Reality is non-contradictory and immutable or permanent

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Dear All,

 

Here is Part 2 of " Yoga As A Means To Knowledge. "

 

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" Yoga As A Means To Knowledge* - Part 2

 

The criteria of reality:

non-contradictability and immutability

 

Two of the main criteria of reality according to the Advaita philosophy are

non-contradictability and permanence or immutability. Non-contradictability is

best illustrated by the case of illusion or false knowledge, which is

subsequently contradicted when we are disillusioned. For instance, when we

mistake the stump of a tree seen at night for the crouching figure of a man,

this false knowledge is expressed when we say: 'That is a crouching man there',

and is subsequently refuted when we find that what we have seen is a tree stump.

Illusory knowledge is clearly often contradicted and negated by more reliable

empirical knowledge. But it is not only illusory knowledge which is contradicted

in this way. Much empirical knowledge is also superseded in much the same way. A

philosopher like Russell might maintain that this is not true contradiction but

'successive approximation' to truth in which 'each new stage results from an

improvement, not a rejection, of what has gone before'*, but it is equally fair

to say that, for instance, the Einsteinian theory of relativity has not only

refined but has actually contradicted the Newtonian conception of an absolute

time and space. Another example is the conception of 'matter' as the substance

out of which the world was made, which has been 'contradicted' by the more

modern conception of the world as made of the unsubstantial play of

electromagnetic energy. According to the yogis all our empirical conceptions

have an element of illusion about them which an investigation of reality will

dispel and show to be misleading.

 

The other criterion of reality, permanence or invariability, is closely

connected with that of non-contradictability. The idea is that the fundamental

truth or reality is the invariable factor in experience with its ever varying

manifestations. One of the chief processes for arriving at truth is therefore an

enquiry (vichara) undertaken to discriminate the invariable from the variable

(anvaya and vyatireka as it is called in Sanskrit), the invariable being the

more real element while the variable is relatively unreal and adventitious. This

is akin to the scientists' search for the one unchanging law governing all the

particular instances which are experimentally observed, the search for a unity

in diversity. Ultimately, the yogis hold, reality must be that which abides

unchanged throughout the three divisions of time - past, present and future.

Indeed it must transcend time, for it must be that in which time itself exists.

 

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

1960.

 

*The History of Western Philosophy, page 864.

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 70-71