Faith, reason and non-duality

[Guest guest]

Namaste Shri Pai,

 

Thank you for your message #33268 of Sep 16, drawing attention to

the Pope's recent discourse on 'Faith, Reason and the University'.

Like you, I found it rather interesting.

 

In particular, you point out that the Pope is speaking of "Greek

philosophy and harmonising it with Christianity and also something

about dehellenisation". And you ask for some explanation of how this

relates to Vedanta.

 

As I see it, the Pope is here reflecting back to a non-dual

grounding that is shared in common by Judeo-Christian faith and the

reasoning enquiry of Greek philosophy.

 

 

Early Judaism -- 'Jehova' as 'I am'

_

 

In early Judaism, the Pope describes the revelation of God to Moses.

To quote from the Pope's discourse, this is a revelation of the

"name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates

this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply

declares 'I am'". That name 'I am' describes a shared principle of

being which is common to all differing persons, beneath all their

differing ways of mythical belief. And thus we have already here, in

early Judaism, "a challenge to the notion of myth, to which

Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close

analogy".

 

 

Greek philosophy -- Belief and reasoned questioning

_

 

Where the Pope thus speaks of "Socrates' attempt to vanquish and

transcend myth", he is referring to a phase of Greek philosophy that

is somewhat like the Upanishadic questioning of Vedic myths in the

Indian tradition.

 

Just before Socrates, there was a Greek philosopher called

'Parmenides', who spoke of two ways of enquiry. One is the way of

'aletheia' or 'truth', and the other is the way of 'doxa' or

'belief'.

 

Here, the Greek word 'aletheia' is made up from the prefix 'a-'

meaning 'not' and the root 'lethe' meaning 'forgetfulness',

'concealment', 'obscurity' and 'death' (as in the English words

'lethargy', 'latent' and 'lethal'). So 'aletheia' implies an

awakening to truth. The awakening takes place through an

investigation and a discovery: of that which truly is, but which has

been forgotten and obscured by ignorance.

 

The Greek word 'doxa' implies belief in some appearance that has

been constructed through perception in our senses and interpretation

in our minds. From this sensual and mental construction, there

arises a problem of imperfect and mistaken appearance. The problem

is that our senses and our minds can make mistakes, as they build up

their perceptions and conceptions of a pictured world. What's

pictured may be shown incorrectly, so that it shows appearances that

are not fully and exactly true.

 

Thus, in the end, it's not enough to just believe in anything that

is produced by any act of sense-perception or of mind's imagining.

To reach plain truth, whatever's shown by sense or mind has to be

questioned further, until there remains no compromise -- with any

variable form or name or quality, in which our many senses and our

changing minds can differently believe.

 

Parmenides is quite uncompromising about the way of truth. He says

(in Peri phusis, 2.3) that its only concern is 'hopos estin' or

'that it is'. Its only concern is with pure being, with what simply

and plainly is. Where being is thus plain and simple, there is no

room in it for anything that ever may not be. So, in that being,

there is no possibility of absence. Nothing previously absent can

ever come into being, and nothing present can ever be absent later

on. True being is just that which does not change. It is completely

uncompromised by all the variety of changing and differing

appearances that make up our uncertain pictures of the world.

 

By contrast, Parmenides says that the way of belief is always

compromised. It's always compromised by a concern which he described

as 'hos ouk estin' or 'that it is not' (Peri phusis, 2.5). Our minds

believe in pictured things that may or may not be. So this

uncertainty of mind's belief must always admit a confusion, where

some mistaken belief in what does not exist has been mixed up with

true knowing of pure being in itself.

 

That knowing is described by the Greek words 'nous' and 'noein'. In

everyday Greek, the word 'nous' is often used to mean 'mind', and in

this context the verb 'noein' means to 'think'. But, in Greek

philosophy, the usage is refined, by distinguishing 'nous' from

'doxa' or 'belief'. 'Nous' is not then a changing act of mind's

belief, conceiving pictures of the world. It is instead the inner

principle of mind's intelligence -- the witnessing principle that

carries on through changing mind, thus knowing what is pictured to

appear. And 'noein' then means just to 'know', as that knowing

principle.

 

With 'noein' used in that sense, to describe an inner knowing,

Parmenides says (in Peri phusis, 3): "For, to know is the same as to

be." Thus his enquiry is aimed towards a reflection back into an

ultimate knowing in identity, where there is no duality between what

truly knows and the true being that is known.

 

Essentially the same investigative reasoning is carried on by

Socrates (as recorded in Plato's dialogues), by Aristotle and

eventually by Plotinus in the late Roman empire -- from where it

passes on to Saint Augustine and the Roman Catholic church.

 

 

St John's gospel -- 'Logos' as the 'word'

_______

 

The pope points also to the gospel of St John -- which was written

in the vernacular 'koine' Greek that was prevalent in the Roman

Empire, somewhere in the centuries before Plotinus.

 

In this context, the Pope says: "I believe that here we can see the

profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word

and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first

verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible,

John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: 'In the

beginning was the logos'.... God acts, sun logo, with logos. Logos

means both reason and word -- a reason which is creative and capable

of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the

final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the

often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their

culmination and synthesis."

 

This spiritual equation of 'reason' and the 'word' is tellingly

non-dual -- in a way that Bhartrihari's Vakyapadiya has made

familiar to us, in the Indian tradition. All our experiences of the

created world are seen here as the speaking of a non-dual truth,

which is at once the complete reality that is known everywhere and

the pure light of consciousness that always knows in everyone. It's

that non-dual truth to which we reflect, through the discerning

logic of true reasoning.

 

This may perhaps be seen more fully by quoting a little more from

the Gospel of St John (in the King James translation):

 

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God. (1.1)

 

In him was life;

and the life was the light of men. (1.4)

 

And the light shineth in darkness;

and the darkness comprehended it not. (1.5)

 

That was the true Light,

which lighteth every man

that cometh into the world. (1.9)

 

 

'Dehellenization' -- Opposing faith against reason

 

 

By what he calls 'dehellenization', the Pope refers to a succession

of attempts to remove from Christianity the reasoned questioning

that has been contributed from the 'Hellenic' (i.e. the 'Greek')

tradition. And he is critical of such attempts, because they

restrict what they call 'faith' to an exclusive belief that is

opposed to scientific investigation and reflective reasoning. As I

see it, he is asking for a deeper understanding of the word

'faith' -- so as to allow for a reasoning that questions merely

personal and cultural belief, in search of a more truly spiritual

foundation. In other words, he is asking that our merely mental

habituation of 'belief' (which in Sanskrit is called 'mata') should

be deepened into a more truly spiritual 'faith' (which in Sanskrit

is called 'shraddha').

 

 

Relationship and differences with the Vedanta tradition

_____

 

I would say that the relationship comes from a common grounding in

non-dual truth. And the differences are a matter of external

circumstance. In particular, the Western tradition has made a more

extended use of the written word and its institutional transmission,

in church communities and in school or university organizations. By

contrast, the Indian tradition has made a more intensive use of the

spoken word and its individual transmission from teacher to

disciple.

 

In the modern world, it seems that we need a coming together of

these two aspects, both institutional and individual. But how this

works out remains to be seen, of course.

 

Ananda