Transcendental existence (paramarthika satta)

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Dear All,

 

And here is Part 3 of " Yoga As A Means to Knowledge " !

 

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Yoga As A Means To Knowledge - Part 3

 

Transcendental existence (paramarthika satta)

 

This brings us to the third category of existence recognised by the yogis,

transcendent existence; and here we are at once in the realm of metaphysics, a

thought which strikes terror into the heart of any modern philosopher,

particularly if there is any risk of his being actually found there! As Russell

has said, the charge of being a metaphysician in contemporary philosophy is

almost as bad as the charge of being a Communist is in the diplomatic service!

But still, if we are to understand the philosophy of Yoga we must resolutely

venture forth into the region of metaphysics, as best we may. But I would say at

the outset that while one can indicate lines of reasoning and traditional

arguments as to why one should accept the existence of a higher order or reality

than the empirical, of a spiritual essence existing behind the phenomenal

appearances of the universe, the yogis themselves do not hold that its existence

can be established by reason (any more than its non-existence can be

established) and their grounds for postulating it or rather describing it are,

strictly speaking, not intellectual at all, but experimental.

 

In fact, among the accepted means of knowing ('pramanas' as they are called),

Vedanta ranks all rational processes of inference and deduction as subservient

to direct perception. Where the two are genuinely in contradiction it is always

perception which is to be preferred. This is so even in empirical knowledge.

Similarly, it is on the basis that they claim to have experimentally verified

its existence that the transcendent reality is maintained to exist. It was

because of this that a great modern yogi, Swami Rami Thirta, was able to call

Yoga 'experimental religion'.

 

This is not to avoid the great difficulties of establishing the validity of

these claims, for we have first, the whole question of whether mystical

experience can be said to give true knowledge (as distinct, for instance, from a

feeling of conviction such as one sees in sudden religious conversion - a

conviction which may or may not correspond to the facts); and secondly there is

the question of what we mean by verification and whether the consequences of the

metaphysical beliefs of Yoga are in any real sense verifiable. These are big

questions which cannot be even considered here. All I want to say at the moment

is that with their emphatic recognition of the essential diffeence between fact

or reality on the one hand and ideas about reality on the other, the yogis have

been well aware of these difficulties and have discussed them with great

thoroughness. These discussions are not, of course, always couched in exactly

the sort of terms which contemporary schools of philosophy would use, but they

are concerned with meeting all objections, many of them very contemporary in

flavour, which the rival schools of Indian philosophy raised.

 

The third order of existence, the transcendent, is held to be the only one which

possesses absolute reality, and it is the reality underlying the universe. As

such it is beyond all finite qualities and relationships. It is that supreme

Being in which the universe and everything in it lives, moves and has its being.

It is not something which exists; it is existence absolute. It is that

underlying reality whose existence confers a phenomenal existence on all other

objects in the empirical sphere. To the God-realised yogi it is not something

dim, vague and nebulous; it is the most real, the most immediate, factor of all

experience. Swami Rama Tirtha says: 'God must be at least as real to you as

objects', and the implication of the remark is that He is really very much more

so. The transcendent both is and is not something outside ordinary experience;

it is outside our experience because we are deluded, overwhelmed by a wrong view

of things, hypnotised by the wrong ideas created by our own raw and

unspiritualised minds; yet the empirical experience is only made possible by the

transcendental reality in which it takes place phenomenally. Just as the

illusory object - the mirage water, the tree-stump seen as a man, the rope

mistaken for a snake - only exists at all by virtue of the underlying reality -

the more real empirical desert sand, tree stump or rope - so the world of

relativity, of time, space and causation, exists by virtue of its real

substratum, the Absolute.

 

As the real element in each and every object, the transcendental reality is also

present in each and every individual, and reveals itself there as the innermost

Self. One of the Upanishads says: 'The Self is the clue to all this universe,

for by it one comes to know the all.'*

 

If we ask whether there is an invariable element in our own experience, we find

it first in the subjective consciousness which gives continuity to our mental

life with its many changing states.

 

It is a universal experience (says Panchadashi) that the states of waking,

dreaming and dreamless sleep are distinct from one another, but that the

experiencing consciousness is the same...That Self which is one and invariable

in the waking, dreaming and dreamless states, is to be meditated upon. That Self

(Atman) which knows itself as beyond the three states is free from rebirth. (VII

211,214)

 

Of course, as Hume pointed out, if one looks for this Self as an object of

experience in the mind (and the yogis are quite clear about the fact that the

mind is an object of experience and not by any means the subject), then the Self

is nowhere to be found. Experience only shows us a succession of momentary

states of mind, a stream of ideas succeeding each other, often with lightning

rapidity. Once such idea - a dominant one - is the idea of self-reference, the

'I' of 'I went for a walk' or 'I gave so-and-so a piece of my mind'. This is not

the self, but the idea or vritti of egoity. As the Sanskrit word for it implies,

it is nothing but yet another idea in the mind, but one 'of the form of I'

(ahankara). The ego, however, is not an invariable element in experience, and

the real Self is other than this:

 

That Self (Atman) which is not subject to experience in any of the three states,

which can be called pure consciousness, the witness, the supreme Self, and which

is neither the enjoyer, the enjoyment nor the object of enjoyment, That I am.

(Kaivalya Upanishad I.18)

 

The Teacher of Yoga in the oldest of the Upanishads says, instructing his pupil:

'You cannot know the knower of knowing'. In other words, it is useless to expect

to see the Self as an object. It is transcendental because it is beyond the

grasp of the mind, being the consciousness which illumines the mind.

 

This being so, it is clear that the ordinary means of knowing are incompetent to

establish the existence of such a spiritual reality. It is 'that from which mind

and speech turn back baffled'. With a pair of tongs we can grasp any outer

object, but the tongs cannot grasp the hand which holds them. It is in some

sense an analogous situation. But the real Self is ever present (even though

unrecognised) in ordinary experience, and it is clearly revealed when the

obstacles to its perception are removed. And these obstacles are the defects of

the mind in its raw state.

 

Perhaps it is as well to make absolutely clear here that Shri Shankara accepts

all our ordinarily-accepted means of knowing as being perfectly competent in

their own sphere of empirical existence; indeed he regards them as the only

competent means of gaining empirical knowledge. The transcendental knowledge

does not invalidate the empirical knowledge in its own sphere. Sense perception,

inductive and deductive logic, and so forth, are the ways of finding out about

the nature of the empirical world, and no 'higher means of knowledge' can

challenge them in this field. As he says: 'Not even a hundred revelations can

make fire cold'! But all these means are indirect or mediate, relying on

discursive reason or the intermediary of the senses.

 

Transcendental reality demands another means of knowing, and this is direct

experience, 'anubhava', not sense perception, not even experience through an

idea or mental picture, but direct experience. It is the self-luminousness of

reality as consciousness, its immediate self-evidence as awareness, which

enables it to be directly known. Empirical knowledge does not contradict it; it

merely obscures it, just as in the illusory perception 'This is a snake' the

acceptance of the appearance as a snake obscures and falsifies the real nature

of what 'this' is. There is something real there (the real 'this', namely the

rope), but it is not correctly apprehended.

 

From this point of view the activities of the mind, though an essential basis

for empirical experience, are an obstacle to the higher knowledge, and this

obstacle has to be overcome. So the aim and method of the yogi is to discipline

and still the activities of the mind voluntarily for a time at least, in order

that the reality may reveal itself. It is not something to be created but to be

revealed as a fact. But as Patanjali says, the truth is only revealed to the

mind which has become adept in meditation on subtle things (rtambhara).

 

A simple illustration of the principle is given in 'Panchadashi'. A father comes

to a village school to hear if his son is being properly taught. All the

children are reciting the lesson in chorus, learning by rote, but the father

fails to hear his own son's voice among the other boys. He goes to the

schoolmaster and demands an explanation of why his son is not being taught the

lesson too. The schoolmaster asks him to listen carefully and continues with the

lesson; one by one he silences the other boys, until only the voice of the man's

son remains. Then the man realises that his son's voice was there all the time.

The story illustrates the way in which the truth is not known because of the

noise produced by the other voices. The voice of the boy is metaphorically the

still small voice of the divine element in man, and if we wish to hear it, it is

for us to put into practice the old command: 'Be still and know that I am God'.

 

*Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.7

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 71-77