Divine Life
Society Publication: Chapter 15 The Heart and Soul of Spiritual Practice by Swami Krishnananda
The schools of thought called
the Darshanas are: Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta. In
these also, there is a gradational rise. It is not that each school says
whatever it wants. There is a continuity of thought even in the Darshanas, or
the schools of thought. For instance, there is a primitive, logical acceptance
of the truths of God, world and soul in the Nyaya and the Vaisheshika systems.
These schools, the Nyaya and the Vaisheshika, which can be clubbed together
into a single phase of logical thinking, say that God is transcendent. He is an
efficient cause, but not a material cause. Like a carpenter standing outside
the tools and the things that he made, God stands above. The individuals are
manifold.
In a purely empirical fashion,
the Nyaya and the Vaisheshika take into consideration the multiplicity of
individual souls; and the transcendent creator, totally unconnected with
creation, operates in the world as a mechanic operates a machine or a carpenter
makes a table, a chair, etc. This is, in a way, a very basic way of thinking in
a so-called logical fashion to justify how the Vedas, Upanishads, Tantras, etc.,
have been helpful. But that is not satisfactory because it is difficult to
believe that God is so far away, unconnected with this world, and that so many
people are unconnected among themselves. Everything is in chaos, as it were.
The Samkhya philosophy took up
this argument in a different way altogether and said it cannot be so, that gods
are somewhere and people are distanced and unconnected. There are only two
things in the universe – consciousness and matter. There is nothing else. You
may call it God or whatever you like. You feel an awareness inside you. The
consciousness which feels that there is something outside calls that thing
matter, which is outside consciousness. That which recognizes this material
existence is consciousness. Technically, the Samkhya calls this consciousness
which apprehends material existence as purusha. Purusha does not mean man. It
simply means the positive principle of awareness. As a negative principle it is
perceived as prakriti. Due to a particular
conjunction of consciousness and matter, everything takes place, and there is
no separate God outside. There is no necessity for this because it is possible
to explain the whole drama of creation by a coming together, in various ways,
of consciousness and matter.
This explanation was also not
satisfactory, because who brings about the union of consciousness and matter?
How does it happen? Consciousness cannot stand outside matter and then attempt
to get united with it in some way or the other. The union of consciousness and matter
is not possible unless there is an operator transcending both – an umpire who
judges the action and operation of two things. Two people cannot resolve their
conflict; a third person is necessary to make a judgment.
Thus yoga philosophy, apart
from its practical techniques of meditation, etc. recognized a God who
dispenses justice and sees to it that there is meaning behind the coming
together of consciousness and matter, purusha and prakriti – a deistic God, a God who
does not have any practical connection with the operations of prakriti and purusha. That deity was envisaged –
a deus ex machina, as it is called, a
convenient requirement that was posited – though it was not seen then what kind
of connection this divinity can have with the operations of consciousness and
matter. It was just a position maintained to get over the difficulties created
by the earlier schools of Nyaya and Vaisheshika. Even that was not
satisfactory. They had to go further.
Suddenly, a state arose when
the human mind reverted to the old concept of many gods. So, once again, there
was a reversal of the thinking mind and it came back to the original
requirement dictated by the Brahmana scriptures. A logical approach was
envisaged to justify the rituals and performances of sacrifice, etc., that were
originally dictated by the Brahmanas in terms of the many gods in heaven. This
once again arose, only in a different way; logic was added to it.
This logical acceptance of the
original concept of the Brahmanas in respect of the divinities in heaven became
the Mimamsa Shastra. It is also called Karma Mimamsa. Mimamsa means an enquiry
into the nature of Truth. This enquiry took the form of assuming that there are
many gods in heaven and they have to be worshipped – the very same position that
was maintained earlier in the Brahmanas, only with a justification added to it
by logical arguments. This did not take the feelings too far. It was just a
halting place and there seemed to be something more, which position was taken
up by the Vedanta school.
The Vedanta is actually the
Upanishads themselves. Difficult are the Upanishads to understand. The Brahma
Sutras attempted to codify certain statements of the Upanishads in order that
things may become clear, but that did not work well because many commentaries
were written on the explanation itself, which is the Brahma Sutra – and we are
nowhere, finally.
Any school that considers God
as the ultimate reality is called Vedanta. The goal of life is the realization
of God. If any school accepts this principle, that can be called Vedanta. But
for various reasons the schools differed from one another in accepting that
God-realization is the ultimate goal. These reasons were: "Maybe what you
say is correct. Let us realize God. We accept that realization of God is
ultimately the goal of life. But, where is God?" There the differences
arose. Once again the old habit of thinking crept into the minds of people. One
said that God is transcendent only and He can be reached only by deep affection
and love for Him. You cannot satisfy somebody merely by rituals. Your heart has
to go with it. This is the Bhakti Marga of Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka,
Ballavha, Krishna Chaitanya Deva, and many others.
The Advaita school of thought
is something quite different. It tries to unify all these principles. Bhakti is
necessary; it is perfectly right. God may be transcendent, in one sense of the
term. He is also immanent, in another sense of the term. Love of God is the way
to reach Him because without affection you cannot contact Him, really speaking.
All these are accepted by Advaita Vedanta; yet it says there is something more
than all these things – namely, there is no point in bringing into the vision
of perfection any duality, any discrepancy, any conflict, in any fashion
whatsoever, such that there cannot be a distinction even between God and the
soul, because if distinction is maintained, you are once again reverting to the
old concept of duality, multiplicity, etc.
While all the dualities
converge into the perception of a single unitary action of the universe, there
is a doubt about the relationship between the human soul and God. That doubt
also has to go. In what way are you concerned with God? Are you totally
outside, or inside? Are you a servant of God? Are you a friend of God? What
kind of person are you? These are all human considerations transplanted from
the earth and placed in the kingdom of God. The human feelings do not leave us
even when we logically argue things. After all, what is logic? It is only
man-made thinking. So Advaita gave the final touch to the superstructure of
logical thinking and concluded that there cannot be distinction of any kind,
anywhere, between anything. There must be a total, absolute unitariness, Being
itself, Existence, pure and simple, which is conscious of itself. It is
ultimate freedom, therefore. Satchitananda is
its nature. That alone is. Nothing else can be. This is Advaita's point.
Still, some deviations from
the original Agamas and Tantras arose in a religious fashion – not in a
ritualistic fashion, but in a specialized form of Agamas known as Vaishnava
Agamas, Shaiva Agamas and Shakta Agamas. It was not enough to posit only
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. Later on it also became necessary to concede a power
that is inherent in these gods – and each god had a shakti,
or a force. In common Puranic style the shakti, or the
power of Brahma, is called Saraswati; the shakti, or power,
of Vishnu is Lakshmi; the shakti of Siva is
Durga, Parvati. It was felt that this shakti is
inseparable from the god who wields it because you cannot have your power
somewhere, and sit somewhere else. When you say you have power, you are
identical with that power. It is only a conceptual distinction; the actual
power cannot stand outside you. When you say fire is hot, the heat is not
outside fire. It is fire only. Likewise, Siva-Shakti samyoga, Lakshmi-Narayan samyoga, etc. were contemplated in
the Agamas, which are known as the Shaiva Agamas, Vaishnava Agamas and Shakta
Agamas, to bring to a halt any further discussion in the matter of religion –
to say, once and for all, everything about religious awareness throughout the
process of its development, right from the beginning till the modern day.
Here you have the whole
history of religious awareness in Bharata-varsha – in India.
Excerpts from:
Darshanas – Different schools of thought: Chapter 15 The Heart and Soul of Spiritual Practice by Swami
KrishnanandaArchives - Blog
If you would like to purchase the print edition, visit:
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
If you would
like to contribute to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge please contact
the General Secretary at:
No comments:
Post a Comment