Presentation of the internet edition
of
(by Bithika Mukerji)
Pr Bithika Mukerji taught philosophy at the Banaras Hindu University. She
wrote the present book as a research work at McMaster University in Canada in
1973-77. She insists in it on the need not to reduce Vedanta to a rationalistic
and intellectual ontology, but to see it fully as connected to Bliss and the
spiritual experience per se. This is also the difference between the
western philosophical approach and the Indian one. In fact, herself a
Bengali, she was disciple of the great Bengali woman sage, Ma Anandamayi whom
she met as far back as in the thirties. This name “Anandamayi” means
"permeated with bliss", so it is not so astonishing that
Bithika develops this subject in the present book. Her reflections on modernity
are well documented and deep, they will stimulate a renewed point of view with
the readers, both Westerners and Indians.
There are three forms of Vedanta which spread in the West:
- The Neo-Vedanta inspired by Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Mission, and also
developed by Aldous Huxley in the last twenty years of his life before his
passing away in 1963.
- The recent Vedanta teachers which are keen to come back to the essentials and
to speak very simply to the western audience. In this endeavour, they may
end up far away from the Indian roots of Advaita; still, they communicate a
message important for the West still recovering of two thousand years of a
forcible dualist religion.
- the Vedanta of academicians, more interested in comparative philosophy and
Sanskrit.
In Indian Universities during the 20th century, a Neo-Vedanta of its own has
developed. It wanted to express the traditional Vedanta within the
Western notions of ontology and epistemology. It was also an apology to defend
this tradition against the accusations of missionaries and western indologists,
who were criticizing it as being out of the word, without ethical preoccupation
and not really rational, since the base of it was direct spiritual experience.
Unfortunately, this Neo-Vedanta failed to change in a noticeable way either the
western philosophy or the traditional Vedanta. Bithika Mukerji explains why,
and restore the timelessness of Vedanta beyond these quarrels which came in a
very particular historical context. May her message first be
understood, and then meditated upon by the reader!
The retyping of this book for internet has been possible thanks to the
financial contributions of the readers of the French quarterly on Ma
Anandamayi, Jay Ma. Dipu Banwal, a student from Ma Anandamayi Ashram in Almora
did this painstaking work in its entirety, May he and the readers of Jay Ma be
thanked for their help in the transmission to the world of the best of the
Indian tradition.
Dr Jacques Vigne , hermitage of Dhaulchina,
Almora, Himalayas 11-1-2005
I am ignorant;
out to my ignorance I ask the seers for enlightenment. (Rig-Véda 1-164-6)
NEO-VEDANTA
AND MODERNITY
DEDICATION
IN MEMORY OF MY TEACHER AND GUIDE IN PHILOSOPHY
Ankul
Chandra Mukhopadhyaya (A.C.Mukerji)
Part-1
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter One: The Framework for modernity:
The Western
tradition
Chapter two: Science, Technology and Automation
Chapter Three: the Indian Response to the Western
Tradition
Chapter Four: English neo-Hegelianism and Indian
Scholarship
Chapter Six: intuition as a Category of thought in
Vedanta: A.C. Mukerji
Chapter Seven: The World as real in Vedanta:,
Chapter Eight: Neo-Vedanta as a Rational Philosophy and a
‘Gospel of Life’
Chapter Nine: the Lack of Soteriological Awareness in
neo-Vedanta
Chapter Ten: Renunciation and Bliss
Chapter Eleven: The Ontology of Bliss
Chapter Twelve: Renunciation as the Precondition of
Realisation
Chapter thirteen: Being as Bliss
Chapter Fourteen: On Ananda (Bliss)
Conclusion:
The translation of the Taittiriyaka-vidya-prakash with an
Introduction, verse analyses and notes
Bibliography
Index of words and names
List of Abbreviations
Preface and acknowledgements
As College students we were reared on Neo-Vedanta and the Indian brand of Neo-Kantianism. Kant was the most important philosopher of the West for us because he seemed to have stated clearly the limitations of reason, vis-a-vis the region of the transcendent. As the Indian philosophical heritage was preoccupied with the effort of delimiting the scope of rationality in the sphere of ontology, Kant was hailed as a kindred spirit. We were not to know that Kant was one of the most important turning points in the history of Western philosophy and that he in fact, was perhaps, nowhere near the thoughts the Indians ascribed to him.
A.C. Mukerji, a leading exponent of the critical philosophy of his time, was my teacher and guide. His lectures on Vedanta were extremely popular. We could not entertain the thought that his rendering of the western tradition as paralleling the quest for the ‘unmediated knower’ was anything but true to the facts. For him the only worthwhile question (with which he sought to inspire every generation of students) in philosophy worth meditating upon was “how to know the self or the ‘unmediated knower’?”
My understanding of philosophy as a ground on which all people seized with similar concerns may meet and help each other was undermined, when I went to Geneva in 1972 for one year, to lead a seminar on Hinduism and Christianity. For the first time I was made aware of the many dimensions which go into the makeup of the West. The student were from many countries and form many denominations and all of them very well trained in theology. It was an exacting task for me to understand their problems and deal with them meaningfully. A philosophical discourse on ‘The One Reality’ seemed out of place because the problem haunting the Graduate School at Bossey from the beginning was: how to enter into a dialogue with ‘the other’. I write all this because this was an occasion for me to live and work together with people of dedication, who made me feel very welcome, although my presence called into question, for, many of them, much of what they stood for.
I learnt much more about the western tradition from Prof. George P. Grant at McMaster during the years1973-77. Whatever is right and perceptive about the West, in this book, I have gathered from him and what is partial or wrong is my own interpretation of it.
It is a strange fact but I also came to a greater understanding of Advaita philosophy at McMaster. I can not say enough about the dedicated work being done there by Drs. J,S.Arapura and K. Sivaraman. My understanding of the ontology of Bliss owes very much to Dr. Agrapura’s writings on the subjects of maya and gnosis. The difficult subject of my thesis which is now being printed as a book, was made interesting and a worthwhile proposition for me by Dr. K. Sivaraman. Without the many discussions we have had on the topic I would not have been able to develop the theme at all. The problem that I chose for study is, therefore, my way of acknowledging all that I had the opportunity of learning at McMaster.
I have great pleasure in recording my appreciation of the sustained encouragement extended to me by Dr. Peter George, during my absence from McMaster and also Dr. Chauncy Wood, who made it possible for me to return and defend the thesis.
I take this opportunity to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friends in Canada Ms Grace Gorden, Mc Marftha Frohlinger, Dr. Ivan Kocmarek and Wayne Barody who made this work not only possible but also enjoyable.
My grateful thanks are due to Dr. Sudhakar Malaviya who assumed the responsibility of printing the book and also Sri Rajendra Tiwari for this help in publishing it.
It is both an honour and a pleasure to write a foreword to Dr, Bithika Mukerji’s book. But it is more than that, because the central issue which is always present in this book is of such great importance for the West: What is the relation between modernity (call it if you will “technology”) and the great truths of the religious and philosophical traditions from before the age of progress? Dr. Mukerji looks at this issue in terms of India, but it is clearly of equal importance in Europe, China, Russia and the Arab world. Perhaps it is most pressing in North America (from where I write) because we are the only civilization that has no history from before the age of progress.
Many people in the world believe that technology is an instrument which human beings can use for their own purpose. Technology is believed to be external to the human purpose which are given in philosophic and religious traditions. It is believed that these traditions are not radically put into question by technology. This is contradicted by the fact that such countries as Russia and China have used Marxist forms of government to technologies their societies quickly. Of course, Marxism is not a philosophy which stands above technology, but a system of thought which is but an aspect of what was given in that great western emergence which we call “modernity” or “technology”. Also of course that capitalist “liberalism”, or which is an alternative system of government for the modernizing of societies, is also but part what came forth form the primal affirmation of the modern West. The difference between capitalism and communism is a subsidiary difference to that between modern and pre-modern civilizations. As Heidegger, the greatest western philosopher of our era, has written; communism are both predicates of the subject technology. It is a vain delusion to believe that technology is an instrument that human beings can use as they choose. It is an affirmation about being and as such penetrates every aspect of a civilization. In the light of that oblivion of eternity which so characterizes the dynamic civilization of the West, it is well for Dr. Mukerji to ask what happens to the apprehension of the ontology of the Vedanta in the context of modernity.
Dr. Mukerji has made herself enormously qualified to write about such a subject. She had taught the truth of the Vedanta for many years in India. She then came for a time to the West. She did not study western thought form the safe distance of India or form the pleasant confines of an Oxford college, as did Radhakrishnan. She first came to Geneva and then to a heartland of modernity, the great Lakes region of North America. She came to a steel town and worked in a university dominated by the computer. Steel and computers are after all two central substance of modernity; steel of an earlier era, computers of the latest region of cybernetics. She studied such great makers of modernity as Hobbes and Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger. That is, she lived modernity in her daily flesh and bones, and thought it in her studies. She therefore has the right to speak of it not in some abstract way, but at it is in itself. She is greatly qualified to understand what it means in the context of the Vedantic ontology of bliss.
To a westerner such as myself, uneducated in the truth of the Vedanta but with knowledge of what has happened to Christianity in the face of the modern, Dr. Mukerji’s chapters on the thought of A.C. Mukerji and Kokileshvar Shstri are of the greatest interest. I am not qualified to speak with authority on Indian thought, but having read these chapters with close attention, I can affirm that Dr. Mukerji’s argument is beautifully expounded. The thesis of that argument is that the impact of westernization on Indian thought has resulted on obscuring what was meant by “bliss” in the Vedanta, and therefore distorting that philosophy. Certainly, ever since I listened to the lectures of Radhakrishnan, it has appeared to me that he greatly distorted the “idealism” of Kant and Hegel to make them seem to be at one with the Vedanta and at the expense of eliminating that mastering modernity which makes them both so revolutionary.
Indeed the English world “ideal” has had much influence in leading to that misunderstanding. It is a modern word and cannot well be used by anybody who takes the ancient traditions seriously. This is seen in the fact that its opposite is the modern world “real”. But to Plato—that western thinker who has most in common with the Vedanta, the distinction “ideal-real” would be a distortion. The “idea” was the true reality; idea was not ideal.
Above all, what is particularly wonderful in Dr. Mukerji’s book in her enucleation of the ontology of Ananda. This is breathtaking for any western listener. How right it is that the word “Ananda” be translated as bliss. The word “joy” would be too subjective and miss the knowledge that what is spoken of here concerns Being. What has come to be in the dynamic civilization of North America-indeed in all these societies which express in themselves the thoughts of Locke and Marx, Rousseau or Darwin or Hume—is the restless search for bliss which escape one because it cannot be know as being itself. Modern life has become the joyless pursuit of joy. One of the truly great stories of the English-speaking world is called “Bliss”. (It is also written by a woman). The story recognizes beautifully the crying need that bliss be more than the subjectivity of feeling but rooted in the Being of being. What is more pressing for us westerners than the understanding that there is an ontology of bliss? That this should be unthinkable is perhaps the greatest price that we have paid for modernity. For those of us who are Christians, it is the elimination of the understanding of the Trinity as bliss which leaves Christianity floundering in the midst of the modernity it so much made. What is sad in the western world is the deep desire to participate in bliss, for instance thought the detached pursuit of the orgasm which because it is outside any ontological understanding of bliss result in the good of the pursuit often being blackly negated.
Much silliness has been written in the modern world about the meeting of East and West, by both westerners and easterners. Such a meeting must note sacrifice the greatness of either side—Dr. Mukerji’s book understands that the true and authentic Vedanta must not be obscured (albeit temporarily) to make possible that meeting. Both westerners and easterners should read the book with close attention.
‘How shall I know the
supreme unspeakable Bliss which
they realize directly as “This”? Is it self-effulgent-
or it is seen to be shining
distinctly ?’
Katha ll. 2-14
It is said very often that Advaita philosophy reflects the general mood of the Indian people. Even when they do not intellectually subscribe to this school of thought, they are drawn into using its terminology as most expressive of all understanding regarding life in the world is formulated in the light of a dichotomy obtaining between what is merely pleasing (preyas) and what is good (śreyas).
This separation runs through all modes of thought, such as monistic or dualistic. The sense of distinction between ‘what should be preferred’ pervades the ethos of India and can be recognized immediately in the mood of detachment, or withdrawal, or renunciation, which characterizes it. It can be readily understood that a demand for discrimination comes with the built-in implication that one sphere is to be given up in order to appropriate the other.
The ideal of renunciation as a form of knowledge, has been thematized only in the Advaita philosophy of Samkaracarya, the well-known ascetic thinker and writer of the 8th/9th century A.D. All other schools of thought subscribe to it as a high ideal, but it is not integral to their philosophy. Samkaracarya, on the other hand, has placed it in the very heart of his writings on the unity of Self (ātman) with Ultimate Reality (Brahman). The sphere of the world, together with its knowing subject, the I-consciousness is, as if superimposed on this unity and needs to be ‘cancelled’ before Brahman as bliss may be realized as an existential experience.
This supreme discrimination between that which is the area of the not-self and that which leads towards true knowledge or self-realization, is called renunciation. It should not be an act of physical withdrawal from the world, which any way, is not perhaps the best mode of denying the world. The very demand of the world to be considered real and final is called māyā in Advaita philosophy; this dimension of non-reality or māyā can be offset only by an equally powerful process of meta-physical cancellation, a renouncing of layers of false identification, so that the veil may be sat at naught. The inspiration for this trans-natural way of understanding the human condition comes from the Upanishads which speak in the language of poetry to recall man’s attention dispersed in the world in search of happiness, to focus it on the quest for the very source of Bliss itself. This is how Samkaracarya has developed his exegeses on the Upanishads and his major work the Commentary on the Vedanta-Sūtra. {A collection of aphorisms beginning with, ‘Now commences the enquiry into Brahman’. This work is variously known as Bādarāyaņa sūtra, Brahma Sūtra or Śarīraka Sūtra.}
In neo-Vedanta, that is, contemporary interpretations of Samkaracarya’s thought, we meet with a very different understanding of ‘māyā’ as well as of the philosophical grounding of the Texts of the Upanishads. It will not be perhaps out of place, if Samkaracarya’s theory of māyā is explained a little here, since, I am going to develop the idea that this very concept has undergone almost a total transformation in the writing of modern thinkers.
The commonly known theory of māyā is presented by Samkaracarya in a short Preamble to the Commentary on the Vedanta Sūtra. Samkaracarya begins by delineating clearly two disparate spheres: consciousness and the object of consciousness. It is well-known, he writes, that the knower and the known which have for their spheres or contents the notions of ‘I’ and what is given to it from without, so to speak as ‘you’ (as the other) respectively, are totally opposed to each other, as light is to darkness. Yet in ordinary usage they are being constantly fused together, as for example, in the statements, ‘It is I’ or ‘It is mine’. That this coupling together is intelligible at all is due to the (unconscious) operation of a kind of superimposition of one on the other which obliterates, phenomenally speaking, the discontinuity altogether. The body and the I-consciousness, become one or even there is identification with persons in the world, like son etc. to take an obvious example of superimposition: a piece of rope is mistaken as a snake, evoking fear in the heart of the observer. This illusion, which will be known as error only upon its cancellation, is a case of superimposition of one thing on another. Thus is the Self hidden under the identity of the I-consciousness. This obscuration is not apparent but the identification of the I- consciousness with its body (‘It is I’) or with things in the world (‘It is mine’) are matters of common experience. It is an error which pervades all human experience. Samkaracarya’s definition of this error may be translated into these words.
The cognition into an object of something
Different which is of the nature of memory of
Something which has been seen elsewhere.
In other words, the real object is ‘falsely’ cognized in terms of something previously seen; this cognition is subsequently cancelled when recognition takes place of the real object. The nature off this error is thus indeterminable in the sense that it can be called neither real (because of the possibility of cancellation) nor unreal (because something as such is certainly cognized). Samkaracarya at this point in his writing makes a passing reference to other theories of error, as inadequate. The reason for grouping together very divergent theories regarding the nature of error is that the admission of this distinction itself is reason enough for stating that error is indeterminable. The aim of the author has been to underscore the presence of two levels within the cognitive structure, one real and the other unreal; this is sufficient reason for the argument in favour of a process of superimposition. The author suggests that it seems almost natural for the natural of the real to remain hidden because the unreal, as it were, makes it determinable in its own from of unreality. This figurative ascription (in the form of ‘as if’) may be called māyā which simultaneously hides the real and projects the unreal.
Samkaracarya’s intention here in the Preamble is to given an explanation of the experience of a diverse world since the Vedanta sūtra is going to propound Brahman as the one and only Reality. On Brahman is superimposed the dimension of the unreal world which appears as a reality by itself. On the cognitive scale, Brahman as the ever abiding Witness-Self remains hidden because the ‘I-consciousness’ is superimposed on it. The relevance of this entire discussion about the cognitive structure may be questioned by an opponent who ask: ‘If the Witness-Self is aloof from the entire range of the categories of thought as a non-object then how can it be superimposed upon? Moreover if you also say that the Witness-Self is self-evident then where is the possibility of confounding it with something else?’
Samkaracarya’s
resolution of this problem brings him to the core of his Preamble. He writes,
‘but, the Witness-Self (ātman) is not entirely a non-object. It is
the object of consciousness, but only in the sense that it is the ground, which
is given in immediate apprehension. Therefore the nature of superimposition or māyā,
the stuff of which it is, so to speak, made, is ignorance. Due to ignorance
a veiling takes place. The way to knowledge is by way of removing this veil of
ignorance which is called avidyā {For the purpose of a general
exposition of the intended views of Samkaracarya attempted here, the subtle
distinctions that are made by later Vedanta between māya and
avidyā or between avidyā or ajaña and
mithyājñāna are glossed over.}
We can now see the implication of the doctrine of superimposition. It stands as a prelude to the first aphorism of the Vedanta Sutra which states: ‘Now commences the enquiry into Brahman’. Superimposition is coeval with being-in-the-world, as natural and unquestioned as the statements ‘it is I’ which lies at the core of life-in the-world. It is completely simultaneous with it, yet it is not a necessary obstruction which then would so inhere in experience as not to be given to removal. It is a metaphysical predicament. Which in fact can be overcome. So the characteristic of superimposition is that it is natural but amenable to “cancellation’.
According to Samkaracarya, then, the self or ātman is the foundational self-luminous reality as opposed to such relational categories knowing, enjoying, etc. superimposition in the false attribution of the relational categories which are applicable only in the sphere of the not-self. Nescience or avidyā is primarily this principal of relationality which upholds the superstructure of superimposition created by māyā. Brahman, the non-relational ground of all relations is revealed only when the relational structure ceases to be operative. Thus there is a close connection between a metaphysical withdrawal on the part of the I-consciousness and the discovery of its ontological ground in immediate apprehension. This explains the Upanishadic statement that Brahman is to be known through knowledge only, because knowledge reveals that which is already there as Reality, by simply canceling the veil as veil. The dissipation of duality is simultaneous with the realization of the true nature of ātman as the Real, the Conscious, Infinite and Bliss Supreme. (Satyam, jñānam, anantam, ānandam brahma).
Samkaracarya’s Preamble to the Vedanta Sūtra Bhāşya sets the stage for demonstrating the non-reality of anything other than Brahman. Māyā, therefore, is integral to the Advaita of Samkaracarya because the concept of māyā holds together the ideals of renunciation and Bliss.
It is well known that Samkaracarya’s theory of māyā did not go to unchallenged. Severe criticisms came from the philosophical standpoint of dualism. The great Vaişņava teachers of the Middle ages emphasized the creature-hood of man, living in a world created by Good. Parallel traditions in Vedanta philosophy started by Ramanujacarya, Madhvacarya and other flourished along with the Advaita of Samkaracarya.
In the nineteenth century, India was brought very close to the Western world through the medium of English education which was welcomed by the leaders of society, Indian scholars were much influenced by the metaphysical speculations of the West, especially by Kant who seemed close to the philosophic position of Vedanta regarding Noumenon which lay behind the categories of thought.
Contemporary philosophical orientations in India show a resurgence of Advaita philosophy. The Advaita of Samkaracarya was presented to the world as the best philosophical achievement of India. The ‘modernisation’ of Indian thought lies in its being presented in terms of Western Philosophy. Many Indian scholars undertook to define Advaita philosophy in such language as could render it intelligible from the perspective of the Western world. The most popular method of doing this was to write on comparative philosophy. The idea behind this bran of writing seems to be that a familiarity with one dimension of thought would open up possibilities of understanding problems inhering in other modes of thinking. Comparative philosophy as methodology for neo-vedanta has come to stay in India.
The point of the present study is that the acceptance of comparative philosophy as a valid methodology is based on a disregard for the crucial and irreducible difference between two traditions, as shaped by philosophers in these traditions. There is yet another aspect which is still more crucial for an understanding of an ancient philosophical tradition such as Advaita Vedanta. Indian scholars in seeking to make their heritage commensurable with the Western outlook on life are already placed in a position of losing hold over it, because they have not first examined the ground on which such changes in their traditions could take place if at all.
This book is devoted to the problem of the westernization of Advaita Vedanta which as neo-Vedanta prevails as the philosophy of our own times in India. Neo-Vedanta seeks to give a realistic interpretation of Advaita and also to make it self-sufficient as a philosophy, without recourse to Scriptural texts. According to contemporary Indian thinkers, modernity can be appropriated easily to the universalism of Advaita. Without jettisoning the hard core of the tradition, Advaita could very well be re-stated in terms of modern demands for active participation in the ongoing concerns of the world.
Without calling
into question the right of any philosopher to interpret Advaita according to
his own understanding of it, this study seeks to establish that the process of
Westernization has obscured the core of this school of thought. The basic
correlation of renunciation and Bliss has been lost
slight of in the attempts to underscore the cognitive structure and the
realistic structure which according to Samkaracarya should both belong to, and
indeed constitute the realm of māyā.
An analysis of this process of obscuration forms the
subject matter of this book. The first three chapters are devoted to the study
of modernism as it is understood as such by Indian thinkers who seeks to
revitalize their heritage in the light of ‘modernity’. Consequently, all
attempts at approximating to the west are riddled by this basic confounding of
fundamental values. We can see this
very clearly in the fact that the concept of renunciation plays no part in the
writings of neo-Vedantins: and also that there is no awareness of the advent of
secularism as an inevitable corollary to the movement of thought from Kant to
Nietzsche in the West. Neo-Vedantins have emphasized concepts of Brahman as
Real (sat) and Brahman as Consciousness (cit), but not Brahman as bliss
(ananda) although the three terms together from the common definition of
Brahman, that is: Saccidānanda.
The influence of Western education on Indian scholars has
been profound. An attempt has been made to put this impact in perspective in
Chapters Four and Five. In the next three Chapters the writings of two eminent
scholars are taken up for detailed study to validate my point that added
emphasis has been laid by neo-Vedantins on the concept of Brahman as Reality
and consciousness to the exclusion of bliss. Both men, A.C. Mukerji and
Kokileshvar Bhattacharya were recognized in their own times as accredited
spokesmen for Advaita. Both were well-versed in western Philosophy as teachers
of it in the Universities of Allahabad and Calcutta respectively. Both fellow
in general the guidelines of traditional exegesis but individually develop
their own particular points of view. A.C. Mukerji favoured a rationalistic
approach to Advaita and Kokilesvar Bhattacharya a realistic’ approach. Their
relevance for this study lies in the fact that according to their own
understanding of Advaita it is quite commensurable with concepts to be found in
western thought. It is not that they thematized their exegeses as such but they
did attempt to relate Advaita ontology to modern thought.
The point I wish to develop is that the entire intellectual movement, was for contemporary Indian thought, a process of alienation rather than the recovery of an ancient heritage. The Ninth and Tenth Chapters take up the study of this process of transformation of Indian philosophy towards an integration of its understanding of reality with all the new values of our times. Renunciation is nowadays understood by Indian scholars to mean a physical withdrawal from the world, a turning away from involvement and thus leading to moral apathy. Their evaluation of a traditional Indian value can in no way be distinguished from the charge leveled against Indian thought by the indologists of the nineteenth century.
To demonstrate my point that a total reversal has taken
place of the fundamental standpoint of Advaita Vedanta, I have undertaken a
study of the Taittirīya Upanişad in the last Chapter
of the book. In this text, we meet with an understanding of man and his world.
The text also brings out the uniqueness of man as seeker of the supreme
knowledge of Brahman as Bliss. I have followed the Commentary of Samkaracarya
on this Text so that it mat be seen clearly how the neo-Vedantins have
traversed a different path altogether in staying away from the central teaching
of Advaita regarding the non-dual Brahman.
I have sought to reinforce my point by adding as Part ii of
this book the translation of a small text on Advaita written in the fourteenth
century by a well-known author in this field. I have write an introduction and
commentary on this work, which so far has not been translated into English or
into any of the Indian languages. This text, called the Taittirīyaka-vidya-prakāśah,
is a commentary on the Taittirīyake-Upanişad the Text examined in
the last two chapters of part I. A study of author’s time reveals the fact that
the main streams of exegeses were continuing to uphold the tradition as
enunciated by Samkaracarya. This may be seen to be in direct contrast to the
modern interpreters of Vedanta who seemed to have uncritically envisaged the
possibility of revitalizing their tradition by incorporating new ideas in order
to be in tune with the demands of the times.
It is a well known fact that attempts at re-interpreting
the Upanishadic tradition in the light of modern Western thought have not
resulted in any major contribution towards meaningful living in our contemporary
world. In the following pages an assessment of these attempts is given with a
view to clarifying the process of ‘modernization’ of Indian thought. The study
of these exegeses suggests that the emerging scene is of Westernized thought
rather than either modern or Indian. This would also explain the reason behind
the dearth of new philosophical schools in our country. This book, in effect,
seeks to highlight the question, namely, is it right to say that renunciation
has been central to the teaching of the Upanishads; and if so, in what way, or
if at all, this teaching can be related to the contemporary way of life in
India?
In Eastern countries and especially in India, the term ‘modernity’ in used very often to denote to progress-oriented ethos of our times. ‘Modernisation’ is accepted as integral to life at present and a matter of coming to terms with Western modes of thinking and living in the fact changing world of scientific and technological innovations. ‘Modernisation’, therefore is almost a synonym for Westernisation. The West is admired for its air of success in all aspects of human endeavour and its ideal of constant striving toward better achievements. The marvelous invention of science evoke nothing but a strong spirit of emulation and the desire to bring about such changes in the existing way of life as would make it possible for all viable cultural and social transformations to take place to accommodate them. In contrast with the very tangible ills which plague the lives of people elsewhere the progressive affluence of the West appears nothing but a good in itself. For a people who are fighting for sheer survival, or freedom, or human rights, the West could symbolize Utopia. ‘Modernisation’, in this sense merely means the free exercise of an option toward greater mechanisation for the sake of economic development. Its main sphere of influence, which admittedly is secular, is seen to lie only in the region of praxis. No anxiety is felt about a possible radicalization of the theories which sustain our tradition.
To an outsider to Western Civilization therefore, the following question would sound merely rhetorical:
Why, in our time have societies well-endowed
with industrial plenty and scientific genius
turned uglier with totalitarian violence than
any barbarous people?…… Why do nihilism
and neuroses brood over what we please to
call the ‘developed’ societies, taking as great
a toll of human happiness as gross physical
privation in the third world ?{Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and transcendence in post industrial Society (London: Faber & Faber 1973), p xxviii.}
No such misgivings, regarding our own future in following the West is in evidence in the writings of Indian thinkers. No doubts regarding encounter with science from within the tradition to the contrary; science and religion are accepted as ‘complementary disciplines,’ which can be “combined harmoniously…………(for) an all-round expression of human genius and total fulfillment.”{Swami Ranganathananda, science and religion (Calcutta Advaita Ashram, 1978), p3. (Inaugural Address for the Lecture Series on “Science, Society and the Scientific Attitude,” University of Bangalore, August 5, 1976).
The two terms ‘Modernization’ and ‘Westernization’, are used interchangeably in India, but the different in meaning is so crucial that any slurring over could lead only to meaninglessness. At this point in time, Westernization is a global event, but Modernization so far is a Western experience. In order to understand what modernity means to people who are obliged to be modern, it is necessary to understand the paradox of a life of affluence overcast by the shadow of ‘nothingness’.
It would seem to the East that the rapidly proliferating advances of modern sciences are so many steps in the right direction. The technological discoveries which are the marvels of our day, are surely of great benefit to human society. It is true that some hazards are created by the growing techniques, but then, the technicians are never at a loss for adequate solutions to the problems. When such is our present situation, how should we understand a passage like this:
People everywhere trace, and record the decay,
the destruction, the imminent annihilation of
the world……The world, men find, is not just
out of joint but tumbling away into the
nothingness of absurdity. Nietzsche, who from
his supreme peak saw far ahead of it all, as
early as the eighteen-eighties had for it the
simple because thoughtful words : ‘The
Wasteland grows….’{Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking, tr. J. Clenn Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p.29.}
There are many brilliant writers in the West who have in varied measure, made the theme of ‘nothingness’ their central concern. The poignant words of Nietzsche have been echoing and re-echoing in such writings as these:
………there is nothing to express, nothing with
which to express, nothing from which to
express, no power to express, no desire to
express, together with the obligation to
express……{Samuel Beckett, in Twentieth Century Views, ed. M. Esslin, (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, 1965), p.17.}
or,
The greatest mystery is not that we have been
flung at random between the profusion of
matter and of the stars, but that within this
prison we can draw from ourselves images
powerful enough to deny our nothingness.{Andre Malraux, Anti-Memoirs(New York : The Modern Library), p. 21.}
The question arises why should a progressive civilization find itself facing ‘nothingness’ in the present age. This question becomes supremely significant for all such societies who are eagerly following in the footsteps of the West. The East would reject the idea outright that it is trying to inherit ‘a growing Wasteland’, but western contemporary literature is clearly held in a tension between an awareness of crisis which is overtaking their civilization and a fearful sense of responsibility that its last sweeping technological conquest of the world will be final and irrevocable. They can only watch helplessly, the eager march toward the same existential nausea {‘Existential nausea has always worried the rich; democracy has now put it within the reach of all’. Dennis Gabor, ‘Fighting Existential Nausea’, Technology and Human Values (California: Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1966), p.13.
John Wilkinson, in his introduction to the same book writes that in justice to American Students it must be pointed out that ‘the progressive assimilation to the machine of human values (and even of religion in the sense of a deus in machina) is a function of a decisive unforeseen and unforeseeable turn of western Culture in its successive passage through mercantilism, industrialism, automation, and cybernation, and that as these mutations take place elsewhere in the world the same pathology of value is manifested’on the part of the East from which the West is beginning to suffer now. ( Ibid., p. 3.)
The important with regard to modernity, therefore, is the kind of awareness it awakens in man by which he understands himself in relation to his world. The term implies an evaluation of the situation in which Western man finds himself today. The primary demand of modernity, then, is to provide meaning to living in the age which has destroyed the region of transcendence that had sustained man over the centuries. To a lot of people this contingency may sound immensely preferable to any kind of historicism (whether theological, philosophical or humanistic) as it seems to grant freedom to bring about such condition as are needed for the well-being of society and also for building the future of our dreams. The thinkers who are aware of the implications of modernity, however, understand that this prospect is likely to be an ever-receding horizon unless one is dreaming of a totally man-made world replacing the given natural one of today. The very nature of technology creates its own autonomous sphere of action. Decisions are necessarily a-moral in a situation where techniques and expertise have to be given preference. Modernity accepts the fact that a new state of affairs has come into being with technology, because ‘the moral discourse of ‘values’ and ‘freedom’ is not independent of the will to technology, but a language fashioned in the same forge together with the will to technology. To try to think them separately is to move more deeply into their common origin.’ {George Grant, Technology and Empire (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1969(, p. 32.}
This would seem to mean that our future will be determined by technology which cannot but he indifferent to those qualities which we knew so far to be peculiarly ‘human’. Philosophy as a mode of questioning the beliefs which guide our life, requires a separation of man from his environment. Modernity spells out the end of philosophy because technology now is closing this crucial gap. Modernity is self-conscious about moving into this region of unification from whence no questioning may arise. Heidegger writes clearly:
Philosophy is ending in the present age. It has
found its place in the scientific attitude of
socially active humanity. But the fundamental
characteristic of this scientific attitude is its
cybernetic. That is, its technological character.
The need to ask about technological is presu-
mably dying out to the same extent that
technology more definitely characterizes and
regulates the appearance of the totality of the
world and the position of man in it. {Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being , tr. Joan Stambaugh (new York: Harper &Row, 1972), P. 58.}
Modernity means an awareness of technology as a mode of knowing which seems to be replacing familiar moulds of thought. These problems are not present in the East, because so far it has not progressed beyond asking first-order questions, regarding methodology and scientific procedure. We therefore, cannot understand what it is to be modern; or to be obliged to fact the possibility of the annihilation of man. We are at the stage of a commonsense understanding of technology as the latest development in the process of scientific discovery while the occasional opposition it evokes is dismissed as nothing but the natural tendency towards conservatism in us. Outcry against innovation is nothing new; the timid are always wary of radical changes, always convinced that nothing but disaster can result from total transformations. Against this negative attitude one hears the enthusiastic approval of those who hail every new breakthrough in technology as another landmark in human achievement. The question for us is not, whether to be cautioned by the first group or reassured by the second, but to realize that to enter this debate at all is already not to understand the nature of technology.
In this chapter, an attempt is made to enter into the concerns of Western philosophers who seek to bring home to us the implication of being obliged to live in the age of technology. In order to do so, we need to familiarize ourselves with the formative influences within the Western tradition which has culminated in the age of technology; only thus can we hope to realize what it means to be modern, or what Rene Guenon means when he writes:
….however far away the state of mind which has been
specifically designed as ‘Modern’ may have spread,
especially in recent years, and however strong
may be the hold which it has taken and which
it exercises ever more completely at least
externally, over the whole world, this state of
mind remains nevertheless purely Western in
origin: in the west it had its birth, and the
West was for a long time its exclusive domain.
In the East its influence will never be any thing
but a Westernization.{Réné Guénon, Writings tr. and ed, by Lord Northbourne (London: Luzac and Company, Ltd., 1952), p. 15}.
It is necessary for us to understand the Western tradition in order to begin to see how integral science and technology are to its culture, and may be also understand the reason why the East remained untouched by this form of quest for knowledge. This survey of the Western tradition is necessarily brief and therefore very partial. However, it is hoped that the simplified nature of the presentation highlights the point of departure which should be studied carefully by those thinkers in the East, who are interested in comparative studies.
B. Formative Factors
Influencing Western Civilization:
The cradle of Western tradition is ancient Greece {Frederick s. j. Copleston, A History of philosophy, Vol. I, part I (New York: Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1962), p. 29.} which brought forth great men of noble deeds and brilliant thought. The understanding this ancient society had of itself cannot be recorded as part of the history of the times. {Karl Loewith Meaning in History (The University Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 4-5.} The ancient world had its own way of understanding the occurrences which commanded attention, such as events of great significance in the lives of heroic men. Their achievements were landmarks which served to inspire and encourage other men to emulation. Celebration of those deeds by recounting them in poetry and drama made them moral imponderables; imponderable, because nobility was closely allied to tragedy. The mystique of ‘man’s relationship with nature’s inscrutable way was perpetuated in the recounting of the tales of antiquity. This ‘history’ is almost a reliving of the past and a continuation of the order of nature in human affairs. Nature, according to tradition, was good and man, as the measure of all things was a natural event, albeit the most exalted one. The inheritors of the Greek heritage agree that:
Through and through, the ideal is unity. To
make the individual at one with the state, the
real with the ideal, the inner with the outer,
art with moral, finally to bring all phases of
life under the empire of a single idea, which
with Goethe, we may call, an we will, the good,
the beautiful, or the whole-this was the
aim, and, to a great extent, the achievement{ G. Lowes Dickinson The Greek View of life (New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 155. }
The west has experienced many exhilarating moments of emancipation from its past, not the least among them is the overcoming of the religious mythology which had combined nature and man in a harmonious whole. Nature, as we now understand the world was ‘discovered’ by philosophers in ancient Greece. Nature was found not to be full of spirits and thus mysterious and inscrutable but rather, obedient to knowable and predictable laws. {The phrase ‘discovery of nature’ was used by F. M. Cornford, who explains it thus: “The Ionian cosmogonists assume…that the whole universe is natural and potentially within the reach of knowledge as ordinary and rational as our knowledge that fire burns and water drowns. That is what I meant by the discovery of Nature….The Supernatural, as fashioned by mythology, simply disappears; all that really exists is natural.” Before and After Socrates (Cambridge: The University Press, 1964), p. 15.} This was the beginning of that separation of man and nature which subsequently divided them completely into the two orders of the knower and the known and later of the maker and the made.
The spirit of scientific inquiry did not develop unimpeded; the quest for the ever-fading region of transcendence sometimes eclipsed it. The platonic separation of the regions of appearance and reality, inaugurated a new line of enquiry which continues to parallel the tradition of questioning nature to its furthest limits. In other words, Plato’s line of separation was drawn differently from that of the nature cosmogonists preceding him. Man, for Plato, was possessed of that reason which could lead him to the vision of the Real and the Good. Nature, therefore, was not exhausted in discovering causes for events, it remained grounded in the eternal order of Forms. The soul of man was activated by the same principle which activated nature. Nature was not merely a neutral object of enquiry but necessarily related to the well-being of man. By focusing on the unchanging ground behind the changing order of existence, the platonic tradition had acted as a break on the process of alienation between man and nature. {Benjamin Jowett writes: “nature in the aspect which she presented to a Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ is not easily reproduced to modern eyes. The associations of mythology and poetry have to be added and the unconscious influence of science has to be subtracted, before we can behold the heavens or the earth as they appeared to the Greek.” Introduction: Timaeus, The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. Iii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 38}.
The other source of western civilization is held to be Hebraism, specifically in the form of Christianity. According to Mathew Arnold, in some ways Hellenism and Hebraism were rival forces, ‘diving the empire of the world between them.’ He writes that ‘between these two points of influence moves our world. {Mathew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ed. J. Doyer Wilson (Cambridge: The University Press, 1935), p. 12}.They remained rivals because reason and faith were never quite reconciled in the history of succeeding generations. The advent of Christianity in the West changed the understanding of nature in relation to man. The dimension of historical consciousness replaced the idea of the manifestations of the natural order in recurring cycles. The ‘Christian reversal’ as Hannah Aredt calls it, introduced a new quality of self-centeredness.
……….in Christianity neither the world nor the
recurring cycle of life is immortal, only the single
living individual. It is the world which will to pass
away; men will live forever. {Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: The Viking Press, 1961), p. 52}.
Inevitably, perhaps, the eschatological dimension of life minimized the importance of nature. The emphasis was now on man, not only as the measure of all things but as one to whom in effect, is given the world to world to enjoy and also to inherit the Kingdom of God, {E. Troeltsh, Protestantism and progress (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), pp. 160-163}. The fast rise and spared of Western powers strengthened the sense of density and an unquestioning faith in the goodness of Providence. This new quality of self-centredness introduced by Christianity created a suitable atmosphere for questioning the workings of nature. Answers could be wrested from nature for the betterment of mankind. Quite paradoxically, therefore, it was Christianity which created a milieu for the conquest of nature although apparently it was opposed to the scientific spirit of inquiry into the working of nature. The paradox may be explained if we consider, opposition came from reverence for dogma rather than for nature. The ancient philosophers who had asked the first questions and who had remained eclipsed by the Platonic tradition, now stood vindicated. It can be said further that the opposition between science and religion was resolved in a strange way by philosophy. It may be a simplification, but not entirely farfetched, to say that the two great philosophers, Kant and Hegel, mediated between science and religion in a fashion which has definitively affected the course of Western thought science their time.
The first major step in the coming of the Age of Reason could be said to be the refutation of the traditional proofs of God’s existence by Kant and the establishment of the supremacy of the moral law as the only object of reverence. According to Kant, man alone, amongst all other creatures, prescribes for himself a law of conduct which is good; it is good not only because it is obeyed out to reverence for the law itself, but because it is the only law which can act as a safeguard against the evil propensities inherent in the nature of man. If man were devoid of reason, he would not be in conflict regarding the “ought”. If on the other hand he were purely a rational being, them the “ought” would resolve itself into the “must” of natural laws. Virtue lies in becoming so attuned to the command of moral law that obedience becomes akin to an upholding of the law in one’s behaviour. In other words, man’s disposition is to be changed by the moral law. This alone can make men worthy of happiness. This law, it is true, commands without promise of reward, but it is unthinkable, indeed irrational, to suppose that virtue will not bring out a state of happiness, the union of virtue and happiness is the highest good envisaged by reason and the demand for this comes from the moral law itself. Nature is indifferent to this concomitance; therefore, the sole source of this happiness is God. In the worlds of Kant “…….It is morally necessary to assume the existence of God” {The Critique of practical Reason, Book ii Chapter ii, tr. by L. Beck (The Library of Liberal Arts, 1956), p. 130}.
Kant has here reversed the traditional relation between morality and religion. The result of this re-orientation of the argument for God’s existence has been far reaching in Western tradition. {After Kant” the proud name of an ontology which presumed to give in a systematic doctrine, synthetic knowledge a priori of things in general, must give place to the modest name of a mere analysis of pure understanding.” Ernst Cassirer, Roussean, Kant and Goethe (New York: Harper Torch books. 1963), p. 95}. E. L. Fackenheim writes that the peaceful co-existence of reason and Revelation was upset by Kant’s revolutionary theory. Moral autonomy is brought at a price. “This same act which appropriates the God-given moral law reduces its God-givenness to irrelevance”. {E. L. Fackenheim, “The Reveled Morality of Judaism and Modern Thought: A Confrontation with Kant. Quest for past and future(London and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), p. 215}. In other words, in a world made vulnerable to secularity by scientific discoveries, Kant provided the clue to moral independence. By granting him a self-legislating will, he made possible the phenomenon of man, master of his own destiny and standing alone at the crossroads of history.
Kant had upset the balance between reason and Revelation. Hegel by combining them, in an unprecedented way finally ushered in that age of secularity, which has come to stay in Western tradition. I the wonderful architectonic of Hegelian philosophy, the eschatological fulfillment of Christianity is transformed into the dialectical movement of the world-spirit, moving inevitable toward self-realization in the future. History itself is divinised and made to lead up to the historical situation in which Hegel found himself, and which, for him was the peak of cultural advancement.{Karl Loewith, form Hegel to Nietzsche, tr. David E. Green (New York: Doubleday &Co., Inc., 1967), pp.32-33}. “In this last stage of the history of the European spirit pure free will, is finally produced, which itself both will, knows what it wills,” writes Karl Loewith.{Ibid., p. 32}.
Hegel’s understanding of history is of the greatest importance because for almost one century it was he who set the tone for European philosophy either through his followers or his critics. In him was completed the substitution of Christianity by an overriding faith in the historical destiny of European man. History, therefore, was not entirely what has happened but what could be made to happen. This secularization of the religious vision of salvation, brought into vogue the many philosophies of history which supplanted Biblical faith. Western civilization for centuries had been sustained by faith in the past; the message of charity towards all fellow man as we hope for mercy from God; and a hope for the further in which was promised salvation. For religion to be meaningful, a teleological setting was necessary. By conferring fluidity to the dimension of truth {H. H. Berger, progressive and Conservative Man (Pittsburgh Duquesne University Press, 1971), p. 34}, Hegel guaranteed that a quality of religiosity would pervade all theories of progress which became current since his time.{Quoting Prof. Bury, Carl Becker writes‘……however formulated with whatever apparatus of philosophic or scientific terminology defended, the doctrine (of progress) was in essence an emotional conviction, a species of religion-a religion which according to Prof. Bury, served as a substitute for the declining faith in the Christian doctrine of Salvation.’ Progress and Power (New York: Random House, 1965), p.7}.
The nineteenth century saw the dislodgement of religion from its pivotal role in human life, and an upsurge of confidence in progressive involvement in life of the world. Man, for the first time, knew himself to be the creator and maker of the future. The material well being made possible by scientific discoveries and actualized by the Industrial Revolution was not unwelcome to the men of an age of expanding horizons. This manner of good life could be easily aligned to a life of obedience to the Divine Will because men saw themselves as the chosen liberators of the entire would. According to Carl Becker:
The long treasured vision of a Golden Age
once identified with the creation of the world
by capricious, inscrutable gods, and then
transferred to the beatific life after death in
the Heavenly City, is at last identified with
the progressive amelioration of man’s earthly
state by the application of his intelligence
to the mastery of the outer world of things
and to the conscious and rational direction of
social activities. { Carl Becker, The Heavenly City (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1947), p. 85}.
The nineteenth century, flew by on the wings of a great enthusiasm in the various fields of human enterprise. It is recognized as the age of progress; {The idea of progress, first explicitly stated by Condorcet in the eighteenth century, viewed material well-being as essential to individual liberty and peace. “In the course of the nineteent