So the world is space-time, and the whole world is only that. There is nothing else in the world except space-time. It is very interesting indeed to know all these things! If space and time were not to be there, our finite consciousness of being would not be able to know that there are other finite beings in the world. There would be no world if space and time were not. Hence, what we call world experience is space-time experience. Therefore great scientific thinkers of modern times have come to a final conclusion that there is nothing in the world except space and time; and the hard things—the substances and the people that we see in front of us—are not outside space and time. They are the very same Being-Consciousness in themselves, too. As we have concluded that we are sat-chit, every person in the world also can come to a similar conclusion in regard to himself or herself . But that they do not appear to be of the same stuff as we are made of, that they are objects of our perception with whom or with which we have to deal in an externalised manner, is a condition brought about by the intervention of space-time. These are hard things for the brain to comprehend. Our minds are not made in such a way as to be able to go deep into these difficulties.

There is a famous thesis written by a most up-to-date scientific philosopher, Samuel Alexander, who gave the famous Gifford lectures called Space, Time and Deity. It is one of the most outstanding productions of modern times, in which and by which argument we are brought face to face with this final position that the world seems to be constituted of space-time only. Space-time is the matrix of all things and, therefore, space-time does not mean emptiness.

We think that space is emptiness, and void, and nil—a zero. It is not a zero; it can contain everything. A zero cannot be the medium of the communication of things. When I speak, you hear what I speak. An emptiness or a void cannot be the means of communication of sound. We have television and radio, which means the possibility of conveying vibrations through a medium which is sometimes called ether; we may call it space, or by any other name. If it was a total exhaustion of all things—a total minus—there would be no television, no radio; no wireless communication would be possible.

There is a substantiality and a tangibility and a reality of some sort even in space, which appears to be a nothing before us. That which is between you and me is not emptiness. It is a very living and substantial something which is the basis of what we call the world structure. It is through space and time that we are beholding objects of the world and, therefore, we are seeing the objects of the world as totally outside us. The work of space and time is to compel consciousness to project everything externally and to make it impossible for us to know things as they really are, but only as they appear through the spectacles of space and time. So reality, as such, cannot be known, says the agnostic—from a different angle of vision, of course.

Now we have to continue the thread of this very same argument up to the point of the great question before us. How do we know that things are outside us? This subject of the process of knowing things which we are not, the ‘not me’, the ‘not I’, the ‘other than what I am’—how is it possible for me to know that such a thing exists, when I am not that? How can the ‘I’ know the ‘not I’? The ‘I’ and the ‘not I’ are contradictions; they are opposites. How could a position know an opposition? This is the subject of a great philosophical theme called epistemology, which is a technical term which simply means the knowledge of the very process of coming to know that things are.

The analytical studies in this direction will bring us no worthwhile fruit. All epistemology has been a failure, finally, because if it is true that we are not in a position to know anything except in terms of space and time, we have to conclude that our knowledge, whatever be the form of that knowledge, is an imperfect knowledge of things. My knowledge of the fact that people are seated in front of me is conditioned by the operation of space and time and, therefore, it is called empirical knowledge. It is sensory, conditioned, limited to space and time and, therefore, it is not true knowledge. It is a characterisation rather than an insight. When I see you, I am not seeing what you are, but what you appear to be in terms of space-time conditions. The characterisation of an object is the limitations put upon it by definitions of the object. I know that you are seated in front of me by a defining characteristic which is foisted upon you by the operation of space and time. There are features which characterise the existence of things or persons. We do not actually see persons and things, but only characterisations.

Definitions, or the qualities that go to define something, and the thing that we are—the thing-in-itself, as people say—is unknown and incapable of being known because we know only the conditions in which the thing-in-itself is placed. What we know are only conditions, characterisations, definitions, qualities, attributes, and not that particular inscrutable thing at the back of what is seen through the eyes, sensed through the senses or even known mentally or rationally. So if philosophy is to be regarded as an insight into the true nature of Ultimate Reality, such a philosophy does not exist in this world.

This is a despair to which thinkers like Immanuel Kant—the Copernican philosopher, as people call him—came to land themselves. There is no such thing as philosophy of reality. Nobody can know it. Nobody can know it, because every knowledge is conditioned by space and time, so what we are seeing is only space and time—or space-time, as it is called. We are really helpless; we have nobody to help us. Nobody can help us because that somebody whom we would like to help us is, again, only a formation that we conceive through space and time. Thus, even the concept of God appears to be spatio-temporally conditioned.

We cannot know God as He is through our minds. Rationally, by arguments, by logic, God cannot be known. Why God?—we cannot know even a sand particle on the Ganga bank, as it is in itself. We can know it only as it appears under conditions imposed upon it by space-time. And do not think space and time are simple things; they are terrible limitations, and they condition the very way in which we think. So, how do we know things? How do I know that you are, and how do you know that I am, and how does anyone know that anything is? This is the problem of knowledge—the epistemological predicament.

Here, we should say that the insight of the Eastern sages has gone deeper than the psychological analysis of Western thinkers like Locke, Berkeley, Hume, etc. Because they were admittedly empirical philosophers, it was not possible for them to go deeper than the structure of the mind and the psychical reason. Reason is the highest endowment of man, and one cannot imagine that there can be anything superior to reason in the human individual. There were also certain geniuses in the West who may be said to have stumbled into a strange way of knowing which is non-empirical and accepted the possibility of such a thing as a non-empirical mode of knowing things. Plato, for instance, was one such stalwart in the field of philosophy, and there were some others also. Though they were also compelled to accept the usual difficulty of the human being in knowing anything as it is, there was something of a genius character in them which accepted that there is another faculty in the human being which is superior to reason, by which reality, as such, can be contacted—by a means which India calls yoga.

Yoga means union. Union of the reality in us with the reality in the cosmos is called yoga. The deepest in us confronts the deepest in the cosmos by a commingling of characters and a blending of features, and a unity of existence. This is the aim of yoga, finally. The knowledge process reaches a summit in the attainment of samadhi, the supreme state of consciousness where being enters being. The root of being in us enters the root of being in the whole universe. This is the final meaning of that great, oft-quoted statement tat tvam asi, thou art that—the truest essence, the quintessential root of what we are—the ‘thou’, not as it appears on the surface but the ‘thou’ in its being, free from the limitations of space and time, getting united with the non-spatial, non-temporal being in the cosmos.

We have often heard it said that God is beyond space and time, and hence there is no possibility of knowing God, because we are in space and time. That which is in space and time cannot know that which is not in space and time, so no man can see God. But there is something in man which is superhuman. Man, though he is empirically drowned in sensory perceptions, has something at the base which is called these days, in a philosophical style, the transcendental unity of apperception—not an empirical unity of sensory perception, but a transcendental unity of apperception, not perception. The Self-cognition which is attained by a transcendental means of knowledge is called apperception. It is Self-knowledge, not knowledge of objects.

You may say even now, “I have self-knowledge; I am Rama, Krishna, Govinda. I am Mr. or Mrs. How do you say that I have no self-knowledge?” This so-called self-knowledge of yours as a man or a woman, or a son or a daughter, or an officer, or a rich man or a poor man—this empirical knowledge of yourself is not transcendental knowledge. When you say, “I am sitting here in this hall, listening to what you are saying,” you are empirically thinking, and not transcendentally knowing anything. Hence, what I am speaking to you is empirically conveyed to your empirical capacity to hear, which is not adequate; therefore, merely listening to what I say is not sufficient. It has to go deep and sink further down into a stratum of your being, which is a tendency to non-empirical existence. Therefore, Indian sages have insisted upon contemplating deeply on what has been heard from an instructor or a Guru or a teacher. So do not think that everything is over by listening to what somebody says. This is called sravana, merely listening; and listening is an empirical act.

This empirical knowledge which you receive through the Guru or the teacher contains a transcendental essence, which has to be separated from the conditions through which it has been conveyed to you. I am speaking to you in a language, a sound process, a means in space and in time, and you are hearing, understanding, and appreciating what I speak through your psychological apparatus, which again is conditioned by space and time. Yet, there is a substance that is conveyed through the empirical process. This substance has to sink into you by a deeper reflective analysis called manana; sravana is hearing, listening to what is told to you, and manana is reflection; and there is a further, deeper process called nididhyasana where it is understood that what is obviously empirical, which cannot be anything but empirical, carries with it, at the base, a transcendental meaning.

As I said yesterday, we belong to four levels of being: the conscious, subconscious, unconscious, and transcendent essence—the point that is made out in the Mandukya Upanishad. In the language of the Upanishad, these conditions are the fourfold layers of being: jagrat, svapna, sushupti, and turiya—waking, dreaming, sleeping, and super-consciousness. So there is a super-conscious, transcendent, non-empirical root in your being which has to absorb what has been conveyed empirically by instruction by a Guru or a teacher. Hence, yoga is a graduated process. Even when you are listening to what I am saying, you are in a state of yoga because you are uniting the knowledge that is conveyed to you with your mental structure. But, it is an outward process. It has to become more vital and real by standing in its purity, divested of the empirical associations. It is not someone speaking to someone. Though it appears that the teacher as a person speaks to a disciple or a student as a person empirically conceived and known, there is something deeper between these two terms of relation called ‘Guru’ and ‘disciple’. This is the only way I can put it.

The Guru and the disciple are not two persons. It is not one man speaking to another man. There is some deeper transcendental significance between the relationship of Guru and disciple. That is why it is said that the relationship between Guru and disciple is not a human relationship. It is not a friendly attitude of one with another. It is not a gesture of social service. It is a spiritual occupation, a transcendental operation taking place between the teacher and disciple, though the knowledge is conveyed outwardly through empirical means of instruction. It becomes a transcendental essence when, with the help of the force that has been injected by the will of the Guru, the disciple sinks this knowledge deep into himself or herself. Afterwards the disciple ceases to be a himself or herself. It is an impersonal something; and in the process of the deepest contemplation, called nididhyasana, knowledge shines in its utter purity, which is the final aim of yoga.