Knowing Beyond Knowledge

Epistemologies of Religious Experience in Classical and Modern Advaita

Thomas A. Forsthoefel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138721500
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351760942
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title was first published in 2002. This book builds on contemporary discussion of 'mysticism' and religious experience by examining the process and content of 'religious knowing' in classical and modern Advaita. Drawing from the work of William Alston and Alvin Plantinga, the author examines key streams of Advaita with special reference to the conditions, contexts, and scope of epistemic merit in religious experience. Forsthoefel uniquely employs specific analytical categories of contemporary Western epistemologies as heuristics to examine the cognitive dimension of religious experience in Indian Vedanta. Showing the developing nuances in the analysis of religious experience in the thought of Shankara and his immediate disciples (Suresvara and Padmapada) as well as in the teaching of Ramana Maharshi, an understudied but important South Indian saint of the 20th century, this book offers a substantial contribution to studies of Indian philosophy as well as to contemporary philosophy of religion. Using the tools of exegesis and comparative philosophy, Forsthoefel argues for a careful justification of claims following religious experience, even if such claims involve, as they do in the Advaita, a paradoxical 'knowing beyond knowledge'.

CHAPTER 1

A brief history of experience

Prolegomena

This study is motivated by a central question that can be phrased in numerous ways with admittedly different nuances. The central question is: does religious experience, whatever that is, provide warrant for claims about God and the universe? In other words, do claims about God, deities, or an impersonal Absolute, following upon certain mental or physical events, contain valid cognitive content, or are they merely psychological projections, wish-fulfilling fancies or expressions of ethical standards or compelling emotion? In short, do these claims enjoy ‘epistemic significance’? This question not only asks whether they enjoy a healthy (cognitive) self-esteem but intends to probe the extent, if any, of the stake these claims have on knowledge. If knowledge is a ‘diploma’ word (Hick, 1966: 206), conferred on judgements and propositions about certain states of affairs, can we know anything from religious experience? More specifically, can we know anything about God through religious experience? Indeed, can we know God at all? Although this study will consider in detail the obvious epistemological issues involved here, it also recognizes important related issues in linguistic theory, especially in the relationship between language and experience. For it seems difficult at best, and perhaps impossible, to extricate the one from the other. Language consists of symbols of our conceptual baggage (much of whose content is experience), but that baggage is preceded by language, thus raising the question whether or not ‘reality’ is constructed by language.¹

Bracketing, for the moment, the relationship between language and experience, questions concerning the cognitive content of religious claims are slightly different to the purely philosophical inquiry, ‘Just what is out there?’ or, as someone once asked, ‘Are there any medium-sized pieces of dry goods in the universe?’ These ontological forays are, of course, usually followed by the related epistemological concern – if so, how do we know it? – although, in the Western context since Kant, the systematic study of what-is-out-there has been more often than not eschewed in favour of strict analyses of knowledge. The reasons for this are well known and need no discussion here. Suffice it to say that Kant raised significant challenges to traditional methods of philosophical theology; in his view, arguments for the existence of God were doomed to fail as illegitimate extensions beyond what we can validly know within the limits of space and time and the categories of judgement. According to Kant, the philosopher of religion ought not to argue for or against religious beliefs, but instead map their structure and limits and offer an account of their origin in practical reason. However, while we cannot technically ‘know’ God according to this view, the idea of God remains a necessary postulate for the moral life. The ‘essence’ of religion, for Kant, is morality.² Contemporary philosophers of religion, such as C.B. Braithwaite and D.Z. Phillips, accept and adapt the Kantian (and Wittgensteinian) limits of religious language and consider narratives, myths, dogmas and doctrines as evocative of ethical standards (Braithwaite) or simple emotions (Phillips). They thus reject the cognitive content of religious expressions; this conclusion may validly follow from their premises but, of course, it dismisses outright the usual understanding of religious expressions held by so many adepts, thinkers, devotees and storytellers of numerous religious traditions.

But the rejection of metaphysics by contemporary philosophers, no less than Enlightenment thinkers, often assumes what is to be proved – namely, the rejection of entities which our senses seem poorly equipped to perceive. We shall determine whether our sensory equipment is truly incapable of receiving data on ‘spiritual’ realities as is usually assumed. However, what is often forgotten in the summary rejection of spiritual realities, whether by Enlightenment thinkers or twentieth-century positivists, is that such positions also involve heavy doses of metaphysics which are often assumed and unestablished, except by rhetoric or assertion. F.R. Tennant reminds us that:

As the futility of metaphysics could only be demonstrated by metaphysical arguments – the success of positive methods being in itself no proof of the necessary failure of others – it must be assumed that at least so much of metaphysics must be admitted into philosophy as is essential to prove the barrenness of all the rest. (Tennant, 1913: 33f.)

Metaphysics invariably pervades our theoretical and practical commitments, and it seems the better part of intellectual virtue to make explicit the metaphysical assumptions underlying our academic agendas. This does not mean that it is necessary to engage in an intellectual confession at the outset of every academic project. But it serves to remind us that the uncritical rejection of (usually theistic) metaphysics frequently involves metaphysical commitments that are unstated or unproved.

In the West, while it may be proper to say that, since Kant, epistemology has taken precedence over metaphysical inquiry, it is also proper to admit that the two disciplines are mutually necessary and presume each other. Metaphysics, however that discipline may be construed – the study of ‘being’, ‘first principles’ or ‘reals’ – cannot rest independent of epistemology. And the justification of the cognitive claims of metaphysics is one of the principal roles of epistemology. How one construes the universe cannot be established philosophically by mere feeling or intuition, but by rigorous scrutiny of what and how we know, and that is the work of epistemology. Similarly, what and how we know often involves metaphysical assumptions. In the Indian context, this is most evident in Advaita Vedānta, which liberally draws upon its metaphysical theories in order to explain certain problems of perception. As D.M. Datta has pointed out, this may strike some students as dogmatic, ‘its epistemological conclusions being vitiated by gratuitous metaphysical assumptions’ (Datta, 1972: 32). Yet, Datta adds:

… if we closely examine the modem epistemological theories of perception, it will not be difficult to find that in spite of their loud protests against metaphysics, epistemologists have tacitly assumed without criticism certain theories of reality, on the truth of which alone their epistemological conclusions can stand. (Ibid.: 33)

Thus, in the Indian context, metaphysical questions were often self-consciously accompanied by epistemological analyses, and properly so. The answer to the question ‘What is out there?’ needed careful authentication of the mechanisms which produce knowledge, the pramāṇas. Among the various philosophical schools lively debate occurred over the relative merits of the various pramāṇas such as scripture, perception, inferential reasoning, comparison and testimony. All this was included under the rubric of pramāṇa vicāra, the investigation into the means of knowledge. Accompanying this was the more metaphysical search, prameya vicāra, the investigation of knowables, which included axiological studies (kārna, artha, dharma, mokṣa ṥāstra) as well as philosophico-theological studies on the world, self and God (Balasubramanian, 1990: 15).

I wish to underscore the necessary partnership of metaphysics and epistemology in answering the related questions ‘What is out there?’ and ‘How do we know it?’ Doing so affirms the sensible strategy in Indian philosophy of pramāṇa and prameya vicāra. The stakes, in any context, it seems, are high and the implications many. Questions concerning the structure and scope of what we can know lead reasonably to the question of whether there is a divine being, or divine beings, or some supramundane impersonal reality and whether we can know it. How one answers these questions invariably affects a variety of theoretical and practical commitments, although no doubt a gap between theory and practice often occurs (and perhaps is the norm) in human experience. Still, the stakes are high. Life, after all, is short, and if the claims of a certain religion or tradition include claims concerning the truth of reality in its most comprehensive context, then it would seem to be among the intellectual virtues to pay close attention to these claims, resisting the temptation to dismiss them out of hand under the force of one’s cultural and philosophical conditioning. This seems all the more important when we study those religio-philosophical traditions which index thinking to soteriological consequences. For example, Ṥaṅkara is quite clear about his reasons for undertaking an interpretation of the Brahma Sūtra: ‘In order to destroy (wrong notion), the cause of evil, and to prove the unity of the Self, the study of the entire Vedānta is begun.’³ In this, and in virtually every Indian tradition, wrong notion, abhimāna, or ignorance, avidyā, is indexed to a downward spiral of egotism and selfishness, which inexorably produces suffering. Conversely, knowledge or right view (vidyā or samyag dṛṣṭi) is indexed to freedom, here taken to mean freedom from all suffering, whether mental, physical or celestial. The ubiquitous existential reality of suffering is the starting point for the search for saving knowledge in all Indian traditions, not a Western-style peripatetic search for abstract truth. Illustrative of this is Sankara’s comment, above, and the sixth-century kārikā of the Sāṅkhya school: ‘Owing to the affliction of the threefold suffering, the inquiry into the means of its cessation (begins)’ (Sastri, 1948: 1).⁴

Now, a question appropriately arises when one recognizes the indexing of knowledge to salvation: what exactly is meant here by knowledge? Does the instrumental role of knowledge in the economy of salvation in India vitiate any prima facie parallels to Western concepts of knowledge? Does it create an insuperable barrier to constructive philosophical comparison between Indian and ‘Western’ epistemologies? The question concerning the Indian concept of knowledge will be considered in detail in Chapter 2. However, concerning the doubts over the possibility of constructive epistemological comparison on account of the putative soteriological value of knowledge in Indian materials, I offer the following response: recognizing that there is no univocal agreement in Indian intellectual history over the nature and function of the mind and the soul, the size and degree of pervasion of each, and the extent of potential suffering attributed to the soul, the indexing of knowledge to salvation in the Indian darṥanas is both important and unimportant in a comparative epistemological study such as this. It is important, obviously, because it represents the highest value possible for the soul, which is implicated in a psycho-physical matrix and in some relevant sense is dependent on cognitive processes for release. It indicates just how high the stakes are for understanding the proper functioning of those cognitive processes. We will see how important ‘proper function’ is both to medieval Indian thinkers and to some contemporary anglophone epistemologists.

On the other hand, the indexing of knowledge to salvation should not deter comparative philosophers, since this gesture seems unimportant in relevant senses as well. For example, Indian thinkers as a matter of course affirmed the basic āstika axiom of the authority of the Veda as the source of their doctrines, but then occasionally spun theories that appeared to have little to do with the Vedic worldview. Ṥaṅkara’s Advaita is an example of such gymnastics: although he is constrained by cultural assumptions to accept the Veda, his metaphysic forces him in the end to accept at best the provisional value of the Veda. Some versions of atheistic Mīmāṃsā and Säṅkhya also engage in their own versions of āstika gymnastics. Much in the same way Indian philosophers also appear to swear fidelity to the assumption that knowledge is paramount for salvation, but then get on with their work at hand, the familiar grunt work of arguments and counterarguments that constitute the substance of philosophy. For example, Nyāya Sūtra 1.1. holds that ‘attainment of final beatitude (niḥṥreyasādhigamaḥ) follows from the knowledge of the nature of the sixteen categories (tattvajñānāt)’ (Vidyābhuṣana, 1975: 1). Having stated such, the real business of the Nyāya system gets under way: logic and epistemology. The Western scholar can recognize this gesture in the Nyâya, or similar gestures in the other schools, without needing to forswear fruitful examination of Indian categories because of the soteriological value of knowledge in Indian philosophical discourse. Inevitably, substantive epistemologies and metaphysics follow the soteriological assumption, and it is here that the Western philosopher of religion will find a locus for a constructive programme in comparative philosophy.

Such a programme argues that it is not only theoretically possible for persons of one tradition to add to their conceptual framework the categories of another tradition, but that it is necessary for the philosopher of religion to do so. ‘Necessary’ is a strong term, but if much of the agenda of philosophy of religion consists in careful examination of the claims of faith, then an appropriate responsibility of the discipline logically extends this programme and considers the claims, content and conditions for saving knowledge in non-Western traditions. Indeed, doing so in a careful, self-conscious manner may in fact constitute the most creative role for the philosopher of religion, for the fruit of such study may contribute to our understanding of human ‘nature’ in its most complete context. What does it mean to be human? How far does our environment extend? Is there a divine reality and, if so, how do we know it? These are some of the questions that classical and contemporary philosophy of religion have addressed. By paying careful attention to the answers which other traditions have proposed to these questions and others, we may add to our self-understanding and to our understanding of our environment in its broadest scope. Thus cross-cultural efforts in philosophy of religion, intimately reviewing the mechanics and outcomes of ‘religious knowing’, clearly impact philosophical anthropology and metaphysics.

That it is possible to engage in such constructive ‘thinking across cultures’ is a matter of historical and contemporary witness: early Christians appropriated Greek concepts of the all-pervading logos, Sufi mystics roaming the Gangetic plain in the fifteenth century adopted elements of Vedāntic thought, and contemporary New Age gurus sometimes borrow wholesale philosophies of the ‘East’. This last example perhaps amounts to the best argument why philosophers of religion need to learn the languages and conceptual systems of Indian thought: many of the popular advocates of ‘Eastern’ wisdom – Indian immigrant-gurus no less than American apologists – are often rather unclear about the various historical and philosophical contexts of Indian philosophy.⁵ In fact, the philosopher of religion provides an important service by accurately representing the various streams of thought and practice that have developed in India’s many traditions of philosophical and theological reflection. And yet, mere representation does not suffice. Many of the philosophical issues that provoked inquiring minds in India are issues that hardly have their sole province on the subcontinent. Problems of causality, substance, the identity of the soul and the processes of knowing are live issues in any philosophical tradition. Philosophers of one tradition can only gain by investigating the analyses of their fellow philosophers of another time and era. Such investigation provides an opportunity to see things afresh and stimulate constructive insight. That, at least, is the hope and goal of this project. In one of the early works of his career, Karl Potter lamented the mere cataloguing of Indian doctrines and the absence of an engaged, philosophically astute, critical inquiry of Indian philosophy. He addressed the need for philosophers who were willing ‘to push to the limit the presuppositions of Indian thought, to work along original lines either to refute or to justify them, but at any rate to address them as living ideas and not as dead ones’ (Potter, 1991: 258). Doing so in fact honours best the great tradition of Indian thought.

Potter, Paul Griffiths, Francis Clooney, Eliot Deutsch and the late Wilhelm Halbfass all represent this tradition, naturally with different nuances in approach and goals. All are philosophically and theologically trained in Western and Indian philosophy and take seriously and critically engage with Indian philosophical and religious texts for constructive purposes. This approach differs considerably fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 A brief history of experience
• 2 The epistemology of religious experience in Śaṅkara
• 3 Later Advaita on religious experience
• 4 The sage of pure experience: the Advaita of Ramaṇa Maharṣi
• 5 The cognitive and social implications of the epistemology of religious experience
• Bibliography
• Index