Yoga As A Means To Knowledge

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Dear All,

 

" Yoga As A Means To Knowledge " includes the sub-titles of 'True and false

knowledge', " The criteria of reality: non-contradictability and immutability "

and " Transcendental existence (paramarthika satta)'.

 

i have posted them in three consecutive posts for you, so they are not too long.

 

The material in them is really important to know. Later on, i would like, in

fact, to use Shri Mataji's teachings, and back them up with excerpts from " Yoga

As A Means To Knowledge " .

 

A whole new vista has opened up!

 

Meanwhile, enjoy!

 

regards,

 

violet

 

 

 

Yoga As A Means To Knowledge* - Part 1

 

The title of this talk, 'Yoga as a means to knowledge', may appear a little

provocative, for the spirit of the age has little sympathy with mysticism or

with any means of knowing other than sense experience and reasoning; but it is

important to realise that it is as a means to knowledge that Yoga is practised

and that all other aspects of Yoga - meditation, self-discipline, enlightened

action and worship - serve merely as preparatory aids to the attainment of a

knowledge of reality.

 

But what is the nature of that reality which it offers knowledge of? And what is

the attitude of Yoga to the traditional everyday sources of knowledge - sense

perception, inference and so forth? A good deal of nonsense is current about the

teachings of Yoga on this subject. For instance, some people, because of its

supposed pre-occupation with introspection and the states of the mind, imagine

that it holds that 'everything is in the mind' or that it believes that 'the

world is only a dream'. But Shri Shankara and the other philosophers of the

Advaita Vedanta are in no sense idealists as, for instance, Berkeley was. On the

contrary, they distinguish very clearly between idea and reality; empirically at

least, the external world and its objects have an existence quite independent of

the individual observer. Imaginative ideas may be dependent on the will of the

individual - 'purushatantra' is the Sanskrit word - but knowledge is

'vastutantra', dependent on the real nature of the object known.

 

True and false knowledge

 

This does not, of course, mean that knowledge cannot be false or misleading. It

can if there is a defect in the instruments of perception, as for instance in

jaundice, when everything is seen as being yellow, or in the double vision due

to cataract when two moons may be seen in the sky instead of one. But this is

nonetheless knowledge of an object or objects existing independently of the

perceiver.

 

Shri Shankara would therefore (I think) be quite content, as far as this point

goes, to accept Lord Russell's idea of 'true' empirical knowledge as

representing a correspondence between an idea (or belief) and an empirical fact;

but, however useful empirically such knowledge may be, he would deny that it

gave an adequate picture of reality.

 

False knowledge represents an idea or belief which does not correspond with the

facts, but, although it is false, it may have a powerful influence on thought

and action. Though the truth of our knowledge depends on what the facts are, our

life and action are determined not so much by what the facts are, as by what we

believe them to be. An illustration of this is given in the classic,

'Panchadashi': Suppose that a man's son has gone abroad, and it is reported to

him by someone whom he believes, that his son has died (although it is actually

not his son, but another man unknown to him with a similar name who has died).

Though it is not a fact, yet since he believes it, he goes through all the agony

and distress that he would do were it true. But conversely, if his son had

really died without his getting to know anything about it, he would feel none of

the distress which the facts warrant, since he believes him to be still alive.

The point then is that our state of mind, our action and our vision, depend on

our beliefs and on the quality of our knowledge, whether true or false,

misleading or correct; but the truth of our knowledge depends on its

correspondence with reality.

 

All this may seem fairly plain and obvious, but it is important to realise that

the philosophy of Yoga is based on this distinction between idea and reality,

for many tend to imagine that the realm of mysticism, with its use of meditation

and introspection, represents a retreat from reality into the dream-world of

fantasy in which any experiences which may be achieved are a result of

hallucination or a creation of the imagination or a reflection by the mind of

ideas which have been implanted in it by long brooding. In fact, the starting

point of the philosophy and psychology of Yoga is the recognition of the

fallibility of the raw and undisciplined mind as an instrument of cognition; and

the avowed object of the inner and outer training which the Yogi undertakes is

to eliminate these defects from the mind and to turn it into a more sensitive

and refined instrument. And the goal of this process is nothing other than a

knowledge of reality.

 

What then does the philosophy of Yoga believe to be the nature of reality, and

what is held to be the nature of the world of empirical fact? In Wittgenstein's

aphorism, 'the world is everything which is the case', but what exactly is the

case? It is evident from the illustration of the man's belief about his absent

son that what we think to be the case and what 'is' the case may be widely

divergent. In a certain sense, however, even the false beliefs exist 'as such',

as is shown by their power to produce very real and tangible effects in action.

 

In this connection the yogis recognise three orders of reality or existence:

 

(1) the illusory (pratibhasika)

(2) the empirical (vyavaharika)

(3) the transcendent (paramarthika)

 

The illusory level of existence is not hard to characterise. It is quite clear,

for instance, that optical illusions and dreams exist in some sense, at least as

appearances. The mirage really does appear to us, even though we may interpret

it incorrectly. Similarly, when a rope seen in the corner of a dark room is

mistakenly thought to be a snake, the snake has at least enough existence to

fill the observer with fear and horror and to make him want to get away as

quickly as possible. This is an example of the illusory category of existence,

which includes the objects of dream and imagination.

 

The second category of existence, quite distinct from the illusory, is the

empirical. This includes all the objects of the world as we know it through

reliable sense perception. Now these objects are clearly more real than the

illusory dream objects or the illusory objects of the mirage, but they are

nonetheless not of the highest order of reality; they too, as they are known to

us, turn out to be mere appearances. This is not to say that they are merely

dream-like. Even the earliest of the classics on Yoga clearly distinguishes

between the objects of dream and the waking world. In the oldest Upanishad

(Brihadaranyaka IV.3.10) it says:

 

" And when a man falls asleep, then, after having taken with him the material

from the whole world, destroying and building it up again, he dreams by his own

light...There are no real chariots in that state, no horses and roads. There are

no blessings there, no happiness, no joys, but he himself sends forth (creates)

blessings, happiness and joys. There are no tanks, there are no lakes, no

rivers, but he himself sends forth (creates) tanks, lakes and rivers. He indeed

is the maker. "

 

A fuller discussion of the distinction between the dream objects and the waking

objects is found in the Gaudapada Karikas. Unlike the dream objects the

empirical objects exist 'outside' the mind, but they are nonetheless phenomenal

rather than absolutely real. This is not an easy part of the philosophy of Yoga

to do justice to in a few words, but the conception here is in many ways very

similar to that of F.H. Bradley. If one can put it rather simply, the objects

are regarded as unreal for precisely the opposite reason that Plato regards

empirical objects as unreal. Plato regards the Form or Idea as the real element

in empirical objects, which are simply shadowy and distorted copies or

reflections of the real Form, the Universal existing in the world of Ideas. The

mind therefore approaches much nearer to the eternal truths than sense

perception ever can, because it can contact or apprehend the ideal Form or Idea

of which any individual object is merely a defective copy. The Vedantic

philosophers, on the other hand, have a much more empirical outlook. To them

both matter and mind have an equal reality status, and the mental images,

insofar as they are illusory or imaginary, can in fact be rather less real than

empirical objects. In these objects it is the form which is considered by the

Vedantin to be the unreal element - precisely what Plato thought was real! - and

what gives reality to the object is the real substratum, the real substance (in

Spinoza's sense of 'that which stands under the appearance') which gives it

existence. This reality, the only entity which can be called real without

qualification, is the Absolute. It is (so to speak) like the canvas upon which

the objective pictures are painted.

 

Just as in the illusory mirage or in the rope mistaken for a snake, the illusion

has something real upon which it is superimposed, so in the empirical existence

also, objects as presented to us are appearances which rest on an underlying

reality. Their phenomenal nature is shown in experience by the fact that they

are transient and perishable, that they come into existence, abide for a time,

and then disappear. They are forms imposed on an underlying reality, just as

from a piece of gold different objects may be made with this form or that, but

the abiding reality in them is not their form but the substance gold. Moreover,

as empirical objects, the yogis predict that if they are investigated by the

scientist or the philosopher in an attempt to find out exactly what they are in

themselves, divested of all adventitious attributes, they will elude our grasp

and turn into something unknown and ultimately unknowable. As products of the

energy maya, they cannot be said to be real or unreal. They are not unreal

because they are there, but they are not truly real because they have no

independent existence; they are contingent beings. Hence it is said in the

Upanishads that the multiplicity of empirical objects exists only as 'names and

forms'.

 

This aspect of objects is quite familiar to Western philosophers, of course,

though not all would interpret it in precisely this way. It is that character

which made the empiricist Locke say that when it was divested of qualities,

relations and attributes, the object became (as he put it) 'a something I know

not what'. Kant's doctrine of the unknowable 'thing-in-itself' is a development

of the same theme. But nearest to the Vedantins, in the radicalness of his

criticism of the inherent contradictoriness and impossibility of our everyday

conceptions of objects as real things possessing attributes and relations, is

Bradley.

 

Another reason that objects possess an intermediate status is that they are

creations of the creative energy of nature (maya-shakti or prakriti). Both

matter and mind are equally creations of this primordial energy. But it is

pointed out in the yoga classics that we cannot say of energy that it exists or

does not exist. It is a power or a potentiality which is clearly seen only by

its effects, and it cannot exist apart from some entity in which it must inhere.

If we consider the burning power of fire, this can only be seen to exist when it

produces effects and burns something. In Panchadashi (XIII 40-41) it says:

 

" There are therefore three entities: the creations of power, the imperceptible

power itself (shakti) and the substratum in which they both inhere. The first

two exist singly and in turn, whereas the third is the constant ever-abiding

reality. The creations of power present an appearance but have no real

substance, as they are subject to creation and destruction. When they appear,

men give them the names by which they are known. When their manifest forms

perish, their names continue to be used. Since they are only indicated by words,

their existence is purely nominal. "

 

This conception of power or energy as the basis of the world of nature has an

astoundingly modern ring about it all, for, as we all know, science by its

investigations has succeeded in banishing 'matter' as such from the world and

has left us only with energy, with events. What is disturbing to the old naive

realistic view of things is that with the disappearance also of the luminiferous

ether, we are left with nothing objective in which that electromagnetic energy

can inhere. As Russell says, the physicist's conception of the world is of a

fire without fuel or substance. All we are left with is a description of the

burning. (see page 53). All this seems very Vedantic. Furthermore, there are now

quite well recognised restrictions upon the completeness of the knowledge which

we can get of physical events, such as that expressed in Heisenberg's famous

principle of indeterminacy, which suggests that the yogis may also have been

making a valid point in predicting the ultimate unknowability of the products of

nature. Of course, to accept this is not necessarily to adopt a defeatist

attitude towards the possibility of future fundamental advances in scientific

knowledge; it is only to recognise that, however great the scope of

investigation, the knowledge which it yields will still have certain

limitations, implicit in all empirical knowledge, and that the ultimate secrets

of the reality behind the appearances in the universe may have to be sought for

in another way. This is precisely the position of the yogic philosophy, which

does not deny the validity of empirical knowledge 'within its own sphere', but

considers it the sphere of practical usefulness rather than that of absolute

truth.

 

I am well aware that this is a very inadequate account of the matter, but hope

enough has been said to show what is meant by the second or empirical category

of existence, different both from the illusory (which is less real) and the

transcendent (which is more so). It is the sphere of practical 'common sense'

reality, good enough for the commerce of everyday life; in fact, the Sanskrit

word for it, 'vyavaharika', comes from a root word meaning 'commerce'. Empirical

objects may be appearances, but they 'work in practice'. You may remember the

apocryphal story, current at the time of large scale black market deals in the

war, of the merchant who bought a lorryload of tinned food at a very good price.

He got hold of a tin and opened it, only to find to his disgust that the

contents were rotten. But when he protested to the seller, he was met with an

expression of injured innocence and the remark: 'My dear fellow, you did not

open those tins, did you? They were not for eating; they are only for buying and

selling!' It is somewhat the same with the Vedantic view of empirical objects.

They hold that they serve very well in practice, but they do not stand up to

close scrutiny. And the yogi might very well cite as a modern instance the

enormous usefulness to us of the electron, which we employ and bend to our

purposes in a hundred thousand different ways, although we are quite unable to

say whether it is a wave or a particle or neither or both.

 

Many empirical philosophers, like Hume and Russell, who examine the claims of

empirical knowledge to logical validity or reliability, are driven back, after a

recognition of these inadequacies, to a modest dependence on a 'common sense'

point of view. They admit (like Plato) that there is no certainty in the

knowledge derived from sense experience, but attempt to find ways of

distinguishing some forms of this knowledge as more reliable than others. In all

this the Yoga philosophy would not disagree with them. Where it parts company

from them is where they become dogmatic in denying any other form of valid

knowledge.

 

*A lecture given to the Oxford University Yoga Club on 27th January 1960.

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 62-70