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Darshana and Philosophy
THERE is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a
direct and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less
opaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and
not unoften a deformed appearance. The mind has its own predispositions—its own categories and terms, its own forms and
figures—which it has to use when it seeks to express that which
is beyond it. Naturally the object, the truth as it is, it cannot
apprehend or represent; it gives as it were the reverse side of
an embroidery work. It goes round about the thing, has to take
recourse to all kinds of contortions and gymnastics and
grimaces to ape the natural gesture of the truth. But mind acts
in this way, as a veil rather than a medium, when one is
stationed in it or below it and strains to look at what is above
and beyond. On the other hand, if the consciousness is stationed
above the mind, that is to say, if it has direct access or contact
with the truth, the spiritual reality, in that case, mind need
not act as a veil, it too can be made transparent, and suffused
with the higher light, it too can translate faithfully, present
and embody the reality beyond somewhat as it acutally is, in
its native rhythm and figure and not diffracted and diffused European thought, European philosophy particularly, moves under the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind and from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and therefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception, its most intimate contacts with spirit-truths are 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought'. The Indian standpoint, on the contrary, is first to contact the truth by a direct realisation—through meditation, concentration, an uplifting and a deepening Page 246 of the consciousness, through Yoga, spiritual discipline, and then endeavour to express the truth thus realised, directly intuited or revealed, through mental terms, to make it familiar and communicable to the normal intelligence. Mind, so subordinated and keyed to a new rhythm, becomes, as far as it is possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the main systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as their background. Each stands on a definite experience, a spiritual realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth and in and through that seeks to give a world-view, building up an intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that are natural to it or derive inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet mentally systematised or logically buttressed: truths were delivered there as self-evident statements, as certitudes luminous in their own authenticity. We accept them without question and take them into our consciousness as forming its fundamental norms, structuring its most intimate inscape. This is darsana, seeing, as philosophy is named in India. One sees the truth or reality and describes it as it is seen, its limbs and gestures, its constituents and functions. Philosophy here is fundamentally a recording of one's vision and a translation or presentation of it in mental terms. The procedure of European philosophy is different. There the reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light is cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and happenings and then proceeds to find out a general truth—a law, a hypothesis—justified by such observations. But as a matter of fact this is the ostensible method: it is only a make- believe. For mind and reason are not normally so neutral and impersonal, a tabula rasa. The observer already comes into the field with a definite observational angle, and a settled viewpoint. The precise sciences of today have almost foundered on this question of the observer entering inextricably into his observations and vitiating them. So in philosophy too as it is practised in Europe, on a closer observation, if the observer is carefully observed, one finds not unoften a core of suppositions, major premises taken for granted hidden behind the logical apparatus. In other words, even a hardened philosopher cherishes at the back of his mind a priori judgments and his whole Page 247 philosophy is only a rationalisation of an inner prejudgment, almost a window-dressing of a perception that came to him direct and in other secret ways. That was what Kant meant when he made the famous distinction between the Pure and the Practical Reason and their categories. Only the direct perceptions, the spiritual realisations are so much imbedded behind, covered so much with the mist of mind's struggle and tension and imaginative construction that it is not always easy to disengage the pure metal from the ore.
We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to
illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The
character of European philosophical mind is well exemplified
in this remarkable modern philosopher. The anxiety to put
the inferences into a strict logical frame makes a naturally
abstruse and abstract procedure more abstruse and abstract.
The .effort to present suprarational truths in terms of reason
and syllogism clouds the issues more than it clarifies them. The There is another concept in Whitehead which seems to be moulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with regard to the working out of the process of creation, the mechanism of its dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the occult functioning of the world forces. Whitehead speaks of Page 248 two principles that guide the world process, first, the principle of limitation, and second, the principle of ingress. The first one Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of concentration (and of exclusive concentration) by which the infinite and the eternal limits himself, makes himself finite and temporal and infinitesimal, the universal transforms itself into the individual and the particular. The second is the principle of descent, which is almost the corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo's system. There are layers of reality: the higher forces and formulations enter into the lower, work upon it and bring about a change and transformation, purification and redemption. All progress and evolution is due to this influx of the higher, the deeper into the lower and superficial plane of existence. There is one concept in Whitehead which seems rather strange to us; it is surely a product of the brain-mind. God, according to him, is not the creator: he is only the Redeemer, he is a shaper but not the source and origin of things. That is because he thinks that if God is made the creator of the world, he would be held responsible for the evil there. This difficulty comes when one thinks of God too much in the popular anthropomorphic way, like someone seated above the world and passing judgment upon a world which is not his doing. God is perhaps a lover of the world, but not its Master—a certain Christian outlook says. According to Sri Aurobindo, God is a triple reality in his transcendental, cosmic and individual aspect. In creating the world, God creates, that is to say, manifests himself. And. Evil is an evolute in the process of God's self-creation through self-limitation: it proceeds to self-annihilation and even self-transmutation in a farther process of God's self-unfoldment in world and Nature. To return to our main theme, we should point out, however, that in Europe too at one time (during the whole Middle Age, the Age of Scholasticism) philosophy was considered only as a handmaid of Religion, it had to echo and amplify and reason out the dogmas (which were sometimes real spiritual experiences or revelations); but the New Illumination came and philosophy declared her autonomy, only that autonomy did not last long. For today in Europe, Philosophy has become the handmaid of Science. It was natural, since Page 249 Reason is not a self-sufficient faculty, it is mediatory and must be ancillary either to something above it or something below it—either to Revelation or to sense-perception. Page 250 |