|
That behind the whole kaleidoscopic ensemble we experience as the world there is a fundamental order, unity, design, rhythm, rule, system, harmony, or
organization, is the central presupposition of Hindu metaphysics. What we reckon today as the part-and-the-whole or individual-and-the-universal problem lies at the core of Hindu thinking. Hindu metaphysicians from
the time of the Vedas and Upanisads (approximately between 4000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.) onwards are seen to have been preoccupied with this problem with an ethical and soteriological concern. From Yajnavalkya in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad to Aurobindo and Gandhi in our own time, Hindu thinkers have defined and re-defined the man-and-the-cosmos syndrome, the self-and-being or atman-and-Brahman union, discerning from it the ethics of individual-society relation, called notably dharma. Both early and later Hindu philosophers argued on the basis of their
total, holistic, universalist Being-experience. Their conspicuously asserted Weltanschauunghas been that although the units of our knowledge of the world appear to be asunder there is at their root a uniting
cord, an original breath (prana) holding everything. This uniting cord was called by the Vedic sages Rta.
For the Vedic holists, Rtais the rhythm of Being. It is Being. There is nothing behind or beyond it. It is a self-propelling project; it is "freedom to create". It is the essence of man-Nature (Jiva-Srsti)
relationship, since by its own inner élan it has bifurcated into human consciousness (the knowing principle) and Nature (the known). It expresses itself in time and space, and is potentially the logic of the entire
cosmic history. It has neither a beginning nor an end. This mental activity of mine which tries to grasp it at this moment in bits, so to say, and verbalizes it is only an occasion within its total structure. Man as
a consciousness locus is only an instant (ksana) within Rta's self-evolving process. No single mind can encompass it in all its complexity. What may appear to be discordant and out-of-the-way belongs
to its total order. The cosmic order which science explains and sets forth in theories is only a facet of it - it is not the whole of it. Rta's empirical and transcendental dimensions are manifest in the
conduct of our mind, in the acts of our consciousness, in the working clarity but fundamental elusiveness of our psyche.
There is a profound mingling, of great hermeneutical importance, of Rta, the concept of eka(one), this (idam) and atman-Brahman (self-Being) in Hindu metaphysics. The origin of this mingling is in the early Hindu scriptures (the Vedas and the Upanisads) and it has formed the bed-rock of the Hindu thought for ages. Again, the fusion of these four notions in the three fountain-heads (prasthanatrayi)
of Hindu metaphysics has produced in the Indian culture a universalism, a cosmo-centric-anthropocentric synthesis comparable to Hegel's philosophy of Man-Nature or Mind-Matter unity.
Several Vedic and Upanisadic texts try to verbalize with tremendous force that the cosmic reality (Rta) is, to human experience, the One (eka), i.e., "all that there is is This."
"This" (idam) is the meeting-point between Man and Nature, consciousness and the world, atman and Brahman. The Vedic utterance idam sarvam asi (all that there is is This)
is hermeneutically so rich in metaphysical allusions that it could suggest truths like "There is no other in Being (Brahman)," "All that the individual mind grasps and is capable of grasping in There." "Nothing is outside Being (Brahman)," "Since Being (Brahman)
and consciousness (atman) disclose themselves as the unified seeing of This, the only background This could have is Non-Being."
The search for self-identity was central to the metaphysical enterprise of early Hindus. The obvious starting-point of this search is the cosmocentric
orderliness one would perceive in one's day-to-day life. This orderliness was not looked upon as merely empirical - it was conceived as emanating from the transcendental Oneness, "This-ness", Being within
which the individual as a conscious, mental being figures. Therefore when one looks at oneself and asks oneself "who am I?" one places oneself as "being This", "being There", and one
tends toward exploring the raison d'être of one's very presence as "This" and "There". One intuits this raison d'être as the basic Man-Nature whole, as Brahman itself.
Cosmocentric unity is the basic perception around which stanzas after stanzas of the Vedas and the Upanisads move. This unity must not be understood as
something to be objectively studied (as, for instance, the unity of a material thing). The unity of the cosmos is its very life. As Heidegger puts it, the life of Nature (or of the cosmos) is Being - it is the
primordial presence, universal, open and pregnant with unmappable possibilities. This is the ground from which humans have arisen as consciousness "spots" or consciousness "centres" (kendras).
There is a large number of symbolic representations of this ground, this primordial presence, this Man-Nature whole in the Vedic-Upanisadic literature.
For the Vedic Hindus, it was an apriori truth that the cosmocentric norma, i.e., Rta, has to be obeyed, and appeased by means of
sacrificial celebrations (yajna). The devasor gods the Vedas call upon in prayer and sacrifice (Varuna or the sky-god, Surya or the sun-god, Agni or the fire-god, Pusan or the pastoral god, Rudra or
the militant god, Indra or the atmosphere-god, and Prajapati or the God of gods) follow Rta as the ultimate cosmic authority. The universal Rta, as the unterlying law of the conduct of gods, was
believed to be timeless and divine. It was therefore necessary for the humans to comply with action (kriva), to follow the logic of cosmic powers, in order to overcome the fear of insecurity and death.
The religions belief of the Vedic Hindus that for welfare and happiness on earth man must surrender to the gods of Nature, to Nature's fundamental
norm, has not visibly diminished in its influence on the Hindu mind with the change of time. Rta, as the One, the transcendental, the Divine and the spontaneous, is still considered to include in its compass
everything that is, has been and can be. It is manifest in man through his self-expression, i.e., through his "inner" and "outer" space which he experiences as his total being. Rtais the
whole mind-body stuff having a potentiality of diversifying itself into multiple consciousnesses which we ourselves are. Man as a self-conscious being is not and cannot be cut off from it. But as one having concern
for his individual being and, at the same time, as one living amidst others and in the world of material things is its self-expression.
Rta, the cosmic uniformity, is raised to an abstract tier in the Upanisadic literature. The Rg Vedasays:
At first was neither Being nor Nonbeing.
There was not air nor yet sky beyond.
What was its wrapping? Where? In whose protection?
Was water there, unfathomable and deep?
There was no death then, nor yet deathlessness;
of night or day there was not any sign.
The One breathed without breath, by its own impulse.
Other than that was nothing else at all.
Darkness was there, all wrapped around by darkness,
and all was water indiscriminate. Then
that which was hidden by the Void, that One, emerging,
stirring, through power of Ardor, came to be.
In the beginning Love arose,
which was the primal germ cell of the mind.
The seers, searching in their hearts with wisdom,
discovered the connection of Being in Nonbeing.
A crosswise line cut Being from Nonbeing.
What was described above it, what below?
Bearers of seed there were and mighty forces,
thrust from below and forward move above.
Who really knows? Who can presume to tell it?
Whence was it born? Whence issued this creation?
Even the gods came after this emergence.
Then who can tell from whence it came to be?
That out of which creation has arisen,
whether it held it firm or it did not,
He who surveys it in the highest heaven,
He surely knows - or maybe He does not know.
The Man-Nature unity, for Hindu metaphysicians, is the unity of Being (Brahman). It is the fundamental truth. In the language of Hindu theology,
Being is God, the Light of all lights, the acoustically mind-elevating symbol of all symbols "Aum". Being represents the fusion of the seer and the seen; it does not allow any duality, or plurality,
or chaos, or disorder within it. All these allusions are packed up, in Hindu metaphysics, into the word Brahman, one of the most widely used words in prasthanatravi (the famous trio of the Upanisads, the Bhagavad-gita and the Brahma-sutra).
An unparalleled sense of the transcendental cosmocentric order is conveyed by the concept of Brahman. And its counterpart atman (the primordial unity of the individual self which one designates as I) suggests the anthropocentric unity.
Sankara, the mosst perceptive interpreter of the Upanisads and a metaphysician (8th century A.D.) having no equal in the history of Hinduism,
admonishes his followers thus: 2
That which man cannot perceive, cannot turn into an object with the eye, the eye associated with mental processes, but that by which he comes to
perceive the functions of the eye as diversified by mental processes - comes to phenomenalize them, encompasses them - know that light of consciousness, that self to be Brahman.
For Sankara Brahman is the totality of all things, the ultimate foundation of all strata of our experience, the highest synthesis of the objective and the subjective, the outer and the inner, the phenomenal and the transcendental. There is nothing, Sankara asserts in compliance with the Upanisads, that does not depend on or is not enveloped by Brahman.
Matter, space, time, change and various categories governing the mind in its encounter with the world are not outside the spirit of Brahmen. Brahman is the One or Divinity, the pure spontaneity, and includes, within its compass of self-expression, everything that is or can be.
The Upanisads say that the nature of Brahman cannot be exactly defined. They use seemingly contradictory expressions to suggest what Brahman-experience, like Plotinus' Nous-experience, could possibly amount to. For instance, the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad3 remarks that Brahman is like
light and no light, desire and absence of desire,
anger and absence of anger, righteousness and absence of righteousness.
In the Katha Upanisad4, Brahman is characterized as
smaller than the small, greater than the great,
sitting and yet moving, lying and yet going everywhere.
Brahman is taken by Sankara, as it is inscribed by the Upanisads, as Supreme Spitit or Pure Essence, self-expressing, self-shining and self-validating.
Sankara's understanding of the Upanisads is traditionally regarded as projecting a transcendentalism which rejects the reality of the material world
and pronounces anti-cosmocentrism. By positing the Supreme Being (Brahman) as the ultimate ground of all existence, a life-force capable of releasing diverse products all of which are its maya (the act of self-veiling), Sankara's transcendentalism has been conventionally interpreted as world-negating. Sankara indeed annuls the world as it is perceived by our common sense. Although everything emanates from Brahman, he argues, Brahman is not tied to its emanation since it is not intended or planned by Brahman.
At the same time, Sankara holds that the universe has appeared as the effect of something which is absolutely real (satyam), eternally conscious (jnanam), and infinitely pervading (anantam). This satyam-jnanam-anantamessence of all existence is Brahman.
The universe is a variogated pattern and cannot have originated from a cause which is not absolutely perfect and self-caused. This self-caused cause, viz., Brahman, expresses itself, Sankara asserts, through
an infinite number of entities (nama-rupa), the whole cosmic kaleidoscope, so to say, which from the metaphysical point of view are like shadows on the wall, a realm of make-believe or appearances, an
"is-and-yet-is-not" drama whose author does not really identify himself with it.
The problem of cosmocentric-anthropocentric disunity which the Upanisads posed Sankara happened to see with extraordinary philosophic profundity. His
mission was to explain how the world of physical phenomena experienced by us in our everyday life could be discerned from the transcendental unity, the unity of Rta, Brahman or Being; and, more importantly, how the consciousness an individual has (as "I", the ego, his finding himself "there" in the world) has its roots in the transcendental unity. No Hindu metaphysician has attempted, in the history of Indian thought, a theory of Man-Nature unity with the intensity of realization (anubhava)
and edification of thought parallel to Sankara's. Sankara exhibits tremendous phenomenological acumen while pointing out that from the level of pure and transcendental consciousness the spatio-temporally perceptible
world, the world of plurality, disunity, contradictions and chaos is within the rhythm of Being (Brahman).
Sankara argues that the Real at the heart of the cosmos is reflected in the depth of the human soul. This depth is denoted by him, following the
Upanisadic insights, by the word atman. Insofar as their ontological aspect is concerned, there is no distinction between Brahman and the cosmos, and Brahman and atman. Throughout Hindu
metaphysics, from the Upanisads to Sri Aurobindo, the identity among Brahman, the world and human consciousness is presumed.
However, although Brahmanas the Supreme Being and atman as the individual self are not fundamentally distinct from each other, to every individual his own worldly existence happens to be a unique fact. The existential situation one lives through has its own irreplaceable and "solid" priorities. The feeling of anxiety, the pangs of alienation, dread, the dread of death and the sense of uprootedness that intensify one's self-identity, one's being an unequalled "I", circumvent one's life, one's being in the world. One's anchorage in the particular social and cultural situation in the world is a fact to which one has to resign willingly or unwillingly. Thus, one's being an individual, a "situational" and "existing" person, as existentialists would term it, is an immediately felt reality to every one of us.
The dichotomy between one's being an individual-in-the-world (jiva) and one's being originally a pure, transcendental consciousness (atman)
is taken by Sankara as morely superficial. For sankara, our down-to-earth, phenomenal (vyavaharika) existence represents our estrangement from our transcendental (paramarthika) nature. The standpoint
to which we are accustomed in our ordinary life does not reflect our primordial, metaphysical state. The self immersed in the world (characterized by Hindu metaphysics as sansara) has come under the influence
of ignorance (avidya) regarding its "real" nature. According to Sankara, it is due to avidya that the individual does not ordinarily see the nexus between Being and the world, the transphenomenal and the phenomenal, Brahman and atman.
The nexus indicates the oneness underlying the subject-object, inner-outer, Man-Nature distinctions. Incidentally, what Plotinus had said in the 2nd centura A.D. was on the wave-length similar to that of Sankara.
Plotinus wrote: 5... in the One itself
there is complete identity of knower and known, no distinction existing between being and knowing, contemplation and its object constituting a living thing ...
... Being is limitless; in all the overflow from it there is no lessening either in its emanation nor in itself ...
Its nature is that nothing can be affirmed of it - not existence, not essence, not life - it transcends all these.
What is peculiar and undoubtedly paradoxical about human consciousness is that it is phenomenal and transphenomenal at the same time. Sankara
underlines this paradox throughout his reflections on the jiva-atman and world-Brahman relationships. He could not have rejected the vividness of the experience we have of living as "bodied" in the material world. The world of senses is existent, engaging and inescapable. But compared to the transphenomenal world, that is, the world of the One or Brahman which must be perceived as having, so to say, bifurcated itself into the jiva-atman pole on the one hand and the world (Nature) pole on the other, the latter, if taken autonomously, is a confinement. In Hindu metaphysics, such an autonomously posited world is looked upon as the state of bondage (baddha).
Man lives in this world like a stranger, an alien. Although we are born in a physical, spatio-temporal universe, i.e., into the womb of Nature, and are for all practical purposes empirical consciousnesses, we are
not completely bound up to it. It is because man is ontologically a Spiritual-Cosmological totality that while living in the world he has the feeling of being "condemned" to it.
The emergence of man as "worldly", and his bodily placement along the stream of time, is one of the infinite possibilities of Being (Brahman)
that has actually been fulfilled. No individual mind is capable of mapping out all these possibilities. Despite being located in the world which is firmly grafted in space and time, man has always experienced a
sense of being lost in the world. In the face of the ontological, the divine, the infinitely overwhelming (which forms a kind of original setting to all that goes on in the universe), the individual has felt the
most indomitable urge to surrender himself to it, to be fused with it, to be enlightened by it by appropriating it. The Brahman-Nature-Man unity (termed by different religio-philosophical traditions as the
One, Nous, Logos, Tao, Sunya, the Godhead, and so on) sends out perennial calls to man-in-the-world and makes him all the time aware of his rootlessness in life. It is this rootlessness that Heidegger, after
Novalis, referred to in his "pure ontology" as "homesickness". To yield to these calls and to constantly strive to overcome the temptations from the "fragments" of world-experience
constitutes man's authenticity.
In the metaphysics of the Bhagavad-gita, a highly condensed work staging one of the most inviting, persuasive and frank dialogues between Krishna (the Absolute incarnate) and Arjuna (man-in-the-world), the basic identity between the human and cosmic, the empirical and the transcendental, the worldly jiva and the eternal Spirit (Brahman, atman)
is very graphically presented.
The Bhagavad-gita looks upon the entire cosmic drama as the body of God and holds that the ultimate ideal of human life should be to attain a union with Him. In Krishna's design of human existence, every attempt at accounting for the fact of man's presence in the world, his being inside the vortex of the law of Karma,
his performance of deeds religious or otherwise, his planning for success in practical life, make sense insofar as they are seen as having their place within the Divine activity. Brahman manifests itself in Nature in different forms with a limitless range of functions known and not-yet-known. As an antaryamin or the inner ruler of all creation, the transcendent principle, the Rta.
The supreme designer of creation, maintenance and dissolution, God (Brahman), the Bhagavad-gitapoints out, is directly related to the human souls whose final destination cannot be other than a union
with Him.
Hindus conceive Brahman as God, as the Universal Spirit, the Cosmic Self, the Complete Person, the ontological genesis of all that is and is possible. Saints, mystics and prophets have claimed to be in communication with Him, to have experienced the total merger of their self into Him. They have felt Him within their heart's throbs. They have celebrated God as the limitless spiritual force which, taken by itself, would entail no spatio-temporal encumbrances. The Bhagavad-gita depicts God as Brahman,
the Universal Souls, the Reason, the Spirit, the pilot of all that goes on in the universe. Krishna advises Arjuna: 6Devote your whole mind to me ... take me for your
only refuge ... I am he who causes: No other beside
me. Upon me, those worlds are held
Like pearls strung on a thread.
I am the essence of waters,
the shining of the sun and the moon ...
It is I who resound in the ether
and am potent in man ...
Know me, eternal seed of everything that grows:
the intelligence of those who understand,
the vigor of the active ...
I am all that a man may desire
without transgressing the law of nature.
The main thrust of Krishna's preaching is that the transcendental is the same in Man and the cosmos, it is the ultimate dimension of the self and the
world. Man has "fallen" from the transcendental as a result of the governance of him by what has been known in the Hindu tradition as the law of Karma. 7
Man as a self-conscious, self-surpassing and fundamentally spitirual being is not really cut off from Brahman(from the Divinity of which he is
the most significant expression), but, as one desiring, world-caring, concerned about and affected by material things, is oblivious of his transcendental source. The Bhagavad-gitastates that there is nothing
higher and more enveloping than Brahman, for once man has ascended to it (i.e., has attained his roots, so to say) he would transmit through his attitude, language and actions a rare holistic outlook and be
spontaneously true, just and good to all creation.
Arjuna, in the Bhagavad-gitadialectics, is the image of the naive man. Throughout the text Arjuna displays a common-sense approach toward the
world, toward the subject-object distinction, toward the final aim of human life. Krishna's task is therefore to bring home to Arjuna that he open up his eyes to the metaphysical ground of the entire world-drama, to
the basic Man-Nature of jiva-Brahman unity and thus act as a "philosopher" (jnani). Krishna admonishes Arjuna not to deviate from the path of becoming the "enlightened" one (that
is, one who has overcome the fragmentary) and shed the notion that he could be the doer or undoer of things in the universe. To a jnani's awareness, Krishna tells him, the Žlan behind the entire cosmic
scenario, behind the process of history, is Rta, Brahman, Got (Parameshwara, Purushottama), Being, the non-divisible Man-Nature unity.
In fact in all the religio-ethical works of Hinduism the goal of the wordly individual in developing a drsti(what phenomenologists after Husserl call Wesenschau)
is consistently emphasized. By drsti (vision), a person could enter into a unique state of awareness concerning his own "fallen" condition and be convinced that nothing would matter to him more than the transcending of this condition. By transcending one's worldly, fragmentary and partial perception, one is face to face with Being, one becomes Being. One's self-surrender to God (Brahman), the Bhagavad-gita holds, revolutionizes one's perspective of the world and of one's own spatio-temporal location in it - one ceases to be a mere onlooker of the whole cosmic process and enters into the very logic of Man-Nature relation.
The journey from the empirical, practical state of being to the transcendental, divine state Krishna advises to untertake is an arduous journey. The
aim of this journey is to develop an absolutely certain understanding of the unity of all existence, i.e., the Man-Nature unity, and to feel that one belongs to this unity. Krishna tells Arjuna that God or Brahman is the essence of all that goes on in the universe and that once the latter attained the knowledge of this truth he would reflect a holistic outlook, he would function in the world of things and persons as a sthitaprajna (one whose mental and physical composure, uninvolvement and peace combined with one's compassion, dutifulness and righteousness would be the daily style of one's life).
Sthitaprajna in the Bhagavad-gitais the image of an "ontological man" 8 at the final stage of his advancement toward self-realization. His holistic perspective would not allow him to view the worldly affairs as in themselves of ultimate significance. He would have gained an insight to know that, in the process of the self-expression of the ultimate reality, (Brahman)
the Man-Nature, subject-object, paramarthika-vyavaharika (transcendental-empirical) duality is only an outer, impermanent, contingent phase. Duality is not the real state of existence. Man and the cosmos are not separate, autonomous and mutually opposed realities. The sthitaprajna,
therefore, would bear a psycho-physical stature of being "undisturbed in adversity, not hankering after happiness, free from fear, free from anger, free from the things of desire."
The reverberations of the holistic metaphysics of the Bhagavad-gita are found in some of the famous religious teachers of later India, such as Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, Vallabha, Kabir, Chaitanya, Guru Nanak, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Tulsidas, Swami Vivekananda, to mention only a few. They have argued and sung in praise of Brahman,
Isvara, God in the spirit in which Krishna has conveyed to Arjuna the supremacy and the unity of the Ultimate Mind. In their efforts to establish that the wordly existence of man, if regarded as a value in itself,
is inseparable from suffering, they have proached the ideal of Sat-Cit-Ananda (Being-Intelligence-Happiness) as the only legitimate quest of human life.
Ramanuja, the renowned theist of the 11th century A.D., had set out to prove, in complete consistency with the cosmocentric-anthropocentric tenor of
the prasthanatrayi, that every human substance or jiva is a microscopic being and a form (prakara) of all-pervading Spirit or Brahman or God. It is God, he said, who makes jivas act. Jivas are distinct from one another inasmuch as they are spatial units capable of having their own individual characteristics. This distinctness is obviously proved from the fact that, as agents and the acted-on, they have, while in the world, specific personalities and destinies. No two jivas are found to be alike. Each jiva,
Ramanuja argued, is what it is found to be in the world - suffering, crippled, poor, happy, rich, intelligent, and so on - because it is governed by the law of its deeds (Law of Karma), which has alienated it from its ontological source. This ontological source is Brahman.
For Ramanuja, both jivas and matter are the manifest forms of Brahman. Yet it is the appearance of the former that is the most urgent
problem confronting man (that is, man is a problem to himself) and the presence of the latter is linked up with the fact that the material world is "real" for the jiva. In Ramanuja's theistic scheme, jivas are degenerated spiritual forces which, when liberated from the Law of Karma, and the shadow of ignorance (avioya)
resulting from it, would realize their true identity as atman or Brahman.
The unity and ultimacy of the atmic-jaivicexistence of man, i.e., man as the symbol of the union between the spiritual and the material, the
transcendental and the phenomenal, the inner and the outer, postulated by both sankara and Ramanuja, the two great stalwarts of the Vedanta tradition, is conveyed poignantly by R. Balasubramanian thus: 9... the mind is responsible for both the freedom as well as bondage of the human being. If what binds a person leading to suffering of various kinds at
different levels is the work of the mind, what liberates a person from suffering is, again, the work of the mind ... A human being is a complex of spirit and matter.
The holistic Weltanschauung which forms the bedrock of the metaphysical systems in the Hindu tradition hides humanism, liberalism, pacifism and "openness of the individual mind to Being" at its very core. Whatever may be the aberrations the Hindu mind has happened to release in the history of India in the form of parochialism, casteism, and many anti-social and inhuman traits (the evils such as oppression against women, the child labour, the bonded labour, the exploitation of the poor and the derelicted, etc., are well-known), taken as a theoretical framework, the holistic Weltanschauung has got the force to prevail upon those aberrations. The belief in the Man-Nature unity is at the root of the Hindu psyche. It has shown itself in the ethics of tolerance and peace India as a state has adhered to. 10
Among recent metaphysicians, it is Aurobindo who has, in his theory of integralism, re-structured the Man-Nature union. For him Reality is a perpetual
creativity starting from the inconscient matter and going toward the superconscient Brahman. Nothing in this process is unreal or accidental. The World-Spirit or Sat-Cit-Anand, as he calls it, is Brahman itself whose play (lila) can be seen in the entire cosmic act. Thus every single entity is
potentially divine - it is capable of, and on its way toward, attaining the superconscient goal. The superconscient state (which is the state where the individual and the universal, the mental and physical, the
microscopic and the cosmic fuse together) is, for Aurobindo, the destination of all existence. Aurobindo writes: 11Nothing to the supramental sense is really finite: it is founded on a feeling of all in each and each in all ... it creates no walls of limitation; it is
an oceanic and othereal sense in which all particular sense knowledge and sensation is a wave or movement or spray or drop that is yet a concentration of the whole ocean and inseparable from the ocean.
Aurobindo describes Reality as a cosmic flow, the cosmic energy, the cosmic vitality manifesting itself through a myriad beings. The only way in which
Reality can realize itself is by creating these beings. Human consciousness with its multiple states is itself the expression of the evolving Real. The Real, Aurobindo says, has no excesses in its evolutionary
process. Matter, life and mind, i.e., the substrata which Reality emits as it ascends higher toward what he meaningfully characterizes as the "Supermind", are some kind of incarnation of Reality itself.
The evolution of Reality is an act inherent in its very nature. Thus the material world belongs to the growth of the Real. There is nothing in the perceiver or the perceived which falls outside the Real (the
World-Spirit). The entire variety we witness in Nature is, for Aurobindo,the creative adventure of the World-Spirit in the uncharted ocean of inconscience so that the infinite possibilities inherent in reality may
be expressed in material conditions.
One can easily see that the identity between the anthropocentric and cosmocentric concerns propounded by the Vedic-Upanisadic sages has found its most
systematic and elegant expression in Aurobindo's integralist metaphysics. Underneath Aurobindo's formidable literary and philosophical enterprise there is the constant endeavour to break the walls our worldly
consciousness posits between "I" and "Nature", human reality and the cosmos, the subject and the object, the individual and the universal, these being for him merely a part of the style the
World-Spirit works.
In Hindu metaphysics, the description of the Man-Nature union, of its width and depth, of its oceanic vastness, is shrouded in metaphors. These
metaphors would remind one of the language of the famous holists of all time, such as Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Jaspers, Josiah Royce and Heidegger. These metaphors emanate from the expanse the individual
consciousness enters into in order to capture the very spirit of the Man-Nature integration. Having a close affinity with the mystical experience, the experience of this integration would force on the language of
its description inexpressible nuances, a certain fluidity and elusiveness which, hermeneutically speaking, would remain open to numerous kinds of empathetic comprehension. However, if woven into the educational
scheme, this language of metaphors would not fail to generate in the people spontaneous friendliness toward the environment, physical and social.
References and Notes
1. Panikkar, Raimondo: The Vedic Experience. Pondicherry, 1983, pp. 58ff.
2. Gupta, Som Raj: The Word Speaks to the Faustian Man, Vol. 1. Delhi, 1991, p. 147.
3. See my "The Concept of Human Estrangement in Plotinism and Sankara Vedanta" in Harris,
R. Baine (Ed.): Neoplatonism and Indian Thought. Albany, 1982, pp. 243-255.
4. Ibid., p. 249.
5. Ibid., 250.
6. The Bhagavad-gita, VII, 1-12.
7. Ibid., VII, 1-12.
8. See, for the introduction of this concept, my Reason in Existentialism. Bombay, 1966, pp. 213-17.
9. See R. Balasubramanian's "Peace through Self-Integration and Social Integration" in R.
Balasubramanian and V.C. Thomas (Eds.): Perspectives in Philosophy, Religion and Art. New Delhi, 1993, pp. 2-19.
10. See my "The Culture of Peace and India's Tradition" in Tolerance in Indian Culture. R. Balasubramanian (Ed.), New Delhi, 1992, pp. 66-70.
11. Sri Aurobindo: The Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry, 1955, p. 989.
12. See my "Sri Aurobindo's Vision of Ultimate Reality" in Aryan Path, March-April, 1977, pp. 1-5.
top
|
