In continuing with my previous post, I am going to digress a little
in order to clarify a concept that could, and certainly does, have
bearing on the cognitive state, especially when we consider the Yoga of
Devotion, Bhakti Yoga and even, the Yoga of Divine Works, Karma Yoga.
Today, I picked up the remarkable book by Karen Armstrong, "The Case for
God". Indeed, what riveted my attention to the book was the author's
prescient analysis of the concept of 'God'. For quite some time I have
been mildly amused at the constant battles carried out for or against
this term. Personally, I did not really have a conflict as the states in
which I did or did not hold beliefs regarding this were quite disjoint.
When I first did take the term God seriously, it was in a spirit of
total negation if not agnosticism. I was in the heyday of my beginnings
in Theoretical Physics and Kantian Metaphysics and I immediately came to
the conclusion that only simple-minded people could take the concept
seriously, especially the anthropomorphic idea of God. As I began to
proceed in this state of intense skepticism, the very inquiring attitude
that made me reject the concept of God made me turn inward and examine
the foundations of reason and faith. Then it was that I understood the
meaning of faith in reason as in scientific inquiry and that of reason
in faith as in enlightened philosophies of the East which, in the broad
sense had nothing at all to do with religion. Very soon, it began to
dawn that the Western mind makes a lot of unfounded presuppositions
regarding the Eastern ways of 'knowing,' mistaking it to be the same as
Western approaches to religion. To the Western mind, God and religion
seemed inextricably intertwined. Several philosophies, (I use the term
philosophy for want of a better term in English; in the Sanskrit, they
are aptly called Darshanas or 'ways of glimpsing the Truth' or also
'Upayas' or methods and methodologies when the process alone is given
significance) do not posit anything that does even remotely resemble the
Western idea of God. Small wonder then that there is so much confusion
in this field where the basic tenet of philosophy and metaphysics,
-first state the terms, has no foundation. I have been wanting to write
something about this to clarify this confusion of tongues and terms. I
see now that Karen Armstrong has accomplished it in admirable detail if
only one is willing to give the attention and care to read so fine and
scholarly a work as "The Case for God'. Let me quote from this book
here, -
"This rationalized interpretation of religion has resulted in two distinctively modern phenomena: fundamentalism and atheism. The two are related. The defensive piety known as 'fundamentalism' erupted in almost every major faith during the twentieth century. In their desire to produce a wholly rational, scientific faith that abolished mythos in favor of logos, christian fundamentalists have interpreted scripture with a literalism that is unparalleled in the history of religion. In the United States, protestant fundamentalists have evolved an ideology known as 'creation science', which regards the mythoi of the Bible as scientifically accurate. They have, therefore campaigned against the teaching of evolution in the public schools, because it contradicts the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis....
....Atheism is therefore parasitically dependant on the form of theism it seeks to eliminate and becomes its reverse mirror image. Classical Western atheism was developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Feuerbach, Marx, Nitzsche and Freud, whose ideology was essentially a response to and dictated by the theological perception of God that had developed in Europe and the United States during the modern period. The more recent atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris is rather different, because it has focused exclusively on the God developed by the fundamentalists, and all three insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion. This has weakened their critique, because fundamentalism is in fact a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend. But the 'new atheists' command a wide readership, not only in secular Europe but even in the more conventionally religious United States. The popularity of their books suggests that many people are bewildered and even angered by the God concept they have inherited.
It is a pity that Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris express themselves so intemperately, because some of their criticisms are valid. Religious people have indeed committed atrocities and crimes, and the fundamentalist theology the new atheists attack is indeed 'unskillful' as the Buddhists would say. But they refuse, on principle, to dialogue with theologians who are more representative of mainstream tradition. As a result, their analysis is disproportionately shallow, because it is based on such poor theology. In fact, the new atheists are not radical enough. Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God's transcendence. But in our talkative and highly opinionated society, we seem to have lost sight of this important tradition, which could solve many of our current religious problems....
....One of the things I have learned is that quarreling about religion is counterproductive and not conducive to enlightenment. it not only makes authentic religious experience impossible but it also violates the Socratic tradition."
The above observations are made in a clear vein and carry the weight of scholarship. It is rarely possible to discover the truth of a given matter by starting out with a prejudiced outlook. One naturally gets the outcome one wants. As the mathematician Jacques Hadamard said, 'To reject everything or to accept everything, are equally convenient attitudes. Both dispense with the necessity for reflection." Moreover, there is one point that both religionists and scientists miss altogether. It is that the really serious individuals at all ages who have undertaken the quest after the ultimate reality, the Absolute, the summum bonum, Brahman, God, or whatsoever one chooses to call it, have more or less always an overwhelming experience behind their quest. As in any serious undertaking, it is not that these individuals were into a self-delusion. That is perfectly possible and not only in the domain of the spirit. The human being is a complex adaptive, error-correcting, evolutionary, psycho-physical system. Error is indispensable for evolution and so is error-correction. Learning is to cognition what evolution is to life. It is wiser to accord individuals in given domains the respect that one demands for oneself when engaged in one's own domain. Prejudgment does ill to any quest, scientific or spiritual though one cannot deny the necessity of adopting a certain powerful belief system in order to even learn the tools of inquiry. This is true in science wherein one goes as Einstein did by a deep faith, that 'subtle is the Lord but malicious he is not. Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness but not by ruse, and, there are laws of Nature to be discovered.' In a spiritual or mystic quest, it may happen that the particular path chosen entails the necessity of accepting the power of a belief system.and it is certainly not always a categorical imperative. There is plenty of room for skepticism and certain Yogas in fact require one to proceed with caution in embracing altered states of consciousness following mystical awakening. To illustrate this I quote Sri Aurobindo below,--
"You ask me whether you have to give up your predilection for testing before accepting and to accept everything in yoga a priori - and by testing you mean testing by the ordinary reason. The only answer I can give to that is that the experiences of yoga belong to an inner domain and go according to a law of their
own, have their own method- of perception, criteria and all the rest of it which are neither those of the domain of the physical senses nor of the domain of rational or scientific inquiry. Just as scientific inquiry passes beyond that of the physical senses and enters the domain of the infinite and infinitesimal about which
the senses can say nothing and test nothing - for one cannot see and touch an electron or know by the evidence of the sense-mind whether it exists or not or decide by that evidence whether the earth really
turns round the sun and not rather the sun round the earth as our senses and all our physical experience daily tell us - so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of scientific or rational inquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature. As in Science, so here you have to accumulate experience on experience, following faithfully the methods laid down by the Guru or by the systems of the past, you have to develop an intuitive discrimination which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and in what field each is valid, what is the place of each in the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with others that at first might seem to contradict it, etc., etc., until you can move with a secure know-
ledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and I have found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand, if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself, - as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual sta-
ture -you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in Science you accept a teacher instead of going through the whole field of Science and its experimentation all by yourself - at least until you have accumulated sufficient experience and knowledge. If that is accepting things a priori, well, you have to accept a priori. For I am unable to see by what valid tests you propose to make the ordinary reason the judge of what is beyond it."
In modern times, it is increasingly being realized that belief is more often a matter of choice and does in no way point to truth as such except in so far as it may lead to a map of it.
"This rationalized interpretation of religion has resulted in two distinctively modern phenomena: fundamentalism and atheism. The two are related. The defensive piety known as 'fundamentalism' erupted in almost every major faith during the twentieth century. In their desire to produce a wholly rational, scientific faith that abolished mythos in favor of logos, christian fundamentalists have interpreted scripture with a literalism that is unparalleled in the history of religion. In the United States, protestant fundamentalists have evolved an ideology known as 'creation science', which regards the mythoi of the Bible as scientifically accurate. They have, therefore campaigned against the teaching of evolution in the public schools, because it contradicts the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis....
....Atheism is therefore parasitically dependant on the form of theism it seeks to eliminate and becomes its reverse mirror image. Classical Western atheism was developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Feuerbach, Marx, Nitzsche and Freud, whose ideology was essentially a response to and dictated by the theological perception of God that had developed in Europe and the United States during the modern period. The more recent atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris is rather different, because it has focused exclusively on the God developed by the fundamentalists, and all three insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion. This has weakened their critique, because fundamentalism is in fact a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend. But the 'new atheists' command a wide readership, not only in secular Europe but even in the more conventionally religious United States. The popularity of their books suggests that many people are bewildered and even angered by the God concept they have inherited.
It is a pity that Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris express themselves so intemperately, because some of their criticisms are valid. Religious people have indeed committed atrocities and crimes, and the fundamentalist theology the new atheists attack is indeed 'unskillful' as the Buddhists would say. But they refuse, on principle, to dialogue with theologians who are more representative of mainstream tradition. As a result, their analysis is disproportionately shallow, because it is based on such poor theology. In fact, the new atheists are not radical enough. Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God's transcendence. But in our talkative and highly opinionated society, we seem to have lost sight of this important tradition, which could solve many of our current religious problems....
....One of the things I have learned is that quarreling about religion is counterproductive and not conducive to enlightenment. it not only makes authentic religious experience impossible but it also violates the Socratic tradition."
The above observations are made in a clear vein and carry the weight of scholarship. It is rarely possible to discover the truth of a given matter by starting out with a prejudiced outlook. One naturally gets the outcome one wants. As the mathematician Jacques Hadamard said, 'To reject everything or to accept everything, are equally convenient attitudes. Both dispense with the necessity for reflection." Moreover, there is one point that both religionists and scientists miss altogether. It is that the really serious individuals at all ages who have undertaken the quest after the ultimate reality, the Absolute, the summum bonum, Brahman, God, or whatsoever one chooses to call it, have more or less always an overwhelming experience behind their quest. As in any serious undertaking, it is not that these individuals were into a self-delusion. That is perfectly possible and not only in the domain of the spirit. The human being is a complex adaptive, error-correcting, evolutionary, psycho-physical system. Error is indispensable for evolution and so is error-correction. Learning is to cognition what evolution is to life. It is wiser to accord individuals in given domains the respect that one demands for oneself when engaged in one's own domain. Prejudgment does ill to any quest, scientific or spiritual though one cannot deny the necessity of adopting a certain powerful belief system in order to even learn the tools of inquiry. This is true in science wherein one goes as Einstein did by a deep faith, that 'subtle is the Lord but malicious he is not. Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness but not by ruse, and, there are laws of Nature to be discovered.' In a spiritual or mystic quest, it may happen that the particular path chosen entails the necessity of accepting the power of a belief system.and it is certainly not always a categorical imperative. There is plenty of room for skepticism and certain Yogas in fact require one to proceed with caution in embracing altered states of consciousness following mystical awakening. To illustrate this I quote Sri Aurobindo below,--
"You ask me whether you have to give up your predilection for testing before accepting and to accept everything in yoga a priori - and by testing you mean testing by the ordinary reason. The only answer I can give to that is that the experiences of yoga belong to an inner domain and go according to a law of their
own, have their own method- of perception, criteria and all the rest of it which are neither those of the domain of the physical senses nor of the domain of rational or scientific inquiry. Just as scientific inquiry passes beyond that of the physical senses and enters the domain of the infinite and infinitesimal about which
the senses can say nothing and test nothing - for one cannot see and touch an electron or know by the evidence of the sense-mind whether it exists or not or decide by that evidence whether the earth really
turns round the sun and not rather the sun round the earth as our senses and all our physical experience daily tell us - so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of scientific or rational inquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature. As in Science, so here you have to accumulate experience on experience, following faithfully the methods laid down by the Guru or by the systems of the past, you have to develop an intuitive discrimination which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and in what field each is valid, what is the place of each in the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with others that at first might seem to contradict it, etc., etc., until you can move with a secure know-
ledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and I have found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand, if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself, - as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual sta-
ture -you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in Science you accept a teacher instead of going through the whole field of Science and its experimentation all by yourself - at least until you have accumulated sufficient experience and knowledge. If that is accepting things a priori, well, you have to accept a priori. For I am unable to see by what valid tests you propose to make the ordinary reason the judge of what is beyond it."
In modern times, it is increasingly being realized that belief is more often a matter of choice and does in no way point to truth as such except in so far as it may lead to a map of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment