The Additional ONE

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The Additional ONE

K Shankara Bharadwaj

 

“What is Hinduism?”

 

This question has been asked in

different ways and answered in different ways by different scholars for about a

century now. People give different aspects of Hinduism as its practical

definition, like “tolerance”, “eternal Dharma”, “belief in Veda and Vedic

knowledge”, “the set of institutions like caste, marriage” and so on.

 

The very fact that there was no

need felt for defining Hinduism, stands for its universal nature. It is for

practical necessity that people tried defining the word in the past century. The

first best attempt was Savarkar’s booklet “Hindutva”.

 

Hinduism is a comprehensive

system of life, encompassing world view, religion, spiritual philosophy, social

institutions and knowledge system. However, when it comes to defining Hinduism,

it is not that simple. For instance if we try to define it by religion, one

cannot say “worship of so and so God makes one a Hindu”. Because one can be a

Hindu by worshiping any God, or even without worshiping! If we try to define it

by spiritual philosophy, there is so much of diversity in schools of spiritual

philosophy that almost any sane view is considered valid.

 

Seers have therefore defined it

in this way: Any view which accepts the authority of Veda and believes in the

law of Dharma, is Hindu. In fact this definition is clear and unambiguous.

However practical difficulties started with this definition. So many philosophies,

which are socially and culturally Hindu in origin, sprouted. For example

Buddhism and Jainism. Technically none of them is Hindu, since they do not

accept the authority of Veda. However they do accept the notion of binding and

liberation. And socially or culturally they had no separate identity, which

makes the definition technically valid but impractical.

 

Till date, the debate is on, and different people hold

different opinions on this.

 

However as I started reading more

on this subject, it felt that there is something that can put all the

differences in place and give me a better definition of Hinduism. And that is,

the belief in “the additional One”. We can notice that there is “an additional

One” in the entire world view of Hindus, which differentiates them from

practically all other religions and world views.

 

The Wise Minister

There is a famous story that is

said about a wise minister. There was a merchant who was fond of arithmetic. He

had three sons. He wanted to give a little challenge to his sons. Before dying,

he told how to distribute his property among his sons. The eldest should get

half, second son should get a third and third son should get a ninth of the

entire property. While everything could be divided that way, he had 17

elephants which could not be divided that way. Going by the equation the three

sons should get eight and half, five and two-thirds, and less than two

elephants in order. How could they divide elephants in fractions! So they

approached the king. The king had a wise minister. He said that since the

problem cannot be solved with 17 elephants, he would give them one more

elephant from the king’s property. So the total is 18. It is simple now, the

eldest son gets nine, the second six and third son gets two elephants. This

makes the distribution seventeen, and the king’s elephant is still with the

king. Thus by adding an element from outside, the wise minister solved the

riddle of division.

 

Very similar is the Hindu

approach to understanding the world. They enumerate the world, add another

element called the unknown or the origin or God, and simplify the riddle. The

additional element is not really affected, the way the king’s elephant is not

affected. But it will make a difference in the way we can view and understand

the known, the way the king’s elephant does.

 

Another noteworthy point is that every

one of the three sons, got more than their calculation and nothing really less.

 

 

That this approach is very

effective not only in mathematics but in entire philosophy of life, can be seen

from the Hindu world view and institutions.

 

The Additional

Element

We can start with the basic

elements that are said to constitute the universe. While most non-Hindu systems

hold that there are four elements namely earth, water, fire and air, Hindus

believe that there are five elements, the fifth being sky.

 

Now it is not just that there is

an additional element, but an entire theory goes round it. The fifth element

puts all the other four in a perspective, gives a relation between those four

and gives us an entirely different understanding of the world. Sky is the

origin, from which air, fire, water and earth emerge. Thus sky holds the secret

of how the four elements emanate and dissolve. Furthermore, each element is

said to emerge from another element in an order: air from sky, fire from air,

water from fire and earth from water. This follows the Hindu theory of

creation, that everything is created from sound.

 

Each element is associated with

an attribute: sky with sound, air with touch, fire with form, water with taste

and earth with smell. It is easy to match these with the five sense organs. Nose

smells, tongue tastes, eyes see, skin feels touch and ears hear. Each of these

is subtle, and the subtlest is direction that can be known through sound.

 

Also, since all the elements

emerge from sky, sky has all the other elements in it, in their principle or

subtle form. And since other elements come from sky and dissolve in sky, they

contain the principle of sky in them.

 

This way, the Hindu theory

addresses the riddle of creation and dissolution. Instead of just speaking of

four elements in the nature, it speaks of how those elements related, what is

their origin and where they dissolve. Thus it not only speaks of matter or the

gross but also how gross is related to subtle and in turn how subtle is related

to the causal.

 

Human System

The same applies to the Hindu

explanation of life systems, including the human system. Man for instance, is

said to have five sheaths of consciousness. There are three “bodies” of the

being that manifest in these. Physical being or gross body is the outer most of

sheaths. The there are three inner sheaths that comprise the subtle body, which

are senses, mind and intellect. This far, is in total agreement with other

knowledge systems. But what is more in the Hindu concept, is the fifth sheath

in man, which is called blissful or the causal being. It is this one refers to

as the self.

 

It is this causal being or principle

that is said to pervade all the beings, cause and govern their existence. And this

is the one that makes all beings part of the same universal being, and not

independent atomic entities. It is this principle that establishes the relation

between micro and macro, element and its system, man and God. Thus in Hinduism man

is not merely a creation of God, but each being is an external manifestation of

what is inwardly the same divine principle.

 

The principle of “the additional

One” does not stop here. Mandukya Upanishad says that Brahman is four-fold. One

is the gross, one is the subtle and one is the causal. There is still a fourth,

which is beyond description, which is neither of the three nor a combination of

them but pervades all of them. And that is the un-manifest.

 

Another unique feature of “the

additional One” is that it is not outside the entities listed, but within them.

It is two-way, all the entities exist in “the additional One” and the

“additional One” exists as the causal principle of each entity. Sky is not

external, but within the other four elements. Causal being is within the gross

and subtle. The un-manifest is within causal in turn.

 

An important implication of this

is that the “additional One” is the base for all entities. It exists with or

without those entities. It is eternal. It is from this principle, that the

concept of God, omniscience and eternity of God really take root.

 

Furthermore, Mandukya relates

Brahman to Aum and explains the four-fold nature of Brahman. “A”, “u” and “m”

are the three parts. The fourth is “Aum” itself. Thus it is acknowledged that

there is something more than all the entities put together, in the total. Total

is not just the sum of all its components, but something more than that. It is

that “something”, that “additional One”, that brings completeness to the

understanding. This is called holistic approach.

 

Arithmetic

In arithmetic, the “additional

One” takes two forms – zero and infinity. Both are intangible and

non-quantitative, but without which arithmetic as a discipline could have made

no progress. The biggest contribution of Hinduism has been because of the same –

the “additional One”.

 

Behind the conceptualization of

those two forms, is the same approach of considering the “additional One” along

with countable numbers. It is one which has no tangible value by itself, but

puts all the tangible numbers in place, with respect to which all those numbers

really assume their values. In its essential form, it is existent in all

numbers – zero exists in every number. For instance, 1 is one added to zero. In

it’s another form - infinity, all numbers exist in it. Thus the entire number

space is defined between two forms of the “additional One”.

 

Medicine

In Hindu medicine, the

“additional One” takes the form of Prana or vital breath. And it results in a

totally different approach to medical science. Unlike the popular medicine instead

of the medicine fighting the disease, it is the body that fights the disease

when prana is revitalized. Here the treatment is prana-centric and not

disease-centric.

 

According to modern medicine the

remedy (the medicine) enters the body and fights the disease. According to

Ayurveda the medicine revitalises Prana so that body itself fights the disease.

This is the fundamental difference. Both medicine and disease being outsiders

to the body, when two outsiders fight in the body a side-effect is natural. This

is not the case with Ayurvedic system, as its approach is more positive.

 

This is just another instance of

the same “additional One”, and how it can make a difference to our lives.

 

Conclusion

What makes the Hindu system

unique is the mention of “the additional One”. It has different names in

different contexts – holistic, eternal, undefined, absolute, God. It takes

different forms in different contexts, the form of sky in the world, the form

of prana in biological systems, the form of zero in arithmetic and the form of self

in all the beings. It is all-pervasive in the true sense of the word. It is one

which itself is not affected by anything but makes all the difference to all that

we see and know. It is this “additional One”, that the Hindus pray in all the

forms possible.