The growth and development of any society depends on the development ……the dignity of the society also. A dignified society means dignified actions of individuals as well as societies concerned. The cream of advaita system is to make every individual acieve … perform is functions that means every individual has to reach the such a hierarchy is uncommon in the advaita system… what is not the hierarchical discrimination but the What it means is that there must be classifications but thy should be performed in a meticulous manner. Such a society alone can be said to be dignified society. Dignified society according to advaita is not a society of high grade professionals like doctors, engineers, lawers etc. but a ….every individual must be able to perform their respective duties at a professionally dignified manner. So, the advaita aims at the discharge of performance. Any society can attain a dignified status when every member of the same society performs his/her respective function in a dignified manner. If sweeper happens to be performing his assigned work much better than the Managing Director, then the sweeper must be adjudged the best individual in the firm. The advaita system says that a person is known through actions and if the actions (karma/functions) are always done in a meticulous manner, such a person can be called a great person; Mahatma Gandhi has been great through the great deeds he has done.
A great society is one the members of which do their functions in a dignified manner and a great nation is the one with such individuals or societies. The takes us to the fact that nobody can be great for reasons he is born to great people or great heredity or great tradition. Suppose somebody says that ‘I’m great because I’m born in India; such a statement is not authentic because a person becomes great only when e is able to discharge his role in a dignified manner. This factor has often been forgotten. There is no meaning in a claim such as India is a great country because it has a great tradition. India can be great only if we recognise that tradition and live according to the standards set. So it is actions that make a person great and not persons that make actions great. This fact has to be admitted as the basic content of Advaitic attitude towards social hierarchy.
The identity between gyana and karma has to be experienced at every levels and every levels of experience must be the experience of the identity between of gyana and karma. When we experience the same in a particular space time context in which one is doing something, at that moment he/she experiences the truth. So, if every person is able to experience such an identity between gyana and karma at every inch of space then naturally every form of karma becomes only the experience between gyana and karma. This fact has often been ignored by the so called experts or pundits, who have got the opinion that master is much higher when compared to a slave. Such discrimination is illogical and draconian in a sense that it virtually denies the natural right of every person to experience the truth in that particular context. If everyone experiences truth then naturally everyone should be able experience the truth between wisdom and action in his own space in units of time. This factor has been accepted by the Advaita system. That is why it never discriminates between one form action from other form of action. But now what happens is that the present day world has classified experience into better one and the weaker one. The better professions include academic, medical engineering, management etc. They strongly believe that all these professions provide us satisfaction because it is a better profession. Lower professions are works like scavenging etc.
Better professions become better only if it is performed in a better manner. The merit of the profession actually depends on the way one performs it. The present day world is in need of better professionals. That is why we are on the lookout for competent persons everywhere. Take for ex. the example of Mother Teresa. The way she performed was very simple when compared to many other higher professions. She was always with the poor and the destitute. She lived with people who were unnoticed by the higher professionals. Therefore, according to me, every society needs a classification of professionals in accordance with an evaluation by the merit and ability of the person.
Whatever be the nature of the society, oligarchic or dictatorship, be the profession legal administrative, technical or unskilled, there must be some classification. This fact is to be admitted. Advaita system believes that such classification should ever be there but evaluation must be on the basis of merit, that is how much each person offer and the grade of justice they give to these professions. Every profession according to the Advaita system is meant for the society. Advaita says that there is no function which can be termed as individual function. So, every person has a social dimension, and every social function has got an individual dimension. Advaita never believes in the separation of social and individual dimensions and separation of professions.
As it has already been seen that word, mind and deed are to be unified at a single point when one wants to transform one’s karmas to nishkama karma. The performance of nishkama karma is bhakthi or devotion. Since devotion is nothing but the performance of nishkama karma and since words, deeds and mind are inseparable in the act of performance of nishkama karma, then it is highly deplorable to say that devotion is inferior when compared to karma (action) and gyana (knowlwdge). But what it really means is that karma, gyana and bhakthi are non-dualistic and are inseparable in the act of performing them. This fact has to be reemphasized in the present day world because the present world thinks in terms of intellectual hierarchy and it believes that a man who contemplates on intellectual concepts are only superior and generally it is perceived that such a person takes the lead over others. But this cannot be admitted as a logical fact or statement woven into advaita system because a man who does something for the benefit of all (For example a farmer who cultivates the land and produces food for the rest of the world) is performing a sort of devotion or bhakthi. Such a man can never be inferior to a person, who discovers a scientific doctrine. But generally it is believed that a person who discovers a scientific doctrine is superior when compared to a farmer. This type of inferiority-superiority distinction can be seen so grave in the present day world. So what I’m telling is that devotion is nothing but performance of karma for the benefit of one and all and a person who attains such a state of devotion must be the most intelligent person because he is a gyani or a person who knows the truth.
Gyani in Indian systems of thought especially in Advaita system is one who knows the truth. Truth is not an abstract entity but a concrete reality to be experienced by everybody, in their contextual limitations. Truth can be known by not by the gifted few or intellectually superior persons only but by one and all. Since truth is accessible to all or known to all then nobody can say that I alone am competent to know truth. To know truth means to experience it. Experiencing truth is an act of karma. Therefore, knowledge can never be separated from karma. Again, let me refer Mahatma Gandhi who was totally against the concept of separating knowledge from practical application. He had the opinion that a person who bursts in line with this impractical idea is violating the eternal vows such as ‘aparigraha’. What it says is that the one who concentrates on karma or contemplates on wisdom may be doing the same non-dualistic act of karma.
It needs no elaboration to describe the very simple fact that the term devotion has been misinterpreted and misused throughout the history of every religion. Devotion has often been conceived as a prayerful life to be devoted to God and prayer has been defined as something that is to be done through the words uttered by each devotee. The question that arises here is, if devotion is something that can be freed from action or karma. If devotion is the means to provide you happiness, then mere lip service should be enough to reach that. This is but a mis-concept shared by most of the religions. All prophets and great men throughout the history of the world have cautioned that devotion should never be confined to lip service, in the sense that devotion can be expressed only through action. If according to the Advaita system, words are only the result of actions and there cannot be words without action. Advaita specifically believes that mind, words and deeds must be unified. If mind, words and deeds must be a unified entity, then it is absolutely illogical to separate one from the other. Truly, one cannot separate words from karma or karma from words and both from the mind of the person concerned. So, the general faith shared by some of the advaitans that devotion is something inferior to action or gyana is absolutely non-sense.
We have already seen that, devotion is the result of one of the forms of manifestations of karma and if so, it is not practically possible to separate devotion from karma and you also cannot attribute that devotion is inferior to gyana or karma. Using the same logic it can be argued that karma and Gyana also cannot be separated. So, what according to Advaita logic is that gyana, bhakthi and karma have been unified at a single point; it is that point of single unity that function at a particular space, time context. In brief, you cannot say that a man who devotes himself in contemplating the high ideas in his life must be better than the person who does something for the benefit of the whole universe. Mahatma Gandhi has once made it clear that the man who does something for the benefit of at least one is better than the person who thinks only in abstract terms in his life for the whole generation. A person who thinks for the whole generation and does nothing to benefit at least one is definitely a logical contradiction. Therefore, according to the Advaita system one cannot argue that the person who concentrates on intellectual contemplation can never be treated as a superior person. But unfortunately, this concept has been shared by some of the Indian Rishis and Indian pundits (learned persons). However, that very concept has to be deleted from the very context of contemporary interpretation of the inter connection and inner connection between bhakthi, gyana and karma. What I am telling is that it is humanly, logically and practically impossible to separate one from between gyana, karma and bhakthi.
How justice can be delivered is a question to be addressed by every community in the annals of history. Justice had been defined as any action that is being done by the might. Hence it got a very draconian doctrine that ‘might is right’. Might have become the right in the sense that whatever is done by the strong must be treated as the just thing. And again, justice had been defined as an action of the ruler not the right of the ruled. Justice had been defined as a gift to be given by a benevolent despot; justice had also been defined as something that should be occasionally given by God. But, according to the concept of the advaita system, justice is something that is to be delivered at every point of time to every phenomenon in this universe. Justice is not a term that can be confined to the affairs of the human beings alone. It should be related to the humans and the non-humans of the whole of the universe. The universe as a whole should be part of justice; in this sense, justice is something that can be attained by the humans for the preservation of the whole universe. That’s why it is said that it is the karma that has to be established. As we have already explained that karma is something that which aims to preserve the existence of one and all. Here, justice is an essential entity and an essential concept to be maintained by every one for the preservation of karma. In this sense, karma is something that is to be experienced and practiced by one and all. This is an important contribution of the concept of ‘nishkama karma’. Nishkama karma mainly aims at the preservation of justice through one and all and it should be given not only to the humans but also to the non-humans.
It is in this sense that we have to define the other terms such as Gyana (wisdom), Karma (action) and Bhakthi (devotion). There is a general concept shared by at least a very strong group of advaitans that there are differences between Gyana, Karma and Bhakthi. Wisdom, action and devotion had always been defined by such a group as three distinct entities and they could even see distinction between one and the other and also they tried to establish, the supremacy of one over the other. According to them, Gyana is the supreme entity and Karma is little below to Gyana, and Bhakthi is the lowest in that hierarchy. Such a concept is absolutely illogical because there are differences in wisdom, action and devotion only means that non-duality cannot be practiced at all simply for the reason that one is superior to the other. The primary aspect we have to note here is that there cannot be any superiority-inferiority type of feeling in the very concept of ‘advaita’. If there are superior and inferior entities with reference to Gyana, Karma or Bhakthi or something else, just like cast differences like Brahmin, Kshathriya, soodra and Vaisya, whatever be the hierarchical distinction according to which one is superior to the other, the first casualty of such a thought is non-duality itself. So in a non-dualistic world, that is in an advaitic set up we have to admit an important aspect that there cannot be any type of hierarchical distinction between wisdom, action and devotion.
An average human being is of the view that the rest should be used as a tool to satisfy his unending desires. Such an attitude really makes us to believe that there is no end to the greed and everything that is capable to satisfy our greed also should be justified as a socio, economic and political activity. This attitude is highly dangerous. The present day economic crisis due to the concentration of wealth with a group of individuals is really the result of the absence of nishkama karma, because nishkama karma believes in the sharing of everything, on the presumption that every phenomenon including a piece of dust should be taken into consideration while thinking about the world. It is a fact that the world cannot be completed without having a specific position attached to a piece of dust. A piece of dust also has got its centre in itself; it never depends on the human beings for its existence; a piece of dust never depends on the whole world for its existence, in a sense that the world also depends on the piece of dust. It is mutual dependence and the mutual dependence beginning with a piece of dust has to be admitted as a reality to be experienced by one and all. This fact has often been forgotten by the present day world. That is why they think in terms of the super power the super star, the super economic factor etc. Nobody is super and nobody is supreme and everyone has to play an equal role because everyone has got uniqueness. The uniqueness of every phenomenon has to be admitted as a reality, the moment we think of nishkama karma.
Nishkama karma never believes in the discriminations of karma on the basis of its merit, never in the sense that the activity of a doctor is superior to the activity of a scavenger. If a scavenger does his duty in a meticulous and a perfect manner that duty must be supreme, when referred to an action that has not been performed properly (for ex. by a doctor). Like this, every individual and every phenomenon has to enjoy uniqueness in this world. Uniqueness, unity and sharing are the three aspects of nishkama karma. Uniqueness has to be admitted as a prelude for the preservation of the weakest. The weakest in the society has often been ignored on the ground that they are insignificant. Nishkarma says that nobody or nothing is insignificant. The significance of a person or an entity or an object or a phenomenon truly depends on the place in which it has already been fixed. Anything in the right place must be significant. So, you cannot say that this is significant and the other is insignificant. Everything is significant in the context in which it has been placed. This aspect also has to be recognized by nishkama karma. The conclusion should be that nishkama karma is a concept that has to be accepted as one of the preconditions for the preservation of democracy, equality and fraternity which are to be maintained as a prelude to the maintenance of justice. When one provides the other with everything he deserves, then what he does is justice.
The democratisation of Karma, that is the acceptance, pluralism and the place of importance of every karma that is to be performed, shows the fact that nishkama karma is never meant for the spiritually affluent few, but it is meant for one and all. Everyone, back from a butcher to the king, has to take part in the process of nishkama karma. Since it is meant for one and all, it is a universal form of performance of Karma and it believes that everyone in society has to perform his or her karma in the nishkama manner. As we have already explained, nishkama does not mean that karma without result but karma with utmost result, but the only difference is that such results are not meant for the individual alone but for the whole universe. Nishkama karma in this sense believes in the sharing of both karma and result.
Unfortunately what happens now is that the present day world order never believes in sharing. Instead of sharing wealth, power etc. the present day world order believes in accumulation and keeping it for oneself. This tendency can be termed as kama. Kama literally means that the accumulation and concentration of power wealth etc. for oneself and oneself alone. Every Asura, that means the villain characters in the Indian systems of thought. Asuras are human beings having certain specific qualities which are harmful to the society. That is why in modern terminology they can be termed as the villains. The villain, whether it is Ravana or Duryodhana, whoever he may be, they believe that everything including the world must be is reserved for them. So they try to accumulate and preserve it for themselves. They are doing meticulous wonderful karma. Take for example the case of Ravana. He was very handsome, very strong with immense potentiality and he had the capacity to implement whatever he thinks to be fit to himself. In a sense he was performing in a meticulous manner. But that performance is kama performance because, the karma and its result are meant for he himself; there was no sharing at all. So what I am telling is that nishkama karma specifically believes in sharing of karma and result.
The present day market economy is only one of the reincarnated forms of Ravana, because it demands everyone to make money, to accumulate money and to keep it for oneself. It never demands that you have to share whatever you have with the rest. Whenever and wherever we lose the capacity to share whatever we have, we are losing the capacity to maintain the nishkama karma. Nishkama karma in this sense can never be confined to the actions of any sort that can be performed by a gifted few, that is why in the beginning of this session I told you that nishkama karma is meant for one and all applicable to both the king and the butcher. Whenever the butcher performs his karma in a nishkama manner that activity can never be treated as a sinful activity and whenever the king rules the country for the benefit of he himself alone, such an activity can never be treated as an ideal one or a nishkama one. If the king wants to peform nishkama karma he wants to perform his duties for the benefit of one and all; that one and all includes not only the humans but also the non-humans.
The very word eco-politics, coined some 100 years back, can be seen within the limits of the nuances of nishkama karma. So, what is meant here is that a person who performs nishkama karma has to think not of oneself but of the universe as a whole. So his commitment to the non-biotic elements of the world also should be taken as an act to be adjudged morally. In this sense, the nishkama karma concept of morality can never be treated as anthropocentric alone; it believes that human beings have got commitment not to the other human beings alone but to the whole universe. Therefore the classic definition that has been given by the western philosophical thoughts, especially the Greek philosophical thought that ethics is a normative science these voluntary actions of human beings living in society is absolutely unacceptable to the concept of nishkama karma, because it believes that human duties should be committed to the non-human elements also. That means that we have to share whatever we have with the rest of the creations of nature. It is in this sense that Mahatma Gandhi once defined cow as the silent creation of God. All silent creations, whether it is movable or immovable, everything belongs within the purview of nishkama karma. Therefore we have to think of a very simple fact that the present day economic system simply negates the performance of nishkama karma.
Duality is a threat against man and God because it creates conflict, competition and chaos. The effect of duality is that it cannot accept co-existence of plurality. Any system, which is incapable to accept plurality, cannot accept democracy also, because democracy is basically the co-existence of one and many at a single individual unit. This type of democratic way of functioning of the individual has been entertained by the ‘nishkama karma’ concept. ‘Nishkama karma’, when it is applied on political theory, justifies only democracy not even kingship because it gives the right to the other to defend with authority and the majority. Duality never gives any form of right to defend with authority or majority because it only insists that ‘might is right’ and need cannot be right in any way. But on the contrary, democracy specifically says that both might and the meek can be right and wrong to some extent. At the same time, it specifically believes that meek also has to play a vital role in maintaining the balance of any society. That is why ‘nishkama karma’ accepts the pluralism in karma at the same time beveling that the best karma is the one that is performed in the best way.
There cannot be an abstract best karma just because of the fact that a particular karma has been entertained by the affluent sections of a society. Take for example medicine and engineering. Now, people are crazy after medicine and engineering, because they believe that medical profession and engineering profession are better when compared to the other professions. This comparison has been made on the basis of the money which they get from those particular professions. The superiority-inferiority concept attached to professions definitely lead the society into conflict. Such a type of conflict can be seen in our modern societies also, not only in India but everywhere in the world. People are running after the best profession; they haven’t realised that any profession can be performed in a best manner. So this pluralistic tendency of the karma has to be translated in to the political system.
When we translate the pluralistic tendency of karma to the political system, definitely we will get democracy. So, ‘nishkama karma’ is a system of interpretation of ‘karma’ which definitely gives importance to the democratic way of functioning. Democracy basically believes that everyone or every entity in this universe has got a definite place to occupy. And that definite place of any object, however insignificant it is, cannot be questioned by the said to be significant entities. That is why Jesus said that a stone that has been left by everyone turns to a corner stone. So, any stone can be a corner stone. ‘Any stone can be a corner stone’ justifies the fact that every human being is equally important in the sense that nobody is insignificant. ‘Nishkama karma’ also believes that each karma is significant. ‘Karma’ attains significance, when it is performed in a better manner. For ex. take the case of a sweeper. If a sweeper performs his duties in a meticulous manner, he would be, no doubt, better than the MD of that firm who performs his duty in the least efficient manner. So, the efficiency in performing human actions can alone be the criterion to entertain or to evaluate whether a particular action is good or bad or a particular profession is superior or inferior.
The system of ‘Advaita’ is logically incapable to justify any sort of discrimination and exclusion on the basis of spacio-temporal demarcations of any sort. Therefore, the term ‘Hindu’ is inconsistent with the well conceived meaning of the term ‘Hindu’. If Hindu is one, who believes in ‘Advaita’ system, we can never brand anyone as ‘non-Hindu’. Moreover, no system of thought, whatsoever it may be, can also be included as non-Indian, if one believes in ‘Advaita’ logic. ‘Advaita’ propagates inclusiveness; it never permits anyone or anything to be kept in the excluded category. In this sense, the categorization of the streams of thought into Indian and Western also is illogical if one uses ‘Advaita’ logic as a tool to understand philosophy. Differences can never be conceived as deficiency, instead differences only justify the existence of plurality, which is quite consistent with all-inclusiveness.
The ability to include everything is the strength of Indian life. Hence it could suffer the test of time. Only all-inclusive pluralistic systems have been able to survive. Non-pluralistic monistic systems have to face its natural defeat. The philosophy of all-inclusiveness is only the expression of non-violence or ‘ahimsa’. The person who believes in ‘Ahimsa’ has to admit the role and relevance of the other even if he/she opposes him. Hence, the doctrine of ‘Ahimsa’; has to proclaim that one has to love his enemy.
This doctrine of all-inclusiveness and ‘Ahimsa’, have got relevance in every area of human activity. The present day economic system eliminates the very existence of plurality because it believes in competition and survival of the fittest. The most important ethical implication of the market economy is that it eradicates those who are not strong enough to make a survival. It bifurcates the whole world into categories of strong and the weak. The weaker section are either terminated or logically vanished away due to the competition which never justify co-existence.
The state of moksha can never be separated from the act of nishkama karma. The one who practises nishkama karma has to be with people in and around his context. Naturally, sanyasa can never be an act of a person who lives in a dense forest totally cut off from the problems of human beings living in a society. He must always be with the people and within the range of the problems of such people. The best example is Lord Krishna himself (Mahabharatha). Lord Krishna was always within the context of innumerable problems. He was with his people who were traditionally shepherds. At the same time, he acted as the driver of a chariot, danced in tune with the whims and fancies of gopikas, gone as a messenger to avoid a great war and he also acted as the savior of the destitute of every time. This shows a very simple fact that Lord Krishna could not find any sort of difference between one form of karma and the other. As a great warrior, he lead battles and wars against fierce demons and danced with the romantic tunes of his lovers. He never thought that advising Gita is greater than playing a messenger or driving a chariot.
This fact has often been forgotten by the so called experts of Indian Systems of Thought, because they think that advising Gita is greater when comparing with shepherding. But Lord Krishna was establishing that discrimination of any karma is an act against Advaita Systems of Thought. The origin of the cast ridden society in the Indian context is closely linked with the intellectual amnesia of the Indian pundits who thought of being separated and kept in isolated shells from the rest is the best way to establish superiority over the other. Hence, Indian society has been segmented into rigid cast prisons. This segmentisation is totally inconsistent with the advaitic logic and practise. But unfortunately, cast system was justified in the name of Bhagavat Gita and its advaitic interpretations.
The Advaita logic cannot be consistent if it bifurcate karma and phala (result). Advaita never believes that cause and effect can be bifurcated and kept in water-tight compartments. Karma and phala are inseparable as that of cause and effect. Therefore, the assumption that karma and phala have been separated by the Advaitians is false, illogical and inconsistent to its own epistemological position.
Since phala and karma cannot be separated, then it leads to the connection between karma and good results and vice versa. It is through this logic that the Advaita system connects moksha on one hand and artha and kama on the other hand. Advaita specifically says that a person who aims at moksha has to practise dharma and he who practises artha will only be able to get kama. Therefore, Advaita believes that the whole karma should be transformed into dharma to attain moksha.
Karma in this sense is only a transformation of every karma to dharma and dharma is the means to attain moksha. Since ends and means are inseparable, an Advaitian cannot approve the idea that end can justify means. He who wants to attain heaven has to practise love on earth as Jesus preached. He specifically describes that such a love never believes in discrimination between friends and foes, but that love goes beyond the barriers of friendship and enmity. Hence, He preached “Love thy enemy.” That act of love itself is the heaven. Therefore, Jesus cannot separate ends and means. He who is unable to separate ends and means in ethical practice specifically believes in ‘Nishkama karma’.
The term ‘nishkama karma’ has been misunderstood even by the said to be experts of Indian Systems of Thought. Such experts believe that nishkama karma is karma devoid of results (phala). Some of them even interpreted that man has to work without getting anything from it. Such a position is ridiculous, illogical and inhuman, because it has been misinterpreted that a laborer is not expected to demand the wages because the duty of the laborer is only to perform work. Such a ridiculous argument has been made by those who failed to understand even the normal theory of possession, which specifically establishes the connection between cause and effect. Where there is a cause, there must be a result (effect). So, nishkama karma specifically denies that there can be karma without phala (result); it only means that one has to concentrate oneself on the karma when it is to be performed, rather than the phala (result) that can be expected. This is because the cause occurs in the ‘present’ and the result has to be occurred in the future. Nobody can regulate the future because future is something which has to be occurred. So, what is practically and logically possible is to regulate the present which is at our command. Therefore, the karma being performed at present is to be performed with utmost concentration and intensity. Anything that is performed with utmost concentration and intensity must be able to produce better results in the future. Nishkama karma logically says that one has to regulate the present to regulate the future. It also means that better performance of karma in the present must be able to produce better rewards in the future.
Therefore, ‘Advaita’ believes that every person who wants to do something with utmost care and concentration must be ready to practice nishkama karma. Nishkama karma is not a meaningless process of renunciation of results of action but it is a process that demands everyone to perform his/her actions with utmost care in the present. Here, one must be able to regulate oneself. In short, nishkama karma is nothing but the performance of self-regulated actions.
Wisdom, temperament, courage, commitment and all such qualities are expected to be used to regulate karma. All the practical steps to be practised by the individual, designed by the Advaita system, are meant to regulate karma. Advaita believes that karma can be regulated, when one is able to understand the centre of every karmic unit. Since the centre of a karmic unit is within itself, the moment one realises that the centre is the constant entity in oneself then one must be able to regulate the whole momentum in tune with the unmoving centre. If the centre cannot hold, ‘things will fall apart’. If one is not able to realise the centre that which regulates one’s own existence, the whole light will shatter away like a crumbling glass tower.
So, what Advaita says is that the duty of every person is to regulate one’s own karma. Karma can be regulated conquering and controlling the sense organs and mind. The point to be noted here is that the sense organs and mind are to be regulated not for the sake of regulation alone but for the sake of one’s own life. Life regulation must be able to concentrate one’s energy on a particular point of action. When we are able to concentrate the whole energy on a particular point of action, then such an action can be performed with more commitment and perfection. The focus of attention in such a state must be on the karma itself, not in the result to be achieved. Result is the essential part of karma and the effect is part and parcel of the cause. Whatever is seen in the cause can be seen in the effect; whatever is not seen in the cause cannot be seen in the result. Naturally, an action performed with more concentration must be able to produce better results. Therefore, no intelligent person be bothered of the results of one’s action but he is expected to concentrate only on the performance of such an action. This is what is known as nishkama karma.
Everything in this universe is known by its karma. It is the karma that gives shape to an object, because shape is after all only a space-time manifestation. Space and time can be known through movement from one distance to the other. Hence, distance and duration are the true aspects that help us to know an object. That is why it is termed that the whole universe is the unification of various types of karmas. In Vedantic terms, it is known as ‘karma prapancha’ (the universe of karma). A man is known by his actions and physical appearance, but a man is more known and appreciated for his vibrant actions. For ex. nobody is concerned about the physical appearance of Jesus Christ; whether He is black or white, handsome or not are not the concern of a man who practises what He taught. Jesus is known through His preaching and all such preaching are the inner actions of karma. So it is the karma that determines who or what something is.
Vedanta says that everyone has to nurture karma to determine his or her nature. Vedanta believes that karma can be controlled. It teaches that only a constant force can control something that is not constant. Karma, as we have already seen, is a changing stuff in space and time; it is a moving force and is known only through distance and duration of internal and external manifestations. This force has to be controlled by something that is not moving. That constant entity which controls the moving force is ‘Brahma’ or truth or reality. Literally it means that which never changes. Then a question arises is that what exactly is the dwelling place of this constant entity, whether it is in the time-space continuum or external to it. Advaita believes that it is not external to the spacial-temporal forces but it is within them. As Jesus has rightly put it, the heaven, the ultimate aim of human existence, is within us.
Advaita system of thought primarily aims at the practice of regulations both internal and external at the macro and micro levels of human and cosmic actions. It is not that easy to understand the causal connection between human and cosmic actions at macro and micro levels. For ex. all the scientific explanations and theories designed by humans at various stages of development as a single race are even today incapable to explain logically how the origin of man and nature was. It is because of the fact that human intellect is limited by its own faculties. The limitations of the human faculties can never be considered as a valid reason to proclaim that anything beyond its reach is illogical and unscientific.
Since we are not able to grasp the internal riddles of the causal relation between man and nature, then that does not mean that there is no relation at all. At some levels of our experience, we are able to analyse things properly by means of the well known law of causation as in the case of thirst and water. Lack of water in human body is the cause of thirst; that is why a thirsty man gets satisfaction when he drinks water,
Advaita System believes that a well trained intellect must be able to understand the innumerable rhythms of causal relations between man and nature. A general name that can be used to explain man and nature is ‘karma’. It has already been explained in the beginning of this chapter that karma is an occurrence in space and time. Just like the stardom in the heaven, man also is a shining stuff, destined to live on earth. The rays of light that radiates from the eyes of a man can never be different from the glittering beams of stars above. So, the element of light, due to various reasons, can never be different in man and cosmic objects and all these cosmic objects and heaven are known by and through light only. It is that light which governs both the macro and micro world.
There are certain forms of karmas which are performed to attain specific results. Such forms of karma can be termed ‘kamya karma’. They come under activities done to get an amount of wealth or pleasure. The legendary ‘putrakaameshti yaga’ (rituals performed to get efficient and beautiful son) is only a kamya karma. Kamya means results to satisfy the sensory pleasures of an individual. Hence kamya karma means a specific set of karma performed to attain pleasure for the sense organs. Then, it is advised that a wise man should always avoid performing the kamya karma because ultimately such karma would only give pleasure and pain together. The best example is the story of Ramayana (Indian epic). Dasaratha, the emperor and the father of Rama performed ‘putrakaameshti yaga’ to get sons who are capable to satisfy his sensual pleasures but unfortunately Emperor Dasaratha died of anxiety and agony due to the separation of his son Rama.
Pratisiddha karma means the form of karma to be prohibited because the performance of such karma would only end up in contradictory results. Prati-siddha means contradictory to what was expected. Best examples are gambling and liquor business. The purpose in either cases is to attain happiness by way of accumulating more money. But unfortunately, gambling and drugging lead everyone to ruin. Therefore, such group of karmas comes under the classification of prohibited karmas.
The prohibition of such karmas should be done externally by the rulers imposing specific regulations and internally by the individuals regulating themselves. The acts of regulations, both internal and external, are essential for the maintenance of peace and harmony in every society. A society that is not being regulated properly will have to count its’ own days. There are many examples to trace. The tales of Sodom and Gomorra, where even God could not find a just man amidst the thousands were finished. Like this the proper performance of all the forms of karma are essential for a healthy set up of the society.
There can be innumerable number of karmas. All such forms of karmas have been classified into four categories. They are 1) nitya karma 2) naimikthika karma 3) kamia karma 4) prathisiddha karma. Nitya karma means the various forms of karmas to be performed by every manifestation in time and space in micro and macro forms. Take for example the respiratory, blood circulatory and digestive functions of a human body; they are best examples for nitya karma. No body in time and space can exist without performing the nitya karma in its unique form. So taking food, doing the job for making the food and all such all such other functions are included in nitya karma. Therefore, the professional functions of a modern man, the social commitment and political & economic activities, religious rituals of daily practices etc. are considered as nitya karma. It is termed as nitya karma because no being in space and time can guarantee its constant existence without performing them.
Naimikthika karma can be described as a group of karmas to be performed on certain occasions. Such occasions may be in connection with religion, social customs, cultural activities or even economic activities. A person can be abstained from performing the naimikthika karma. It is a question of discretion of the individual, whether such karmas are to be performed or not. Non-performance of such karmas may be criticized. It can even affect the social status of a person concerned, but such non-performances would never affect the existence of the person concerned. Take for ex. a set of karmas to be performed in connection with the customary marriages of every community. It is up to the person concerned whether to observe such karmas. It shows that naimiktika karma can be changed from place to place and time to time.
The System of ‘advaita’ never believes in polemics, rather it believes in the methods of practising or enjoying ‘ananda’ in the regular context of human existence. ‘Ananda’ should never be considered an honour to be rewarded posthumously for the ‘karma’ practised on earth. It specifically aims at the enjoyment of ‘ananda’ through ‘karma’. ‘Karma’ is a technical term which means action in general sense; action always takes place in space and time. Space and time have been regulated by their own rules and regulations. There is an antecedent, consequent temporal manifestation and nearness and distance in space. The antecedent-consequent relations are technically termed as cause-effect relations. Cause is the antecedent and effect is the precedent. So, anything which occurs in space and time must be able to explain by means of casual nexus.
The nature and function of the cause and effect may be complex and complicated. We need not be able to experience it always by naked eyes. That does not mean that the space-temporal occurrences are free from cause-effect relations. Take for ex. suppose you hit a table with your fist. The immediate result is the sound that is heard. But the force you applied on the table is definitely capable to effect changes on the molecular structure of the wooden surface of the table as well as the connected parts of the table. The force that was applied on the table must have impacts, however minute and subtle it may be, on the ground on which the table rests. That in turn is capable to pay effect to the solar and stellar systems and to the last point of the universe, if such a point exists.
So, ‘karma’ in this sense is only the expression of cause-effect relations, manifested in the universe in various forms. Each entity, manifestation, incidents etc. are only the units of ‘karma’. The stellar system is only a macro unit of ‘karma’ operated and regulated by its’ own rules and regulations. The human beings or even a piece of dust, it only means that the sub-microscopic particles in such an entity can be located by scientists and are being regulated by the ‘karmic’ laws – the laws regarding cause and effect.
The aim of an artist as a participant is to regulate oneself to overcome one’s own limitations. Apparently there is a paradoxical position in the concept of regulating oneself to cross over the boundaries. But really there are no controversies in this concept because to regulate oneself only means to realise and overcome the limitations through concentration of one’s own energy to a particular point of expression. Take for ex. a musician who uses the sound to reach a universe of silence. The methodology to cross over the limitations of sound must be developed and practiced by every musician to express silence. The task of a musician is not in the expression of sound but in the experience of silence. The regulations are to be imposed on oneself to experience the world of silence where one should not be limited by the boundaries created by space and time. Such a state of experience has been technically termed as ‘ananda’. Brahmacharia is only a prelude to the experience of ‘ananda’.
The person who practises ‘brahmacharia’ has to share whatever he has with the rest. The state of ‘ananda’ can be experienced only when one shares whatever he has with the humans and non-humans alike. Since ‘ananda’ is a state of experience that can be attained only by sharing, then it can be argued that brahmacharia is an activity to break the prisons created by the ego-sense to reach the rest. Ananada can be experienced only when one strengthens oneself to break the conceptual prisons of various types created by the ego-sense, due to the influence of selfishness. Market economy believes in concentration of selfishness and advises all human beings to get sheltered in self-created conceptual prisons. Naturally, a contestant cannot enjoy ananda by himself; hence he cannot make others also enjoy it. The situation of a participant is different; not only is he/she capable of enjoying and experiencing happiness but also making others to experience the same. This proves that the practise of brahmacharia and connected self-regulation is always relevant in everybody’s life.
The inherent order in Nature specifically warns everyone not to go beyond a limit that also is inherent in one and all. These inherent limitations can never be considered as defects or deficiencies of the manifestations concerned. Such limitations only specify a simple fact that such demonstrations can be seen in space and time. The observances of the inherent limits are technically called as self-regulation. Self-regulation is a mode of life practice to be observed by one and all at every level. Brahmacharia technically aims at the practice of self-regulation in words and deeds.
Market economy on the contrary believes that there is no such limit; hence no need of regulations of any sort. That is why it aims at the maximum in words and deeds. The result of such an act is that one has to live in a world where there is no regulation at all in words. This can be seen in the regular discourses of the news media. Take for ex. in all the reality shows, an Anchor uses the term ‘contestant’ to denote a performer, who is expected to be on the screen. The unfortunate factor is that in earlier times the word used to denote a performer was ‘participant’.
There are acute differences between a participant and a performer. The aim of the contestant is to get victory over his ‘rivals’. Naturally, a contestant will use any means to defeat his rival. A participant, on the contrary, believes in performance. He/she claims only that this is what he/she has to do in this particular context. Participant shows his/her experience within the rest. A participant never wants to defeat anyone. He only wants to express his mite; the participant is the contributor to his mite in the totality of the art form in which he/she works. For ex. Beethoven and Mozart were not rivals but they contributed their share to the vast ocean of music to make it greater. A contestant, on the contrary, accumulates everything including his own experience for himself. The result of such a discourse is that our system of language has been polluted with the philosophy of the maximum. That is, market economy directly affects the transparency, clarity and lucidity of language systems. Instead of using the minimum words, an Anchor uses a diarrhea of words that signify almost nothing.
The term ‘brahmacharia’ has always been misunderstood with celibacy, which only means to abstain from sexual intercourse. But ‘brahmacharia’ never insists that one should be abstained from engaging in sexual intercourse. It only means that one has to fix the minimum at every level of experience, including sexual intercourse. Anything that leads to excess can always lead us to competition, conflict, crisis and destruction. Therefore, a person at every state of experience has to strictly observe the norms of the minimum. As it has already been explained, the advaita philosophy believes in the minimum rather than the maximum. Then, in every stage of human experience, one has to comply with the norms of the minimum as a prelude to maintain peace and harmony. In this sense, the philosophy of advaita raises a question that what is that practical step that can maintain peace and harmony in the present day world. The market economy believes that peace and harmony can be purchased from the market. It propagates the concept of accumulation of the maximum to maintain and guarantee peace and harmony in human life.
Now it is a foregone conclusion that nothing in the external world can provide happiness unless we are not able to generate happiness in ourselves. But a new commodity in the market is capable of guaranteeing happiness only if it has got the capacity to generate the same by itself. Advaita asks everyone to learn the lessons of sustenance on earth from the birds in the sky. The Biblical aphorism specifically says that “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” (Mathew 6:26) No bird in the whole universe ever eats anything more than the minimum requirement. How abundant be the supply of the food grains in fields, every bird says that you share that has been year marked for by the philosophy of the minimum that is inherent in Nature. In this sense, the advaita is a system of thought that is inherent in Nature as a system of order.
These three systems of thought (dvaita, advaita and visishtadvaita- ref. previous article) have relevance at every point of time. It is not possible to get a society of human beings that entirely believes in only one of these categories. The society in general, as part of the natural order, believes in all these three categories at every point of time. But at certain points of time, one of these categories may get an upper hand over the other. At our times, the ‘dvaita’ category gets mastery over the other. That is why we believe that there is nothing in common between ‘I’ and ‘you’. Hence, ‘I’ easily conceives and believes that ‘I’ can purchase anything that of ‘you’ at a convenient price fixed either unilaterally or mutually. Such a system at present is technically known as ‘market economy’.
The system that was prevalent over some part of Asia and Europe before the coming of Jesus the Christ was similar to the present one. That may be the reason why Cain could not understand his brother Abel (Old Testament). When Cain was trialed, he declared that he could not know Abel (because there was nothing common in between them). This form of estranged and alienated brotherhood was challenged by Jesus when He declared that there is heaven in ‘I’ and ‘you’. The moment one believes that there is heaven in ‘you’ and ‘I’, one cannot purchase the other because every form of purchase is self-purchase. Such a person cannot treat oneself as a market, to be either sold or purchased. In this sense, the propagation of the market economy is nothing but the negation of Christ experience.
The present day market economy, according to the views of an advaidan (the one who is for ‘advaita), is nothing but the manifestation of ‘dvaita’ system in one of its’ forms. Therefore, the system of advaita has to expose the logical contradictions of the market economy, which basically believes that the world is fully a commodity either to be sold or purchased. The dvaidan (the one who is for ‘dvaita) on the contrarory believes that the world is only the manifestation of oneself in many forms. Hence we have to deal with the well known philosophical problem of one and many from a very different angle.
One and many and their relationship have been a major problem throughout the development of various systems of thought in the East and the West. Of course, the solutions given by the exponents of various systems of thought are different. But everyone accepted a view that the problem of one and many cannot be ignored as a trivial issue in human life. The systems of thought and practice that believe in equality have to accept that in one sense or the other there is something common in between one and many. The moment one accepts there is something in common between ‘you’ and ‘I’, then ‘I’ has to stop conflicting with ‘you’. Naturally, conflicts, crisis and resulting destruction are to be replaced by concerns, co-operation and co-existence. Nobody (including individuals, society, institutions and systems) can lead a normal life in a world that leads to destruction. That is why it has been explained clearly that a house divided is naturally entering its’ final days.
The present day market economy which believes in competition, conflict, crisis and final outcome cannot take the world into confidence to lead to victory. Victory in its’ real sense is a state of experience that provides space for one and many in the sense that the mighty and the meek co-exist. In this sense, whenever and wherever one speaks of consensus, co-operation, co-existence and peace the philosophy of non-duality (advaita) is exposed in a pluralistic language form. Then the question arises is what are the modus operandi of maintaining co-existence and peace. This has been a matter of discussion in the advaita philosophy. As practical steps, advaita believes that every person, society and institution has to practise certain constants (vrita – nearest meaning is vows). They are ahimsa, satya, astheya, aparigraha and brahmacharya. I have already explained all these vows except brahmacharya in the early chapters of this series. The essence of the practise of these vows is nothing but the practise of the philosophy of the minimum. As it has already been seen, there can be the philosophy of the minimum and the philosophy of the maximum. Advaita system believes in the philosophy of the minimum to be fixed by the person concerned.
So the constancy which we feel in experience at every level can be termed as truth. That is why it can be concluded that change is known only through something that is not changing. The velocity of every object in the world is known in comparison with the velocity of light. There can be other particles having more velocity than light but that does not mean that something can be known without having a constant entity. So, the fastest entity keeps always intact constancy. This is what is meant by ‘truth’.
Since change always leads to something that is not changing, then the question arises is whether the changing and the not changing are different entities or not. The answers to this question can be classified into three categories. The first category believes that the changing and the non-changing are entirely different entities and there is nothing common in between them. The second category propagates that there is no difference between the changing and the non-changing and all such differences are only peripheral and absolute identity between the two can be experienced at every level. The third category explains that there are certain changing entities amidst something that never changes. It also believes that identity and differences are equally important and cannot be avoided.
The first category of philosophical understandings paved the way for the emergence of a heap of philosophical systems. Such systems in Indian philosophy have been classified into a philosophical stream named ‘dvaita’ (duality). On the controrary, the second category believes in diversity but everything that appears in diversified manner is nothing but the manifestation of one and the same reality. This system of thought is quite unique to Indian ‘darsana’ (nearest meaning ‘sight’, in the sense seeing from the root – duly explained later) and it is technically known as ‘advaita’. The third category of thought has been systemised by Aristotle the Greek philosopher and it has been manifested in various forms in Europe as well as in the Indian Systems. In India, that category of thought has been classified as ‘visishtadvaita’ (nearest meaning – special non-duality).
These three positions are the result of the basic approaches to the understanding of the reality in and around us. A fourth category is not practically and logically possible. That is why these categories of thoughts in Indian Systems are known as Vedanta which means, the beginning and the end of our experiences. That is, human experiences begin with duality and develop into proliferation of thoughts and streams that culminate into the logic of identity in differences, ultimately ending up in the experience of absolute identity. That is why the Indian Systems of thoughts divide categories of understanding of reality into
The moment one believes that there is heaven in ‘you’ and ‘I’ one cannot purchase the other because every form of purchase is self-purchase.
An alternative economic system is possible. That System believes that what is practically possible is to control one’s desires to ensure the minimum use of the natural resources as a prelude to provide enough for one and all. Such an economic system is the outcome of ‘mumukshvitviam’. A ‘mumukshvi’ (a person who practices ‘mumukshvitviam’) always believes in the fact that the uncontrolled market forces are incapable to provide constant happiness. So a person who perceives the world in a different angle can evaluate the market also in a different angle. Therefore ‘mumukshvita’ is an act of seeing the world differently rather than living in a different world.
To live differently does not mean that one has to relinquish the ordinary world in which we live. It only means that the world in which we live must be one and the same. But the approach to that world must be different. So the great men according to the ‘upanisadic’ tradition are not the ones who believe that they should abandon the ordinary world. They insist that one has to live in the ordinary world with extra ordinary care. Therefore, the great men do not avoid ordinary human problems. They have to live within that frame, but at the same time, they must be able to approach the world in a different angle. Hence, what is necessary is to effect changes in one’s own approach so as to transform oneself into a ‘mumukshu’.
The perfection of the world can be changed only when the inner perfection of the human being also is changed accordingly. The inner perfection can be changed by the practise of the five eternal vows (pancha mahavrita). They are ‘satyam’, ‘ahimsa’, ‘asteyam’, ‘aparigraha’ and ‘brahmacharia’. When one tries to practise these eternal vows internally, then starts seeing the changing world from a different angle. This does not mean that a person who practises the eternal vows has to tune into a different world which is free from the ordinary issues like conflicts, crises etc. but it only means to approach all such problems from a different angle. Great men never do great things but they do ordinary things differently and make such things great.
The term ‘satya’, which has already been described in a different context, need to be defined properly. Literally, ‘satya’ can be translated as truth in English. But, etymologically this Sanskrit term ‘satya’ means anything that is free from change. It is part of the common human experience that change can always be known only in comparison with something that never changes or something that is relatively constant. That is why, the constant velocity of light has been accepted as the measuring rod to every change that occurs in this universe. Without having the constancy of velocity of light, nothing can be measured out. That is, nothing can be known or experienced in such a world that is insufficient to provide an atmosphere to maintain life element in this universe.
The various shades of these diametrically opposite actions and reactions have really fractured life into endless segments. This type of life has often been termed as hollow and the hollow men and women constitute a collection of human beings in a market, where they have nothing common to share except profit. But profit is strictly a personalised entity. That is why the ‘advaidian’ preaches that life is an indivisible unit. Hence, humans at every moment have to do the practise of conquering and controlling the mind and sense organs. That is why it is said that there is no holiday for a moral man.
The next question that arises is what should be the driving force behind the person who practises ‘sama’ and ‘dama’. That driving force has been technically called as ‘mumukshvitviam’ (the unending urge to attain nothing other than constant happiness). The aim of every human being, as it already has been explained in the previous chapters, every human being aims at enjoyment of happiness. How such a state of happiness can be enjoyed and how such a state of happiness can be maintained constantly without any distractions are the two important questions that are to be encountered by one and all.
There is no royal path to success and salvation. A person who wants to attain ‘mumukshvitviam’ has to be careful about the context in which lives and the demands made by such a context. Man as a contextual entity should be the concern and the criterion of every discipline that aims at ‘mumukshvitviam’.
A person who aims at ‘mumukshvitviam’ is not expected to get satisfied by anything other than constant peace, harmony and happiness. The human being who has been located in the context of a market economy always thinks that he or she should be able to get happiness, peace and harmony through the commodities available in the market. Market cannot survive without having consumers; a flourishing market always depends on greedy consumers. Greed is a state of experience in which one never gets satisfaction through accumulation of goods. That is why man as a market being always tries to skip from one brand to another on the presumption that changing of brands can give him/her more and more of happiness. But unfortunately, if one brand is incapable to ensure peace, happiness and satisfaction then the other brand also will never be able to ensure the same. That is why the corporate in the market engage in introducing and changing new brands with slight modifications of the old one.
A person who dedicates oneself for uncompromising happiness, harmony and satisfaction has to realise a simple fact that no brands available in the market are capable of ensuring harmony, peace or happiness. It is because of the fact that no brand available in the market by itself is capable to ensure the same. If the multiplicity of brands can provide happiness then its basic unit must also be able to provide happiness. This fact has often been concealed by the market to project a false claim that market is enough to provide happiness. A person who aims at ‘mumukshvitviam’ has to realise that market is unable to provide happiness because market is only ‘maya’ condensed.
Maya and happiness has been brilliantly explained by Rishis in the ‘Upanishads’ with an appealing simile that one cannot put out fire supplying dry wood to it. That is, the unending desire cannot be satisfied providing goods to get the desires satisfied. Hence, the Rishis have got the opinion that the best way to conquer the market is to control the desires. Market falsely believes that the universe is capable of providing goods in abundance to satisfy the greed of one and all. So the economics of the market depends on a false notion of abundance of natural resources. They believe in enlargement of the area of the market to satisfy the unending desires of the human beings.
Of course, it is not an easy task to conquer and control the mind and sense organs. It needs constant training. Training does not mean that one has to approach a particular person or an institution to get trained in controlling the mind and sense organs. It is because there is no such institution or person who can make one to control over one’s sense organs and mind. The act of controlling the sense organs and mind has to be done by the individual himself. All the external agencies can only help him/her to do it in a particular manner. But a universalised practice has to be individualised in tune with the context in which one lives. All Gurus (Masters) can tell one something about the existence of God or of the values, but the experience of God or of the values can never be given by a Guru.
A Guru is a person who is authentic because he/she preaches only what he/she experienced. Authenticity in writing and in preaching can be attained only when there is a direct one-to-one correspondence between words and deeds. That is why it has been said that a Guru is only a personified experience of the ideas and values he/she teaches. Such a Guru can give one the idea that if one is ready to follow a particular path or journey then he should be able to reach a particular destination. But the task of travel has to be done by the traveler himself. Even such a Guru is not enough to make one to experience values or God. But such a person can only guide others. The maximum experience one can expect from a Guru is that he/she must be able to give us some sort of guidance. But the actual task of conquering and controlling the mind and the sense organs have to be done by the person concerned. The conquering and controlling of the mind and sense organs are to be practiced at every level of human action. It is not possible to have a division in between a group of actions in which one need not have control over mind and sense organs and another group where one does have such conquering and controlling, is not possible. Since human life is an individual unit of experiences, one cannot sanction holy days in one’s practice of ‘sama’ and ‘dama’.
The present day market economy has made life divisible into too many fractured segments. In such a state of experience a man occurs in different contexts and adopts various norms and practises in tune with contextual peculiarities. Take for example the case of a seller and a buyer in different contexts. As a buyer one is free to bargain to get a product at the minimum prize, but as a seller he/she would be insisting to get the maximum price. The methodology he/she practises as a buyer would be entirely different from the methodology he/she adopts as a seller, though in both the contexts he/she expects the maximum profit. The market economy openly justifies that a person is free to adopt any means to ensure the maximum profit. Therefore, the personal interest of a buyer and the seller can be diametrically opposite.
Since nature never provides unlimited resources to satisfy the unending need and greed, then every individual, society and state has to limit oneself to the minimum. But today, the whole media with all their magnificent varieties of performances make us believe that it is possible to go to the unlimited extend. That is why we are thinking of an ambitious world. But really, the world is incapable to satisfy human ambition. Therefore one has to control ones own sense organs and mind.
The control of mind and sense organs has been technically termed as ‘sama’ and ‘dama’. ‘Sama’ means controlling the mind; ‘sama’ has been defined as the sum total of the subtle forms of sensory organs and motor organs. Then, controlling the mind must be the first step to be adopted to control the sensory and motor organs. That is, if we are able to control the subtle forms of activity, naturally we must be able to control the gross forms. The theory is that there is causal nexus (connection) between cause and effect and since cause remains as a subtle entity and the effect is exposed as a gross entity, then any control over the causal form must be able to control the explicit effect.
There are instances in which people practise the external control of sensory and motor organs without having proper control over the mind. Then what happens is that such an activity can always create conflicts, crisis, confusion and various types of psychological complexes. Every psychological complex has been generated in human mind and the dangerous tentative mechanism reveal something pleasant as a means to control that has often been treated as unpleasant. For ex. The superiority complex that is present in every dictator, whatever field in which the dictator acts, is only a mechanism to conceal the inferiority complex which he feels. Every act of superiority always reminds the agent that he is inferior. Finally, the multiplicity of the rate of gravity of the complexities takes him to the mental asylum to get released. If one is ready to go through the sad narrations of oppressions and repressions experienced by the monks in monasteries of religious orders, it substantiates their view. Therefore, the first thing one has to do is to control ones desire by conquering and controlling mental functions.
Market never permits anyone to make a distinction between what is essential and what is not essential. Market always demands us to accumulate the maximum irrespective of the necessity. That is why, market believes in production and marketing rather than producing something to meet the need. Market propagates greed; hence, the slogan ‘greed is not bad’ is really the expression of a life pattern that is devoid of the application of ‘viveka jnana’. Any life that is not being lead by ‘viveka njana’ always claims the maximum rather than the minimum.
Market always believes in perception rather than introspection. Market always takes you to the outer world, ignoring the inner essence. That is why, market depends on propaganda through advertisement. The ad language never believes in a one-to-one correspondence between the world and the reality. It always gives a false hope of overcoming all the difficulties which are to be faced by every human being. Take for ex. the age withers us; no cosmetic is capable of preventing this withering nature of human beings. But, market gives a false guarantee that a particular cosmetic product can prevent us from getting withered. The false hope always conceals the reality and takes us to a world of unreality. Naturally, one may not be able to make discrimination between what is real and unreal in a world that is being driven by the norms of market economy. Therefore, the most important philosophical problem to be faced by the present generation is the inability of making discrimination between ‘nitya, anitya, vasthu, viveka’.
Such a power of discrimination between ‘nitya, anitya, vasthu, and viveka’, as referred early, can be attained only by realising the fact that there is limit for worldly pleasures. By worldly pleasures it means that any experience that can be attained by means of our sense organs and mind. The limitations of our sense organs and mind must be the limits of our experience and pleasures. Since the limits of our experience are the limits of our pleasures, naturally we cannot go beyond a limit. Without knowing this fact, humans are thinking too much of getting pleasures through sense organs and mind. Our psychic operations also are not free from inherent limitations of our sense organs because whatever is seen in explicit form in our sense organs can be seen in implicit form in our psychic apparatus. The psychic apparatus is only the sum total of all the subtle operations of the sense organs. That is, sense organs are the gross form and mind is only the subtle form. Therefore, whatever is seen in the gross form also can be seen in the subtle form.
But unfortunately, the humans are thinking of extending the possibilities of human experiences through sense organs and mind. If one wants to get rid of the pain which is the corollary of the pleasures has to make a clear cut distinction between the possibility and limitations of the worldly pleasures. This has to be realised first. The ‘Advaita System’ says that one has to abstain from the deployment of worldly pleasures here and elsewhere. This is known as ‘iham’, ‘uttra’, ‘artha’ ‘bhoga’ and ‘vairagya’.
‘Artha’ is a technical term in Indian Systems of thought. ‘Artha’ means any experience that can be derived through sense organs and mind. In this sense, ‘Artha’ includes pleasure and pain. The result of experience of ‘Artha’ is ‘Bhoga’ and ‘Bhoga’ includes all possibilities of the sum total of all human experiences in the ordinary sense. Since ‘Bhoga’ includes pain and pleasures and since one and the same object of experience as we have explained earlier is capable to give the diametrically opposite feelings of pain and pleasure. Then one will not be in a position to ascertain what would be the final form ‘Bhoga’. That is ‘Bhoga’ creates uncertainty.
Therefore, it is advisable to create equal distance from both pains and pleasures. This is what is known as ‘Vairagya’. Raga means attachment to worldly experiences and virago means absence of such attachments to the ‘Artha-bhoga’; that is the sum total of all worldly experiences. It does not mean that one has to cut away totally from the world, which is impossible because everything including humans in the world is the part and parcel of time, space, matter and continuum.
But unfortunately humans want to indulge in ‘Artha-bhoga’ thus destined to lead a life of uncertainty. In order to overcome the anxiety created by uncertainty, humans want to possess more and more of worldly things. The worldly things can be classified as power, wealth, positions and fame. That is why we want to get unlimited powers, wealth, positions fame and everything to unlimited extend. So a dictator who wants to possess all the varieties of power from alpha to omega is really doing an unsuccessful effort to get rid of the fear created by uncertainty. This is sheer ignorance because the poor fellow does not know that being a limited entity he cannot go to unlimited extend in space and time. Therefore every dictator has to face his necessary defeat in history.
The uncertainty and the resultant anxiety have to be either avoided or eliminated. Otherwise, nobody can lead a normal life. Fear Psychosis is one of the major diseases of our times. We are afraid of death, afraid of losing power, losing wealth, losing positions, losing fame …….. We are afraid of being attacked and getting defeated. If one is not able to remove this fear psychosis, one cannot be happy, even if he/she possess wealth or fame to unlimited extend. Therefore, what we need at present is to find out an effective remedy to remove the fear psychosis.
It is at this point that one has to seek an alternative method of life practice. That method demands us to focus on the minimum, each one requires to sustain one’s existence in space and time. That minimum can be ensured by the practice of ‘iham, uttra, artha, bhoga, vairagya’. This advises us to keep equal distance with pain and pleasure. Vairagya does not mean that one has to renounce everything that can be experienced by the sense organs and mind, it is humanly impossible too. Since man is a spacio-temporal entity and since he has to depend on space and time to ensure his existence, he cannot renounce everything in space and time. He needs food, shelter, cloth etc. Vairagya does not mean the practice of compulsory starvation but it demands that one has to stick on to the minimum food, minimum shelter and everything that requires to keep one’s existence on earth at the minimum.
If one thinks in terms of the minimum, he has to think of a very simple fact that whatever is given by the world as it undergoes through constant changes is incapable to provide anything that is eternal. Therefore, a man of wisdom always thinks in terms of the eternal entities and believes in discarding the non-eternal for the eternal. This is technically called as ‘nitya, anitya, vasthu, viveka’.
Jñāna is a Pali and Sanskrit word which has various nuances of meaning depending on the context. The Simple meaning of the word is knowledge. The knowledge referred to is inseparable from the total experience of reality. In Buddhism, it means pure awareness that is free of conceptual encumbrances, and is contrasted with vijnana, which is a moment of ‘divided knowing’. Progression through the ten stages of Jnana, is supposed to lead one to complete enlightenment. In Hinduism it means true knowledge, which is also referred to as Atma Jnana which is frequently translated as self-realisation. As per Hinduism, Jnana means a divine wisdom or total knowledge of everybody, everything, everywhere and every time in the entire cosmos. This wisdom can only be given by God to a qualified human being, so believe the followers of the Dualist Hindu Philosophies, while the Non-dual Hindu Philosophies (eg. Advaita) posit that this knowledge is available to all, and that even the Gods are but illusions.
‘Viveka jnana’ is the basis of any life that creates something for the benefit of oneself and others. Every artist exercises the ‘viveka jnana’ to create a work of art. For ex: a poet is one who makes the clearest discrimination between one word and the other before conjoining them together to express a state of experience which is unique to the poet. In this sense, the skill of writing poetry is nothing but the application of ‘pada viveka’ (the power to discriminate between one word and the other before conjoining them together).
In the application of ‘pada viveka’, the poet has to take care of the simple fact that the work or sign that he chooses is the essential one when compared to the other. The sound and silence are to be carefully conjoined, exercising the ‘swara viveka jnana’ (the power to discriminate between one ‘swara’ and the other as well as the silence in between them). So, the sound alone cannot make music. Unfortunately, this fact has often been forgotten by the pop musicians. Sound and silence is essentially blended together to create a music that leads us to a state of sublimity.
In any form of art including painting, the artist has to apply the ‘viveka jnana’ carefully. The combination of colours without ‘viveka jnana’ can create a clash of colours but not a painting. This shows a simple fact that anything that is great can be created only by the judicious application of the power of discrimination or ‘viveka jnana’. A great life is not an exception to this general rule. Therefore, a great life is one that is more perfect than a work of art created by the proper application of ‘nitya, anitya, vasthu, viveka’, which is totally absent in a life led by market economy.
PS ‘Jñāna’ is knowledge, ‘Viveka’ is power of discrimination and ‘Pada’ means word. ‘Swara’ as used in the context, is one of the seven notes of the scale in Indian Music. The seven notes are shadja, rishabh, gandhar, madhyam, pancham, dhaivat and nishad. The notes Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa Da Ni are shortened form of these ‘swara’s. The first four shortened names are combined together to call this collectively, ‘Sargam’.
We have been going through a world of dissatisfied human beings, living in different continents. The unfortunate fact is that nobody knows the reasons for their dissatisfaction. They only know that they are not able to get satisfaction from the commodities they possess and the positions they hold. Still they try to accumulate more and more of commodities and positions. They simply forget the fact that satisfaction is a state of experience a person gets through one’s performance of actions. It is not the positions that leaves one pleasure or happiness or satisfaction but the performances of an individual holding such a position that gives him pleasure or happiness. The case is the same with commodities we possess. It is not the number of vehicles one possesses that gives him pleasure but the way he makes use of them that gives him satisfaction.
A dissatisfied human being will always be trying to get more and more as a means to satisfy his need. Naturally the need develops into greed. The market economy creates human beings of a dissatisfied lot devoid of satisfaction. The dissatisfied mind always broods over intolerance. Greed and intolerance are the first cousins of market economy, which is being driven by the forces of maya. The world that is being driven by the forces of maya is technically known as ‘sansara’. The ‘Advaitha’ System is meant to help the individual cross over the ocean of sansara through the practise of self-regulation. There is no role for a market economy driven way of life in a world that is being regulated by the self-imposed discipline. What we lack now-a-days is the self-imposed discipline. The various systems of religion which are expected to inculcate a sense of self-regulation in the minds of individuals have proven their inability to do so. This is one of the reasons for the onslaught of market economy on the various aspects of human life. That is why it has been argued that even religions have become a product and process of market economy. This has to be encountered by the human souls over the world.
No systems, including religion, can go on cherishing the market forces. It needs a self-regulation by individuals and systems. The efforts to take self regulation are the beginning of the attainment of wisdom. This has been termed as ‘jnana’ by the ‘Advaitha System’. ‘Jnana’ or wisdom can be attained only by exercising the power to discriminate between what is necessary and what is not. Necessary means necessary for the sustenance of one and all together because it is impossible to imagine the existence of a single individual alone in this world. The power of discrimination leads one to know how things can be shared with the rest. Things can be shared with the rest only if one thinks that the minimum that he fixes is enough for him. So the moment one starts self-regulation, one automatically tries to fix his minimum. The fixation of the minimum by oneself is contradictory to the philosophy of the market that always aims at the maximum.
The human being who is indulged in worldly pleasures offered by the market is really a hollow man, always trying to find peace and happiness among everything that market provides. One who is forced to purchase a number of automobile vehicles for his regular travel forgets the fact that he cannot use more than one vehicle at a particular time to reach a particular destination.This is what luxury means and such a luxurious life pattern compels everyone who has been trapped in it to speed more and to purchase more. According to the market economy, the hall mark of human existence is purchasing capacity. A God whose prime purpose is to support human purchasing capacity is the contribution of the market economy to religion. Now-a-days, it is sad to say that all religious customs and practices in action have this ‘pleasure factor’ hid behind.
The Kerala Society is not an exception to the general rule shared by other societies world over. In religion, people believe in a God who can do miracles to make the devotees rich. God has not been conceived as a solace, even if one fails to get anything from the society. Here, God should be an active participant and He has been reduced to one of the ingredients of the pleasures to be attained from the world. Such a God has got the responsibility to satisfy the greed rather than the need.
On the basis of the faith in God, who satisfies the greed, humans all over the world believe in gambling. Everyone expects an SMS from a known or an unknown quarter offering millions of dollars as price money for the work he/she has not done. Again, humans have cultivated a habit of believing in slogans which say that ‘you will get your invested money doubled within a short span of time’. That is, everyone wants to believe that somebody remains in mystery just to make them rich by hard work. Instead of earning something through hard work, the present day slogans make us believe that we will get everything without earning anything and the only thing we have to do is invest our money either with a firm or a person whose credibility is not known.
Naturally, the world has become a fertile land of cheating. People are ready to get in it because they are greedy and they believe in the aphorism that greed is not bad. But here, they forget the simple fact that there is a ‘one to one’ correlation between hard work and earning. The moment we forget about hard work and think only of earning, we are in the world of maya because it conceals the fact that one can earn only through hard work and it projects that earning is possible without hard work. Hence, the market economy propagates a world of maya filled with cheating despair and resultant disappointments.
The most important philosophical dimension of the concept ‘maya’ is that he who is placed between dualities cannot be able to know reality. For ex. One who is trapped in between reason and passion cannot enjoy happiness. This factor has been admitted by philosophers of the Greek tradition as well as the oriental heritage. Plato specifically said that happiness can be attained only by one who is completely controlled by reason and he must be free from even the shadows of passion. Again, when Bertrand Russell defined ideal life as one that is being guided by knowledge and ruled by love, he also endorses the view that happiness can be attained by someone who is able to get over the riddles of binaries. The problems of binaries have been really created by maya, because maya has got a dual functioning of ‘concealing the real’ and ‘projecting the unreal’.
Market economy, on the contrary says that man is a creature of contradictions in the market and it propagates that man is able to attain happiness when he makes an adjustment with profit and loss. The market mechanism specifically admits that a man is simultaneously a profit seeking and loss enduring being, because the market gives everyone the opportunity to bargain for one’s profit. That is, a person who gets more profit curtails the profit of the other which may amount to loss. Since one and the same person has to play the dual role of the buyer and the seller, he has to bear with profit and loss. A man who constantly bears with profit and loss will never be able to enjoy happiness permanently. Here, he acts as a pendulum swinging in between pleasure and pain. Again, since market never keeps stability, it always throws man into a state of uncertainty, which creates anxiety and its’ consequences. Therefore, the market mechanism can be attributed to be creating problems of anxiety at individual and societal levels. An important problem to be solved in all life saving mechanisms created by humans at various levels is to find a solution to the anxieties created by the market economy. Anxiety, when it crosses the normal limit, turns to neurosis and neurotics take refuge in black magic and illogical faith mechanisms.
The present day religious practice of devotion is a brilliant example for the materialistic interpretation of God. The contemporary popular devotee firmly believes that God is a person or a force to provide everything to achieve the unlimited human wants. Prayers have become exercises to present inventories to the Almighty and get it realised at the earliest. Interestingly, God is not expected to spend more time in this process. Here, God is considered a participant in the human activity of accumulating more and more of worldly pleasures at a minimum effort. More profit at minimum rate is an attractive slogan of the present day market mechanism and the same has been accepted as a way to God by the present day religions.
A post-modern man really has no basis (man free from foundation). Naturally, he thinks that words are free from meanings. The post-modern trend firmly believes that there cannot be fixed senses and nuances for a term or sign. The meaning of a term or a word is being determined by the context at which it appears. Likewise, the existence of a man has been determined by the context in which he appears. There is a religious man in the place of worship, an economic man in the market, a political man in the legislature and an aesthetic man when he enjoys a piece of poem. The point to be noted is that all these contexts and experiences leave undeletable marks on him, because there is no foundation in man.
A man devoid of foundation is a hollow man and a ‘stuffed man’. Such a man cannot keep any integrity. The feeling is that man is the disintegrated fragments of experiences spreading over innumerable contexts in which he is destined to reach. This also is a play of maya because it conceals the fact that there is an integral whole in him which really is the pivotal point. This really is the crisis to be experienced by everyone in a society and it has been known as adhocism. Adhocism is an approach which believes that one need not think about a permanent solution, because there is no permanence and all problems are temporary; hence they can be solved on an adhoc basis. Adhocism has been entertained by the management experts as a powerful technique to get control over the market.
The market economy, the resultant philosophy of post-modernism and the adhocism adopted to solve issues regarding the existence of man paved way for the emergence of the conflicting one and the same person having divergent interests. Post-modernism says that there is not one man but many men in accordance with the changing contexts and interactions of man with such contexts. A man in the market and man in a place of worship are not one and the same man but are different in different contexts. Naturally his interests, attitudes, actions and reactions may be changed. Hence, a person is able to adopt two different moral attitudes in the said two contexts. But how a person having specific name and form can adopt difference up to the level of having contradictory nature of moral norms is a question to be answered properly. A man in the market is concerned with his own profit alone, while a man in a place of worship has to pray for one and all including his friends and foes. That is, a person who stands for himself in a market prays for the benefit of one and all is quite contradictory.
A man of contradiction cannot experience peace and harmony. His life would be in a world of uncertainty. Hence, he has to experience a sense of psychic imbalance. This may be one of the reasons for the sharp increase of patients suffering from hypertension and diabetes. Both these diseases are the results of the metabolic imbalances of the body and they are the psychosomatic diseases generally referred to as ‘tension’. Everyone is suffering from tension. Man in a tensed mood is cursed to endure anxiety. Therefore, the 21st century man who celebrates technological victory over organic unity has to pay heavy price for his ignorance that man cannot make a survival without organic unity. The very idea that man is a heap of fragments of experiences and he is an organic whole inseparable from the context he lives is due to the influence of maya. So maya appears in different contexts having different dimensions. The main concern of advaita* philosophy is to find methods to overcome maya in order to experience stability.
One of the functions of maya is that it divides our experiences into two at the minimum. That is: nature-man, body-mind, man-God, society-individual, ruler-ruled etc. The market economy following the footsteps of maya bifurcates the whole world into ‘buyer and seller’. It conceals market as a place of conflicts of interests between the buyer and the seller. Market economy advises both the buyer and the seller to aim at the maximum profit. Since both of them aims at the maximum gain, conflict of interests is a natural outcome. Wherever there is conflict, the first causality is the elimination of consensus.
Where there is no consensus and coexistence, contentment cannot be experienced. Naturally, market creates not a society but a mob of unsatisfied individuals left alone in a private world where the entry to the others has been strictly prohibited. This amounts to a state of anarchy where there is no unity. According to Mahabharatha (Indian Epic) the first and foremost duty of a king is to unify the subjects and maintain equilibrium of the Nature. The maintenance of equilibrium of the Nature can be attained only if we are able to find out a common space between the ruled and the ruler. This fact has often been cunningly ignored or accidentally forgotten by the rulers. Naturally they would think that they are absolutely free and the ‘wealth of nations’ is at their command. But every ruler has to bear in mind that he is not absolutely free and is a popper because a ruler can act only on the basis of advises given by his colleagues and executive officers, who have been decided by the rules, regulations and precedents framed by the generations known and unknown. As far as the ‘wealth of nations’ is concerned, the ruler is only a custodian who is expected to keep it for the present generation and the generations to come.
This fact has often been forgotten by the rulers even in a democratic set up. Those who forget this simple fact is under the influence of maya and he or she wrongly thinks that there is nothing common between the ruled and the ruler.
A man in the market always thinks in terms of divided interests. As a seller he wants to get the maximum price and as a buyer he wants to get things at the bare minimum. The man in both the buyer and the seller is oscillating in between the maximum and the minimum. Since he is always on momentum, he would never be able to fix himself anywhere. This divided interest really creates the problem of divided personality in one and the same person. That means, the same person appears as many in different occasions and he forgets the fact that he is an indivisible unity of body, mind and something more than that. When he appears as many in various contexts, he becomes a post-modern man.
The customary religious life itself can be a product of maya, because it conceals the real and projects that is something unreal. The customary religion behaves as if the sum and substance of every religious observance is nothing but the practise of customs and rituals. They often forget even the simple fact that all the customs and rituals have to be used as a ladder to land up in the land of spirituality. Surprisingly, religion at every speck of its historical development has often been in the grip of maya and has been ready to sacrifice spiritual experiences for the customary practices.
The religion that is driven by maya has often been unconcerned of the changes to be effected in the religious customs, in accordance with space-time limitations. Hence, such religious patriarchs would always make a command that man is made for the Sabbath. It is evident from their approach that religion has been misused not only by the protagonists of the religious practises but also by the laymen for some other purposes that are directly contradictory to the spirituality. The first task of a religious man who wants to experience spirituality is to redeem religion from the mechanical clutches, created by the so called religious people who were not concerned of the spiritual content in religions. My argument is that the primary task of a religious man in real sense is to rejuvenate religion in tune with spirituality. Unfortunately, the 21st century human beings have been living far away from heaven, destined to fall apart from ‘father to dust’. The market economy has enthroned money at the sanctum sanctorum and has designated corporate tycoons, who proclaim profit is the heaven to be attained, as priests. Therefore, the real task of a religious man who believes in spirituality is to encounter market economy.
There has been a continuous stream of thought among the philosophers, social reformers, politicians and activists that competition, conflict, crisis and final culmination in destruction should be the way of life. This ideology has been endorsed by the Old Testament, Hitler, Marx, Darwin and many others. But there is another way of life that believes in co-existence, co-operation and harmony. Jesus Christ believed and propagated this unique way of life, which is known as the New Testament, new in the sense that it never goes old; it is ever new and it can never be reversed by anything other than what it is. That ever new law that governs life is ‘love’.
The market economy stands as a testimonial against the New Testament and Jesus Christ. The first enemy of market economy is Jesus Christ and his concept of love, because He insists that one has to share everything with the other. Market economy on the contrary, never believes in sharing but it advises humans to concentrate on every worldly thing for oneself. Market economy believes in centralisation of power, wealth etc. Centralisation naturally demands competition, which ends up in conflict, crisis and destruction.
Market economy projects a very unreal picture of the world because it says that every human being can satisfy their unlimited greed in the name of need by producing unlimited amount of commodities. This belief really is the basis of commodification of worldly things. Market economy says that man also should be a commodity and everything in human life can be transformed into commodity. A place where commodities are exhibited can be briefed as market. Market economy earnestly believes that there is a market in man and man himself is a market.
The procedure of marketisation of human beings is really the act of maya because the person who believes in market conceals the real nature of man and projects the unreal. The real nature of man has been explained properly by Jesus, when he said that there is heaven in us to enshrine the love in us. Market economy conceals the real nature of love and projects the unreal nature of humanity in the form of hatred, conflict, crisis and destruction.
The term religion has often been misconceived, misunderstood and misused both by its exponents and opponents. Exponents have the opinion that religion is a system of code and conduct to be practised by everyone who shares the fraternity with a particular religion in a verbatim manner of the prescription given by the prophet. The prophetic revelations are but mostly pregnant with multi-layer meanings and nuances which are to be contemplated and accumulated by the reader or hearer in his/her context. The contextualisation of the prophetic revelations has often been treated as the realisation of the spiritual content of religious practises. When our concern is with the spiritual content then we have to utter that ‘Sabbath is for man’ and not ‘man is for Sabbath’. That is, all the rituals in religious practises are for the realisation of the spiritual content.
Therefore, the primary concern of a religious man is to understand the multi-layer meanings of the religious teachings with utmost precision in their nuances in the context in which that religious man lives. This universality of religious teachings can never be a hurdle to actualise the same in a contextual reality which is changing from place to place and time to time. These spatiotemporal dimensions of the religious teachings can never be ignored and the understanding of the same can be made proper only if we are able to make use of the lingual expressions of the practise.
The moment we think that the mechanical repetition of what has been understood in a verbatim manner is enough and more to understand the religion, we are landing up in a world of confusion. In that world of confusion we will meet spirituality. What I am telling is the meaning of spirituality in religious practices, which is a common concern in every religion throughout the world is closely related to the meanings and understandings of the meanings of the religious aphorisms which definitely is a linguistic problem.
The linguistic confusion has always been a problem in the understanding of spirituality from the very beginning of religion and religious practises. When Jesus was trying to explain the realm of spirituality through parables, a heap of questions have been asked by his followers to ascertain the nuances of the simile he used. Then He explained that spirituality is something that has to be practiced by everyone on earth.
The primary duty of a spiritual person is to ensure justice to one and all. Justice can be ensured only when one assures the minimum to the last in the row. That is why Jesus proclaimed that whatever is done for the benefit of the destitute of the destitute have been done to God. An action becomes a Godly action only when the agent of the action aims at the benefit of the weakest of the weaker sections in a society. The moment we ensure justice to the last in the row, it logically implies that everyone in that row has been ensured with the minimum. Since spirituality is the action that has to be fulfilled on earth, no religious person can be satisfied with the verbatim interpretations and the mechanical application of the prophetic utterances. It shows that every simple human being can be a spiritual person when he ensures justice to one and all in the context in which he/she lives. The moment we ensure justice, we experience heaven on earth through spirituality.
Therefore, a spiritual person need not be a religious man at all, in the technical sense of the term that a person who observes customs, rituals etc. Spiritual experience need not be customary which is always creative and it addresses the conscience of every person. A spiritual person has to undergo a trial by his own conscience at every moment of action. He has to confess to himself and to repent for the wrong doing. He should know for himself when to correct oneself and how to lead a life that is free from ‘wrongs’.
Language must be transparent because language is the only medium to express oneself. Language must be free from ambiguity and pleonasm. It must be logical simple and intelligible to both the reader/hearer and the speaker. It is clear that when our language creates confusion then we really demonstrates the maya inflicted use of language. The present day market economy demands the use of a language system that helps us to express what is real in us but to communicate in a way that is desirable to others. Interestingly, the desirability criterion has often been determined by the market itself. For ex. The market deliberately keeps propagating a theory that one cannot be satisfied with the minimum things possible but has to acquire maximum commodity. Here, happiness has been equated to a measure of commodity to be possessed by an individual. The question arises is whether the commodities are capable of producing happiness in an individual or if happiness is a state of mind to be attained by the individual by regulating oneself. The language of a self-regulated man must be consistent with the truth in himself. Such a man cannot be a ‘hypocritic lecturer’ at all.
So what happens now-a-days is that the person who lives in a confused language system gets more confused and adds more confusion to both life and language. It is a fact that only a master can use a simple language and do ideal communication. The simplicity of language can only be attained by surrendering oneself to the truth in oneself. When one surrenders to the truth he or she reveals what is within and such a revelation always creates aphorisms like ‘aham brahmasmi’ (I am Brahman) or ‘tathwamasi’ (it is you only).
We are using a language system that is confused with meaning and context and it affects every walk of life because at every word man has to use language. Everyone who deals with language has to express and communicate whatever one has to the other in a straight and serene manner. However, it is not the concern of the lingual experts or creative writers to help attain precision and clarity in writing. Unfortunately the whole language system creates confusion in expression, experience and communication. Religion is not an exception to this general rule.
The term value is to be defined in a concrete context. Value is not something that can be understood, discussed and easily discarded by a gifted few, who are known as moralists or experts but it is to be understood, experienced and expressed by one and all in their respective contexts. By the term ‘value’, I mean provision of basic amenities to one and all, i.e. to make everyone eligible to get food, shelter, clothing, medicine and education. Value appears in the form of food to a hungry man, shelter to an estranged person and medicine to a man inflicted by ill health. It is the duty of the society as a whole to provide literacy as a prelude to help the last in the row, who has often been ignored by the men in power. In this sense, value is justice to be provided to all, including the deprived sections in a society. To provide value means to do something concrete for the benefit of the marginalised sections, who are not fortunate enough to get the basic necessities.
A system of education that inculcates a sense of value among the students must be able to explain the modes operandi of a just society, because what we need is not a system of education that provides sufficient space for the rituals, customs and etiquettes of various religions but a system that explains theories through concrete incidents. The sense of justice must help a student to be aware of the fact that the world has not been created for him alone but it is meant to be shared with the rest. The moment that a student realises that he is not a custodian of the world but only a humble participant in the process of sharing, he or she accepts the truth that he or she is not a tool meant to compete with the rest.
Sense of value leads a student to the awareness that a fellow student is not an enemy to be defeated in a cut-throat competition but he is a participant to be co-operated in the process of living and learning. The process of learning through living is the only way to inculcate a sense of value among our students. The process of living begins within the context of the family and extends to the society through organised class rooms. Therefore, the parents, other members of the family, the School (including the teachers and the management) and the various institutions of the society have to be engaged as an indivisible whole in this process. Unfortunately, the first casualty in this regard is caused by the family itself because it is mostly the parents who insist that their children be confined to their own interests alone. A self-centred student thus brought up, naturally thinks that the whole world is meant for him alone and he is not at all meant for the world. As a consequence, he morally separates himself from his parents and estranges himself from the family. This is one of the major reasons that compel an educated guy to keep their parents in old age homes as prisoners. It is quite disappointing to note that our system of education, even today, is incapable to realise this grave problem of amorality. The new generation does not know the difference between morality and immorality and lives in a world of amorals. This too is due to the utter confusion created by maya at intellectual and emotional levels of experience.
The moral confusion that has been created by the present day living culture really affects the communication strategy of the present. The purpose of language is to reveal whatever is hidden in us. But now-a-days the language has been used as an effective tool to conceal what is real and project what all that are quite unreal. The moment language conceals the real and projects the unreal, it spreads confusion all over. For ex. When the language has been used as a medium to attract the market at large, projecting some striking qualities which are totally missing in a product but propagating that such attributes are abundant in it, really cheats the consumer.
Unfortunately, the present system of statecraft whatever be the form of Government, never gives up to personal integrity to be acquired by an individual through rigorous and consistent practise of personal morality. This is the reason for the major setback that has been faced by every system of Government. Dictatorship is easily prone to corruption but democracy is not an exception. The only solace is that we will get a chance to rectify corruption in a democratic setup. But that doesn’t mean that democracy can be maintained by a system of laws enacted by the Parliament, implemented by the executive, interpreted by the judiciary and observed and commented by the media is complete. Every pillar of democracy must be strengthened by a group of individuals having personal integrity. In India, we think that impeccable integrity is the concern of the persons occupying high level executive positions in a democratic set up. Nobody is worried of the impeccable integrity of the persons in legislature, judiciary and the media. An important point to be noted is that there is no criminal law to punish a hypocrite because there is no system to understand what is in one’s mind when utters a group of words. Therefore it is the primary duty of the Government to inculcate value system in the minds of the younger generation.
As it has been clarified early, removal of maya is a dire necessity to enjoy ananda; we have to think of developing personal integrity. It has been a complaint made by every section in our society that those who occupy public positions are devoid of personal integrity. It is not that much easy to get a person of impeccable integrity, which has been treated as an essential qualification to a position of high social esteem.
Personal integrity is nothing but to be consistent to oneself. Self-consistency can be attained when one is able to reduce the distance between deeds, words and mind. If there is rift between what is in mind and what one expresses through words, there must be an internal conflict (i.e. at such a point, a person conceals his mind and reveals something either contradictory to or absent in his own mind). Hence, it has to be concluded that a hypocrite always conceals the real and projects the unreal. This is nothing but expression of maya. And if there is a conflict between words and deeds then also the logical position would be the same because he who expresses something in words and either does something contradictory to the words or abstain to do the pregnant promises of the words, then he is committing the follies of maya.
Every corrupt person is inconsistent to himself. He conceals the real and projects something unreal. This concealment and projection could be in social, political, religious and administrative contexts. So the corrupt practices can be occurred at any level when one refuses to be consistent with oneself in words, deeds and mind. What Advaita says is that there should be non-duality between mind, words and deeds. Such a state of non-duality alone will be able to guarantee a corruption free public life. Everyone thinks and demands a corruption free public life. But how is it possible to get a corruption-free public life without having personal integrity has not been discussed properly. It is not possible to have such a society without having individuals of personal integrity.
The theory that a corruption-free society would be able to create corruption free individuals cannot be accepted as a concrete suggestion because the term society becomes an abstract entity in the absence of individuals. More over what is logically possible is to effect changes in one’s own life than to effect changes in the life patterns of others because what is at our direct control is our own life. As far as the lives of others are concerned, no one individual has direct control over them. So what can be done easily and practically is to effect changes in one’s own life. As Gandhiji has rightly put it “If there is numeral ‘1’, then all the zeros after it will get meaning.” So the primary condition to create a corruption-free society is to effect changes in one’s own life to keep up personal integrity by diminishing the distance between deeds and words and words and mind.
Market believes in centralisation of wealth and the philosophy it propagates justifies competition, conflict, crisis and its natural culmination in destruction. Before it reaches the natural culmination, it rewards a mighty person who establishes his authority over the meek. The might always believe in giving commands and it demands others to take in commands. An economically centralised world demands the economically weaker sections to take its commands and to lead a sub servant life to the economically stronger. Naturally, any system that believes in culmination of money cannot believe in co-operation and consensus.
The market economy which is founded upon competition and establishment of the economic power over the economically challenged section can never think of democracy, because the basic principles of democracy are consensus, co-existence and co-operation. It is clear that a market economy cannot maintain democracy at political level and equality at social level. In such a setup, we cannot even imagine of a dialogue between the more polarised groups in a society. That is, economic segmentation and resulting polarisation can lead to the formation of island like groups in a society which are totally cut off from all mutual communication links. He who believes that in market economy one would be able to practice democracy is really in the grip of Maya. Such a person cannot enjoy happiness because there will be constant conflict in his inner as well as outer spheres of existence. Therefore, a person who believes in equality at social level, democracy at political level and co-operation at economic level has to experience ‘ananda’.
Democracy can be effective only if the subjects are prepared to be regulated by themselves. If individuals refuse to be regulated by themselves, then the practise of democracy becomes a false. Voluntary submission to law can be interpreted as one among the measurable parameters of effective democracy. But if one submits to law because of some sort of external force and if the same person violates law due to internal instincts or in the absence of the presence of that external law enforcement agency, then there would be a contradiction in terms. That is, a person who submits to law due to pressure form external forces and violates law because of the unregulated inner instincts, creates direct conflict between the internal and the external. In such a situation, that person conceals what is real in internal life and projects something that is contradictory to the internal face. The concealment of the real and the projection of the unreal have often been located as the hall marks of maya.
This contradiction has been narrated as hypocrisy and hypocrisy has been adjudged as one of the important weaknesses of any democratic practise, because there is no specific system of law to punish a hypocrite. An example that can be sited from the Indian context is the discretion on the basis of caste. External observances of caste discrimination is a crime according to law but the internal practise of caste discrimination cannot be seen dictated by the investigating agencies and convicted by the court of law. This social context which is quite common in almost all Indian states has still been treated as a complicated social problem to be resolved. But unfortunately, the maya ridden social context never permits us neither to resolve the issue nor to adopt a different path of life.
A different path of life is essential, but to clean the polluted social context in a democratic set up shall never be an easy one. We have to cleanse the psychic apparatus of each individual. That is why Mahatma has made it clear that politics without spirituality is disastrous. The spirituality to be practised in political life can be attained only by rigorous practise of religious vows such as ‘satya’ (truth) and ‘ahimsa’ (non-violence). So, the moment one experiences ‘ananda’ (bliss), he should be able to shed off the crisis, conflict and confusion emerging out of maya. Therefore, it is a political as well as a personal necessity to remove maya as a prelude to the enjoyment of ‘ananda’.
Mahatma Gandhi has answered a specific question – ‘what exactly is a good government?’ He said that the best government is the one that governs the least. Any government that governs the least must be a self-regulated government. A self-regulated government applies only the minimum force to establish law and order. In such a state of affairs, the ruler also has to regulate himself. According to the Indian Systems, the prime qualification of a ruler is that he must be able to control himself. All great kings in India had traditionally attained such a quality and they could successfully regulate the ruled. The logic behind the argument is that only the self-regulated will be able to regulate others. Hence, a system of self-regulation is the basic principle of democracy. Instead, democracy can never be a system of management, externally managing or regulating the citizens, but it is a government of internal regulation by every citizens. This internal regulation of the citizens has been spelt out as ‘submission of oneself to law’. A law abiding citizen must be a self-regulated citizen.
Democracy has often been described as the best form of government; because it is only in a democratic set up that we impose regulation on oneself. Democracy never believes in centralisation of power. Democracy is a government of decentralisation through the practice of self-regulation by individuals and institutions. It is inappropriate to define democracy as the government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’, because such a definition endorses up anthroprocentrism. Anthroprocentrism believes that man is the centre of the universe and everything can be interpreted in tune with the interests of the human beings. The notorious Greek slogan that ‘man is the measure of all things’ is the declaration of the anthoprocentric exercise on nature.
Democracy believes that the centre of everything should be within itself and not external to it. Therefore the centre of man must be within himself and the centre of a particular institution named judiciary or executive also must be within themselves. That is, as a person has to regulate himself. Any institution or establishment in democracy also has to regulate itself by framing principles of regulations by itself. For ex. The judiciary, legislature, executive and the media in a democratic set up have to frame rules regarding the regulation of the respective institutions by themselves. That is, legislature cannot go beyond a limit that has been set by the legislature itself. Therefore it has often been considered that regulation of a particular democratic institution, for ex. take the case of judiciary, cannot be regulated by the executive or legislature. Therefore, no democratic set up can entertain the use of unregulated power mechanism. The unregulated use of power mechanisms takes a person as well as an institution to the point of dictatorship in which power has been centralised either on a person or on an institution. Centralisation of power can never be satisfied with limitations. Hence, it stretches its wings to the unlimited horizon. As we have already seen that anything that is unlimited is impractical and hence all dictatorial forces of any kind have to face their natural fall.
Dictatorship can never be confined to the art and science of statecraft alone. Dictatorship appears in the form of centralisation of worldly things, including wealth and positions along with power. The centralisation of wealth appears in a form of dictatorship of economic authority over the economically less privileged. It is a fact that we cannot have a group of people who can be classified under a class named ‘have-nots’ as it had been dreamt by Karl Marx, because it is not possible to find out a person who has nothing with him. Every man is born with a set of talents. The talents of each person have to be nurtured by constant training. A man with a trained talent is an economically powerful person. Since it is impossible to find out a man free from talents, the term cannot be true to the contextual reality in absolute sense. But at the same time it is a fact that there are economically less privileged in a society driven by market forces.
Maya can never be equated to illusion because at the time of experience, the piece of rope behaves as a snake. But at a later moment with sufficient light, the same person experiences it as a piece of rope. That experience of rope also cannot be discarded. So the snake which we have already experienced is within the frame of experience of a piece of rope. Similarly, the world as it has been experienced by humans with sense organs, motor organs and mind are also within the frame of Brahman. That is why the Upanishads say that Brahman can be experienced in the form of ‘anna’ (matter), ‘prana’ (life elements), ‘mana’ (the subtle forms of matter and life elements having consciousness), ‘vijnana’ (specific knowledge of the self-consciousness) and finally ‘ananda’ (the all inclusive experience of the Bliss). Such an experience of Bliss that excludes nothing but includes everything is ‘Brahman’.
Therefore, it can be argued that the state of experience of Brahman includes all diversities and at the same time transcends all such diversities including contradictories such as pain, pleasure etc. Only such a person can liberate himself from the clutches of Maya.
The experience of ‘Ananda’ ⃰ (Bliss) is the knowledge that liberates man from the grip of Maya i.e. from the horrible experiences of sorrows, sufferings and uncertainty. But a genuine question arises is that what exactly is the state of ‘Ananada’ and how it can be described and communicated. The Upanishads unanimously adopt a position that “Ananada’ can neither be described by words nor be approached by mind. But at the same time it is a state of experience that can be attained by everyone, if he/she dedicates oneself to such a state of experience.
Anything that can be perceived by sense organs can be described by words. Hence we have got a world of descriptions in words. There are certain experiences which cannot be described by words but can be known by mind. The taste of a food item is an example. Because of our limitations to explain a taste, a group of guys eating the same food come out with distinct comments. But the real taste remains in our tongues, may be in the form of taste buds. ‘Ananda’ but is an experience that goes beyond the reach of words and mind. Naturally it must be a state of experience that crosses the limits of our sensory organs and mind. So it is a possibility of experience of something in me and at the same time, I may not be able to explain what it is. Indescribability of a state of experience can never be treated as a logical base for the non-existence of such a state of experience. It is the possibility that leads us to a higher state of experience.
Nobody can deny a very simple fact that he or she has not yet experienced even a bit of ‘Ananda’ in his or her life. The possibility of experience of ‘Ananda’ suggests that such an experience can be a perpetual one. But again the question arises that how can I know that somebody experiences ‘Ananada’ or not.
He who uses the minimum worldly things is the right person who realises ‘Brahman’. The worldly things include power, wealth, position and fame. One who uses the minimum power, the minimum wealth and even the minimum food is the person who experiences ‘ananda’ (Bliss). In other words, a person who is capable of experiencing ‘ananda’ at the minimum use of worldly things alone can be called as one who has attained ‘ananda’. The next question arises is how can one be able to fix one’s own minimum. It is the habit of the humans to aim at the maximum. That is why we like to get the maximum power, maximum wealth etc. But the unfortunate thing is that nobody would be able to know the maximum because the maximum is limitless. Anything that is limitless is infinite and anything that is infinite cannot at all be known. Naturally, a person who aims at the maximum engages himself to run after something he does not know. In such a position, one cannot be able to enjoy happiness. Therefore, the person who aims at the maximum will always be tied up by sorrows, suffering and miseries of all kinds.
What can be known is only the minimum and the minimum has to be fixed by the person concerned. As a prelude to fix the minimum, one has to control oneself. Self-control can be attained only by regulating sense organs and mind. The self-regulation to be practiced by one is an essential step to ensure the minimum use of worldly things. As it has already been seen, man is habitually aiming at the maximum; naturally he will end up in despair. So a person who makes use of the minimum power, minimum wealth and minimum position alone can be called a person who enjoys ‘ananda’. That is why it is said that ‘ananda’ always lies at the minimum and not at the maximum. In order to make use of the minimum, a self-regulated person has to ascertain himself that he cannot go below a particular point.
The Advaitha Vedantha says that it is vidya (wisdom) alone that is capable to remove Maya. But the question that remains is, what exactly is the nature of vidya that is capable of removing Maya.
Nobody can be happy with Maya because it creates only chaos and confusion. Therefore happiness can be attained only when one is capable of removing Maya. The removal of Maya can be attained only by the possession of right knowledge. In this sense, it is true to say that it is the knowledge that makes us free.
What is the knowledge that makes us free is a question to be answered by one and all because each one wants to enjoy happiness. The answer to the question need not be identical because each one is capable to find out a contextual answer. There is nothing wrong in conceiving that the knowledge that makes us free is the knowledge that can be acquired through the sense organs and mind. The sense organs and mind reveals only a changing reality.
Advaitha Vedanta believes that the changing reality is only a ladder to the unchanging reality. Otherwise, they justify, that one cannot be able to know the change. The unchanging reality that has been signified by the changing signs is known as the truth or ‘Brahman’. Brahman is the knowledge that liberates us from the changing world of chaos and confusion.
Is the changing world different from the unchanging Brahman? All the efforts of the Upanishadic Rishis ⃰ were to find out a logically consistent and practically viable answer to the question. The most common element of the answers given by them is that the world and the Brahman is non-dualistic. As in the case of a human being having a body consisting of sense organs, motor organs, internal organs, external skin, manas (mind) and something more than them i.e the ‘Atman’ ⃰ ⃰ are functioning as a non-dualistic entity. It does not mean that Brahman is the inner essence alone of this entity but it is the entity itself.
Any knowledge about the world cannot be discarded as non-existing because whatever we have acquired as knowledge has been direct outcome of one’s own experiences. In order to explain the relation between the world and the Brahman, advaitiyans ⃰ ⃰ ⃰ used ‘rope’ like experience as a parable. In a dim light, a piece of rope has been experienced as snake and later within the presence of sufficient light the same thing has been experienced as rope. In this parable, the person who experiences snake instead of a piece of rope really experiences snake because his body and mind react as if it has been a snake, not a rope. This shows that the experience of a snake instead of a rope can never be discarded naming it an illusory.
Our world of experience has been filled with contradictions. Pain and pleasure, love and hatred, sorrow and happiness, life and death are some of the familiar contradictories to be experienced by everyone in day today life. One and the same object is capable to provide either one or the other of the contradictories at one occasion. For example a lover who gives pleasure at a time point ‘t1’ provides pain at a time point ‘t2’. Naturally it is not possible to assert what it would be given at ‘t3’.
In such a state of experience, a person must always be in a state of anxiety due to the uncertainty provided by the object in question. The uncertainty and the resulting anxiety makes us unable to define an experience; that is, an object that possesses contradictory qualities cannot be defined. The indefinability of our experience makes us to go through incessant sorow and suffering. Therefore, Maya has been defined as ‘Anirvachaniya’, which means indefinable.
This indefinability is the cause of anxiety and anxiety is the cause of stress, strain and suffering. The present task before any HR Management expert is to reduce stress and strain as a prelude to maintain harmony. A person, who is under the grip of Maya, will never be able to enjoy happiness because uncertainty is just incapable to provide harmony and happiness. Hence, anyone who wants to enjoy happiness has to overcome the obstructives of Maya.
Anxiety has been considered as the most serious problem to be encountered by majority of humans of the present century. It has been diagnosed as the root cause of most of the psychosomatic diseases. But modern medical science is helpless to find out a practical solution to this problem, because it has no panacea to offer to enlighten the grey areas of the cause of anxiety. Since Maya is indefinable and since anything indefinable remains opaque, it is not possible to get a transparent idea about Maya.
But if something remains as opaque before us, then nobody can remain satisfied without finding a means to know what it is. Religion, Philosophy, Science, Literature, Art and all such human efforts are there to offer a proper tool to solve this vital issue. That is why all these human efforts are at the revelation of truth, because truth alone shall make us free from the burdens of mystery. Religion believes that right faith is the effective tool to shed light to resolve the mystery of misery and suffering. Science propagates that the right scientific method, whatever be its definitions and consequent descriptions, is the only tool to know truth at least as a justifiable belief. The endless efforts of the poor mortals to know the ‘said to be’ truth can be seen in the form of art, literature etc. But the patterns of life still remain unchanging amidst its mystery.
There are serious problems in perception, conception, articulation and communication. All these problems are derived naturally from the inbuilt limitations of our sense organs, Psychic apparatus, language and communication respectively. For ex. Our perception of light is limited to a medium range of violet to red. The innumerable rays that go beyond the visible range of our eyes still remain as unobservable. Similarly, our psychic apparatus has been limited by the inborn tendency which can be classified into two categories namely likes and dislikes. Hence there are omissions and commissions in understanding.
Our language has been limited by too many factors. The semantic and syntactic ribles create confusion both in articulation and communication. Hence, the general complaint is that I’m not properly understood. The spiritual enquiry begins from the human efforts to cross over the limitations inborn to sense organs, psychic apparatus, and language. Therefore every spiritual leader says of a world that is different from what we have perceived, as like a physicist who says that a modern table is not really a plane surface but it is a communion of innumerable particles and space in between them. So there are two different worlds, the world that has been perceived and the world that has s to be perceived.
In Indian Systems, this phenomenon has been termed as ‘Maya’. That is, the world that has not been perceived by you or not exactly revealed to you. But something that has been concealed has to be revealed through constant practice of self-regulation. Every religion in its’ spiritual sphere advises us to find out the world that has been covered by our sense organs, psychic apparatus, and language. All these instruments can be used as ladders to experience the world that has been concealed by our sense organs etc. The one who makes a success in that attempt attains sainthood.
There are differences between the world as it has been presented before us and the world as it has been seen. The seen world has been changing from person to person. Therefore, the world as it has been seen by a poet, prophet and the physicist may be different from the world as it has been seen by a layman. The poetic world need not be in conformity with the prophetic world and the world of the physicist need not be the world of the layman. Similarly, the world can be perceived differently by differently abled and interested persons from place to place and time to time.
Hence, we have got many worlds on the basis of the experiences of the one and the same person. That is, the same world can be experienced differently in accordance with ‘will’, ‘whims’ and ‘fancies’ of the persons concerned. Therefore, which world is the best among the many worlds has been the result of the experiences and expressions of one and the same person. The prophetic world and the poetic world are equally the best to the prophet and the poet respectively.
This belief is the basis of pluralism. Pluralism provides equal opportunity to one and all, to experience and express the world. It gives everyone the right to create one’s own world and to lead a peaceful life in that world. The only condition to be observed is that the life of a person in one’s own world should never be a hindrance to others. If one creates hindrance to others, then such an act amounts to negation of pluralism. This attitude towards life and world has been prophetically termed as ‘to live and let live’. This aphorism transforms our existence into a peaceful co-existence.
Co-existence does not mean the peaceful co-existence of uniform objects together. Uniformity does not need equality because there cannot be any sort of diversity in uniformity. Equality is the concern of a pluralistic society and no sane society can ignore the idea of equality. Even in times of slavery, the slaves had been dreaming of a free world that provides equality with their masters.
But the nuances of the term equality have been interpreted and reinterpreted by philosophers and laymen alike. Equality presupposes identity. It is the identity that constitutes foundation for multiformity. Multiformity projects differences rather than identity between one and the other. Every object of the same species keeps uniqueness in appearance. It is the uniqueness of an object that has often been misconceived as differences. The uniqueness that appears as differences has been identified as the features which make an object different from the other. Therefore, every object is identical of having uniqueness.
The uniqueness and identity kept by every object are the basis of pluralism. Hence, pluralism believes that every object keeps identity with the rest. Something which remains identical in every object, in spite of the differences, has been termed as ‘sat’ (truth) by Indian Advaitha Philosophy. All the diversified features, of the objects we experience with the help of our sense organs and mind constitutes to Maya.
In every process of rejuvenation there is an act of self actualisation or self regulation, because the moment one creates something one has to ensure full participation in the act of creation. That full involvement occurs only when one is able to exercise free will. Otherwise, a person who is not involved in a particular activity will naturally be alienated from the action as well as the context in which he is acting. This process of alienation is a very serious one and the person who himself alienates from the context, as well as the action, will never be able to make anything novel or anything creative. It is the total involvement of the person in the context as well as in the action that makes him really free and such a person should be able to create something, in the sense that he must be able actualise whatever be the potentialities in him. The range of the actualisation as well as the range of the potentialities may be changing from person to person or place to place. A person who is actualising something alone need not be great – this rule is applicable to a great writer and a great craftsman.
A person who is able to actualise whatever he has with him must be able to produce something and such an act of creation must be able to surpass the test of times. The test of times means that an act of creation must be able to survive irrespective of the temporal changes. This is what is meant by the term novelty. So the act of creation is a novel action and in that novel action the person actualises whatever he has with him in the potential form. If there is a cent percent involvement in that actualisation that can be treated as self-realisation in the context in which one acts. So, self-realisation is the aim of a creative artist. The moment one feels that he has actualised whatever he has with him then he can be sure of the fact that act has been a creative one. Such an act of creation really leads the whole nation to prosperity and progress. A progressive society is one that gives maximum opportunity to its members for the actualisation of their talents. This is one of the reasons why the fascist societies are not able to survive the test of the times. Such a society will never be able to preserve the right of its individuals to create with maximum involvement in the said context. This is one of the reasons why the fascist maxims are failing in due course. Fascism will never be able to entertain the free will of the individual and since they are not able to do that they won’t be able to help those members of the society to actualise their capacities; it can be in any form.
A man can be creative in a business field just like genuine artist. So we cannot say that only artists and writers are creative and business men are not. This style of thought never makes any sense. Business men can also be creative provided they also blossom into full. This is applicable to every area of action including religious service. Take for example any business man or an industrialist, who is making money and he cannot enjoy the total of his creation for himself alone. That is another characteristic of the art of creation. The art of creation guarantees its enjoyment not to the creator alone but to other persons who need not be gifted to live in a particular favour. Take for ex. Ford. The Ford industry has made money, and whatever Ford has made, that money is utilised also by the persons who are not directly linked to him. This is the case of a businessman in India too. My point is that whatever be the art of creation, one of the aims is that any activity of creation is not exclusively meant for the creator alone; it is meant for the whole public in the sense that it also includes the generations to come.
It is the self regulated mechanism of freedom that really leads a society to creativity. Creativity in its ideal form must be novel and noble. By novelty, it means rejuvenation of oneself – that is the most important feature of novelty. Novelty invariably rejuvenates a person to new dimensions and it also leads one to new horizons. It is in this sense that a creative activity becomes the best form of expression that makes every society healthy and wealthy. If a society is not wealthy, it simply means that such a society doesn’t utilise its’ resources in a creative manner. Rejuvenation intends to make use of whatever one has with him/her in tune with the contextual demands and never anything from external sources. Rejuvenation for a person is not through extraction of any sort of energy from external agencies, but that person or the body of that person due to its metabolic mechanism makes use of whatever it has in a more organised manner, to make the body more strong in that context. It is what is called the adaptability of the body mechanism. When novelty rejuvenates oneself, then he/she must be able to produce the best from them.
There is rejuvenation of economy and health. The best of a nation or of a person can be made only through the process of rejuvenation. In that process, an individual, society or a state makes use of its economic energy in a convergent manner to make it more and more useful. To make a nation wealthy, it is not proper to invade other nations or rob off other’s wealth. Instead, they have to depend upon whatever they have with them. This is how creativity is made novel and noble. The very idea of invasion and exploitation of others is not at all creative because such an idea never makes a person free. A person who is engaged in any sort of exploitation will naturally be living in a world of slavery. It is in this sense that Mahatma Gandhi made it clear that the British people who were establishing colonies in Asia and Africa were not enjoying freedom. He knew that free people never exploit others, they always rejuvenate their own resources. This rejuvenation of one’s own resources must be the source of an economic force according to the Indian concept. Mahatma Gandhi who followed the Advaita system in socio-political life, insisted that Swaraj must be the dictum to govern the socio political and economic forces in India. It is the Swaraj that gives one freedom nobility and novelty; it is the Swaraj that makes one happier. This must be the dictum for everyone who is engaged in a creative activity.
In literature, plagiarism has totally been treated as unethical. There is no creativity in imitation. Here, no one can enjoy freedom or happiness. A plagiarist cannot also utilise his own talents. This is applicable to the nation also. The case of a nation or a society which exists exploiting others might cease to be wealthy one fine morning. Same is the case with an artist, an industrialist, layman or a family man. While addressing a writer’s conference, Gandhiji made it clear that as an Indian one has to depend on India. The writers who are trying to follow the footsteps of the western authors will never be able to make their attempts a successful one. For ex. one cannot imitate Shakespeare and create an identical play in India. In the history of the literary movements in India, we are not tracing the history of all imitators but we are after the original writers who made exclusive use of local resources, the literary history of India begins with Vyasa and Kalidasa. So, originality depends on creativity and creativity means rejuvenating oneself and rejuvenating oneself means using one’s own resources in the given context.
A very false concept on creativity is that it amounts to anarchy. Take for ex. music; anarchical expression of various sound waves can never be able to create music. Music can be created only if the musician regulates his vocal cord to produce a specific range of sound with all required features. A musician also needs consistent practice for effective utilisation of all supporting equipments. Like this, a poet has to make rigorous practices to make his selections proper. After all, poetry is diction; but how to use the words appropriately is the question. Words can be connected properly in a poetic manner only if one is able to make discrimination between what the poet needs in a particular poetic context and what he does not need. So the ‘need’ and ‘does not need’ are to be assessed properly, where one has to exercise one’s power to regulate his capacity to select words. Words are flowing like a river but we have to get what we need. This proper form of selection is to be done by proper regulation. This is applicable to the administration also. A good administrator is the one who is able to regulate himself as well as his establishment. Administration is nothing but an act of exercising freedom, in the sense that he regulates himself and the whole establishment. Regulation can never be confined to the financial matters alone, even though every finance manager gives the warning that one has to regulate one’s expenditure. If one is not able to regulate expenditure, such an institution will end up in bankruptcy because unregulated spending of money will definitely take an institution to financial crisis. So, regulation is essential even for a good administrator. One cannot become a management expert without having regulation.
These rules of regulation are not restricted to either a good politician or a good academician. Wherever we exercise our free will, there we need regulation. There cannot be any creation or creative activity without having proper regulation. This universal theory can no way be ignored by any person whatever be his area of activity, irrespective of a laymen and an expert. Take the case of a lady who is cooking. Cooking is an activity which needs a high level of attention and concentration. In every minute segment of the process the one who is engaged in cooking has to exercise accurate self-regulation mechanism. She should invariably know the proportion of all ingredients used in a dish – from salt to spices. In short, wherever we are placing ourselves, we essentially need self-regulation. My point is that self-regulation is not merely the concern of Rishis and sages alone but of every person who is engaged in any sort of activity. The moment one wants to transform ones activity as an act of creation, such an act can never be able to ignore the role of self regulation. At the very beginning of this discussion itself, I had made it clear that freedom is self-regulation. Advaita Vedanta clearly gives the idea that any person in any field can be creative only when he exercises his free will with a regulative mechanism that has been designed by the person himself.
Freedom is one of the necessary preconditions for creativity. A society can be creative, only if it enjoys freedom; same is the case with individuals too. A free person and a free society should be able to actualise whatever remains in potential form. So, the best form of management is exploring the creativity of one and all in that organisation. Here, both the organisation and all the members of that organisation should be free. An organisation consisting of free members alone is a free organisation; only such an organisation turns creative in management, in political affairs, in social affairs and even in industrial development. A developed society in its real form is a society that enjoys freedom, in the sense that it is able to exercise self-regulation.
A self-regulated society alone will be able to effect changes in a creative form in the context in which it exists. Take for example the case of management: we want to get the best product, the best result etc. but the best can be produced only if all the members of that organisation, right from the last grade to the Managing Director are exercising their free will. The exercise of free will means that a person in that organisation must be able to concentrate, must be able to organise and focus his attention on the goals directed by that organisation. Then only an individual can be creative and only a creative individual is able to contribute something effective and valuable to that organisation. What happens now days is that we are fixing targets to be achieved. In the process of achieving a target, the individual is bound by issues other than the target because if he is not able to achieve the target, he will be thrown away from that organisation. This naturally generates fear. A person who is overpowered by fear can never be a free man. Man must necessarily be free from all sorts of fears including fear of God. The very concept of fear of God has been the contribution of the Jewish tradition. When Jesus introduced His Gospel, He really changed this position and He identified with those persons, who were then treated inferior. Such an identification give those persons, a sense of freedom because they get rid of the fear that has already been created by a philosophical position which says that God is something different from man and man cannot attain the position of God. Jesus has made it clear that if a person is able to experience God he should also be able to establish His kingdom on earth. Jesus explains that when one experiences heaven on earth he gets freedom from all the fears that have been created by distinct forces.
This philosophy is never different from right management principles. A management expert must be able to guide others to exercise their free will in tune with the objectives of the organisation. When an individual gets tuned to this style, he really turns a contribution to the whole organisation. This is what effective management means. But now-a-days what happens is that we are separating the management tactics from the employees; such a separation creates fear in the minds of employees. A person who is afraid of his superiors may not be able to extract the good aspects of his own potentiality. So, in every sense, the management has to make everyone in that organisation, free. If a teacher can make a student free from fear of a subject, quite sure that such student must be able to produce the maximum to the subject as well as to the society.
Freedom and Creativity
If you want to actualise the potentialities present in an individual, you must necessarily make him free and if a teacher can make a student free from fear of a subject, quite sure that such a student must be able to produce the maximum in the subject as well as in the society. Because of the fact that there is an element of fear in our students, usually they are not creative in their activities; they are afraid of language, they are afraid of mathematics, they are afraid of science and they are afraid of almost every subject. The duty of an ideal teacher is to remove fear of a subject from the mindset of the students and removal of fear is exactly the work of a teacher. A person who is able to remove fear from the minds of the people is a real leader. But, on the contrary what happens now is that here in the political organisations the supreme leaders are creating more of it. Because of this fear any follower always imitates the leader, and imitation cannot bring out anything creative. So, especially in the case of India, we have to free our youth, free our students free our management and our employees from that fear which has already been created by the so called superiors. The removal of fear is an essential precondition in exploring the potentialities in a human individual. Advaita aims at removal of fear and the moment we admit that ‘I and you’ is identical, we also indirectly admit that there is no difference between ‘I and you. If there are identical elements in ‘I and you’ there is no question of lack of communication. Lack of communication always ends up in creation of fear.
No society can be progressive without expression of freedom by every member. A developed and progressive society means a society which actualises the potentialities in every individual. All such actualisations should have the ability to exercise freedom of each person. Freedom is something that is not given; it has to be taken by the person concerned. The one who exercises freedom has to remember that a free person has to regulate himself too. The self-regulated exercise of freedom by every member of a society alone ensures progress and development. The present day market economy believes in unfettered freedom. An unfettered freedom is dangerous to a healthy society. A society needs regulation and that regulation must be self-regulation. This aspect has been forgotten by the Western philosophical systems of thought. Now-a-days the world moves towards polarisation of power, wealth etc. This is highly dangerous. It is not freedom that is dangerous but self-regulated freedom.
Effective communication is a necessary precondition for the maintenance of peace and harmony, because if one does not understand the other he is inculcating fear in the other. If the other inculcates fear in me, naturally I will be getting away from him and there cannot be effective cooperation. So if I want to cooperate with the other, I must be able to understand him. To understand means, there should be effective means of communication between I and him. If this effective communication is not possible, then naturally the other becomes an unknown continent; an unknown continent always creates fear and fear provokes one to conquer and the control the other.
Anything that is unknown in the world creates fear and fear is the reason for the violence against the other. Violence really is the creation of fear and fear is due to lack of effective communication. If one is able to understand that there is nothing uncommon between I and you then naturally that person must be able to get in touch with the other because there is a level of identity between the two. If such a level of identity is not able to be experienced by the person, then such a person will naturally turn to weapons as a means of protection. What I am telling is that similar persons are in need of effective tools of communication and effective communication should be the essential precondition for the maintenance of peace in oneself as well as in others in the society. Only then a peaceful society can be a free society.
Freedom can be attained only when one is able to practice non-violence and the moment one practises violence, he/she must be imprisoned by fear as well as the other entities which make anyone incapable of getting in touch with the other. So, a free man must be a man of non violence; non-violence in the sense that one should be able to make use of the minimum for himself as well as for others. So, the idea of sharing is the essential part of non-violence and freedom. A free man must be able to share everything with him with others. That’s why Jesus has once made it clear that if you have got two with you, you have to spare one to the other. This means that there is identity between one and the other. This identity has to be realised. That identity can be realised only by means of effective communication. The moment one is not able to understand the identity between oneself and the other he has to keep everything for himself because he never sees any reason to share whatever he has. The moment he sees that he has to keep everything for himself, he is centralising them be it money or position.
Centralisation of money position etc. can easily be the necessary and the most explicit form of violence. Wherever there is centralisation of power and money, such a place can never be free from violence. So, violence means centralisation and decentralisation means non-violence. If you want to share whatever be with you with others, then you have to realise that there is identical element in yourself and the other, just because one realises that, one must be able to share whatever be with him, with the others. In a non-violent activity, a free man must be able to share whatever has. So a free man must be able to share money and food with others. A society that shares everything with others can be treated as a free society. Advaita System firmly believes that a non-violent society can never be a society that believes in centralisation of power, money etc. Power and money can be decentralised in the sense that it must be shared with the rest and such a sharing process alone will be able to guarantee freedom. This is the basis of pluralism. What I mean is that a pluralistic society must be a free society, a free society must be a non-violent society which does not believe in centralisation of anything. Such a de-centralised society that is capable of sharing resources with the other alone will be able to maintain peace harmony.
Everyone accepts a fact that we are living in a multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-formal world where plurality is a reality. There are cultural plurality, religious plurality, political plurality, economic plurality and even plurality in food, dress habits etc. The question that arises is how it is possible to get an effective means of communication in a pluralistic world. Is no meaning in saying that a monolithic or a uniform world is better than a pluralistic world because nature never provides a uniform world or a monolithic world; there are differences and diversities. All such differences and diversities mean proper means of communication. How is it possible to make communication effective? The modern philosophical trend in philosophy, literature and media etc. have got a very firm opinion that communication is something that is different from what it is intended by the author. The text here is a different entity and the author has no role to play in the text or the intention of the author need not be considered as a proper element in communication, whatever be the intention of the author, the intention that has been explained explicitly or implicitly there in the text. We, the readers or the hearers have got full freedom to understand it in a way which is in tune with our context. It is well and good that if a particular term has been written by a particular author, has a specific meaning. This theory gives us the right that it can be understood in a different meaning. Suppose a term ‘mother’ has been used to explain the lady who has given birth to me, the meaning can be interpreted as mother-in-law, who is the mother of my wife. So, mother cannot be mother-in-law. That is a very serious aspect. But they simply says that any term be interpreted in any manner. This results in anarchy in the very experience of communication.
In an anarchical state where there is no communication at all, there must be some specific order communication and communication can be easy only we are able to establish some common elements between ‘I’ and ‘you’. Where there are no common elements, there is no communication. The post-modern trend says that there is similarity but nothing common between them; this makes communication ineffective or it creates chaos in the field of communication. Hence, what makes us more difficult is that the other remains as a mysterious entity as far as I am concerned. Such a trend in philosophical life as well as in cultural life really creates a serious problem. In his context it is essential to look into all possibilities to overcome this crisis and establish a dialogue between ‘I’ and ‘You’. Take for example the inter-religious dialogues. The Western Christianity developed based on a trend given by the Greek philosophers especially by the Aristotelian logic.
Thomas Aquinas was instrumental to make it possible to adopt the Aristotelian logic in Christianity through his theology. He said that the Aristotelian logic is enough to incorporate Christ experience. But it is a proven fact that one cannot be able to understand Christ with the tool provided by the Greek forefathers, especially Aristotle. Hence, we have to find out a new tool. When we make a comparison between Hinduism and Christianity, there is the question, ‘should we follow the tool as developed by either Hinduism or Christianity’. With Hindu tools, your assessment of Christianity need not be correct and vice versa. So, whenever we are in need of an effective communication system, we have to develop a new epistemology which is able enough to keep up identity at every level. Such a logical identity can be developed by the Advaitic System of logic. Advaitic System says that differences are not deficiencies but are the marks of nature; hence, we can be sure of the fact that there are diversified objects and all such diversified objects have something in common and it is that common element which helps us to make communication, more easy and possible. If we are not able to realise and recognise that common element then it is not possible to establish a meaningful dialogue in a pluralistic world.
Richard Rorti and other American writers who were too much conscious of resolving the riddle between body and mind have finally done it by creating a man who is free from mind – the mindless man, a man who is untouched by the problems of the mind. Such types of divisions can be seen in the Western philosophical trend, I mean the Greek philosophical trends. But this issue has been resolved in a brilliant manner by Jesus, when he said that there is heaven in you and there is heaven in me. Heaven is best common entity. There is the body in you and body in me; hence ‘you’ and ‘me’ need bread. Where I am more than the body, I am in need of something more than bread. This concept of the finer forms of human experience in life that begins with the sense organs, travels through the mind and finally reaches a state of experience which can never be explained either by words or even approached by mind. Everyone must be able to experience it. Such a state of experience has been termed as Ananda. Si it begins at Annam Brahma. Annam means the body, the matter – man is a matter. This fact can never be questioned. For ex. suppose you say that it is with wood that the table has been made. That is true; but if you ponder over the question and ask yourself ‘what you by wood?’ then immediately you will get the answer that it is specific unification of innumerable number of molecules in a very peculiar manner and the unification have been made by a set of rules and regulations. The table made out of wood is true at one level of our experience, and at the other level as the physicist says it is a peculiar arrangement of molecules also must be true. Here you agree with the fact that it is both molecules and wood.
Quite similar is the question ‘who am I’? Nobody can deny that there is a material entity in human beings. This truth cannot be ignored or deleted from the sphere of our experience. The body gets in touch with other material entities of the world. Whenever my body contacts with other material entities of the world there is a type of identity between the body and the material world. That is there. Here, you can also say that I am something more than the matter. There we have life – pranan. There are certain entities that come from the finer forms of matter. Life must be in the finer forms of matter. This vision is not new to the Indian Schools of thought, especially the Advaita System. We read in the Upanishads, ‘Who are You?’ ‘I am matter, then more than that I am life’. That life element can be seen in me and the unicellular mechanism in the world can never be differentiated. There is perfect identity in the life elements in me and that in the unicellular organism which can be termed as a microbe. It is impossible to find out that microbe through naked eyes, but with the help of certain equipments one must be able to detect it. But that life element which can be seen in that microbe in you and me is identical (not, are identical). More than that it is ‘mana’ (mind) – the ultimate reality is ‘manas’. Manas is the most subtle form of matter. Beyond manas, there is prangnanam (consciousness) and this consciousness can be seen in matter also. Ultimately it goes to a level of experience that can either be approached by mind or explained by words and such an experience is termed as Ananda. One must be able to communicate at that level also. Pluralism definitely raises the question of communication and this issue of communication can be resolved properly only if one is able to accept that there is something common in between you and me. Common entity can either be matter, life, mind, consciousness and ultimately the extreme Bliss (Ananda). There are various levels of experience, with regard to communication. All these have to be recognised and the moment we recognise it, the question that arises is, ‘what is the tool by which one must be able to understand that common element?’
It is at this point that we have to think of a different way of life that says that though there is flesh and blood in human beings, they are something more than that. According to Bible, “Man can never live by bread alone.” He needs something that comes out of the mouth of God. That something can be anything. It has been identified as heaven by Jesus. The moment we think that we are in need of something more than the flesh, that something is the foundation of the human beings, then the communication has to be directed to that end. From flesh to flesh we have to shift the communication to spirit to spirit or heaven to heaven. So the heaven in me and the heaven in you must be identical. This fact has already been explained in a brilliant manner with logical precision and clarity by the Advita System. The Advaita basically says that the world is a pluralistic entity but amidst that pluralism there must be something that is identical in everything that makes communication possible. A man and man, that is flesh and flesh, mind and mind; and also something more than flesh and mind. That something that exists in me and you that makes communication easy and possible.
The problem of communication is really important in the present day world. With the physical proximity that has already been seen in the world, thanks to the development of IT and transportation, we must be able to get in touch with the other within the least possible time. But the unfortunate fact is that the physical proximity alone is not enough to understand oneself and the other. So we have to find something more than that. That is why the Advaita System says that human beings are something more than what we directly perceive. Advaita asks ‘who you are?’ ‘I am the body’, that is one of the finest answer one can give. But are you the body alone? ‘No I’m more than that. There is mind in me.’ ‘Are you mind alone?’ ‘No, I’m more than that. There is spirit in me.’ ‘Are you Spirit alone?’ ‘No I’m more than that. There is pure Ananda in me’. This type of experience also must be identical. This problem has either been forgotten or misrepresented by many of the scholars and exponents of various Systems of thought, especially that of Western origin, more precisely that of the Greek origin, because Greek philosophy basically believes in bifurcation. There is no unity in Greek philosophy and the philosophical development of bifurcation is the central problem of Greek philosophy. That problem has not yet been properly solved by the tradition. So, generally we would like to say that there is a Decarthian problem or the Carthesian bifurcation, which says that there is difference between body and mind. Hence, we have got a psychology that is entirely different from that of the physiology.
There is physiology and psychology and these two systems are working on different systems of thought. Physiological rules and regulations need not be applicable to the psychological operation; hence we have the psycho-somatic; soma means body and psycho means mind. The somatic entity need not be applicable to the mind because mind is an entity totally different from body and what exactly is the relation between body and mind still remains an unresolved question or puzzle or riddle in the entire history of the Zen thought. Resolving this question Richard Rorty has suggested that it is possible to have a man without mind. So if there is no mind there is no question of any division between body and mind. This is as easy as possible to treat the headache of a man then it is better to chop the head itself; then we must be able to eradicate the whole ache due to the ailment of the head.
Positive aspects of the new market economy and the IT revolution is that it has made the whole Democracy can never be maintained in a uni-polar world; it can be maintained only in a pluralistic world. One of the world into a world of plurality. For ex. a man who lives in a remote village of Kerala cannot remain aloof from the developments of other parts of this affluent world. The so called European culture has often been accused as an inferior stuff by the Oriental group of philosophers, writers and scholars. But today, nobody can keep away from the influence of the so called European culture because even without your invitation, either you like it or not, the European culture is within the frames of your own living room. Whether you like it or not, it is there. The other ‘now-a-days’ is very near to you in physical terms.
The question, how is it possible to get communicated with the other who is physically very near to you, leads you to the problem: what is common between oneself and the other. The other here can be a religion, a system of life, a philosophy, a continent, a man with a difference or an object with a difference. The other is too near to you either in the virtual world or in the actual world. Since the other is too near to you, you will be forced to get communicated with the other. The question on the tool that helps to get communicated with the other is a fundamental question. To make communication easier, however, that common element has to be identified and experienced. But, this seldom happens in the present day world. This is a very serious problem. Though we have developed too many theories on communication, the real problem of communication is within oneself, not anything external to him. That is what that is common between ‘I’ and ‘You’; in another sense, what is common between oneself and the other, what is common between one religion and the other, what is common between one continent and the other, what is common between one philosophy and the other. If there is nothing common between one religion and the other, the only possibility is relational conflict. If there is nothing common between ‘I’ and ‘You’ the only possible relation is estrangement.
Estrangement means, ‘I will be really afraid of you’. An estranged entity or an estranged person or whatever it may be, it creates fear in human beings. So, there must be fear. So what is common between ‘I’ and ‘You’? While Jesus was teaching His philosophy and way of life, this question was asked. When He was talking about the kingdom of God, this question was raised. We see Him saying that what is common between you and me is the heaven. That means that there must be heaven in you and me; there must be something common in between you and me that makes communication possible. So communication can be made easy and possible only when one is able to find out the common aspect that exists in me and the other.
This aspect has often been forgotten by the present day Western thinkers. The present day world is too much concerned with anti-foundationalism. For example Richard Rorty asks, “Where are the foundations? I have not seen it.” But, if there are no foundations communication is impossible. Communications can be possible only if there are certain foundations, which must be common for the one and the other. That common element can be reduced to human flesh alone. Then flesh must be able to communicate with flesh. Only the identical elements make communication easy. If one thinks that man is flesh alone then everything that he expresses about man must be the various dimensions of the flesh alone and everything that can be communicated to the flesh alone. Here, the flesh communicates with the flesh. That sort of a communication system says that man is nothing but a lump of flesh and there may be blood also. So, if at the moment one thinks that human beings can be reduced to flesh alone then everything that is related to human beings must be related to the flesh also. It is here that we have to confine ourselves to the pleasures that can be enjoyed through the sense organs. Epicureans firmly believe that the human aim is to enjoy the maximum sensual pleasure. The moment we admit that our aim is to enjoy the maximum pleasure, then we have to admit that this pleasure is related to flesh alone.
Democracy does not mean that it is the rule of the human beings alone. The definition that democracy is the government of the people for the people and by the people is an obsolete one. Such a democracy can be termed as anthropocentric democracy where we are concerned only with the right of the human beings alone. We are totally unconcerned with the right of a granule of dust or the whole of vegetative kingdom. Democracy can never be a good system of government if it exploits nature, because it affects the free movement of the individual in one sense or the other in a different manner. So in a democratic set up what happens is that one has to expand the definition of democracy. Democracy has to include not only the human beings but also the biotic and the non-biotic entities of the universe as a whole. So a democratic government must be able to respect the right of a particle of dust and also it must extend a possible regulated mechanism to protect such a right, maintained by the non biotic world. It can never be confined to the biotic world alone but to the non-biotic levels also and then we must be able to protect the right of one and all. So democracy in this sense is not the rule of one or a few over the majority or the minority or the rest who are not part of a particular ideology but democracy means it is the rule by one and all in the sense that everyone must be able to regulate himself. Such a self regulated activity alone can be treated as the basis of democracy.
Then a question can be raised about the nature of non-human beings which are not concerned with the discriminatory power which is not applying the discriminatory power. How can we say that they are also part of a democracy? The answer is that no being or non- being in the universe except human beings will never be able hurt the rights of the other entity. Take for the example of a lion. A lion eats only when it feels hungry. No lion kills another animal as part of their sporting experience. This is not the case of human beings. No being in this universe ever collects anything for its family or its future generation. What they are doing is that they want only what they need at that particular moment of time. Human beings have got the habit of collecting and keeping things for a long time. They expect that they can keep it forever because they falsely believe that they must be able to lead a very long life on earth or probably till the end of it. Such a concept is too dangerous. What is possible is that in a democratic set up the people must be able to understand the fact that non-biotics are strictly following the rules of Nature and the Universal law that governs the macro and the micro, organic and the inorganic in manifestation. But human beings due to their ability to apply discriminatory power have got the habit of collecting and keeping. That is why Jesus once asked his disciples to learn the principles of right living on the earth not from the human beings but from the birds of the sky. No bird hoards anything for the future. It gets enough to satisfy the present. Humans are not able to follow that dictum but the spirit of that dictum should be practiced and maintained by every human being.
As we have already seen, the system of Advaita propagates plurality and freedom. Plurality admits uniqueness and identity; uniqueness in the sense that every individual needs unity. But at the same time, there is something common between one and the other. When there is something common in between, then there can be communication. A democratic system can be maintained only in a state of effective communication methods. For effective communication, the primary requirement is that there must be something common in between I and You. Wherever there is nothing common in between I and You, there cannot be any communication and wherever there is no communication there cannot be a democratic set up. Freedom depends highly on democracy in the sense that one of the preconditions for freedom is communication. This shows the fact that a free individual must be able to share something with the rest; he has to take something from the rest. This type of give and take relationship can be maintained only in a democratic set up.
In the capitalist set up especially in a market economy, there is no question of giving or taking but only grabbing. Everyone wants to grab the maximum at the maximum level. Maximum level means every individual leads a nomad like universe where he lives as a free individual who is totally cut off from the rest of the society. So he wants to maintain a world of his own. But in a democracy, no one maintains his or her own world. The world is his own but at the same time it has to be shared with the rest. So what I am telling is that the free individual has to admit that he is free to regulate himself. Such a self-regulated individual and the communion of such individuals form a society. Such a self-regulated individual and communion of individuals made society that also believes in self regulation can constitute a democratic set up.
The present day market economy can never be able to give any sort of guarantee to democracy. Any platform of privatisation, liberalisation or globalisation also cannot be liberal because a person who believes in competition can never be liberal. A liberal person has to admit the right of the other individuals. The world that has already been liberalised for the market economy is to get it the maximum for each individual to get in his/her custody, not sharing anything with the rest. Such a state can never be treated as liberalised. A pluralistic society has to admit these and at the same time admit the identity between one and the other. Identical factor is a common factor; it is that common element that makes communication possible. Democracy can be maintained only in a society in which effective tools for communication also are maintained. Then the question arises is how is it possible to maintain democracy where there is no regulation at all. An unregulated society can never be treated as democratic; it is a chaotic society. So, at the ultimate stage, the state next to the present, there should be of utter chaos if we are not able to regulate the unfettered march of globalisation. So, the possible form of government according to Advaitha is the democracy.
Globalisation has created a myth that a free society can be created only through open competition and a free society according to globalisation is the one that competes for maximum and thus prove its might over the rest. This eventually has become the basic notion of a consumerist society and it has created a very false impression that a good individual is the one who consumes the maximum quantity of consumer goods, whatever it may be. A person respected as good here is the one who enjoys the maximum and this maximum is limitless or undefined. Consumerism firmly believes that an individual who consumes more and more gets respectively more and more power, freedom and happiness; this again is false. The natural outcome of globalisation is the emergence of a consumer society. A consumer society is the one which firmly believes in maximum everywhere. No such a society will ever be able to enjoy freedom, as it already has already been explained in the previous sections.
Advaita firmly believes that it is not consumerism that creates a free society but the self regulation imposed by the individuals, societies and the nation on itself. The present consumer society trend is to create more and more consumer goods. Take for example the automobile industry. Every week, a new brand of motor car is being produced by the manufacturers and again every manufacturer is also producing more and more varieties of motor cars. Once it reaches an optimum mark, their advertisements begin to ask ‘what is your second car?’ This shows the fact that the first car has already been purchased and now the individual has to purchase one more, otherwise he cannot be treated as a respectable individual. Similarly, the same strategy says that the identity of a woman can be established only by the amount of gold or diamonds she possesses. The possession of gold and diamonds is treated as the hall mark of dignity and one has to compete. Every Jewellery shop or manufacturer of jewels has the opinion that every woman has to purchase the maximum to keep up the dignity of womanhood. Here, what happens is that the dignity of womanhood is identified with the amount of gold or diamond she possesses. This is nothing but equalisation of a spiritual being into a mere material entity. This attitude reduces man to the false assumption that man is nothing but a physical entity alone. It forgets a very simple fact that man is something more than a physical entity. That is why Jesus said that man never lives on bread alone. The globalisation and the resultant consumerism, firmly believes and propagates a notion that man is only just a physical entity and he is destined to live by bread alone. This is bare materialism. What I am telling is that consumerism, globalisation, market economy and the resultant consumerism reduce the whole society to rare materialism which never gives any hope for the individual to attain some sort of pain or pleasure or happiness. It limits all happiness to the possession of material entities only. Whether the possession of material entities is capable to offer happiness or not, which has never been a concern for this type of society. At present what happens in our society is that the society turns to the uncompromising materialism and a society that believes in it will never be able to enjoy happiness or freedom.
The competition as it has been envisaged by the market economy leads the whole society either into anarchy or into despotism. Anarchy results in the disintegration of both the individual and the society. Freedom can never be identified with anarchy because in an anarchic set up there is no regulation at all. Without regulation there is no freedom guaranteed. Freedom requires regulation and an individual is always regulated by some force. Whenever and wherever our society is being regulated by itself then it can enjoy freedom. That can never be equated to anarchy. Market economy takes the whole society either to anarchy or to despotism. Despotism can be practiced in a novel manner in the new world in the form of corporate management tactics. The corporate world believes in an open world that is the free world – an unregularised and liberated world. In a liberated world the corporate giant must be able to establish itself. This shows that after the establishment of the might over the meek according to the corporate giant, what remains there is despotism.
In a despotic set up, either in economic sector or in political field, or in cultural arena, wherever it may be, it ultimately leads the whole society to slavery. In effect, the present day economic practice takes the whole world into different islands of slaves through despotism, unfettered competition and unregulated life pattern and life mode. This can never be treated as a sign of freedom because freedom can never be guaranteed by any despot. Freedom is not something that is not given by somebody to someone but it has to be taken by the individual himself, the society itself and also the nation itself. If the individual never takes the freedom to experience freedom, such an individual will never be able to enjoy freedom. One has to prepare oneself by self-regulation, for this unique enjoyment of freedom.
Freedom can never be enjoyed without giving its price. Its price means the individual has to take up the responsibility. Responsibility of an action can be established on the individual, only when he is being regulated by himself. But in the other cases of an individual being regulated by some external forces, then naturally such a society of individuals can never be treated as a free one. So freedom in this sense either at the individual level or the societal level or at the national level can be enjoyed only by regulation by itself. This factor has been totally eliminated by the market economy or the new economic system. This is a very serious thing; when we think of a society in terms of the competition that has been permitted by or that has been enjoyed by the present day system of economic practice, then we have to think of the one fact that such a society can never give or guarantee freedom. Advaita believes in self regulation as an effective means of enjoying freedom. Equality, fraternity and liberty, can be enjoyed in a democratic set up only within the frames of self- regulation. No society can be said to practice equality if it denies self-regulation. Fraternity is the direct result of self-regulation. To maintain fraternity one has to admit that there are differences of opinion and such differences has to be admitted as pre-condition for the existence of society and the individual.
Advaita system aims at plurality and co-existence at the levels of both humans and non-humans. In a sense, it envisages an eco-centric universe, where the centre of every spacio-temporal manifestation should be at the centre within that spacio-temporal manifestation and it must be that centre which must be the governing force of each and every existence. Equality is an essential condition for pluralism; equality does not mean uniformity. It means uniqueness, identity and co-existence. Equality does not mean that everyone should get a share which has been fixed by an external force or authority, and everybody should be able to get his share as regulated by himself. In such an act of regulation, the individual should be very careful not to take the maximum but to confine himself to the minimum. The confinement of one’s minimum is the necessary precondition. And such a confinement alone will be able to guarantee plurality, equality, co-existence and freedom.
A free society means a society that regulates itself just like a free individual means an individual who regulates himself; so is a free social mechanism. In this sense, freedom means self regulation. So, the regulated by himself and should regulate himself aspects should be the necessary tool to be noted in a pluralistic society. Such a society must be the strength of the world. A strong human being means a person who is being regulated by himself. Such an act or mechanism of self-regulation, is to be practiced by every individual, every institution, and every stations and positions in a society. But unfortunately, the first casualty of the modern economy or the said to be market economy is the plurality. If we attain the principles defined by the modern economy, then we have to think of the annihilation of all the rest for the existence as supreme. In such a society there cannot be co-existence but only competition and annihilation and a society that believes in competition and annihilation, cannot guarantee any sort of freedom. This is the second casualty in the modern economy. Here, the society can never be free, the individual never can be free, a nation can never be free. In such a set up it is also not possible to reach the actualization of all they potentialities of an individual. Naturally, the theory that competition is an essential condition for growth and development is absolutely nonsensical, illogical and also draconian in its nature because if we believe that there is competition, it ultimately ends up in annihilation. Such a society never gives the opportunity to express itself, to expose one’s own potentialities. So, a free society is the society that guarantees the actualisation of the potentialities of one and all enjoying enough freedom to provide a set up where one must be able to actualise the inborn and the acquired talents and potentialities.
In this sense, Advaita aims at the acquired talents and potentialities. Take the example of an artist: an artist can never be able to express himself in a society that is being determined by too many forces. Here, even the Almighty God may not be able to create an individual with his genuine talents well actualised. The ethical principles of Advaita and the metaphysical ideas of Advaita can no doubt be in tune with the philosophy of such an economy.
A society becomes dignified only when the members of the same are ready to cooperate with each other, not in the sense that there should not be any competition with each other. A society can be termed as peaceful creative and progressive only if it guarantees cooperation than competition and consensus than contradiction. A society that endures any type of inner conflict can never be called a progressive society. Development does not mean huge buildings, wide roads, extensive transportation or flooding Medias and it cannot also be evaluated on the number of institutions it runs. A developed society guarantees co-existence between one and all. According to Advaita system a society also should not be empowerment of one group/individual over the other. We have social movements for women empowerment, Dalit empowerment and empowerment of the last in the society etc; but I don’t think such isolated empowerments of one over the other will never be able to make a society peaceful. Equal empowerment should be the rule of a peaceful society; equal empowerment, in the sense that every individual should be empowered to do his actions in his own way and not in tune with the directions that come from any outside entity. A person influenced by God can never be treated as a free person as far as he considers God as an external force. Here, he is nothing more than a tool and his actions can never be adjudged as his own actions. He also does not hold the moral responsibility for his actions. If one cannot contain moral responsibility of his actions and if a society as a whole also does not hold responsibilities of any kind, then such a society cannot be said to be a peaceful society.
According to Advaita way of thinking both the individual and the society should be free. The Advaita system believes that the centre of force that determines every individual is really within the phenomenon and not something external to it. That force should be the self-regulating force with the individual which guarantees co-existence and co-operation in any society. So a developed society is the one that contains self-regulated individuals, who are relating everything to themselves. A self regulating society can be treated as a developing society and a progressive society. We also have to remember that a collection of super power individuals of any kind also do not make any society progressive or developed. According to Advaitic attitude, an individual must be able to regulate himself, so is a society, so is a nation and so is the whole world. This self regulating mechanism in the individuals as well as in the whole universe must be experienced as the force on which the world should grow. This fact has often been ignored by both capitalists and communists. Both basically believe in centralization of power. The difference is that according to capitalism the centre of the force is an individual while in communism it is an abstract entity called the state. The state being the centre as it has been defined by its critics is not different from the individual in capitalism. Advaita system believes in de-centralization which should be applicable to the individual, society as well as the nation.
It is very easy to say that one has to regulate oneself; but it is not that much easy to practice the same. There must be certain practical steps to be adopted to regulate oneself. According to Hinduism ‘sama’ and ‘dama’ are to be practised for the attainment of a state of self-regulation. ‘Sama’ means to conquer the ‘manas’ and ‘dama’ means to control the sense organs.
‘Manas’ can never be equated to mind, because by ‘manas’ it means the subtle forms of all the sensory and motor organs. That is, ‘manas’ is capable to perform all the functions of sensory and motor organs in a subtle manner. If one is able to control the subtle form, then naturally one must be able to control the gross forms too. Therefore, it is always a futile exercise to try to control the sense organs, without having proper control over ‘manas’.
Hence, it has been argued that he who controls the ‘manas’ must be able to control the sensory and motor organs. When one is able to control ‘manas’, sense organs and motor organs thereon must be able to regulate oneself. A self-regulated person is not expected to abstain from the day to day duties and functions but on the contrary he or she has to perform such duties and functions in accordance with one’s ability and commitment. Such a man can make his best in his performance.
What happens now-a-days is that we are not able to get the best from the people in and around us. The main complaint is that humans are being used by the market as a commodity, but a self- regulated man must be able to overcome the temptations of the market, due to many reasons. But the fact reminds us that market is not an external entity but it is an internal mechanism. A self- regulated person must be able to control the temptations of the market by controlling the mechanism. This may be a viable alternative to market economy even.
An anarchist is incapable to enjoy freedom, because he does not believe in regulations. Anarchy is logically incapable to enjoy any type of order. Therefore, the natural outcome of anarchy is chaos. In a chaotic set up nobody can expect what would happen at the next moment, because there is no place for sequence of any sort in chaos. Since there is no order and sequence, there is no chance for freedom in anarchy.
Sequence and order can be established only by maintaining regulations. Then, who or what should be the force of regulation is a question to be answered carefully. The force or authority of regulation can easily be conceived as an external agency to the individual who has to be regulated. This has been a concept entertained by renowned personalities of known history. The moment we accept a person who has to be regulated by an external agency or authority, then we are accepting that the person regulated is only a tool in the hands of the regulating agency. This is nothing but a type of naked slavery that justifies determination and dictatorship.
A determined dictator is incapable even to conceive of equality of any sort. Peace is the first casualty of the world of unequals. Similarly, anarchy also provides no space for peace due to utter confusion. Peace cannot be attained without regulation but that regulation should be infused by the individual himself. Therefore a free man is one who has to be regulated by himself. Therefore, a free man is one who has to be regulated by himself. Hence, freedom can be defined as a state of self-regulated existence. Such a state of affair in Indian Philosophy is termed as ‘Shanti’ (peace).
Man cannot live on earth without a body and body is a spacio – temporal entity. That is why the holy Bible says that man is in need of bread to sustain his body and he also needs something more than that. Anything in space and time is changing. Hence man is an ever changing entity. Everything in him including his body, mind and something more than them are changing.
Though everyone knows that there is change, it is not that much easy to know how does change occurs and how it can be known. Change is always known in relation to something that remains at least relatively unchanging. For example, imagine of a wrist watch in which the dial as well as the needle are in a perpetual changing mode having the same velocity or not. It is not possible to know change and hence no time can be known using such a wrist watch. That is, changing time can be known ‘if and only if’ the dial remains stationary and the needles are on move. The moving needle is a ladder that leads us to the stationary dial and the dial indicates time. So what is known is not the moving needle but the stationary dial. Therefore, it has been argued that change is a ladder that takes us to the unchanging state of experience. That is, the space time entity which is always in a changing mode had been a ladder to something that is not changing. That something which is free from change is known as ‘Satya’ or ‘truth’. It is the ‘truth’ that is known through the phenomenon. Hence, it has been argued that every phenomenon in space and time is a sign that testifies the unchanging truth.
The ever changing phenomenon is ‘Agama’ (changing), which is ladder to ‘Nigama’ (unchanging). The Agama is the whole world and ‘Nigama’ is the basis of the world. The Vedic texts expressed in lingual form is ‘Agama’ and the basis to be experienced to it is ‘Nigama’.
History begins at this moment. We can move to the past and the future from this moment. If there s no present, then there is no past and future. The past that is relevant to the present alone can be known. The future that cannot be foreseen from the present is irrelevant. The irrelevant remote past and the distant future are vague. Any human effort to build up remote past history and distant future imagination ends up in irresponsible speculations.
Speculation is an abstract exercise. People make speculative history which leads to the building up of illogical and impractical Knowledge Systems. We have had too many examples of such futile exercises in the annals of history. So what is advisable is not to go beyond the reach of the present both in past and future. Therefore, it has been conceived on the basis of experience that time past and time present are in time present.
The communion of the past, present and future gives birth to a new concept of time, which is entirely different from the linear concept of time. The linear concept describes time as an incessant flow of having unknown beginning and unknown time. And what is known is only something in between the beginning and the end. The Indian concept of time is entirely different from the linear concept and it is known as the cyclic concept of time, in which time past and time future are converged in at a single point that is time present. This is the logical basis of the Indian belief that there is an end in every beginning and a beginning in every end. Naturally, no beginning can be a first beginning and no end can be a final end. Therefore, there is death in the every ‘sperm of life’ and life in the end of death. Hence, what is possible to have is a life cycle having birth, sustenance, death and again rebirth. This is what is meant by ‘Sansara Chakra’.
Though everyone experiences love in one form or the other, the meaning of love has been understood differently by different persons. Even the same person experiences it differently at different times. The meaning of love, as far as an ordinary man is concerned, is nothing but something that he gets from the very act of love. Naturally, one expects at least a sign of love in return. So to ‘love and to be loved’ has been an unquestionable dictum of the act of loving. Hence, one who loves someone can make a claim of being loved.
A person craves for love either from his friend or foe, only because he is sure that he has given out love and so he deserves to be loved. It means that there has been love in him. Dissolutionment has been narrated as the fate of such conditioned love affairs, because everyone engaged in the act of loving feels that one never gets back the exact amount of love in the same gravity and purity that one gives to the other. The feeling of difference between ‘the giving’ and ‘the getting ‘ leads one to the brewing of mistrust, misunderstanding, conflicts, quarrel and self-destruction. This is the beginning of the feeling that one has been cheated in the sacred act of loving. This is a horrible experience and that leads one to take revenge on the other. Such revenge ranges from irrational submission of suicide to irresistible aggression of homicide.
Then, how these extremes can be avoided to adopt a safe step to practise normal love is a question to be addressed by one and all in the same society. The answer formulated by the majority is ‘love ones’ friends and hate ones’ foes’. But it cannot be practically possible and logically free from contradictions, because it is not possible to have the co-existence of love and hatred at the same time in ones’ life. Therefore, what is practical in the practise of love is to avoid discriminations of friend and foe or good and bad. Such an act of love is termed as ‘Nishkamakarma’ in Indian System of thoughts.
According to Indian system of thoughts, brahmacharyais a compulsory vow to be practised by everyone for the attainment of moksha, the supreme state of experience.Indian System has not but demarcated moksha as an area exclusively meant for the celebrated saints only. It includes not only all human beings in the sphere of moksha but also non-humans like plants, animals, birds etc.,which also are equally eligible to attain moksha.The Indian tradition is generous enough to accept that even a grain of sand can also attain moksha.
If moksha is a state of experience to be aspired and attained by one and all and if brahmacharya is a necessary vow to be practised by everyone for the attainment of moksha, then what exactly is the meaning of the term brahmacharya is a question to be answered specifically.The English equivalent of brahmacharya is celibacy, which only means to abstain from sexual intercourse.But the Indian System does not insist that one has to practise celibacy as part of brahmacharya because if celibacy is part and parcel of brahmacharya, then a large group of household person cannot attain moksha.If we exclude all married men from the sphere of moksha, then indeed it is a great injustice.
Brahmacharya in Indian context means the minimum use of worldly pleasures through self regulation.It does not prohibit the enjoyment of worldly pleasures because it is impossible to lead a normal life in a market ridden world without having worldly pleasures; moreover our sense organs and mind are having the inborn tendency to enjoy the world at its’ best.Therefore no human can abstain completely from enjoyment of worldly pleasures.Hence what the Indian System insists is that we have to control ourselves from the tide of market pleasures, checking our craving for physical pleasures.
We are living in a ‘Market culture’. It influences us in many ways. It says that it is the routine matter to offer something as an incentive to buy something. Even if we are not in need of that particular thing which is being offered by the market, we have the habit of acquiring all those ‘free gifts’ as a part of our routine life.
How far are we being justified morally in these free gifts accumulation? The Indian System of thought says that accepting anything which is not essential for our existence is wrong. This concept is technically called ‘aparigraha’. ‘Aparigraha’ literally means to abstain from receiving anything which is not essential to ensure our existence, i.e. the basic needs like food, shelter etc. are to be minimized to ensure a fact that we are not taking anything which is not our due. We are warned to practise ‘aparigraha’ because the Nature is sure to provide everything to meet the need of all but nothing to satisfy the greed of even one. So if we take anything that is not essential to us, no matter how small it is, we are taking something which could have been the share of someone else. This act amounts to theft.
So what is necessary in the present context is to check the influence of the market by oneself. Market really tempts us to accumulate the maximum but ‘aparigraha’ reminds that there is nothing to satisfy the maximum of a single person. Therefore we have to accept a simple fact that our greed also is responsible for the famine in Bosnia and other countries. Is it that difficult to sort out our needs from our wants?
Whatever be the definition given to the term theft, stealing has been considered as an unethical act by every religions well as all systems of law. The Indian term to abstain from stealing is ‘Asteya’.
‘Why should we ask the society to abstain from stealing?’ is a question to be answered by the philosophers of ethics. Imagine that everyone in a society practices theft. It is needless to say that no one can lead a normal life in such a society. A society in which everyone practices theft can create only confusion. Nobody can lead a normal and peaceful life in a confused state of affairs. Therefore the primary requirement of the normal human existence is order rather than chaos.
The primary duty of every ruler, whatever is the nature of the theory of statecraft, has to ensure law and order; that is to provide conditions for the existence and co-existence of one and all.
Asteya, specifically demands everyone not only to take something of somebody either by force or consent but also to give up everything that is not essential to ensure ones’ own existence. In this sense Asteya specifically says that one has to regulate oneself to fix his or her minimum as a prelude to establish law and order in a civic society. In short law and order can be maintained properly not by the police force but by the self regulating individuals who firmly believes in virtues.
Note: Asteyais a Sanskrit word that means non-stealing and it is an important principle of Hinduism and is a vow taken by Indian spiritual aspirants. Asteya means much more than the Biblical commandment ‘Thou shall not steal’. Asteya refers to not stealing, not coveting, non hoarding as well as not obstructing other people’s desires in life.
In the beginning of the ‘Rigveda’ the term truth has been introduced and discussed with utmost precision. Truth has been defined as the basis of every manifestation in Space and Time. Space and Time are in perpetual motion. It may often lead us to think that the ever changing manifestations in Space and Time must be the reality because our experience always testifies change.
But how can we know that something has been changing? For example , if the needles and dials of the wrist watch are in perpetual motion, one cannot locate time. We can locate and fix time because the dial remains permanent while the needles are on motion. It shows that only something that remains at least relatively permanent be able to make us to experience something that is changing. That is why every motion in nature has been located in comparison with the relative permanence of the velocity of light. That is if we realise that the world is changing that definitely indicates that there is something which remains unchanging.
That unchanging reality amidst change is technically termed as ‘Satya’ (Truth). ‘Satya’ in this sense means the experience of permanence. That is why ‘Satya’ has been described as ‘Nitya’ which means eternal. So according to the ‘Rigveda’ the ever changing world that manifests before us with magnificent variety leads everyone to the experience of something that remains unchanging. The unchanging truth has been worshipped in many forms. That is why Gandhi said that Truth is God.
The whole system of Indian Thought is unique for its concept of Dharma. The definition of Dharma may be varying from system to system, but every system accepts the preservation of dharma as a necessary precondition for the preservation of life and universe. The term dharma means anything that preserves one own existence as well as the co-existence of others. That is, it aims at the co-existence of man and the universe. What is essential to preserve the co-existence of man and universe may be a debatable matter. For Eg; the Carvaka system, the Indian materialistic thought strongly believes that bread alone is enough to preserve human existence. But all other systems have the opinion that human existence can be preserved by something more than bread and its’ fabrications. In biblical terms, man needs every word that comes from the mouth of God apart from daily bread.
If we accept that bread alone is enough to preserve human existence then the natural outcome is that every human being has to accumulate the maximum amount of bread to ensure the longevity of human existence. If everyone tries accumulating the maximum for oneself, then the result will be competition, conflict, crisis and war. In such a set up no one will be able to live a normal life. This shows that if one believes in bread alone, it cannot guarantee even his own existence because victory in any war needs something more than skill and efficiency. That something can be termed as good luck. But one cannot be sure that the good luck will always be with him.
Therefore, the Indian Rishis introduced a very unique term to the philosophical world, ie, Ahimsa. Literally, it means abstain from killing. But it is impossible to lead a normal life without annihilating the other beings because we want to eat something. Eating something means annihilation of one form of life or other. Even a strict non-vegetarian cannot make a claim that he is not annihilating anything because life element in a piece of grain can never be different from the life element in me. Then the question arises is whether ahimsa is an impractical concept or not. The answer given by the Indian tradition is that it is practical because the term Ahimsa means to take only the minimum from the world. That is Ahimsa means the minimum use of wealth, power, position, fame etc. The use of the minimum guards you from competition, conflict, crisis and war and it guarantees peaceful co-existence.
