Subject: Purna and prakriti -- How can nature be complete?

[Guest guest]

Dear Shri Madathil,

 

Yes indeed, I must agree that you are right to say:

 

"There of course is a difference between phusis [nature] and tekne

[artifice, technology]. But, as the unmitigated protagonists of

fullness, are we not bound to include all tekne under phusis? Weren't

all that we term artificial conceived in our minds and created by us?

How could then they be external or extra-phusis? In fact, this is the

opinion aired and shared by many a Western thinker in the last

century. The nuclear bomb is thus fullness as also the olive branch

and the doves of peace."

 

If nature is understood in its completeness, then nothing can be

'extra-phusis' or 'supernatural'. And yet, through 'individual' or

collective ego, we have an ingrained habit that keeps on thinking of

our petty artifice as somehow outside or beyond nature. Such thinking

is of course a self-contradicting confusion of puffed-up imagination.

As the Gita says (3.27 and 3.33):

 

Everywhere all acts are done

by nature's manifesting qualities.

Mistaking ego for the self,

a person thinks: "I am the doer."

 

One acts according to one's own nature.

A learned, knowledgeable person

is no exception. Beings follow nature.

What will holding back achieve?

 

The Gita is here asking a very delicate question. What can be achieved

by standing back from nature's manifesting acts? In a variety of ways,

the Gita tells us that all our physical and mental doings must be left

to nature -- so that we stand in true knowledge, utterly disinterested

in all personal and cultural techniques of achieving various partial

ends. In the last chapter of the Gita (18.3), Krishna tells Arjuna

that such knowledge is the inmost heart of nature, where all division

ends:

 

Pure knowledge is just that by which

one changeless principle

of undivided nature

is seen in all divided things.

 

That's what you need to know.

 

In order to describe that changeless principle, scholars use the word

'metaphysical'. Literally, the word means 'supernatural' -- from

meta-' meaning 'super-' or 'beyond', and 'phusis' meaning 'nature'.

Actually, the word 'metaphysics' has a curious history. It came into

prominence with the editing and arrangement of Aristotle's writings.

The writings were arranged into sections, and the section on nature

was called 'ta phusika' or 'the physics'. The following section, on

first principles, was accordingly called 'ta meta ta phusika' or 'the

(section) after the physics'. This phrase was shortened to 'ta

metaphusika' or 'the metaphysics'. And from there, the name has come

to be used in general to describe a science of first principles, which

are conceived to underlie the phenomena of nature.

 

Curiously, metaphysical principles are often described in the plural,

as though many things could come first all at once. But, since the

word 'first' does imply a primary unity, there is a tendency for

'metaphysics' to reduce the number of principles towards a final one.

The fewer the principles become the more they are described as

'metaphysical', as though they were further and further removed from

nature. And massively imposing structures keep on being built -- to

try explaining how so many phenomena could arise from such a few

principles, or even from a single one.

 

The structures must of course seem artificial; but in the end they can

only work by leading back to the heart of nature, to that which is

utterly and completely natural. It is not nature that needs

transcending, but only the trappings of constructed scholarship and

learning. Where any trappings are retained, so too is a confusion that

needs clearing, by carefully distinguishing the superficial artifice

from what's more truly natural.

 

And here we are of course back at the inherent paradox of advaita

enquiry. It keeps relentlessly distinguishing what's different, in

search of an impartial truth where all seeming differences are found

dissolved.

 

Ananda