|
Listen
to the audio of this discourse
Download
the MP3 audio
We were discussing the nature of knowledge. The way in which we come to know
that the world is there outside us is a very important matter, indeed, in
the conduct of our life. Our relationship with things, and our conduct in
life, depend upon the way in which we understand things. The process of the
knowledge of things entirely determines the way in which we behave with things;
hence, the importance of the study of the very process of knowing. The importance
of it cannot be overestimated, because it is very clear that our dealings
with things depend upon the way in which we know things; hence, the great
significance of the way of knowing. Academicians, in their own jargon, tell
us that this theme is called epistemology. Definitions and names apart, it
is important to know the extent to which we can have an understanding of
the world.
Previously I touched upon the difficulty in correctly knowing anything in this
world. In a way, it appears that we cannot know anything at all in the way
in which it actually is in itself, because of the fact that there are certain
curtains hanging in front of us. There are certain spectacles we are putting
on, through which we behold the world outside us. The very word ‘outside’ is
anathema to the true nature of things. Why do we say that we see the world
outside? Who told us that it is outside? The obviousness of the fact that the
world is outside us shows the obviousness of the difficulty in knowing things
as they are. We have been so much involved in the error of human knowledge
that we have ourselves become a heap of error. Thus, the empirical percipient,
the individual knower of things, is nothing but a heap of misconceptions. To
say that the world is relative is to say very little about it. It is much worse
than a mere relativity of things.
The last words, perhaps, that I uttered in the previous session were that space
and time condition us in an overwhelming manner. These are the principal spectacles
that we put on: space and time. Everything is seen as located in space and
in time because of these spectacles. These spectacles cannot be removed and
set aside. They form part and parcel of ourselves, and are more intimate than
our own skin. Even the skin may be peeled out, but we cannot peel out space
and time from our existence. Hence, it is impossible to know anything except
as situated in space and conditioned by time—more so because of the fact
that the knower of things in space and time is also in space and time. It is
not as if somebody outside space and time is looking at things through space
and time. The man has become the spectacles themselves. He is not putting on
the spectacles; he is himself the spectacles. What a pity! One can imagine
where man stands.
Here is the basic problem of knowledge. All knowledge is mediate, and not immediate—mediate
in the sense that it is a closeness of relationship between two terms of relation,
the knower and the known. As the knower is different from the known, the question
arises as to the way in which the knower can connect himself with the known.
All knowledge is the relationship between the knower and the known; but, what
is the meaning of ‘relationship’? Merely because we utter the word ‘relationship’,
it does not mean that matters are clear. That which connects the knower with
the known may be said to be the relation between the knower and the known.
But, what is it that connects the knower with the known?
The connecting link between the knower and the known, evidently, is not identical
with either the knower or the known. It has to be something different. If the
relation between the knower and the known is a part of the knower himself,
then there would be no relation between the knower and the known. On the other
hand, if the relation is a part and parcel of the known, then, also, there
would be no relation between the knower and the known; so, either way we are
caught. But, if we say that the relation between the knower and the known is
not connected either with the knower or with the known, then, also, there cannot
be understanding of things.
I hope you understand the difficulty involved here. Neither can it be related
to the knower, nor can it be related to the known, nor can it stand independently
of both. Then, what is this relation between the knower and the known? So,
there is an inscrutability about our knowledge of things. We do not know what
we are seeing, and how we are seeing things at all. There is a muddle in the
understanding of the individual in respect to anything whatsoever. Hence, there
is no such thing as right knowledge in the proper sense of the term. All knowledge
is erroneous. We are in a phenomenal world. This is a world of phenomena.
Apart from the fact that the process of knowledge is conditioned by space and
time, and there is a terrible difficulty in knowing the relationship between
the knower and the known, there is a kink in the mind of the knower himself:
a contortion which delimits the very reason of the knower into certain patterns
of understanding—moulds we call logic.
What is logic? It is a system of moulds into which the thinking process is
cast; and we take for granted that this mould is the final thing. But, who
told us that this is the final thing, that there cannot be any other way of
knowing? This is a hypothesis on which we found every type of consciousness
of existent things. The psychological conditions which are the limitations
on the knowing process, plus space and time, make everything almost impossible
in this world. We are in a state of despair in knowing anything. The knowledge
process seems to conclude that we are in a relative and phenomenal world of
unintelligible relations.
But, every cloud has a silver lining. The very consciousness of this difficulty
is a hope beaming forth as a ray of possibility in the deepest recesses of
our own phenomenal individuality. Here, we are undertaking a process of self-analysis,
an analysis of the very fact of our knowing that we are in a phenomenal world.
The phenomenality, the relativity, the un-understandability of things in general,
of the world as a whole, acts as a pointer to a higher possibility which is
the hope of man.
The phenomena indicate that they are phenomena of something which itself is
not a phenomenon. When we say the world is an appearance or a phenomenon, we
mean that it is an appearance of something which itself cannot be an appearance.
There cannot be simply an appearance without there being something of which
it is an appearance. When we say that something is erroneous, we arrive at
this conclusion by comparing it with a standard which is not erroneous. Nothing
can be known to be wrong unless there is something which is right. If there
is only wrong, we cannot even know that it is wrong. So, the restlessness that
the individual feels, the finitude which annoys us every moment of time, the
limitations of which we are conscious, and the philosophical conclusion that
the world is relative and phenomenal is the first step of the ascent of consciousness
towards its higher reaches. There has to be a noumenon in order that there
may be a phenomenon. Technical thinkers tell us that there is such a thing
called the thing as it is in itself which, of course, cannot be known, because
of the difficulties mentioned. But, here, an intriguing position is maintained
by the philosophical thought when it holds that the thing as it is in itself
cannot be known, because the idea that the thing as it is in itself cannot
be known is an acceptance of the fact that it has been known in some way.
The thing-in-itself—that which is the noumenon, that which cannot be
known—is known as that which cannot be known. This is how the mind, in
an acrobatic feat of its own difficult processes in knowledge—even in
condemning itself as a totally inadequate instrument of knowing anything—raises
and lifts itself above this difficulty by the very profundity or the latency
which is behind this difficulty. The noumenon speaks. When a statement is made
that the noumenon cannot be known, it is not the phenomenon that makes this
declaration. The statement that the noumenon cannot be known is not made by
the phenomenon, because the phenomenon cannot make a statement of that kind.
So, there is a depth in the human nature which is beyond the reach of the mind
and the reason; and the empirical processes of knowing are inadequate for the
purpose on hand. Man cannot know himself by the endowments of reason, intellect,
understanding, or even all the psychological operations put together. The potentiality
of the human being is deeper than the psychological operations of the human
being. That means to say that in our daily life now, we are not drawing from
the deeper potentialities of ourselves. We are floating on our own surface,
ignoring, neglecting, being unconscious of our own basic rootedness in something
of which our phenomenal instruments of knowledge have no awareness. Thus, while
a perception, or sensory contact with things, in collaboration with the mind,
the intellect and the reason cannot give us right knowledge, there seems to
be some other way of knowing things as they are—some other means altogether
different from the reason, the intellect or the mind.
Though we operate in our daily life only through the intellect and the reason,
it is obvious that we have something in us which is deeper than, profounder
than, superior to, the intellect and the reason. We have lost ourselves in
forgetting ourselves; and in losing ourselves, we have lost the world also,
because in the ignorance of our essential nature we have, also, the ignorance
of the true nature of anything else in the world. We do not know ourselves
and, therefore, we do not know the world—and vice versa.
This is a magnificent analysis made in Eastern scriptures like the Mandukya
Upanishad, to which I made a reference earlier, and in certain other Upanishads.
Deeper than the waking condition on which man usually operates, deeper than
dream, deeper than deep sleep, there is the true man. The true man is not the
waking man, or the dreaming man, or the sleeping man. There is a superman appearing
as a man in the conditions of sleep, dream and waking. These three conditions—waking,
dream and sleep—are the relative operations of the finitude of the individual.
Our scriptures say that we are caught up in samsara. We hear it said
many a time by admonishers that this is a world which is samsara,
entanglement. Samsara means entanglement, involvement, unnecessary
botheration. We have been involved in samsara, entangled in bondage,
because of the fact that we cannot get out of this cycle of the rotation of
the wheel of waking, dream and sleep. Either we are awake, or we are dreaming,
or we are sleeping. What other condition have we? Tell me! And is it a great
freedom to be subject to these states, like puppets? But the revolution of
these three states and the restlessness of these conditions prove that we are
restless for another thing on which we wish to rest ourselves, finally.
There is a self in man which is deeper than the reason and the intellect and
the psychological functions. The mind that thinks, the ego that arrogates,
the intellect that understands, or the reason that argues, are not sufficient.
What can they argue? What can the mind think, except that which is thus involved
in the limitations mentioned? The process of yoga is the process of diving
deep into one’s own self, which is a simultaneous diving into the depths
of anything else, also, in the world. There is a parallel movement of consciousness
in this delving deep into the waters of the cosmos. The subject that is the
human individual is co-extensive with the object that is the universe; therefore,
the depth of one thing is, also, the depth of another thing. To know oneself
is to know the world, and to know the world is to know oneself. So, the great
dictum “Know thyself” does not mean to know oneself as a person.
To know oneself as one really is, is to know anything in the world as it really
is. Self-knowledge is world-knowledge, and world-knowledge is, also, self-knowledge.
This is the great standpoint of yoga in its psychology, in its philosophy,
and in its spiritual techniques.
The world is not before us, outside us, confronting us. It is a large body,
of which we are a part. This is the reason why we are entangled in it in such
a way that we cannot understand the way of involvement, the way in which we
know things. As I have pointed out just now, the difficulty in understanding
our relationship with things arises because of our intriguing relationship
with the world, which is not a relationship in the logical sense of the term.
We are part and parcel of this body called the cosmos. That is the reason why
we are, on the one hand, incapable of wresting ourselves from it and, on the
other hand, unable to know anything about it.
This intriguing character of our knowledge of things arises because of our
intriguing connection with the world. Here, we come to the cosmology of the
world as a whole, which explains the process of creation. Philosophers, mystics
and thinkers along these lines have attempted to understand the process of
the evolution of things—how things came about—so that we may know
where we are standing at the present moment.
|
