Self-realisation with special reference to U.G. Krishnamurti
The Unrational Philosophy of U.G. Krishnamurti
The Physics and Biology of Enlightenment
Comparative Study of J.K. and U.G.
University of Mysore
Department of Studies in Philosophy
Dr. M. Ramachandra
Professor and Chairman
Manasagangotri
Mysore 570 006
Dated: 25-11-2009
Foreword
I have the great pleasure of writing a foreword to this beautiful book of my beloved student, Sri Satya Simha, who unfortunately could not submit his Thesis for the PhD Degree to the Postgraduate Department of Philosophy, Mysore University, MGM due to his untimely death. The book pertains to the philosophy of U.G. Krishnamurthy, popularly known as U.G., who created revolution in the philosophical world. The author has made a deep study of U.G.'s philosophy and has based his study mainly on his personal interactions with U.G. He has also referred to other authentic sources. Though U.G. himself wanted to avoid all clichés and metaphysical controversies regarding the nature of self, Brahman, moksha etc., Mr. Satya Simha in his work promptly and successfully makes an attempt to study U.G. in the Vedantic light.
At many places the author quotes U.G.'s daring observations on many thinkers – both Eastern and Western – which motivates modern students to pursue philosophy in a new dimension. U.G. never cared to discuss about the nature of mind, matter etc. His was the philosophy of no mind.
Mr. Simha gives a graphic narration of U.G. undergoing a state of calamity which later transformed U.G.'s very lifestyle. U.G.'s firm conviction in his experiential state of calamity reveals itself in his statement, ‘With the great exception of Yajnavalkya and Gaudapada, no philosopher in the world can challenge me.’ As a person U.G. was an enigma. People from all walks of life, belonging to several philosophical schools and cults would visit him and find justification in his talks for their views. But U.G. refused to be affiliated to any particular school of thought, any ‘isms’. To persons who go in pursuit of spiritual truth, he gave a clarion call, ‘What is that you are searching for? You are searching for that which is already there within you.’ For him truth was a challenge and everybody had to find out this truth in his own way without attaching himself to any school of thought. Though U.G. was often known for his fiery talks, he was also soft like a child. His observation on children is very interesting, ‘Children are innocent, but they are not ignorant.’
I am proud that Mr. Satya Simha has made an objective study of U.G. from all perspectives and am also sad that he is not here with us to see his book published.
May his soul rest in Peace.
Since ages, man has been trying to become one with the silence of nature. In the process of becoming one with nature, or what we call self-realisation, man has adopted one path or the other. Self-realisation can be defined as a state of being one with the supreme or cosmos, which is believed to be the end of one's karmic cycle of birth and death.
The Need, Aim and Objective of the Study
Although man is at the peak of wealth, the modern day lifestyle has made him like a flower without fragrance, completely disturbed within. The confusion and conflict in one's own mind, and the list of conflicts in society, is endless. The aim of this study on self-realisation is to help mankind and society in general to recognise the real purpose of our life. Adaptable to our modern day lifestyle are many techniques and paths for becoming a realised soul. As any spiritual seeker or knowledgeable philosopher would know, it is the birthright of every human being to reach the stage of moksha or liberation and become a jivanmukta.
Historical Background
Hailing from an orthodox Brahmin family, U.G. spent his young days with his grandfather, a theosophist, whose house was a religious centre where endless discussions on philosophy, comparative religion, occultism, mysticism and metaphysics took place. His formative years were seeped in religious lore and saturated with spiritualism, with gurus, mahants, swamis and saints. Thus his early life came under the culture of spiritual personages for which he had great fascination. He travelled to all the holy places and centres of learning, and even spent seven summers studying classical yoga with Swami Shivananda.
During these years U.G. began feeling that something went wrong somewhere in the religious traditions in which he had been immersed since his childhood. There was a strong urge in him to have his own way of thinking and acting. Breaking established Brahmin traditions he threw out his sacred thread, the symbol of religious heritage, and became a rebel, rejecting all conventions of his culture. He started questioning himself. He was beginning to lose his respect for religious institutions and traditions which were the hallmark of his family. His attitude made his grandmother remark that he had the heart of a butcher, testifying to the fact that he had enormous determination and courage to disregard everything that represented the embodiment of Hindu heritage. Thus with one stroke he swept aside the entire psychological content of his past.
It so happened that U.G. once visited Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1931 at the latter's ashram at Tiruvannamalai near Madras. Ramana Maharshi was supposed to be a realised saint. But the realised soul did not make much of an impression on U.G. By the age of 21, U.G. became almost an atheist while studying philosophy and psychology during his bachelor's course at the University of Madras. At that time he wanted to be on his own in his quest.
Meanwhile, around his 25th year, he developed sex problems. He wanted to be celibate but soon realised that sex was a natural drive, a biological urge, and that it was not wise to suppress it while the institution of marriage was available to fulfil the urge. He reluctantly got married to a charming and beautiful Brahmin girl selected by his grandmother. He led his married life for 17 long years and fathered four children – two sons and two daughters. His spiritual quest drove him to the point of deserting his family.
His family became a problem for U.G. In his early 40s (around 1960) he was financially broke and wandered aimlessly after his family was sent back to India. He went to various places like New York, London and finally to Geneva. After looking at the credentials of the man whom the then-President of India, Dr. Radhakrishnan, praised as a great orator, the consul gave him time to get some money from India. This was the turning point in U.G.'s life when he met Valentine de Kerven. History was yet to be made, but the time had come.
Right from his 35th year, U.G. used to suffer from recurring headaches which were not relieved by aspirin and coffee. He began to grow young and looked like a boy in his teens. He was feeling as if he was headless and developed occult powers (which U.G. calls man's natural powers and instincts). He could see a person's entire past history. He could discern from a stranger's palm his entire destiny. These powers came to him after his 35th year but he never used them.
At this moment U.G. was contemplating about enlightenment (self-realisation) and the search for it – he realised that there is nothing like spiritual or psychological enlightenment, as there is no spirit or psyche at all. At that moment all his questions disappeared and he ceased to act through the thought structure. There was a collapse of the entire thought structure and, along with it, the separate self and an opposing society. He calls it a calamity. The physiological change must have touched him at the very molecular levels.
U.G. refers to the changes that occurred then in purely physiological terms: within a few hours he felt constriction at various locations in his body and head. Large swellings appeared at various sites, like the anterior surface of the throat and the centre of the forehead; also there were changes in the hypothalamus, pituitary, pineal and thymus glands. The eyelids stopped blinking and tears were rolling down, cleansing and lubricating the eyes in a new way. Energy seemed to flow upward from below, analogous to the kundalini energy. His temperature used to rise and his body used to get covered with ash, then his body temperature would drop to low levels barely enough to sustain life. His pulse would quicken and his temperature would rise again. The body would start with slow arching movements and eventually return to the normal state. Thus U.G. went through a series of death states with his heartbeat intact.
There was no psychic coordinator collecting, comparing and matching all the sensory inputs so that it could use the body for its purposes. Thought was in the background and came into operation only when there was a demand for the functioning of the organism. U.G.'s memory became extraordinary after the event.
The body became functional. His right side responded more to women, and left side more to men. (At the time of marriage and other Hindu ceremonies, the wife always sits on the right side of man. Is that a coincidence?) U.G.'s energy, otherwise utilised by thought, started to flow from his spine to the top of his head. He had only one sensitivity, that is, biological sensitivity. It became magnified. Celestial bodies like the moon had a strong effect on him.
People who come across U.G. are indelibly marked by a strange and lasting impression that each one finds difficult to define. People report that they are either deeply shaken or overtaken by curiosity after a few minutes talking with him. He doesn't offer hope, love, peace or spiritual salvation. On the contrary, his words are rather deflating. He discourages people from coming to see him and most often politely turns them away. Yet he is the most talked about thinker in India, and his biography, published by Penguin in India, topped the best seller list for many months.
U.G. endlessly repeats: ‘I have no message for mankind.’ Yet, ironically, thousands of people the world over feel otherwise and flock to U.G.'s unique brand of discourse.
Never has a philosopher become so famous while emphatically denying that he even has a philosophy. Yet, what makes a man who so avidly shuns publicity so talked about? How does one who never gives a public lecture get such a following? How does a ‘guru’ with no organisation get such media attention? U.G. is India's most controversial teacher and categorising him is extremely difficult. He has been called ‘the anti-guru’, ‘the raging sage’, ‘the thinker who shuns thought’ and ‘the anti-Krishnamurti’ – referring to his namesake, J. Krishnamurti, U.G.'s better known contemporary with whom he shares no family tie.
If any comparison makes sense, U.G. could be likened to a modern day cross between Socrates and Diogenes. However, he differs from the former because he undercuts the cornerstone of the Socratic method: discourse. However, he is similar to Socrates in that he has a disarming and implacable logic, and akin to Diogenes because he shows no deference to money, power, position or prestige. In a very real sense, U.G. is a unique witness to that elusive wisdom that has been the hallmark of every great mystic who has ever lived.
Methodology
Methodology is the way to solve the research problem systematically; without a proper methodology, the results are going to be undependable and defective. Hence, methodology denotes the methods and techniques used in the study undertaken by a researcher. It is an academic activity and an art of scientific investigation. Research is a careful investigation or enquiry, especially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge.
Creative Method/Descriptive Method
The descriptive method is the only way to explain the experience. A description is rather a clear-cut explanation, a method to unfold the layers of an experience or a state of being in the context of self-realisation. In this method, a research study will help one to understand the various aspects of an experience, or any subject, for that matter, which could rather be said as a theoretical knowledge of the practical experience.
Historical Method
The historical method is an integral part of any philosophical research. The historical background on the subject forms the basis of research activity and all theories and knowledge derived out of the study is grounded in the historical background.
Intuitive Method
The supersensory and super mental experience is called intuition or mystical experience. It has been universally accepted that a mystical experience is the only source for the origin of religion, and religion is the tool for self-realisation.
Comparative Method
In research methodology, this method occupies an important position. This method helps us to know the mindsets of two or more different thinkers or spiritual masters in our context. The comparative method is the easiest way to distinguish various paths and helps us to a great extent in the logical understanding of a research study.
Analytical Method
The analytical method consists of an in-depth and detailed exposition and analysis of a concept explained by different thinkers. It is all through study or analysis of a concept with multidimensional approaches. Different gurus and thinkers have interpreted self-realisation as that which can be achieved by following different paths or practising techniques.
Various techniques towards the path of Self-realisation
Karma Yoga
Karma is action and as the saying goes every action has an equal and opposite reaction; here I would note the significance of karmic law showing how all our actions of past, present and future plays an important role in reaching the state of a realised being.
Karma yoga is consecration of all actions and their fruits unto the Lord. It is performance of actions dwelling in union with the divine, removing attachment and remaining ever balanced in success and failure.
Karma yoga is selfless service unto humanity. It is the yoga of action which purifies the heart and prepares the heart and the mind for the reception of divine light or attainment of self-knowledge. The important point is to serve humanity without any attachment or egoism.
Action of some kind or the other is unavoidable. One cannot keep quiet without doing anything. What binds us to phenomenal existence or samsara is not the action but the idea of doership and enjoyership. Karma binds when it is done with a selfish motive, with the expectation of fruits of action. But when action is done without the expectation of fruits it is liberating. If you act as an instrument in the hands of the Lord, as a participant in the cosmic activity of nature, without expectation of fruits of action, that karma will not bind us. Karma then becomes karma yoga. Work unselfishly.
The practise of karma yoga prepares the aspirant for the reception of knowledge of the self. It makes him a proper adhikari (aspirant) for the study of Vedanta. The mind is filled with likes and dislikes, jealousy, etc. What is really wanted is practical Vedanta through ceaseless, selfless service. Selfless service is the only way to remove the impurities lurking in the mind. The karma yogi should have non-attachment to the fruits of actions. Non-attachment brings freedom from sorrow and fear. Non-attachment makes a man absolutely bold and fearless.
Dhyana Yoga
Meditation is an experience that cannot be described, just as colours cannot be described to a blind man. All ordinary experience is limited by time, space and causation. Our normal awareness and understanding do not transcend these bounds.
Finite experience, which is measured in terms of past, present and future, cannot be transcendental. Past and future are non-existent in the present. We live in illusion.
The meditative state transcends all such limitations. In it, there is neither past nor future, but only the consciousness. The closest analogous state that we can experience is deep sleep, in which there is neither time nor space nor causation. Meditation, however, differs from deep sleep, for it works profound changes in the psyche. By curbing and stilling the oscillations of the mind, meditation brings mental peace.
On the physical level, meditation helps to prolong the body's anabolic process of growth and repair, and to reduce the catabolic or decaying process. Meditation can significantly reduce the catabolic decline. This is because of the innate receptivity of the body cells.
Each of our body cells is governed by the instinctive subconscious mind. They have both an individual and a collective consciousness. When the thoughts and desires pour into the body, the cells are activated; the body always obeys the group demand. It has been scientifically proven that positive thoughts bring positive result to cells. As meditation brings about a prolonged positive state of mind, it rejuvenates body cells and retards decay. One cannot learn to meditate, anymore than one can learn to sleep. One falls into both states.
Jnana Yoga – The path of knowledge through inquiry and discussion.
Jnana means wisdom or discernment. Jnana yoga is the path of wisdom, and jnana meditation is many-faceted. The main purpose of jnana meditation is to withdraw the mind and emotions from perceiving life and oneself in a deluded way, so that one may behold and live in attunement with reality or spirit.
Jnana is knowledge. To know Brahman as one's own self is jnana. To say, ‘I am Brahman, the pure, all-pervading consciousness, the non-enjoyer, non-doer and silent witness’ is jnana. To behold the one self everywhere is jnana.
Ajnana is ignorance. To identify oneself with the illusory vehicles of body, mind, prana and the senses is ajnana. To say, ‘I am the doer, the enjoyer, I am a Brahmin, a brahmachari, this is mine, he is my son’ is ajnana. Jnana alone can destroy ajnana, even as light alone can remove darkness.
Just as space appears to be of three kinds – absolute space, space limited by a jar, and space reflected in the water of a jar – so also there are three kinds of intelligence. They are absolute intelligence, intelligence reflected in maya, and intelligence reflected in jiva (individual soul). The notion of the doer is the function of intelligence as reflected in the intellect. This, together with the notion of jiva, is superimposed by the ignorant on the pure and limitless Brahman, the silent witness.
The illustration of absolute space, space limited by a jar, and space reflected in the water of a jar, is given to convey the idea that, in reality, Brahman alone is. Because of maya, however, it appears as three. The notion that the reflection of intelligence is real is erroneous and is due to ignorance. Brahman is without limitation; limitation is a superimposition on Brahman.
The identity of the supreme self and jiva, or reflected self, is established through the statement of the Upanishads: ‘Tat tvam asi’ (Thou art that). When the knowledge of the identity of the two arises, then world problems and ignorance, with all their offshoots, are destroyed, and all doubts disappear.
Self-realisation, or direct intuitive perception of the supreme self, is necessary for attaining freedom and perfection. This jnana yoga, or the path of wisdom, is, however, not meant for the masses, whose hearts are not pure enough and whose intellects are not sharp enough to understand and practise this razor-edge path. Hence, karma yoga and upasana (bhakti) are to be practised first, which will render the heart pure and make it fit for the reception of knowledge.
Bhakti Yoga
Bhakti yoga is pure spiritual devotion, of love for God. The deity is the beloved and the devotee is the lover. In bhakti yoga, everything is but a manifestation of the divine, and everything else is meaningless, including the ego. When the bhakta (devotee) is blessed by divine grace he feels an undivided union and a non-dual consciousness prevails. Bhakti yoga is regarded as the most direct method to merge with cosmic consciousness. Bhakti yoga is based on the doctrine, ‘Love is God and God is love’. The bhakta experiences separation and longs to meet or even just to get a glimpse of his beloved. Nothing else attracts him, nothing else holds his attention, everything else is meaningless.
Bhakti yoga is the most direct method, the shortest way to experience the divine. All knowledge rests on the foundation of true faith, true devotion, i.e., bhakti yoga. There is nothing higher than love, and bhakti yoga is the religion of love. In whatever form bhakti finds the divine, all other forms are magically present. The form literally becomes the deity and devotee, all become one. This is the essence of bhakti yoga. Knowledge and wisdom alone provide awareness of the cosmic principle. Bhakti yoga lets one see the absolute manifested in all experience.
U.G.'s Philosophy
With conventional techniques regarded as various paths towards self-realisation, we have been grounded with the information that self-realisation is something that we can get by practising certain techniques or a certain path and eventually bring the mind to a thoughtless state, all routed in the desire for permanent bliss or ecstasy, and many more such phrases that we use to denote that particular state of being. U.G. has consistently been saying that there is no division between the body and the mind. The reality of all that is there is one and only one, which sounds much like advaita. In fact, U.G. further emphasises that the whole of the self-realisation process, or what he calls a calamity, is much attributed to a biological mutation, unlike every other philosophy and scripture from time immemorial which have been claiming self-realisation as a psychological process.
U.G. talks of enlightenment as a neurobiological state of being which is utterly free of religious, psychological or mystical implications. This represents a new and genuinely fresh approach to the experience. U.G. also scoffs at the sacred, the religious and particularly at the whole idea of enlightenment (self-realisation).
Although U.G.'s shocking statements are largely unacceptable to religious buffs, what he says has tremendous significance for those who are searching for enlightenment.
How U.G. challenges body-mind dualism and spiritualism-materialism.
The mechanism of mind, its existence and finally its illusion
Self-realisation
Upanishads on Self-realisation
Advaita on Self-realisation
U.G. on Self-realisation
U.G. on the Law of Nature
We have polluted the sky, the waters, everything. Nature's laws know no reward, only punishment. The reward is only that you are in harmony with nature. The whole problem started when man decided that the whole universe was created for his exclusive enjoyment. We have superimposed the notion of evolution and progress over nature. Our mind – and there are no individual minds, only mind – which is the accumulation of the totality of man's knowledge and experience, has created the notion of the psyche and evolution. Only technology progresses, while we as a race are moving closer to complete and total destruction of ourselves and the world. Everything in man's consciousness is pushing the whole world, which nature has so labouriously created, towards destruction. There has been no qualitative change in man's thinking; we feel about our neighbours just as the frightened cave man felt towards his. The only thing that has changed is our ability to destroy our neighbour and his property.
Comparative Study of U.G. and J.K.
U.G. and J.K. are undoubtedly from the same background of the Theosophical Society.
Their philosophy has a lot in common to a certain extent on many aspects, but when it comes to the core of self-realisation, the comparative study reveals that there is an ocean of difference between them in the very root of their thinking, experience and outcome.
Childhood
On the 9th of July, 1918, U.G. Krishnamurti was born at 6:12 a.m. to Srimati Bharathi, daughter of Sri Tummalapalli Gopala Krishna Murthy of Gudiwada and wife of Sri Sitaramaiah of Tenali, at the residence of Sri Vemuri Chinnayya Rao in Godugupeta, Machilipatnam.
The child was named Gopala Krishnamurti, the future U.G., ‘U’ standing for the surname Uppaluri. He would later be acclaimed as a world teacher whose philosophy would earn for him the sobriquet of a ‘radical revolutionary beyond any logical comprehension’.
The Seven Wonders in Seven Stages
The number seven has played a pivotal role in the life of U.G. ever since he was born. U.G. noticed during the week following the ‘explosion’ some fundamental changes in the functioning of his senses. The stage was set for seven baffling events:
On the First Day
U.G. noticed that his skin was so soft that it felt like silk and also had a peculiar kind of glow, a golden glow. He was shaving and each time he ran the razor down his face it slipped. He changed blades but it did not make any difference. He touched his face. His sense of touch was different.
On the Second Day
He became aware for the first time that his mind was in a ‘declutched state’. He was upstairs in the kitchen where Valentine had prepared some tomato soup. He looked at it and did not know what it was. She told him it was tomato soup. He tasted it and then he recognised it. ‘That is how tomato soup tastes.’ He swallowed the soup and he was back in the odd frame of mind; rather it was the frame of no mind. He asked Valentine again, ‘What is that?’ Again she said it was tomato soup. Again U.G. tasted it. Again he swallowed and forgot what it was. He played with this for some time. It was such a funny business, this declutched state.
On the Third Day
Some friends of U.G. invited themselves over for dinner. He agreed to cook for them but somehow he could not smell or taste properly. He became gradually aware that these two senses had been transformed. Every time some odour, whether from an expensive perfume or from cow dung, entered his nostril it irritated his olfactory nerves in just about the same way, it was the same irritation. And then every time he tasted something he tasted only the dominant ingredient, the taste of the other ingredients came slowly later. From that moment on, perfume made no sense to him and spicy food had no appeal for him. He could taste only the dominant spice, chili or whatever it was.
On the Fourth Day
Something happened to his eyes. U.G. and his friends were at Rialto restaurant in Gstaad. It was here that U.G. became aware of a tremendous ‘vista vision’ – like in a concave mirror. Things were coming toward him or moving into him, as it were.
And things going away from him seemed to move out from inside of him. It was such a puzzle to him, as if his eyes were a gigantic camera, changing focus without his doing anything.
Similarly, U.G. was able to see everything very clearly. He could see even minute particles with total clarity; he could even count the hairs of the people in the hotel.
When U.G. returned from the restaurant he looked in the mirror to find that there was something odd about his eyes, they were fixed. He kept looking at the mirror for a long time and observed that his eyelids were not blinking. For almost forty-five minutes he stared into the mirror; still no blinking of the eyes. Instinctive blinking was over for him and it still is.
[Note: In Hindu mythology, gods are called animeshas, those whose eyes do not blink.]
For some other reason, drops of tears secreted from the corners of his eyes. In Hindu classical literature they are called ‘spiritual tears’ (adhyatmika baashpa).
On the Fifth Day
U.G. noticed a change in his hearing. When he heard the barking of a dog, the barking seemed to originate inside him. All sounds seemed to come from within him and not from outside. They still do.
The five senses changed in five days.
On the Sixth Day
U.G. was lying on a sofa. Valentine was in the kitchen. And suddenly his body disappeared; there was no body there. He looked at his hand – ‘Is this my hand?’ There was no actual question, but the whole situation was somewhat like that. So he touched his body – nothing. He did not feel that there was anything except the touch, the point of contact. Then he called Valentine and asked, ‘Do you see my body on this sofa?’ She touched it and said, ‘This is your body.’And yet that did not give him any assurance. He said to himself, ‘What is this funny business? My body is missing.’ His body had gone away and has never come back.
On the Seventh Day
U.G. was lying on the same sofa, relaxing, enjoying the declutched state. Valentine would come in and he would recognise her as Valentine. She would go out of the room; then, finish, blank – Valentine was nowhere. He would think, ‘What is this?’ He could not even imagine what Valentine had looked like.
He would listen to the sounds coming from the kitchen and ask himself, ‘What are those sounds coming from inside of me?’ But he could not relate to them. He had discovered that all his senses were without a coordinating mechanism inside himself; the coordinator was missing. Then he felt something happening inside of him, the life energy drawing to a focal point from different parts of his body. He said to himself, ‘Now you have come to the end of your life. You are going to die.’ Then he called Valentine and said, ‘I am going to die, Valentine, and you will have to do something with the body. Hand it over to the doctors, maybe they will use it. I don't believe in burning or burial. In your own interest you have to dispose off this body. One day it will stink. So, why not give it away?’
Valentine replied, ‘U.G., you are a foreigner. The Swiss government won't take your body. Forget about it.’
The dreadful movement of U.G.'s life force came to a focal point. Valentine's bed was empty. He moved over and stretched out on it, getting ready to die. A person who does not fear anything in the world still trembles when death touches him. He tries to save himself in a number of ways. The desire or will to survive persists strongly. But U.G. did not feel any such fear. He took the issue of death very casually.
Valentine ignored what was going on. She left. But before she left she said, ‘One day you say this thing has changed, another day you say that thing has changed and a third day you say something else has happened. What is all this, U.G.? And now you say you are going to die. You are not going to die. You are all right, hale and healthy.’
In U.G., ‘then a point arrived where it looked as if the aperture of a camera was trying to close itself.’ It is the only simile he could think of. The aperture was trying to close itself and something was there trying to keep it open. Then after a while there was no will to do anything, not even to prevent the aperture from closing itself. Suddenly, it closed. He did not know what happened after that. Life conked out.
This process of dying lasted for forty-nine minutes. U.G. Krishnamurti is now physically dead, literally, in the village of Saanen in Switzerland.
The description of the process of forty-nine minutes of death was entirely different from the way it had actually occurred. In fact, this process that had happened at that time was beyond any description because there was nobody there thinking in such terms. In this connection two important points should be observed. Something was there trying to keep it open. What was that something?
That something from the inner layers was trying its utmost to stop the closure of the aperture. What it was is not known. At any cost it had struggled to face death till the end. The desire to do something was missing in U.G. The will to prevent the closure of the aperture evaporated. From the inner layers this mysterious something fought tooth and nail to overcome the aperture to the last minute and failed. It lost its battle against death.
The first point to be observed here is that the will or volition to prevent the closure of the aperture was missing.
The second point is that even if the will or desire had been there in U.G., there was still no idea of coming back, since the entity of the self was missing. That means there was no desire to become alive again. From this it can be inferred that there was some unknown thing distinct from the will and desire. Perhaps it was the body machine with its self-propelling capacity (as an independent and autonomous entity) that fought to protect itself with its own energy, gathering and garnering all its hidden powers together and battling with death for forty-nine minutes in a thousand ways. In other words, the self-built, self-propelling body (as a special and separate entity) has its own power and is distinct from the person living in the thought sphere.
To return to U.G.'s virtual death: his hands and feet became cold, his body became stiff, his heartbeat slowed down, his breathing slowed down and there was a gasping for breath. Up to a point, he was there – his breath, his last breath, as is were, and then he was finished. What happened after that, nobody knows. There was nobody there to describe it.
For U.G., who was in eternal sleep, the sound waves of the telephone worked as an awakening call. The limbs of his corpse began to show a pulse. There was a microscopic movement in the entire body. It was like the blossoming of a hundred-petaled lotus in quick motion.
The body of U.G. became alive and kicking as if it went through a transmigration for a short period.
U.G., who was literally dead physically a few minutes before was resuscitated back to life. It was an automatic bodily process. U.G. became conscious and he touched life. Gradually all his energies were restored. The body of U.G. spontaneously took a heavy breath.
Afterwards, there was regular breathing and his eyes opened themselves like doors. His eyeballs began to roll but the eyelashes did not blink. U.G. appeared like a person who emerged from the tomb with fresh life; he rose from the bottom of the ocean of death.
U.G. got up from the bed and began to walk downstairs as if in stupor, like a zombie. After a pause, he reiterated in a sledgehammer style, ‘Everything else but the body has died and the traces of the ego connected with that. This was the final and ultimate death. Now, there is no enlightenment. There is no one here to be enlightened,’ he uttered emphatically.
Thus the seven wonderful events in U.G.'s life took place in seven days.
The Uppaluri Family
In the saline soils of the coastal state of Andhra Pradesh, an herb known as uppi is found. After the harvest, this type of whitish grass makes its appearance all over the fields as a weed. Hence this place is called Uppuluru. Some say that since sea salt (uppu in Telugu) is found here, the village is known as Uppuluru or Uppaluru.
According to the ancient Vedic cult adumbrated by rishi lore, the gotra rishi of a family is the one who had chalked out the path of spiritual practise for the upliftment of that family.
The Uppuluri family descends from the sage Atreya. Thus the members of that family are said to be of the Atreyasa gotram (‘sa’ is a suffix which indicates that the family is of a particular Gotram). The Uppalari family is trai-rushyam, that is to say, it had three great ancestral sages: Atreya, Archanana, and Savasya.
The Uppaluri family belongs to a respectable lineage of Aaruvela Niyogis. By birth they are intelligent and shrewd. A number of scholars were born in this lineage and earned a name for themselves for their attainments in alankara sastra (poetics), prosody and Sanskrit grammar. They had a firm grip on tarka sastra (logic). They could recite a good number of Sanskrit verses from ancient literature. Some of the ancestors were in search of truth and were engaged in spiritual inquiry. They renounced everything and became ascetics, while some occupied key positions in the estates of local landlords. But primarily they were agriculturists.
[Note: U.G. was referred to as ‘Krishna’ in his younger years.]
At the age of three, Krishna's hair was ready to be offered at Tirupati to the deity, Lord Venkateswara. The child had a strong liking for travel. He was always first at the gate in a train or bus station.
It was observed that Krishna was very intelligent by birth and wiser than other boys of his age. He used to observe everyone closely and imitate them. He was accompanying his grandfather to different types of performances of artists such as harikatha bhagavatars and was imitating them for the amusement of others.
The Sprouting of the Seed
Even in early childhood, Krishna was pious. Pantulu was proud of his grandson; he arranged a separate prayer room for him. Krishna did not allow anyone into his prayer room. A number of pictures and idols of different gods were arranged in the room as he liked and he worshipped them in his own fashion.
Earlier, Krishna was sleeping with his grandfather on the same bed. But now he was provided with a separate bed. At midnight, however, Krishna would wake up and sneak into his grandfather's bed. When Krishna woke up in the morning, to his great surprise he would always find himself back on his own bed. He did not know how he got there. Later he understood that his grandfather carefully brought him back quietly to his own bed. So thereafter when he woke up at midnight, Krishna began to crawl underneath his grandfather's bed and slept there. What he wanted was the proximity of his grandfather, whether under or above the bed, it didn't matter. Grandfather was everything for him.
By the time he was five years old, Krishna was mentally sharp and his memory was powerful. He impressed everybody with his ability to memorize anything in a very short time. In the early hours of each day, his house resounded with the chanting of Vedic verses. Krishna would wake up slowly to the sound of the recitation and gradually he too began to recite. Sometimes without knowing what he was doing, Krishna would involuntarily get up from his bed and walk to the place where the verses were being chanted. He would sit there in a semiconscious state. On days when there was no chanting he still felt he was listening to it.
In those years he memorized a number of philosophical works like Panchadasi and Naishkarmya Siddhi. He could recite verses from them just as any scholar would. If someone asked him to quote a particular verse he would recite it instantly. If he was asked for the context and reference of a certain verse he could supply them.
In Bangalore, the alphabet learning ceremony for Krishna was arranged. According to the Kannada tradition, the boy was to be dressed in a long coat, a loose pyjama and a turban. At an auspicious moment he would be taught the alphabet for the first time.
On returning home from Bangalore, Pantulu sent his grandson to a nearby elementary school. Till then Krishna was like a free bird. But now he did not like to be regimented by the schedules of the school. He began to abhor the very idea of school. But he had to go to school and he did so without much interest. He was getting irritated often. The facial expressions of teachers and their behaviour repelled him. Punishment was considered more important in the school than teaching.
Krishna was classified as a special case by virtue of his social status. Even otherwise he would never go unnoticed wherever he might be. He attracted attention and admiration. He was a boisterous and blithe boy full of childish pranks. He was totally carefree, he feared none; he was adventurous, audacious, strong-willed and steadfast. He was kind, humane, considerate and generous. He was talkative and quick-witted. He always had a handful of admirers around him.
Krishna had a number of friends at school. On some holidays all the friends used to assemble at the Mound of Tarts and play there amidst the ruins of the Bauddha aramas, a huge area which acted a hub of religious activities in days of yore. Jainism and Buddhism flourished as state religions in ancient Andhra. In the course of time their followers became debauched, hence the place was abandoned, but the derogatory name for the place remained. Krishna went to school as a routine but he had no interest in the school curriculum.
Every day, Krishna listened with rapt attention to Upanishads, Dakshinamurti Stotram, Brahma Sutras, Bhagavad Gita and other philosophical works, along with commentaries on them. He would be quite thoughtful while trying to understand Vedic philosophy. ‘I must reach the peaks of philosophy and know the self. I must attain salvation. But how? By meditation? If so, how, when and where? By chanting the sacred mantra incessantly?’ Hitherto he had wanted to ask God to grant him the gift of showing his mother. But now Krishna would pray for ways and means of attaining salvation.
Krishna used to read classical stories, biographies of yogis and legends of Prahlada, Markandeya, Dhruva and other great devotees of God. ‘I too should be as great as Prahlada or Dhruva’ he thought. He dreamed that he flew to the Himalayas and meditated there. His sole aim was to acquire knowledge of the self to attain salvation.
In ancient times, saints and other ascetics were able to curse and cast a spell on someone if they were displeased with him. They also suggested ways and means of release from the spell. If that was possible for them, why not for him? If they had the power of their meditation, he had the purity of heart. Yes, he could, by thought, word and deed, achieve what he desired. Krishna settled slowly in this new line of thinking. Without depending upon the gods in the temples or relying upon anyone else for help, he wanted to achieve what he wanted by himself with this newly acquired power. Thus at the age of seven Krishna became convinced that thought had inherent power.
One evening, under the great banyan tree of Adyar, Krishna observed an inspiring speaker addressing the august gathering in English. She was clad in a perfectly white dress, like an angel who had just descended from heaven. He did not know who she was nor did he understand what she spoke. He could only guess that she was a great person and that was why the audience was spellbound. He was thrilled and enthralled. Krishna stood stock still, looking at her with wide-open, unblinking eyes. Her fluency and sweetness of speech could impress anyone. Krishna totally forgot himself and where he was while the eloquent speaker captivated his attention totally. An ardent desire engulfed him to learn and speak English fluently like her. He should fearlessly converse with the Englishmen, speak like them and get their applause. She concluded her talk and left the dais.
After some time, Krishna became conscious of himself and the surroundings. Exciting currents of ecstasy moved through his whole body. Later, Krishna learned that the lady was Annie Besant. U.G.'s grandfather told him that she was called Vasanta Mata by the Telugu people. Krishna observed that his grandfather had a few European acquaintances and that he was talking to them freely. He felt somewhat proud of him.
Pantulu could see that his grandson liked Adyar and its surroundings. He therefore thought that if Krishna was educated there his ambition for him would be fulfilled without much difficulty; his daughter's prophesy too would become a reality. He therefore decided to admit him in the Guindy National School which was run under the management of the Theosophical Society.
Krishna was happy over the change. He could be rid of the abhorrent teachers he had in Gudiwada. The grandfather and the grandson went to the Guindy school. The buildings and the atmosphere were fascinating. Pantulu told Krishna that the teaching methods in this school were altogether different. Children were not punished with canes here in the name of discipline. Teachers took the viewpoints of children into consideration. They didn't behave like dictators. Theirs was a new approach. In the new surroundings and amongst new people, Krishna felt lonely. He had a liking for the change and yet some dislike too. None could converse with him in Telugu, while a few talked to him in Tamil and many in English.
After a couple of days it was announced that a dignitary was visiting the school and that he would address the students. Students were directed to come to school neatly dressed. When the visitor entered the class everyone got up from their seats respectfully and saluted him. He too smiled, nodded at them and took his seat. Krishna was stunned to see him. ‘Oh, this was the gentleman that helped me long ago to collect a few shells on the beach. I wanted to know at that time who he was. Good. I am happy to see him here now,’ he thought. He keenly observed the dignitary and his expression. He was Jiddu Krishnamurti (J.K.), popularly known as ‘Krishnaji’.
Krishnaji addressed the students in English, speaking slowly. Krishna followed him attentively. But after a while he lost his interest. The personality of Krishnaji was commanding. The speaker appeared to be more attractive than his speech.
In those days, tourists and other visitors to Madras could have a bird's-eye view of the city by hovering in an airplane for five rupees per head. Pantulu and Kittu had made that trip once before. While flying in the air through the clouds Krishna observed the pilot, who looked like a great hero to him. He sat in the front in a dignified manner and flew the plane.
Krishna had many fantasies in those days. He wanted to become a train engineer so he could see many towns. He enjoyed a number of classical stage dramas. He particularly observed the spectators who applauded when the climax scene was being enacted. He wanted to become a great actor and receive overwhelming applause from the audience. He had reminiscences of many such fantasies from his early childhood. But now his aspirations were altogether different. His sole aim was liberation; knowing the self was his only goal.
Koumara Nadi
U.G.'s grandfather was always eager to know Krishna's future. There are different traditional ways of knowing it. Pantulu had complete faith in Nadi astrology. One day, he and his grandson went to a Koumara Nadi astrologer whom he had consulted earlier. The astrologer lived in Royapet, Madras.
The astrologer received them cordially and looked at Krishna. Pantulu submitted Krishna's horoscope to him. The astrologer went with the horoscope in hand to search for the matching palm leaf manuscript from the archives he had inside the house. These Nadi manuscripts were written on palm leaves in old Tamil. Some were also written in Sanskrit.
There are different Nadi astrologies, e.g., Parashara, Dhruva, Sukra, Chandrakala, Saptarishi, Bhrigu (Koumara) and Nandi. There is a legend which says that some yogis had contributed to these Nadis centuries ago. According to another legend, Lord Shiva Himself incarnated as Bhrigu Maharishi. The Maharishi meditated earnestly for a long time and attained higher levels of knowledge and various powers. He was sympathetic to human beings and their welfare. He prepared horoscopes of important persons and future prophets on palm leaves.
Pantulu consulted the Bhrigu Samhita, also known as Koumara Nadi. The astrologer was believed to have inherited the original ancient manuscripts from his ancestors. Pantulu believed that the readings of this Nadi were accurate.
After an hour, the astrologer emerged with a manuscript. He was sweating profusely. He wrote down the whole horoscope of Krishna in Tamil as it was written on the palm leaves of the manuscript. Later he himself translated it from Tamil into English and read it out to Pantulu before handing it over to him.
Pantulu compensated the astrologer generously and bade him goodbye. Krishna and Pantulu walked up to a typing office in Royapet. The astrologer's reading was neatly typed and Krishna observed how the machine was speedily typing the text. The typist was not looking at the keyboard while typing. Krishna watched how his fingers moved on the entire keyboard. He was impressed by the skill of the typist. Both he and his grandfather then returned to Adyar.
On returning from Royapet, Pantulu become thoughtful and silent. Krishna expected something more from his grandfather. Krishna suspected that his grandfather was hiding something from him. He silently left the room and walked to the verandah. Pantulu recalled his daughter's last words. She emphatically told him on her deathbed the same thing that was contained in the astrological prediction. Each matched the other exactly. Her prophesy was not an imaginary wish. It was now clear that her words were destined to take shape as reality in the future.
Reading
Vasishta and Viswamitra offer obeisance to Goddess Parvati and discuss the tenth bhava of the native.
The native's name is Gopala Krishnamurti. Sitaramayya is the name of his father. And his mother's name is Bharati. The planetary position at the time of his birth was as follows: Mithuna Lagnam, Sun and Jupiter in the ascendant, Mercury, Moon and Saturn in the second house, Mars in the fourth and Rahu in the sixth house, and Venus and Ketu in the twelfth house.
At this stage, Vasishta says that the native will attain moksha in this very life.
Educational attainments must be very high. He is endowed with versatility, imagination, intuitive perception and fluency of speech. He must attain prosperity through personal merit, but there is no steady income and it will not be proportionate to his name and fame. He will have much more money than ancestral inheritance. Since he is distinctly spiritual-minded, he will always be indifferent to money.
He comes into contact with great men very early in life. Breaks in education; begins professional study in his twenty-third year, but ends it abruptly.
After the twenty-fifth year, he takes up the line of teaching and lecturing for an organisation which stands for universal brotherhood and essential unity of all religions. That brings him wisdom, friendship with great men, increased reputation as a great speaker and respect of learned men. The nature of his work is such that he constantly travels, comes into contact with great men from different fields and gains experience.
After his thirty-fifth year, there is a change in his life. Residence in foreign lands. There is an indication of constant and fruitless travelling around the world. Intense inward struggle. But the inner crisis will end well. He will be helped by a great teacher who puts him on the right path. He will be aided by a woman who will help him establish himself in foreign lands permanently.
Forty-fifth to fifty-fifth year are years of great importance in his life. He will be born again in his forty-ninth year. Becomes an international personality. He will be constantly on the move. His name goes to the four corners of the world. Honours will be showered upon him. Books will be written about him. Great respect for him in all lands. As years go by, a great organisation with huge properties and a great following grow around him to spread his teaching.
Around his fifty-fifth year, there is an indication of death under tragic circumstances, failing which he lives right up to a ripe old age preaching all the richness of his personal experience. He will leave his mark on the world as one of the great teachers of mankind.
~
Soon after Krishna attained the age when he could comprehend the things and happenings around him, his grandfather's daily routine, behaviour and style attracted his attention. For him, Pantulu was a hero. He moulded himself after him carefully. In his young mind the emotional bond with his grandfather had already formed. Krishna's investment in strengthening this bond was so great that even the slightest disruption in it would have been intolerable.
The Theosophical Society had been providing food to all its members in specified rows. One was marked for traditional and orthodox Brahmins. The other rows were meant for others. On that day Krishna had a new idea. He caught hold of his grandfather's hand and pulled him towards the second row of diners; he sat near a plate and asked his grandfather to sit next to him. Everyone in the row felt happy when Pantulu joined them. Pantulu felt uncomfortable but restrained himself and finished his meal. Krishna was shocked at this vehement reaction of his grandfather. He did not anticipate it.
Krishna continued to be indifferent to school education. Pantulu tried his best to persuade him to pay attention to schoolwork. Krishna always paid a deaf ear to his admonitions. Pantulu thought of providing special coaching for him in the evenings. Krishna was sent to a tutor every day in the evening, after dinner.
After returning from Adyar, Krishna's desire to learn English increased. He started to read regularly the English periodicals his grandfather subscribed to, whether he understood them or not. Krishna purchased the Sankaranarayana Dictionary to find the Telugu equivalents of difficult English words. His vocabulary thus improved gradually. The popular J.V. Ramanaiah's English and Telugu Grammar and Wren and Martin's English Grammar helped him learn the language. As a result, he could score 80% on English tests. His grip on the language grew gradually stronger and his confidence rose.
A few days before when he went to Adyar, Krishna realised that the mind had tremendous will power. By utilising that power he had been satisfying his petty desires. This ability strengthened his attitude of independence and increased his self-confidence. Krishna observed keenly that his desires needed some time to materialise. He didn't understand why things had to take time. His will power was revealing itself on various occasions. About half of his desires were being fulfilled. For Krishna, school was nothing but jail, so he would often try to find ways and means of absconding from it.
Krishna was thus getting all his wishes fulfilled by virtue of his own will and confidence. The worship in the temples, the vows to the gods and other related procedures became completely dispensable. He would say, ‘When I have the ability to achieve what I want with my own will power, does not depending on idols belittle my own powers? Why should I underestimate my Himalayan self-confidence? There are no powers at all in the idols. My own planetary power is enough for me!’
After that, Krishna did not go to any temple. Different gods in temples, including his favourite, Karanji Anjaneya Swamy in Bangalore, faded away in his mind. At the tender age of seven years, Krishna developed an immense dislike for God. He turned his back on God, saying, ‘God is totally routed out from my consciousness.’ This is the first of the different transformations, each of which occurred in his life at the end of a cycle of seven years.
‘What is meant by death? What happens to a person after death? Where does he go? Are there really heaven and hell?’ Krishna wondered.
In 1926 while touring Andhra Pradesh, Krishnaji (J.K.) visited Bezawada. He stayed with Rajashekargopalachari Iyengar. It was announced that his talks were scheduled at Museum Hall on Machilipatnam Road. The local theosophists, Hindu scholars, and others attended the meetings. Krishnaji hailed from the Andhra area and held an extraordinary attraction. Krishna could only understand parts of Krishnaji's speech in English. He wanted to see him again. He noticed that everyone regarded Krishnaji as some sort of heavenly being, the chosen one.
Krishna paid more attention to learning English. Whenever he could he would read some English book or other. He started reading English newspapers aloud and tried to improve his pronunciation. Whenever he came across anything interesting in any paper he would save a clipping of it to read it again later and understand it. In a short time he could grasp different idioms in the language. He developed a little ease in expressing himself. Though there was no one before him he would speak aloud as if he was addressing a gathering.
Krishna did not like such a rigid way of living. He was very inquisitive and wanted to learn the ‘why and how’ of everything. In 1916, the construction of the building for the Theosophical Society Centre in Gudiwada was completed. U.G.'s grandfather named it Krishna Nivas and handed it over to the Society. The authoritative, hierarchical structure in the Society disturbed Krishna’s sensitive, fragile mind; he did not understand why such abominable customs existed. He felt it was so unfortunate that people had to reconcile themselves to their fate; there didn't seem to be anything they could do to change it.
Instance to Be Noted
The prayer room of Pantulu on the second floor was kept under lock and key. No one was allowed to go into that room. It was not opened when Pantulu was out of station; he always kept the key with him. Krishna was curious to know about the secrets of the room. He thoroughly searched for the key in every nook and corner of the house. He was determined to open the room.
Once when Pantulu went out of town to Bezawada on court work and Durgamma went out to visit a relative, Krishna thought that it was the opportune moment for him to unfold the mystery. He took a bunch of keys, told others in the house that he was going out and pretended to do so. Instead he sneaked up to the second floor by the wooden steps after closing the door at the bottom of the staircase. He was worried that he might have to try all the keys to open the lock but to his surprise he could open it with the very first key. Making sure that no one was looking he slowly opened the door to the prayer room. After entering the room he closed the door behind him.
He could sense an unknown fragrance in the room. He had the feeling of entering a sacred shrine. He scanned the entire room. In it he did not find pictures of Hindu gods that he could in the prayer room on the first floor. He saw the photographs of prominent people associated with the Theosophical Society. He recognised one of the photographs as that of Annie Besant. She was seen meditating sitting on a tiger skin. Krishna could also recognise a picture of Jesus Christ. There were many portraits around. He looked closely at each of them.
One of them attracted his attention. He continued to look at it for some time. He was fascinated by it and his eyes were transfixed on it. All of a sudden his thoughts travelled in myriad directions. His mental bearings were cut loose. He felt a strong force which enveloped and overwhelmed him. The person in the portrait was charming, sublime, noble and seraphic in appearance, representing an ancient wisdom embedded with spiritual secrets.
The portrait appeared magnetic. Some vibrations were emanating from it whirling and swirling. Krishna experienced the vibrations like spirals of waves. The feeling was akin to a keyboard being played on by the fingers of a musician. He fixed his gaze on the portrait and that had a freezing effect. However, he felt an unknown yet familiar warmth pervading the atmosphere. He lost awareness of his surroundings. Though the room was small, it appeared vast and without walls. He had no sense of time and space. Everything stood still.
By a divine afflatus his consciousness was awakened with an unknown thrill which he had never experienced before. Some inner voice seemed to be heard in an extremely low tone. He felt that some doors of the inner recesses of his mind were being opened. The portrait seemed to say, ‘I am here exclusively for you to discover. Now you cannot escape from my looks. You have a goal the nature of which you are not yet aware but must discover. The new task is designed by destiny in the infinite mystery of its divine purpose.’
After a while Krishna became conscious. The mystical moments came to an end. He rose from the very depths of his being into his normal self. He was released from the hypnotic spell. Slowly he locked the room and went down the stairs like a robot as if he were emerging from an unknown realm. Was it a hallucination or was it real? That whole day Krishna was thinking of the person in that portrait. He now knew the mystery of his grandfather's prayer room. But he was faced with another question: ‘Who was that great man?’ Krishna secretly opened that room again the next day and spent some more time there.
One day he was browsing through past issues of the periodical Theosophist and suddenly came across the history of the great saints of the Society. There were also a number of photographs in the periodicals. He could immediately recognise that great saint's photograph among them. He read that some saints of Tibet continue to live forever in an invisible form and move about in the world. They are said to be competent practitioners of yoga. They also appear to initiate people and help them along in their spiritual journey. Krishna read about the saints and their deeds. Kuthumi (Koot Hoomi) is one such master, also called Kutupananda. Krishna learned that he is popularly known as K.H. by theosophists.
In his own prayer room, sitting in padmasana posture, he meditated. He remembered the Vedic recitals of his early childhood and they reverberated in his ears from time to time. He knew that the highest knowledge was self-realisation. For a person who realised the self nothing would be impossible, so he wanted to attain immortality through self-realisation.
A number of ascetics, Muslim fakirs and others used to come to Gudiwada and stay outside the town in some abandoned places, in the ruins of Bauddha aramas or in the temples. They wore different types of garbs and would not stay for more than a couple of days at any one place. They were called spiritual gypsies and the villagers gave them alms, some asking them for amulets for their children. It was believed that these gypsies had invisible powers. They gave out herbs and powders for treating various diseases.
Late in the evenings some of the mendicants would go about in the villages singing spiritual rhymes. They were adept in rendering recondite spiritual lyrics into simple songs to the accompaniment of a tambura (a single string musical instrument). One of the songs conveyed the idea that the body is a leather bag of nine holes that it may burst at any time and that one has to be watchful in dealing with it. These simple spiritual songs were composed with the aim of teaching people about salvation. Krishna listened to such simple songs with great attention.
In 1929, the upanayanam (initiation) of Krishna was planned in the traditional manner. Though usually the event is limited to the family and their kith and kin, Venkatappayya wanted to perform it on a large scale. By that time his property had already dwindled. Lands were sold one after the other as maintaining them was felt difficult. Still, the upanayanam was performed with pomp and glory as if it were the coronation of a prince.
While the relevant Vedic verses were being chanted, Krishna put on the yajnopavitam (the sacred thread) and received the initiation along with the teaching of the sacred Gayatri mantra. Pantulu presented a special golden chain of rudraksha mala (rosary) to his grandson. Krishna enthusiastically took part in the rite and felt that he acquired a new individuality and importance.
Krishna felt that he had entered adulthood and was moving towards truth step by step. He cleaned his prayer room every day and made arrangements for regular worship. He meditated, chanting the sacred Gayatri mantra a specific number of times with the help of his rosary. His quest for spiritual knowledge was intensified day by day.
The Esoteric Section is an important wing of the Theosophical Society. Not everyone was allowed to become a member of it, only those who received initiation. To attain that eligibility a devotee had to prove by thought, word and deed that he/she was dedicated to the Society and its principles. People who passed the test would be given initiation by the masters. Afterwards any cooperation and help which they needed were extended to him or her. Only people who had attained specific spiritual heights were admitted.
Annie Besant had been the divine beam of light and power for the Theosophical Society; approaching the end of her life, she was its central pillar. Very many spiritual practitioners, theosophists, philosophers, politicians and others began to flow into Adyar to pay their last respects as her body was showing signs of decay and her memory was getting weaker. Her vision was becoming blurred and she was unable to recognise even the persons whom she had known for decades. Added to this, of late, she had become stone-deaf. Krishna first saw her when he was seven years of age as she eloquently addressed a large gathering under the great banyan tree of Adyar.
Somehow Krishna completed his middle school education in Gudiwada. He was again admitted in the High School at Machilipatnam and was put up with his aunt, Saraswati.
Tradition claims that by constant reflection upon a mantra, one could attain emancipation from the cycle of births and deaths. With purity of mind, Krishna used to pray every day in a systematic, traditional manner – in the morning, at midday and again in the evening. He was regularly praying to the goddess Sandhya, chanting the sacred Gayatri mantra 1008 times in each session. He learned the meaning of the mantra and concentrated while chanting it. He synchronised his breathing with his chanting. At bedtime, Krishna would remember the Shiva mantra, given to him by the Shankaracharya of the Shiva Ganga Monastery, and reflect upon it while chanting.
He did all the prayers and chanted the mantras with the utmost devotion and with an immense faith that they would yield their respective fruits, as mentioned in the holy scriptures. Moreover, he followed rules and principles regarding his food, excluding chilies, salt, garlic and other spices. He stopped wearing sandals and would walk barefoot even in the hot sun on paved streets as well as dirt roads. He stopped using a mirror. He never used perfumes. He slept on a reed mat. He was fasting once in a fortnight on Ekadasi (the 11th day of the lunar month) and also on special holidays like Shivaratri.
Krishna's mind ceased to be tempted by worldly things. With purity of heart he overpowered lustful thoughts and never uttered foul or indecent language. Needless to say that he abhorred obscene literature. Whenever he happened to come across ladies on his way, he would move aside, humbly bend down his head and make way.
Thus Krishna's daily routine was governed by rigid principles, regulations and purity. With firm determination and self-confidence Krishna continued his prayers and meditation in a traditional manner, keeping his thought, word and deed in full agreement with one another. Consequently his thought process underwent a myriad of changes.
Krishna visited Madras several times to be in the cherished company of C. Jinarajadasa. He used to raise many questions which Jinarajadasa patiently answered. A close rapport ensued between them. Jinarajadasa introduced his young buddy to some prominent theosophists including George Arundale. Krishna noticed that significant changes were gradually taking place in him, depending upon his eligibility and fitness. That means all the virtues he had wished to have in his sadhana were being realised to a large extent.
Krishna continued to study the different persons that he was coming across from day to day. Their actions and words were not in consonance with each other. Are there no honest people at all? From birth to death, a person's nature continues to be the same. The mind is fickle. It changes from moment to moment. Opinions thus change constantly but human nature does not seem to change.
Principles, honesty, moral values, righteousness, ideals and such are all laid out in books and scriptures. Reading about these things is different from assimilating and implementing them in everyday life. Krishna assimilated them right from the time of his childhood. They were part and parcel of his daily life and they moulded his behaviour.
U.G. Krishnamurti is well-known in spiritual circles as an anomalous, enigmatic and iconoclastic figure. He has been variously and aptly described as the ‘un-guru’, as the ‘raging sage’ and also as the ‘Don Rickles of the guru set’. The man is a walking Rudra who hurls verbal missiles into the very heart of the guarded citadels of human culture. He spares no tradition however ancient, no institution however established, and no practise however sanctimonious. Never have the foundations of human civilisation been subjected to such devastating criticism as by this man called U.G.
Unlike J. Krishnamurti, U.G. does not give talks to the general public or interviews to VIPs. He keeps no journals or notebooks and makes no commentaries on living. There is an unusual but authentic atmosphere of informality around U.G. You don't have to beg the favour of some pompous devotee or worker to meet him and talk with him. U.G.'s doors, wherever he happens to be, are always open to visitors. In striking contrast to most contemporary gurus, U.G. does not appear to discriminate between his visitors on grounds of wealth, position, caste, race, religion or nationality.
U.G. continued to travel around the world in response to invitations from his friends. His migratory movements over the globe have earned him a rather devoted circle of friends in many parts of the world including China, one of the very few countries he has not visited. U.G.'s ways are like nature's ways. Nature does not claim copyright over its creations. Neither does U.G.
U.G. does not claim to have any spiritual teachings. He has pointed out that a spiritual teaching presupposes the possibility of a change or transformation in individuals, and offers techniques or methods for bringing it about. ‘But I do not have any such teaching because I question the very idea of transformation. I maintain that there is nothing to be transformed or changed in you. So, naturally I do not have any arsenal of meditative techniques or practises,’ he asserts. Although there may be no spiritual teaching in the conventional sense, it seems quite undeniable that there is a philosophy in his ever-growing corpus of utterances, a philosophy which resists assimilation into established philosophical traditions, Eastern or Western, and one which is certainly worth examining. U.G. is important enough not to be left to J. Krishnamurti's ‘widows’ and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's former ‘divorcés’ (to use U.G.'s terms). He deserves critical attention from the philosophical community, particularly in India, where the traditions of all the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
The term ‘unrational’ best describes the temper of U.G.'s philosophical approach. He is not interested in offering solutions to problems. His concern is to point out that the solution is the problem! As he often observes, ‘The questions are born out of the answers that we already have.’ The source of the questions is the answers we have picked up from our tradition. And those answers are not genuine answers. If the answers were genuine, the questions would not persist in an unmodified or modified form. But the questions persist. Despite all the answers in our tradition we are still asking questions about God, the meaning of life and so on. Therefore, U.G. maintains, the answers are the problem. The real answer, if there is one, consists in the dissolution of both the answers and the questions inherited from tradition.
U.G.'s approach is also unrational in another sense. He does not use logical arguments to deal with questions. He employs what I call the method of resolution of the question into its constitutive psychological demands. He then shows that this psychological demand is without a foundation. Consider, for example, the question of God. U.G. is not interested in logical arguments for or against God. What he does is to resolve the question into its underlying constitutive demand for permanent pleasure or happiness. U.G. now points out that this demand for permanent happiness is without foundation because there is no permanence. Further, the psychological demand for permanent happiness has no physiological foundation in the sense that the body cannot handle permanence.
As U.G. puts it:
‘God or enlightenment is the ultimate pleasure, uninterrupted happiness. No such thing exists. Your wanting something that does not exist is the root of your problem. Transformation, moksha, and all that stuff are just variations of the same theme: permanent happiness. The body can't take uninterrupted pleasure for long, it would be destroyed. Wanting a fictitious permanent state of happiness is actually a serious neurological problem.’
The problem of death would be another example. U.G. brushes aside speculations about the soul and afterlife. He maintains that there is nothing inside of us that will reincarnate after death. ‘There is nothing inside of you but fear,’ he says. His concern is to point out that the demand for the continuity of the experiencer which underlies questions about death has no basis.
In his words:
‘Your experiencing structure cannot conceive of any event that it will not experience. It even expects to preside over its own dissolution, and so it wonders what death will feel like, it tries to project the feeling of what it will be like not to feel. But in order to anticipate a future experience, your structure needs knowledge, a similar past experience it can call upon for reference. You cannot remember what it felt like not to exist before you were born, and you cannot remember your own birth, so you have no basis for projecting your future non-existence.’
U.G. also repudiates many of the assumptions of the philosophers of reason. He has Aristotle in mind when he declares that ‘Whoever said that man was a rational being deluded himself and deluded us all.’ U.G. maintains that the driving force of human action is power and not rationality. In fact he holds that rationality is itself an instrument of power. The rationalist approach is based on faith in the ability of thought to transform the human condition. U.G. contends that this faith in thought is misplaced. According to him, thought is a divisive and ultimately a destructive instrument. It is only interested in its own continuity and turns everything into a means of its own perpetuation. It can only function in terms of a division between the so-called self or ego and the world. And this division between an illusory self and an opposed world is ultimately destructive because it results in the aggrandisement of the self at the expense of everything else. That is why everything born of thought is harmful in one way or another. So thought is not the instrument which can transform our condition. But neither does U.G. point to some spiritual faculty such as intuition or faith as the saving instrument. He dismisses intuition as nothing more than a form of subtle and refined thought. As for faith, it is just a form of hope without any foundation.
But U.G. does speak of something like a native or natural intelligence of the living organism. The acquired intelligence of the intellect is no match for the native intelligence of the body. It is this intelligence which is operative in the extraordinarily complex systems of the body. One has only to examine the immune system to comprehend the nature of this innate intelligence of the living body. U.G. maintains that this native intelligence of the body is unrelated to the intellect. Therefore it cannot be used or directed to solve the problems created by thought. It is not interested in the machinations of thought.
Thought is the enemy of this innate intelligence of the body. Thought is inimical to the harmonious functioning of the body because it turns everything into a movement of pleasure. This is the way it ensures its own continuity. The pursuit of permanence is also another way in which thought becomes inimical to the harmonious functioning of the body. According to U.G., the demand for pleasure and permanence destroys, in the long run, the sensitivity of the body. The body is not interested in permanence. Its nervous system cannot handle permanent states, pleasurable or painful. But thought has projected the existence of permanent states of peace, bliss or ecstasy in order to maintain its continuity. There is thus a fundamental conflict between the demands of the mind or thought and the functioning of the body.
This conflict between thought and the body cannot be resolved by thought. Any attempt by thought to deal with this conflict only aggravates the problem. What must come to an end is the distorting interference of the self-perpetuating mechanism of thought. And this cannot, obviously, be achieved by that very mechanism. U.G. maintains that all techniques and practises to end or control thought are futile because they are themselves the products of thought and the means of its perpetuation.
The rationalist approach is also committed to the concept of causality. U.G. rejects causality and maintains that events are actually disconnected, and it is thought which connects them by means of the concept of causality. But there is no way of knowing whether there are actually causal relationships in nature. This leads him to reject not only the notion of a creator of the universe, but also the hypothesis of a Big Bang. He maintains that the universe has no cause, no beginning and no end.
There seems to be some similarity with the Buddhist approach on this issue. The Buddhists also rejected the notion that the world had a beginning. But they still subscribed to the view that all phenomena had causes. U.G., by contrast, rejects this view. He has no problem with the idea of acausal phenomena. Of course, U.G. is not a Buddhist. He rejects the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the goal of nirvana and the methods of Buddhist meditation. He even considers Buddha a foolish man because he enjoined his followers to propagate the dhamma to the four corners of the earth. The mischief of the missionaries thus originated with the ‘mindless one’.
U.G. also argues that there is no entity called ‘self’ independent of the thought process. There is no thinker but only thinking. We think that there must be a thinker, an entity that is thinking, but we have no way of knowing this. There is only a movement of thought. U.G. does not acknowledge a sharp distinction between feeling or emotion and thought. Even perception and sensation are permeated by thought. His use of the phrase ‘movement of thought’ is thus quite extensive in its meaning. U.G. accords a central role to memory which conditions the movement of thought. In fact he maintains that thought is a movement of memory. He also has no place for an independent consciousness, or the vijnana skandha of the Buddhists.
In a masterly stroke of negative dialectic, U.G. points out that there is nothing like observation or understanding of thought because there is no subject or observer independent of it. The division between thought and an independent subject or observer is an illusion created by that very thought. What we have is just another process of thought about thought. U.G. therefore dismisses all talk of observation or awareness of one's own thought process as absolute balderdash! He thus takes away the very floor from beneath those who practise vipassana meditation!
In U.G.'s ontology there are no entities like mind, soul, psyche and self. The ‘I’ has no other status than the grammatical, insists U.G. It is just a first-person singular pronoun, a convention and convenience of speech. The question, ‘Who am I?’ is an idiotic question, remarks U.G. apropos Ramana Maharshi's method of self-inquiry. It is worth noting here that U.G. had visited Ramana in 1939 or so. To the young U.G.'s query, ‘Can you give enlightenment to me?’ the sage of Arunachala replied, ‘I can give it, but can you take it?’ U.G., full of youthful self-assurance, said to himself, ‘If there is anyone who can take it, it is I,’ and walked out. He says that Ramana's answer was a traditional one and did not impress him. On the contrary, he was put off by what he describes as Maharshi's unblinking arrogance. U.G. never visited him again. Regarding Maharshi's terribly painful death by cancer, U.G. curtly observes that cancer treats saints and sinners in the same way. This seems to be true, but the interesting question is whether saints and sinners treat cancer in the same way.
According to U.G., the question, ‘Who am I?’ presupposes the existence of some unknown ‘I’ other than the ‘I’ which was born in some place to some parents, is married or unmarried, and which has picked up this question from some book. U.G. denies that this assumption makes sense. There is an unceasing but ever-changing process of thought. The so-called ‘I’ is born anew each moment with the birth of each thought. The notion of an enduring or permanent psyche or self is merely a concept thrown up by thought. U.G. therefore asserts that spiritual and psychological goals have really no basis or foundation. What is it that attains so-called enlightenment? What is it that realises or transforms itself? What is it that attains happiness? ‘Absolutely nothing!’ is U.G.'s reply. These goals have been projected by thought to keep itself going. That's all there is to it.
U.G. claims that this self-perpetuating process of thought can come to an end. However, he points out that this does not imply a state totally bereft of thoughts. According to him, the ideal of a thoughtless state is one of the many hoaxes to which Hindus have fallen victim. He claims that when the self-perpetuating mechanism of thought collapses, what is left is a harmonious mode of functioning of the living organism in which thoughts arise and disappear in accordance with a natural rhythm and in response to a challenge. Thus, the problem is thought as a self-perpetuating process and not the occurrence of thoughts per se. In the natural state, as U.G. describes, the state of functioning of the body free of the interference of thought, thoughts are not a problem. It is not that there are no sensual thoughts, for example, in this state. But they do not constitute a problem. One is not concerned about whether the thoughts are good or bad, or about whether they occur at all. U.G. says, ‘You may ask, “How can such a man have a sensual thought?” There is nothing he can do to suppress that thought or to give room for that thought to act. The thought cannot stay, there is no continuity, no build-up. One knows what it is and there it ends. Then something else comes up.’
The death of thought as a self-perpetuating mechanism involved, in U.G.'s case, also the ‘death’ of the body. One wonders if it was some sort of a state of samadhi or trance of the body. Spiritual history in India furnishes us with examples of mystics who underwent this samadhi of the body. Ramakrishna used to go into a state often accompanied by a total cessation of breathing and heartbeat. It is recorded that his personal physician, Dr. Sarkar, was baffled by the phenomenon. Another striking case is that of Ramana Maharshi. Ramana underwent a death experience when he was seventeen years old. The experience culminated, on his account, in the realisation of the atman. Ramalinga Swamigal, a nineteenth century Tamil mystic, also appears to have gone through this samadhi of the body. The death and the subsequent renewal of the body that this samadhi involves could have been the basis of his astonishing claim that he had overcome bodily death. The saint Tukaram, in one of his songs, also claims that he witnessed his own death through the grace of his deity. Thus there are some sorts of precedents to U.G.'s calamity, as he describes what happened to him, in the annals of India's spiritual history. This is not to deny that U.G.'s calamity is a unique phenomenon.
U.G. claims that in his case the body underwent actual clinical death. He says, ‘It was physical death. What brought me back to life, I don't know. I can't say anything about that because the experiencer was finished.’ This happened in 1967 in Switzerland soon after his realisation that his search for enlightenment was the very thing that was keeping him from his natural state. This hit him like a bolt of lightning, and led to the collapse of thought as a self-perpetuating process. He then underwent a series of changes in the functioning of his body for six days. On the seventh day he died. When he came back he was like a child and had to relearn all the words necessary for functioning in the world.
U.G. strips the phenomenon of all religious or mystical content. He is emphatic that it was simply a physiological phenomenon. He also insists that it is an acausal phenomenon. No spiritual or physical technique can bring it about. U.G. is fond of reiterating that it happened to him despite all the sadhanas, or spiritual practises, he had done. When asked about how he could be sure that it had not happened because of his sadhanas, he replied that he discovered it was something totally unrelated to the projected goals of those spiritual practises. U.G. discovered that the state he had stumbled into had nothing to do with bliss, beatitude, thoughtless silence, omniscience, omnipotence etc. Rather, it was a bewildering physical state with all the senses functioning independently of each other at the peak of their capacity, since they were free of the distorting interference of the separative thought process. He did not attain omniscience. It was a state of unknowing, a state in which the demand to know had come to an end. There was no bliss or ecstasy. It was a state which involved tremendous physical tension and pain whenever there were outbursts of energy in the body as a consequence of the collapse of the self-perpetuating mechanism of thought. And it was not some dead, inert state of silence of mind, but the silence of a volcanic eruption, pregnant with the essence of all energy.
He also discovered that it could not be shared with others. Sharing presupposes that there is a division between the self and others, and the knowledge that one has something to give to others. But for U.G., there is no division between the self and the other in that condition. It never occurs to him that he is now an enlightened man and that others are not. It never occurs to him that he has something that others do not have. So he discovered that there was actually nothing to give or impart to others.
U.G. therefore questions the legitimacy of the idea of the guru, or spiritual authority, which is central to the Indian spiritual tradition. He argues that if a person gets into this condition, he cannot set himself up as an authority because he has no way of comparing his condition with the condition of others. Since it implies the absence of an independent experiencer, it is not something that can be transmitted by someone to others. Therefore U.G. maintains that there is really no basis for the idea that enlightenment or moksha can be attained by contact with an enlightened guru or teacher.
There is also another interesting reason for his repudiation of spiritual authority. He maintains that each individual is unique. Therefore even if there is something like enlightenment, it will be unique for each individual. There is no universal pattern or model of enlightenment that all individuals must fit into. Every time it happens it is unique. Thus the attempt to imitate someone else's spiritual realisation, which is the foundation of all spiritual practises, is fundamentally mistaken. This is also true of any attempt to make one's own spiritual realisation into a model for others. This is the reason why U.G. is critical of most of the spiritual teachers in history. They attempted to make what happened to them a model for others. It simply cannot be done. If enlightenment is unique for every individual, and if it is something that cannot be shared with or transmitted to others, the very foundation of the concept of the guru collapses.
U.G.'s critique of spiritual authority is very relevant to an age full of gurus who have turned out to be manipulative and mercenary slave masters. His uncompromising criticism of exploitation and commercialism in the garb of spirituality is yet to be rivaled.
One of the most radical and startling claims that U.G. makes is that the search for enlightenment, salvation or moksha is the cause of the greatest misery or suffering. U.G. says that it is the duhkha of all duhkhas! In the pursuit of this non-existent culture-imposed goal, people have subjected themselves to all sorts of physical and psychological torture. U.G. regards all forms of asceticism or self-denial as perverse. It is perverse to torture the body or to deprive oneself of basic physical needs in the hope of having spiritual experiences. The torture radically disturbs the metabolism of the body and gives rise to hallucinations which are considered as great spiritual experiences. ‘All these spiritual experiences and visions are born out of disturbances in the metabolism of the body,’ declares U.G. He maintains that the experiences induced by breath control, or pranayama, are just products of the depletion of the flow of oxygen to the brain. The tears that flow down the cheeks of the devotees, or bhaktas, result from a natural function of the eye in response to a physiological process. ‘They are not actually tears of devotion, or of bhakti, but a simple response to self-induced physiological stress,’ remarks U.G. What about the ideal of the renunciation of desire? U.G. views desire as a function of hormones in the body. There is no such thing as a total absence of desire for the living body. That is yet another hoax prevalent in India. If anything it is the desire for moksha that has to be renounced!
According to U.G., there is no qualitative contrast between the pursuit of material values and the pursuit of the so-called spiritual values. He therefore rejects the division between higher and lower goals. The pursuit of spiritual values is not in any way superior to the pursuit of material values. This is a very radical position, particularly in the context of the Indian tradition. U.G. argues that the use of thought, a physical instrument, to attain the goal is common to both the pursuits. Since the spiritual seeker is also using thought to attain their projected goals or values, their pursuit also falls within the bounds of something material and measurable. There is nothing transcendental about it. Moreover, the spiritual pursuit is as self-centred as the material one. It makes no difference whether you are concerned with your peace or salvation or your financial status. It is still a selfish pursuit.
U.G. also argues that spiritual goals are only an illusory extension of material goals. By believing in God, one thinks that one will find security in the material world in the form of a good job or a cure for some illness or deformity. Faith becomes a means of obtaining material goals. This is just a delusion.
As U.G. puts it:
‘There are no spiritual goals at all; they are simply an extension of material goals into what you imagine to be a higher, loftier plane. You mistakenly believe that by pursuing the spiritual goal you will somehow miraculously make your material goals simple and manageable. This is in actuality not possible. You may think that only inferior persons pursue material goals, that material achievements are boring, but in fact the so-called spiritual goals you have put before yourself are exactly the same.’
U.G. also has some interesting views on social issues. Since he rejects the search for permanence, he questions the validity of grand programs for the sake of humanity. He maintains that the concept of humanity is an abstraction born out of a craving for permanence. We assume that there is some collective and permanent entity called humanity over and above particular and perishable individuals. The assumption has no validity for U.G. A revolutionary program like Marxism, for example, assumes that humanity will be permanent and will eventually experience the fruits of the future communist epoch. This assumption has no basis. It is quite likely that humanity could destroy itself in the capitalist epoch. What has importance is the predicament of individuals in the world here and now, not the ‘future of humanity’. The revolutionary is frightened of his own impermanence. He realises that he will not be around to experience the benefits of living in his utopian society. He therefore invents an abstraction, humanity, and endows it with permanence. ‘Humanity, in the sense in which you use it, and its future, has no significance to me,’ remarks U.G. If the demand for permanence comes to an end, the concept of humanity ceases to have any meaning.
U.G. is realistic enough to acknowledge that we live in a sordid world of our own making. He refers to society as the ‘human jungle’ and observes that it would be much easier to survive in nature's jungle. As he says, ‘This is a jungle we have created. You can't survive in this world. Even if you try to pluck a fruit from a tree, the tree belongs to someone or to society.’ Elsewhere he is more explicit in his indictment of the property system: ‘What right do you have to claim property rights over the river flowing freely there?’ he asks. U.G. has no illusions about the way society works. He points out that it is basically interested in maintaining the status quo and will not hesitate to eliminate any individual who becomes a serious threat to it. Some societies may tolerate dissent but only to a point. No society will tolerate a serious threat to its continuity. This implies that any attempt to terminate the status quo will result in violence. We have to accept the social reality as it is imposed on us for purely functional reasons.
We have to remember that society will only tolerate dissent up to a certain point. We also have to acknowledge the necessity of surviving in society as we find it. We can talk about alternative societies, fantasise about ideal societies and speculate endlessly about the future. But we have to survive in this society here and now. This can be conceded. The problem is that there are many things about society as it is that also endanger one's prospects of survival. If I live in a neighbourhood threatened by gang wars, I have to do something about it or get the community to do something about it. Otherwise I risk being shot at the next time. U.G.'s emphasis on accepting society as it is is problematic. Such acceptance could end up strengthening the very mechanism of maintaining the status quo.
U.G. is not interested in these academic issues. He is not in conflict with society or its structure of power. He is not interested in changing anything or taking anything away from anybody. According to him, the demand to change oneself and the demand to change the world go together. Since he is free from the demand to change himself, he has no problem with the world as it is. This does not mean that he believes that it is a perfect world. He has stumbled into a condition in which there is no conflict with the way things are. But it remains true that he poses a serious but subtle threat to the value system of society. How would he react if he is told to shut up? U.G. replies that he is not interested in becoming a martyr to any cause, not even freedom of speech, and would probably shut up!
Some of U.G.'s criticisms of social movements are interesting. The anti-bomb movement is a good example. U.G. argues that the bomb is only an extension of the structure which has created the need for the policeman. The policeman exists in order to protect my little property from perceived threats. The bomb, in just the same way, exists in order to protect the collective property of a society or nation from perceived threats. I cannot consistently justify the need for the policeman and yet oppose the need for the bomb. They go together. This was U.G.'s response to Bertrand Russell when he met him at a time during which Russell was actively involved in the anti-bomb movement.
The ecological problem is another example. U.G. points out that the roots of the present ecological crisis lie in the Judeo-Christian belief that the human species is superior to other species because it alone was created for a grand purpose, and that therefore it has the privilege of dominating and using the rest of nature. Hinduism and Buddhism also share a variant of this belief, the idea that birth as a human being is the most precious and highest form of birth. It is believed that in order to attain enlightenment or moksha even the gods have to be reborn as human beings. U.G. completely rejects this belief in the special status and superiority of the human species. He observes that the human species is not created for any grander purpose than the mosquito or the garden slug is. Our erroneous belief in our own superiority has been used to justify our extermination of other species and has led to the environmental problem. What is in question is not just the kind of technology and the economic system we have but the structure of belief and values which drive the technology and the economic system.
But the problem endangers us, not the planet. Nature can take care of itself. So it is absurd to talk of saving the earth or saving the planet. ‘We are in danger, not the planet,’ observes U.G. The problem has to be dealt with realistically in relation to the objective of meeting the basic needs of the population of the planet. He is quick to point out that Hollywood stars are only interested in promoting themselves and not the environment. The lifestyle of these stars is itself a contributing factor to the problem. Similarly, those who write books and articles criticising the destruction of trees are also contributing to the problem because the paper for their books and articles comes at the expense of those very trees. U.G. does not see any justification for the publication of books in the age of the computer and video. And he is absolutely right. U.G. also warns that the cause of the environment, like other religious and political causes, will be used to justify the persecution and destruction of individuals.
U.G. is notorious for his response to the '60s slogan ‘Make love, not war’. He retorts that making love is war! For U.G., love-making and war-making spring from the same source, the separative structure of thought. They both presuppose a division between the self and the other. This is why U.G. does not take kindly to fashionable talk about loving relationships. He points out that the search for relationships of any kind springs from a sense of isolation, an isolation created by the separative thought structure. What one wants is to fill the emptiness or void with someone. It is a process of self-fulfilment, self-gratification. But we are not honest enough to acknowledge this sordid truth. Instead we invent fictions like love and care to deceive ourselves about the whole affair. When these fictions are blown away, what remains expresses itself in its own way. Then there may not be others to love or to be loved by.
There is more than a touch of advaita in all this – advaita in its etymological sense, meaning non-division or non-duality, and not to refer to the philosophical system of Shankara. U.G.'s philosophy has little in common with Shankara's system. U.G. rejects the authority of the shruti (he says that the Vedas were the creations of acid-heads!), repudiates the assumption of Brahman, and dismisses the doctrine of the illusoriness of the world. There is no place for any kind of consciousness in U.G.'s philosophy, not to speak of pure consciousness or witness-consciousness. U.G.'s philosophy is permeated by a spirit of negation of all division and fragmentation. It is an interesting and original form of advaita, one that is based on a physical and physiological mode of description. For instance U.G. claims that nature is a single unit and that the body cannot be separated from the totality of nature. There are actually no separate individual bodies. This is a form of advaita or non-dualism. It is a naturalistic or physicalistic advaita, in contrast to Shankara's metaphysical or transcendental advaita.
In U.G.'s account, all forms of destruction, disorder and suffering flow from the division between the self and the world or nature. This divisive movement of thought came into operation with the birth of self-consciousness somewhere in the process of the evolution of mankind and marks the beginning of the end of this species. ‘The instrument that we think places us at the pinnacle of creation is the very thing that will lead to the destruction of not only the human species but all forms of life on this planet,’ declares U.G., because of the very nature of the instrument of thought on which human civilisation is based.
U.G. thus ends up with a subjective explanation of the human condition. This is quite in the line of the Indian, or rather, the Eastern approach. It is not specific external, social or socioeconomic factors that are responsible, e.g., class divisions, or the military-industrial establishment, but internal factors, the separative movement of the thought mechanism, the ego structure, the separative self-consciousness, the nature of the mind and so on. This approach however has its limitations.
U.G. sometimes talks as if the problem is biological, or more specifically, genetic. Genetic factors, he seems to suggest, are the ultimate determinants of the human predicament. He observes in passing that explanations referring to karma are obsolete hogwash in the face of genetic science. Deformities have genetic causes and can be handled by the science of genetics. Culture, he seems to suggest, with its value system, its models of perfect individuals, and its attempt to fit individuals into a common mould, has distorted our natural mode of existence. But on the other hand, U.G. also claims that we are a function of our genes. Perhaps he would allow for some sort of an interaction between culture and our genetic structure. If he would, then genetic engineering alone cannot deliver the goods. We might also need cultural engineering, a change in culture.
U.G.'s critique of culture also raises problems. Culture could mean different things, a manner of greeting, or a system of religious and political values, or the art and literature of a society. By culture U.G. means the value system, the normative structure of human communities. There is a difference between the talk about culture and the talk about cultures. U.G. is not referring to any particular culture. He thinks that there is not much to choose between different cultures. All cultures are variations on a common theme, the perpetuation of a social order by fitting individuals into a common value system. This is the reason why U.G. does not discriminate between Eastern and Western cultures. Nor does he advocate a return to our primitive past as a solution. The problems would still be there albeit on a less complex scale. U.G. remarks that ‘The hydrogen bomb had its origin in the jawbone of an ass which the cave man used to kill his neighbour.’ Thus it is not a question of a specific culture or a specific epoch of cultural evolution. Culture itself is the problem.
The significance of U.G. lies in his radical and original critique of tradition, particularly the religious and spiritual tradition. His most important contribution is that, for the first time in history, the essence of what would be considered as spiritual experience is expressed in physical and physiological terms, in terms of the functioning of the body. This opens a new perspective on human potential. Whatever may be said about the merits and demerits of U.G.'s approach, it is undeniable that it has the power of an uncontaminated simplicity which because of its very nature is also deeply enigmatic.
One of the notable contributions of Hindu thought to world philosophy is the Advaita Vedanta usually associated with the great name of Adi Shankara. Advaita literally means non-dualism. The concept is as old as the Upanishads, but the credit for developing and building up non-dualism systematically on sound principles of logic, experience and revelation goes undoubtedly to Shankara. Sometimes the achievements of Shankara have been acclaimed as the highest or the boldest of intellectual speculations. It has also been said that his absolutism is indifferent to the hopes and beliefs of man. Such estimates go against a proper evaluation of his personality. High sounding adorations may conceal behind them an underestimation of the orientation of his thought. No doubt his thought system primes with high intellectualism and remorseless logic but is not the outcome of fanciful dialectical thought. The system which he builds stems from an authentic experience of the highest truth, and quite naturally, the dialectics of the absolute which he imports into human logic may be beyond the reach of the ordinary. But Shankara need not be blamed for the fruits of wisdom he brings to us from the other side of the mundane world. Sufficiently deep were his insight and experience that whatever he has said holds both an invitation to the spiritual aspirant and a challenge to the sticklers of simple reason.
Shankara is supposed to have lived an abbreviated life, definite dates are scarce, but what he achieved within that short duration has been remarkable. By an age the majority of us begin to exercise our thinking, he had established a formidable system marked by philosophical cogency and a spiritual halo. From the purely academic point of view, no doubt, he built his thought on the Prasthanatrayi: the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, but deeper lay his source of strength, viz. anubhava (apprehension) of the most direct type, usually called aparokshanubhuti.
Without this, neither the unity of reality nor its transcending quality, for which advaita stands, can be proclaimed with such zest and sincerity. While the ordinary cannot rise to the level of experience, Shankara has bestowed on them the grace by analysing on rational grounds the nature of the non-dual, a rational analysis only to be transcended by the intuition of the highest.
The metaphysical teaching of advaita is that reality is non-dual. It is an undivided, indivisible unity of existence, the infinite principle of consciousness and bliss. This non-dual reality is termed Brahman and the Upanishads call it satcitananda. That the real or reality is ultimately an indivisible infinite principle of consciousness is also indicated by yet another significant phrase: satyam jnanam anantam brahma. If this is the transcendental truth of reality, standing at a level which is anything but transcendental, we look for it in vain through clouded vision, and so naturally we perceive it to be divided and plural. The dualities of one and many, the infinite and finite, the subject and the object, etc. are associated elements of a limited consciousness, a consciousness covered by ignorance (avidya). While reality (sat) or the truth (satyam) is one, any combination of one-many, one and many, one or many, are productions of ignorant perception or understanding, even the reality that the truth is not one in the ordinary numerical sense. Strictly speaking, it means absence of duality, i.e., where a countable second does not exist. This is the meaning of the absolute or the infinite, and a being of the type simply does not make for a second entity. Whatever is, is the infinite. There is neither a within nor a without to this absolute. It denies a divided existent, a second real besides. Such is the conception of reality according to advaita.
It is from this stand, the absolute stand, that advaita looks at the world of experience and says such a world does not exist. Any reality assigned to it is provisional, contingent or relative. Related to our feeling of finitude we find a world being real outside us, even as we find manyness around. The world with its pluralism has only an empirical reality. It has a vyavaharika satya, an empirical value, whereas its non-existence or the existence of the undivided infinite Brahman is paramarthika satya, the transcendental truth. Until we remember this qualification we are apt to mistake the evaluation of the world and its plurality which advaita makes. From the relative and the finite level of consciousness the world is real and the plurality too. The warning is that neither of them has absolute value of being. For one who misses the intuitions of this truth, the world is always real and he rests satisfied with it and with plurality.
How should we know that the world is unreal? The answer is the analogy of the dream and that of the illusory snake. The dream world and dream experiences are real while we are in a dream, no one doubts the validity of dreams while one is dreaming. This reality goes by the name of pratibhasika satya. But this satya or reality is contradicted as soon as we wake up. What was real and concrete in a dream we dismiss now as unreal. Likewise in an illusion a rope appears as a snake. We see the snake and not the underlying ground, the rope. While we mistake the rope for the snake, we run away and are afraid, under the cover of ignorance. But when we go near or see the situation properly we realise the ground to be only a rope and not a snake. What was a real snake in illusion now turns out to be unreal. We realise its reality to be conditional, i.e., when we were under the spell of ignorance. Like the dream reality, even this is pratibhasika satya.
Pratibhasika satya is contradicted when we are awakened to wisdom. Normally a vyavaharika satya denies a prathibhasika satya and it requires a paramarthika satya to get contradicted or denied. The world we live in, its experience of duality and plurality, remain to be so while we do not climb to heights of paramarthika satya, while the dream reality is countered soon by waking and the illusory snake countered by a vyavaharika satya lasts longer and may last forever if we do not intuit the paramarthika satya of Brahman. This is the key position of advaita: not that there are three degrees of reality, the pratibhasika, the vyavaharika and paramartika, but that reality has no degrees. All degrees of reality are only appearances of the one real. The one or the non-dual Brahman appears as the world and the plurality to us under the spell of ignorance or avidya, which is also called maya. When the spell is gone the non-dual sheds its appearances, or is seen as having no appearances at all. This is the Brahman which is described in the Upanishads as nishprapanca or nirguna. It is the one acosmic truth beyond the cosmic descriptions and definitions. It is born, immortal, infinite bliss and the principle consciousness.
When once we are awakened into the position of the paramartha, when the infinite engulfs all, the realisation comes that one is not different from the infinite. Advaita means the same when it says atman is Brahman. It is an identity unqualified and absolute.
The analogies in advaita to arrive at the paramartha are only empirical and mundane, for there cannot be proximate comparisons for the incomparable. And so when analogies are given, one is invited to go beyond analogies to intuit the truth in its pristine brilliance. They have only a practical value, to be picked up as pointing towards the goal one seeks. For remaining in the empirical, yet to extend one's imaginative understanding to something beyond, the only method is to choose from amongst the empirical analogies and examples, such of those which can expand our vision beyond the immediately given. In the illusion of the rope and serpent, it is handy to point out the rope as the ground of the illusory snake. Even so, to extend one's imaginative understanding to discover the ground beyond the name and form of the rope, one is invited to go beyond to the universal being giving rise to such names and forms. In the same way, ‘atman is like akasha’ is another empirical analogy, by which even the ordinary may understand the immensity of space and its indivisibility unaffected by the multiplicity of the physical events within. One is asked not to rest at his small individuality but is invited to discover the inestimable dimensionless dimension of one's own self and be one's own bliss, infinite in the expansive being which one is.
The philosophy of advaita is often summarised in just three statements: the one reality is Brahman, the world is unreal, and the individual self is verily Brahman and not different. Unless we carefully comprehend the implications of the concepts involved, such as the real, the unreal, and non-difference, and the total implication of the truth of the statements (for they convey only one truth), there are bound to be underestimations of the philosophical perspective of advaita. To overcome possible mistakes, advaita makes use of technically accepted means of knowledge (pramana) but orients each in the light of the intuitions of the non-dual, and so we find a distinct angle given to its ontology, epistemology and axiology. For each one of these can be looked into and determined purely empirically, keeping us bound to the mundane, whereas advaita has a transcendental perspective (paramartha dristi) and relieves the seeker from the contradictions and difficulties of mundane life otherwise brought in by mundane logic and reason. Advaita points out that even the highest concept, the absolute, has had this fate in the history of human knowledge and understanding, leading to the philosophies of the absolute where the absolute so determined is a weak or closed one, i.e., relative. It remains an absolute to the extent we can relationally identify and find satisfaction in its adoration.
The implications of advaita metaphysics sets also the methods of realisation on the intuitions of the absolute, i.e., as the absolute revealing itself to us as the self-evident light within, and so speaks of jnana, bhakti, and karma insofar as they are to be understood as instruments receiving that light. Advaita elevates jnana as the means over and above the others in helping us have the intuitions of the truth. That is, jnana is not used here ordinarily as something achieved through the instrumentality of the psychic apparatus, the mind, or antahkarana, but as direct apprehension of the principle of consciousness (i.e., the self-evident light or the svayamjyoti – the self, the one element which illumines the psychic apparatus in all its acts of giving out jnana knowledge). As contrasted with karma and bhakti as ordinarily understood, advaita says what helps realisation of the dimension of the self as the infinite is such illumination of it, which though termed jnana, is not the result of the psychic apparatus undergoing a mode but is the light, the self-revealing noumenous, bringing about the infinite-form of the psychic mode (akhandakara vriti). The most practical empirical example of light dispelling darkness is taken as the cue for showing the revelation of svarupajnana as the means for dispelling ignorance of the empirically determined mind, of the plurality or division of the transcendentally indivisible self, and showing its being as the very light and bliss.
And with regard to the consummation of all endeavour, viz. mukti, the perspective of advaita is made clear by saying, it is not something to be achieved but is the very nature of the self. Infinite it is in being, and only to be expressed in thought and action – the absolute, the philosophic culmination of all existence and thought. The categories of existence and thought should find their logical, metaphysical, or even natural fulfilment somewhere, and that is the absolute.
However, the knowledge of the absolute has not been the same throughout. The history of the philosophy reveals that it has been changing. Should we say, then, that the absolute is changing, or that the absolute changes? If ever the absolute changes with the changing understanding of it, it ceases to be the absolute. What may change is the idea of the absolute but not the absolute itself. The absolute as the object of knowledge is relative. At best it is the knowable absolute (jneya Brahman), and in its religious formulation is God.
Clearly then, there are two concepts, the epistemological and the ontological. The latter is the existential ultimate beyond logical and epistemological categories, while the former (i.e., the epistemological, or even the logical conception) indicates the progressive realisation of it in thought only. Otherwise stated, it is the progressing venture of thought at realisation, whereas the ontological one is the thing itself. It remains like the unchanging mountain which one climbs or scales progressively. The absolute is grasped a priori, and the scaling does not determine the mountain or absolute but is determined by it.
The limits of realisation are relative to the venturing spirit. The veil is of the epistemological pursuit and does not cover the ontological basis. All philosophical pursuit to understand the absolute is an attempt to uncover the veil (maya), and may never cease till the scaling is done. As an object of knowledge it is never achieved, for the difference between the subject and the object ever persists. Whatever be the rate of progress, the duality continues to exist. But the non-epistemic intuitive attempt at identity of the subject and object is realising the absolute not in thought but in reality.
If philosophic intuition and mystical identity are to be compared, it may be said, if the first gives a glimpse of the absolute from outside the threshold, by the second the aspirant realises himself to be the absolute. That is, if philosophic comprehension is the degree at which one's reflective adventure is measured, the mystical identity is the degree by which pure existence is experienced.
What is generally unintelligible and is missed is the aspect of mysticism as knowing, and mystic expression as thought. The confusion is contingent to mistaking the mystic's knowledge and thought in terms of philosophic categories. Where the latter can at best be transcendental empiric, the former is transcendental aesthetic. If the one pre-judges, the other evaluates after experience. The mystic in state never speaks; when the mystic speaks he is speaking out of an authentic experience. It is a posteriori (from the transcendental sense) and not a priori (from the empirical sense).
Described as knowledge, mysticism is a method of knowing what it is to be! As long as one is, i.e., existentially in the real transcendental sense, he does not understand his being, for then, the critical apparatus, which splits the subject and the object, is extinct. He understands only when he comes out of it. It is objectivity after being the subject, not in imagination or thought, but by being the whole subject in all its essence. The sympathetic intelligence of Henri Bergson's description can give only an outside glimpse of being the subject by an indirect participation, whereas what we mean is being a thing and getting out of it to see how it is or was! It is knowing after being, if one were to be more precise, and makes use of a language unknown before being. What is referred to here is clearly a condition which occurs consequent to realisation. And all thought and expression in word and deed take a new dimension consequent to the transmutation that will have taken place in the course of being. The dimension is converse and any reflection therefrom is bound to be quizzical and weird from the pre-being perspective. Where we see out, the mystic sees in. Where we think, he feels. Where he feels, he enjoys; where he analyses, he unites. And where we imagine the acosmic from the cosmic, the mystic deducts the cosmic from the acosmic experience of the absolute. No wonder he looks strange, his thought and expression both unintelligible.
No argument explicit and elaborate in nature need be given to prove the reality of the world we see or to prove the multiplicity of the beings. If one rests with an attitude of a naïve-realist, things will be so satisfying, and one's only philosophic or scientific task would be to know by analysis of the given content and the nature of things given in experience. What evolves out of it would be a mundane philosophy or an empirical science (not different from materialism) giving a surface knowledge of what we see and find.
On the other hand, if origins of the world and life were to bother any, a step beyond may be taken to assume a cause on the analogy of the world experience itself. Again, if the attitude happens to be materialistic or positivistic, one would postulate or hope to discover a more basic cause in a principle with not much difference in quality, say, the primal nature or prakriti of sankhya (dualistic philosophy). If the attitude is not completely materialistic, one can toe the line of sankhya and postulate a spiritual principle beside to prove the fact of consciousness which otherwise cannot be explained by the materialistic hypothesis. With this non-physical or spiritual element as the background of consciousness, viz., the purusha of the sankhya, we have a more satisfactory scheme of life and the world, provided interaction and cooperation between the non-spiritual and the spiritual are explained better than was done by the sankhya. Positing of the dual principles ordinarily removes the difficulties of the positivistic and naturalistic philosophies which otherwise find it hard to explain the conscious and the unconscious, the organic and the inorganic, the living and the non-living, within the frame of our experience. Not straining one's speculative capacity, life processes can be satisfactorily explained, and with an introduction of an elementary moral and social code, one would conceive of a lifespan of existence of happiness and turmoil, a world of day and night. Perhaps that was the reason why, in India, the sankhyas were heralded as the most scientific and satisfying thinkers. Even today, the loopholes plugged, their system can provide a good platform for all of us.
The element of a supreme deity is introduced not only to control the spirit and matter (purusha and prakriti) but also as their common ground. While thus going beyond a certain limit and in defense of such positing come in the different varieties of metaphysical explanations.
Even here, what may, with easiness (i.e., not straining much) be posited is the theory of creation, where the supreme principle forms the material, the efficient, the formal and the final cause. There can be no quarrel if such a theory is accepted without enquiry. It may satisfy the tradition-bound and devout believer. But thought does not rest with such happy theories trying to solve everything for everybody for all times on the basis of the leela (fanciful play) of the supreme. The rational are always the trouble-mongers and the skeptics always prick the bubbles. The theist is confronted with the evil, and the pantheist with the exhaustion of the supreme in the show, with nothing left over. It does not satisfy the devout, if he reflects over it, to find it. God is thus exhausted in the very creation.
As an alternative, a transformation theory may be offered; the supreme transformed Himself in part, showing Himself as living and non-living, the one and the many of existence, but managing to keep some portion of His being in reserve. Even such a theory should face difficulties. How can the one and the many, which are contradictories, be attributed simultaneously to the supreme? How can it allow a path to rot, and to keep the rest in good spirits: one part nasty, the other fine; one repulsive, the other attractive? Moral evil and moral good, ignorance and knowledge, ugly and beauty, may well be said of the relative and the distinct. But reality, if it is to be infinitely perfect, should not be affected by these contradictions which occur in experience. Any adjustment to a concrete universe like this is unsatisfying, for in it the real or reality is brought down to our own mundane level of understanding beyond which we do not ordinarily rise. To accept a cosmos of this type is to accept all as they come (in the manner of a scientist) but not to explain the crux.
Naturally, a way must be found not only for containing the world of differences and multitudes of the world of unity-in-difference, but to rise beyond to seek a consistent truth to solve contradictions of experience. One method easily adoptable is to fill the world of contradictions with a mere illusion and a mere appearance; another, to grasp the real significance underlying the analogy of the serpent and the rope. Much of the confusion consists in remaining literally at the level of the analogy. Where the analogy is the final thing, the enquiry stops and the vision gets blurred.
We shall indicate two lines of thinking (not socially different) suggesting a clearer understanding of the solution.
One is a self-examination of experience, not limited to the empirical levels of wakeful and dream states, but to measure through all the dimensions of one's existence. What is a miss in most understanding is the limit, the set of the span of experience available to the physical scientist, the psychologist and the rational philosopher, and to treat what is not accessible to these as sheer fiction. There cannot be a greater testimony to the short-sightedness of evaluations than missing the implications of the four dimension of one's own existence, which every reflective and true student of experience should cognise. The third and fourth dimension (as revealed in the Mandukya Upanishad) point to a significant aspect of experience, to a truth which forms the basis of all existence. The third, the dreamless dimension of the self, reveals the condition of attunement to a blissful state of pure consciousness, wherein the differences and multiplicities of the objects of the empirical and dream states (i.e., of the first and the second dimensions) find a restful condition. It is a condition of absorbing tranquility making facile the tumultuous contradictions of the objects of the first two dimensions. It is a condition not of resolution of conflicts but dissolution of them in a state of bliss. It is unlike and more than philosophic synthesis, for thought does not work here and consciousness is solidified in a mass of pure existence (prajnana ghana) and therefore is blissful in itself (ananda maya).
In the case of one who could do it, he attains the fourth dimension, which is not only the fourth in number because of its uniqueness but envelops everything as the foundation of all experience, still remaining untouched by any of the other states. This is the acosmic state of being (turiya), which gives credence to the whole cosmic experience of the three dimensions, or the experience of the scientist and the philosopher.
The other line of thinking is to draw our attention towards the transmutations of being, which takes place in the aesthetic and trans-aesthetic experience.
To miss this unique characteristic of the transcendental being is to underestimate it and therefore downgrade it as a negative attitude towards the world and life of which we ordinarily take a view and beyond which we cannot rise. To call it illusionist in approach is to admit our ignorance of a heightened experience whose comprehension and pronouncement are more basic, vital and real.
There is a logical view which maintains that the absolute, characterised as changing or having history, is thoroughly contradictory to its own being, and if associated will lapse into something that it is not. The argument is: that which changes is relative, finite, contingent, and cannot be absolute. For change involves time, and space implies parts, and the absolute, by definition, is anything beyond these. The absolute is an unconditional, unrelational pure being which does not change as occasions demand. As it is impartite, it does not allow change in parts. If it does, it is not different from having a cake (intact) and eating it too.
Eastern thought, as far as it is absolutist, agrees upon this common conception of the absolute. The advaita conception of vivarta (appearances) is based on such an understanding and opposes all parinama (transformation); call it change, evolution, modification, progress or history. As all these are phenomenal characteristics, they are appearances only. The real is unchanging, perfect, neither changing nor becoming.
All forms of absolutism and monism, in one way or the other, subscribe to this view. Though the Hegelian absolute is a synthesis in a dialectic process, yet it is free from an anti-thesis, and is beyond a further development in the process. For the entire dialectic process finds its logical culmination in the absolute. It is the final aspect of the being, where the historical becoming finds a finish.
It is against such absolute theories that revolts occur, and have occurred in history. In the West, William James and the pragmatists, Benedetto Croce and the neo-idealists, and Samuel Alexander and the realists, treated the Hegelian or Bradleyan absolute as block philosophies, and preferred a dynamic conception of the absolute. In India, the revolt against the akshara Brahman, or the immutable absolute, was led by Buddha, for whom reality is eternal flux. He anticipated the Greek Heraclites and the French Bergson in maintaining that not being but becoming is the real. He denied a permanent substratum (an immutable atman) but posited a changing entity which could cease to be.
Taking first the arguments of the flux theorists, or those who maintain that the absolute is history (Croce), they cannot easily be brushed aside. At least for us who are here in the world of experience, change is more real than immutability, drifting time is more real than immobility. Even the absolutist Hegel could not resist the temptation of the practical relativity and plurality, the changing phases of nature leading to the self-conscious man. Hegel is of glaring example of being his own critic; he unwittingly refuted his own absolutism of it – the absolute idea, by allowing for the different and the many, i.e., the changing, in the conception of the concrete universal. Indeed, a thorough and non-compromising absolutist is a rare find, and if discovered, is likely to be looked at as either a fanatic or a doctrinaire trying to avoid the issue of glaring change, or pretending to be blind to reality of the day to day world.
While the Western absolutists like Hegel and F. H. Bradley succumbed to and allowed compromises, the only exception, perhaps in the entire history of world philosophy, who did not accept the disfiguration of the absolute for lack of experience of it at the level of empirical understanding, is Shankara. It is hard to refute the logical position which he maintains: the absolute cannot be mutable, is beyond time and space, has no history, no progress. The theory of vivarta (transfiguration) is a sequel to this fundamental tenet of his philosophy.
Is there no solution to the problem of being and becoming? It is submitted here that much of the confusion can be spared, if the ontological implications of the absolute are grasped. Non-compromising absolutism, it can be shown, is neither fanatic nor doctrinaire. There has been an unfortunate tenacity in interpreting what constitutes the absolute and seems to be originating in an unphilosophical fear that liberal interpretations would take away from the absolute the stature that has immutable, unchanging and eternal being. If all immanence of the absolute is taken as being, i.e., the basic existence of everything at any particular time or state, all transcendence of the absolute is just an ontological extension of very being as the becoming, beyond the particular time or state, wrongly understood as changing or mutable in the empiric and epistemological sense. The metaphysical identity of being as becoming was perhaps missed us by Buddha, and has been so all through by fluxists. It is beyond the ordinary association of temporal change, it refers to the very existence of the absolute, without which it cannot be absolute, let alone its becoming the relative. The progress or change which we associate with becoming is only of thought but not of being as such. Perhaps a distinction between thought and being, i.e., the ontological aspect of it, will help us to understand the point made.
If ever the absolute changes with the changing understanding of it, it ceases to be absolute. The absolute as the object and content of knowledge may change. It is the knowable Brahman, or the absolute (jneya Brahman). Clearly then, there are two aspects, the epistemological or the relative, i.e., the known, and the ontological, i.e., not-known. The significance of the acosmic aspect of the absolute becomes clear here, for it aims to show the limits of human understanding and knowledge, and points to the transcendence of the being, till being remains the object of thought.
Between the two views that reality is an unchanging, immutable absolute and that reality is changing or becoming, studied as a problem in the history of philosophy, it appears that the reason for the disagreement has been the misunderstanding of the perspective, as shown above, and that a straight opposition does not exist. In India, when Buddha revolted against the upanishadic akshara (immutable) Brahman and formulated his kshanikavada (doctrine of momentariness) and anatmavada (theory of non-substantiality or soullessness of permanent nature), and when there was argument in favour of Brahma parinamavada (transformation theory), there was clearly in view the positive empiric aspect of experience and a logic limited by the sensibilities of understanding and of empiricism. In fact, Buddha never seems to have given much importance to the transcendent. The Brahma parinamavadi understood the transcendent from the non-transcendent angle, i.e., interpreting the transcendent on the analogy of what is available in daily experience. The attempt of the sankhyas was obviously to overcome the difficult of the Brahma parinamavada, viz., the philosophical and the moral difficulty of the occurrence of the finite and the imperfect, either in the form of objects of individual selves or of moral evil or sin. What the sankhya offered was the prakriti parinamavada, which obviously redeems the entanglement of Brahman and keeps it immaculate. But what they thought best was to drop Brahman altogether and to substitute the purusha in their system, and to refer all parinama or change or evolution to prakriti, which is sustained on the ontological difference from that of purusha. What becomes is the prakriti, what does not is the purusha.
When it was the turn of Shankara, he attempted to correct these perspectives and tried to interpret the upanishadic absolute from the ontological angle. His efforts at reconciling the abheda and beda srutis clearly indicate a significant hint at taking the right perspective. He took the transcendent view, as against Buddha, based on his mystical and intuitional experience of the absolute as the non-relative. The unimportance that he gave to the relative, the empiric and the commonsense perspective of finding the phenomenal and the changing as the real has unfortunately been missed of its import and appeal, with the resultant trends of the thinking of theistic schools. This phase of Indian philosophy does not in any way represent a defeat of the absolutism of Shankara (as some believe) by a straight opposition, nor does it indicate philosophical progress (as some others believe) against non-dualism. The two pursuits have differences in vision; they are not linear, not parallel, but clearly tangential. It is also not certain if the ontological import of Shankara was grasped by his own followers. For, the traditional orthodox interpretation of the advaitic absolute is a glaring example of how a teacher can easily be misunderstood by his followers let alone the critics.
The Status of Advaita as a Universal Phenomenon
It is necessary to observe that in philosophical discussions certain stresses are laid on points of prime importance, taking them as the standards of reference in light of which all others are considered secondary, incidental or contingent. These latter though need not be considered as figments of imagination or as illusionary. They may not possess, however, absolute value when compared with the standards of reference. This is generally true of all systems of thought. With regard to the phenomenal world itself, such treatment is possible. We may note that the advocate of realism in Vedanta, Madhvacharya, himself considered the world as just incidental to establishing the absoluteness of the Lord. In fact, in this system the only standard of reference is the Lord (svatantra), before whom all else is dependent (asvatantra). Madhva says: Advaita is from the standpoint of the paramartha, it alone is the supreme reality over all.
One of the modern exponents of Madhva's philosophy, Dr. H. N. Raghavendracharya, writes that apart from Brahman, the truth of all, Madhva has nothing else in view. It is a mistake to think that he appeared to save the reality of the world against mayavada, the position of Shankara. To have interest in the reality of the world for its own sake is rather the attitude of the Charvaka. Madhva really wanted to save the conception of Brahman against mayavada itself. Whether it is really necessary to establish the reality of Brahman is a point of argument. But it is enough to see that the ultimate aim is the assertion of one reality. The philosophical purpose being the assertion and attainment of the goal, i.e., the absolute, it becomes doubtful if there could be any teleological necessity to transport into and adore the secondary and the contingent in the sanctuary of the absolute. The advaita position presents no different aim, and the philosophy is never doctrinaire in its attitude to explain away or dismiss the world in which we live and move about as pure myth or illusory, the illusory always being differentiated from the unreal.
Shankara's Conception of Sat and Asat
In what sense does advaita consider the unreality of the world when it says, Brahma satyam, jaganmithya? For Shankara, the systematic exponent of advaita after Gaudapada, ‘sat’ means the absolute, eternal, unchanging reality, and ‘asat’ means absolute unreality. The world according to him cannot be included under either of these.
The following example can be considered to get a clear idea of Shankara's explanation of the terms sat and asat, and of their applicability to world phenomenon:
E.g.: A rope appearing as a snake, or a shell as silver, or a desert as watery sheet.
These are cases of illusion and properly belong to the sphere of human experience. They are not only possible but probable.
They are psychological facts given in certain cases of human experience. The snake exists as a psychological object, and to that extent it has an incidental or relative reality. But it cannot be finally established, for it ceases to exist as soon as the error is detected, i.e., when the rope is revealed. The world belongs to this order of reality.
The world is not absolutely non-existing (not asat) as the horns of a hare, but exists (sat) as a snake in illusion, having only incidental reality till the illusion lasts, i.e., till the more real behind it is revealed. It presents what is termed an anirvacaniya position, which can be characterised as neither real nor unreal. The expression anirvacaniya has often been misunderstood, and pointed references are made to show that the advaiti has failed in explaining the situation of the universal phenomenon, which faces him as a hard fact of his life. But a very careful thinker like Prof. Hiriyanna has correctly pointed out that the expression anirvacaniya implies that the world is not self-explanatory but depends for its explanation on Brahman, the ground of all types of existence, exactly as the snake in illusion rests on the rope. It is not a reciprocal dependence or relationship. It is the illusory snake that depends on the rope, and the rope need not and does not depend on the snake. In the same manner, the universal illusion depends on the ground of Brahman, in the absence of which there can never be scope for the illusion of the world. However, the correction of the illusion of the snake does not in any way affect the rope. In the same way, the dissolution of the world illusion does not affect Brahman. In light of this one-sided dependence of the illusory object on the unaffected ground, what difference do we find in the spirit of the argument of the realist when he says that this world is paratantra on God?
According to advaita, the reality of the illusory object and that of the world are not identical. The analogy between them must be taken so far as it goes and not beyond it, because between them there is a difference of degree of relative reality. If the former is the result of malobservation, the other is not. If one is capable of being sublated, very soon the other takes a longer time till right understanding dawns. Comparatively, it is more enduring. Shankara calls the former pratibhasika satya and the latter vyavaharika satya (illusory reality and empirical or practical reality, respectively).
The relative reality of the world, as against that of illusory objectivity, may be clearly understood in light of our dream experience. While we are in a dream we never feel or imagine that our experiences are unreal. They are real to us as long as the dream lasts. In the same manner, the world phenomenon and the differences and the multiplicity within that sphere are all real to us till we are awakened to that superconsciousness of the higher reality (paramarhika satya), Brahman. Ordinarily this will not happen to all (with the exception of a jivanmukta) in their lifetime. While the things of the dream world are sooner realised by us as unreal from the standard of the waking life, that of the world dream lasts longer till the real knowledge arises in us.
Private and Public Experiences
What is that which makes us dismiss the dream object or the illusory object as unreal but not so the things of empirical or day-to-day life? We must notice here that advaita does not deny the reality of the things of the universal experience as long as the experiences last. Advaita puts forth two types of experiences to explain this: private and public. The dream object and its experience, the illusory object and its experience, are purely individual and private and are not ratified by anyone else, not even by one who sleeps nearby or stands nearby. It is the individual who dreams or gets an illusion and it is he who wakes up from the dream and gets over the illusion. It is purely a private experience of an individual and does not form part of a second person's experience. As soon as the dream ends or the illusion detected, their objects are realised as unreal and impermanent by the individual. But he does not think of the impermanence of the objects of waking life, because they become objects of common experience for others besides him, and the waking life gives rise to such collective or public experience. This makes us doubly sure of the greater reality of the world and its objects. Nobody denies this, as far as it goes. Advaita positively admits of such an empirical reality of things and that is what the realist wants to establish anyway. However, advatia does not stop at this but continues to say that the reality associated with the empirical experience is not ultimate or final. The distinct characteristic of the empirically real (vyvaaharika satya), experienced and ratified by the public endorsement, is that it is more durable than the reality of the dream or illusory object (pratibhasika satya), which can only be experienced and attested to by the individual.
Degrees of Reality
In such an explanation, it is clear that advaita is not arguing like a Buddhist subjectivist or a nihilist. Shankara recognises degrees of reality in their respective fields. That Shankara is not compromising with the subjectivist's position will be clear from his recognition of an object even in an illusion. He recognises the snake as an object of the mind in illusion with an illusory, temporal and spatial characteristic. Prof. Hiriyanna rightly says that psychologically the theory is realistic. The illusionary object has a reality, only it is less real when compared with the things of the world, which again are less real when compared with the really real, Brahman. While for all practical purposes the things of the world are satya, Brahman is satyasya satyam.
Thus Shankara has recognised the relative reality of the vyavaharika prapanca (the empirical world). He treats it to be a cosmos with spatial, temporal and casual orders. In other words he recognises the world of science, where one can kick a stone (or experiment with it) to establish that it exists even for others to kick and to know for themselves its existence. It is a naïve realist's world of things where they exist independent and irrespective of an individual's private consciousness and where they look different, diverse and plural for public experience and ratification. It looks as though Shankara has taken for granted what the realist contends to establish. But like all those who have a mission to direct our attention to an everlasting and fuller experience or metaphysical value, the summum bonum of all existence and bliss, he says that the purpose of human endeavour is not to assert this world as final but to reach beyond to the perfect system of the eternal reality, the ground of all existence, Brahman, which transcends the phenomenal characteristics of time, space and causality. It is not meaningless then that such an absolute reality (paramarhika satya or satyasya satyam) should have been described only as neti, neti (not this, not this), for no empirical sign can indicate it.
If one were to follow the premises of advaita to their logical conclusion of Brahman and only reality and value, then what have above been tentatively called degrees of reality reduce themselves to degrees of unreality.
Jnana in Advaita Philosophy
Advaita, or the philosophy of non-dualism, understands jnana (knowledge) in two distinct senses and in two distinct orders. The first is ontological and refers to the absolute itself as constituting jnana. This is knowledge of its essential nature (svarupa jnana) and is indicated in the Upanishadic statement, ‘Brahman which is reality, knowledge and infinity’. The second is epistemological and refers to the empirical perspective when the absolute is viewed under limitations. Here jnana is vrtti-jnana, or modification of the inner organ (antahkarana) as illumined by the atman or witness.
It is evident from this that their different usages refer to different orders of reality, the transcendental or pararhika, and empirical or vyavaharika. As philosophy, advaita wants us to be clear about this distinction, and as religion, advaita wants us to intuit the identity of jnana and reality of the ontological order. Advaita warns us against identifying jnana of the two orders and against committing thereby a metaphysical error leading to all empirical or phenomenal conditions of existence. It is this error that advaita designates as superimposition (adhyasa) or nescience (avidya).
The distinction between two orders of jnana is made thus. The empirical or epistemological jnana involves a relationship of subject and object. Jnana is an epistemological experience, and as all experience involves a subject-object relationship, so does jnana. Any experience that involves such subject-object relationship is relative. And jnana is explained in terms of an object of knowledge and so at the epistemological level there is no contentless knowledge or objectless subject. Quite distinct is jnana of the metaphysical or ontological order, according to advaita, where it is relationless order, for that is the absolute with no relations.
Apart from indicating such distinction between the types of orders of jnana for purposes of elucidating its own perspective, advaita has two other objectives, namely: (1) to show the deficiencies of the subjective idealism of Yogacara Buddhism, which denies an objectless subject, and (2) to show that the relation jnana which the realistic schools maintain as final as not final.
By maintaining that every jnana or knowledge points to an object at the empirical level, advaita bestows a reality to the world of objects and to the universe around us, as against the Buddhistic contention that only the mind is real. This is a clear indication of advaita metaphysics not reducing the world of our experience to a mere myth. The criticism from wherever it may come betrays an ignorance of what mayavada is, besides a misunderstanding of what reality itself is. Let alone giving objects of the wakeful hours a reality, advaita goes to the extent of granting reality to even the dream objects and of illusion. In its assertion of psychological or epistemological realism, advaita corrects the mentalism or mithyavada of Buddhism. Then to confuse advaita for Buddhism is an error of judgment arising out of ignorance of the advaitic concept of reality.
However, as against a bare realism of the empirical world, advaita in its search for the real never stops at something less than the absolute, and as per the intuition of advaita the absolute has no compromises. And therefore the reality that advaita gives to the world experience is naturally qualified. It gives it a conditional status, for a non-conditional one can only apply to the absolute. That is exactly the reason that even the metaphysics of all theistic schools has an inner dialectic of the absolute which reduces the reality of the world to no better status than what advaita gives it. While giving the empirical (vyavaharika) and the apparent (pratibhasika) objects their reality in their respective orders, advaita estimates them from the absolute (paramarthika) perspective and declares that their value either as reality or as experience solely depends upon the absolute (paramarthika). Any validity must eventually depend on this basic ground. All reality is to be judged from the point of the unconditional reality, and every jnana is to be judged from the perspective of the ever-shining illumination.
Now let us try to know what jnana means psychologically or epistemologically according to advaita. It is common experience that jnana, or knowledge, is mental, i.e., it is the result of the modification of the inner organ (antahkarana-vrtti, i.e., buddhi, ahamkara, citta and manas). When the modification in correspondence with the objects outside is illumined by the self, experience arises. According to advaita, there is little difference between the inner organ and the material world outside. Both of them are insentient, only the former is subtle and the latter is gross. Bare modification of inner organ due to stimulation from outside is purely mechanical and physical. It is just the subtle matter that is responding to the gross in obedience to a material or physical law. It does not rise to the level of a psychological nature as such until the modification is illumined from within. That is, bare mental modification is material and is not jnana even at the empirical level. Its transmutation into a psychological character is the doing of the real psyche, the self within.
Having explained the way how jnana arises in an individual, advaita warns us against mistaking the identity of what illumines and what is illumined. If what illumines is the principle of sentience itself, what is illumined is matter in its subtle form which constitutes our mind. A mistaking between these is the fundamental metaphysical error to which we have already referred as being at the basis of empirical life.
Beside this, there is another warning that advaita wants to give, and this refers to: (1) mistaking the entire field of empirical experience for jnana in the sense of correct knowledge, and (2) mistaking the psychological or empirical jnana for the ontological knowledge of the essential nature.
We shall try to know the implications of these warnings. Experience is a wider term and arises as a result of the modification of the inner organ and getting itself illumined. If this is termed knowledge it can be both correct knowledge and wrong knowledge. If the former is called jnana, the latter is ajnana. That is, both jnana and ajnana are forms of experience, and experience is not to be equated with any one of these. Now what is important is to enquire if jnana is equivalent with the knowledge of the essential nature, i.e., the self. It should be evident by now that psychological knowledge is rooted in the inner organ modifying itself. Any jnana that is rooted in the inner organ is a form of nescience, as even ajnana or ignorance is. To identify jnana rooted in nescience with the principle of sentience, namely self, is wrong. This mistake of identification is done not only in our ordinary life but even in our endeavours of rational systems which estimate what is rationally or logically true to be metaphysically or ontologically true.
Incidentally, it may be pointed out here that wrong knowledge as a modification of the inner organ is not equal to nescience but is only a manifestation of it. To make the distinction clear, if the basic inner organ itself is nescience, a modification of the inner organ is ajnana. What is important to know is that, be it jnana or ajnana, both are nescience, being rooted in the inner organ.
Our endeavour is not complete if we do not examine how, after all, the empirical and the rational jnana and ajnana are only in nescience, i.e., not final. Advaita makes an assessment of them as such from a higher plane, the real jnana, the self. The self that is involved with the inner organ is the empirical self called jiva, and one is invited to get out of this complex of the inner organ to have the intuitions of the self directly, that is, without the aid of the inner organ, the usual means of getting knowledge. It is not sufficient that a perceptual error or ajnana is corrected to make it perceptual truth or jnana, for even at this stage of correction, thought or experience rests at the empirical level and the real self is beyond this experience and cannot be known as object of thought or experience. It is non-relative.
Now the problem is if the self is not to be known through the instrument of the inner organ (i.e., through reason and logic) and cannot be known as object of thought or experience, how to grasp it? This is where advaita tells us of the metaphysical nature of self as the self-revealing jnana, revealing itself as the very self, requiring no further revelation to prove its existence. This is knowing it by being it, where knowing is only metaphorical. And how this self as jnana is relationless can be known now.
The Upanishads describe the pure atman not only as absolute reality (sat or satyam) but also as consciousness (cit or jnanam). What is real is not bare existence or being but that it is the principle of consciousness or sentience as well, and vice versa. Now reality is infinity (anantam) as per the Upanishadic description, and we shall try to know the ontological significance of how it is absolute jnanam or cit without any relations involving it or involved in it. The main purpose of advaita is to point out this state of jnana as the summun bonum.
Absoluteness means a condition beyond all relativity. Anantam, or infinity, has in its heart this sense, and its comprehension strengthens one's idea of atman as an indivisible being. The absolute, by definition, cannot be a passing phase in terms of time. It must be eternal and is conveyed by the term anantam. Again, the absolute by definition cannot be limited by the presence of another being, absolute or non-absolute. That is, it is non-dual and does not encounter an ontological second at any stage of its being. Thus in both ways it points to an infinity over and above the concepts of time and of duality or finitude. And so the Upanishads, with an unquestionable intuition, state that Brahman is reality, knowledge and infinity (satyam, jnanam and anantam). It is this last constitutive factor which fixes the meaning of Brahman as an indivisible reality either from within or from without. That there is no second to an absolute infinity may be grasped with some difficulty but it requires greater intuition and sense of objectivity to grasp the implications of partlessness and non-modification. The dialectics of the infinite are so ungraspable through empirical means of reason and logic that in our failure to intuit it we make reality itself adjust with these limited means and so offer the modification theory of Brahman (Brahma parinamavada) or of a division within the organic unity of Brahman (vishishtadvaitavada), or the theory of multiple reals (dvaitavada). From the intuitional grasp of reality as infinite, advaita explains how these theories are inappropriate with the ontological truth of absolute existence. It is the vision of advaita which says that the infinite need not become or convert itself into a finite by a process of modification or change. It need not work upon itself an act of delimitation to appear as the finite to accommodate a finite mind. There is no becoming of it but that the infinite by the law of infinity is every bit of reality, and to call something as finite and individual is not to grasp what infinity is. It is an identity that is wrought by the nature of infinity and it places us who speak of finitudes at an illogical opposition to something which has no opposition. In the framework or the dialectics of the infinite, the millions we speak of are assimilated and anyone is invited to stand outside the infinite and to examine if this is wrong. What we think of as factors which divide and separate us, namely, time and space, are contrary to our understanding, pointers to infinity and linking us with infinity. This may seem to be the reversal of ordinary thinking, but certainly is the cue to know what this indivisible infinity is.
Now coming back to our point, we ponder how reality, that is, knowledge, is relationless. Being infinite in the sense of indivisibility, what is reality and consciousness dismisses the possibility of an existent which is a second consciousness or a second insentient principle; there is neither opposition to it from a second sentient or insentient principle. From this point of view, what is cognised as jiva (a complex of witness consciousness and the inner organ) is purely empirical and bears a consistency from purely empirical considerations. And in this complex the insentient factor, the inner organ, is an unreal entity. The sole reality therein is the unchanging witness, the atman. So also the subject-object relationship between and amongst spiritual entities is ruled out. In an indivisible spiritual infinity, plural spiritual entities are not existing to have any bilateral relationship. The atomic conception of the selves may be consistent with empiricism, which looks at reality not as a whole but as divisible, but not so from the point of view of an all-assimilative infinite which resolves atomic existence or finite being as not true.
From the metaphysical point of view, Brahman is atman and is self-shining (svayam-jyoti or svayam-prakasa). It is illumination itself illumining all things but not requiring an agency to illuminate it. While at the empirical level of the jiva, what receives illumination is the inner organ leading to empirical jnana and what illumines is transcendental consciousness, the atman.
We are only to ask if this principle of the all-illumining consciousness requires to be known through the jnana rooted in the inner organ? Those who wrongly identify the atman and the inner organ commit the error of focusing a lighted torch to show the sun. Neither the atman is seen thus nor requires to be seen thus. All statements of self-awareness are empirical when the mind is operative and do not go beyond the range of the empirical. Knowledge, or jnana, which originates in nescience, i.e., through the inner organ, cannot know that which is beyond it. All that it can do is to know what is empirical. One can build up a system of empirical knowledge or science of empirical objects.
Advaita and the Upanishads
It is not knowing it epistemologically, for one who says he knows does not know it; one who says he does not know it (epistemologically) knows it (ontologically), for it is one's own self not requiring any further proof for its existence. It is not knowing it but being it, where being and knowing are identical. This is shedding of the rational and psychic apparatus and allowing the self-shining consciousness to reveal itself to us, for nothing else can reveal it. Under the brilliance of that one is the indivisible infinity. This is the route of relativity, a condition otherwise called satcitananda or satyam jnanam anantam brahma. The foundational character of consciousness implies that reality, which is the self (atman or Brahman), is consciousness and is the prius which cannot be questioned, for that is the presupposition of all questioning. It does not require any means to prove itself of its existence. Its existence is consciousness and so consciousness is existence.
Of the earliest of the Indian philosophers, Yajnavalkya opened up this perspective, and later Sankaracharya developed and fortified it by the reviews and criticism of all opposing theories, and the implications of them being universal apply equally to all relevant schools and theories ancient and modern touching upon the problem of consciousness.
In philosophical literature we find the term being used variedly as awareness, knowledge, cognition, thought etc. But the most basic sense in which advaita, which is called here for the present purpose, spiritual idealism, points to a state of existence identified with the self as consciousness, makes it possible for all other usages to come in as psychological or epistemological aspects or processes of consciousness. This distinction shows the fundamental character of consciousness, with reference to which only one can assess the modes of awareness, knowledge and understanding. The basic intuition of consciousness as ontological places an enquirer in an existential situation which is central to his being and from where he cognises, judges or evaluates all. We shall examine this position.
Humans exists, but how do they know that they exist? Do they depend on something not structural to their being to know that they exist? If they do, possibly they will never know that they are existing! If the source, which makes them know that they exist is alien to them in being, they lives a borrowed existence! If consciousness is not constitutive with their being, or if it is not their being, they can never be said to be existing in an absolutely free and unconditional way. The basic truth, then, is that existing is consciousness existence. To be is to be conscious, and consciousness is to be. Being, consciousness and freedom go hand in hand, and each is interchangeable for the other.
Consciousness, then, is complete expression of what is being or reality. It is complete for two reasons:
1. Its denial is impossible. One cannot logically exist while denying existence to oneself, for denial is evident expression of his being and consciousness is at the base of it.
2. To be existing while requiring confirmation by something else is denying existence to oneself as a conscious agent. At this level of one's existence the revealer and the revealed are non-dual. And so neither one is substantive to the other treated as a quality, attribute or property, and neither one is adventitious. Any linguistic distinction is empirical methodology only refusing ontological application to the non-dual being.
Of reality on this existential level, all definition is no definition but is only a symbolic description or just an indication. Shankara says one indicates it by a lakshana (indication) and does not define it by a visesana (attribute). Further, self-consciousness is always present, not in the temporal sense but as the pre-condition for the recognition of all change. It is self-evident luminosity which illumines all other things. This disposes of the flux theory and need not be elaborated.
This picture of reality which advaita maintains is that of spiritual existence whose marked differences from the essentialist and existentialist philosophies, and from idealism and realism, may be noted and its contribution for a comprehensive and basic understanding of reality be assessed.
1. Reality is not divided here into essence and existence, nor the precedence of the one over the other accepted. And denial of bare existence frees it from the predicament of existentialism if its pretensions to pure existence exclude a constitutive consciousness even at the human situation existentialism starts from. Humankind's beginning is not a blank beginning. One is consciousness even before one is born. One is consciousness without one's knowing.
2. Spiritual idealism that advaita is, is distinct in its approach from realism with regard to objective reality. For it, the problem of consciousness is not so much to prove the existence of external reality as it is to know about the reality of external existence which is taken for granted. The implications of consciousness as self-evident and self-revealing truth for the experience of the self is to be extended to know how far the experience of the non-self or the objective world could be evident to or authenticated by the self or knower. If the truth of a thing is not directly apprehended, it can never be done so by the most accurate and precise means or pramana (means of knowledge). A direct apprehension is possible insofar as the being of the other becomes the self-being. The next is not the nearest but the farthest in existence, for the cleavage in being is unbridgeably immense. The event of the other becoming the very self of the knower – sarvamatmaivabhut, as Yajnavalkya says – is the cue for the perfect understanding by acquaintance, not by description. The subject-object relationship or distinction annihilated in the direct apprehension of the object as the self is the realisation of consciousness as self-revelation or illumination of the whole being.
3. Now, unlike normal idealism, advaita is the philosophy of the self and not mind only, whose infinite dimensions untouched by the limiting space and time give no scope for exclusions from being and divisions in being of the sort of subject and object or the self and the world.
The distinctions in perspective of advaita from that of realism and idealism being thus made clear, we shall assess its achievements.
What normal idealism isolates and rejects, viz., the object, and what normal realism fights to restore as a parallel existent, the spiritual idealism of advaita receives, and receiving gives meaning and reality in the existential infinitude of the structure of the self. The significance of this theory of consciousness as being is very great for a philosophy of life, let alone for spiritual realisation, and perhaps is sadly missed. Apart from the transcendental non-dualism of consciousness as being, it is interesting to see how advaita orients its empirical epistemology in restoring reality to the object which normal idealism withdraws; and in receiving the object back to the unity of being which normal realism separates as an independent being at the cost of truth. An epistemology not in tune with the intuitions of the self as the infinite consciousness principle of non-dual existence does not even recognise the object as being there and its knowledge becomes impossible if it is not resolved into the structural non-duality with the knowing subject. This bears out the significance of advaita as spiritual idealism, calling both the object and the means of knowledge as caitanya, equally as it calls the knower caitanya. A mistaken division in consciousness-existence creates the subject and object whereas the intuition of the non-dual consciousness-existence corrects this mistake of a division in being. However, life is the practical incidence of this division wherein the object is not taken as false and so the normal realism is satisfied. And at the level of the correction of the mistake, the object gets illumined as the very self of the knower and so the normal idealism is satisfied.
The implications of the transcendental condition of the self for explaining the meaning of self-consciousness at the empirical state are evident. Even here the self cannot be objectified. What seems to be objectification in a statement like ‘I know myself’ is mistaking the mental modification for the self, which Shankara points out as adhyasa or super-imposition. In case one insists that one ‘knows the self’ in an act of introspection, one is reducing the knower to the level of the known, thus to materiality, or leading to the fallacy of infinite regress.
If then the self can never be objectified and known as an object, one may think of the position to be no different from that of agnosticism. But it is a misplaced agnosticism as even it is pointed out that it is the self which doubts, leading to the confirmation of the doubter himself – ‘there is no other thinker than the self’ as Yajanvalkya declares. The agnostic has missed the intuition of his very self as consciousness which is self-evident throughout his existence and so is the presupposition of his empirical doubt. Shankara says: ‘Consciousness which is the basis of proof is established even prior to the process of proof.’
Under such conditions of unknowability of the self as the object, a definition of the foundational consciousness, which the self is, is impossible. And so a description of the way how this consciousness appears in and through practical life is the only choice. Hence at this stage simple phenomenology only is acceptable.
Thinking and Reality
The position of advaita regarding the problem can be summarised by a statement like, ‘The real does not think, and what thinks cannot be real.’ The statement implies a fundamental difference between what constitutes the real or reality and the realm where categories of thought operate. This realm of subject-object considerations advaita identifies as vyavaharika, i.e., the empirical or the practical. The intuitions of the real according to advaita should set at naught all controversy of the relations and the confusion between and lead us to an ultimate rejection of the same as unreal. This is a major departure which the system of advaita makes from the rest of the Indian systems.
Advaita stands for spiritual absolutism and following the Upanishads calls the ultimately real by the terms atman or Brahman and establishes its authenticity of existence on the ground of one's existence in all acts of one's own assertion or denial. Shankara says, ‘It is impossible to deny one's own self because the very denier is himself the atman.’ Further, advaita establishes the non-dualism of this basic principle, the atman, on the evidence of the universal revelation or sruti which says: ‘atmaivedamagra asit purushavidhah’ (Brih. Up. 1.4.1), ‘Brahma va idamagra asidekameva’ (Brih. Up. 1.4.11), ‘idam sarvam yadayamatma’ (Brih. Up. 4.5.7), ‘neha nanasti kimchana’ (Brih. Up. 4.4.19), ‘sarvam khalvidam Brahma’ (Chan. Up. 3.14.1). These passages indicate the absolute condition of the real, the sat: ‘sadeva somyedamagra asit ekamevadvitiyam’ (Chan. Up. 6.2.1), a pure non-relational being as such. This non-dual ultimate reality is not an inferred conclusion but is the basis which makes all conclusions and existences possible. As the Kena Upanishad points out, ‘it is not thought out, but what makes thinking possible’. What the Upanishads identify as satcitananda or as satyam jnanam anandam (or anantam) Brahma is this very same reality which is the infinite, non-dual, indivisible principle of consciousness and bliss, which is above the categories of dualism, viz. subject and object, good and evil, form and formlessness, etc. And Shankara says of this principle, ‘Sat is to be understood as the entity which is pure being, subtle, free from all specific features, all pervading, indivisible; the consciousness which is known from all the Upanishads.’ (Chan. Up. Bhashya 6.2.1). The best method of indicating this non-relational being is to speak of it only negatively as neti, neti, which, however, does not mean negation but negation of negation, as it is also true the negation of all assertions. The Mundaka speaks of the highest reality by negative descriptions, implying not denial of characteristics but transcendence of our human estimates of it either as this or that. This principle is acosmic and beyond the catuskoti, as Gaudapada points out. In the diction of Kant, this is the realm of the noumenon, the thing in itself, beyond the categories of thought and the sensibilities of understanding.
With reference to the problem on hand, the historical development of this vision finds its first emphatic statement in Yajnyavalkya when he said: ‘That by which everything is known, with what could one possibly know it? With what, my dear, one can know the knower?
‘Where there is duality as it were, there one sees another...smells another...listens to another...thinks of another...speaks to another...touches another...understands another. But when everyhing has become atman alone, who can possibly see another, and with what?...smell whom, and with what?...speak to whom, and with what? listen, and with what?...think of whom, and with what?...understand whom, and with what? One with whose consciousness one understands all this, with what can one understand?’ (Brih. Up. 4.5.15)
‘That is the infinite condition, where one sees the other, hears the other, knows the other. And that is the finite where one sees the other, hears the other, knows the other. That infinite is the immortal, the finite is the mortal.’ (Chan. Up. 7.24)
‘That infinite is bliss...One should realise the infinite non-dual condition.’ (Chan. Up. 7.23)
And the second elaboration of the vision is found in the metaphysics of Shankara, who perhaps came after a thousand five hundred years.
‘Atman does not become known to oneself depending of one's knowledge on any pramana (means of knowledge) ...atman, being the basis of the idea of the means of knowledge…is pre-supposed even before the idea of the means of knowledge…’ (Sutra Bh. 2.3.7.)
‘As long as there has not arisen the intuition of the reality of the indivisible non-dual atman, so long the unreality of the effects of the nature of valid means, objects of knowledge and the resultant knowledge, never occur to any one.’ (Sutra. Bh. 2.114)
Shankara has nothing else to do but to reiterate the intuitive vision of the Upanishadic seers on all the matters concerning the absolute and the relative, or the real and the unreal, i.e., the certainty of the priority and the foundational nature of the absolute indivisible atman, and of its non-relative self-luminous being. What is not self-existent and self-luminous is for him the relative and the practical and ultimately is unreal. For Shankara, ‘that is the real, the nature of which never changes, and that is the unreal, the notion of which is liable to change’.
Advaita's interest in not mixing the transcendental or the ontological condition of the atman or Brahman with the empirical or the epistemological realm, which Shankara holds to be valid in its own field. This is the philosophical mind at work but whose reasoning is receiving its illumination from intuitive vision of the transcendent reality. Standing on this platform, Shankara explains the incidence of the empirical as due to a natural beginningless mistaking between the real and the unreal, the absolute and the relative.
Maya as Relativity
In the field of modern science, it is an accepted truth that all truth is relative, i.e., relative in space and time, or to the space-time continuum. All decisions about facts or formulations of laws are made with reference to fields of observation, and it is the frame of reference which ultimately estimates the correctness of judgments. It is the vindication of truth that scientific truth is limited to the physical or empirical and that matters not touching the physical or the empirical are not topics properly to be investigated by sciences. This makes all the difference between physics and metaphysics. For, relativity of science is practical while that of Vedanta is validational and metaphysical.
In the field of philosophy, it is the advaita of Shankara which speaks of relativity yet goes beyond it. It says that all our experience here and now is relative, that the objects of our experience are relative, or that we are face to face with the principle of relativity. It is to this principle that advaita gives the name maya. Maya literally means that which measures, i.e., it is the principle of validation. Whatever is measurable is commensurate with maya, and yet maya goes beyond itself. If modern science says such a non-relative (or the absolute is unintelligible within its field), maya says that the non-relative cannot be measured as if it is an event or a thing in the relative realm but that its existence is logically basic, necessarily true and essential for the being (or even for its comprehension) of the very relative. While science accepts nothing but the absoluteness of relative existence, maya rejects it as absolute and points towards an absolute not involved in any relativity. Thus maya functions by measuring or covering whatever is the content of empirical experience and pointing to a necessary something unmeasured by any known or empirically determined means as the ground of all experience.
What is important to note here is that maya, or the principle of relativity in advaita, while it points to something beyond itself, does not reject the world nor its relative reality or truth but rejects its absoluteness either of existence or non-existence.
It is sometimes argued that in an experience called spiritual which constitutes the real, and insofar as it should become wholesome and integral, there should be no rejection of any object even if it is relative. In other words, the world and all that is relative must form a necessary element of the spiritual. What advaita says in this connection, or means to say, is very significant. It is not inclusion of relativity or objectivity which gives any spirituality to an experience but that in a spiritual experience we get to the very core of substantiality, i.e., reality, which makes all relativity and objectivity a possibility. It is this substance which gives what is termed a spiritual experience its uniqueness, and forms the end of all endeavour. The world of experience can get restored or illuminated on this canvas which is not the world itself.
Claims are made to prove that advaita, through its maya, is an attempt to make this world and life meaningless. But how can anybody make it meaningful if a proper assessment of the world and life is not made at all? Any meaning that may be gotten cannot be measured outside and beside the sphere of the spirit, or spiritual experience.
The advaitic absolute is not the commensurate absolute which modern science says it has rejected, nor is it one which is discussed as an object of enquiry. What is measured and discussed as forming the object (or subject) of all philosophies and sciences is maya, the principle of all relativity or objectivity and its various manifestations, viz. the things and the events, not excluding a personal God. Any bid to include a polar relativity as such within the absolute as to have an integral experience of the type spoken of is to miss the pure occasion called the absolute and its spiritual dialectics. From the point of view the spirit which the absolute is, the experience can only be a degree different from the worldly experience but not qualitatively unique.
The real perspective of liberation as a significant state of experience valuable both as an event available here in the empirical realm and as a transcendent truth will have to be assessed from the points of view of philosophy and life.
Liberation as a concept is relevant to philosophy; either we take philosophy as inquiry (tattvajnana) or as a way of life (jivana dharma). However, the limits of the concept may be different in each case. In the first, liberation, i.e., mukti, is understood as a topic for logical analysis and discernment at the theoretical level, and in the second, liberation may convey a sense of actual experience in life, i.e., as a way of life. As inquiry is to be assimilated into the way of life, so the way of life is to find its consummation in liberation.
This means that even discussion on liberation must be oriented to receiving light and direction from life and to reflecting the significance of life in thought. For philosophy as inquiry, liberation is a discussible topic, the dialectics of which are linked with its opposite bondage. As a mode of inquiry, philosophy evaluates bondage as a conditional existence of the contingent and the relative (with all their implications) and defines liberation as freedom from the contingent and relative. For philosophy as a way of life, liberation is the assessment or value of life as an actualized experience. It takes liberation as being the very foundation of not only the contingent and relative factors of life but even of philosophy as inquiry.
This aspect is significant and calls for the attention of those who strive but fail to understand and experience liberation. This is the perspective of a mukta, the liberated, who if called for dwells on the evidence of direct experience of the non-contingent and the non-relative as distinguished from the perspective of a mere inquirer or jijnasu, who is led by the logic of thought and by its infatuations. If for the jijnasu and even for the mumukshu, i.e., the aspirant after moksha, liberation is a logical possibility and an expected result of a pursuit, a yet to be, for the mukta on the other hand it is a state of experience lived and enjoyed, and therefore philosophy as inquiry should find its direction and significance from the perspective of a mukta.
This is how a jivanmukta would say: mukta sthiti is the essence of existence, or it is real existence. It is the natural state of one's existence, as it is called savrupa sthiti. Accordingly, mukti is the essence of the self; it is self itself, atmasthiti. As such, it refers to the unconditional state of self-being, neither bestowed on it by an external principle nor earned as a result of self-effort. This is the absolute sense in which the being of the self is identified with liberation or mukti.
For a mere inquirer, or jijnasu, liberation and bondage are concepts for discussion as mutually contending poles which beset human thought, and therefore are estimated as antithetical at the dialectical level, with possible evaluations of them which remain at the same level. They may remain so being contended and discussed for eternity. But for a mukta they cease to be simple conceptual categories and become instances of life, mutually relative to each other and alternating at various times but ever depending upon a deeper experience which measures them as but temporal and relative contingencies. This is the eternal seer or witness of all other things which find their locus in the very self, the witness. They are beyond not only the logical opposites of the dialectician but also even beyond the logical synthesis of opposites. The distinctive achievement of the mukta lies in rising above them in life and discovering in experience (not simply in thought) the basic ground of freedom from all the tensions in the very self. What contributes to the resolution of strife and tension is the fact of their being established in the very principle of freedom and equanimity, viz., their own self. This is the vantage position which a mukta commands, and from where the whole process of existence is witnessed with an infinite, non-relative and cosmic vision. This is the brahmi sthiti of a sthitaprajna, for whom liberation is not that which a jijnasu would like to refer to as an ideal to be achieved, as opposed to an existing bondage or as a possible experience, but forms the very basis of existence. That is, liberation is existential truth, the atman or Brahman. Atman is not achieved, atman one is.
If liberation is a natural condition of the self, straying away should be unnatural, and this we call bondage. Considered in this light, all endeavour is to be directed not to attain what we are in essence but toward removing this unnatural condition. The purpose of sadhana is to overcome the confusion which makes us think ourselves that which we are not.
The whole perspective then is changed and demands a reorientation of the perspective of philosophy as inquiry regarding the problems of reality and unreality, truth and error, good and evil, etc., accordingly, removal of the confusion between what we are essentially and what we are not, between truth and error, is the problem of philosophy (i.e., of logic and epistemology), in which the establishment of error is not the goal but the removal of it, and similarly, of the removal of the unreal, of evil and misery, of finitude, etc. For the real and the untrue are not discovered other than by themselves, and it is they which discover or reveal the unreal and the untrue, not vice versa. The logical mind and our epistemological enquiry are only instruments and can function under the illuminations of inner reality and inner truth, which are not revealed but reveal themselves. This is the difference in perspective of the mukta towards the topic under discussion: atman is svayam jyoti, not an illuminable object. It is the infinite freedom, not a realised result, that is, mukti is not any kind of a product achieved (sahana phala). All sadhana is directed to removing or overcoming a confusion, technically, avidya, that the self is in bondage, that is, virtually finite and relative, and that these are real and true. Bondage is involvement in the finite and the relative, and liberation is overcoming the involvement while still in the realm of the finite and the relative. What we generally think of is overcoming the confusion in thought only, forgetting that life is more complex than mere thought, and that we are to rise above other phases of the contingent and the relative which life presents. Where we may succeed is in thought or talk only, but fail and yield in both action and feeling. A mukta is strong where we are weak, established where we are shaky and uncertain, here but unaffected by all relativity. A jivanmukta is not only a challenge but an enigma, being here with us but at the same time being established in the infinitude of the self, the sure guide in laying the proper foundations for all right action and thought and for all judgment regarding what the relativity and the contingent are in value and being.
Among the Indian systems, advaita gives a significant place for jivanmukti and for one who has risen to that state of freedom, and so they are called a jivanmukta. Advaita takes them for a test case to understand what actually stands for liberation as evidenced in life.
Certain logical difficulties are raised against the relevancy of the concept saying that it is a contradiction in terms and that mukti legitimately should be vedeha mukti or that which comes after physical death. To say that videha mukti is legitimate is to equate mukti with it and to deny the significance of even the relative freedom which we can ordinarily experience in life. Apart from discounting the scriptural evidences of such an experience (eg: Isa 7, Katha 6.14-15, Brihadaranyaka 4.4.7, and the Gita 2.55-61), it appears that the objection discounts the real meaning of freedom, which has relevance to life here and now and to philosophy as inquiry, by overstressing difficulties from a sub-logical attitude which has yet to attain a logical stand beyond the logical which one is conversant with. To underestimate experience of which we are ignorant and measure it with a rod which is limited has been the fate of technical philosophical dialectics. However, if we are not indifferent to the spirit of philosophy we should try to understand the problem from the perspective of a jivanmukta who has faced and won the challenge regarding life, its meaning and foundation from a more comprehensive experience and vision that is usually available at the empirical level where we generally stop.
Jivanmukti is a challenge because it questions the indifferent and asks them if it is possible for them to rise above the contingent and the relative with which they live and still be untouched by the physical and the psychological necessities of life. Jivanmukti is allegorically kama dahana by the jiva who rises to the level of Ishwara and burns down the lure of the earth (i.e., with a third eye which burns down the narrowness of things) and metaphysically releases them from relativity (maya). When we miss the real spirit of this challenge to rise above littleness and narrowness which constitute bondage, we are up against it on a flimsy dialectical detail saying that it is illogical, and that mukti is obtained only as videha mukti, i.e., when the karma-bandha is over or avidyalesa is spent out. The evidence of mukti is not to be sought in the physical death, for all physical death is not evidence of liberation, nor is physical death the only death. Liberation hereafter (videha mukti) is to be evidenced here, proved against bondage, or else it becomes a simple hypotheses.
One who has attained jivanmukti fuses his body with the world of objects, and both with the sat aspect of the real, wherein all that exists finds its ultimate locus. And so they do not find a need or necessity in consciousness to treat their body as having a being different from the rest of the objects, i.e., even while they breathe, eat, talk or deal with the matter of the body we associate with them. This freedom they will have gained from the physical body, and the unnecessity of treating it as different from the rest of the world, is verily the indication of avidya nasha, or destruction of avidya. Understood thus, the question of an element of avidya remaining (avidyalesa) is forceless, as also that of prarabdha karma (or the karma which is yielding its results) binding the body to the individual. The former objection is wrong; for the fact of feeling free from the necessity of the body is itself vidya or knowledge, and one who is established in this is the jivanmukta. So also, that prarabdha karma holds their body is wrong, for their body is no more theirs as it is fused in the sat aspect of the real, and physical death is not the only criterion to determine the fruition of prarabdha karma. If prarabdha karma were true it should refer even to the world other the physical body with which they will have identified their body. The essential attitude of a jivanmukta is that they have no individual body as distinguished from the cosmic body. And this equally refers to their attitude towards the non-distinctness of their individual self form, the universal. This identity is so much achieved by them that we argue about a little lump of matter (their physical body) which has been released by them as inconsequential but held up by us with vehemence because of our relative experience of involvement with our own bodies, and so we think in a jivanmukta's case a separation from involvement is impossible. It is as if we care more for their body than they themself do. It is no more than a carcass for one who is free from the necessity of it. The fact that a liberated soul is still with the body should be a great relief to us for that provides a supreme and extraordinary example of how an individual could identity himself with a cosmic structure and perform a cosmic fruition in his being by affecting a virtual devaluation of the physical body. We forget the glory of this sacrifice and are unable to appreciate it for the simple reason that we cannot do it. We think they live confined to that body, forgetting the infinite dimensions of their growth beyond the physical frame that appears to us surrounding them. Our vision has a blind spot in it which cuts off from our vision the non-distinction they will have affected between their immediately surrounding mass of blood and muscle and the cosmic universe of an endless dimension. How can we ever understand that a jivanmukta presents the spirit of the infinite self being the indwelling atman of not only that matter which was their personal and private body but also of other small and big packets of matter and non-matter? And so videha mukti is of no consequence for one in whose case dehavi mukti, i.e., rising above the limitations of the two dehas (gross and subtle), is an accomplished fact.
It may even be shown that other than as jivanmukti the real significance of mukti cannot be demonstrated. Jivanmukti is freedom from the bondage of the limitations of the body which are of two kinds, the gross and the subtle, or the physical and the psychic. Of the two, the limitations of the first type of the gross physical are suffered and the body is thrown off by all at death. But the distinction of the jivanmukta is that while living with the body they rise above the limiting demands of the same and throw it off when they decide to. In fact, physical death is a technical detail with them and is of no importance. Even beyond the fetters of the physical, what matters is the limitation of psychic body, overcoming of which alone constitutes real liberation. This body operates not only when they live but extends even beyond the physical death. Is it possible for one to escape at this level of psychic life from the narrowness of thinking, feeling and doing one is prone to? Is one able to conquer hate, malice, anger, greed, lust, etc? Is one able to maintain calmness amidst the disturbing situations of life? If so, to that extent one is a mukta from the narrow manifestations of buddhi, etc. A sthitaprajna is not a dead person. They are with the body, sthula and sukshma (physical and subtle), but freed from the bondage of limitations. For them life is not this ordinary biological life but is the cosmic dynamics which puts up not only this life but the endless forms of being and expression.
If mukti is claimed to be a condition coming after the falling of the body but not when one is living, it is missing the point. For all dead people are not freed. There is no proof that they are freed from the sukshma deha and its limitations. In fact, transmigration is through the medium of sukshma deha, and when one is at that stage, there is no possibility of attaining freedom, for it is a state of impotency as there is no scope for causing fruition of karma. One may call it the potential state of a seed, and whatever be its inclination it cannot sprout. It should find a soil to grow in and show what is hidden in it. In other words, it is seeking a karya or karma kshetra, the sthula deha. And it is here that one can fully express one's potentialities to grow or to be buried with the chain of samsara.
Liberation is to be understood at the subtle level of the operations of mind, etc. while one lives. If so, it is not videha mukti but dehavi mukti which constitutes the real meaning of mukti. A jivanmukta is a standing example or evidence for all possibility of mukti.
Understood thus, jivanmukti presents a positive aspect of life and philosophy, neither escape from life nor denial of it. The jivankmukta goes nowhere by dissolving or rejecting the universe. Jivanmukti is a condition of one being or existence not involved in relativity (or its implications of space, time, finitude, etc.), nor does it reduce the world of objects to mere nothingness which constitutes the truth of the real condition of being. One who is liberated yet living presents cosmic implications of individual functions and freedom, and so should be of greatest importance to philosophy as inquiry and as a way of life.
In the light of the statement made of the cosmic implications of the individual freedom of a jivanmukta, their relations with society and the idea of lokasamgraha get a new dimension. There is a traditional view that such a person has transcended the obligations to perform any function or karma either individual or social. In other words, they have attained naishkarmya. Its implications have also been explained in the specific sense of their not being obliged to perform even religious rituals. Either as duty or as a ritual, there is nothing which binds them. It is said that while they are living with us they could nevertheless engage in what is called lokasamgraha, or social services, where in the fruits of labour, good or bad do not accrue to them. It is a disinterested, unrecoiling function which keeps them free from the results, for they have nothing to attain as a personal benefit.
As a species pointing to the consolidation of cosmic purpose, they are the measure of people's capacity to serve it in life, bringing it to the conscious level that life's future is linked with the cosmos in positive relationship with dimensions not merely individual and local but covering all the living beyond the selfish and narrow fortifications of ordinary life. It is here a jivanmukta steps out of the ordinary meaning of biological or organic evolution. The significant turn they record in their life should be very fascinating as such.
They are never silent and never idle in the ordinary sense. Having attained that stage of realisation of what could be called brahmanirvana or brahmishtiti, they are one with the cosmic law and as such are the dynamic law itself behind all existence. Looked at in this light, even lokasamgraha is not any accumulative overt act of doing something in the ordinary sense of social service but is conservation and consolidation of cosmic purpose, which sustains the order of existence or which is existence itself. With regard to a jivanmukta marking the measure of human evolution, even the ordinary application of the principle of evolution gets a new orientation.
A human being's evolution as a biological species is different from his spiritual evolution, as may be witnessed in a jivanmukta. Spiritual evolution is not biological or ecological evolution of a species through time. It is not to be determined with reference to era or age or race or creed. It will have to be sought for in the spontaneous or natural expression of love, mercy, truth, harmony, peace, understanding, equanimity and patience. It is these which mark a jivanmukta as a distinct being who only can cross not simply the ideological barriers but also the natural barriers to unite in one act of will and feeling the living and the non-living as but nuances of the expression of life and bliss. This is not simply to be equated with an instance of a species rising through the struggle for existence. This is the growth of a human even beyond the sphere of human society, and such a one embodies in themself the spirit of cosmic life which adds grace to human life and the species which otherwise may remain just biological. The scales of such a growth will have to be seen with reference to a jivanmukta.
The need to bring advaita's context on self-realisation is to highlight non-duality, which U.G. continuously spoke of in many of his spontaneous conversations about the reality of one unitary motion of the life force. This clearly indicates the acceptance of non-duality in all forms of existence. In U.G.'s own words:
We don't seem to realise that it is thought that is separating us from the totality of things. The belief that this can help us to keep in tune with the totality is not going to materialise. So it has come up with all kinds of ideas of insight and intuition.
U.G. prefers to use the term natural state. The first and foremost thing that U.G. dissolves is the very idea that there is a self to be realised. Through the separative structure of thought we have created an illusion that there is a self. We identify it as ‘I’ and then we superimpose the idea of realising that self called ‘I’. It is of utmost significance that we are continuously making an effort to realise an illusion without even realising that the identification ‘I’ itself is an illusion besides chasing another illusion called realisation.
The uniqueness in U.G.'s teaching lies in his demystification of spirituality. While discounting all spiritual experiences, he provides a rather naturalistic explanation of spirituality in terms of what he calls the natural state. He maintains the impossibility of attaining the natural state through search, effort, seeking or any other strategy employed by our thought process.
Spiritual experiences are, he says, like any other experiences only more glorified. They do not solve the problems of duality or suffering. There is no such thing for U.G. as a non-dual experience, it is a contradiction in terms. In order for you to know non-duality as an experience you must somehow be there. That means the experience is not truly non-dual.
None of the means which tradition has handed down to us to attain such a liberated state of non-duality delivers the goods. Meditation, renunciation, prayer and worship are all done with an ulterior motive and can never free you from duality. You are always there measuring your progress. As long as ‘you’ are there, you can never be free.
Thought: The ‘I’ is thought-generated. Thought is memory, our cultural and individual past operating on the present situation. Each thought splits itself, as it were, into two: the object thought about and a fictitious, non-existent subject. It creates the illusion of the subject, the thinker. Since there is no thinker as such we can never know the thinker. The thought is the thinker. There is no other thinker.
Thought cannot understand reality. Reality and life are constantly changing. Thought, being dead and static, can never understand them or know them. We know or understand anything only through experiences moulded out of our past. If thought cannot understand reality, nothing else can either. You can never know anything directly without the mediation of thought or knowledge. If we could then there would be no need to understand anything.
For U.G. thought is only useful for communication. The structures that thought produces, its theories and hypotheses, are only useful in producing technological tools and gadgets. The theories and hypotheses are mere fictions created by thought.
Thought superimposes itself upon the biological organism creating a parallel world, the world of thought, which consists of all the things we strive for, our pleasures and pains, our knowledge and values.
The Cultural Input: U.G. says that all typically human problems arise out of the values that the society or culture around us has imposed upon us, what he calls the cultural input. Our desires and goals are all passed on to us by the culture around us. This culture wants us to become perfect. It induces us to emulate the models which history has produced, models like Jesus and Buddha, or to strive for utopias such as the kingdom of God or nirvana that those models have presented. The cultural input gives us the notion that by living this way we will gain permanent happiness.
Thought is the mechanism which enables the experience of the past to repeat itself through images and words by creating a future which is only a modified past and prompting us to strive for it. Ideals thus projected into the future falsify our present condition, making us feel as if there were something wrong with it. We are in constant conflict between what we think we are and what we want to become. We feel restless, inadequate and unfulfilled, and we constantly search for a meaning in life to fulfil us.
Thought presents us with various goals and prompts us to strive for them to gain permanent happiness without a moment of pain. But permanent happiness is an illusion, it does not exist. In our attempts to realise our goals, including spiritual goals, we begin to transform ourselves. Furthermore, the process of seeking self-fulfilment is endless, resulting in suffering for the individual and destruction in society. Our seeking leads us to a search for security, power, wealth, sex, love, spiritual liberation and so on. As we strive to attain our goals we have conflicts, fears, jealousies, exploitation and wars. These are generated by what U.G. calls the self-protectiveness of thought.
Instead of a peaceful living organism we now have an individual torn by conflict, stressed out, competing, conflicting with other individuals and groups, causing suffering for himself and for the society. As long as we are driven by thought and its goals and structures, our problems are inevitable. The problem is that we take our thoughts and goals to be too real. They are all fictitious and generated by the society around us. Since the goals conflict with each other, we are constantly in conflict. ‘We want all this and heaven too,’ to quote U.G.
Then we ask how we can become free from all these goals. The ‘how’ is a mischievous question; it implies another goal, this time one of thoughtlessness or absence of goals. All our effort is utilised to strive for goals.
To become free from the stranglehold of thought, to use U.G.'s expression, all effort must cease. A clinical death must occur. But you cannot bring it about. If and when it happens the organism will function smoothly without the interference of thought and its artificial goals. Thought then falls into its place as an instrument of communication and problem-solving.
The Body: For U.G. the human organism is unique. No other organism is like it. It is unparalleled in nature. U.G. maintains that the body is a tremendously intelligent organism capable of living in the world without any help. It does not need any of our knowledge, education, goals, pleasures and happiness. It does not care to achieve anything or to improve itself. The only needs of the body are survival and reproduction. The body has no need for transformation or liberation. ‘There is nothing there to be transformed’ U.G. says.
‘The body is always in a state of peace. This is not a dead peace concocted by thought but a living and dynamic peace. Through our conditioning we constantly seek pleasures. But the body is not interested in them. Pleasures take it away from its peaceful harmonious state. Pleasures are indeed pains in that sense. For that reason the body constantly tries to get rid of them.’
According to U.G. the body has the needed intelligence to take care of any problems such as ill health that it might confront. It has the needed resources and the power to recuperate and renew itself, given a chance. When all else fails it will die gracefully. Medical science only prolongs the agony of pain, it does not cure it. In a sense, the body is immortal because at the time of death its atoms may be reshuffled and recycled but the body is always there in some form or other.
U.G. calls the mind the interloper or squatter. He says that through its pleasure-seeking movement it constantly interferes with the functioning of the body and disturbs the peace and peak functioning that are already there.
U.G. holds out as a possibility that when one becomes free from the stranglehold of thought, which might happen not because of any of our effort but in spite of it, the body falls into its natural rhythm; then thought functions harmoniously without creating a surrogate life. Such a body is in the natural state. According to U.G. when one falls into this state the body and the senses will resume their full function and sensitivity.
Means: U.G. does not supply any specific method to become free from the stranglehold of thought. Instead he wants us to see the futility of striving for all our goals for self-fulfilment. He asks us to find out what we really want. If we are free from all those fictitious goals and realise that there is no such thing as permanent happiness and no meaning in life our lives become simple and easy. Otherwise we are wasting our life and talents in futile pursuits.
Teaching Process: U.G. was a teacher who constantly operated from a state of non-duality: his actions were not born out of calculation or premeditation, they were spontaneous. His dealings with people were directed constantly toward drawing them into the vortex of non-duality where there are no distinctions between bondage and liberation, or indeed, even between life and death. U.G. did not distinguish himself from others. He was not trying to achieve any results nor was he trying to change anyone. Yet his dealings had that effect on people, viz., they were constantly prodded to question their belief structures. His only aim seemed to be to destroy the mental structures people had so carefully and assiduously built within themselves, without attempting to replace them with any of his own.
The Physics and Biology of Enlightenment
This realisation that symbols and experience do not follow the same rules has been brought to the science of physics by the formidable quantum logic. The possibility that separate parts of the universe like you or any other thing are connected in ways which both our common experience and the laws of physics believe has forced its way into science under the theorems of John Stewart Bell.
Laser fusion research and the hunt for quarks are paradigms of physics. A paradigm is an established thought, a framework. Quantum logic calls us back from the realm of symbols to the realm of experience. Bell's theorem tells us that there is no such thing as separate parts, all the parts of the universe are connected in an intimate fashion as has been claimed by mystics.
The difference between experience and symbol is the difference between mythos and logos. Logos imitates but never replaces experience. It is a substitute for experience. Logos is an artificial constitution of dead symbols which mimics experience on a one-to-one basis. Classical physical theorems are an example of a one-to-one correspondence between theory and reality.
Einstein argued that unless a physical theory has a one-to-one correspondence with phenomena it is not complete. In other words, every element of physical reality must have a counterpart in the physical theory. Quantum theory does not postulate a one-to-one correspondence between theory and reality as it cannot predict events but only probabilities of events.
If enlightenment is seen as the realisation of ultimate unity then this is how Bell's theorem amply proves it. But if enlightenment is taken as ‘I’ exist in ‘all’ and ‘all’ exists in ‘me’ then the unity refers to life systems as the chemical thread of life and as the unifying thread of all living systems. All living systems are characterised by the common chemical thread of DNA linking all organisms, from primitive viruses to man. Life is similar in all beings whether it be a snake, a bird or a dog. Thus a man could see his own life in all and all life in him. In this sense I am in all and all is in me.
A vital aspect of the state of enlightenment is the experience of an all-pervading unity. ‘This’ and ‘that’ are no longer separate entities. They are different forms of the same thing. Everything is a manifestation. It is not possible to answer the question, ‘Manifestation of what?’ because what is, is beyond words, beyond concept, beyond form, beyond even space and time. Everything is a manifestation of that which is. ‘That which is’ – beyond these words lies the experience, the experience of that which is. Everything is that which is. We are part of that which is. In fact, according to the discovery of Bell in 1964 formulated in what is called Bell's theorem, at a deep and fundamental level the separate parts of the universe are connected in an intimate and immediate way.
The Biology of Enlightenment
Are there glandular changes that accompany the dying process (as in the case of U.G.'s calamity)? Dr. Paul Lynn in the U.S. stresses the way the thymus gland functions. Other glands like the pineal and the pituitary are also affected. The thinking consciousness of man is affected by propaganda, persuasion or drugs. Mystical enlightenment is different, it is physiological mutation where endocrine transformation reacting with the nervous system causes changes.
The endocrine orchestra: the anterior pituitary operates through the hypothalamus and the pineal gland. It is the conductor of the endocrine orchestra with its tropic influence resulting in the release of several hormones from the thyroid, ovaries, testes, the adrenal gland and the like through a feedback system.
Description of the Natural State in U.G.'s Own Words
In the natural state there is no entity who is coordinating the messages from different senses. Each sense is functioning independently in its own way. When there is no coordinator, there is no linking of sensations, there is no translating of sensations. They stay pure and simple sensations. The personality does not change when you come into this state. You are after all a computer, a machine which reacts as it has been programmed. It is your present effort to change yourself that is taking you away from yourself and keeping you from functioning in the natural way. One cannot expect some kind of spiritual humility. Such a man may be the most arrogant man you have ever met because he is touching life at a unique place where no man has touched before. It is for this reason that each person who comes into this state expresses it in a unique way in terms relevant to his time. It is also for these reasons that if two are more people are living in this state at the same time they will never get together. They won't dance in the streets hand in hand saying, ‘We are self-realised men!’
The natural state is not a state of omnipresence wherein all of man's eternal questions are answered. It is rather a state in which the questioning has stopped because the questions have no relation to the way the organism is functioning and it leaves no room for those questions.
Is there such a thing as enlightenment?
There is no such a thing as enlightenment. One may say that every teacher and saint of mankind have been asserting for centuries that there is enlightenment and that they are enlightened. To realise that there is no enlightenment at all is enlightenment. But actually an enlightened man, if there is one, is not interested in freeing or enlightening anybody. This is because he has no way of knowing that he is a free man, that he is an enlightened man. It is not something that can be shared with somebody because it is not in the area of experience at all.
According to U.G. what exists as enlightenment is purely a physical process. ‘There is nothing mystical or spiritual about it. If the eyes are closed some light penetrates through the eyelids. If the eyelids are covered still there is light inside. There seems to be some kind of a hole in the forehead which doesn't show but though which something penetrates. There is also some kind of light penetration though the back of the head. It's as if there is a hole running through between those spots in front and back of the head. This state is a state of not knowing. All there is inside is wonderment.’ The reason why U.G. emphasises the physical aspect is not with the idea of selling something but to express what is called enlightenment, liberation and transformation in pure physical and physiological terms. There is absolutely no religious content to it and no mystical overtones or undertones to the functioning of the body. Unfortunately, for centuries the whole thing has been interpreted in religious terms which have caused misery for all of us.
The whole mystique of enlightenment is based upon the idea of transforming oneself. When enlightenment comes it wipes out everything. That is something which cannot be made to happen through effort or through the grace of anybody, through the help of even a God walking on the face of this earth claiming that he has specially descended for the sake of mankind.
The self is nothing but the totality of the knowledge that one has accumulated. We cannot even experience the reality of the world in which we are functioning much less the world beyond. There is no world beyond time and space. In the natural state the movement of self is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond which can be never experienced. It is when the ‘I’ is not there. The moment it is translated the ‘I’ is there. Thought interferes with the sensation by translating. We are either thinking about something which is totally unrelated to the way the senses are functioning at the moment or else labeling. That is all that is there. The word separates from what we are looking at thereby creating the ‘I’. Otherwise there is no space between the two. God is irrelevant. There is no power outside of man. It the same power, the same life, that is functioning there in us. Something is trying to express itself and the culture is pushing it down. When once it throws the culture out it expresses itself in its own way.
Meditation is Warfare
Meditation is a self-centred activity. It strengthens the very self that one wants to be free from. We have also been told that through meditation we can bring selfishness to an end. Actually we are not meditating at all, just thinking about selflessness and doing nothing to be selfless. All activity along these lines is exactly the same. One must accept the fact that we do not want to be truly free from selfishness. All the experiences through meditation, prayer, all that we do, are self-centred. It strengthens the self, adding and gathering momentum in the opposite direction. Whatever is done to be free from the self is also a self-centred activity.
What is Awareness?
Awareness is an integral part of the living organism. Awareness is not a divided state. There are not two states, awareness and something else. Awareness is simply the action of the brain. Awareness and the self is all a product of modern psychology. We are conscious, aware, only through thought. The animals also use thought. The dog, for example can recognise its owner in a simple manner. They recognise without using language. Humans have added to the structure of thought and made it more complex. If one can be in a state of awareness for a single moment once, the continuity would be snapped, the illusion of the experiencing structure, the ‘I’ would collapse and everything would fall into the natural rhythm. In this state we do not know what we are looking at. That is awareness.
There is no Self, no Soul
The belief that there is a centre here, that there is a spirit here, that there is a soul here, is what is responsible for the belief that there must be something beyond. Is there such a thing as soul? Is there such a thing as ‘I’? Whatever we experience there is created only by the knowledge we have of the self. There is no self, no I, there is no spirit, no soul, and there is no mind. That knocks off the whole list and we have no way of finding out what we are left with. Ideas of the soul and life after death are born out of the demand for permanence. When one actually sees and perceives for the first time that there is no self to realise, no psyche to purify, no soul to liberate, it will come as a shock to the instrument of thought. When we have invested everything in the soul, mind, psyche, and suddenly it is exploded as a myth, it is difficult to look at reality, at the actual situation.
Mind Is a Myth
There is no such a thing as an unconditioned mind. If there is a mind it is bound to be conditioned. There is no such a thing as an open mind. There is no self to be realised. The whole religious structure that has been built on this foundation collapses because there is nothing there to realise. The whole Buddhist philosophy has been created on ‘no mind’ yet they have created tremendous techniques of freeing themselves from the mind. All the Zen techniques try to free oneself from the mind. But the very instrument that we are using to free ourselves from the thing called mind is the mind itself. When once it dawns upon us, by some strange chance or miracle, that the instrument that we are using to understand everything is not the instrument and that there is no other instrument, it hits us like a bolt of lightning. The separation between the mind and the body must come to an end. Every cell in our system has a mind of its own and its functioning or working is quite different from that of the other cells. Mind, or thought, is our common inheritance. There is nothing like my mind and your mind, there is only mind, the totality of all that has been known, felt and experienced by man, handed down from generation to generation. We are all thinking and functioning in that thought sphere just as well as we all share the same atmosphere for breathing.
Is there such a thing as Truth?
Truth is a movement. You can't capture it, give expression to it or use it to advance your interests. The moment you capture it, it ceases to be truth. What is the truth for one person cannot under any circumstances be communicated to another person. Whatever you do in pursuit of truth or reality takes you away from your own very natural state in which you always are. It's not something you can acquire, attain or accomplish as a result of your effort. All that you do makes it impossible for what already is there to express itself. That's what U.G. calls the natural state. You are always in that state. What prevents what is there from expressing itself in its own way is the search.
We are constantly moving away from ourselves. We want to be happy, either permanently or at least for this moment. We want to perfect ourselves. We are constantly trying to be something other than what we are. Society has put before us the ideal of perfection. No matter in what culture we are born, we have traditions and doctrines handed down to us telling us how to behave. We are told that by due practise we can eventually come into the state attained by the sages, saints and saviours of mankind. We try to control our behaviour, our thoughts, to be something unnatural. We are continuously living in a thought sphere. Our thoughts are not our own. We create a counterthought, the thinker, with which we read every thought. Our effort to control life has created a secondary movement of thought within us which we call the ‘I’. This movement of thought within us is parallel to the movement of life but isolated from it, it can never touch life. We are living creatures yet we lead our entire life with the realm of this isolated, parallel movement of thought. We cut ourselves off from life, which is something very unnatural.
The natural state is not a thoughtless state. Being able to think is necessary to survive. But in this state thought stops choking oneself and falls in its natural rhythm. There is no longer an ‘I’ who reads the thoughts and thinks that they are ‘mine’.
Excerpts from talk at Indian Institute of World Culture, Bangalore (1972)
This state of not knowing is not just my particular state, this I call a natural state of your being. This is as much your natural state as it is mine. It is not the state of a God-realised man, it is not the state of a self-realised man, it is not the state of a holy man. It is the natural state of every one of you here. But since you are looking to somebody else and you are reaching out for some kind of a state of liberation, freedom or moksha you are of the belief that it is the state of a realised man.
But how can one understand the limitations of thought? Naturally the only instrument we have is the instrument of thought. But what is thought? I can give you a lot of definitions and you know a lot of definitions about thought. I can say that thought is just matter, thought is vibration, and we are all functioning in this sphere of thought. And we pick up these thoughts because this human organism is an electromagnetic field, and this electromagnetic field is the product of culture. It may sound very inappropriate on this occasion to say that in order to be in your natural state, all that man has thought and felt before you must be swept aside. And that means the culture in which you are brought up must go down the drain or out of the window. But at the same time it is so difficult because you are the product of that culture and you are that. You are not different from that. You cannot separate yourself from that culture. And yet this culture is the stumbling block for us to be in our natural state.
The natural state is not a conscious state of your existence. It can never become part of your conscious thinking. For all practical purposes it does not exist at all. It can never become part of your conscious thinking.
Here I have to explain what I mean by the word consciousness. You and I mean two different things probably, I don't know. When do you become conscious of a thing? Only when the thought comes in between what is there in front of you and what is supposed to be there inside of you. That is consciousness. So you have to necessarily use thought to become conscious of the things around you or the persons around you. Otherwise you are not conscious of the things at all. And at the same time, you are not unconscious, but there is an area where you are neither conscious nor unconscious. But that consciousness, if I may use that word, expresses itself in its own way, and what prevents that consciousness from expressing itself in its own way is the movement of thought.
Thought has a tremendous momentum of millions and millions of years. But yet our culture, our civilisation, our education – all these have forced us to use that instrument to get something for us. So can that instrument be used to understand its own nature? It is not possible. And yet when you see the tremendous nature of this movement of thought and that there isn't anything that you can do about it, it naturally slows down and falls in its natural pattern.
When I say that, I do not, of course, mean what these people in India talk about – that thought must be used in order to get into a thoughtless state or into a meditative state – there is no such thing as a thoughtless state at all. Thoughts are there, they will be there all the time. Thoughts will disappear only when you become a dead corpse, let me use these two words, dead corpse. Otherwise thoughts are there and they are going to be there. If all the religious teachers tell us that you are going into a thoughtless state they are taking us all for a ride. They can promise you that in that thoughtless state, in that state of silence, in that state of quietness or in that state of a quiet mind or whatever phrase you want to use, there will be this real bliss, beatitude, love, religious joy and ecstatic state of being. Because that state, if there is any state like the state of bliss, can never become part of your consciousness, it can never become part of your conscious existence. So you might as well throw the whole thing, the whole crap of these ideas, concepts and abstractions about the blissful states.
No outside agency can help you. That means a complete and total rejection, as I said in the beginning, of all that man has thought and felt before you. As long as there is any trace of knowledge, in any shape, in any form in your consciousness, you are living in a divided state of consciousness.
As referred to my coming into a state of not knowing, or the calamity, as I myself refer to that – what happened? I don't know. Suddenly thought has fallen into its natural state. The continuity has come to an end. So what I am saying is not the product of thinking. It is not manufactured by my thought structure inside. Nor is it a logically ascertained premise. But what is happening here is only the expression of that state of being where you do not know what is happening. You do not know how this organism is functioning. It has no mystical content whatsoever. And at the same time, this extraordinary thing, the extraordinary intelligence that is there, which is a product of centuries of human evolution, is able to express itself and deal with any problem and any situation without creating problems for us.
Both J.K. and U.G. speak the same language and say more or less the same things. J.K. is considered to be a more compassionate teacher and U.G. crude, sometime even irrational and cruel, by common seekers. For many J.K. is the ultimate. His teaching seems to be a sort of extreme spirituality that one could not go beyond. Then came U.G., the other Krishnamurti, who debunks all that J.K. has said as romantic hogwash, sheer unadulterated fantasy and nothing more. If J.K. has made one's head burn and the whole body feel as if on fire all the time, with U.G. the head would go missing and he gives the feeling like an absolute zero. It can very well confuse us with J.K. as a genuine teacher, a compassionate man, a truly enlightened being, one who has reached the other shore, and U.G. as stuck somewhere on the way or still on the move wading through difficult waters.
We always build up ideas dialectically and in frames, as U.G. says. Our knowledge-building process is a movement in measurement and pleasure. Indian enlightenment traditions and texts such as Yoga Vasistha and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras register the marks of an enlightened being. But how does one know for sure that this is how exactly an enlightened man speaks, moves and behaves? Since there is no birth, no death, no such thing as bondage, there is no liberation either. Then how can there be any teaching, any teacher, or anyone to be taught? Speculation deflects one's attention away from the facts one has to come to terms with. The need to compare, assess and judge is a trick of the mind in search of security. So if both J.K. and U.G. mean what they say, whether what they say reflects in their lives, one should examine the implications of their teachings in the context of one's own experience and examine the realities as one understands them.
Crucial aspects of J.K.'s career as a World Teacher
J.K. literally questioned and blasted all forms of authority both spiritual and secular. He believed he was not merely unique but someone the like of whom the world had not seen for many centuries. In fact he has even gone on record saying, ‘You won't find another body like this or that supreme intelligence operating in a body for many hundred years.’
U.G. has literally questioned, rejected and exploded all the ideas hallowed so far, has truly and wholly questioned the very foundation of human thought. In his own words: ‘I am an unconverted member of the human race. My viewpoint throughout life has been in tension with those who readily conform to the middle-class standards and conventions of my generation. I am in revolt against the mainsprings of our faith, the religious customs that propel us and form the impelling motives of our actions.’
When J.K. was twenty-six years and still a budding world teacher within the mould of the Theosophical Society, he warned his followers by saying that true spirituality is hard and cruel and the world teacher is not going to be lenient to our weaknesses and our failings. Two years later he surprised everyone by declaring: ‘Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk of the clear and pure waters at the source of the fountain of life and my thirst was appeased. Nevermore could I be thirsty, nevermore could I be in utter darkness; I have seen the light....I have drunk the fountain of joy and eternal beauty. I am God-intoxicated.’ In 1926, two days after the death of his brother, Nityananda, from tuberculosis, though still in great sorrow and feeling let down by the masters, J.K. announced at Adyar: ‘An old dream is dead and a new one is being born, as a flower that pushes through the solid earth....As Krishnamurti, I have now greater zeal, greater faith, greater sympathy and greater love....I have drunk at the fountain of human sorrow and suffering from which I have derived strength.’
The final rupture with the Theosophical Society, the agony and ecstasy of the birth of the new teacher, took place on the morning of 3 August 1929 in the forest of Ommen in Holland before an array of Theosophical Society leaders including Annie Besant. J.K. declared, ‘I maintain that truth is a pathless land and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.’ Almost until his death he held that the idea of the teacher and the taught is basically wrong. What he was trying to do was not teaching but sharing, merely acting as a mirror in which others could see themselves clearly and then discard the mirror. He was trying to awaken people from their slumber to see for themselves the truth. ‘Truth is not at the top of the ladder, truth is where you are, in what you are doing, thinking, feeling – you must see the truth of all that, not a truth at the end of innumerable cycles of life.’
Doubt and negation as a method of inquiry was the strong point of J.K.'s teaching. Finally, after he broke away from the Theosophical Society, the way he questioned, doubted, probed, tested and negated the established, sacred beliefs of the religious traditions of the East and West, and opened new ways of seeing and experiencing life, was something new. It was a voice, deep, profound and cathartic, a voice that had not been heard for a long time. He was a witness to two horrible world wars and great social and political upheavals. He was also a contemporary of the pathbreaking modern artists and thinkers who have had a great impact on modern consciousness. Some of them now may appear like toddlers trying to dream up new ideas when compared with J.K.'s mature and deep understanding of the human condition. His great contribution lies in the fact that he developed and encouraged doubt as a method of inquiry. When in both the religious and scientific spheres, nature, still predominantly seen as an enemy in favour of the otherworldly, when matter, seen as a limitation and escape from the manifestation, was celebrated as freedom, J.K. kicked reality into motion and went on to assert that freedom – not as an escape from matter, manifestation or creation but as a passage into freedom, not as an escape from matter but as a passage into it as pure creation and pure activity.
Thus for almost seventy years with doubt as his method he tried to awaken people from all the truths that had been accepted as pre-given. He wanted to create a new order, a new way of living and being in the world. To bring about this new order and new way of living he declared repeatedly that we must understand disorder. It is only through negation that we can understand the positive, not by the pursuit of the positive. Out of negation comes the right discipline which is order. Negation can only take place when the mind sees the false. The very perception of the old road is the new beginning.
There is no way we can measure the impact of J.K.'s teaching on the world but he certainly marked a major departure in spiritual thought. His criticism of religious traditions and authority changed the way we look at religious thought and even at the reports of mystical experiences. In some ways his teaching also anticipated some of the radical insights and perspectives the postmodernists would use to deconstruct the ‘hallowed ideas’ of Western philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. In one way he also anticipated the coming of U.G. and his anti-philosophy.
The professional non-dualists in India found it difficult to appropriate or absorb J.K.'s teaching into their Vedantic philosophy. J.K. rejected all the central ideas and symbols of Vedanta too. There was no atman, no Brahman, no sadhana, no samadhi and no moksha. Of the mahavakyas (literally great statements or scriptural utterances) such as Prajnanam Brahma (Brahma is absolute), Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahma) and Tat tvam asi (Thou art that), he questioned, ‘Why do we always attach ourselves to something which we suppose to be the highest? Why not say I am the river, I am the poor man? A conditioned mind that is small, petty, narrow, living on superficial entertainments, cannot know or conceive or understand or feel or observe the unconditioned.’
Vedanta means the end of the Vedas, the end of knowledge. ‘If Vedanta means the end of knowledge, the ending of the Vedas which is knowledge, then why should one go through the labourious process of acquiring knowledge and then discarding it?’ is what J.K. questioned from the very beginning. J.K. questioned the traditionalists, the professionals, the scriptures and the spiritual leaders that do not see this. He felt it was because the authority of the Bhagavad Gita and scriptures was tremendously important.
Years later U.G. would ask the same question of J.K., saying, ‘Why talk about immensity of beauty, of choiceless awareness, of love and compassion?’ By U.G.'s own admission J.K. did have some influence on him. In fact he has talked openly of his truly paradoxical relationship with J.K. However it is hard to imagine the impact of U.G. on J.K. if there was any for J.K., he has neither in public nor in private talked of his relationship and strange encounters with U.G. though records show that in 1953 when J.K. was in Madras to give his talks he did meet with U.G. and have serious conversations with him every day for over forty days. U.G. said that during those forty days of intense discussions J.K. was using him as a mirror to understand himself. This could have been true. At some point during one of those conversations U.G. went through what he calls a near-death experience. It was an experience, said U.G., which altered his being and could have made him a teacher in his own right. In his own words: ‘I could have been a spiritual teacher on my own but I put the idea aside as just another illusion that I would be adding to mankind's hope of finding the truth. The majority of those who reach this state that I experienced think that they have reached the final goal and believe that they have attained liberation. But unfortunately there is no measuring stick to differentiate between the few who have attained and those who have gotten stuck in the mystical experience.’
There were, of course, a few more encounters between the two in London and then in Gstaad. It is important to note that U.G.'s calamity was triggered in a sense when for the last time U.G. attended J.K.'s talk on 13 August 1967 at Gstaad. This is in no way to imply that J.K. was the cause of U.G.'s calamity or even that J.K.'s influence was somehow responsible for what happened to U.G. in 1967.
Ultimately thought can operate only within the framework of cause and effect. For example, we see fire and we see smoke and conclude that fire causes smoke. All our knowledge systems are based on such binary thinking. All our sciences and even political thinking are rooted in this dichotomy. It is indeed effective, it is result-oriented, otherwise we could not send rockets into space. It is to be realised that life slips through this framework and truth eludes us. It is very well known that the cause of anything is not known or even if such a thing exists at all.
However there was something magnetic and some sort of mysterious connection between J.K. and U.G. Perhaps it is not all that mysterious. It is just how things are in life, like the way everything is interconnected as a whole. We affect each other all the time in more and deeper ways than we can understand. We affect the environment we live in just as the environment affects us. It is all one interconnected whole and the unitary motion of the whole universe in every little thing.
The mysterious connection between the two snapped after J.K. passed away. A year later U.G. said what he had to say. It was time to dismantle the old but not erect or construct anything new it its place. It would not be a new interpretation, amplification or clarification of the old teaching but a total rejection. It would be a negation of all approaches including the negative approach of J.K. U.G. would claim that there is no method implied in either his negation or rejection of things and that it could not be made into yet another approach. It would be neither a negation nor an assertion of anything. Many people get either upset or misled by U.G.'s criticism and dismissal of J.K. Yet as a matter of fact U.G. has acknowledged the significant role J.K. has played in his life, saying, ‘It was J. Krishnamurti who pushed me to stand on my own two feet.’ In the early years of his acquaintance with U.G., Mahesh Bhatt once asked him: ‘U.G., if I ask you to name the most remarkable man you have met in your life who comes to your mind first?’ U.G. replied, ‘Jiddu Krishnamuti’.
U.G. criticised J.K. all the time with every slightest opportunity given. Some people think that U.G. is obsessed with J.K. Religious-minded people however view the relationship between these two as in keeping with the great Indian spiritual tradition in which the disciple annihilates the teachings of his guru.
To U.G., J.K. was no different from any other guru churning out more disciples in the holy business. He said, ‘To me, J.K. is playing exactly the same game as all those ugly saints in the market whom we have in the world today. Krishnamurti's teaching is phoney. There is nothing to his teaching at all and he cannot produce anything at all. A person may listen to him for sixty, seventy or a hundred years but nothing will ever happen to that man because the whole thing is phoney. If the number of followers is the criterion of a successful spiritual teacher, J.K. is a pygmy, he is a mere wordsmith. He has created a new trap. Yes I am using eighty percent of his words and phrases, the very phrases he has used over the years to condemn gurus, saints, and saviours like himself.
‘If one sees the mess he has created in his false role as world messiah and dissolves the whole thing, I will be the first to salute him.’
J.K.'s followers were appalled that U.G. was giving J.K. a dose of his own medicine. U.G. insisted not to compare what he was saying with what other religious authorities have said. U.G. proclaimed, ‘If you give what I am saying any spiritual overtones, any religious flavour at all, you are missing the point.’
Many former followers of J.K. were helpless to agree with U.G. They were taught by J.K. to question everything and all authority including his own. The message was clear. Truth cannot be organised or taught. Any attempt at the institutionalisation of truth or wisdom can only lead to its corruption and whatever possibility may exist for an individual to come upon truth and wisdom will be messed up.
Many followers of J.K. wondered in spite of all the talk about truth. Why then did J.K. let an organisation be built in his name? His close associates and admirers defended J.K.'s decision that it was formed for practical reasons like arranging J.K.'s trips and talks, publishing his talks in the form of books and bulletins and to produce audios and videos of the talks and discussions so that those interested in his teachings could benefit from them. Many a times it was a confusive state where one would begin to wonder if J.K. was discussing his own dilemmas and conflicts from the public platform. Anyone would have the impression that J.K. was beyond all conditioning, doubts and conflicts, that he was truly an enlightened master. A long association with J.K. would naturally raise the question of whether J.K. really had to break away from the Theosophical Society only to build yet another massive organisation in his name when he very well knew the nature of organisations and their functioning, whether secular or spiritual, and was aware of the implications and results.
U.G. called J.K. the greatest fraud of the twentieth century. ‘He denounces systems and opens meditation schools, talks of the crippling effects of conditioning then runs schools which foster more conditioning, talks of simplicity and builds worldwide real estate organisations. He says you must be on your own then takes measures to preserve his teachings for the future.’
But U.G.'s criticism of J.K. and his teachings concern a much deeper and more fundamental flaw. What J.K. says does not operate in his life. His teaching does not spring from the state of being which it seems to indicate. It is rather an expression of his own doubts and problems but has tremendous appeal because his listeners, who were to assume themselves as operating from a state of choiceless awareness, also operate within the same realm of doubts and aspirations. The reality is that one cannot simply exist without choice even for a second. Thought, ‘I’, becoming still or choiceless, would mean the death of the self which would trigger psychological transformation and a kind of clinical death, biological mutation.
In U.G.'s own words: ‘To me there is no such thing as mind. Mind is a myth. Since there is no such thing as mind, the mutation of mind that J. Krishnamurti is talking about has no meaning. There is nothing there to be transformed, radically or otherwise. There is no self to be realised. The whole religious structure that has been built on this foundation collapses because there is nothing there to realise.
‘J. Krishnamurti has gathered about him the spiritual dead wood of a twenty, thirty and forty-year club. What good is that? I lived with him for years and I can tell you he is a great actor. What you experience with him is the clarification of thought. You are that thought. As long as you think that you can see more and more clearly I say you have seen nothing. J. Krishnamurti says, “Seeing is the end.” As long as you think you can understand or see the world around you more clearly I say you will see nothing and understand nothing.
‘J. Krishnamurti has subtly enticed people into believing in a spiritual goal, a goal which moreover can be reached through specific techniques – passive awareness, free inquiry, direct perception, skepticism, etc. I reject the idea of transformation altogether. There is nothing to be transformed, no psyche to revolutionise and no awareness you can use to improve or change yourself.
‘He is a showman of excellence and master of words. Krishnamurti's teachings may have sounded very revolutionary a century ago. But with the emergence of new revelations in the fields of microbiology and genetics, the idea taken for granted in the field of psychology will be challenged. The mind (which Krishnamurti's teaching assumes), the exclusive franchise of psychologists and religious teachers, and all the assumptions connected with it will also be undermined.’
But J.K. believed that his very coming and his teaching was a major departure from all the religious teachings of the world and that his teaching was far from being outdated, that it would last for at least 500 years.
U.G. explained that an immense energy and intelligence had been using his body. He said, ‘I don't think people realise what tremendous energy and intelligence went through this body – there's a twelve-cylinder engine. And for seventy years was a pretty long time. The body can't stand any more. Nobody can understand what went through this body. I repeat this: nobody amongst us or the public know what went on. Once the body is over, there is no consciousness left behind of that consciousness, of that state. They'll all pretend or try to imagine they can get into touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings.’ The same night, when J.K. was dying, something extraordinary happened. U.G. called his friends home; he was seated in the middle of his bed cross-legged and said, ‘I don't think I am going to survive. The energy is so strong the body can't take it.’ He added, ‘All the papers are on top of the chest. Everything is in order about what to do.’ It is told that his whole body was undulating and U.G. again said that the energy was too strong. U.G. sat still with his eyes closed in a yoga posture. While J.K. was dying, U.G., another man miles away, was in some way connected with his death. The mystery unfolded about the two Krishnamurtis that their lives were in some way connected for which U.G. never gave an answer till the end.
From time immemorial human beings get exposure of the earth, sun, moon, stars and other planets virtually from their birth. As they grow they come to know about the magnitude, functioning and vital role of these gross objects of the universe for their own survival. Thereafter one observes from childhood the various phenomena relating to plants, beautiful flowers, green leaves, vegetables and fruits in different seasons. Along with this the fixed periodicity of seasons, the rise of the sun and the moon, the emergence of dawn and dusk, day and night, the formation of clouds, rain, storms, floods etc. are also observed. By the time a child is able to think more independently, he/she accepts the phenomenon of birth, growth, the death of human beings, animals, birds, plants and trees beyond his/her control being a natural phenomenon. Thus the human being starts knowing about nature much earlier than the knowledge about many gods, fairies, deities and perhaps later on about the one universal Lord – the formless and ineffable God. Behind the gross universe, nature is then visualised as something extremely powerful, disciplined but subtle. In the Vedas nature is described as prakriti and it is the manifestation of God as such, it is divine nature. Human beings have a natural relationship with prakriti, the gross universe and the world.
So long as one is happy with these natural phenomena and no wrath of nature in the form of hurricanes, lightning, thunder, tornadoes and bursting of volcanoes is faced, perhaps one does not feel any need for God or gods, spirit, soul and other divine metaphysical concepts. The ancient man would not have been different in regard to the observations about these natural phenomena. This vast sea of matter and its extremely turbulent material waves would have also affected ancient man but perhaps with less vehemence than modern man as the moral and physical pollution, social tension, environmental hazards, economic strains and vulgar consumerism would not have been there to the degree these exist now. Thus the ancient man suffered much fewer agonies and miseries caused by matter in the various fields of society, family, economics and physical sciences with many of their negative and harmful applications. However compared to modern man, ancient man had to move even to far off places in search of food, shelter and safe surroundings for protecting a family and forming social groups.
During this frequently forced displacement many human beings might have come across erupting volcanoes, cloudbursts, ferocity of man-eaters in the forests, poisonous snakes and other reptiles and many other creatures with mild and strong venom. All these would have led them to appease some supernatural force sitting in the volcanoes, clouds, oceans, rivers in spate, etc. While they could appreciate the blessings of nature for providing them food, shelter, family and other blessings, they would have found difficult to understand her wrath leading to unpleasant and furious phenomenon. To locate and appease those forces sitting behind these phenomena, a large number of gods, deities and other objects of worship would have been found or created. This search led to animism, anthropomorphism, pluralism and later to metaphysical gods, devas, and finally to Vedic metaphysics relating to one supreme reality as supreme father and prakriti as supreme mother.
Vedic Prakriti
The gross universe in Vedic metaphysics is part of the brahmanda, or the universe, and covers everything from subatomic particles to the mightiest systems of stars, planets and galaxies. It has various types of matter, radiation and gunas (primordial matter) with the characteristics of purity, activity and passivity. These gunas are subtle in their nature. The universe also includes all kind of animate and inanimate life. The properties of matter, with the five mahabhuta (main elements) which include water, air, ether, fire and earth and a large number of bhuta (elements) with three gunas of sattvic, rajasic and tamasic, are the same to the earth as well as in other planets and stars. The three gunas in different proportions are the cause of certain fixed properties in each element including the five main elements. Prakriti is that living power through which all material things are begotten. The Vedas refer to it as mahatatva (the great subtle element, or primordial matter, of the three gunas) that can create the five mahabhuta and a large number of gross elements.
The Rig Veda describes nature as mother prakriti and the Yajur Veda describes earth as adorable, immortal mother. Earth in the Vedas is prithvi devi and it is widespread, very kind and a gracious mother. Prakriti has an invisible and subtle form and her gross form is the visible universe. Both the visible gross universe and the invisible subtle nature are His grandeur.
Prakriti is also mentioned as matar, the material cause, which is the mother of the world at the primeval state that came in contact with pitar, the ineffable and formless God. The Vedic cosmos is a jumble of physical and non-physical forces fashioned by the eternal law (rita). The various hymns of the Atharva Veda refer to prakriti as aditi, and God as adit. Prakriti, like a woman desiring progeny, churns this fiery element created by pitar (father in heaven) and further creates the worldly objects with jiva (animate life containing the spirit of God). Rig Veda 4-20-6 mentions that prakriti is mighty, benevolent and virtuous and all women should have complete knowledge of prakriti (A.V. XI-1-23). She has primordial matter spread like the light of the sun which goes round the earth, and ether (R.V. 5-42-2). From the subtle divine nature emerge atoms, subatomic particles, waves, wavicles and all these form gross matter. Also from prakriti emerges the subtlest of the subtle particles containing the spirit of God that comes to all animate and inanimate life, unlike atman (soul) which is directly provided by Paramatman, the supreme soul. Once the gross universe emerges from subtle prakriti and the earth is formed, prithvi becomes the formative womb of matter in which all manifested things are generated. It then becomes the cosmic energy and working of God behind which the divine reality is hidden and makes earth truthful, vivid and transparent and provides patience and perseverance. Thus like prakriti, earth is also a mother substance. In the Vedas, prakriti is described as aditi (infinite), devaki (mother of the 33 devas, forces of nature) and daivi (divine). She is the supreme mother and earth is the benign mother (prithvi mata).
Rig Veda 1-164-15 describes prakriti as mahatatva (the primordial state of matter/energy). This subtle main element is the cause of the formation of gross mahabhuta and bhuta. The five main elements (mahabhuta) include water, earth, air, fire and ether. Bhuta are the other large number of elements which undergo change into different forms like alloys. Mahatatva remains the same as it does not undergo any change and it is the sum total of subtle primordial matter in the form of three gunas of purity, activity and stupor. The divine prakriti is created by the unmoved mover who Himself is immutable but can create various mutations in the objects made by Him and, being omnipotent and omnipresent, remains all-pervasive in those objects.
The creative force of prakriti is thus the spirit of God which is present in all animate and inanimate life/things and follows the eternal laws. In view of His spirit being present everywhere, not a single object even amongst inanimate things is inert. All elements, atoms, particles, waves and quarks have life in them. Since prakriti is a perpetual source of energy, many metaphysicists and even major religions of the world have no difficulty or any major problem in not believing in God. They consider prakriti as adequate cause for the creation of the world and the entire universe. In India alone, Mahavira, Buddha, Kapila of Sankhya darshana and others did not feel the need to know or believe in God. They explained the cosmic creation, laws of social and moral order, ideal human conduct, social behaviour, etc., without invoking God, but could not avoid the role of prakriti in their metaphysics. Prakriti itself provides a book of nature and gives guidance and education to all animate life as a supreme mother and perfect preceptor.
Thus, clearly two views emerge from the Vedas regarding prakriti. One view is that God is the creator while remaining as the unmoved mover and the other that prakriti is the adequate cause of creation of the gross universe. According to Ramanuja, a qualified monist of great eminence, prakriti is Sri Devi and the consort of divine reality and is coeternal. She is ever united with Him and is the supreme mother for all animate and inanimate life in the universe. She being a woman (symbolically) desiring progeny while creating this universe extends the accessibility to all including worthy and unworthy men. For all human beings, mother prakriti is shakti, divine power and energy. This concept of shakti is very much similar to the religious philosophy of the Shivaites. For them, Lord Shiva is the supreme God and His consort Parvati is shakti. Thus, Sri Devi of Ramanuja is the same as Parvati of the Shivaites.
Parvati, amongst Hindus, is known by many names – Durga, Kamakhya, Kali Devi, Vaishno Devi and a few others, which mostly indicate her cosmic power and energy to destroy and eliminate evil and evil-minded persons. However, as Kamakhya she is the creator. For the monists she is coeval with Him. For the qualified monists and dualists including Shivaites, prakriti is both coeval and coeternal. Ramanuja found prakriti as jada, i.e., an insentient category unlike God, so it cannot exist without Him. A pure dualist, Kapila, considered prakriti as independent and eternal. Advaita vedanti, also considered as pure monists, found prakriti and the gross universe as maya (phantasmagoria) and only a shadow of God, which looks real on the stage of ignorance and illusory when the true knowledge is obtained.
Largely, Vedic metaphysics brings out that the supreme lord Brahma, the real self of the individual (jivatma), pure non-material stuff (shuddha sattva) which is beyond the three gunas, kala (time) and disha (space), are all beyond prakriti. According to the Bhagavad Gita, prakriti is regarded as the ground through which all causes, effects and their agents are determined. She is the fundamental principle of all – dynamic operations, motivations and actions. Owing to the vehement effect of the gunas, particularly rajasic and tamasic, the subtle prakriti and gross universe are the abode of sorrow and transitory by their nature and not our permanent habitat. While God and immortal souls are chit (consciousness), prakriti, and the universe, owing to the gunas, is achit (lack of consciousness). In the Vedas, God is supreme consciousness and human souls have different degrees of consciousness owing to the effect of past and present karma (good or bad actions).
The Bhagavad Gita refers to the lower and higher natures of God. Prakriti, with her five mahabhuta – earth, air, fire, ether and water, along with mind, reason and ego, is the lower (insentient) nature of God, who is an intelligent being that maintains harmony in non-intelligent and insentient prakriti; since gunas, consisting of subtle substance in the form of particles, and being non-intelligent, when they form prakriti by their combination in different proportions, make her also non-intelligent. God sustains nature and the entire universe. This is His higher nature in the form of jiva bhutani, which is the life principle of prakriti. In view of the higher and lower natures of God, the Gita brings out that prakriti is the creation of God and in Him (B.G. 7-6). Thus both the Vedas and the Gita tell us that prakriti, the gross universe and all animate and inanimate life and things live in God and God lives in them – whether it is water, ether, fire, sun, moon, the sacred syllable om, pure odour, or life in all beings. Those who understand Vedic metaphysics find no difficulty in understanding and appreciating the eternal link between God and prakriti, and God as the eternal seed of beings. The Gita (9-10) further says, being an unmoved mover, He acts only as supervisor, and under His supervision prakriti brings forth the whole creation. It is due to this divine cause the whole samsara (universe) is revolving.
Prakriti is non-violent but strong. The various activities in divine nature are performed without much struggle peacefully, non-violently and smoothly, which are certainly not the weakness but the strength of prakriti. It is the non-violence of the strong. Gandhiji's metaphysical concept of non-violence of the strong largely resembles the similar principle of prakriti. The magical effect of Gandhiji's practical application of non-violence of the strong in achieving the independence of India peacefully in spite of provocation of revolutionary leaders both in India and Britain brought about the greatest democracy in the history of the world. This principle can be observed in the functioning of prakriti through her gross form, the universe and the world. Water containing hidden energy in the form of electricity passes through hills, rocks, deserts, etc., peacefully and non-violently without many struggles. It goes on finding its path in all kinds of terrain before merging gracefully into the sea or ocean. According to the Vedas, only timid, ignorant and weak persons show their might on various occasions involving petty issues, as violence of the weak. The fifth non-divine class of the Vedas, viz., avarnas, vritras, bribe takers and givers, mafia, etc., has inherent weakness and timidity as their main characteristics. It is for this reason their activities and actions tend to get violent. Their ostentatious worship of God is only for show as the inner divine world is almost dead for them. To them, prakriti, the universe and the world are only for exploitation for their material and vested interests.
In prakriti all types of life have the spirit of God through mahabhuta (five main elements) but not all have five predominant senses. Various bhuta (elements) like gold, silver, iron, etc., have the spirit of God as shunya (void) in the subtle form which provides constant and permanent qualities and properties to all elements anywhere in the world, universe, stars, planets, galaxies. etc. No elements have any predominant sense of smell, touch, sight, hearing, etc. However, these elements (bhuta) have some visible or non-visible trace of air, ether, fire, water and earth. Since these elements are bereft of senses, many scientists and individuals tend to consider matter as inert, insentient or jada. This conclusion is entirely based on the lack of knowledge about the presence of God's spirit in these elements. The most surprising aspect amongst Hindus particularly is that in their prayers they refer to God as all-pervasive and present in kan kan (sub-atomic particles) but in the same prayer when applied into practise, all elements, even plants and wood are considered inert. In the absence of Vedic knowledge, doubts about God's omnipresence in atoms and particles continue to exist.
In the Vedas, when one predominant sense is found in any object it is considered part of animate life. Trees and plants have one predominant sense of touch and virtually nil or negligible dominant sense of taste, smell, sight or hearing. Germs, bacteria, parasites, etc., start developing two predominant senses of touch and seeing and can thrive on any kind of food in the absence of sense of taste and smelling. Ants and termites develop the third predominant sense of smell along with touch and sight. This evolution continues and five senses finally become predominant in animals, birds and fishes as well as human beings. It is for this reason that many philosophers consider human beings as animals and qualify their statements by describing man as social, economic, divine, etc. This gives a clue that human beings have another predominant sense which is very subtle in nature. Vedic metaphysics refer to it as a sixth subtle sense provided by the immortal soul (atman). Thus the human being is the only divine animal, provided he/she acts under the divine and benevolent guidance of the soul which is the real self of the individual. In the absence of the knowledge of his/her real self, a person considers only their body as their real self. They then tend to behave even worse than animals, mainly because the animals at least follow the laws of nature by knowing these through the book of nature, but such a person considering his body as their real self is likely to ignore laws of nature. The Vedas clearly bring out that avarnas, vritras, bribe takers, evil-minded people who live in body consciousness and tend to behave hypocritically with vested interest and feel pride in their false ego and status, fall in these categories of animals with five predominant senses.
Individuals who are satisfied with material knowledge and add spiritual knowledge as an appendix to their intellectual knowledge normally consider soul and spirit as one and are keen to worship, meditate and pray to God only by ignoring prakriti and its vital role in their conduct, behaviour and attitude towards others. The Upanishads are emphatic in this regard that such persons, even though they meditate, pray and worship, get into greater darkness and that their worship is more for show, ostentation and social recognition and that their meditation is a temporary sleep.
The gross universe which is the manifestation of prakriti is both organic and inorganic, having animate and inanimate life. The number of predominant senses makes things organic and inorganic. Inorganic things with nil predominant sense would also have five main gross elements. Teja (fire), tapah (water) and kshiti (earth) are visible, vayu (air) is perceivable and akash (ether) is subtle and gross with tanmatras. In the Vedas, tanmatras are extremely fine subatomic particles bordering the subtle state. Thus the three basic gross elements in organic matter are teja, tapah and kshiti and the other two are alloys which help in making a large number of other alloys through tanmatras with gross and subtle characteristics. Even the three visible gross and main elements (mahabhutas) have their subtle states known as kshiti/prithvi matra, agni or teja matra and apah/tapah matra. The subtle matras in all elements form the gunas and have characteristics of purity, activity and passivity. Since human beings' gross bodies contain billions of tanmatras, living cells and subtle gunas, they make the human body work 24 hours, i.e., day and night, including in the three states of being awake, sleeping and dreaming, through actions, thoughts, desires, ego and intellect. The Vedas therefore advise to keep these inner instruments – manas (inward looking mind), will, ego and intellect always neat and pure along with the gross body.
Amongst the three gunas, the tamasic guna of passivity, stupor, idleness and dullness makes the soul heaviest. The rajasic guna of activity, material desires, blind pursuit of matter and money makes the soul relatively less heavy, but not light enough to make it move upwards to attain moksha, eternal bliss. The sattvic guna of purity, love, truth and transparency is the lightest, which can make the soul move upwards and towards the six other communities of men including angels, devas, pitries, gandharvas, etc. However, shuddha sattva and shunya sattva that are beyond gunas, make the soul free from the three subtle gunas and the effect of karma. Six schools of Indian philosophy based on the Vedas describe this stage differently. For self-realisation, Shankara has used the term turiya, and Patanjali the term kaivalya in his Yoga Sutras. Only after reaching the stage of self-realisation can one attain moksha when further rebirths as human beings are avoided. For those who do not reach the stage of turiya or self-realisation, their souls continue to get rebirth on this earth in gross bodies. Such souls are manifested souls, or jivatma, and these are again affected by karmas of good or bad deeds. It is for this reason Hindu scriptures describe earth as karma bhoomi, where a person desires and wills, and whatever they will they act on and thus becomes their own greatest friend or enemy. When senses, sense organs, mind and intellect are in harmony with the divine manifested soul a person becomes their own best friend. In the case of total discord in these material, spiritual and divine instruments of the body a person becomes his own worst enemy.
The Vedas consider that matter is perpetually alive and striving to attain its particular perfect form owing to the all-pervasive spirit present in it. Greek philosophers independently found these characteristics. Plato found it in his theory of forms and ideas and Aristotle in the metaphysical concept of entelechy and nous (mind) making all, even inanimate things, move towards perfection, a quality that entelchy possesses. His concept of entelechy is more like the divine spirit of the Vedas. An acorn is matter which contains the form of an oak tree and it strives towards it owing to the presence of entelechy. This term is from three words: echo (having), telos (its purpose) and entos (within). Matter and form with entelechy make things move towards perfection in nature to their highest utility, tree, shape and organs; all these are His internal designs created through His spirit. According to Vedic metaphysics, all gross and subtle things start from Him, move towards perfection in growth, utility and service and then go back to Him. This cosmic process of creation and dissolution is described as srishti and pralaya. The modern existentialists have come to this conclusion in a more abstract metaphysical expression, ‘All things come to an end. Life is too short in time and space so the need is to get detached from matter and develop need-based living.’ They have obviously avoided bringing the spirit of God into need-based living like Buddha, who propounded his philosophy of the middle path independently of Vedic metaphysics and accepted laws of God as laws of nature. The Bhagavad Gita also propounded this truth by invoking God, His spirit and laws. However, there is no evidence that existentialists got this concept from Buddha or the Gita.
The Gita refers to the eightfold nature of prakriti with five mahabhuta, egohood (ahamkar), intellect (buddhi) and mind (manas). There is no existence here on earth, in the heavens or amongst the celestials or anywhere else in prakriti, which is free from the three qualities born of subtle primordial matter – sattvic, rajasic and tamasic. All these are activated by God to maintain equilibrium and to create karma bhoomi for the soul to get detached from the effect of gunas. Thus any thought of renouncing the world to attain a stage of turiya, kaivalya, self-realisation and moksha (final salvation) is not supported by Vedic metaphysics. It can be achieved through selfless actions and duties without the desire for their fruit. Prakriti provides earth as karma bhoomi for human beings to achieve a stage of self-realisation. Prakriti itself is the cosmic energy of God and His working, while He Himself remains unmoved. Through prakriti He provides His stern and permanent laws, gives lessons of non-violence of the strong, transparency, truthfulness and vividness.
Non-violence is the message of prakriti to depict harmony in nature. Prakriti functions as non-violent but tends to show wrath and even violence when under the vehement effect of the tamasic gunas, when we create pollution of all kinds in prakriti, the universe and atmosphere and even in society. This wrath and non-violence is more to bring ultimate peace and serenity everywhere; it is therefore in prakriti. There is not only non-violence of the strong but also violence of right and virtue against evil and wrong. To neutralise the effect of evil activities of non-divine persons and behaviour of social villains who consider bribe taking or giving, blind pursuit of money and matter as virtue and social evolution in terms of income earning by whatever means, prakriti has to resort to occasional wrath and even violence to bring social and moral order. Thus in the Vedas there are certain prakriti devas, forces of nature who show wrath as violence of right and virtue. A few such devas are Indra, with attributes of power, energy and strength, Manyu deva, who is always ready to show wrath when pollution, social evils and environmental hazards become predominant in prakriti and its manifestation, the gross universe. Yama, with power to take away the gross body, also becomes active during large-scale social and physical pollution.
Though prakriti gives a long rope to evildoers to revert to divine activities for the welfare of others, yet after crossing certain tolerance limits these prakriti devas do get activated to save humanity and other animate and inanimate life. The thirty-three prakriti devas representing all the attributes of nature provide kinds of fuel – mahat (intellect), ahamkar (ego), five subtle elements (suksham bhuta), five gross main elements (sthule bhuta or mahabhuta), five organs of cognition (jnana indriyas) and primordial subtle matter in the form of the three gunas. With the help of these, prakriti has orderliness in regularity, design and shape, and expresses this orderliness through her laws. From this hymn of the Yajur Veda it is apparent that in Vedic metaphysics, except the immortal soul, all other inner and outer instruments of the body are directly from prakriti, though under the direct supervision of God.
Prakriti has three bodies – gross, subtle and causal, conforming to Vedic terminology of sthule, suksham and tamkam (or karana). Prakriti herself is the subtle manifestation of God, and the universe is the gross manifestation of prakriti. God lives behind prakriti in the causal body. Similarly, human beings have three bodies. While God and soul reside in the causal body, spirit (jiva), will, intellect, kundalini (hidden coiled spiritual energy) and ten pranas (vital breaths), out of which seven are subtle, reside in the spiritual body. The remaining three pranas – mind, senses and sense organs – are part of the gross body. In these three bodies reside five koshas (sheaths). Annamaya kosha is the food sheath of the gross body. Manomaya kosha is the mind sheath, partly in gross body and partly in subtle body, consisting of extremely fine particles like ether. Pranamaya kosha is the vital breath sheath, partly in the gross body and partly in the subtle body. Vijnanamaya kosha is the knowledge sheath in the causal body where soul resides and partly in the subtle body where spirit and intellect reside. If soul provides divine knowledge, spirit and intellect provide spiritual knowledge. Lastly, ananda maya kosha is the sheath relating to eternal bliss and resides entirely in the causal body. To reach the stage of self-realisation one has to cross each sheath to reach the last sheath. This can be done through food control by avoiding entry of toxins in the body through stale, spicy, extremely hot or cold food and moving the taste of food from the tongue to the mind. This is only possible by taking need-based simple food. After crossing annamaya kosha one has to cross manomaya kosha. In this case the turbulent outward-looking mind is to be controlled by the inward-looking mind (manas). By living in a pollution-free location, having noble thoughts and following the path of selfless action, along with purification of vital breaths through pranayama (certain exercises for the purification of vital breaths), one crosses pranamaya kosha. Thereafter, by acquiring harmonised divine, spiritual and material knowledge the fourth kosha relating to the knowledge sheath can be crossed. Finally, one reaches the fifth kosha when self-realisation is attained and one can move towards the moksha stage of eternal bliss. In this stage, a person can communicate with his/her soul.
Prakriti has not only thirty-three subtle and formless devas, twenty-one kinds of fuel, three bodies and five kosha, but also has 16 parts. Spirit in the form of ego (ahamkar) and parana, desires, five mahabhutas, five senses, mahat, food, vigour and the 16th penance and Vedic sacrificial rites. In all the 16 parts the three gunas pervade. According to the Prasana Upanishad, when all 16 parts enter the human gross body along with three gunas, only thereafter the soul enters as jivatma (manifested soul). It is only when the soul leaves the body that all 16 parts start merging with prakriti. This enlightened liberalism ensures that her children, the entire humankind of the universe, does not overuse and waste resources and does not create any kind of pollution in the atmosphere and society. This principle of idd nan mmam (nothing for self) prakriti explains through her laws and expects all human beings to understand and follow the same. All animals, birds, fishes, etc., follow these laws within their capacity and characteristics provided by prakriti and they invariably resort to need-based living. Prakriti is the supreme mother of all and so her blessings are meant for all kind of animate life. Being her children, all human beings are spiritually brothers and sisters.
Unlike the dualist Kapila, the absolute monists, particularly Shankara, Badrayana and others have found a stuff in prakriti which makes up the changeful world and universe. Owing to this stuff which is not illusory, it creates a phenomenal world of maya and makes it look both real and unreal to individuals at different stages of knowledge. The other terms for maya used by metaphysicists are pradhana, tamas avyakta and shakti.
The concept of seven is another important feature of prakriti and the gross universe. There are seven communities of human beings out of which six are not found on this earth. Only the seventh community of human beings is found on this earth. Others are devas, pitries, karma devas, etc. The Taittiriya Upanishad gives a detailed description of these communities. Scriptures of other religions including the Koran and Guru Granth Sahib also refer to these seven communities. In the Vedas, there is a mention of seven codes of conduct and deviating from these a person becomes a sinner, transgressing the seven boundaries a person falls into distress (R.V. X-5-6). These are described as theft, adultery, killing a learned person, abortion, drinking and habitual addiction to wickedness and false accusation of heinous crimes. There are seven flames of fire, seven colours of light, seven streams of knowledge merging in Brahma jnana, seven fortifications of avarnas and other non-divine persons to be destroyed and many other seven objects in prakriti.
The concept of flux in nature and the universe is very predominant in the Vedic metaphysics. There is continuous change in the universe and prakriti. Because of this flux, atoms are breaking and uniting every second. Similar flux is there in human beings where cells are born and destroyed in the millions in a short span of time. We see flux in human personality and thoughts every decade and even earlier. This flux is observed most after marriage. Buddha found this flux independent of the Vedas. After complete understanding of Vedic metaphysics, Shankara has brought out that the knowledge of the outer world through our sense perception throws us in perpetual flux.
In the Vedas the epithet Brahma, formless and ineffable God, appears much less compared to prakriti devas. It is perhaps for this reason that the founder-philosopher of Sankhya darshana, Kapila, did not find the need of God in his metaphysics. Even Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, based on Vedic metaphysics, also described God as the first guru who helps in learning and understanding yoga and its philosophy. Beyond that, he also did not feel any necessity to bring God in his yoga shastra. Thus it clearly shows that the Vedas give great importance to prakriti through her 33 formless devas. If God is the first and supreme guru, prakriti is the perfect preceptor. Even Greek philosophers, particularly Democritus, found nature as the preponderant subject of philosophy.
The Atharva Veda considers human beings as pashu, animals like cows, horses, goats and sheep (A.V. XI-2-9). The Vedas further amplify that if human beings follow the path of knowledge known to the soul they become divine animals, and when they know the path of knowledge known to the spirit they become spiritual and social animals.
In Atharva Veda X-8-8, the human body has mind as engine, five koshas or sheaths as wheels, and the path to be covered not known to mind but only to the soul, which is the nearest on self-realisation and farthest when the material world becomes the closest. Therefore, the human being is divine only when he follows the path shown by the soul, otherwise he/she is more like a pashu, and in that state he/she can get even worse than animals. A person starts moving towards miseries, naked selfishness and false ego when they totally ignore the instruments of the inner world of the subtle and causal bodies within the gross body. Moderation and need-based living is advised to human beings while following laws of God, satya (absolute truth) and Vedic knowledge. One should not starve one's body as it is troubling to the spirit and the gross body and hence it is a tamasic action and should be avoided along with other kind of excesses. Tamasic rituals and penance by human beings are not advised in the Vedas. Yajur Veda 8-53 even has a prayer, ‘May we be rich in nourishing food.’ This nourishing food need not be expensive food.
To maintain purity, transparency and truthfulness in prakriti, the Vedas strongly prohibit creation of any kind of pollution in water, air, atmosphere and society. Rig Veda 1-88-9, 10 mentions, ‘Twashta (God), while making all wonderful articles of the gross universe, sun, moon, earth, planets, etc., also advised all animate life to protect forests and also conserve them for the healthy growth of vegetables, herbs and plants.’ For the preservation of vegetation He created poisonous creatures with mild and strong venom. While continuing on this subject, the Vedas refer to the science of toxicology and anti-toxic measures. Rig Veda 1-191-3 mentions about 99 kinds of anti-toxic drugs in the world. There are 21 kinds of peahens which suck the poison (R.V. 1-191-4) and we should never kill these. Y.V. 35-17, A.V. 19-9-94, R.V. X-105-8 and IX-63-4, 5 contain peace manyras as shanti path. There should be no pollution in prakriti while there should be peace in sky, earth, water, air, plants and trees. Excessive use beyond minimum need is the cause of pollution, degeneration and environmental hazards. Also, there is a prayer in Y.V. 30-7 to 9, ‘O God, cast aside the vile man who pollutes rivers, waters, air and society.’
Class war, terrorism and other forms of social wars and turmoil, and building up of various kinds of tensions amongst the states resorting to global trade, are the indication that Vedic meta-economics is not followed. The unhealthy trade practises lead to inevitable disputes between producers, sellers and consumers. These disputes under the vehement effect of uncontrolled senses and outward-looking mind further lead to deception, adulteration, looting and finally to class wars. Plato had visualised in his Laws-622, if restraint is not observed by traders in foreign trade a kind of trade war between the states cannot be avoided. Unlike modern economics (akin to Vedic anartha), Vedic trade is based on meta-economics (artha). In modern economics the spirit does not play any role whereas Vedic meta-economics looks after the material and spiritual welfare of society and mankind while balancing and harmonising the laws of nature so that nature, which otherwise is extremely peaceful, non-violent and benevolent, does not show her wrath. The meta-economics does not create material progress which is bereft of social ethics, public and private morality and spirituality. It is apparent that the Vedas have derived the concept of meta-economics (artha) based on the functioning of prakriti.
Without describing the gunas that are the primordial subtle matter the description of prakriti in the Vedas remains incomplete. As earlier brought out, prakriti is the sum total of gunas of purity, activity and passivity. Since these gunas are subtle, so prakriti is also subtle and she functions through the gross universe. Just like in human beings, the gunas though subtle have their effect seen through the activities of the gross body. Because of these three kind of subtle primordial matter, prakriti functions incessantly. The Bhagavad Gita says that all actions, desires and thoughts of men are impelled by gunas coming out of prakriti and make human beings act continuously. These are source of virtue, goodness, love and purity, as well as sins, evils, stupor, impurity and passivity. Between these two extremes, these are also the cause of activity, desires and pursuit of false ego. However, their proportion in prakriti as well as in human beings is different. All the scriptures of Hindu's, the Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads and Smritis, describe these three gunas as sattvic, rajasic and tamasic. The Gita has almost two complete chapters on gunas and their effect on gifts, speech, activities, sacrifice, charity, knowledge, desires, matter, and on virtually all other things and subjects which affect human beings.
However, those individuals who go beyond the gunas and acquire a state of shunya sattva or shuddha sattva finally transcend the vehement effect of cosmic illusion (maya). Only such persons attain self-realisation and can communicate with their souls. They can have complete knowledge of their previous karma (good and bad deeds and actions) and all their previous births through their manifested souls. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagorus seemed to have claimed that he knew all his previous births. Like Socrates he completely believed in the immortality of the soul. The Brahma Upanishad says while remaining in prakriti you are not beyond hunger, thirst, delusion, decay and attachment. Thus a person who follows the laws of nature, acts, thinks and speaks truthfully, and observes the Vedic philosophy of enlightened liberalism, crosses the vehement effect of gunas and soon reaches the stage of shunya sattva on the way to the realisation of his extended perfect real self.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad therefore advises, ‘Get detached of your progeny, wealth and material possessions, and live life unfettered.’ This advice of the Upanishad is reinforced in Bhagavad Gita 3-28, ‘Those who know the truth about modes of prakriti, consisting of the three gunas as primordial subtle matter, they do not get attached’ and all their activities are based on nishkama karma. The Gita further says, ‘Owing to gunas, this universe, which is the gross form of the divine nature, is the abode of sorrow and transitory by nature and not our permanent habitat.’ (B.G. 8-15). Rebirth of the gross body is under compulsion from prakriti as it is due to the gunas' vehement effect, though gunas are not intelligent and not the cause of consciousness but are the cause of one's karma of good or bad actions in the human body. This characteristic of gunas which make them look intelligent is because of the spirit of God present in prakriti which enables them this intelligent path in nature. It is their same characteristic in the human body. It is due to this reason, when the gunas are following the spiritual knowledge contained in the spirit and divine knowledge available to the soul, i.e., cosmic laws of social and moral order (rita), absolute truth (satya) and righteousness (dharma), the evil effect of gunas starts disappearing. It is during this stage that all actions of the human beings are based on a priori principles and the treasure of knowledge already contained in the soul. Those who do not follow rita, satya and dharma would invariably continue with their good and bad actions. So whether a person performs actions or karma by observing dharma, satya and rita or not, the final effect of gunas leads to stored karma (sanchita) which literally means accumulation of good or bad actions. The final result of this sanchita is prarabdha (destiny), which is the cause of present birth in a particular family of the gross body and its character, as the stored karma in their subtle form gets accumulated in the manifested soul in the previous birth. As the stock of good karma would vary from individual to individual and sanchita is exhausted, individuals come back sooner or later in this phenomenal world (B.G. IX-21).
One's actions also lead to kriya karma which is the divine law, ‘What you are sowing now, you shall reap in the future.’ This kriya karma leads to agami karma which literally means ahead or future. So agami karma becomes the basis for your action in this birth as well as next birth. Vedic metaphysics makes it very clear that no one can get out of the vehement effect of gunas on one's actions, rebirth and the law of retribution, which is a stern law of God. By understanding and following rita, satya and dharma along with Vedic knowledge, or in its absence the a priori principles known to the soul, one can get rebirth in the families of seers, sages and savants for moving further towards self-realisation and attaining moksha. The birth in different kinds of families is not due to any accident or destiny and is due to the law of kriya karma – as you sow, so shall you reap. No one can escape this stern law.
These laws relating to karma, sanchita, kriya, agami and prarabdha are adrishta, unseen, where the stock of good or bad actions, merit and demerit apply. These are part of Vedic spiritual science. Thus the entire process starts with the proportion of the three gunas in the gross body. These make you act under your real self (jivatma) or your body self which is one's lower self controlled by senses and sense organs and also the knowledge obtained through perception of the phenomenal world. The gross body, or one's local self, has a characteristic of creating an illusory feeling which makes you believe that there is no rebirth, no soul or spirit, and that there is nothing beyond the gross body. It will make you convinced under the vehement impact of the senses that human birth is nothing but a union of male and female and that your creation starts only with your father and mother. Under the uncontrolled senses and outward-looking mind the role of spirit in all animate and inanimate things/life disappears and thus matter becomes supreme in all activities, thoughts and desires. This is the origin of materialistic philosophy and the outlook in human beings. However, for the realisation of the real self one has to cross the gunas and reach a stage described in the Bhagavad Gita as when joy and sorrow, a clod of earth, stone, silver and gold look similar in value, and pleasant and unpleasant are taken in the same spirit. One remains calm, tranquil and balanced in both conditions of censure and praise (B.G. 14-24). In the absence of these characteristics one tends to become his/her own enemy. Accordingly, the Gita advises to act, think and desire on the path of moderation and to get established in your real self.
By the fertilisation of God's power in prakriti in the form of His spirit, the gunas, or the characteristic qualities which pervade all animate and inanimate things/life, come into being and form part of one's ego, intellect, mind, senses and all other parts of the gross body. Thereafter, these gunas move in all directions and create the entire psychology of human beings relating to pleasure and pain, desire, detachment, vice and virtue. The Gita further brings out that these gunas create a group with their eightfold nature. While the manifested soul as higher purusa in the human body is independent of gunas, the spirit of God which comes through prakriti lives side by side with these gunas and the eightfold group and thus experiences and enjoys the material world of senses but still guides all animate life towards right direction. Rita, satya and dharma, being divine qualities, are always present in the spirit. Prakriti's role as a guide through the spirit of God is mentioned in Yajur Veda 21-4. In this hymn, prakriti is described as Aditi, the queen of eternal order, never decaying, wide-expanding, the protectress and gracious guide. Thus, most Vedic hymns describe prakriti as a female element and mother of the 33 devas and devis who are formless beings of light. God is the male element and is the primordial seed. Vedic metaphysics leave no doubt that God is the supreme father and prakriti is the supreme mother. In various other Vedic hymns, particularly A.V. 4-2-1 to 8, Y.V. 36-17, R.V. X-8-7, prakriti is also described as trita (trinity) with three bodies, gross, subtle and causal. The gross universe is also therefore part of prakriti. Her other two subtle and causal bodies are invisible to human senses. The pralaya, or cosmic dissolution, is the yoga of prakriti, as she is ever keen to be united with Him and become one with formless and ineffable Brahma.
Owing to prakriti yoga, the subject of creation and dissolution, srishti and pralaya, has been given sufficient importance in the six schools of Indian philosophy. For advaita vedanti, both pure and objective idealists and monists, this subject relating to prakriti is part of maya. For them, prakriti is not eternal and not absolutely real as she is created and dissolved. Since human senses with only material and intellectual knowledge find her gross form, the universe, as real and normally do not recognise her other two subtle and causal forms, these idealists on the authority of the Vedas examine the subject of srishti and pralaya in greater detail. However, the dvait vedanti, whether objective or qualified dualists, consider prakriti as real and eternal, so the subject of the yoga of prakriti to get herself dissolved and united with Him is not a major subject with them. For proper understanding of Vedic metaphysics in this regard, some brief details are given. The Chandogya Upanishad says, ‘from this engenderment beam of light shot up and down and gross matter was formed. Prakriti expanded in all directions as the sentient one spread Himself everywhere high, low, here and beyond.’ According to Rig Veda 1-115-2, all worlds except the abode of God described as Brahmaloka are subject to appearance and disappearance, creation and withdrawal. The term used for creation or appearance is srishti and for withdrawal two terms are mentioned, pralaya and samhara. The importance given to srishti and pralaya vary considerably in the six schools of Indian philosophy.
The Mimamsa school did not accept her creation or dissolution and perhaps did not come across the relevant Vedic hymns on the subject or ignored those as not getting harmonised with their philosophy of rituals and ceremonies based on the Vedic Brahmanas. It is a separate matter that the dreaded ancient materialist Charavkas also refuted this concept but for different reasons as they based their philosophy on eat, drink and be merry by totally ignoring the Vedas. The Vedic school Nyaya-Vaisheshika is silent on this concept in their later sutras; they perhaps tend to accept it without giving much importance to the concept. Maybe it needed special efforts to overlook or ignore the Vedic hymns. R.V. 1-130-1, 2 links the cosmic creation to a weaver's job. This weaver is God Himself as Lord Prajapati who spread out the web with His threads on all sides, upwards, downwards, forward and backward. The Chandogya Upanishad and the Rig Veda leave no doubt that prakriti and the gross universe come from Him and go back to Him. It is a divine phenomenon similar to plants which take material from the earth and finally go back to the earth. The same phenomenon is also observed about all animate life. The law of nature is uniform for all.
In time immemorial, beyond the physical sciences to find out, the supreme Lord Brahma spoke some cosmic word. The Vedic rishis, munis, metaphysicists and savants named it as om or aum and explained it as shabda Brahman. Through this word the spirit of God first entered in space (disha) and led first to the creation of divine and subtle nature. According to the Vedas, both space and time live in God, and these are eternal and existed before the origin of nature. This cosmic energy caused through shabda Brahman with the passage of time changed into subtle, extremely fine and gross particles. Gradually these particles formed atoms (anu and kanu) with the merging of subatomic particles (tan matras), and the combination of these building blocks formed the five mahabhutas – ether, air, water, fire and earth. This process continued and from these five mahabhutas – three gross and visible and two alloys not visible but perceivable, i.e., ether and air, a large number of bhutas (elements) were formed. Before this cosmic word there was neither existence nor non-existence nor any realm or region, there was no sky (akash), no air, no sign of day and night. Darkness was concealed in darkness, it was more a plasmic continuum. In this void (shunya) God spoke aum and the spirit of God entered. Thus, Brahma, the supreme reality, manifested through the light of tapas, spiritual fire (R.V. X-129-1 to 3). The believers in the plasmic continuum as void or shunya, popularly known as shunyavadins, still consider that the spirit of God even now is found in the void of all subtle and gross atoms, particles, tanmatras, cells, etc. It provides constant energy and specific characteristics and properties to all animate and inanimate life/things.
From inanimate life with no indriyas (senses), and with the help of the spirit-energy principle and one sense, first animate trees and plants emerged in water, seas and oceans, and then on earth. Plants and trees have one predominant sense of touch and when the number of senses went on increasing, gradually germs, bacteria, protozoa, cells, ants, fishes, birds and animals appeared. All the five senses entered in animals. According to this theory of the spirit of God in shunya (void) and the metaphysics of shunyavadins, human beings emerged last on earth, with five senses and one divine soul. When human beings evolved to a stage when knowledge could be provided to them, the soul entered them directly from God, who is also the supreme soul (Paramatman). Thus, man became a divine animal capable of getting a priori knowledge from the largely omniscient soul as well as spirit. Only Paramatman is omniscient. It entered the human beings as His particle (ansh). It can therefore also be described as Brahmavamsha. When it was manifested in the human body, rishis of yore named it jivatma, the soul caged in the gross body. Thus, soul is the omniscient principle and the spirit is the life or energy principle. While prakriti with the help of spirit provides five senses of touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell to all human beings, God provides His particle as soul directly and ordains the human beings to achieve perfection, self-realisation and come back to Him. This, according to pure idealists and monists, is His divine sport (leela). If Vedic interpretation is accepted, it would only mean that God is the supreme soul, so the image of God is only through His soul. Since man is made in His own image, i.e., soul, so only the human beings have the soul and not other animate or inanimate life. Thus, the real self of the human beings is atman and its realisation is self-realisation. The spirit (jiva) provides only body-self, which is also local or phenomenal self.
The Vedas give more details about soul spirit in human beings. First one cell having two senses enters the womb of the mother which leads to 2-4-8-16-32-64 cells when these split into 40+24. The heavier part of 40 cells gets lower in the womb owing to effect of gravity and energy in these living cells. Thereafter, formation of living cells continues and more and more energy enters the body until millions of cells are formed. These cells form various senses, sense organs and all parts of gross body of the infant. Thus, God is present through His spirit in the entire procreation process. The agent is prakriti, as Krishna tells noble and gallant Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Spirit enters with the first cell and this energy goes on increasing with the formation of millions of cells as spirit reaches all the cells. However, the divine soul enters later which brings consciousness in the infant still in the mother's womb.
Rig Veda 3-54-8 tells us that with the cosmic word om, multiform creation came into existence. The sages thus discovered by their wisdom the non-existent (the unmanifested) and existent (manifested). Nature's bounties appeared later on step by step (R.V. X-129-6). He only knows when prakriti was first created as time is eternal and beyond prakriti (R.V. X-129-7). However, prakriti, the universe with stars, planets and galaxies came into existence like a cluster of yarn beads formed by knots on a thread. All these are threaded to Brahma, the supreme reality (B.G. 7-7). The supreme Lord created prakriti and the universe for the enjoyment and fulfilment of tiny little souls for their actions, knowledge and bhoga (both spiritual and material enjoyment). Thus was created the phenomenal world of maya along with prakriti, also described as svadha.
A few hymns in the Vedas, particularly R.V. 1-121-1, Y.V 25-10, A.V 4-2-7, link the creation of prakriti with Hiranyagarbha, the cosmic golden egg where the Lord manifested in His splendour as the sole Lord of creation. The cosmic word om created enormous cosmic energy, it formed a cosmic golden egg as Hiranyagarbha. This was the first stage of energy getting converted into some kind of mass. Thus the permanent truth of relationship of energy and mass and vice versa emerged. This relationship of mass and energy the physical scientists could prove in a laboratory only in the 20th century. When the cosmic egg opened/busted, the subtle prakriti was first formed and the process continued with the formation of the gross universe, and it continues to expand. The gross creation then starts evolving from the cosmic word om and Hiranyagarbha, it starts getting differentiated from prakriti. In the process, Brahma, the supreme Lord, continues to remain whole. During the stage of differentiation the primordial matter in the form of gunas, categories, tanmatras, anu, kanu and other grosser matter start emerging. The subtle sattvic, rajasic and tamasic gunas join in different proportion and constant properties of various elements and other matter is formed. The spirit of God spreads in all gross, fine and subtle particles and leads to the formation of mahat, which is cosmic intelligence. Thereafter, some intelligence also comes to the senses and sense organs.
After the origin of prakriti and creation of universe, both these pass through the four celestial periods of the Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali yugas. It is not only the Vedas which refer to these four celestial periods, even the ancient Greek metaphysicists had also mentioned about these periods as the golden, silver, copper and iron ages. The description of these celestial periods going up to an almost infinite number of years as mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita could be symbolic, indicating that the process of creation and dissolution or withdrawal of prakriti and the gross universe takes abnormally long periods. The Vedic dualists like the seer Kapila, even after going through the Vedas, were inclined to conclude that nature is eternal. Perhaps abnormally long periods of creation and dissolution was considered as providing eternity to prakriti. The Atharva Veda rishis did not agree with Kapila and reiterated that only God is eternal and prakriti is created by Him. Atharva Veda 4-1-3 reiterated, ‘from the bosom of the cosmic word om, He brought forth the world, universe and prakriti. On high, below, He abides by His own laws.’
Science and Prakriti
Many scientists believe that the universe originated from a cosmic egg by a catastrophic explosion, the Big Bang, and was not created by God. In science the distinction between nature and the universe is not apparent and certainly not very specific, as the concept of the subtle is beyond the scope of material scientific instruments. There are a large number of hypotheses in the physical sciences but no factual theory. It is mainly due to the limitation of human material instruments like the senses, the outward-looking mind and also scientific material instruments, which can see the minutest gross subatomic particles but not tanmatras like the subtle gunas, spirit, will, ego, etc. The other major limitations of the scientists and environmentalists are their prejudices and epoch, as observed by eminent American scientist and Nobel Prize winner in 1912, Alexis Carrel, in Man, the Unknown. The inanimate universe, cosmology, geology, physics, astronomy, chemistry and other branches of science only tell us that in nature, properties and characteristics of all elements whether on this earth, other planets, stars or comets remain the same. However, the scientists of all these branches have great difficulty in explaining how these properties were acquired by these elements unless some of them are able to harmonise the Vedic concept of the harmony of matter and spirit.
Scientists can at best push the prehistoric and ancient techniques of fighting by weapons made of stone, crude iron or bows and arrows to atom and even hydrogen bombs, star wars and push button technology. Nevertheless, they have great difficulty, owing to their inherent limitations, to know nature in its entirety, her divine and spiritual purpose and role, and the aim of all kinds of life and many other metaphysical concepts. Owing to such limitations, scientists of great eminence like Isaac Newton could at best say, ‘Nature is very consonant and comfortable with herself,’ but still found matter created by divine nature inert and insentient. Later, Einstein and a few other scientists corrected this after a gap of a few centuries from Newton, and tens of centuries after the Greek atomists and dualists. For a few thousand years the truth contained in the Vedas and later brought out by shunyavadins, the Bhagavad Gita and many Upanishads was not accepted. Even now scientists have difficulties to explain what is making the number of tiny and almost invisible machines to work continuously without any rest and lubrication in all kinds of atoms. Scientists have yet to study the other Vedic metaphysical and analytical subjects like prakriti, soul, spirit, God, creation and dissolution or withdrawal of the universe and come out from various hypotheses to scientific proof. A few theories like the one given by George Edward Lematire (1894-1966), a Belgian astronomer, that the cosmic egg was born out of some cosmic power at zero time look more like metaphysics than science. Such infinitely long periods strengthen the views of dualists that nature is eternal. Thus the philosophy of dvaita vedanti and Sankhya darshana cannot be easily overlooked.
The cosmic egg before the Big Bang was originally hydrogen gas compressed with electrons, protons, neutrons and other subatomic particles. Neutrons were neutronium which weighed about one billion tons per cubic centimeter, considered to be the ultimate limit by scientists for any kind of compression. Though difficult to ascertain owing to its vastness, scientists in the last a few decades are coming to the conclusion about the possibility of life elsewhere. These scientific findings, discoveries and hypotheses if converted to metaphysical philosophy would come closer to Vedic metaphysics and the permanent truths contained therein.
Hindus have the swastika symbol of cyclic return of the four celestial periods, Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali yuga, or the golden, silver, copper and iron ages. The Chinese scientist and philosopher Mencius, who was the disciple of Confucius, found these celestial cycles owing to yin and yang, the oscillation of two-fold cosmic forces. Pythagorus, the Greek philosopher and mathematician of the 6th century BC who interpreted the universe in terms of mathematics, made a distinction between the cosmos (sublunary world) and the ouranos (superlunary world). All potentially knowable objects like earth, sun, moon, other solar system bodies and stars and galaxies consisting of matter formed the cosmos that has a cyclic creation and dissolution, whereas ouranos is imperishable being beyond cosmos.
Alcmeon, Heraclitus and Plato believed in the concept of a cyclic cosmos. Plato even found that the revolution of celestial bodies and four cyclic celestial periods have an effect on fertility, barrenness and healthy or defective breeding of each living species including plants, trees, animals, birds, human beings and all kinds of animate life. The golden age is the period of divine begetting when the unfailing laws of God rule. The worst is the dark age when divine guidance is steadily withdrawn as the laws of God are not followed, leading to chaos, disorder in the state and society, ultimate immaturity, feebleness and almost complete final extinction. Thus it is quite apparent that both physical and metaphysical scientists throughout the world in all ages did some kind of research within their abilities and capacities and did their best to find out the scientific explanation of the origin of cosmos. Although these findings, explanations and hypotheses neared the truths already contained in the Vedas, still the same would require more research in astronomy, cosmology and other physical sciences. However, the concept of nature or Vedic prakriti remains vague with the physical scientists though the metaphysicists are able to visualise its subtle character and divinity.
Salient Features of Vedic Prakriti
Many Vedic hymns describe the various salient features of prakriti and its manifestation as the gross cosmos, the ever-expanding universe and the world. These include primordial matter, the gunas, bhuta, mahabhuta, tanmatras, anu, kanu, creation and withdrawal, rebirth of human life again and again, global trade, the 33 prakriti devas who are formless beings of light, mahat, mahatatva, the female aspect of prakriti, ego, karma bhoomi, the cosmic illusion, maya and many others.
If bhuta is the gross element, tatva is the subtle element and mahatatva is the main subtle element, i.e., prakriti herself. Mahatatva, with the help of God's spirit, creates will, ego, activity and other sense perception instruments. Ego (ahamkara) is the moving force of human beings. When ego is guided by soul based on a priori principles, it helps in creating harmony, virtue, cooperation and love in families, society and all areas of human dealings. Those human beings, when their ego is guided by a priori principles, do not resort to any activity for the satisfaction of their personal ego. Thus, ego provided by prakriti and personal ego are not the same. Prakriti ego of the individual makes a person move on the path of virtue and goodness. Otherwise, to satisfy one's ego, individuals run after power in all fields whether these are economic, social, political, religious and even artistic, but bereft of their spiritual and divine aspects. They are outrageous examples of the strange triangulation of gorging, giving and greed.
The personal ego creates deliriously strange feelings of greatness without having any real attributes of greatness. It is more like the three gunas which are causes of different kinds of activity. But when these gunas are bereft of the guidance of soul and spirit, being themselves non-intelligent, they make gurus, god men, tantrics, priests and even some scientists, politicians and industrialists want to share the omnipotence of God through ritualistic prayers, hypocritical meditation and ostentatious and proxy worship. It is because of the effect of gunas that some active followers and organisers of such cults and gurudom have created fairy tales and strange mythologies by churning their mental thought process and have given so many attributes to these gurus and founders that many ignorant followers have accepted them as incarnations of God/gods on this earth. Their targets are not really the poor masses but the ultra rich, fabulously wealthy persons. It is because of this personal ego against divine ego provided by prakriti that they have also wonderfully succeeded in amassing money, power, influence and immovable property throughout the world.
Thus the prakriti ego of human beings, if bereft of Vedic metaphysics and knowledge contained in other scriptures of major religions of the world, can become the cause of many social evils. The same ego when regulated and channelled with the knowledge contained in the Vedas and other scriptures, or in their absence with the a priori principles known to the soul, becomes extremely useful for the society.
According to Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1-6, brahmanda is the trinity of om, nama and rupa, which in metaphysics would mean spirit, name and form. The source of all names is shabda Brahman om and the supreme spirit is behind this cosmic word – Om kham Brahma, Om thy name is Brahma, who is the source of all names. Without giving some name, no one can describe any form. The source of all forms is the sense of sight which is available through our eyes, and Brahma is behind that. The source of all actions is the gross body; Brahma, through his spirit, is behind the gross body. This Upanishad thus concludes that in the universe all forms of spirit, name, shape, appearance, eye, action, and gross and subtle bodies are but one.
Maya is one of the most important and vital salient features of prakriti. It is due to the effect of maya, the Vedic phantasmagoria, that we see one as many and millions of names and forms. Prakriti maya makes us weave a web of our own destiny from which we cannot free ourselves with the help of material and intellectual knowledge bereft of the spiritual and divine knowledge, vijnana and jnana, contained in the Vedic metaphysics. Through complete and perfect knowledge of Brahma and prakriti one can largely free himself from the web of destiny.
If one goes by the definition and description of maya by advaita vedanti who are either pure or objective idealists and also either monists or monotheists, or both, maya is only a phenomenal world of senses and not so real. Even the pure monist Shankara did not say maya creates an unreal world. It is not like a magician who makes you feel many unreal things as real and finally makes the unreal things disappear. Nevertheless the world is not so real as it is created and withdrawn by the supreme reality. It is at best transitory but not unreal. There is no magic involved in its creation as God is not a magician but perfect truth and reality. Even Albert Einstein during his scientific research came to the conclusion that God does not play dice. However, whatever He creates changes, faces flux and is perishable. So the phenomenal world is not unreal, it is only the phantasmagoria that creates change, flux and final disappearance. It is because of this cosmic illusion that the world has many names and forms which leads to so many theories, interpretations, descriptions and even contradictions of certain hypotheses. This world is, therefore, nama rupa with multiplicity of names and forms of gods, deities, religions, sects, modes of worship, etc. All these names and forms disappear when the effect of maya starts diminishing with the movement from tamasic to sattvic gunas and thereafter towards shunya sattva, beyond gunas. Maya in prakriti is thus a mystical power (shakti) and under the influences of senses.
The outward-looking mind and gunas force us to do many divergent and even contradictory things. It makes you feel that all those who resort to bribery, smuggling, deception, cruelty, blind pursuit of money and matter are corrupt persons, but when you do the same or somewhat similar activities you do not consider yourself as an evil-minded and corrupt person. Many times you get so much attached to your children and friends that their evil and non-divine activities do not appear as corrupt practises. This stage in the Bhagavad Gita is described as moha, infatuation. So what you criticise in others you justify in the activities of your children, relations and friends. When you resort to such activities yourself and do not find these as evil it is the stage of attachment to matter and the phenomenal world. This is all the effect of the cosmic illusion, maya. Many things which our senses and sense organs cannot or do not see, and only visualise or happen to see differently at different times, and also different physical states of mind, you tend to interpret not based on reality but based on your vested interest. Thus maya is the main cause of extremely divergent theories in economics, political science, ethics, philosophy and even metaphysics. Even the eyes, ears and nose do not perceive sunrise or sunset, a particular song or a scent of flowers in the same manner all the time. A rope appearing as a snake under the dim light of dawn and dusk, the illusory appearance of water in the desert as a mirage under the bright daylight of the sun, and hundreds of such examples are the effect of maya in prakriti. Since God is beyond desire and ambition, by creating the cosmos, prakriti, the universe, He remains whole and has no personal objective to gain from this subtle and gross creation. At best, it is His leela (sportive manifestation).
The Vedas describe maya as mayu, and it is sattviki or unpolluted. It hides the real from the vision of mortals. In sattviki maya when you acquire Vedic knowledge, vision of the real supreme divinity starts emerging. For those individuals who gather a large proportion of tamasic gunas by resorting to non-divine professions, thoughts and activities, even maya becomes polluted for them and it breeds further ignorance. Those who acquire any kind of divine, spiritual and material knowledge under polluted maya do not go beyond ajnana or ignorance.
The word prakriti is used in two different senses in the Bhagavad Gita, (a) as the primary and ultimate category, and (b) as the nature of God's being. In the first sense gunas are produced, and in the second sense as maya or hypnotisation of God's leela. In this later sense maya is a reflection of God (B.G. VII-14, 15. VIII-18, 61). The concept of maya as God's hypnotisation, cosmic illusion and reflection is part of the Gita's path of knowledge, described therein as Sankhya yoga. The Indian school of philosophy, Sankhya darshana of Kapila, and Sankhya yoga of the celestial song, the Bhagavad Gita, are vastly different. The concept of maya in Kapila's metaphysics hardly exists as both God and prakriti are eternal and real. In fact, God's existence is neither accepted nor rejected by Kapila. The Taittriya and Chhandogya Upanishads find the divine essence as the soul of the universe, which is also present in human beings to guide them out of the effect of maya and the waves of the rough sea of matter by following rita, cosmic laws of social and moral order. The Upanishads thus conclude that subtle prakriti and its gross manifestation as the universe is the temple of God. Even if the entire world is a mere appearance (pratibhasa), a real world has to be assumed as a prototype. In this prototype, maya makes the world karma bhoomi for performing our good and bad deeds. Since no activity can be performed in an unreal bhoomi (earth, land, place, location), human senses invariably consider this prototype as real and an abode of comfort. Very often, these senses make you forget even your transitory existence in this karma bhoomi.
The Role of Prakriti
The human body consists of the same gross and subtle elements, tatva, tanmatras, anu, kanu, subatomic particles, electrons, protons, neutrons and many more tiny and microscopic particles, as prakriti, being our supreme mother and the universe. In view of this close relationship of man with prakriti, the same laws are applicable to human beings as are observed by nature and the universe. Being the supreme mother she helps us to convey the same in the form of the book of nature. It is a separate matter that human beings tend to create their own laws sometimes contradicting the laws of nature, under the influence of their senses and outward-looking mind. Still worse they not only contradict and flout the laws of nature but also their own laws for their selfish and vested interests. Many learned persons have observed the flouting of man-made laws by human beings and compared it to sandcastles which are built and destroyed by small children for their pleasure. William Shenstone explained this human phenomenon in his inimitable literary style, ‘Laws (made by human beings) are generally found to be nets of such a texture as the little creep through, the great break through and the middle sized are alone entangled in.’ All physical forces in nature are man's greatest allies, whether the sun, moon, rain, air, water or others. By flouting the laws of nature and even their own laws human beings unashamedly create pollution in these forces, like acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, etc., overuse the blessings of prakriti and tend to become parasites on this earth, described in the Vedas as being the other which does not kick. There are man-made religious, state and social laws against pollution, smuggling, rape, bribery, adulteration of food and medicines, the dowry system, infanticide, etc., but all these activities and social evils continue with a vengeance. This ambivalence has created two faces of many human beings, the face of their gross body and a masked face. Many of the ultra rich and deliriously wealthy persons of gorging, giving and greed have masked faces in society and their real face, with unsociable activities, is very often hidden even sometimes from their own children. Thus no one can deny the great social importance of the Vedic truth that not knowing the supreme mother prakriti and her noble and benevolent role, human beings tend to move on the path of evil.
To explain the role and functioning of prakriti, recourse to the 33 devas has been taken by the Vedic metaphysicists. The total attributes of prakriti have been first split into 33 sets of attributes and each set is brought symbolically under the charge of one of prakriti's formless devas/devis. Since Vedic rishis and munis found the supreme reality ineffable, and found in explaining His attributes that even words recoil, they did transcendental research to find what attributes of the formless Brahma are found in prakriti, as the divine nature was also His manifestation. Since prakriti was created through the supreme spirit of God as shabda Brahman om, these attributes came through His spirit in the divine nature, which is spread everywhere. While God has infinite attributes, prakriti has finite attributes. From these attributes the role of prakriti can be easily appreciated. Rig Veda X-93-4 says, ‘joyful lords of ambrosia are adorable.’ The same hymn further says, ‘Aryaman deva is the regulator of cosmic order, Mitra the principle of effulgence behind the sun, Varuna is the master of oceanic forces, Rudra the right and virtuous force behind storms and hurricanes, Marutas the cloud bearing winds, Pusha the nourishing principles, and Bhaga the power behind material and spiritual prosperity.’
Deva is the epithet applied to all kinds of forces of nature including fire, water, wind, electricity, wrath and other forms of energy, selfless service, light, etc. For each force there is a corresponding deva or devi. In all there are 33 devas/devis who are formless beings of light. The literal translation of deva is ‘shining one’ and owing to their partly divine attributes they can be considered as gods but without any human form. So to give form to them and worship them through their idols is non-Vedic. Thus this epithet also applies to selfless service, light, knowledge, oceanic forces, time, calculation, education, decay and final graceful death through their corresponding deva/devi. Indra, Agni, Varun, Mitra, Surya and others are devas. Prithvi, Usha and Saraswati are devis. The female beings of light preside over education, selfless service, time, calculation, discipline, etc. Male devas who are the shining ones that preside over energy, power, knowledge and other natural forces like decay, etc. The attributes of prakriti relating to production, scientific knowledge (of all physical sciences), vidya or jnana, through the book of nature, are presided over by Ribhu, Ashvinau and Saraswati. Knowing all these 33 beings of light, one can fully know the attributes of prakriti. Since these divine attributes are given to prakriti through the shabda Brahman – the Vedic cosmic word om through which the spirit of God first entered prakriti and later even human beings, so these attributes are also available to human beings and also other animate life. However, the attributes of soul manifested in human beings (jivatma) are different, more in the nature of a priori principles, being partly omniscient.
This kind of classification of the attributes of prakriti into 33 sets greatly helped in the brevity of the Vedic hymns. Instead of repeating every time the particular set of the attributes of prakriti, the ancient rishis and munis used epithets like Indra, Varuna, Usha, Prithvi, etc., and succeeded in conveying many attributes through one epithet each. Even though a Vedic hymn, chant or mantra may appear to be brief, its real meanings could be quite lengthy. In addition to devas, there is a mention of another word, devata. This metaphysical word refers to subject matter and abstract ideas like gambling and its censure (R.V. X-34-1 to 6), or praise of sattvic charity (daan) of love, knowledge and selfless service (R.V. X-117-1 to 4). Nowhere the 33 devas or devis and devatas have been mentioned as deities. The in-depth study of the Vedas would indicate that emphasis on shruti (Vedas) is not so much on prayer, meditation and worship but on the understanding of God, soul, prakriti, gunas, tatvas and bhutas. No one can move towards moksha, the stage of eternal bliss, unless he/she is well integrated with nature. The divine nature which is our supreme mother prakriti is benevolent like most of the devas, mighty like Indra and virtuous like clouds (Marutas). Amongst these 33 devas, some seers and sages opted for different names for them like Savitara, Surya and Aryaman related to the sun. Aditi, Devaki and daivi are the epithets of prakriti.
These hymns clearly prove that attributes originally provided to prakriti by the spirit of God through His cosmic word om at the time of creation continue to remain the same from zero time till now and shall not change till pralaya or withdrawal of the gross universe and thereafter subtle prakriti. At that stage the entire mass of the universe would change to subtle energy and thereafter into the cosmic word om. Thus all activities in prakriti, the universe and the world commence with om and also end in the same cosmic word or shabda Brahman.
Owing to flux in prakriti and tatva's effect of the three subtle gunas, no one remains inactive even for a moment as all of us are driven to action by nature-born qualities (B.G. 3-5). However, a person who performs his activities like being in mother prithvi and supreme mother prakriti without attachment excels (B.G. 3-7). No one can maintain his/her gross body without any good or bad action. We all know the role of food in our life for survival, energy recoupment and maintenance of normal health. The production of food is rooted in action. We only exist so long as we perform our allotted duties; otherwise, not to be occupied is the same thing as not to exist. The Bhagavad Gita, amongst many other sins, mentions idleness. Voltaire also observed a similar phenomenon in nature and wrote, ‘All people are good except those who do not work and remain idle.’
All civilisations of the world in the ancient, medieval and modern times are judged from the mode of work people performed and the results achieved by their collective efforts and not from their idleness or selfish objectives. World history tells us that most of the highly flourishing civilisations came to their final end when the concept of work became part of materialistic philosophy and value systems changed to economic values based on self-interest. So any effort on the part of modern science, economics, organised religion, cults, material ethics and philosophy which ultimately lead to change in the definition of work, opposed to the Vedic way or the Gita's nishkama karma, and make human beings idle or perform work which is not useful to families, society, state and humankind of the entire world, is against the law of nature.
Socrates had known and understood the role of nature and learned from its workings governed by the wise. For him wisdom, virtue and goodness, if society were to be saved (the polity, city-states then existing in Greece), should be synonymous. His disciple Plato, in the theory of rule by philosopher kings in his Republic, later on perfected this noble concept of Socrates. In India, King Janaka of the 8th century BC, referred to in the Gita as an ideal king, was more like Plato's philosopher king, being a benevolent ruler, metaphysicist of great eminence and perfect administrator. It is a separate matter that Plato evolved his theory of philosopher kings about four centuries after the death of King Janaka. Materialism had spread so much in Greek city-states that Plato himself could not succeed in establishing the rule of the philosopher king in any of the city-states of Greece. Aristotle, who was the student of Plato and teacher of Alexander, finally did not consider the subject of philosopher kings important enough in his metaphysics. Swami Vivekananda was emphatic that knowing and understanding God, prakriti and one's divine inner instruments, one can acquire real physical and spiritual strength, and without their knowledge no nation can be strong. Shankara in the 8th century AD gave much less emphasis on prayer, meditation and worship of God and prakriti but emphasised the need to know and understand Brahma, prakriti, maya, soul (atman) and other Vedic metaphysical concepts. Many other learned persons, seers and sages have also observed worship, prayer and blind meditation is the hidden desire and ego of many persons following the path of materialism with the appendage of spiritualism, while these are not God's requirement.
Prakriti also performs the role of divine reformatory. She helps human beings in discharging their debts to society, parents, children, friends and all those who produce for you food and other items of daily use, as well as those who render various kinds of help and assistance to you. While providing all these blessings she also provides three kinds of pains and miseries. The first and foremost, due to mental and physical sufferings mostly self-inflicted, owes to lack of knowledge of God and prakriti. Simply, the first kind of sufferings is due to avidya or ajnana (ignorance). The second kind of sufferings is due to natural catastrophes and causes like floods, arson, earthquakes, droughts, etc. The third kind of miseries are due to supernatural causes which could be the effect of planets, destiny due to one's past karma or fate due to one's present karma. Human beings undergo these kinds of sufferings when they ignore the reformatory role of prakriti. Since salvation (moksha) is complete freedom from all these sufferings and miseries described in the Vedas as adhyatmic, adhibhutic and adhidaivic kashta, i.e., pains and miseries, prakriti in the role of divine reformatory helps us to attain moksha. Individuals who are not well integrated with nature, and also if they do not follow the laws of nature, become their own worst enemies, face these three kinds of miseries and cannot attain final liberation.
Those who do not understand the reformatory role of prakriti and even fail to recognise her as their supreme mother even resort to strange kinds of spiritual hypocrisy. The phenomenon is so vivid and apparent amongst some Hindus that hardly anyone throughout the world can miss it. First, by ignoring prakriti many Hindus would worship God as both supreme father and mother. When their pursuit of money leaves no time for prayer, meditation and worship of God, they resort to proxy prayer and worship. More than twenty kinds of proxy prayers and worships are performed in Hindu temples on hefty payments involving money, gold, diamonds and even animals like cows, etc. The more you get occupied in blind pursuit of money, power and influence through corrupt practises the more you feel the need for proxy prayers and worship and priests ignorant about Vedic metaphysics and Upanishadic philosophy.
A major role assigned to prakriti by Brahma through His cosmic word om, containing the spirit of God, is relating to the book of nature. This book teaches all her children, i.e., human beings and other animate life, the cosmic laws of social and moral order which for all of us are laws of necessity. An equally important concept which we learn from prakriti is eternal flux. The composition of the three subtle gunas of sattvic, rajasic and tamasic goes on changing in prakriti to maintain equilibrium, stability, gravitational effect and other properties of matter so there is continuous flux in nature and the gross universe. This flux is both visible and non-visible to human eyes. Even human senses cannot perceive this flux and so the help of material scientific instruments are taken to know the intensity of this flux. This principle of flux in prakriti, the gross universe and the earth is also found in the human beings, particularly in their gross bodies, from birth until old age. Owing to the effect of gunas, human personality, thoughts, ideas, desires, degree of transparency and even the gross body itself undergo constant and regular change. This flux gets more vehement with the predominance of tamasic gunas when it brings inconsistencies and contradictions in human conduct, behaviour and thoughts. It is due to this effect that a person finds material justification for his evil and corrupt actions and becomes extremely critical when others perform the same evil and corrupt activities. With the predominance of sattvic gunas, though the flux still remains, its vehement effect is much less. When sattvic gunas start diminishing in human beings, even the divine truth starts appearing different to many persons. At this stage some individuals consider that previous records of revelations are not authentic and only a particular scripture of a religion, guru, cult or tantric is the authentic message of God and applicable to mankind. It is for this reason so many different and contradictory divine injunctions, messages and philosophies are spread in the world. Thus in spite of flux in prakriti, the laws of God (rita) do not undergo any change and are beyond the gunas effect. These laws are logical and mathematical and remain the same concerning time and space.
All kinds of flux in prakriti, the universe and even in human beings is related to kala (time) and disha (space), but these two concepts of time and space are beyond prakriti and hence not affected by flux. These are part of the grand design of God, described in the Vedas as the supreme designer and architect (vishwa karma). Since God designs nature and the universe and assigns certain roles to prakriti, so her roles are divine. She performs her role and other functions under the supervision of God as mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita. Under His supervision, prakriti creates all animate and inanimate life/things, and the spirit of God provides constant energy to all kinds of life, including 21 kinds of fuels to human beings. He pervades everywhere in His manifestation, prakriti and the gross universe. It is therefore essential to know the relationship between God and prakriti.
Brahma and Prakriti
The sovereign ordainer of the Vedas is Brahma who is the universal God. The Vedic seers and sages, while giving this epithet, were aware that many wise and learned people throughout the world may give different names to the supreme reality. Even in the Vedas, apart from Brahma, in the Atharva Veda the name Shiva is also mentioned. There is a mention of Vishnu as well.
Mundaka Upanishad II-2-1 describes the whole universe as supreme Brahma Himself. The universe is the projection of Brahma to enjoy Himself. The subtle form of the universe is prakriti, which is Brahma's leela, or His cosmic play. In Vedic metaphysics, He is also the soul of prakriti. Harmony of soul, spirit and prakriti as subtle and gross matter is the main theme of the Vedas. R.V. 1-164-20 contains a simile of two birds sitting in a tree. One bird eats its fruit and enjoys and the second bird sits as a silent spectator and watches the other bird eating and enjoying the fruit. The two birds are two spirits, one finite and the other infinite. The finite spirit of God described as jiva comes to animate and inanimate life/things through prakriti, and the infinite directly from God to human beings as soul or atma. Prakriti in itself is non-intelligent owing to gunas but the soul of God in prakriti makes her intelligent through the knowledge contained. The spirit of God in nature is the energy principle of prakriti and enjoys all her activities through her subtle existence and the gross universe. It is in this background in which the Mundaka Upanishad refers to Brahma creating the universe to enjoy Himself. Thus, there is not only harmony of soul and body, spirit and matter, but also God, soul, spirit and prakriti live in harmony. In prakriti, 33 devas and devis live in harmony. Therefore, harmony is Vedic rita, a cosmic law of physical, social and moral order.
Incidentally it is mentioned above that His spirit is finite and soul is infinite. This has to be viewed in the context of human beings and other animate and inanimate life/things. The spirit of God is made available to prakriti and the universe during the stage of srishti, divine creation through His cosmic word, shabda Brahman om, and is finally withdrawn at the time of pralaya or samhara, i.e., dissolution or withdrawal, even though His spirit is infinite, and by creating nature and the universe He remains whole. As far as prakriti, the brahmanda, and animate and inanimate life is concerned, it is finite. However, human manifested souls being divine remain immortal and part of the infinite Brahma. Spirit, being energy principle, is not affected by deeds or karma, but human manifested soul (jivatma) is affected by human actions, thoughts and desires. The quality of spirit may be the same in all human beings but manifested souls are different due to the effect of gunas, karma and knowledge.
This Vedic hymn relating to two birds sitting in a tree is one of the most important, as various metaphysicists of later periods have interpreted it differently. For dvaita vedanti or dualists the tree is prakriti, the two birds are the soul and the spirit and all these three are eternal along with God. The Sankhya darshana of Kapila did not even consider the need for God to explain the eternal aspect of prakriti. There are metaphysicists who consider soul and spirit as one; they interpret the two birds as God and the soul sitting on a tree which is prakriti but not eternal. For them prakriti is subject to creation and dissolution and as such it is asat, non-existence or maya. Whenever it is sat, in existence, God, soul and prakriti remain in harmony. This hymn of the Rig Veda is found in many Upanishads and other parts of the Vedas. The great seer Patanjali also did not feel the need for God to explain his philosophy in his Yoga Sutras but accepted that He is the first guru-preceptor who helps in the expeditious understanding of yogas. Thus Vedic metaphysics is clear that God does not live or act in history; His need is felt based on your thoughts and ideologies. In addition the Vedas cannot be identified or equated with God only as there are many other subjects in them.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks as ‘I’, i.e., supreme reality. In Atharva Veda 6-LXI-1 to 3, God's injunctions are also directly from Him as ‘I’ relating to the creation of prakriti – sun, air, water, etc., and distinction between truth and untruth, including revelation of the Vedas by Him. To many who consider the path of bhakti or devotion to God as the supreme path, it is an ample proof that God did take human form due to His divine potency. The Vedas thus came directly from Him as shruti. It is in spite of Vedic metaphysics that God is aja (unborn) and transcends all images. Being formless, idols, icons and portraits cannot do justice to Him. Vedic maya resolves this conflict. Apart from this, before the Gita there were only three Vedas. The Atharva Veda was compiled much later when the concept of personal God as saguna Brahma with attributes and form had clearly developed. In the Rig Veda there is only impersonal God who is ineffable and formless and is described there in as nirguna Brahma – beyond human description, as even words recoil while describing his infinite attributes.
The Vedas describe prakriti as divine being. His creative art human senses can see through the gross universe, and perceive prakriti's subtleties in the fragrance in the air, earth, flowers, and also the divine forces behind all physical phenomenon. Twashta is another epithet in the Vedas for God who has provided His cosmic energy to prakriti, and thus she is shakti, the storehouse of enormous cosmic power and energy. The sum total of that energy remains constant throughout her existence. Twashta has made all these wonderful gross objects and articles of prakriti – the sun, moon, earth, planets, galaxies and many others out of His invisible cause. Thus He helps human beings, animals, birds, fishes, etc., in their proper development and growth by providing His own knowledge, made available to us through spirit and rita, the laws of necessity. However, human beings are also provided with manifested souls for knowing the a priori principles and Vedic knowledge for their development and attaining perfection. The purpose of birth as a human being is to acquire and spread Vedic knowledge either as a priori principles known to the soul or by study and understanding of the Vedas (R.V. 1-188-9). Having created prakriti and the formative womb of matter as Mother Earth, God remains the unmoved mover and makes prakriti work and function under His supervision. Being the light of light in nature, He resides in prakriti and prakriti resides in Him. It is in this background that Rig Veda 1-131-1 and the Isa Upanishad mention, ‘Whole is that, whole is this, from the whole, the whole comes, take the whole from the whole, yet the whole remains.’
It is quite apparent that Vedic seers and sages depicted His greatness and vastness in a symbolic manner by avoiding giving any specific human or other form. The above hymns of the Atharva Veda further make it clear that all 33 prakriti devas that are in charge of each set of attributes of divine nature are also fused in God. The Bhagavad Gita in verse XI-16 explains His greatness through His virata rupa, which has no beginning, no middle and no end. Human gross eyes cannot see and senses cannot visualise Him. Arjuna, being Krishna's true devotee, was bestowed with divine eyes to see the virata rupa of God. This bestowing of divine eyes is more to explain that only true devotees of God, having complete divine and spiritual knowledge, can realise his/her real self and thereafter can also see God who is everywhere.
Prakriti, being our supreme mother, helps in purifying the effect of gunas in human beings, provided you move towards self-realisation and beyond gunas, described in the Vedas as the shunya sattva state. Only when you become pure, truthful, righteous and transparent, first prakriti reveals to you her subtle form and only thereafter will reveal to you His grandeur and virata rupa. It is, therefore, quite apparent that to realise God and attain moksha, knowing and understanding, following her guidance through her laws of necessity is most important. Once you know prakriti and follow her niyamas (guidelines), your gross body in the shuddha sattva state also becomes divine. It is at this stage that aura appears.
Thus a person can find God in rita by following His laws and by remaining transparent and truthful. The trinity of God's spirit, subtle prakriti and gross universe also become as Brahma. The entire nature and universe are temples of God (Taittiriya Upanishad). The Chandogya Upanishad also refers to prakriti as the temple of God, as the soul of God is also present in prakriti and the universe. Separate it from rituals and man-made temples of marble, idols, icons and worship for ostentation. Study of the Vedas helps in removing these extraneous adjuncts and thereafter prakriti will soon appear as illusory, not real, as soon as the ultimate truth about Brahma is known. After all, prakriti is the subtle garment of God, as believed by Visishtadvaita vedanti. Its gross form is for the enjoyment of the soul and spirit. The Vedas therefore advise not to exploit matter and to use it for our minimum need. The soul never enjoys when we take someone else's share.
God and prakriti are thus one and different like God and soul. All things, objects and categories tend to become one when the spiritualism and divinity in them reach their perfection. At the gross level, owing to vehement effect of gunas, these along with nature, soul and matter remain different but always yearning to reach perfection. God's immanence makes Him part of prakriti yet God is chit and prakriti is achit as prakriti has no consciousness of its own. God is omniscient, prakriti is non-intelligent being constituted of only subtle gunas which in themselves do not have intelligence but particular constant characteristics. After creating prakriti, the universe, animate and inanimate life, He remains aloof and undergoes no change (R.V. X-90-2), and becomes the innermost self of the phenomenal world and human beings as Narayana. Nara is human beings and ayana is dwelling place – the one who dwells in human beings as Shiva (pure) and Shambhu (auspicious).
Later scriptures even preferred the epithet Shiva or Shambhu for God. His attribute of all pervasiveness as Vishnu is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita and two books of mythology, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. A stage was reached in the evolution of Hindu dharma that the epithets Vishnu and Shiva became far more important than Brahma. The harmony of three names/epithets for God was achieved through the concept of trimurti (trinity). The epithet Brahma continued to lose its importance and two major sects, Vaishnavites and Shivaites, spread throughout India amongst Hindus. While Hindus have now a few hundred thousand temples in India and abroad where the major deities are either Vishnu or his later mythological incarnations as Rama and Krishna, hardly a few temples are entirely dedicated to Brahma. One temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan and another at Katasraj, now in Pakistan, are mainly dedicated to Brahma. In the Vaishnavite and Shivaite temples, sometimes a small idol or statue is installed for Brahma in a corner along with hundreds of minor deities. Vedic metaphysics is not very particular about the name of the God, being nameless and formless. Only some wise men and learned people tend to give some name to God. However, for the understanding of Vedic metaphysics, the epithet Brahma would be mostly used.
The relationship of God and nature is also found in Plato's theory of forms and ideas. The ideas of Plato are from the Greek word eidos, meaning shape or appearance. Men try to copy these forms and ideas in a poor manner which is short-lived and normally imperfect. In nature these shapes are normally round – the sun, moon, planets, apples, peas, play balls, etc. Many places, these forms or ideas are much like geometrical formulae expressing the law or principles that govern the physical world. There is a hierarchical principle that governs the physical world. There is a hierarchical system of forms – matter, earth, planets, universe, nature and God, logically and ontologically interrelated with the supreme being at the top. Nature, with infinite species and multiplicity, forms its base. Thus in his theory of forms and ideas, Plato visualised subatomic round particles and all gross and subtle objects and subjects below God as summum genus and ultimate reality. All others including nature are lower reality and can be described as the phenomenal world and universe. Do not disturb the ordered system of forms and ideas. The Vedas describe this ordered system as being maintained by supreme Brahma with the help of prakriti, the 33 formless devas who provide for all human beings, all living creatures, three-fold protection to guard us and three-fold light to aid and befriend us.
Various Philosophies about Prakriti
It is a common observation that human beings anywhere in the world, in any state, society or family are always at different stages of material, intellectual, spiritual and divine knowledge. They have also different levels of material and scientific progress, so any comparison of human beings is odious. No two human beings are the same except maybe partially. It is owing to this variation in the degree of knowledge that individuals who study the Vedas sometimes come to different conclusions about Vedic metaphysics, philosophy, rituals, ceremonies and ethics. For this reason, translations of Vedic hymns and chants vary. Max Müller, Swami Dayananda, Vivekananda and many others hold slightly different, and at times vastly different, views about certain hymns. For some the Vedic formless 33 devas are God/Gods/gods with human form and for others these devas represent forces of nature. Some find prakriti as gross and others as subtle. A somewhat similar phenomenon of such variation also occurred in ancient India. After studying the same Vedas, different metaphysicists of eminence interpreted the various metaphysical concepts like nature, maya, soul, spirit and many others in vastly different manners. This resulted in the emergence of six schools of Indian philosophy.
These schools were slightly/vastly different from each other. Apart from these, a few minor schools also emerged. Since in the Vedas the focal point is the human being, ultimately all schools converged in similar conclusions for the welfare of mankind. These six schools are popularly known as darshanas – six visions of the universe, nature and God. There is pantheism in one school, where God is the world and the world is God, and pure idealism and monism, where only God is real and prakriti and the cosmos are maya, an illusion of comfort and place of misery and pain. Dualists found both God and prakriti as real and eternal, and others found prakriti passing through a phase of creation and withdrawal after a long period of billions of years. If one school did not find any God in the Vedas, another came nearer to agnosticism. One darshana relating to yoga shastra did not feel the need of God in its metaphysics except as the first preceptor. The pure agnostics found God as adrishta (unseen cosmic force). For some, God is not a subject of the Vedas or substance but only an idea and they developed their metaphysics based on ‘not knowing’.
Amongst these six schools the most important for the liberal learned Hindus is Advaita Vedanta, both in its pure and objective forms of idealism and monism. Badrayana and Shankara are the pure idealists, whereas the Bhagavad Gita has mixed in the philosophy of objective monism, monotheism, though in many verses and chapters there is dualism as well. Some learned persons have observed that a few chapters in the Gita were added later on in different periods of time, leading to some repetition in certain metaphysical concepts of gunas, their effects, personal and impersonal God, mahabhuta and mahatatva. There is only one Brahma and His one day and night each is equal to 1,000 mahayugas. One mahayuga is over 4.3 million years and one day of the impersonal God is billions of years. This concept may be symbolic to show that He is eternal, whereas prakriti and the gross brahmanda, the ever-expanding universe, are not eternal. This concept moves towards maya based on primordial matter of purity, activity and passivity. This path of knowledge is Sankhya yoga and, quite distinct from Sankhya darshana of Kapila, is not meant for every individual. The Gita's pure monism ends here and moves towards objective monism when both nirguna and saguna Brahma are described. Saguna Brahma becomes God with some human form and leads to incarnation of God as a human being due to His divine potency. This concept is meant for those on the bhakti yoga marga, the path of devotion and worship of God with human form. As the gunas play a vital role in the thoughts, conduct and behaviour of human beings, in the Gita reference to many gods and spirits is also made. This book also mentions about the real nature and characteristics of prakriti.
For Shankara, prakriti has independent existence only as maya, or cosmic illusion, which looks real to most of us in the stage of ignorance. Prakriti is not self-dynamic but functions entirely by the will of God. His will pervades everywhere in the form of His spirit. Since the spirit of God is provided at His will, it is also withdrawn as part of His leela (cosmic play). Prakriti has thus a cyclic order of creation and dissolution. Each such cycle lasts for an immense period. During pralaya (dissolution) and samhara (withdrawal) both jiva and prakriti go into latency in their substratum. Prakriti goes into the substratum of the three gunas viz. sattvic, rajasic and tamasic. Jiva (spirit) goes into shuddha or shunya sattva, i.e., beyond gunas. It is virtually merging with Brahma. In metaphysical expression, first the mass from its gross form changes to subtle form and the cosmic energy originally created through the cosmic word om reverts to Brahma. In the Vedas, Brahma and om are the same: Om kham Brahma literally means Om thy name is Brahma.
The universe is evolved from God who is the material cause of this gross creation, not really but apparently. It is so as the entire universe is formed over shunya, or void, and so it only appears as real since shunya is not visible to human eyes and also not perceived by the senses. However, in a stage of ignorance and when a person has only material and intellectual knowledge it appears as absolutely real.
This relative reality of the gross world due to the degree of one's knowledge is due to maya. The whole universe is but one ocean of matter with the three subtle gunas and we are ourselves little particles in this ocean. The immaterial soul and the subtle nature with the gross universe became manifested when they are in conjunction. When spirit and matter are only together, the effect of the gunas becomes the cause of pain or pleasure, good or bad actions and virtuous or evil thoughts. Shankara recommended the yoga of knowledge through Vedic education and studies, whereby we can separate body and soul at the stage of turiya. It is no fault of the creator that partiality exists in this universe in the social, physical, political, economic and religious fields. Vedic philosophy is for all but those not ready, owing to their past and present karma, prejudices and being too much involved in the pursuit of money, power and false ego, who fail to get full benefit of this highest ethical, moral and social philosophy. Therefore the partiality of God is only due to ignorance and avidya that is bereft of spiritual and divine knowledge.
To mortals, God is available only through His shabda Brahman om. In the Vedas a large number of hymns either start with the cosmic word om or this word comes in the middle or end to maintain a kind of poetical harmony. As earlier mentioned, om is the cosmic word that led to the creation of this universe. Each prayer, logic, philosophy, ethics and all concepts end in Brahma. This creates unity in diversity. All animate and inanimate life/things always move towards perfection so that they can merge in Brahma. Advaita vedanti therefore advise to acquire Vedic knowledge and move towards perfection, become supermen in all areas social, economic, political, religious and in other fields. Prakriti helps you in this regard through her book of nature and once you acquire the real knowledge it starts disappearing being maya or a shadow of God. Those who do not understand prakriti and follow her laws, rita, which are the cosmic laws of social and moral order, cannot move towards perfection and later towards turiya, when you can even communicate with your soul. According to Shankara, you become Brahma: Aham Brahmasmi, I am Brahma.
However, qualified monists like Ramanuja firmly believe in trinity of Ishwara, jiva and prakriti. Ishwara is saguna Brahma with finite attributes, personal God. All three are real, though God is the only one who is formless and ineffable. Thus belief in both impersonal and personal God is part of Ramanuja's philosophy of qualified monism. Ishwara and Brahma both are real. The philosophy of this school leads to idol worship and bhakti marga, the path of devotion. Prakriti and the universe are not cosmic illusion (maya) but are qualifying and embodying, though God is real, eternal and all pervasive. This concept of trimurti (trinity) shifted the emphasis of Vedic metaphysics towards theology. After a few decades of Ramanuja and Vallabha, during the periods of Madhva and Nimbarka, theology and metaphysics virtually became one. Thus the organised Hindu religion got sufficient support of the Vedas and thereafter the growth of Hindu temples with idols continued unabated. This qualified monism led to even theological idealism. It is apparent that Vedantism, whether advaita, pure or qualified monism or dvaita, had metaphysicists who were pure, objective, qualified and even theological idealists.
By the time of medieval ages, Madhvacharya and others moved towards complete dualism. They talked of independent reality (svatantra) and dependent reality (paratantra) and referred to only one God as svatantra, soul, prakriti and primordial matter of the gunas as dependent reality. Madhvachrya's philosophy was aimed at putting theology on a higher pedestal through Vedic logic, epistemology, ontology and ethics. The Vedic epithets became names of deities, formless God and devas/devis were given human form, and lower deities as Ishwaras multiplied in numbers replacing formless and ineffable Vedic Brahma. This concept led to a large number of female goddesses in charge of power, energy and strength in nature. The importance of Vedic beings of light, i.e., prakriti devas of power, energy, etc., like Indra, Varuna and Mitra considerably lost their importance. Durga, Kali and others became as Shakti, divine goddesses with form and attributes. The philosophical Vedic dharma started losing its spiritual science to a theology of pluralism and Vedic metaphysics lost its importance acquired during Shankara's time.
An effort was made to revive the same in the 19th and early 20th centuries by Swami Dayananda, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and others, and the success was only partial as idol worship had penetrated too deep in Hindu psychology. At present, the Ramakrishna Mission and Arya Samajis are making some efforts to revive the same, but owing to considerable aberrations in Hindu organised religion the impact is not being felt much. Both Arya Samajis and followers of Vivekananda are not able to completely isolate theology from Vedic metaphysics. Shankara had already cautioned to keep away from theology at its metaphysical level which he described as parmarthika. In theology, all metaphysical concepts, deities, rituals and yajnas are linked to God. Prakriti loses her Vedic significance. Thus all devas and devis of prakriti become divine. Though these devas and devis are formless beings of light, in theology they become gods and goddesses with human form and their association with nature virtually disappears. Now hardly any Hindu considers prakriti as supreme mother Aditi and the earth as being mother Prithvi devi.
After advaita and dvaita, the philosophical school of Sankhya darshana of Kapila is of great importance to many learned persons. It is more agnosticism than atheism as some individuals consider. The main philosophy is that we may not admit God to explain this world as prakriti is an adequate material and efficient cause of the universe as a whole. Kapila did not emphasise much on the non-existence of God and held that both supreme purusha (Paramatman) and prakriti are two ultimate realities. The stage before creation of the gross universe was avaykta. Prakriti always existed with her three gunas of purity, activity and passivity being the modes of nature. During the stage of avaykta, owing to movement of the subtle gunas and their intermingling, balance got disturbed, the gross elements with different proportion of the gunas emerged, and when their atoms joined the universe was created. Kapila did not bring the role of God in this creation and emphasised only the role of prakriti as the material and efficient cause of all kinds of gross creation, though she herself is subtle. Kapila did not consider it necessary to explain the metaphysical concept of shabda Brahman om and the cosmic golden egg, Hiranyagarbha, in the creation of prakriti, except some supreme unseen power (adrishta) created and thereafter it is eternal. This intermingling of the gunas that continues in prakriti is the real cause of periodical withdrawal and emergence after an abnormally long period.
Thus in Sankhya darshana, prakriti being eternal, srishti and pralaya are not creation and destruction but emergence and withdrawal. The subtle gunas remain all the time during the stage of avaykta and their balance gets disturbed. Even the four celestial periods, the Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali yugas are also due to certain proportions of the gunas. In the golden period of the Krita yuga, sattvic gunas of purity, truth, transparency and virtue have predominance, and in the fourth dark or iron age of the Kali yuga, tamasic gunas of impurity, passivity and stupor become predominant, and these create imbalance when pralaya or withdrawal and not dissolution occurs. Thus in all the four celestial periods, gross matter, i.e., the universe, the world, and animate and inanimate life/things are affected. Even the flux noticed in human beings, the world and the universe is also due to the ever intermingling of the gunas. Human personality changes whenever predominance of any particular kind of these three gunas occurs.
The highest manifestation of prakriti is mahata, or universal intelligence, of which human intelligence is a part. Prakriti gives complete knowledge through her book of nature and helps you in attaining self-realisation. Sankhya darshana did believe in soul as the real self and considered it as purusha but did not emphasise it as a particle of God and His divine aspect. While prakriti is single, subtle and material, purusha is plural and spiritual. In Sankhya darshana, divine and spiritual knowledge is one and the same as divinity beyond soul and prakriti is not acknowledged or rejected. Souls are plural as these are different in their knowledge in different human beings and are finite.
There is an important metaphysical expression of this school – how can an entity be created or produced out of a non-entity? This is explained by accepting prakriti as eternal along with all other gross and material objects created by prakriti. While in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta of Shankara, Brahma is the only subject and all other metaphysical concepts are objects, in Sankhya darshana prakriti is also the subject. Only knowledge of prakriti and the universe, i.e., material and spiritual knowledge of matter and spirit, is true and perfect knowledge. Prakriti and the universe are considered as distinct and mutually exclusive.
Rig Veda 1-XXX-16 says, ‘The eternal cause of the universe is the primordial matter which always existed.’ This hymn largely supports the philosophy of Sankhya darshana and its metaphysics, as in this hymn there is no room for any deity or supreme deity. Thus the study of the Vedas as a whole and in parts does lead to different interpretations and even vastly different understanding. While in some of the schools God may or may not be the focal point, the human being and his welfare remain the main concern of all these darshanas. It is for this reason that in Sankhya darshana three kinds of miseries and pains, viz. adhyatamic, adhibhutic and adhidaivic are linked to lack of knowledge of prakriti, purusha and the stern law of karma, i.e., as you sow, so shall you reap, owing to your good or bad actions.
Many Hindu mythological figures and deities symbolise the original tendency set up in Sankhya darshana to identify prakriti as the female principle and purusha as the contemplative and inactive male principle. Purusha is not only in human beings but also in prakriti. These two cannot easily get along without each other. For many Hindu priests, Sankhya darshana led to a large number of lower deities, as Shiva-Parvati where Shiva is purusha and Parvati is shakti or prakriti. A somewhat similar phenomenon can also be observed in Western metaphysics where nature is the efficient and material cause of the universe.
The other darshana was Mimamsa of Jaimini who gave far more importance to prakriti, her formless 33 devas and their worship though rituals and ceremonies. Followers of Mimamsa darshana gave human form to Indra, Varuna, Agni, Prithvi, Surya and others. They virtually gave no importance to Vedic formless and ineffable Brahma and for this reason many learned persons consider Mimamsa darshana as the philosophy of atheism. Steadily prakriti also loses her importance as many devas/devis and their worship through idols and rituals is the path for attaining moksha. According to this school, the objects in this world are formed out of ever-existing matter in accordance with karma of the soul. The law of karma is the eternal and moral law which rules the world.
The philosophy of Yoga darshana is found in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. While basing his metaphysics on the Vedas, he limits the role of Brahma to the first preceptor. As a preceptor, God only helps in easy and early understanding of yoga and for attaining the state of kaivalya. It is the stage of superconsciousness when you can communicate with your soul. Beyond that, God has no role to perform. Prakriti, with her subtle atoms and particles (kanu and tanmatras) can be seen through yoga. Patanjali's Yoga darshana is more a philosophy than physical exercises. Later followers of Yoga darshana observed the activities, movements and agility of birds and developed most of the physical exercises based on the postures of birds and attributed it to Patanjali. However the fact remains that Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is a treatise on philosophy and metaphysics and not a book of physical exercises. The stage of kaivalya or self-realisation mentioned therein cannot be achieved through physical exercises as developed by his followers later on.
In the Nyaya darshana of Gautama, God is divine will, divine desire, immanent, omniscient but formless. He produces movement in animate and inanimate life through atoms which are not inert but have life in the form of God's spirit. God produces motion in atoms by His will, and to fulfil God's desire these atoms combine to form the universe, the world and all animate and inanimate life. The subtle atoms and particles (tanmatras) form prakriti. The foundation of prakriti is laid by the unmoved mover as His leela (cosmic play). The creation and dissolution of the entire universe starts with His will. The philosophy of Nyaya darshana is like advaita Vedantism but the emphasis is more on atoms and not subtle gunas. Likewise Nyaya-Vaisheshika explains prakriti more as a physical science of atoms than as divine creation. The origin of the universe is due to the combination of atoms and molecules. There is no indication that the metaphysicists of this school noticed subatomic particles, as the atom was the smallest particle and building block of the universe. However, unlike Newton they observed some life in these gross atoms. Kanada, of this school of philosophy, also observed that God did not create atoms but that these were coeternal with Him. The power that comes for combining atoms is from God. It is this cosmic power which makes the aggregate of atoms, similar in the case of elements (bhuta) and different in alloys (combination of bhuta). Ether and air (akasha and vayu) are the two main mahabhutas which help in the formation of alloys.
Ether, time, space, soul and mind are eternal substances of nature. This darshana thus combines soul and spirit into one and the same comes through nature. Man is therefore a social animal and not divine. There are nine eternal substances of nature, and they refer to these substances as dravya. These are prithvi (earth), jala (water), teja (fire), vayu (air), akasha (ether), kala (time), disha (space), atman (soul) and manas (mind). The first four are atomic in character, perceivable, and can be inferred. Motion in these is due to unseen agency (adrishta) which resides in human beings as well. For them, atman or soul is part of prakriti and not a particle of God. It is mainly due to the atom being the smallest. Thus they do not consider subatomic particles either gross or subtle. God as adrishta and as Ishwara created prakriti and the universe by His divine will out of ever-existing atoms. Thereafter prakriti created nine substances as dravya and the gross universe and world were formed. This school also believes in karma theory, rebirth and srishti, and pralaya of the universe and not prakriti.
Thus all these schools consider the Vedas the source of their metaphysics, and these shruti are infallible. However, sat darshana interpret the Vedas differently while aiming at the welfare of mankind all the time. Concepts like good, virtue, social welfare, ideal society, laws of necessity, enlightened liberalism, avoidance of corruption and evil are common in their philosophies. Apart from these metaphysical concepts like the theory of karma, rebirth, transmigration of soul and liberation or salvation, srishti (creation) and pralaya (disappearance of the world) are largely common in these. However on the concept of worship, meditation, number of deities and gods, and rituals and ceremonies, some differences are there apart from the role of God and prakriti. Broadly one can infer that variations are in the means and not ends. Even concerning the means, none of these schools advise blind faith, an unscientific outlook, mumbo jumbo of meaningless rituals or the institution of gurudom as it exists now amongst Hindus. Though Hindu religion still retains its roots in the Vedas, the numerous aberrations which now exist in this religion make many outsiders, particularly those in the West, feel that it is the most unscientific, ritualistic religion, based on pluralism, animism and even animatism. Under the vehement effect of maya, prevailing naked materialism and widespread material and intellectual knowledge, the Vedic metaphysics is not penetrating in Hindu religion.
Apart from these six schools of Indian philosophy, there were a few minor but quite important schools like bhedabheda (difference in identity) and shunyavada, philosophy of the void. The cosmic energy of God is in shunya, in all animate and inanimate life. The entire gross universe is formed over this void. The tiny atoms and still tinier particles have the spirit of God in the subtle void. Thus the entire world and universe formed over void by the infinite number of building blocks, i.e., atoms. It is therefore a phenomenal world of maya or phantasmagoria.
Buddhism and Jainism also gave their metaphysical views on prakriti after the transcendental research by their founders but not based on the Vedas. The dreaded Charvakas had known Vedic metaphysics and not only criticised the Vedas but even used abusive language for Vedic seers and sages. Their materialistic philosophy clashed with divine and spiritual knowledge contained in the Vedas. For them, nature, the universe and the world are all gross; whatever human senses cannot see, perceive or visualise does not exist.
In Vedic metaphysics, time and space are not part of prakriti, as observed by some schools of Indian philosophy. However some sages of yore and ancients savants described time and space as dravya, or substance of prakriti. A number of hymns in Rig Veda volume 1 sukta 164 relate to the description of time. Kala (time) is a twelve-spoked wheel that revolves around the sun and does not decay. It is endless and all pervading. There are 720 elements of matter born of the time eternal cause. It is time on which creation, sustenance and dissolution of the universe is set. All space, planets, stars and the five main elements abide in this five-spoked revolving wheel of time. Its centre lies in God and so it moves continuously. A learned person should get the knowledge of time (kala) most accurately. Since time lives in God, it is beyond gunas and so it exists in void.
In prakriti, there are three ashudha gunas, or impure primordial matter. These three gunas of purity, activity and passivity always tend to intermix. Even the sattvic guna of purity is ashudha (impure) as it alone cannot exist, and the two other gunas, in some minor or major proportions, are invariably intermixed in this. However the predominant would be only sattvic guna. Beyond prakriti are two, shunya sattva and shuddha sattva, and these two exist in void along with the spirit of God. Shuddha sattva helps the individual in self-realisation only when a person goes beyond the three gunas of purity, activity and passivity. Shunya sattva is time (kala). Time therefore resides in God. It is His glory (vibhuti). Time regulates the entire creation and dissolution process of prakriti and controls the four divine celestial periods of the Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali yugas. It is non-material and spiritual stuff. Being shuddha sattva itself, it cannot even take the soul covered with the three impure gunas, owing to the effect of good or bad actions, towards the other seven nobler and divine communities of karma devas, devis, angels etc., on the way to attaining moksha.
The above description of time in the Rig Veda greatly resembles the metaphysical concept mentioned in the Nyaya-Vaisheshika school of Indian philosophy. Being a priori, human beings cannot perceive it but like ether can infer it. It is not a substance or entity. Even human inference, owing to the effect of impure gunas, is only limited. The human gross body cannot infer how many cycles of creation and dissolution have already passed. During pain, sorrow and misery, time looks longer, and during pleasure, sensual enjoyments, etc., it looks shorter. Since time has no beginning and is endless, it resides in God and prakriti. Both God and time are eternal.
Time is infinite. Time is all-pervasive in the universe. All the five main elements (mahabhutas) abide in the revolving wheel of time. The divine reality is that the entire gamut of the movement is controlled by time, which is all pervading (R.V. 1-164-14). Time has created 720 elements (bhutas) in the universe which are born of five mahabhutas, i.e., three gross and two alloys air and ether. These mahabhutas are eternal for a few schools of Indian philosophy but perishable during srishti and pralaya for others. For advaita vedanti, these are real only in the stage of ignorance when the effect of maya is the most vehement. Past, present and future, late, early, soon, etc., are all due to time. Kala is the protector like the supreme father. It is the Lord's divine instrument of creation, sustenance and dissolution. Atomic time is the time taken by a sunray to pass one gross atom. It is less than a millionth of a second. It is not an empirical concept. Human experience can give distortion in the concept and duration of time. It is therefore, a priori. No phenomenon can be perceived without time. Immanuel Kant even observed, ‘Different times are part of the same time.’ From experience, infinity of time, beginning, end, minimum and maximum duration, cannot be known as being a transcendental reality; it is not an absolute reality, as that is only supreme Brahma. It only resides in Brahma but is not Brahma itself. During creation and dissolution of prakriti and the universe it does not get dissolved.
Space (Vedic Disha)
Space is also beyond prakriti and resides in Him. It covers Brahmaloka or Vaikuntha, all other worlds where the seven nobler communities live and also this phenomenal world of the human beings.
Being a priori, one cannot perceive space through the senses, its magnitude, characteristics and eternity. It is only an external reality like ether and is non-atomic, unitary, ubiquitous, not perceivable but inferable. All spaces are part of this one and unitary space. Thus the space of the ever-expanding gross universe (brahmanda), subtle prakriti, and whatever we can visualise based on the degree of knowledge is part of the infinite and eternal space. Prakriti space is finite and the eternal space is one. The ashvinaus (scientists), savants and philosophers see its different dimensions owing to their different degree of material, spiritual and divine knowledge. To a child, space is small, to a student it is bigger, to a scientist it is very large and expanding, and to metaphysicists it is infinite, eternal and not part of maya, while the space of the universe is illusionary but looks real to our senses. In the Vedas, 3/4th part of space is beyond human perception through our senses but known to our jivatma, the manifested soul (R.V. 1-131-1 and VI-47-8). This division into 1/4th and 3/4th of space is perhaps symbolic to show the magnitude of disha and limited size and dimensions of the gross universe and subtle prakriti. In the Vedas even shunya, or void, is part of one eternal space.
If we go strictly by the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and pure idealists like Immanuel Kant, one will find all a priori principles relating to truth, transparency, humility, selfless service and cosmic laws of the social and moral order and others are beyond time and space. Since the human body is subject to birth, decay and death, so such a priori principles the human body and its senses, sense organs, e.g., the outward-looking mind, cannot explain. On the contrary, these gross objects very often corrupt a priori principles and laws of God or Vedic rita. But the fact remains that the human body, brain and outward-looking mind still come to know of these without any physical experience, thus proving that something eternal and even beyond time and space exists in our body as our philosopher, guide and friend. Some Hindu scriptures including the Gita and Upanishads refer to God as living in our heart, and some Vedic hymns mention this particle of Paramatman (God) in our gross body as manifested soul living in our heart, in the subtlest of the subtle part of the body. Thus whatever moral, ethical, material, scientific, religious and other facts or truths we come to know from the outer world, these are a posteriori principles of non-permanent value. It is for this reason that a large number of impure truths are parading as pure truths, while these contradict each other in the same family, society and the entire world. These are all a posteriori principles. Thus time and space decide both these principles. Like atman and rita, kala and disha are also divine.
All movements are in space regulated by time. Both these work in harmony. Time contributes to succession and space to juxtaposition. These two categories in the Vedas are as important as soul, spirit, gunas, prakriti and other metaphysical concepts. Madhvacharya, based on study of the Vedas, goes in detail about time and space. He found two kinds of space – avyakrita akasha, the uncreated eternal and unmodified space, and akasha, forming one of the five mahabhutas of prakriti. The former, i.e., avyakrita akasha, and time (kala) are coeval with Brahma, prakriti and spirit. Madhvacharya was a dualist who found prakriti also as eternal. Shunyavadins even go to the extent that prakriti lives in time and space, and these two categories live in God, being His vibhuti (glory).
Those who understand the Vedic concept of prakriti can never be violent in thoughts and actions against divine nature. They not only stop violence against nature themselves but guide their children, friends and members of society also to this effect. While various metaphysicists and seers may form and postulate different ideas and philosophies about nature, all of them come to certain common conclusions, like to follow the laws of nature, and to create material and spiritual welfare in society with minimum consumption of matter. There is an optimal consumption while following the path of Vedic moderation, beyond which it is vulgar display of wealth and violence against prakriti. The knower of Vedic prakriti invariably emphasises the need for right livelihood for self and others.
Albert Einstein wrote in his treatise on peace, ‘Research should be towards peace, non-violence and not warfare against nature.’ Keynesian economics and maxims like, ‘Everything is fair in war and business’ are now obscuring the reason even of highly learned and intellectual persons. Economic ills are now competing with physical and mental diseases for the top slot. Diseases like affluenza are fast spreading, for which the cure now is only Vedic metaphysics or similar knowledge in other scriptures of the major religions of the world which have faced all kinds of criticism, censure and even passed through welfare and perverted forms of governments, open and closed societies, and still withstood the test of time. Even the highly ethical metaphysics of Socrates, Plato, Mencius, Augustine, Aquinas, Shankara and others can also help. The individuals on the path of pursuit of matter, money, power and getting inflicted with the ever-increasing economic diseases are perhaps overlooking that all human beings are the children of same supreme mother prakriti, so any effort to become master of divine nature is bound to misfire. She is after all the manifestation of God and His cosmic power as shakti. Human beings, though the lowest of the other seven divine communities, are still the highest creatures on this earth and are required to look after all other animate and inanimate life and not to tyrannise, ruin or exterminate them. It is their noble obligation as only they possess divinity through the particle of God and are associated with all others through His spirit. The distorted and selfish interpretation of modern economics has made earth a quarry and divine nature an object of exploitation. It is now a major question whether to live against or in harmony with nature. Only Vedic metaphysics has the answer to harmonise soul and body as well as spirit and matter, and to get integrated with nature for living a satisfying and purposeful life.
The various civilisations and cultures of ancient, medieval and modern times tell us that the destiny of this beautiful globe of nature, Mother Earth, has been sometimes brilliant and other times obscure. The need to understand, appreciate and follow the hymns relating to peace everywhere, or Vedic shanti path (prayer for peace), has now become paramount. It may be useful to chant, recite or meditate on these hymns repeatedly in the morning, evening and night, prayers just like the mother hymn, Gayatri mantra, of the Vedas. This hymn in the Vedas is a prayer to God to provide us His divine knowledge all the time, even during sleep and dreams. Shanti path hymns say that there should be peace, no violence, no pollution in the air, water, ether, forests, all kinds of vegetation, animals, human beings, in their thoughts and actions, and virtually in all things and objects on this earth. The need to modify from the ancient Charvakas type of economics to development or meta-economics contained in the Vedas, Buddhist metaphysics or Gandhian philosophy, need hardly any emphasis. Any commercial or economic principle bereft of spirituality could be discarded. The various economic theories should lead to production of wealth for society and not for the individual except what he/she gets as social reward and earns within the noble principle of moderation.
The message of Vedic prakriti is very clear and loud that we are all in this world to fulfil the noble and divine mission of God who is our supreme father. To achieve this, supreme mother, prakriti, brings us here, nourishes us and guides us. The Vedas nowhere say that God brought us here. Prakriti provides senses and sense organs duly energised by the spirit of God. Only the soul in our body as jivatma is directly from God, as divine spark or light. The pure soul illumines in our body all the time and its light starts getting dim with the accumulation of the tamasic subtle gunas of impurity, stupor and inactivity. Fulfilling the mission of our supreme father is the main aim of our life. Follow the divine message conveyed by prakriti and also by Mother Earth through selfless functioning, along with Vedic rita, dharma and scientific rituals by avoiding all kinds of blind faith, meaningless rituals, proxy and false worship of innumerable deities and mumbo jumbo of ceremonies. Even prakriti performs her role and functioning within the mission of God. By deviating we create social, moral, filial and even physical environmental and economic disorder. This message is not contained in the Vedas alone; the existentialists of the 20th century have also said to reduce your requirements and lead a simple life. Leading a simple life is certainly not life negation, but life confirmation. The Greek stoics of yore, Confucius, Mencius, Chou-li of the Chinese philosophy of good and virtuous living, the Sufis of the Middle Ages, and many others, emphasised need-based living by avoiding all kinds of material excesses, opulence and even deficiencies like poverty. Plato, while emphasising the golden mean, that economic disparities to be limited to between 1:1.6 for an ideal state, also added virtue, beauty and goodness conforming to his theory of forms and ideas to bring order in chaotic and disorderly life. Pure idealists like Shankara, Immanuel Kant and even certain parts of the celestial song, the Bhagavad Gita, mentioned that doing your duty against the noble will provided by prakriti is not freedom.
The realisation of the fact that we are an atom of nature and the whole existence is one unitary motion shall also lead to the realisation of the self that there is no separate entity as the self other than the one that exists in the whole of prakriti.
Satya Simha wanted to do PhD on self-realisation with special reference to U.G. Krishnamurti. In one of the usual gatherings during U.G.'s visit at Chandrasekhar Babu's house in Bangalore, he got the personal wishes and blessings from U.G. himself to go ahead and do it. The main information for this thesis has been marshalled by way of personal interaction with U.G.
Mr. Simha went ahead with his work from 1st August 2006, which would have culminated in him getting a doctorate had it not been for his untimely death. With the sincere wishes from his mother, his guide, professors and friends at the University of Mysore and other well wishers his thesis has taken the shape of this book.
Both the master and the student are not amidst us today. U.G. Krishnamurti passed away on 22nd March 2007 and Satya Simha on 7th July 2008. But this book bears the fruit of his efforts.
No additional input has been made to his thesis and the book encompases his thoughts and works. A few chapters were yet to be compiled before his unexpected death. It is sans a conclusion but the chapters are complete by themselves.
Some errors are bound to be there as a thorough compilation of the thesis could not be done. The purpose of this effort has been to present and project the thesis in all its originality.
M. Ramachandra
Books
Advaita Vedanta: Problems and Perspectives, Dr. K.B. Ramakrishna Rao, Prasaranga, University of Mysore, 1980
The Mystique of Enlightenment, Dinesh Publications, 1982
Mind is a Myth, Dinesh Publications, 1988
The Sage and the Housewife, Sowmya Publications, 1990
Thought is Your Enemy, Sowmya Publications, 1991
No Way Out, Akshaya Publications, Bangalore, 1992
U.G. Krishnamurti: A Life, Mahesh Bhatt, Viking, Penguin, 1992
The Natural Man: Poems on U.G., Larry Morris, Hillside Community Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1993
The Courage To Stand Alone, Plover Press, New York, 1997
The Other Side of Belief, Mukunda Rao, Penguin Books, 2000
The Little Book of Questions, Mahesh Bhatt, Penguin Books India, 2000
Curse is Broken, P. J. Rao, 2003
Stopped in Our Tracks, K. Chandrasekhar, Smriti Books, 2005
The Natural State, Compiled by Peter Maverick, Smriti Books, 2006
The Penguin U.G. Krishnamurti Reader, Edited by Mukunda Rao, 2007
Glimpses of Vedic Metaphysics, Prem Sabhlok, 2007
UG Says, Compiled by Arun Babani, Indus Source Books
A Taste of Life: The Last Days of U.G. Krishnamurti, Mahesh Bhatt, Penguin Books
The Seed Beneath the Volcano, Rajasekhara Reddi Kollukuduru
Papers
The Unrational Philosophy of U.G. Krishnamurti, T. R. Raghunath, 1992
Science and U.G. – An Exposition of the Scientific Basis of U.G.'s Philosophy, Dr. O.S. Reddy, 1994
Thought, the Natural State and the Body – Deconstruction of Spirituality in U.G. Krishnamurti, J.S.R.L. Narayana Moorty, 2007
Transcripts of Interviews
Close Encounters – A Journey of Spiritual Discovery and Adventure: TV Interview with U.G. Krishnamurti, Roxi Ian McNay, Roximillion Publications, London
Thinking Allowed – Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge: TV Interview with U.G. Krishnamurti, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, Council Oak Books, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Coloquintessence – Instantané avec U.G., (French), Radio Suisse Romande, Lausanne, Switzerland, Yvette Rielle, Editions Les Deux Oceans, Paris
Television Interviews
Thinking Allowed. Public Broadcasting System (PBS), USA, Interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, Oct. 1988, 3 segments – 1/2 hour, 1/2 hour & 1 hour
The Natural State, Documentary made by Dutch television students and shown later on Dutch Television, 1988, 20 minutes
The Next Step in Human Evolution, An interview on U.G.'s book, The Mystique of Enlightenment, with Rabbi Alvin Bobroff, New York, 1988, 1 hour
Conversation. Doordarshan (Indian TV), Interview with Rajiv Mehrotra, Feb. 1989, 1/2 hour
Calamity Consciousness, Interview with Roxy McNay, New York, Oct. 1989, 1/2 hour
Dimensions in Parapsychology, Interview with Bryce Bond, New York, Nov. 1989, 1 hour
Breakfast Show. Doordarshan (Indian TV), Interview with Shashi Kumar, Dec. 1989, 1/2 hour
Interview with John Wren-Lewis, Australian TV March 1990, 1/2 hour
Interview with Mr. Willem de Ridder, Dutch Television, Amsterdam, Holland, September 1990
Interview with Mahesh Bhatt, Doordarshan (Indian TV), Apr. 1991, 1/2 hour
Interviews with John Wren-Lewis, Sydney, Australia, Nov. 1991, 30 minutes and 28 minutes
Interview with Deepak Vohra, Doordarshan (Indian TV), Feb. 1992, 1/2 hour
Interview with Monica Armenta, NBC, New Mexico Mornings, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Apr. 9, 1992, 1/2 hour
A Conversation with U.G. Krishnamurti, Interview with Dr. Larry Morris, Cable TV Channel 27, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Apr. 1992, 1/2 hour
Interview with Dr. Larry Morris, FOX TV Channel 14, “Accent: Public Affairs,” on behalf of Deborah James, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, Broadcast Sunday, Dec. 27, 1992, 1/2 hour
Interview with Mr. Ted de Luigi, Italian Television RAI TRE, Rome, Italy. June, 1993, 1 hour
Face to Face: Interview with Ms. Ramola Bachchan, TV ASIA (London), June 6, 1993, 1/2 hour
Hinderdenken: (Hindering Thinking), Interview with Mr. Willem de Ridder, Dutch Television, Amsterdam, Holland, June 24, 1993, 1 hour
Interview with Mr. Willem de Ridder, Dutch TV Holland, July 14, 1993, 1 hour
Interview with Mr. Willem de Ridder, Dutch Television, Amsterdam, Holland, June 1994, 1 hour
Willem de Ridder and Byron Katie interview U.G., Dutch Television, Amsterdam, Holland, 1998, 50 Minutes
Interview with Luc Sala. Kleurnet, Dutch Television, Amsterdam, Holland, May 15, 2001
Radio Interviews
All India Radio Interview, Dr. B. Ramakrishna Rao, Brahmachari Sivarama Sarma and Prof. Sastri, AIR, Bangalore, 1972, 30 minutes
Book Review of Mystique of Enlightenment, Harindranath Chatopadhyaya, AIR, Bombay, May, 1983
Discovery, KAZU Interview, Ms. Barbara Schuler, Seaside, California, May 12, 1989, 1 hour
New Dimensions Interview, Michael Toms. Nov. 15, 1989, 1 hour
All India Radio Interview, M.G. Subramaniam, Director, AIR, New Delhi, Dec. 1989, 29 minutes
All India Radio, Newsreel, External Services, Dec. 30, 1989, 10 minutes
Scope, ABC Interview, Donald Ingram Smith, Sydney, Australia. March 6, 1990, 30 minutes
Scope, ABC Interview, Donald Ingram Smith, North Arm Cove, Australia, March 9, 1990, 30 minutes
Insights, Interview, Paul Collins, ABC, Sydney, Australia, March 15, 1990, 30 minutes
Radio 100, Interview (live), Willem de Ridder, Amsterdam, Holland, February 9, 1990, 2 hours
Dr. Paul Lynn Show. Interview (live) with U.G. on Health, KEST (Personal Growth Radio), San Francisco, Nov. 16, 1990, 30 minutes
Encounter, Interview, Mr. Pavan Varma, All India Radio, New Delhi, March 24, 1991, 29 minutes
Sunday Night Talk, Interviewed (live) by John Cleary and David Milliken, Head of Religion for ABC Radio, Sydney, Australia, November 17, 1991, 2 hours
Talk Radio Interview (live), Art Schreiber, KQEO 920 AM, Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 8, 1992, 1 hour
Arts and Information Showcase, Interview (live), Susan Dean, KHFM (Classical) Radio, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. April 9, 1992, 30 minutes
KUNM Radio Interview, George Gray for University of New Mexico Radio, Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 10, 1992, 30 minutes
Arts and Information Showcase, Interview (live), Susan Dean, KHFM (Classical) Radio, Albuquerque, New Mexico, December 13, 1992, 30 minutes
Transitions, Interview, Alan Hunter, Coyote Radio, KYOT FM, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, December 14, 1992, 30 minutes
Talk Radio Interview (live), Art Schreiber. KQEO 920 AM, Albuquerque, New Mexico, December 18, 1992, 1 hour
Religion Special: Pause for Thought, ABC (Australia) Interview with U.G., National Radio of New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand, January 1993
Guest of the Week, BBC World Radio Service, London, June 1993, 20 Minutes
L'Eternel Present, Interview, Mme. Yvette Rielle, Swiss Romand TV & Radio, Lausanne, Switzerland, June 27 and July 4, 1993, 1 hour
ABC Radio, Radio Interviews, Sydney, Australia. Dec. 12 & 13, 1994, 30 minutes each
Interview, Elizabeth Gipps, KUSP, Santa Cruz, California, April 20, 1996
KPSL 1010 AM Talk Radio, Palm Springs, Ca. Interview, William Edelen, November 9, 1997, 1 hour
Talk Radio 1395 AM., Interview (live), Willem de Ridder, Amsterdam, Holland, Mar. 15, 1998, 2 hours
Talk Radio 1395 AM, Interview, Willem de Ridder, Amsterdam, Holland, 1999, Instantaneous translation
Note: Also, a book review on AIR Bombay – Shylaja Ganguli reviewing Mahesh Bhatt's U.G. Krishnamurti: A Life
Books in Various Languages
Kannada
U.G. Alla Guruji, Y.N. Krishnamurti, Editor of Kannada Prabha, Akshaya Publications, Bangalore, India, 1995
Yaree Mathinamalla Jangama? S.A. Shamarao, Sowmya Publications, Mysore, India, 1999
UG – Bayalabelagu, S.A. Shamarao, Sahasramana Prakashana, Bangalore, 1997
U.G. Krishnamuti: A Life, Mahesh Bhatt, Kannada Translation by Dr. C. Sitaram, 2007
Sakashatkarada Vismaya – Bhavanuvada, S.A. Shamarao
Tamil
Manam Oru Punaikathai (Mind is a Myth), Translated by Georgina Peter, M.A., Gandhi Kannadhasan. 2003
Thanithu Nirkkum Thunivu (Courage to Stand Alone), Translated by Rajalakshmi Shivalingam, Gandhi Kannadhasan, June 2004
Gnanamadaithal Endral Puthir (Mystique of Enlightenment), Translated by B. Udayakumar, M.C.A., Published by Gandhi Kannadhasan, Chennai, India, November, 2004
Ennamthan Ungalin Ethiri (Thought is your Enemy), Translated by B. Udayakumar, M.C.A., Gandhi Kannadhasan, Chennai, India, July 2005
Maatra Paduvatharku Ethuvum Illai (No Way Out), Georgina Kandasami, M.A., Gandhi Kannadhasan, Chennai, India, June 2005
Dutch
U.G. de Mystiek van Verlichting: De Irrationele Ideeen van U.G., Alexandra Gabrielli, Mirananda – Wassenaar
De Resolute Waarheid van U.G. Krishnamurti, Robert C. Smit
French
Rencontres Avec un Eveille Contestataire – U.G., Paule Salvan, Editions Les Deux Océans, Paris, France, 1986
Le Mental Est un Mythe: Entretiens Deroutants avec U.G., Paule Salvan, Editions Les Deux Océans, Paris, France, 1988
La Pensee Est Votre Ennemie: Entretiens Fracassants avec U.G., Paule Salvan, Editions Les Deux Océans, Paris, France, 1992
Coloquintessence: Instantane avec U.G., Yvette Rielle, Translated from English by Marie-Charlotte Grandry, Les Deux Océans, Paris, France, 1993
Le Dos Au Mur: Le Mythe de la Perfection, Translation of Courage to Stand Alone, Jean-Michel Terdjman with his commentary, Editions Les Deux Océans, Paris, France, 1998
U.G. – Pertinences Impertinentes, Charles Antoni, Editions Charles Antoni L'Originel, Paris, France, 1999
German
Die Mystique der Erleuchtung (Mystique of Enlightenment), Translated by Ulla Inayat-Khan, 1997
Wissenschaft und Spiritualität (Science and Spirituality, J.S.R.L. Narayana Moorty), Translated by Ulla Inayat-Khan, 1997
Erste und Letzte Öffentliche Rede U.G.s nach seiner Kalamität (First and Last Public Talk after Calamity), Translated by Ulla Inayat-Khan, 1997
Ein Vorgeschmack des Todes (A Taste of Death), Translated by Ulla Inayat-Khan, 1998
Das Ende Der Sehnsucht (Mind is a Myth). Translated by Ulla Marten and Published on the Internet at U.G.'s website, 2002
Der Mut, allein zu Stephen (The Courage to Stand Alone), Translated by Ulla Inayat-Khan and Published on the Internet at U.G.'s website, 2003
Italian
La Mente è un Mit – Conversazioni sconcertanti con un uomo chiamato U.G., Giovanni Turchi, Aequilibrium, Milano, Italy, 1990
L'Inganno dell' Illuminazione, Tommaso Iorco, Aria Nuova, Torino, Italy, 1996
Il pensiero è il tuo nemico: Dialoghi sconcertanti sulla vita degli esseri umani, Giovanni Turchi, Aequilibrium, Milano, Italy, 1997
Il Fiore Raro: U.G. Come l'ho conosciuto io, Pierlugi Piazza, 1997
Il Coraggio Di Essere Se Stessi: Conversazione in Amsterdam con un uomo chiamato U.G., Pierlugi Piazza, 1997
Il Coraggio Di Stare In Piedi Da Soli: Translated by Giovanni Turchi, Aequilibrium, Milano, Italy, 2000
U.G. Krishnamurti – Lo Stato Naturale: Scopri l'essenziale con U.G., Aequilibriuum Press Milano
Korean
The Mystique of Enlightenment in Korean: Olinda Capece, 2006
Polish
Umyst Jest Mitem: Niepokojace Rozmowy z Czlowiekiem Zwanym U.G. (Mind is a Myth) Thesaurus Press, Warsaw, Poland, 1994
Mistyka Oswiecenie, Mistyfikacje swietego biznesu (The Mystique of Enlightenment), Stanley, Warsaw, Poland, 1997
Mysl Jest Twoim Wrogiem (Thought is Your Enemy), Limbus, Bydgoszcz, Poland, 2002
Odwagaz Bycia Samotnym (The Courage to Stand Alone), Limbus, Bydgoszcz, Poland, 2002
Polish translations by Cezary Wójcik of Mind is a Myth, No Way Out, Courage to Stand Alone and Thought is Your Enemy can also be accessed online.
Spanish
U.G.: Charlas Con un Illuminado Contestario, Edited and Published by Editorial Sirio, S.A., Málaga, Spain, 1988
La Mente Es un Mito: Inquietantes Conversaciones con Un Hombre Llamado U.G., Edited and Published by Editorial Sirio, S.A., Málaga, Spain, 1989
El Coraje De Eestar Solo, Edited and Published by Ed. Gulaab, 07192 Estellences, Mallorca, Spain, 1998
El Pensamiento Es Tu Enemigo, Translated and Published by Editorial Gulaab, Mallorca, Spain, 1999
Cuando Dejas de Buscar, Relatos Sobre U.G. en la India, K. Chandrasekhar, Translated by Sabra (Shalabha Beltran), Ediciones Gulaab, 2002
Destellos de Sabiduria, U.G. Krishnamurti (The Little Book of Questions), Ediciones Luz de Luna
Yugoslavian
Zabluda Prosvetljenja, Iracionalne ideje coveka zvanog Ju Dzi, Translated by Natasa Nikolic i Zoran Denic, Esotheria, Narodna biblioteka Srbije, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1994
Um Je Mit, Uznemirujuci razgovori sa covekom svanim Ju Dzi, Translated by Nilolic Natasa, Esotheria, Narodna biblioteka Srbije, Belgrade, Yugoslavia 1996
Relevant Information
The Telugu Translation of Mahesh Bhatt's biography of U.G. by K. Chandrasekhar titled U.G. Krishnamurti: Oka Jeevita Katha, 1994
The Hindi Translation of U.G. Krishnamurti: A Life entitled Na Khatm Honewali Kahani, Jagadamba Prasad Dikshit, Vani Prakashan, New Delhi, India, 1996
Ab Mai Kaun Hun? (Hindi Translation of A Taste of Death, Mahesh Bhatt), Vani Prakashan, New Delhi, 1997
Avichar: U.G. Krishnamurti, Jivani ra Vartaharu (No Thought: U.G. Krishnamurti, Life and Teaching), Nepalese work edited by K.C. Ramesh, Nirvan Prakashan, Khatmandu, Nepal, 1995
UG Says – 35 hrs of Audio Talks compiled in MP3 CD format by Satyasimha, founder of Prakruthi Foundation, July 2007
