Revival: Contemporary Indian Philosophy (1936)

S. Radhakrishnan, J. H. Muirhead, S. Radhakrishnan, J. H. Muirhead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351345446
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

The book includes essay which are all written by philosophers of or about forty -five years of age. They fall into two main groups: those in which the writer devotes himself chiefly to the exposition of the great Vedic tradition as he has apprehended it and made it the basis of his own life's work; and those in which the writer, while on the whole remining true to the spirit of that tradition, has sought to give new interpretations of it, either by instituting comparisons of it with the Western doctrines most closely allied to it or by treating of modern problems in a way which, though suggested by what he has learned from the West, is yet stamped with the mark of his own racial sympathy. Western readers will naturally find the latter group more attractive; but this volume will have failed of its purpose if it does not give them some sense of the truth that underlies even the essays with which, owing to the presuppositions ion which these are founded, they find themselves least in sympathy.

ĀTMA-VIDYĀ OR THE SCIENCE OF THE SELF

by BHAGAVAN DAS

Born January 1869

ĀTMA-VIDYĀ OR THE SCIENCE OF THE SELF

PRELIMINARY

IN the year 1880 A.D. a boy was studying in the Matriculation Class of the School attached to the Queen’s College of Benares. From time immemorial Benares has been and continues to be the greatest publicly known centre of Saṁskṛt learning and the religious capital of India. In that same year, 1880, when the boy was in his twelfth year, he witnessed his dearly loved and loving grandmother pass away. He followed her bier to the funeral pile, wondering deeply what it all meant. Then came into his hands casually papers which spoke of holy men, Rishis, Yogis, possessed of sacred, mystical and philosophical knowledge, as if they were still to be found. He also happened to have some conversations with benevolent Saññyāsins and spiritual-minded persons. In earliest childhood he had greedily absorbed story portions of the puránas, the Rāmāyana, and the Mahābhārata, sitting beside his grandmother, when the Pandit recited and expounded them in the afternoons; the philosophy with which they were saturated passed over his mind, leaving behind only sub-conscious traces, if any. But now some sleeping germinal tendencies (samskāras) awoke, though the boy of twelve understood but little of the things that he read and heard.

A curious sense of the futility of this earthly life came into his sensitive boyish mind. Mixed with the usual distractions and engagements, play and school, of boy-life, vague mystical achings, yearnings for something better, “The desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow,” seized him off and on. Gaining strength as he grew older, these questionings took definite shape as the ever present wish to understand the “why” of the misery within and without, the “how” of its cure. All subordinate questions were inseparably connected with the great question of the “why” and the “how” of the Universe. No part can be understood unless its articulation with the whole in the ways of co-ordination, subordination, super-ordination is worked out. Part and whole, individual and society, society and the universe, finite and infinite, can be understood and dealt with only in relation to each other. To convince Arjuna, distraught with a sudden compassion and a horror of the slaughter of cousins, that it was his duty to war against his sinful kinsmen, Krishna had to compress into seven hundred verses an explanation of the whole scheme of the Universe and the meaning of all life.

The boy took up courses of psychology, ethics, metaphysics in the College; thought, discussed with sympathetic friends, and read all he could in English and Sanskrit. The disadvantage of two unfamiliar languages ultimately proved an advantage, for the times required that the invaluable ideas enshrined in the old Sanskrit medium should be interpreted in the new counters of thought. Only so could they help towards a rapprochement between Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, thought and life.

The longing to find out the “why” and the “how” became a psychic fever. Consciously, subconsciously even more, this was the mood of the youth up to 1887. In that year he somehow found satisfaction; an answer arose in his mind, which summed up, in itself, answers to countless subordinate queries. The fever abated. Aspiration for a better, a holier life, remained—and remains, unfulfilled unfortunately, to this day. But his mind is more or less at peace at the centre, though there is not and cannot be peace on the surface.

That boy, that youth, is the present writer, now in his sixty-seventh year waiting patiently to cast off his nearly worn-out body, wishing well to all, praying with all his heart that other hearts may find much greater peace, at least no less, than he has found.

In humble endeavour towards this great object, by inner compulsion, and even more by the wish of kind friends, who liked his reinterpretations and presentations in fresh forms of the eternal truths recorded in the scriptures by the ancients, the writer has compiled a number of books to be of service to such readers as may be more interested in the modern ways of thinking, to express them livingly, since the old ones have become hackneyed with much use.

BRIEF CONFESSION OF FAITH

The writer may mention here at once that he is a believer in (1) infinitely countless individual selves or souls; (2) their rebirths, evolution and involution, in and through evolving and involving, integrating and disintegrating, forming and dissolving, material bodies and surroundings; the passing of each self, through all possible experiences, in infinite time, space and motion; in (3) cycles and circles of time and space on all possible scales of duration and extent, in which the processes of rhythmic evolution and involution manifest themselves; in (4) One all-including, all-pervading, ever-complete, timeless, spaceless, Universal Soul or Spirit or Self, which is Absolute and Changeless, which is also identical with and includes within It-self all the countless individual selves, and whose eternally changeless, and yet also ever-changing, Ideation the entire world-process of all souls and bodies is.

Reasons for this faith, expounded in his books, as fully as was possible for the writer’s very feeble powers, may appear briefly in the course of the present paper.

THE PSYCHIC FEVER OF SPIRITUAL ADOLESCENCE

Psychic fever seems to be a normal event in the evolution of the human soul, somewhat like adolescence in that of the physical body, and frequently, though not always, coincides with it in time. A certain dissatisfaction with the ever-disappointing, fleeting, painful, deathful world seems to be the main emotional characteristic of it; and a disinclination for the apparently futile daily duties of life, the actional characteristic. If the intellectual characteristic of enquiry into causes is weak (as it is in the earlier stages of the soul’s evolution), and the frustration of wish and hope and consequent fear and anger and despair are very severe, then, in extreme cases, physical suicide may be the result. If both enquiry and distaste are weak, the mood passes, and the individual settles down to the routine of life quietly. But if the intellectual enquiry is keen, persistent, invincible; if the passion of revolt against the cruelties and injustices of life which inspires that enquiry is compassion for fellow-sufferers; if the revolt is against the sufferings of not only oneself but of all selves—as it is when the soul has arrived at a certain stage, as every soul must, and is turning from egoism to conscious altruism, on the way back to Universalism in the great cycles of the World-process—then the result is an Understanding, a philosophy, a theory of who am I, what am I, whence and whither and wherefore am I; who, what, whence, whither, wherefore, are all these other I’s; what, why, how, is all this, i.e. the world of objects and its incessant process; what the meaning and purpose of life with all its pains as well as all its pleasures.¹ The result of the successful passing through this experience seems intended by Nature to be the strengthening of the individual body, soul and spirit, in action, emotion and intellect, for the discharge of the duties of life, physical, super-physical and metaphysical.

VAIRĀGYA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES—OF DIFFERENT KINDS

Vairāgya (dis-passion, dis-taste), if it is predominantly (rājasa and tāmasa) inspired by “egoistic restless or clinging passions,” leads in its extreme form to “physical” suicide, whereby the unhappy soul destroys the outer apparatus through which it experienced misery, under the false belief that it will thereby destroy the real source of misery (kleṣa); a source which, however, is fundamentally internal, and only superficially external; for the outer apparatus itself is created by it and will be fashioned by it anew, again and again, until it, the internal cause, has been diagnosed and cured. But when the dis-affection is intelligent (sāttvika), enlightened, philanthropic, accompanied by intense intellectual seeking for cause and remedy, is guided by discrimination (viveka) between the permanent and the transient, the lasting True and the fleeting False, when it is combined with the “cardinal virtues” (sādhana-shatka) which are the opponents and vanquishers of the six “deadly sins” (ṣadṛpu), and is motived by poignant “yearning for freedom” (mumukṣā), not only for oneself but for all selves, freedom from that quintessence of all pains, viz. the fear of pain and death, the feeling of being at the mercy of another, the doubt of Immortality and Self-dependence—then the result is Realisation of the True Universal Self (Ātma-bodha), Spiritual Knowledge, Theosophia, God-Wisdom, Metaphysical knowledge of “that which is beyond the physical” but yet includes the physical; conviction of the Immortality and invulnerable Self-dependence of the Self, the Universal Self with which all selves are identical; the destruction of Error, Delusion, Nescience, False Belief (avidyā-nāśa), the “meta-physical” “suicide” of the inner egoistic selfish self, under the compulsion of the True Knowledge (Vidyā) that separative egoism (ahamkāra) is the final internal root of all misery; then the result is the realisation, by the person, of the identity of his individual self (jīvātmā), personal ego, with the Supreme Self (Paramātmā), the Absolute Ego, and consequent freedom from all fear and sorrow, extinction of the sense of separateness, the uprising of the Bliss of the sense of non-separateness; the conviction that All is One-Self, that All is I, unto I, by I, for I, from I, of I, in I; that all possible relations expressible by any prepositions are ever-present between I and not-I.

The far-reaching nature of this sense of non-separateness is seen in the awful consequences of its opposite, race-separatism, nation, class, creed, colour, sex, age-separatism; consequences from which the human world has been and is suffering, in the shape of war, pestilence, social convulsions, perpetual semi-starvation in intensive and extensive forms, since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Sensitiveness to the sorrows of others, sympathy, is the sensing of the Universal Self in all selves and things, round which every atom, every orb of heaven, the breath in the lungs, the blood in the veins and arteries, every manifestation in every department of Nature, revolves in cycles, and in which all duality, all opposites, are “turned into one” (uni-versed). Such compassionate passion of dis-gust (vairāgya) with the heartless iniquities of life, and such indomitable faith that the secret of the universe is powerless to withstand the might of thought are indispensable for the kindling of “the Light that lighteth every man.”

Buddha, in his divine madness, abandoning wife and child, takes the oath: “I will not enter these gates again until I have won the secret of life and death to help my fellow-sufferers.” The secret he wins and teaches all who care to learn is that “we suffer from ourselves, none else compels”; there is none else to compel.

THE UNITY OF LIFE AND THEREFORE OF THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

In Indian tradition the culmination of philosophy is the same as that of pragmatic ethics, science, art, religion—in the sense of ultimate principles, or rather one final principle. Nature, God’s nature, Nature’s God, is a breakless continuum. The bodily-mental life of man, with all the varied organs and functions involved, is the life of an organic unity. The laws and the facts of all the sciences, arts, philosophy, the religion of God—Nature—Man are all at work simultaneously in that life, in the body and mind of man, as indeed in everything, everywhere, in varied degrees. Indian philosophy, Vedanta, the “final knowledge,” is not only a theory, a body of knowledge, a set of beliefs; it is a philosophy which arises in, and in turn gives stronger rise to, philanthropic aspiration, and inspires and guides beneficent action. It is eminently emotional, devotional, humanitarian also, for it sees and worships the One in all animate and seemingly inanimate Nature. It is Jñāna-bhakti-karma, knowledge—devotion—works, all in one. Its purpose is to maximise human happiness and to abolish sorrow; to satisfy not only intellectual curiosity but also emotional hunger and actional craving; to reconcile and balance and give just scope to head, heart and limbs; to give duly apportioned equal opportunity to the man of knowledge, the man of desire, the man of action, the undeveloped man, one and all. It is called darśana (insight), vision, view, because it enables us to see the heart of all things.

THE LOGION WHICH SUMS UP THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

In the exalted mood which followed the “sudden flash” of insight that lighted up the darkness and brought the answer the writer composed a little poem in the manner of the aphoristic and ecstatic utterances; the last lines were:

Out of the storm rose calm the thought—

I (am) This not, I (am) This not.

These words, slight though they look, enclose all the philosophy which the present writer has been able to achieve. The soul must crave to discover the true nature of God, of Self, as frantically as the suffocating man struggles for air, before it finds the Truth. The spiritual preceptor of the Upaniṣads imparts the “commonplace” knowledge by a solemn, earnest, tenderly affectionate whisper into the ear of the equally earnest and devoted listener, in psychical conditions which transmute the common lead into exceedingly uncommon gold; and a mental, a spiritual, miracle is performed; Tat tvam asi: So’ham, Thou art That which thou seekest; Thou hast been seeking thine own True Self; I am That; the I is That; “That I (which Thou and I are, that I is, and am) not this.” For the requirements of the writer’s mind, the Upaniṣad teaching, “That am I,” was completed by the thought, “Not this.” Positive and Negative together make up the Absolute, the Whole Truth, of the Relatives abolishing, neutralising, each other.¹

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LOGION

Failing to find satisfaction in the current philosophies of the East and the West—very likely because of his imperfect understanding of them—and having struggled on till he arrived at this great word, this Logion, his quest ended, though the unending routine of duties remained. After this glimpse, the hidden word began to shine out clearly from the pages of the Scriptures.¹ Recapitulating the progress to the logion, the following steps can be traced. The popular theory of causation (ārambha-vāda), that an extra-cosmical personal God makes and unmakes the world at will, fails to convince lastingly. The scientific theory of causation (pariṇāma-vāda or vikāra-vāda), that the world-process is a continuous transformation or creative evolution which is the result of the interplay of two infinites, indestructible matter and indestructible force—this is only a description, not an explanation. Two infinites are illogical. The me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• M. K. GANDHI
• THE RELIGION OF AN ARTIST
• HINDU PHILOSOPHY IN INDIA
• THE CONCEPT OF PHILOSOPHY
• COMMON-SENSE EMPIRICISM
• ON THE PERTINENCE OF PHILOSOPHY
• ĀTMA-VIDYA, OR THE SCIENCE OF THE SELF
• PHILOSOPHY OF DEPENDENT EMERGENCE
• REALISTIC IDEALISM
• THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH
• THE SPIRIT IN MAN
• THE EVOLUTION OF MY OWN THOUGHT
• MAN’S INTEREST IN PHILOSOPHY: AN INDIAN VIEW
• PRAGMATIC IDEALISM
• INDEX