Ch. 4 - Authority from Maha Yoga by Who

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Ch. 4 - Authority from Maha Yoga by "Who"

We HAVE SEEN that before taking up the Quest of

the real Self — where by we shall become free from

bondage to desire and fear — we have to prepare ourselves

for it by revising our ideas and casting off those that are at all

likely to hamper the pursuit of the Quest. This revision of our

present ideas — as a preparation for the Quest — is called

philosophy; for philosophy is a means, and not an end in itself.

But there are philosophies and philosophies. Unless it

is of the right kind, it will, instead of leading us to the Quest,

actually lead us deeper into the ignorance that is the cause

of all our ills. The right kind of philosophy is an impartial

criticism of all our present notions about the three things,

the world, the soul and God. Those philosophies whose aim

is to confirm these notions are inimical to success in the

Quest; they are to be avoided.

 

Philosophy, therefore, to be really helpful, must begin

with a recognition of the primary ignorance that is pointed

out in the fore going chapter. This means that all our present

ideas are suspect, for the reason given by the Sage, and

explained in the same chapter. They must be subjected to a

thorough criticism, and replaced by other ideas which shall

be unobjectionable and helpful to the Quest.

In the course of this criticism we shall need to consider

the evidence for or against the validity of our ideas. But the

evidence we are to rely upon must be of the right kind.

 

 

 

What is the right kind of evidence? Is it the common

experience of men? That experience is the outcome of the

primary ignorance! To rely on such evidence would only result

in giving the stump of philosophical truth to the ideas we

criticise. We require evidence of a different kind.

We can now understand how it happens that philosophy

has earned a name for futility. It is undeniable that philosophies

have as a rule failed to give us any real help in solving the

riddle of life. This has been particularly so in the West. This

failure was evidently due to their use of evidence of the wrong

kind. They used as evidence the common experience of

mankind, which, as we have seen, is bad as being the offspring

of our ignorance. And they used this wrong kind of evidence,

because they began their philosophies without a recognition

of this ignorance. Naturally they arrived at conclusions which

confirmed that ignorance and barred the way to Deliverance.

 

Some tell us that the body is the Self. Others say that the

mind is the Self. Both agree in asserting that the world is real,

and that the Self is an individual, one of a vast multitude of

selves. Some there are who admit that the Self is neither the

body, nor the mind as we know it, but imagine that there is a

superior kind of mind which is the real Self. All these views

agree in making it out that the Self is finite. But finiteness is

the cause of bondage. If, as these philosophers say, the Self is

really finite — finite in its very nature — then we must bid

good-bye to all hope of becoming free. Thus there is no vital

difference among these views. These philosophies cannot at

all help us in getting rid of our primary ignorance.

 

He that would philosophise aright must avoid the

mistakes of these philosophers. He must choose his evidence

aright. He must seek and find evidence of experience which

is not the outcome of the ignorance.

 

Reliable evidence, therefore, is not the experience of

ignorant men, but that of the Sages, who are wholly free from

this ignorance. Only on the basis of their experience can we

build up a philosophy that would relax the grip that this

ignorance now has on us, and thus make it possible for us to

start on the Quest and pursue it to the very end, so that we

may win similar experience for ourselves.

 

That the truth cannot be reached without evidence other

than the experience of common humanity was felt by Prof.

James of America. He sought to supply that need to the best of

his power in his book Varieties of Religious Experience. In that

book he made free use of the contents of another book, namely

Cosmic Consciousness by Dr. Bucke. The evidence gathered

into these books is that of exceptional men. But all this evidence

has been treated uncritically, because the authors had no clear

notion of the primary ignorance. There are at least three classes

of exceptional men, and all of them are not of the same grade.

That is to say, those who have given evidence of exceptional

experiences belong to one of three classes, namely Yogis, Saints

and Sages. We need to discriminate among them and find out

which of these are the proper witnesses in our inquiry.

 

The evidence of the Yogis is unreliable, because they

have not transcended the realm of ignorance. This is seen in

the fact that they differ among themselves. The same is the

case with the Saints. The Sages do not differ among

themselves, because they have transcended the ignorance.

No Sage ever contradicts another Sage. Revelation tells

us that all Sages are one; we shall be able to recognise the

correctness of this teaching later on.

 

As between the Yogis and the Saints the latter are far more

worthy to be followed than the former, though we need to

discriminate between Saint and Saint, because — as we shall

see in the chapter on Devotion — their views differ according

 

 

to the degree of their ripeness; the nearer they are to sagehood,

the wiser are their utterances. And there are Saints whose

utterances are of a mischievous tendency.We also find that the

Saints have moods, or rather that moods have them, which is

not the case with the Sages.

 

The experiences of the Yogis are highly complex and

therefore their descriptions have an irresistable fascination

for us. But the fact is, they are not even conscious of the empire

that the ignorance has over them. Their goal is not the ending

of the ignorance, but the attainment, within the realm of the

ignorance, of a glorious status that seems to them worthy of

being striven for. They are persuaded that the mind itself is

the Self. And this is the case even when they deny it. They

believe in a blissful existence in which the mind shall survive,

though infinitely glorified and endowed with wonderful

powers. This they consider to be the highest possible gain.

Some of them are more ambitious still. They hope to be able,

after winning these powers — which they wrongly call

Deliverance — to obtain control over the world and then to

change it beyond recognition — to erect a tangible heaven on

earth. The Saints are free from these ambitions.

That neither Yogis nor Saints can have a right vision of

the Truth was clearly pointed out by the Sage Sankara. In his

Viveka Chudamani (verse 365) he tells us that the vision of

the Truth obtained by non-Sages is apt to be distorted by the

interference of the mind, which is not the case with the Sages.

 

According to the Sages this glorified mind of the Yogis

is but a body of a subtler kind. The notion that this is the Self

is simply the primary ignorance in a more dangerous form.

 

The common man is in fact in a much better state than the

Yogi; for the latter has only gone deeper into the ignorance

and postponed the day of Deliverance.

With all due respect, therefore, to the Yogis, we must

reject their evidence. The Saints as a class are worthy of

reverence. But for the present we must put on one side their

evidence also, and build up our philosophy on the evidence

of the Sages alone. But after we shall have done this, we may

take up the evidence of the Saints and make a study of it in

the light of the teachings of the Sages. This study has a great

value for us, as we shall see in due course.

 

There have been Sages in every age down to the present.

Their testimony has come down to us enshrined in certain books

called Upanishads or Vedantas. There are many passages in the

books which carry conviction straight to the heart. In fact it is

the Heart of all life, the Real Self, that speaks to us in them.

The student is thus simultaneously aware of two things — that

the teaching is true, and that the teacher is a Sage.

But there can be no doubt that the earnest disciple would

prefer to these books the words of a living Sage, if he can find

one. There can be honest doubt about the genuineness of the

texts of the ancient Revelation. But we can havenone whatever

of the genuineness of the teachings of a living Sage. And we

are on much stronger ground if the Sage has himself written

down his teachings. There is also this further advantage; if

we happen to be in doubt about the correct meaning of any

passage, we can apply to the best possible commentator,

namely the giver of the Revelation, the Sage himself.

 

The disciples of the Sage of Arunachala are therefore in

a much better position than those that rely on the older books,

or on pandits who have studied those books. The Sage has

written down his teachings, and has himself explained the

meanings of some of the passages. He has also given oral

 

 

answers to a great many questions that have been put to him

from time to time, and these answers havebeen recorded fairly

accurately by disciples. Of course, apart from these

considerations, it is a great thing to attach oneself to a living

Sage, as the older Revelation tells us. Those that fail to do so

are losing a great chance. It is not possible for a teacher who

is not a Sage — who is just a pandit and nothing more — to

understand the spirit of the ancient Revelation. Still less is it

possible for him to rouse the spiritual energies that are latent

in the disciple, for the reason that he himself has not had them

roused. It is necessary that the Guru or Master that is to teach

us should himself be the embodiment of that Wisdom which

he is to impart to us.

 

The teaching of our Sage is therefore for us the new

Revelation. And for the reasons pointed out, this Revelation

is the most authoritative for us. We should take it as the chief

basis of our philosophy, and utilise the older Revelation also,

in so far as it may serve to explain or complete the teaching.

There is, of course, the unexpressed view of orthodox

pandits, namely that the ancient Revelation is the primary

authority, and that the words of a living Sage are authoritative

only as echoes of that Revelation. We shall come to this view

later on. Just now we shall seek to obtain a clear and rational

notion of what is known as authority.

Authority is just the testimony of the Sages, giving us an

idea of their own experience of the True Self, transcending

the ignorance. It is called authority, because it is the only

reliable evidence we can have about the True Self and the

state of deliverance, so long as we ourselves are subject to

that ignorance.

 

There is an apparent conflict between authority and reason.

A European student of philosophy who for some years sat at the

feet of the Sage once remarked to the Sage that, as historyshows,

this is the ‘age of reason,’ and hence it is necessary that the

teaching we shall listen to and accept must be in accordance

with reason. The Sage replied as follows: “Whose is the intellect?

You must answer ‘Myintellect.’So the intellect is your tool, You

use it for measuring variety. It is not yourself, nor is it something

independent of yourself. You are the abiding reality, while the

intellect is just a phenomenon. You must find and get hold of

yourself. There is no intellect in dreamless sleep. There is none

in a child. The intellect develops with age. But how could there

be any development or manifestation of the intellect without the

seed of it in sleep or childhood? Why go to history to discover

the fundamental fact? The degree of truth in history is the same

as the degree of truth in the historian.”

 

We may put it this way. The usefulness of the intellect is

limited by its origin, namely the primary ignorance. To those

that are unaware of their subjection to this ignorance, and to

those also who are content to remain in subjection to it, the

intellect is a good enough tool for all their purposes. That is to

say, it is an excellent tool in the service of that ignorance. But

for the purpose of transcending it, it is of little use. The utmost

that the intellect can do for us is to recognise its own limitations

and cease to hinder our Quest of the Truth. This it can do as

soon as it begins to realise the fact of its own tainted origin and

of the necessity of relying on the evidence of the Sages as a

step in aid of the Quest, by which an authentic Revelation of

the True Self can be won. Thus the conflict between reason

and Revelation is only apparent.

 

Our reliance on the testimony of the Sages is not

unreasonable, also because such reliance is only tentative.

The Sages tell us about the real Self and the way to obtaining

the direct Experience of that Self, not that we may blindly

believe whatever they tell us, but that we may verify their

teaching by our own Experience of the truth of that Self.

The essential part of their teaching is not what they tell us

about the State of Deliverance or the true nature of the Self,

but what they tell us about the method of winning that State.

That is why this Sage always tells the disciple, to begin with,

that he must find the Self by means of the Quest taught by

himself. Whatever else he teaches is auxiliary to the Quest.

And we are to accept all this teaching only tentatively, so

that we may be able to take up the Quest and carry it through

to the point of success.

 

All sense of conflict between reason and faith in the

Guru will vanish as we proceed in the study of the teaching.

The Sages as a rule appeal to our own experience as worldly

men; and the Sage of Arunachala is no exception. It is true,

as we saw already, that our experience is discredited as the

offspring of the primary ignorance. But even out of it the

Sages are able to pick out facts that make it easier for us to

accept their teaching, revolutionary as it seems to be at almost

every step. The light that they shed on our own past

experience enables us to see that, in truth, there is no real

conflict between faith and reason.

 

This being the true nature of what has been called

authority, it follows that in the last resort everyone is his own

authority. Before accepting the teaching of a Sage as

authoritative, he must decide for himself whether or not he is

a Sage — a person having intimate Experience of the Real

Self, and established, by virtue of that Experience, in the State

of Deliverance, which he himself wants to attain. He must

come to the conclusion that the person in question is in the

enjoyment of unalloyed and uninterrupted happiness, due to

his freedom from desire and fear, the two enemies of

 

 

happiness. The disciple is not asked to surrender his reason,

until he finds one to whom he can surrender it with the prospect

of incalculable gain. The Sage to whom he makes this

surrender becomes his Guru or Master.

 

It is not possible to lay down clear rules to guide the

novice in the delicate business of recognising a Sage. And it

may be said that no rules are really necessary. He that is

destined to find a Sage and to become his disciple will find

no practical difficulty in recognising him when he finds him.

For those that are not so destined, rules will be of little use.

Divine Grace plays a decisive part in the process by which

the Sage is recognised as such and accepted as one’s own

Guru. But when once the choice is made, the disciple can

use the available tests of sagehood, in order to confirm his

choice. The chief test is serenity and unruffled happiness,

which is the same as perfect peace. Another test is

egolessness, and this is proved chiefly by indifference to

praise and censure, as noted before. Other tests will appear

in the course of this exposition.

 

We shall now discuss the notion of authority, which is

upheld by the orthodox pandit, who has not sat at the feet of a

Sage. This notion is as follows. There are certain books which

are unquestionably authoritative in their entirety, because they

are of divine origin. Every sentence or clause of a sentence in

them is divine, and it is not permissible to us to doubt their

authenticity and authority. It is said that the books ‘prove

themselves’— that they are ‘svatahpramanam.’In this sense

authority is a kind of spiritual dictatorship imposed from

without. The subservience of the seeker of the Truth goes

further still. Not only must he accept the sacred lore as

authoritative, but he must also bind himself in advance to

accept the interpretations of disputed passages which these

pandits offer.

 

 

 

This notion is one of the many untoward effects of the

organisation of religions into churches or hierarchies. It must

be said that this notion is good enough for the man who is

content to live and die in ignorance. He that wills to rise above

it needs authority of a different kind.

Even the sacred lore is of relative value and needs

evidence of some kind to prove its worth. There is only one

thing that proves itself, namely the Self.

The upholders of the orthodox view do not recognise the

testimony of a living Sage as having any authority of its own.

They believe that a special sacredness attaches to the ancient

lore, and that no additions can be made to it.

But the truth is the other way about. The reason for the

authoritativenature of the ancient lore is the fact that it contains

passages, which are more or less faithful records of the

testimony of Sages that lived in the past. And Sages are the

same at all times. As the ancient lore itself tells us, they are

not in time, but transcend it. Further in the sacred lore we

have the injunction that we should receive instruction from a

living Sage. The truth is that the Sage is not a person, but an

embodiment of Divinity, as the Gita (7.18) tells us in the words

“The Sage is Myself”; and this — which is one

of the fundamental teachings of the ancient lore — seems to

be insufficiently understood by the pandits.

 

Besides, the most natural way for us is to start with the

teaching of a living Sage; for we are able to determine by our

intuitive perception whether the teacher is a Sage or not. We

cannot thus judge any Sage of the past.

Besides, we can never be quite sure that the books as we

now find them are a faithful record of what the Sages had

said. It seems probable that these books are made up of the

actual utterances of Sages and other passages composed by

philosophers who were not Sages. It would seem that the

evidentiary texts remained unrecorded for a long time before

they were incorporated into the books. During the interval

the texts must have been preserved by oral tradition, which

may account for the fact that the same passages occur in

different books, but with variations.

 

The claim that is made for the ancient lore is based on

its being prior in time. But priority in time is no consideration

at all in any inquiry in which the validity of time itself as an

objective reality is in question, as we shall see in due course.

Our first reliance therefore shall be on the testimony of

the Sage of Arunachala; we shall make use of the ancient lore

by way of amplification or commentary.