content of the whole work. Such a notion, being beyond the paradox of logic, has to be approached dialectically. In such a unitive approach the attitude of reverence or adoration is but a natural corollary. Hence the prostrations here are indicated without violating the requirements of human dignity in its everyday sense. No abject idolatry or kow-towing is implied, but rather an adoration of the Absolute as the highest and dearest of human values.
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'RISING EVEN ABOVE KNOWLEDGE': What is implied here is the Platonic distinction between the world of the visible and the intelligible. (1) Pure and practical reason in the terminology of Kant would refer to the same distinction as between the immanent and the transcendent, the ontological and the teleological, the a priori and the a posteriori, and in many other pairs of terms by which various philosophers have attempted to refer to two aspects of absolute reality.
Some of these, such as the Cartesian distinction between the body and the mind, imply a duality sometimes exaggerated out of proportion or asymmetrically conceived as between the two counterparts. Here the Guru refers to a central reality which transcends the two aspects of the visible and the intelligible. In the Upanishads para-vidya refers to the knowledge of the intelligibles and apara-vidya to the visible (Mundaka Upanishad. I. I. 4, 5). Para-apara is a term used in the Upanishads too, referring to what transcends these twin aspects of knowledge.
When opinion attains to the red glow of what might be called knowledge, the duality between the two aspects may still persist, but when the same attains to white heat, the duality as between the material source of light and light itself becomes effaced, and luminosity pervades both subjectively and objectively. When fully realized, the wisdom of the Self would have no vestige of duality as between the source of light and light itself.
Such is the unitive reality in the mind of the Guru here. The neutral Absolute given to higher dialectical reasoning and reaching beyond or higher than its own dualistically- understood counterparts is what is intended to be conveyed by the word 'even' in the text of the verse. In verse 72 we come again to this question of non-duality beyond or above duality,
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discussed in its proper place as the Guru's philosophy unravels systematically. The subtle problem as between duality and non-duality is fundamental to Vedanta tradition, and we shall have occasion to refer to it many times in the course of our comments. We shall therefore not unnecessarily labour the point here.
'WITHIN...AS EQUALLY WITHOUT': The equal status given here to the subjective and objective aspects of knowledge is not an alternation as between the light within and without. An alternating movement as between two ambivalent aspects of the personality is, however, alluded to in Verse 68 as well as in Verse 72.
Duality might have to be admitted for methodological reasons to arrive finally at its abolition through higher dialectical reasoning. Even otherwise, we know in modern philosophy such as that of Bertrand Russell, who calls himself a neutral monist, that the 'mind-matter' duality could have a middle ground which is neither the one nor the other.
In terms of consciousness the distinction between its subjective and objective aspects is only of importance for purposes of nomenclature. The stuff or substance constituting knowledge, whether subjective or objective, is the same. Ramanuja's Visishta-advaita (non-duality of the specific substance of wisdom as such) refers to the same paradox. (2) Spinoza's notion of 'a thinking substance' can also combine the two aspects unitively. He defines it as follows:
'I understand substance (substantia) to be that which
is in itself and is conceived through itself: I mean that,
the conception of which does not depend on the
conception of another thing from which it must be
formed.' (3)
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In more modern times we have the discussion between the 'substance' theory of the mind and the 'substantive' theory of the mind as distinguished by C. W. Morris. To understand the non-materiality yet self-existence of the notion, as used by William James who applied it to the resting phase of the stream of consciousness, we are helped by the following explanations:
'Substantive states of mind, in contrast to transitive or
relational states, are the temporary resting places in the
flow of the stream of thought'. (4)
The 'substance' as understood by the Guru Narayana is unitively conceived. Even the last vestiges of duality persisting in the notion of consciousness considered as a stream is here abolished by the Guru when he underlines the perfect equality of status as between its own subjective or objective aspects. Consciousness is here to be understood in terms of the eternal present or the moment, as in Plato's Parmenides, where 'being' and 'becoming' meet. (5)
'TO THAT CORE': What we have called the core here corresponds to karu in Malayalam. It can be a substance centrally situated in an organism like its nucleus and the source of its functional side. As something that starts or initiates action it could be thought of as the functional basis of the faculties or as an organ or instrument. Aristotle's 'unmoved mover' comes nearest to what is meant by the Guru. The Sanskrit word karanam, referring to the functions of the mind, intelligence or reasoning ego, refers to the common Self behind, as it were, these specific aspects of the same Self.
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Our idea of the 'core' has to accord with the further elaboration of its attributes in later verses, starting with the very next verse. The 'core' is not matter as in biology, but something more subtle as a functional basis of consciousness which is the meeting-point of outgoing and incoming conscious impulses. It is the source of the 'pure act' of Aristotle.
'WITH THE EYES FIVE RESTRAINED WITHIN' : Afferent impulses tend to dominate everyday consciousness through the outward-directed attention fixed on objects of interest succeeding one another in cyclic succession, and depending on biological or other urges normal to living beings. Consciousness itself, in its two-fold symmetry, is not proportionately or fully seen in its normal balanced state when the outgoing tendencies dominate the incoming ones.
A detachment from the empirical world and a state of mind resembling that of pure mathematics is implicit in all contemplation. Interests lead to chains of activities which are initiated through any object of interest occupying the centre of consciousness at a given time. These would compromise the case for pure contemplative attention to the Self as the neutral Absolute. Just as pure mathematical thought is impossible when we are swayed by passions belonging to the outer world; so pure contemplation is impossible to one attached to the empirical world of touch or measurement.
Eastern philosophy has to save itself from the aspersion of escapism cast on it by so-called positive philosophers of the West, which will be seen to be unjust when we remember that contemplation, and all philosophy for that matter, pertains to the world of vertical values in life rather than to those that are horizontal. Either one wants contemplation or not. This is for each person to decide for himself. But, after wanting it, it would be absurd to say that its methods have to be as objective as in the empirical branches of science or knowledge. In shutting the eyes here the philosopher only resembles
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the mathematical physicist, and in metaphysics this attitude is only all the more valid. Even Eddington, though a physicist, stands for what he calls 'selective subjectivism.'
In fact, as Fichte pointed out, in discussing the Kantian duality between 'pure' and 'practical' reason, there could be a common principle, as in his notion of 'wissenschaftlehre' (doctrine of science), which could be independent of the pure or practical content of reason, referring to the truth of all science or knowledge treated as one.
The 'core' here may also be said to lie at the meeting-point of the vertical and the horizontal aspects of reality, and represent at once the Platonic real and the 'entelecheia' as understood in the Aristotelian context. (6) Existence, subsistence and value notions meet neutrally in this central core.
'ONE SHOULD CHANT' : No obligation to chant is here implied. Such could not be the construction that we can put on the word 'should' as used here. The Vedas or smritis (obligatory codes remembered) like that of Manu are sastras or canonical scriptures which have social or religious obligation implied in them. Pure philosophy as in the Upanishads and the Gita is distinguished by its perfect freedom from any trace of obligation. Such works are therefore classed as srutis (heard wisdom teachings) as against the smritis, which are remembered ones from the teaching as applied to life.
How is it then, that the word 'should' is employed by the Guru here? This is a pertinent question. We have already indicated that the Guru's intention here is to compose a work which will treat philosophy and religion unitively. It would have the characteristics of both
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Veda and Vedanta. What would be good (philosophically) to understand should be good to apply or adopt into one's way of life. The duality as between smartha (remembered or applied) and srauta (first-hand, heard, or non-obligatory) is here brought together by the Guru in his treatment of the subject of Self-realization and the yogic disciplines that form an inseparable part of it in reality. Wisdom and action, as in the Gita, are brought together as one subject. The work is meant to be a song and a science at once. Exaltation is natural to the adventure of the discovery of the Self, and hence chanting the text is in order and normally indicated.
(1). See article in VALUES, (pub. Kaggalipura, Bangalore)
Vol. IV, No. 5, p. 141.
(2), See VALUES Vol. IV. .No. 4.
(3). p. I. Spinoza. 'Ethics', (Everyman's Edition)
(4). p. 305 Ledger Wood, Rune's 'Dictionary of Philosophy'. (Jaico, Bombay.)
(5). see definition in VALUES, pp. 146-147 Vol. IV. No. 5.
(6). see VALUES P. 146, Vol. IV. No. 5.
VERSE 2
The inner organ, the senses, and counting from the body
The many worlds we know, are all, on thought, the sacred form
Of the supreme Sun risen in the void beyond;
By relentless cogitation one should attain to this.
AS in mathematics, there is an inductive equation here, which the mind is capable of giving to itself. As the two terms of the equation we are asked to think hard about the inner organ at one pole and the sun in the supreme void at the other pole. Between these worlds one has to fill up for oneself grades of value-systems with which, as human beings, we deal, whether emotionally, actively or intellectually.
'Terra firma' is one such world, and the galaxies of the expanding universe could be the other. Or we could fill the series between these two limiting counterparts with other material, psychological or cosmological value-factors which concern human life interests. Howsoever they may be named,
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there is to be imagined a vertical axis in which all value-interests or things themselves could be arranged in an ascending or descending series, with perhaps a neutral point between the extremes.
The positive and the negative items of this series could always be equated and understood one in terms of the other. The 'supreme Sun risen in the void' would represent the extreme positive counterpart of the inner organ, which is the first item of the ontological aspect of reality. The main equation is between the inner organ (as next to the 'thinking substance' or core we have seen in the first verse), and the supreme Sun in the void postulated here. A form of pure mathematical reasoning is involved here which a scientist, whose very language is mathematical, should not question.
If mathematical predictions of events such as eclipses are possible and permissible, this a priori induction here, which equates the poles of reality as we can experience them, arrived at by hard introspective cogitation on the part of the contemplative seeker of the wisdom of the Self, should not be dismissed as unscientific, dogmatic or superstitious.
One can attain to this vision or certitude, the Guru warns us, only by very hard thinking of a certain kind, whose nature will become clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile it would be worthwhile to note that the 'inner organ' - which is the basis of the attributes of ego or individual consciousness such as the mind, reason, relational mind, and sense of individuation - is strictly the correct contemplative counterpart of the Sun in the void. Any empirical stigma attached to these starting counterparts in the mind of the student will have to be progressively discarded as the discussion attains to subtler inner factors which must constitute the subject-matter as well as the object-matter of all contemplative philosophizing. In other words, the physiological organ within and the physical sun are both to be substituted by a psychic organon and a supreme transcendental immaterial Sun beyond.
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'THE INNER ORGAN': Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and Kant have employed the term organon in referring to the instrument of reasoning in man. The ordinary empirical reason that we use in everyday life is more of a faculty (that is, an attribute of the physical aspect of the personality) than one belonging to the philosophical a priori side of conscious
awareness.
Our own body is what we cognise first with this organ which is within us. When we pull out a thorn in our foot there is a coming-together of the counterparts of subjective and objective factors which go to make up the whole personality. A boy extracting a thorn becomes a dignified theme for a Greek sculptor because of this meeting of counterparts.
As we have said, this inner instrument of reason could be further vertically subdivided into mind, reason, relational
faculty, individuation, etc., as has been referred to in Sanskrit psychology as manas, buddhi, chitta and ahamkara respectively. Whatever the subdivisions named or unnamed, they belong together to this inner organ when telescoped into one another as a single factor for purposes of easy nomenclature. This inner organ uses the five senses such as hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. The very first object with which we can be said to be in palpable contact is our own body. Objectively speaking, the body should have been our negative starting-point, and the physical sun its positive counterpart here; but, contemplatively treated, the inner organ itself, as the instrument of cognition, conation and affection, is the more correct starting-point in equating counterparts.
'THE SACRED FORM OF THE SUPREME SUN RISEN IN THE VOID BEYOND': This pagan sun which pre-Christian philosophers, including Julian the Apostate, made so much of, in contrast to the Christian tendency to do without the sun in vaulted churches of stained glass which keep the rays outside, comes into the Guru's writing here, perhaps to some of us at least, with somewhat shocking abruptness. The Aryans were
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known to be sun-worshippers, and the Zoroastrians too extolled the midday sun. Plato's writings refer to the sun, not in a religious but in a philosophical context. The sun is attained by the highest form of reasoning which Plato distinguishes as the dialectical, as in the following passage:
'But isn't this just the note that Dialectic must strike
(to be able to argue logically as only trained philosophers
can do)? It is an intellectual process, but is paralleled in
the visible world, as we say, by the progress of sight
from shadows to real creatures, and then to the stars, and
finally to the sun itself. So when one tries to reach ultimate realities by the exercise of pure reason, without any aid from the senses, and refuses to give up until the mind has grasped what the Good is, one is at the end of an intellectual progress parallel to the visual progress we described'. (7)
Thus we see that treating the sun and the visible world as dialectical counterparts in higher reasoning has the sanction of long philosophical usage. The Upanishads also refer to the Absolute as aditya-varnam, as of the splendour of the Sun on the other side of all darkness. The Pushan of the Isa Upanishad also refers to the Sun as a visible symbol of the Absolute. References to the Sun in the Upanishads as Aditya, Savitr or Surya are numerous, but the reference in the Chandogya Upanishad (8. 6. 2.) gives the dialectical relation between the two poles as follows:
'Now as a great extending highway goes to two villages,
this one and the yonder, even so these rays of the sun go
to two worlds, this one and the yonder.'
However, we should note here that the Platonic sun beyond has to be cancelled out or equated against the simple reality here in the inner organs in order to arrive at the neutral
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Absolute which is neither to be conceived as hypostatically nor hierophantically sacred. The sacredness has to be derived from its neutral absolutist participation.
'THE MANY WORLDS WE KNOW': The unmistakable
suggestion which the Guru makes in this very second verse is that we know of several worlds. It is but fair for us to
give the writer a chance to develop his subject in his own way, and it would not therefore be just for us to label the Guru in advance as a pluralist or a serialist.
We saw in the first verse that the 'core' that he referred to admitted of no duality. In the very next verse we find him referring to many worlds and to the counterparts of these many worlds to be thought of in a certain graded order and brought together as the terms of an equation.
The inner organ is to be the dialectical counterpart of the Sun in the void postulated by him. If pure non-duality is
the doctrine of the work as a whole, the Guru has to develop his subject by using a certain method. Methodological and
axiological requirements thus make him come down from the platform, as it were, and explain more intimately to the student that the way to arrive at non-duality finally, is first to find the counterparts that belong to the unity and bring them dialectically together for being resolved in unitive terms. Such apparent duality is not to be mixed up with a doctrinal duality. It is rather a methodological, suppositious requirement only.
All contemplation must needs have a human purpose, however pure or abstract. The axiological limits have therefore to be clearly indicated. We know of our own mind and the body that we touch. As we travel outwards from these given factors the objects of desire which form the natural human environment, such as the world of food, can be said to constitute the next value-system. More removed from the food-world, we could think of social, ethical or aesthetic environments for each man. The world of the intelligibles as
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described in Plato's writings and the summum bonum which is the region of the final or supreme interest for man to reach, could be thought of as the highest of possible worlds. Other philosophers such as Leibniz would perhaps think of the serial world of monads, ranging from the simple atomic monad here to the monad of monads which is the same as God, according to his philosophy. Even to the scientific philosopher, with a space-time continuum, a series of worlds is possible as between the quantum pulsations of matter in its electro-magnetic field, to the cosmos imagined with its vast interstellar spaces in an expanding universe with an attraction and repulsion between bodies constituting the larger cosmos.
The many worlds we know, as here intended by the Guru, should be in keeping with his own philosophy, as developed in these verses or elsewhere in his writings, which it is our duty first to try to understand as we proceed.
'BY RELENTLESS COGITATION ONE SHOULD ATTAIN TO THIS ': One has to do violence to one's own nature in the practice of dialectical reasoning. That is why it has been called in Sanskrit 'tapas' or the burning up of oneself. A form of agony and a vertical ascent is implied in this intellectual effort which resembles the working of the faculties of a pure mathematician like Eddington with his sedenion algebraic formulae, his equations and constants. No arm-chair philosophizing will suffice here. Bergson in his Metaphysics refers to it as a form of 'intellectual auscultation' as when one hears sounds from within oneself by stopping and reversing the process of normal thinking. Dialectical ascent and descent are also known to philosophers from classical times. The cogitations of Descartes and the use of intuition as known to him and to Plotinus or Bergson involve a pure mathematical way of negative or positive induction which involves special effort on the part of the contemplative. The true end of contemplation is not to be attained in any lazy attitude but involves vertical, though not horizontal effort.
(7). P. 302, The Republic, (Penguin Classics) - our parenthesis
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VERSE 3
These phenomenal aspects five such as the sky
Which as emergent from outside is here seen to be,
By contemplation one should bring to non-difference
As the sea is to the waves that rise in rows thereon.
AFTER making out the two poles involved in contemplation - one at the core of one's own being, and one in the void beyond, in the previous verses - the accent now shifts to the subject, who is here treated as a passive onlooker witnessing the given phenomenal world.
This world is what is known to physics and as in the pre-Socratic hylozoism of ancient Europe, it is even now habitual in India to refer to the sky, air, fire, water and earth as graded realities of the phenomenal aspect of the Absolute.
The elements thus contemplatively understood should not be confused, however, with elements as understood in modern physics or chemistry. It is not merely the material basis of phenomena which have to be thought of under the symbols of the elemental names, but rather stable nodes in a vertical series of graded entities which, when more closely scrutinized, would reveal themselves to be of the same substance as the Absolute itself as understood in the first verse.
Waves on the sea are water under specific name and form but otherwise homogeneous with the ocean. This classical Vedantic example is resorted to by the Guru here to refer to the differencelessness between the cause and the effect in the phenomenal world. The cause when viewed contemplatively yields this answer, while when viewed horizontally or
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non-contemplatively, the waves will have to be given a status in reality of their own.
Indian logic makes the distinction between the material cause, such as the clay that makes the pot, and the occasional or incidental cause, which is the potter's work. The former is the vertical cause, while the latter would refer to a horizontal sequence of causes and effects. Each wave might have an individuality, horizontally viewed; but contemplatively or vertically viewed, the material cause and effect, namely, water, leads to a differenceless unitive vision. The text here being of a contemplative order and especially as there is reference to contemplation in the verse itself, the vertical unitive view of cause and effect is what is intended here by the Guru.
'EMERGENT FROM OUTSIDE HERE SEEM TO BE ': That Vedanta, especially as stated by Sankara, refers to the visible world of phenomena as a mere appearance or passing show is proverbially known. Maya-vada (the doctrine of illusion) and ajata-vada (the doctrine of emergent appearance), are different names by which the negative principle of nescience is supposed to dim the transparency of the human mind, making for all sorts of conditioned states of consciousness, by which representations of apparent realities become supposed or superimposed on the pure being which is the subjective-objective Absolute.
Other favourite examples of nescience are the snake imagined in a piece of rope or the silver imagined in the mother-of-pearl. The colourless glass crystal conditioned or 'coloured' by its being placed on a piece of red silk is another favourite example of the conditioning optical or logical illusion possible in respect of reality. What seems to exist, as it were, 'over there' in our common experience of the visible world, is not in reality substantially there at all. The blue of the sky, to start with, is a mere optical effect known to science. It is due as much to the weakness of the optical nerves as to the effects in the dispersal of light.
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As we come down from the subtle element, the sky, through the intermediate nodes marked out symbolically by the elemental principles known by their respective names, understood subjectively and objectively at once, we appreciate only degrees of differentiation as between the successive items taken in order. Even here the difference as between say, fire and water for example, is due to the interpenetration of factors in an ascending as well as a descending order at once.
The process of such neutralisation by opposites is known in Vedantic literature as panchikarana, and the elements themselves, thought of as principles rather than things, are called tanmatras (things-in-themselves). The story of the process of panchikarana or equalization of the factors is described by Prof. Lacombe as follows:
'The great elements do not enter as such into the
composition of individual realities, but undergo first a
sort of shaking-up which is called quintipartition -
panchikarana.
Each of them is divided by the Creator into two parts and
each of these halves again into four parts. Each of these
quarters is afterwards mixed with the half that remains
intact of each of the four elements. This takes place in
such a way that each element becomes already composed
as follows: 1/2 element plus 1/8 of each of the other four
elements. And these are the composite elements which
serve the constitution of the individual things. The
dominating proportion of the primitive element safeguards
its authenticity. But the addition of bits of the other
elements gives account of the participation of all things
with all things and explains certain anomalies of perception.'
(8)
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Although the above description of the process of actualisation of elemental principles as individual entities is graphic enough, the reference to the 'Creator' therein gives it a theological flavour which is due to the fact that this version of panchikarana is taken from the writings of Ramanuja and his followers such as Sri Nivasa Dipika, rather than from the more strictly philosophical Sankara school. In the Viveka Chudamani (verse 88), Sankara attributes panchikarana to action in previous births.
The same process of panchikarana is accepted in the other Vedantic schools.
In the Guru's verse here, this elaborate story of the process of panchikarana does not have to be drawn into the discussion, especially at the present stage. Elsewhere in this same work are found simple theories of concretion and individuation which we shall discuss in their proper place. Meanwhile we thought it good for the student to be informed about the prevailing theories on the subject.
'AS THE SEA IS TO THE WAVES THAT RISE IN ROWS THEREON': The analogy of the sea invoked here is not the sea of samsara (phenomenal existence) but the sea of consciousness. Samvit sagara (the sea of consciousness) has to be distinguished from samsara sagara (the sea of phenomenal becoming in nature).
The world of appearance is only the specific aspect of the basic consciousness in which all things have being. Name and form are the factors giving specificity to the general consciousness. The electromagnetic field and the gravitational line in modern physics are comparable to the twin correlating factors which may be said to give a frame of reference to the mechanism of radiating waves in the context of the quantum theory.
The picture presented here is not without similarity to wave mechanics. Mass and velocity of energy and many other pairs or conjugates come into the picture of the physical
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world as understood at present through mathematical constants such as Max Planck's 'h', which is the unitive principle between the twin, rival or complementary factors involved in particle-mechanics. Just as the trained scientist can understand wave-mechanics in terms of the constant 'h'; so the philosopher is asked here to look at the successive grades of phenomenal manifestation of the visible world through elemental principles understood as substantially the same as the stuff of consciousness itself.
Consciousness has its radiating or horizontal wave-aspect and the aspect of depth in which contemplative operations can move. When contemplation is established, the difference vanishes, but in a more passive state, the waves appear as such in consciousness. Appearance has to be overcome and appreciation of reality established by the effort of contemplation. The effort alluded to in the previous verse is here too suggested as desirable for contemplative vision. The reference to the rows is to mark out the subtle gradation which will still persist in the vertical scale of reality between elemental principles. Thales and Heraclitus gave primacy to water and fire respectively in their hylozoic systems of pre-Socratic philosophy. The flux of phenomenal life was to Heraclitus like a river which one could not enter twice. The vertical process of becoming was distinguished from the horizontal aspect of being. The latter was mere appearance. What is implied in the Guru's verse is a similar idea in terms of pure consciousness which for him remains the central reality understood through the notion of a neutral Absolute.
WORD NOTES :
The Vedantic term 'vivarta' in this verse has been translated as 'emergent' and by 'seem to be' understood together. A mental projection or supposition of a reality not there is what is implied.
Vibhuti has been translated 'phenomenal aspect' because the root 'bhav' suggests 'becoming'.
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Bhutas are those entities that have come to be; the mahabhutas, the great elements, is the term applied to those elements in their universal aspect as fundamental principles in the creation or phenomenal emergence of the visible world.
(8). P. 325, O. Lacombe 'L'Absolu selon le Vedanta', (Paris 1837). Our translation.
VERSE 4
Knowledge, its meaning known, and the personal knowledge
Subjective, together make but one primal glory;
Within the unrarified radiance of this great knowledge
One should merge and become that alone.
THERE is a subtle tri-basic factor called triputi which is responsible for our wrong appraisal of reality. The lazy mind left to itself without the attitude of contemplation has a tendency to view reality sectionally or horizontally, as it were, from an angle which takes for granted the knower, the knowledge as a concept, and the objective side of knowledge, as three distinct separate entities. One has to counteract this tri-basic prejudice to which the human mind is naturally disposed. We take a cross-sectional rather than a lengthwise view of reality.
Bergson has referred to this tendency as 'the cinematographic function of thought', by which it appraises 'stills' of a moving picture rather than the motions as such. Pure motion eludes appraisal by the mind because of its incapacity by its very structure to take in events other than mechanistically.
The horizontalization of our relation with the visible world produces a similar tri-partite cleavage in our thought-process, which, instead of being the continuous process that it really is, shows itself under split or separated aspects by which the unitive nature of thought is marred.
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The paradoxes of Zeno are well-known classical examples of the kind of contradiction or error implied in all thought referring to the phenomenal world related to space. Even with reference to the vertical time axis, pure time can be thought of without such divisions into disjunct events by a little training in meditation; but it is merely the time as known by the tickings of the clock that is more naturally cognised.
When the vertical view is established a sense of wonder of contemplative vision goes with it. As such knowledge refers to the Absolute, it is called the 'great knowledge' which, once established, shines inclusively without intermission.
'BUT ONE PRIMAL GLORY': When the tri-partite split has been transcended by another way of approach to reality which is more in keeping with contemplation, an inclusive and universal value of great interest and intellectual content takes its place in the centre of consciousness.
The elements, when conceived as belonging to the grand elements of the vertically graded series that we have seen as
implied in the last verse, are here referred to as making one mahas (great knowledge). The Guru does not want, straightaway at this initial stage of the development of the subject, to refer to any definite finalized concept such as the atman or the Absolute. The notion of the Absolute Self will be developed methodically stage by stage. But even here the relation thus correctly established between the subject and the object of contemplation does not admit of any duality at all, and the bipolarity or complementarity is bound to be perfect. The unitive character of the relationship is underlined by the words 'but' and 'one' which, read together with the last word of the verse where the word 'alone' occurs, contains something of the same idea as that of Plotinus where he refers to contemplation as the 'flight of the alone to the Alone'.
'UNRARIFIED RADIANCE': Light is the favourite analogy for wisdom. Direct awareness which true wisdom demands,
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is not of the nature of a merely syllogistic ratiocination, but approximates to an intuitive vision which is immediate rather than mediate. Ratiocinative thought is normal as between things and is a dull mechanistic movement in consciousness compared to the compact or intensive thought which contemplation can establish.
Henri Poincaré refers to a state of mind in which he was led to a great mathematical discovery when one night he lost his sleep after drinking black coffee. This is a recent instance where the mind shows itself in special states to be capable of functioning differently at a higher scale than usual. Mystical states referred to in religious books become probable in the light of such possibilities. When such a white heat is established in thought, the methodology applicable becomes changed. The logical rules of double negation and inclusive conjunction, which have nothing to do with ordinary logic, become applicable to this style of thinking. Light when it becomes intense denies darkness and establishes itself as a reality without a rival. Relativistic thought thus changes into absolutist thought which becomes unitive and positive.
'BECOME THAT ALONE': The identity of subject and object in contemplative life has been recognized both in the East and the West. The reference of Plotinus to the 'flight of the alone to the Alone' is a direct paraphrase of the state of
kaivalya (aloneness) which is the goal of contemplative life even according to dualistic schools such as that of Patanjali.
With the maha-vakyas (great dicta) derived from the Upanishads such as 'tat tvam asi' (That thou art) etc., this identity of subject and object may be said to be the central doctrine of wisdom generally.
When we say that 'the kingdom of God is within' or that 'I and my Father are one', as in the biblical context, the same verity is implicit. The imitation of Christ would be sacrilege if there was not this idea implicit in the suggestion made. That the Brahman-knower attains Brahman
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and becomes one with it is clearly stated in the Taittiriya Upanishad (II. i): 'He who knows Brahman attains to the highest.' That the present work follows the lines of Vedanta in general is indicated here.
WORD NOTES:
Mahas and mahat are terms originally known in the context of Samkhya tattvas (principles) later incorporated into the Gita and other Vedantic works. It has to be understood in the light of the revaluation it has undergone in the course of its use, with all vestiges of duality being progressively abolished. In his book 'Yoga as Philosophy and Religion' (New York, 1924), Surendranath Das Gupta refers to the 'two parallel lines of evolution' starting from mahat: one by which it passes through intermediate tattvas such as 'ego, manas, the five cognate and the five conative senses'; while on another line of evolution 'it develops into the five grosser elements through the five tanmatras which are directly produced from mahat through the medium of ahamkara. Vyasa Bhashya II. 19, 9 has a revised version in which the duality of yoga texts is better reconciled.'
CONCERNING VERSES 5 TO 7
It is important to notice, as from verse 5, the general plan of these hundred verses. We know already that the Guru Narayana, being an avowed Advaita Vedantin who follows the steps of Sankara and revalues his position in his own way, has the basic doctrine of non-duality preserved intact in his writings. This can be gathered from a general examination of the other compositions of the Guru taken all together.
The task of the student of philosophy of the Guru will be facilitated if he can place his finger correctly and carefully on just those points where the Guru tries to restate the position of Sankara's Advaita. The later modifications given to the Science of the Absolute (brahmavidya) as brought about in the
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writings of the two other important classical Gurus of South India, Ramanuja and Madhva, should also be kept in mind by the careful student.
In point of method and theory of knowledge the Guru Narayana will be seen to depart slightly from all these Gurus: Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva, and although the essential spirit of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita will be seen to be maintained, and the finalised position of the Brahma Sutras generally supported, the Guru will be seen to conform closely to the requirements of a more strictly unitive or dialectical approach.
He is not content to be merely theological like Ramanuja; nor does he make of philosophy as perhaps with Sankara,sometimes, merely academic abstractions in which the living breezes of human values do not play. In these verses 5 to 7, it would be advantageous to note in advance that the method employed here approximates to that of Sankara in the analysis of the states of consciousness in locating the substratum of the Absolute common to waking, dreaming and deep sleep. It is compatible with Sankara's definition of the Absolute as avastha-traya-sakshi (the neutral witness, as it were, of the three states, jagrat or waking, svapna or dreaming, and sushupti, sleeping). This compares with the method of the Mandukya Upanishad which equates absolute consciousness with that of the 'fourth' or turiya state which inclusively transcends all the other three.
Ramanuja's dynamism of existence follows the same dialectical lines but in terms of being and becoming rather than in terms of pure consciousness. Madhva stresses the aspect of a scale of values as between the Absolute and the Relative, understood in the dialectical context. But here the Guru Narayana brings dialectics to bear on common human life.
These three verses, therefore, have to be read together so as to see that unitive fibre running through all three of them. The same thing is said from three dialectically different
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points of view. Using the terminology we have developed in the pages of Values we can explain broadly that verse 5 tries to draw the distinction between the horizontal and the vertical attitude implied in contemplative life. The dynamism of the horizontal factors, as they regulate common human life, is outlined in verse 6; while the same is viewed from the vertical in verse 7.
The student must read all these verses in the light of one another before trying to extract any doctrine out of any one of them. Wherever the doctrine is vague, he must rely on other sections in the same work where a similar or allied problem has been treated; and he may even go beyond the limits of the present composition to others by the Guru.
It would not be wrong to fit the teaching here back upon the general teaching of the Advaita of Sankara and upon the greater background of Vedanta thought in general as implicit in the three 'canonical' writings, namely, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras. Only then one would be but doing justice to the Guru Narayana, who represents the Advaita tradition in a fully revalued and restated form. In this translation all we are trying to do is to find precise modern equivalents and illustrations for the ideas presented by the Guru and his predecessors and, if possible, to continue the very trend of modern philosophical thought which itself is waiting, we believe, for a more unitive restatement in terms of a new world-philosophy where the scientific spirit would not be lost, but would be preserved in an extended sense. Although we cannot promise to be exhaustive, we shall make an effort as far as possible to supply cross-references.
(9). pp. 59-60 Vyasa Bhasya of Yoga Sutra, translated by Bengali Baba.
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VERSE 5
People here on earth, they sleep, wake and think
Various thoughts; watching over all of these with intent eye
There dawns a priceless light, which never shall dim again;
Led onward by this, one should forward wend.
AFTER preliminaries about the subject-matter and the general approach to it have been broadly indicated in the first four verses, the theme narrows down, as it were, to its proper contemplative limits, not as a cosmological or as a merely psychological abstraction, but in terms of a way of life or a bipolar relation from a more personal everyday point of view.
What was neutrally treated in the first verse as the 'core' spreading its light homogeneously within as well as without the central Self (which is the subject-matter and the object-matter of the whole work), we saw that the Guru, for methodological requirements alluded to it as a 'supreme Sun' postulated as a second pole marking the goal of attainment for the contemplative. The inevitable duality thus introduced - somewhat akin to a pagan sun-god, though not strictly so when viewed more closely - was again to be reduced into terms of 'non-difference' and strict 'loneliness' in the next two verses.
Here in verse 5 we should not miss the change in the analogy. Instead of a sun in the void, there is an eye watching the actions and thoughts of man. In the Isa Upanishad (verse 16) there is the reference to the purusha or supreme Spirit 'yonder' which is equated at the same time with the supreme purusha 'within' the contemplative 'here'. The Person in the sun and the person within are equated to
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constitute the central unitive Absolute without prejudices of
the subjective, objective or conceptual as explained in verse 4.
The eye above is watching the watcher from here below who is caught in everyday necessities of personal life, such as waking, sleeping and thinking of various interests arising during the workaday life of the common man. Necessary aspects of life touching the common generality of mankind are not bypassed by the Guru but, more like a modern pragmatic philosopher, the contingent and the necessary aspects are brought together, as if with equal importance, in the treatment of the highest contemplative text. There is no other-worldly escapism in such a way of treatment here. The Guru thus catches up with the requirements of modern thought as against the ivory-tower isolation of the more ancient classical writers, whether of the Eastern or Western context.
'THINK VARIOUS THOUGHTS': Contemplation becomes strictly established only when the multiplicity of interests which regulate human activities are absorbed and united into a single bundle of one master-interest proper to the absolutist way. If we were to distinguish this master-tendency at the core of life as the vertical, then the plurality of interests that keep succeeding one another in our life ordinarily, clashing and displacing one another for occupation of the centre of the stream of consciousness, might be called the horizontal factors. The well-founded intelligence or the properly cultivated wisdom in man always seeks the unitive value of the vertical. As the Bhagavad Gita states even in its early chapter:
'The well-cultivated intelligence is unitive, 0 Joy of
the Kurus (Arjuna); many-branched and endless is the
intelligence in uncultivated people.
(II. 41.)
There is again the Upanishadic dictum which says:
He who sees (reality) as if pluralistically here
Wends from one death to another.
(Brihadaranyaka Up. IV. iv. 19)
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Plurality of interests and thoughts, arising from desires or instinctive hungers that cannot be wholly satisfied, is the enemy of the contemplative. This does not mean, however, that to be a contemplative means killing out the legitimate joys of life. But in and through all interests, a master-interest must always be preserved. All actions and thoughts motivating them must be gathered together into a master life-tendency, so verticalized as never to enter into conflict with the minor fissiparous dissipating interests of a life without such a dominating interest. What is here implied is a process of sublimating pluralistic interests to a unitive interest.
'THERE DAWNS A PRICELESS LIGHT...': The mixed metaphor of 'eye' and 'dawn' is deliberate. The eye of the previous line is treated as if it could equally be regarded as a light. The light is what helps the eye to see other objects. The organ of sight is dialectically equated to the light which is both an end and a means in the central awareness of reality which is the common result of the presence of all these factors working in unison or operating in one vertical line. The idea is not unfamiliar to us in Plato's Republic, as well as in Plotinus' 'Never did the eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like.' (10)
'WHICH NEVER SHALL DIM AGAIN': The idea suggested here is of an everlasting value in life. When we reach the end of the work, in verses 93 and 98 this dominant everlasting life-interest in the self-hood of man is reiterated, after the implications of such a claim have been properly covered in the body of the composition.
When we say ''Man as homo sapiens is characterized by wisdom' the verity of such an axiomatic statement is accepted without further proof. Wisdom's method admits of such a priori reasoning as normal. It is true there is a modern
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tendency in thought to speak in terms of probabilities rather than in absolute certitudes. This is the result of the a posteriori habit of mind brought into vogue by science. But when a unified science becomes an accomplished fact, as hoped for by some of the best minds of our day, the absolutist form of reasoning implied here will not be really objectionable. A priori inductions and a posteriori deductions will become equally valid in a unitive way of exact thinking which will bring the humanities and the sciences together as belonging to one single discipline.
'LED ONWARD BY THIS': The kindly light leading one on to salvation or to the goal of wisdom is sufficiently familiar in the context of Christian theology to need any explanation.
In reality the idea dates back to times more ancient than Christianity, and general literature such as Dante's Divine
Comedy has poetical imagery borrowed from Plato, such as the progress of the soul guided in its upward course to God
by the help of celestial light. In the very first canto Dante refers to 'the planet that leads men straight on every road'.
In many other passages in the various cantos of this work of the Florentine Christian poet, the pagan image of the sun
occurs, treated in the dialectical fashion of both the Upanishads and Plato's Republic, where the inner eye and the outer sun are equated into a central value. In Canto XIII of the Divine Comedy we have Virgil and Dante described as mounting the second terrace of the Purgatory past the 'circle of purification'.
They were in a region where the value called 'generosity' is in front of them and 'envy', its counterpart, is behind them. They dare not linger in this region of dual values. The usual 'virtuous citizens' were found to be denizens of this region. Their eye-lids are described as being stitched together, through which, on seeing the visitors, tears come in their agony. Virgil is depicted by Dante as remarking, 'If here we wait to ask of, I fear perchance that our choice may have too great delay.' And, gazing fixedly at the sun, Virgil remarks,
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'0 sweet light, in whose trust I enter in the new
way, do then lead us we would be led here within;
thou givest warmth to thy world, then shineth upon it;
if other reason urges not to the contrary thy beams
must ever be our guide.' (11)
Thus in the heart of Christianity we find this way of spiritual progress described in terms of Platonic dialectics.
Vedantic literature in many places has the same comparison of light in relation to wisdom. In the literature of Advaita
the two counterparts or terms of the equation are treated more unitively together. Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva
mark three grades of such treatment, the last accepting a greater distinction between the counterparts.
In the history of Western philosophy the body-mind duality of Descartes, if viewed in the light of dialectical methodology, implicit as in Dante, need not really be considered as objectionable, as some modern critics tend to think. Dialectical methodology requires at least some initial duality, even though it abolishes it later. The occasionalism intervening between the body-mind duality makes full amends for the initially-supposed dualism and makes of it as respectable a theory as any other, conceived on the same dialectical lines. The dialectical method permits duality in order to efface it more completely afterwards.
Boethius (480-524 AD) who may be described as the first of the scholastic philosophers-or the last of the pagans-for he was the companion of all the medieval scholars, recognizes in God not the Father but the 'foreknowing Spectator of all events' (Encyc. Britt.) The idea of a guiding star or light or supreme intelligence is only a corollary of our search for wisdom.
When light and darkness are properly understood as simple analogies, the strangeness of this language will be seen to be merely attributive to the limitations of common
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language. By trying to escape from the exigencies of language we are only likely to enter into more subtle dualities as implied in the most recent of philosophies called Existentialism, which is based on the rejection of the notion of 'essence' known to classical philosophers, and substituting in its place the notion of 'existence' as primary. The analogy of light is perhaps the most permissive, since light has a unitive status of its own, independent of darkness which is not a rival entity in its own right, but merely a negation of the real item called light.
This analogy which the Guru employs elsewhere, as in his Advaita Dipika (The Light of Non-Dual Wisdom), enables us to treat the counterparts with easy dialectical insight. With a slight stretch of methodological insight or intuition, darkness can easily be imagined as being capable of becoming positive again by a process of negation of itself. Poetic expressions like 'dark-splendid', as also the description of the light of infernal fires in the opening lines of Milton's Paradise Lost, reveal the subtle principle of double negation as known in general literature. The essence of tragedy itself is based on the principle of double negation. When light triumphantly leads us onward, the tail-end of the same light gets absorbed or doubly negated. Such are some of the more delicate implications of dialectics which we must bear in mind here.
Knowledge can prevail both by double negation as well as double assertion.
(10). Plotinus 'Enneads'. I. vi. 9
(11). P. 271, Dante. 'Divine Comedy' (Modern Library Edition, New York)
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VERSE 6
One has to wake, then go to sleep, of food partake, or mate,
Thus do promptings dissipating keep coming round;
Whoever could there be, therefore to wake
Unto that reality's one and changeless form?
THE biological cycle of necessary activities, considered neither physiologically nor psychologically but from a common-sense standpoint, are referred to in verse 6. These follow one another as dictated by the vital urges within man. One satisfaction of instinctive desire follows another in a certain order of circulation. Waking and sleeping alternate diurnally, attended with secondary needs or appetites of hunger or sex common to human beings generally.
Instead of referring to these aspects of necessary life as belonging to sin, concupiscence or desire as in the stricter
theologies of codified religions, the Guru here reviews them more simply as necessary factors in common human life, but all the same suggests that, if one set of such necessary items of activity prevails in anyone, it would be impossible for him to get interested in the other or larger unitive interest which is beyond mere necessity in the everyday sense, but belongs to an order wherein one lasting value prevails over all others.
The object here is to bring together into proper relief the two sets of interests or value-worlds to which any man normally can relate himself. Without self-instruction as contained in this composition, man will tend naturally to attach importance to the series of necessary activities at the expense
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of the higher contingent interest which can everlastingly include all the others and lift the personality to a higher level of life altogether.
The rhetorical question at the end of the verse strikes a note of despair on the part of the Guru. The natural penchant
of the human mind to find satisfaction in the horizontal world of values has to be overcome with the help of some positive effort which, as it were, must do violence to itself. Here comes the need for disciplining the mind to overcome its conditionings, for lifting it away from its merely instinctive moorings, and for setting it on its course to higher and higher levels of interest until its full dignity is established in selfhood.
That very few persons seek the positive orientation of the spirit implied in the ascent here is referred to with a similar note of despair in the Bhagavad Gita:
'Out of a thousand humans, one, maybe, strives to
attain the desirable; out of such strivers, even when they
do so, one may be can understand Me in the light of
(correct) principles.' (VII. 3.)
'THUS DO PROMPTINGS DISSIPATING': The expression in the original is 'vikalpa' which has its antonym in 'samkalpa'. These refer to two sets of mental activities, the former connoting evil and the latter good. The mind is the meeting-point of both these types of activities as defined by Sankara in the VivekaChudamani (167 to 183 and verse 174 particularly) and by Vidyaranya in Panchadasi and in the Vedanta-Sara of Sadananda. Opposite tendencies like good and evil promptings originate in the common locus of the mind. Sankara places in the mind the factors conducive to bondage as well as emancipation. Of the two sets of promptings originating in the mind samkalpa will thus refer to vertical tendencies and vikalpa to horizontal ones which refer to lower values in life. The vicious circle of horizontal values keeps recurring and repeating, while vertical tendencies lead to wisdom and freedom.
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'TO WAKE UNTO THAT REALITY'S ONE AND
CHANGELESS FORM': The reference here must be to the Absolute conceived as the master interest in life. Horizontal
relativistic interests are pluralistic. They contain rival or conflicting items as against the series of vertical unitive interests implied in the contemplative view of life. The latter can range from the basic necessities of life such as food to the satisfaction of the highest of cravings, such as the love of freedom. The Absolute need not necessarily be conceived as a thing. It can be merely a dimension such as depth, or a direction such as the superior attitudes that the mind is capable of having when thinking creatively of the Absolute. The one-one relation as between the Absolute and the Self is implied here.
The word 'changeless' employed here draws attention to the nitya-anitya-viveka (the discrimination between lasting and transient values) which, according to texts such as the VivekaChudamani of Sankara (verse 19) is the preliminary qualification required before one enters contemplative life.
The changeless reality can only be the Absolute, as will become clear later on when the nature of the Self stands
revealed in greater relief in these verses. The Eternal, the Everlasting, Omnipresent and Omniscient are attributes
belonging to the Absolute, whether theologically conceived as a deity or as a purely abstract notion by one capable of
such philosophic thought.
WORD NOTES:
'Wake to, etc.': The suggestion here is that the Self, when moving within the range of the fully sleeping state or the opposite condition of full wakefulness, is engrossed alternately in actual or virtual activities or interests of a horizontal kind. Intermediate to these extremes of sleeping and waking there is a purer middle state of consciousness which is referred to more directly in verse 7. This word 'wake' is meant to pave in advance the way to this middle state.
When bipolarity is established correctly between the Self and the non-Self as counterparts, the resulting state of
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consciousness has the Eternal as its content. In other words, there is entry into the neutrality of the Absolute when the
relation as between subject and object is established in a vertical sense.
VERSE 7
To wake never more, ever sleepless to remain, as awareness;
If for this today you are not fit, then in the service
Of those silent ones who ever dwell awake to AUM,
Absolved from birth, steadily fix the form.
THIS is the third verse in sequence which refers to the alternating states of sleeping and waking in consciousness.
The analysis of states of consciousness in a vertical series referring to deeper and deeper seats of consciousness is familiar to us in the context of the methodology of the Vedanta.
Especially is this so with Sankara who conceived the Absolute as the witness of the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep, with the 'fourth' called turiya, which touches the deepest stratum of Absolute awareness. But before coming to deepest seats of pure consciousness, it is necessary in the initial stages of developing the subject of Self-knowledge, to distinguish between the vertical and horizontal.
The necessary aspects of everyday biological rounds of activity have been referred to in verses 5 and 6. We were brought to the threshold of a central spiritual value which persists at the core of even our everyday life, in and through our ordinary activities. It was referred to as a guiding light in verse 5, and as a changeless factor to which we should
become awake in verse 6. The poles of the vertical axis of
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spiritual progress or Self-instruction have thus been worked out for us in verse 5. These poles were brought together more unitively in verse 6, as a way or an axis referring to unitive values in life. Instead of the cosmological setting with a source of light apart from the seeker, guiding as it were from beyond, the metaphor here refers in terms of the personal consciousness and its affiliation to lasting or changeless values which are under the category of the Eternal. The present verse goes one step further in the same direction. Sleeping and waking are not treated here in verse 7 as alternating states falling outside of the vertical axis of pure consciousness. In the form of a central neutral awareness independent of both the alternating states lying on one side or the other of the vertical axis, there is here a function postulated in which pure knowledge thrives and triumphs in and through itself.
This state of equilibrium between alternating states or tendencies is the secret of the contemplative or the yogi. The verse assumes the existence of silent men who live in this kind of unitive awareness in which the mean or middle ground between the alternating asymmetrical states in consciousness is merged into a central stream. Here it is hard to distinguish whether the subject is in a state called sleep or whether he is fully awake. Participating in both from either side as it were, sleep is to be understood in terms of waking, and waking in terms of sleep. Awareness becomes fully neutralised in this fourth or deepest dimension.
Active temperaments tuned to the horizontal world of action and caught in the love of particular objects of interest cannot steady themselves in the pure contemplation of absolute Value. There are, however, rare individuals among human beings who may be said to have tuned themselves to this kind of higher consciousness, which belongs to a category by itself.
If an aspirant to wisdom feels that he has not understood the content or the intellectual and emotional implications
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of such an attitude as recommended here, there is a time-honoured alternative method known to many wisdom texts, especially in India, of establishing bipolar relations with a master who has already attained to the awareness or attitude implied. As the understanding of the attitude is not possible by the usual didactic methods of learning and teaching, which are mostly based on an a posteriori, pragmatic, empirical or logical approach, the only way to get it is through a global intuition which has its favourable conditions. By means of a subtle rapport and a mutual bipolar personal adoption between the seeker and the teacher, a sort of osmosis is established. The personality thus better adjusted to the absolutist way will be able to absorb something of the master's attitude to the seeker when all the conditions required for the transmission of the teaching are present together.
The service of such a wise man is meant to induce that degree of mutual adoption necessary for the osmotic transfer of the wisdom-state from teacher to seeker. Mistrust and disadoption between the two concerned in such a bipolar wisdom-situation would tend to make the experiment a failure.
Sankara's 'VivekaChudamani' (verses 37 to 43) refers to the relation between the teacher and the disciple in detail, and
the Bhagavad Gita, after entering into the subject in chapter IV-34, goes into greater and greater secrets to the point where the teacher there, who is Krishna the Guru, feels confident that there is no disadoption between himself and Arjuna the pupil, and himself refers to the possible kind of disadoption by the name asuya (a carping attitude).
In the Upanishads we have several instances, such as that of a Nachiketas, Satyakama or a Svetaketu, who are adolescent seekers of wisdom and who are taught only after the requisite bipolarity of relations is securely established between teacher and pupil. The wavering mind, caught between rival interests, has to be steadied. This can be accomplished only by a body and soul affiliated to the context of wisdom. The wholeheartedness of the affiliation requires that the whole man,
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which does not exclude the physical, is made to comply or bend, as it were, to listen to the word of wisdom represented by the personality and attitude of the Guru. (11)
According to popularly accepted dicta on the Indian soil, no wisdom which has not received the sanction of a Guru can be valid.
'AS AWARENESS': The deeper one sinks into consciousness, the more independent does it become of the alternating states of sleeping and waking. In verse 9 the two poles of the vertical axis are more explicitly alluded to, the two states of sleeping and waking attaining to an alternating asymmetrical expression. After establishing bipolarity with a supreme notion as representing the Absolute, the aspirant is to develop, here and now, a corresponding attitude of neutrality and steadfastness of a wholehearted character so that interests can be secured at both ends and kept within the right path of spiritual progress.
Wisdom can result only when the conditions are fulfilled correctly. The two poles implied and the axis involved have first to be visualised or postulated correctly before instruction in the Self can go on unhindered. Neither the waking life or overt action nor the dreaming life of innate mental representations can give the correct orientation prerequisite for Self-realization.
'SILENT ONES': The word 'muni' is given here. It brings to mind the picture of a recluse living in a forest or far from the 'maddening crowd's ignoble strife.' Mouna means silence, and contemplatives of the type called munis in India are those
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who are generally sparing in speech. They have invariably a pronounced inner life which lives in constant awareness of
a high human value represented by the Absolute Self that they themselves represent. The two attributes that follow in the same verse, giving two of the limiting characteristics by which such persons have to be distinguished, are also referred to as follows:
'AWAKE TO AUM': The analysis of self-consciousness with reference to the mystic syllable AUM has been masterfully accomplished in the Mandukya Upanishad which, with its commentaries by masterminds such as Gaudapada and perhaps Sankara also, should make what is implied here quite complete and as thorough-going as can be expected. The letters A, U, M, represent three grades of open, half-open and closed states of consciousness, with a fourth stratum that pervades all the others. The vertical axis may be said to pass through all of them. Activity and passivity, waking overtness and dreaming innateness, are all levels to be marked on one and the same vertical axis in which consciousness can live and move towards action at one stage or to pure inaction at the other.
'ABSOLVED FROM BIRTH': The phenomenal existence of a living being, when biologically understood as active, is one in which horizontal factors enter to a greater or lesser degree.
When pure movements of contemplative thought are established, as it were, along the vertical axis of awareness, the alternations as between birth and death, sleeping and waking, which have their being only on the horizontal plane, cease to operate. Even if they do operate, they have to be considered as null and void, belonging to the world of secondary values which can be dismissed as mere epiphenomena.
We might here perhaps pause to ask relevantly whether or not the well-known doctrine or theory of reincarnation is not implied here. This doctrine or theory belongs to the general background of Indian thought. It has never been put
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forward as an article of faith. Various versions of the same theory are found in different grades of literature, beginning from the Puranas (legendary mythological lore) up to highly philosophically-conceived works such as the 'Yoga Vasishtha'. Popular belief has its own story to tell of an ancestor whose soul might be in a crow that pecks first at a ball of cooked rice ritualistically offered by way of propitiating the pitris (ancestors).
But reincarnation in the proper context of wisdom has to be understood divested of all the mythological or allegorical prejudices or accretions around the idea of the past living into the future, which is perhaps all that the doctrine in its purest form wants to suggest. The vertical axis of time or pure duration has its retrospective aspects changing into prospective ones through what might be called the eternal present or the dialectical moment.
The silent ones who have awakened to the high value called the Absolute Self live an undisturbed life of peace and understanding which is free from the taint of the alternation of states whether between sleep and wakefulness, memory and prospective vision, life and death. Established in wholehearted interest in Self-realization, such an alternation of opposites does not affect them. They maybe said to be established in a form of pure becoming where the alternation of successively opposing states does not arise.
'STEADILY FIX THE FORM': The word in the text here is 'murti'. An idol in wood or metal is sometimes referred to as a murti. Each individual has an aspect which is finite with a particular form. The impersonal Absolute is at best an abstraction which is formless and infinite. To establish a correct bipolarity between the two aspects involved here it is
important to recognize that the outer aspects of the personality come into relation with the inner. The two poles of the two magnets have to be juxtaposed with the understanding of the technique which will give double mutual gain rather than
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double loss. It is not the spiritual side of the disciple which is first to be surrendered, but rather the gross, materially inert side on which he has actual control through his own will. Steadfastness results only from proper cross-affiliation.
(11) Further psychological and educational implications of this relationship have been worked out in a thesis submitted to the University of Paris by the present writer, entitled The Personal Factor in the Educative Process, (Vrin, Paris. 1933).
VERSE 8
Eating of the five fruits such as light and so on,
Perched on a shot-gun foul-smelling, ever in wily changeful sport,
Such, the birds five, in shreds, what can bring down,
Wielding such a lucid form, let the inner self brilliant become.
THE way of absolutist contemplation is not to be mixed up with mere religious piety. There is a radical note struck in
this verse. It aims at giving the would-be contemplative an indication of the drastic, uncompromising attitude involved
in getting started on the path of real contemplative life. It is more than mere prayerful meekness. There is something
positive in the attitude required. The Bhagavad Gita refers to the inwardness involved by comparing the aspirant to a tortoise which withdraws all its limbs into its shell (II-58). There is also a reference to the flame that remains motionless in a windless place, steadily adjusted vertically (VI-19). These analogies are meant to indicate in advance the personal attitude or psycho-physical adjustment involved in the initiation of the contemplative's progress.
In this verse we have to imagine a hunter trying to shoot down birds on a branch. They are evasively changing from one twig to another before he can take proper aim. Interests are ever shifting ground in consciousness. As soon as one is displaced another appeal to the senses comes along,
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initiating another chain of associations. Thus the chain of cyclic associations never comes to a standstill. Meditation
thus recedes further and further away from reach. The hunter has to take a firm one-pointed aim. The metaphor is meant to dispose summarily of many psychological and other questions by a figurative language. A mixed allegorical and parabolic style is adopted here, so that many factors may be understood as covered in a suggestive rather than in a discursive manner. The reader is left to guess freely and to fill in the gaps where they are purposely left to be implied. This concentrated cryptic way is compatible with what was already pointed out in the beginning of the work itself when, in the first verse, we were told that this composition was meant to be a chant rather than a discourse. This is reminiscent of the suggestive style of the Upanishads.
The reference to the foul-smelling shotgun on which the birds are seated at one end, at the other end of which we have to put the hunter who is about to pull the trigger, suggests a vertical axis between the two polarities or factors of the same Self. The birds with the fruits which they peck represent the sensuous interests based on each of the five senses opening to the world of horizontal values. The aspirant cannot afford to be enticed by these frivolous interests if he is to be seriously established in contemplative life. The hunter has to take his aim in such a way as to shoot down all five of them at once.
This means that he has to aim at the focal meeting-point of all sensuous interests and associative processes in the mind. He has further to be uncompromising. If he appears to be a kill-joy in this respect, we have to concede that he is only so in the name of a greater gain of inner contemplative brilliance of the whole spirit within him. The smaller items of pleasure are inclusively transcended in this inner lucidity which he gains. The body being a differential factor between the two poles, is here referred to as something to be despised. When we think of the gross aspect of the body, consisting of
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tissue etc., it is really something to be despised. Pampering the body or cultivating the body-sense obstructs the contemplative way. When the gun is fired there is a flash of light which would fill the whole of consciousness without the duality of the mind or the body. Both are abolished m a full absolutist state of intense light within. The suddenness of the event suggests further that contemplation is not to be thought of as a slow process of evolution through laborious intermediate stages, as it is commonly thought of in the context of what usually passes for the practice of meditation or yoga. Even Patanjali yoga, as Vasishtha points out to Rama in the Yoga Vasishtha, is tainted by the idea of graded steps in contemplation, to be gradually ascended.
This attitude, tainted by Samkhya (rationalist philosophy)dualism has been revalued, not only in the Yoga Vasishtha, but is also implied even in the Bhagavad Gita in chapter II, in referring to self-discipline. The absolutist way of Advaita
is thus slightly different from the ascent involved in the dualistic approach of hatha and raja yoga. A revalued, restated yoga is implied here. The way whereby contemplation becomes actually established may be a slow one, but the attitude of the aspirant has to be wholehearted and drastic.
When the verse is paraphrased and expanded to smooth out all the subtle mixed metaphoric implications, the unitively revalued psycho-physical plan or functional structure of the Self with its two polarities to be reduced into absolute unity of pure content will become sufficiently evident without going into further analysis of the expressions used.
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VERSE 9
He who dwells in contemplation beneath a tree
Whereon climbing, a creeper bears aloft on either side
The blossoms of the psychic states; mark, such a man,
By inferno unapproached ever remains.
HERE we come to a verse which is intended to close a preliminary section in the development of the subject-matter of the whole work. In the next verse, we see that the Guru treats of the nature of the Soul or Self in man, thereby entering one step further into the subject-matter. But before doing so he uses a word-picture, the ancient idiom of a man sitting under a tree which is found so often in the contemplative literature or mythology of various parts of the world. This idiom is recognizable from the Shiva Seal of Mohenjo Daro to the fig-tree in the Bible associated with John the Baptist. While the immediately previous verse also used the language of a word-picture in referring to the alert and active hunter who with absolute precision aims a weapon, arrow or gun at a unitive target of value, uncompromisingly and radically dealing with petty relativistic attractions in life, an attitude which is a prerequisite for initiation into wisdom proper. Here the personal attitude is that of a more fully contemplative man sitting under a tree and detached from the lure of passing interests.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE OF VERSES 8 AND 9:
These two verses must be treated and understood together in order to extract from both the central doctrine which the Guru wishes to transmit and which is tacitly contained between them. This is the case also with other similar pairs of verses which
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can be located by the careful reader throughout this composition. In the active huntsman giving place to the contemplative sitting under a tree we have the indication of two limiting ways which are complementary - the initial limit positive and the other negative. Both these refer unitively to the contemplative state required before any Self-knowledge can be initiated and progress.
The plain meaning of the verse must be sufficiently clear; but it is important to be able to see, through the mixed or complex metaphorical idiom, the scientific content as it should be grasped in the context of the Science of the Self
representing absolute reality.
The man dwelling beneath a tree should be understood as distinctly living apart from the tree itself. The relativistic context of time and becoming, with a duration tending to be historical rather than pure, is not the proper world of the contemplative. He not only lives apart from it, but under it. The tree has its stem which is the common origin of all the various branches and ramifications arising from it. The roots constitute its negative or retrospective part, referring to memory and other factors in the background of the personality. The man under the tree is above the level of the ground which hides the roots from view, but he is in the shade of the leaves. He is thus in a neutral middle position of detachment between the two extremes of time's pointer as it indicates opposingly to the past or the future. He is balanced and neutral, as it were, between the rival tendencies involved. He sits calm and wholly apart in his loneliness, and thus escapes or transcends all tribulations.
'BENEATH A TREE': The tree of world mythology and as employed symbolically in the lingua mystica of humanity all over the world must be examined at closer quarters.
The description of a mystical tree with roots upwards end branches downwards, given at the beginning of chapter
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XV of the Bhagavad Gita is a revised version of the same tree which is found in many mythologies and scriptures throughout the world, whether oriental, occidental, Nordic or Asiatic.
In modern nursery tales we have the last remnant of a heaven-kissing tree in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk - the 'tree' that touches heaven and earth. The myth of the heaven-supporting tree is also found in the Scandinavian sacred Ash tree, Yggdrasil, which drops the honey from heaven, with three roots of various values, belonging to the refined heavenly Asa-gods, the coarse Frost-Giants of nature and to the Underworld of negations. At its top is the heavenly eagle and at its root is the snake, while in between there is the squirrel which sows strife between the eagle and snake (Vide Brewer's 'Dictionary of Phrase and Fable').
The Cross of the Bible is sometimes referred to as representing the idea of a 'World Tree' whose origin can be traced back to antiquity, far earlier than that of the Medieval Christian legends. The tree is praised even in the hymn 'Crux Fidelis' sung on the day of the crucifixion during the Mass. Alan Watts gives the hymn:
'Crux fidelis, inter omnes
Arbor una nobilis:
Nulla silva tamen profert
Fronde, flore, germine.'
(Faithful Cross, the One Tree noble above all: No forest affords the like of this in leaf, or flower, or seed.) (12)
In the Book of Job (XIV. 7-14) we have a reference to a tree of life that sprouts again in the context of Job's belief in resurrection. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (III. 9. 28.) the same analogy of human life to a tree is mentioned:
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'As a tree of the forest,
Just so, surely, is man.
His hairs are leaves,
His skin the outer bark.'
(Hume's translation)
Modified references to the same tree are found in the Katha
Upanishad (VI. 1), and in the Svetasvatara Upanishad (III. 9), and are referred to respectively as 'Its root is above, its branches below - this eternal fig-tree,' and 'The One stands like a tree established in heaven'. In the Svetasvatara Upanishad again, later, there is a dialectical revaluation (VI. 6) where we read:
'Higher and other than the world-tree, time and forms is
He from whom this expanse proceeds.
The bringer of right (dharma), the remover of evil (papa)
the lord of prosperity,
Know Him as in one's own self (atmo-stha) as the
immortal abode of all.'
(P. 409, R. E. Hume, 'The Thirteen Principal Upanishads', Oxford 1950)
The whole of chapter XV of the Bhagavad Gita is meant to revise this notion of a World-Tree into more absolutist terms. An examination of the implications of the chapter will reveal that the purer absolutism implied in the teaching of the Gita treats of the tree as a human value beyond historical time in terms of mere pure duration which is timeless. By the man being made (as in this verse) to sit beneath a tree and apart from the phenomenal aspects which it represents, or as in the Gita by the cutting down of the tree, the idea suggested is to transcend becoming.
The Book of Job tries to make the same distinction but the subtle revaluation is lost or overcovered in translation or through the exigencies or vicissitudes of language. For our purpose here it would suffice to remember that the Absolute can be viewed as a living person as represented by the World-Tree or in more pure terms as an abstract Value.
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It will be seen in the Bhagavad Gita in XV, 3-4 that the higher path of absolutism is clearly distinguished from the lower or relativistically-coloured form of absolutism found in the Vedic teachings, these latter being compared to a tree which has to be cut down mercilessly before one can follow the higher path of absolutism which the Gita finally stands for. These verses from the Gita are:
'Nor is its (i.e. the tree) form here comprehended
thus (as stated), nor its end, nor its beginning, nor its
foundation.
Having sundered this holy fig-tree with strongly
fixed root, with the weapon of decisive non- attachment,
Then (alone) that path is to be sought, treading which
they do not return again, (thinking) I seek refuge in
that Primordial Man from whom of old streamed forth
active (relativist) manifestation.'
Involved in relativistic versions of the Absolute, one is still exposed to the dual influences of pleasure, and pain. In the higher path indicated, suffering is by-passed altogether.
'A CREEPER BEARS ALOFT...PSYCHIC STATES':
The psychic states here refer to the waking, dreaming and deep sleep trio (jagrat, svapna and sushupti), called the avastha-traya (the three states), to which every living being of the higher order is seen to be subject. The examination of the content of the three states in man has been employed in the Vedantic method (especially of Sankara) to arrive at the notion of pure or absolute consciousness which underlies all three.
Understood in this way, the Absolute has been named avasthatraya-sakshin, the witness of the three other layers of consciousness in graded order, reaching to the familiar waking state which is the first or most superficial.
This way of analysing personal consciousness is employed masterfully in the Mandukya Upanishad. This shortest of Upanishads is a precise subjection of consciousness to the most exact contemplative analysis, and in a spirit of
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scientific though subjective experimentation. On this Upanishad is based the Gaudapada Karika (commentary of Gaudapada, predecessor of Sankara through his Guru Govinda) which is a monumental work forming the basis of the whole superstructure of Vedantic psychology, so valuable to the methodology and epistemology of the science of the Absolute. Sankara's Bhashya or commentary on the commentary of Gaudapada, makes it further precious to all students of Vedanta.
Thus in classical Vedanta we have three states of consciousness as named above, with a fourth one which, as the basis of them all, corresponds to the Absolute itself. This fourth is the turiya. Like white light or grey light, it is implied in the others, which have a status like that of the primary colours of the spectrum, red, yellow or blue.
In the verse here, it will be noticed that the Guru slightly deviates from the conventional number three in favour of a symmetrically conceived pair of alternating states. In the preceding verses we have already noticed this symmetry of a bilateral kind. It is suggested in the alternating states of sleeping and waking which overpower, or take over charge of, consciousness in everlasting alternation. In and through these alternating states pure consciousness continues as the central vertical axis. The horizontally alternating pair has, as it were, a superficial content merely. The third state, sushupti, has a negative vertical status. The fourth state, turiya above, attains the status of Absolute consciousness. As for the third state, sleeping, left out by the Guru in his vertically symmetrically-conceived plan, it must be supplied by us as virtually implicit in the person of the man under the tree. It requires no special mention as it enters consciousness only virtually, and does not regulate conduct. Bergson has the same four states compared to a swallow flying over a river, a boat on the river, the river itself and a man watching all these.
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In this revised picture presented by the Guru, we therefore think of the alternating states of waking and dreaming as bearing blossoms on either side. Dream has its bright and beautiful representations as much as the waking state, when seen with the neutrally poised eyes of a true artist who is neither too positively awake nor deeply asleep.
The meanest and most ordinary of subjects presented in the visible outer world of the waking state can be considered quite interesting. The paintings and drawings of such artists as Honoré Daumier (1808-79) have amply revealed that even scenes ordinarily considered ugly or not particularly beautiful, can have a hidden beauty in the situation of life that they might suggest in a globally synthetic manner. Daumier's famous painting of a butcher cutting up an animal is ugly according to conventional standards of beauty when flowers or birds might have been chosen by the artist. But the attitude of the butcher represented by Daumier succeeds in drawing out the essence of a necessary and realistic human situation in which the ugly itself attains to the status of a subject dignified enough for a real artist to paint.
In the case of reputed artists other examples of this kind are considerable. By telling their own tales in which value- factors are hidden, even waking life with all its ugly contents can be considered beautiful in the sense of the 'Flowers of Evil' (Les Fleurs du Mal), employed as the title of a volume by the French poet Baudelaire. The flowers or representations of the dreaming state are as beautiful as the corresponding flowers of the waking state as revised and seen, as it were, through the eyes of the artist and the poet who can, as Shakespeare would say, 'see Helen's beauty in an eye of Egypt'.
The contemplative has to participate thus in the attitude of the poet before he can establish himself and be initiated
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into the reality symmetrically viewed in this manner. Like the man in the famous statue of Augusts Rodin (1840-1917) called 'The Thinker' (Le Penseur), the man sitting under the tree in the Guru's verse should be understood, not as living in a vacuum of abstraction but as having for his content of consciousness all the other possible grades of truth or reality implied. Tree, creeper and the two orders of blossoms must be viewed globally with that degree of detachment which belongs to real living man in truly human contemplation.
'BY INFERNO UNAPPROACHED EVER REMAINS': Joy and suffering, light and darkness, positive and negative, prospective and retrospective orientations of the spirit, are to be understood as poles of the vertical axis of the personality of man As in a plant, where the roots seek darkness geotropically and the twigs seek light heliotropically, so too the consciousness of man is caught between ambivalent poles.
The detached man who sits under the tree takes up a neutral position between the positive and negative. He avoids the lure of the sense-luxuries of objects of little interest and recedes to wholehearted or lastingly worthwhile interests by placing himself nearer to the negative pole. This would mean being nearer to the trunk of the tree which would represent the master-tendencies in life treated as if tied in a bundle together. Bergsonian metaphysics would lend support to such a picture of 'being' and 'becoming' put together globally and unitively, although finally Bergson tends to stress 'becoming' at the expense of 'pure being', which latter admits no creative evolution.
In thus placing himself correctly in detached neutrality, and if biased at all, more negatively than positively, the Self escapes all possibility of being caught in the alternating phases of the plus or minus of the situation. Self-realization is thus freedom from suffering when one's consciousness is balanced: first vertically between dreams and facts, and secondly between positive and negative vertical states, when established in the neutral fourth state.
(12), P. 157, 'Myth and Ritual in Christianity'. Also see P. 335, Vol. II, A. MacCulloch, 'Mythology of All Races'.
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VERSE 10
'Who sits there in the dark? Declare!' says one;
Whereupon another, himself intent to find, in turn
Asks, hearing the first: 'who may you even be?'
For both the word of response is but One.
THIS verse has to be read with the next (given below, on page 493) to make a complete contemplative item. The two men sitting in the dark questioning each other in the name of knowledge about the self in each, represent a dialectical
situation by which the Guru here in this tenth verse enters into the heart of the subject of the present work.
Wisdom has always been enshrined in dialogues between two persons - whether Socrates and an Athenian youth; a charioteer and a warrior on the battlefield, as conceived poignantly in the Bhagavad Gita, or more simply as between a teacher and pupil.
Here the counterparts are brought together very closely as dialectically interchangeable factors, with all extraneous
elements eliminated as in arranging a laboratory experiment. The Guru, in such a method of approach, seems also to have
been fully alive to the requirements of the age of science and of free criticism based on equality of status between the
counterparts.
AN EXPERIMENTAL SITUATION:
The dark room is meant for selection and control purposes as in laboratory experiments. The reference to two men, instead of referring to the self in one man, is like
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bringing in the control element in the experimentally- conceived critical situation by which he is to prove scientifically to himself the reality of Soul or Self. The normative method in science would rely on statistics or a questionnaire to arrive at scientific certitudes. The experimental approach on the other hand is more direct and based on the three stages of experiment, observation and inference. The Guru employs here a method which combines both these, the normative and the experimental together, into a more direct one yielding a certitude that does not violate common sense. He thus fulfils the requirements of dialectical reasoning rather than relying on the one-sided approach consisting of inductive or deductive proofs known to the empirical scientists or rationalistic philosophers of modern Europe.
To know oneself has been accepted both in the East and in the West, in both ancient and modern times, as constituting the core of wisdom. Knowing oneself is hindered by the outward-going eye which sees other objects besides oneself. Bipolar relations could be established between the self on the one hand and what the self is able to perceive through the outwardly directed senses on the other. This latter aspect could be called the non-self. When the bipolarity is between equals of the same kind or species, the non-self aspect could be spoken of as the other self. Language even permits of a man referring to his wife as his 'better half'. There is thus a parity that we can imagine between two persons. The subjective and the objective selves could be treated as interchangeable terms.
If anything could mar the strict bipolarity of the experimental situation here envisaged for attaining to a correct notion of the Self in man, it would be a third set of elements in the form of various secondary, miscellaneous interests that could dissipate attention and spoil the contemplative attitude required for wisdom. It is for this reason, in order to minimise the possibility of a third factor disturbing the bipolarity that the Guru postulates darkness as a necessary condition
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for the experimental situation to teach us fully the self-knowledge that could be derived from it. The darkness further implies that contemplative wisdom is what is given to the eye of man when shut and directed not outwardly to objects but to realities belonging to the inner world. The science that results with the eyes open could be called physics and that which persists even when the eyes are shut may be said to belong to metaphysics. Between the visible and the intelligible worlds of Plato these conditions are not strictly applied nor distinguished.
As a result we have the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle getting confused one with the other. Extraversion or extraspection has pure action implied in it, but introspection is directed to tranquillity or peace. Both are movements of thinking envisaged by the Self in each man.
'THE WORD OF RESPONSE IS BUT ONE': What could be called a dialectical proof may be said to be implied here. There are proofs given by a priori reasoning which are not those of experimental sciences like physics. The a posteriori approach is more naturally associated with its history. The telescope or the microscope were used by the earliest modern physicists to help outwardly the normal sight of the open eye. In other words the eyes were to be more open to see truth or reality. The philosophers who were called rationalists or idealists, from Descartes (1596-1650), through Spinoza (1632-1677) and Leibniz (1646-1716) to Kant (1724-1804), admitted the a priori but still thought with objective predilections and spoke of essences, substances or existences which they sometimes compared to some sort of fluids, emanations or monads. The a priori lost its way with them till dialectics began to be recognized again with the German idealists like Hegel (1770-1831). Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was able to look at the self from the pragmatic angle, giving a new start to philosophy from the standpoint of evolutionism. There is however a far cry from evolution as in the philosophy of Spencer (1820-1903) and the Creative Evolution as envisaged
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by Bergson. Bergson himself however, stops short of employing the fully dialectical method. What he refers to as 'intuition', which is reasoning from 'inside' an object rather than what is got by viewing it from outside, and which serves physics and metaphysics equally, is really a dialectical form of reasoning which was only beginning to be understood by him and the philosophers of his generation. Bergson remains for us here perhaps the only philosopher of the West who comes very near to the method of approach adopted by the Guru in the present verse. Bergson wrote:
'There is one reality at least which we grasp from
inside and not by a simple analysis. That is our
own person in its flow along time. It is our self that
endures. We can sympathise intellectually or rather
spiritually with no other thing. But we do sympathise
surely with ourselves.' (13)
Bergson goes on to describe what he is able to grasp about his own self by the method of making his 'inner power to see' (regard intérieur), take a walk over his person (promener sur une personne) as he puts it, and is able to describe poetically the structure of the personality in man. By this treatment of the self, which is not yet fully conceived as it ought to be in conformity with what we have called 'dialectical methodology', he kept the company of those who spoke the language of speculative philosophy and other rational or contemplative disciplines. They have each put a barrier between themselves and those who spoke the language of experimental science.
THE TWO SELF-COUNTERPARTS:
The Guru Narayana, by referring to the self in two persons at the same time, makes a |
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