SELF-KNOWLEDGE

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Adhyatma Yoga and Advaita Vedanta

The highest wisdom experienced by the Seers of Truth has been passed down from ancient times to the present day through a line of traditional teachers. Its metaphysical side, Advaita Vedanta, establishes by reasoning a non-dualistic explanation of the universe; its practical side, Adhyatma Yoga, gives guidance on the life of thought and action, so that the purpose of life may be fulfilled. The essential teachings are:

The universe is a phenomenal expression of the supreme Reality, which is by nature Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute.

Our innermost Self transcends the limitations of body, mind and ego, and is not other than the supreme Reality.

The purpose of life is conscious realisation of this identity, and this can be achieved while engaged in the duties of life.

Self-realisation gives unbroken peace, poise and bliss. It is the ultimate goal sought consciously or unconsciously through philosophy and religion, art and science.

The one Reality reveals and pervades all beings, and underlies the highest teachings found in the world’s religious traditions.

Shanti Sadan is a Centre of Adhyatma Yoga, founded in 1933 by the late Hari Prasad Shastri, where the teachings continue to be given and practised in the traditional way.

Information about meetings and events can be found at shantisadan.org/meetings

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Spring 2025

Vol. 76 No. 2

Contents

The Real Rest

The Mandukya Upanishad

Non-Duality and My Life in the World

The Truth-bearing Mind

Basho’s Pilgrimage

What Did Descartes Certainly Know?

Is the World an Illusion?

Simple Factors of Joy

The Real Rest

To the seeker of wisdom, the word ‘rest’ has a deep and growing meaning. The familiar meaning of rest as cessation of activity in order to recover our strength and freshness is not discarded, but the rest promised is shown to have a deeper source—a source related to the ultimate truth of what we are. This is the rest referred to in the sayings and writings left to us by the illumined sages, to be confirmed in our own experience.

We find, for example, the words of Christ:

Come unto me all who labour and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me... You shall find rest for your souls.

This is more than physical rest. It is freedom from suffering and indicates a higher state of consciousness. In the Bhagavad Gita, the same release is taught as life’s goal and fulfilment. (5:20)

One who knows Brahman (the reality) can neither rejoice on obtaining the pleasant nor grieve on obtaining the unpleasant. Steady-minded, undeluded, resting in Brahman.

In these and countless other sources, it is shown that the Reality is approachable and that one can rest in it. But how does this Reality relate to our Self? The answer lies in discerning our own true identity. There is no relationship because the true nature of the Self is Brahman, and Brahman is the selfhood of the self. All talk of a relationship is a mental makeshift, a provisional substitute destined to be superseded and replaced by the higher knowledge.

The truth is that all the time we are resting in Brahman. The sage Shankara has given the following verse in a short piece known as ‘Spiritual Medicine’ that is included in his Thousand Teachings:

Since I am not other than the supreme eternal self, I am eternally contented and am not in quest of any end. Ever contented, I do not desire my individual welfare. Make efforts, O mind, to attain peace. Herein lies your welfare. (19:3)

Self, as Brahman, is perfect, but the mind needs to make adjustments in order to recognise the immediacy of perfection. These adjustments are not a question of forming new qualities and virtues in ourselves, but of adjusting our mentality so that it awakens to what is already the case. Our inner life is not limited to the mind, with its endless stream of thoughts. Mind has its being in a more subtle principle that is transcendent, limitless, like formless space in its purity.

It is our thoughts that determine our moods and state of mind generally. Our ability to control and turn our mental energy into worthwhile channels is the key to happiness. To bring the mind to a thought-free rest, with the help of the practices regularly described in this journal, is not only to free ourselves from present discontents, but to begin to unveil that deeper self-brahman reality in which thought lives, moves and has its apparent being.

Here is a text for meditation which, infiltrating the mind stream, will reveal the way of higher progress available to all.

O MY MIND, FIND REST

IN THAT MOST BLESSED PEACE

WHICH IS EVER WITHIN THEE

AND FOLLOW NOT AFTER THAT

WHICH IS TRANSIENT.

The Mandukya Upanishad

The Mandukya is the shortest of the main Upanishads, and its twelve verses deal with a single subject: how to awaken to our intrinsic identity with Brahman, the Absolute, aided, particularly, by practices based on the syllable aum. The Upanishad begins:

The syllable aum is all this... All that is past, present and future is indeed aum. And whatever is beyond the three divisions of time is also truly aum. (Mandukya, one)

The syllable aum indicates all that exists in time and also the ultimate Reality that transcends time. It encompasses both without contradicting either; this is the root of its efficacy as a focus for contemplation. It ‘is all this’ because its three elements contain the seeds of all speech, and here ‘speech’ is used in its fullest sense to mean all that can be known as names and forms, which is the entire phenomenal world. The transcendent is found in the silence from which the syllable appears and into which it resolves. By meditation on aum one can see the world in its right perspective and affirm one’s true identity as the consciousness in which all experience appears. This theme is to be expanded in the Upanishad, as we will see below.

Such an awakening to Self-knowledge is not a special or unusual state of mind, but a return to normality and well-being. Our innermost Self, concealed by an imaginary delusion, frees itself from this state of not-knowing, and recovers its innate knowledge that ‘I am Brahman’. This is expressed in a special way in the second verse of the Upanishad:

All this is surely Brahman [the supreme, Absolute]. This Atman [Self] is Brahman. The Self has four quarters. (Mandukya, two)

Here we find the statement ‘This Atman is Brahman’. This is one of the four mahavakyas, the ‘great utterances’, which indicate the identity of human consciousness with the universal. This has to be understood by discriminating between reality and appearance in human beings and the universe. The ‘four quarters’ referred to in this verse are three aspects of the phenomenal world, plus the fourth, the transcendent, as will be explained later.

How do we know that such a knowledge exists, and that at present we are held back from realising it? Initially we know through the testimony of the illumined sages, who have themselves negated the illusory error at the heart of experience and gained clarity of understanding and inner vision. It is this depth of insight that authorises the sages to proclaim the highest truth fearlessly, and these testimonies form the basis of the upanishadic teachings.

The Mandukya Upanishad has a unique feature. Wherever it is published or studied, it is nearly always paired with a longer work known as the Karikas of Gaudapada, which, in pithy verses (karikas), draws out the practical and philosophical implications of the Upanishad. Gaudapada was a forthright exponent of advaita (non-duality) whose presentation accords with ajata-vada—the doctrine that the phenomenal universe never was ‘born’ in the Absolute, which is ever perfect and immutable. Thus ‘there is no duality whatsoever’, and never was or shall be.

Gaudapada’s Karikas, embedded in the Mandukya Upanishad, are the oldest known formulation of the pure non-duality of Shankara’s school.

Established in non-duality, this teacher gives no weight to theories of Creation or to philosophical debates aimed at winning arguments. For Gaudapada, intellectual quarrels about the origin and purpose of the universe are a waste of time and energy, while what really matters is realisation of the Absolute as non-duality. The world itself is therefore not the outcome of a real transformation of anything, but a web of passing appearances, distinguished only by their transiency and brief association with a particular name and form. This mystery cannot be explained, and so it is referred to as maya, that which makes possible the unreal appearance of duality where in fact there is even now only the non-dual.

Gaudapada and Shankara help us to understand the origins of suffering and ignorance. If the sun shines too brightly and there is no shade available, we will not be able to see clearly. Similarly, the statements that point to the highest truth as the only real existence, can confuse the understanding. Therefore we find that the direct and uncompromising statements of non-duality are often augmented or followed by teachings based on a more familiar view of self, namely as a mind and body acting and experiencing in the world of multiplicity. For example, here is a verse from the Karikas:

When the individual soul, asleep under a beginningless, hypnotic illusion, finally awakens, it awakens to a knowledge of the unborn, sleepless, dreamless non-dual reality. (Karika1:16)

This is a verse of awakening. It draws our attention to the transcendent and immaculate nature of the reality to which we are being awakened. The verse also glances back, so to say, to our empirical experience, when we were led on by the ‘hypnotic illusion’ (maya).

The reference to sleep and dream relates to the symbolism of aum as given in the Mandukya Upanishad.

The first quarter is the waking state with consciousness of external things... the second is the dream state, where consciousness is internal... the third is deep sleep where all is undifferentiated and abounds in bliss... [Mandukya, four to six]

This analysis describes human experience as passing through three distinct states each day: waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep. These are linked to aum by the three letters that form the audible parts of the word. Hence ‘A’ represents the waking state, the leading sound of active life and of the response to sense data. ‘A’ is the mouth-opener and in this sense it accompanies all vocal activity. It also stands for involvement and submersion in the world of sense objects.

The middle ‘U’ signifies the world of thought cut off from the activity of the senses, and which is at its most complete when we are dreaming. Here there is awareness of the inner world, but no receptivity via the senses, which cannot participate at this level.

The third and seemingly final stage of experience is symbolised by the ‘M’, suggestive of closure and satisfaction. In terms of our daily cycle, it refers to the deeper phase of sleep without dream.

Thus the phenomenal world that we experience is comprised of three elements: one is the objects perceived by our senses; another is the operations of the mind that arranges the sense data and integrates them with memory to produce the coherent image of the world we experience; the third is the awareness of what the mind thus presents. All three elements of the phenomenal world are encompassed in the three parts of a-u-m. A Karika verse says:

The first experiences external things, the second cognises internal things, the third is formed of massed intelligence. (Karika 1.1)

So far there is nothing obviously enlightening in this account of aum. But contemplation of this doctrine can bring about an inner transformation and guide our mind to a higher standpoint. Reflection on the totality of experience fosters a sense of detachment, and this itself is a step towards inner freedom. Pondering the notion of the three states automatically relieves us from being completely identified with those states. To reflect on the likeness of the dream state to the waking state is to deepen one’s capacity to view life objectively.

There is a subtle but valuable point to be noted in the teaching so far. The third element in our experience of the world—the ‘m’ in a-u-m—has been identified as the consciousness that remains in dreamless sleep from which the dreaming and waking states arise, that is, as the intelligence in which objects and concepts appear. As such, this principle is the source and controller of the world that we experience while awake. The Upanishad says:

This one is the Lord of all, the knower of all, the inner controller. This is the source of all, in which all beings originate and finally disappear. (Mandukya, six)

Here the unmanifest source of the manifest world is being included in the totality of conditioned forms, all that can be perceived and conceived. Even this ‘creator of creation’ has limitations which are transcended in the ‘fourth’ principle revealed by the Upanishad called turiya (meaning ‘fourth’) whose nature is eternal limitless consciousness and which abides even now as blissful peace and freedom.

The fourth is that which is not conscious of the internal world or the external world, nor both, neither compounded nor simple, nor unconscious, unperceived, non-relational, indescribable...

This fourth is identified as atman, the true and only self, and is not different from Brahman, the Absolute. It is that in us which is conscious of all the changes that occur in the three states. Yet turiya transcends all relativity and change. It is the only real principle, so to call it a ‘witness’ is a provisional teaching, an aid on the path to our realisation that:

...turiya is not related to anything, incomprehensible by the mind... essentially of the nature of consciousness, the Self alone, negation of all phenomena, all bliss and the non-dual. (Mandukya, seven)

The teachings thus reach through and beyond our individuality to embrace the macrocosm, which includes the phenomenal world and all humankind. Ultimately there is only one indivisible being, all-in-all and transcending the universe. For purposes of contemplation and as a means of widening our understanding, we may conceive of the consciousness that underlies our waking state, and the conscious power that impels all, as forming a single continuum. Similarly, the way that our dream state and the interior life of thought, invisible and subtle, appear in our consciousness, can be contemplated as analogous to the appearance of the phenomenal world in universal consciousness. Subtler still is the consciousness associated with dreamless sleep, which is regarded as the substratum of waking and dream, and being more inward, as the ‘cause’ of the material and mental.

What is absolutely permanent, free and real is not to be found in these three levels of mental and phenomenal experience, but in the ‘fourth’ principle, called turiya, which is one with Brahman and is our true nature. The student of non-duality is advised not to seek to erase the world, but to appreciate that its real being is turiya, and that true knowledge is transcendent in essence, though apparently diverse in manifestation.

Atman, the self-luminous, through the power of its own maya, imagines in itself and by itself (all the objects, whether they are parts of the mind, or seem to be external to our body.) Atman, the real self, alone is the cogniser of the objects. This is the judgement of knowers of Truth. (Karika, 2:12)

This teaching is of fundamental importance for our practice, because it is discrimination between the one and only subject or cogniser, and the ever-changing objects, that will lead to the recognition that the seeker was never really bound. In the unillumined condition, we perceive phenomena as independently real, and the conscious substratum as at best abstract and distant. This has been called ‘the superimposition of nescience’ and is rooted in the workings of our mind and brain, not in Reality.

What is necessary is to awaken from the hypnotic illusion of nescience. Non-duality is suppressed by our uncritical acceptance of duality and our unconscious conviction that the only valid experience must be based on the subject-object interplay. We identify with our body and its needs; our states of mind; our sense of ownership; the roles we play in the world. Often we are subject to some vague, ever present fears or anxieties, which add to our sense of finitude and separation, and serve to intensify the dualities of our experience.

The antidote to this discontent and fear is to train ourselves to intervene in the mental flow, sometimes to pause and replace the present picture, whether pleasing or disturbing, with the supreme ideas that disclose our connection with the realm of transcendence, ideas distilled and conveyed in aum:

One should concentrate ones’s mind on aum which is Brahman beyond fear. For one ever fixed in Brahman there can be no fear anywhere. (Karika, 1:25)

This practice includes the conscious recollection that all is passing and what passes cannot count as authentic reality. At the same time, we evoke the awareness of the ‘fourth’, turiya, not as one more state of consciousness that we pass through as we do in the case of the waking, dream and dreamless sleep experiences: it is atman itself, not other than Brahman, the Absolute. This recollection may be effected by contemplation of aum. The Upanishad ends with a repetition of the essentials for emphasis:

Aum is Turiya, partless and relationless, the limit of the negation of phenomena, all-good and non-dual. This aum is indeed Self. One who knows this merges oneself in Self, yes, one who knows this. (Mandukya, twelve)

How are we to understand that ultimately all is the non-dual absolute alone, and at the same time attend ethically to our responsibilities and do the meditations and other practices that resolve inner darkness? This difficulty is astutely recognised in one of the karika verses that follow the end of the Upanishad:

The aspirant, taking up devotional exercises, abides in the conditioned absolute, believing that all this was the birthless absolute before creation. This is a misunderstanding. (Karika, 3:1)

Is it possible to reconcile the absoluteness of the absolute and the appearance of the phenomenal world? Gaudapada indicates a solution based on the analogy of space:

Here is an illustration: Self is thought of as existing in individual souls in the same way as Space is as existing in individual pots... (Karika, 3:3)

The space within a jar may appear to be filled with various contents, as individuals are affected by joys and sorrows. Yet:

As a space within a jar is neither a transformation nor a part of space, so an individual being is never a transformation nor a part of the Supreme Self. (3:7)

The origin of individuals and objects is not to be understood as an event in space and time. The appearance of the phenomenal world does not limit the non-dual absolute. This can be realised through inner tranquillity, discrimination and trust.

With its focus on the sacred syllable analysed as a-u-m, the Mandukya Upanishad awakens us to a new appreciation of the significance of words. It is through words that we are alerted to the higher teachings, and we have seen how aum contains within itself all verbal expressions.

On the first verse of the Upanishad, Shankara comments:

...all these objects that are indicated by names are non-different from the names...

How can the name be the same as the object named? Here ‘name’ means the ‘concept’ we have of an object, and the named is that object as it is in the phenomenal world. We usually assume that the two are distinct, but on reflection we find that concepts cannot be separated from the phenomenal world, or the world from concepts. According to what we are trying to convey, we may emphasise one or the other so that at one time:

...the same thing that was presented with emphasis on the word is being indicated again with stress on the thing signified, so that the unity of the name and the nameable may be comprehended.

The equivalence of name and named, or concept and phenomena, underlies the power of contemplation on aum:

Once this identity is established, one can by a single effort eliminate both the name and the nameable to realise Brahman that is different from both. (Commentary, Mandukya, one.)

Brahman is Turiya, the ultimate reality which is the revealer of the waking, dream and dreamless sleep states, and which is the only immutable and self-evident principle in experience because it is the self in all.

All beings are ever free from bondage and pure by nature. They are ever illumined and liberated from the very beginning. Still the wise speak of the beings as capable of knowing the ultimate truth. (Karika, 4:98)

At first, our awareness of turiya will be indirect, based on an imaginative picture and not the real thing. If we persevere with our enquiry, which involves determining that the real self is other than the three states, our indirect knowledge of turiya will awaken a sense of its living presence that has its source in the self beyond multiplicity. We will realise that Brahman alone is real, and is the only substratum underlying the apparent spread of names and forms. Things are unreal, unborn, except as appearances; yet if we consider their substratum as Brahman, then everything is as real as Brahman. This is the liberating vision that frees us from the hypnotic illusion, cancelling all fear and unrest.

B.D.

Non-Duality and My Life in the World

Question: I feel attracted by the non-dual ideas. Yet, if I were to lead such a life, would not my worldly affairs suffer? If I am wholly devoted to my mundane duties, my soul starves and feels restless. What do you recommend?

Reply: When people follow these teachings, they find that continuous worship can and does blend successfully with attention to mundane affairs. The great figures of antiquity who are revered as incarnations of the supreme reality, are both depicted as living lives of vigorous action and exemplars of Dharma (the law of righteousness in thought, word and deed).

The first rule of the higher life is to live for a great purpose, and that supreme purpose is the discovery of your identity with the higher Self. The average man does not control his life, his life controls him, but the seeker with a well-marked road to the goal, has a fixed estimation of real values, and a determination not to be led away by the lure of the external world.

The ideal can be brought closer in daily life. Start the day with a deep and heartfelt prayer, a meditative reading of a passage from one of the great scriptures, and a dedication of the day to the work of the ultimate Power. Then whatever task you undertake, do it for that Power, and persevere, unconcerned with the results. It is His work and He will bring success or failure.

Another important aid is the silent repetition of a name or word that points to the highest, for example, Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Allah, Truth, or OM. Throughout the day, make endurance an active rule. Try to endure with patience discomforts and inconveniences, harsh and painful words, adversity and illness, prosperity of your neighbours, or unpleasantness in any form. In the evening, again do your worship and go to sleep with your mind full of exalting thoughts.

If you live in this way for a few months, it may seem that your business is not receiving sufficient attention, but rest assured, it will be looked after. Remember the promise of Shri Krishna: ‘None engaged in spiritual good ever passes into a bad state.’ The meaning is that those who have seriously and faithfully entered on the yogic path, will never perish.

Those who live only to satisfy their instinctive demands, their family ambitions or their patriotic ideals, without spiritual vision, may become prosperous, famous or popular for a time, but they are strangers to eternal peace and happiness. Like the shooting stars, they quickly lose their brilliance. Where fame, promotion, power and wealth are concerned, those in quest of the highest may be unpractical, but they prove to be generous and steadfast friends, dependable citizens who are wise and contented.

Non-duality is wisdom. It presents a high standard of rational ethics. By reducing in the pupil’s mind the disturbing tendencies of conceit, distraction, anger and greed, the practicant is enabled to follow the daily routines in an atmosphere of peace and light. Prejudice for or against any person, group or nation, confounds the judgment, but yogic discipline eliminates such disturbing factors and gives an equipoise which permits wise decisions.

The higher Yoga is mental alertness. It sharpens the intellect by instituting logical enquiry; it robs the devotee of fear in failure and of undue elation in success. So in adversity or prosperity we are undisturbed and undismayed. Our reward is enduring peace and ability to communicate it to others. In such a state of equanimity, the importance of worldly success may dwindle in the realisation that the physical region is transitory. So from the vantage point of disinterestedness, the enquirer can watch the rise and fall of fortunes and accept ‘the blessed discipline of pain’, as Bishop Berkeley says.

Hari Prasad Shastri

The Truth-bearing Mind

Perhaps Aristotle is right when he says that the truth expressed by poetry is profounder than the truth expressed by history because it is a more general truth and more universally applicable. When one considers the profound knowledge of human nature which we find for instance in Shakespeare’s plays or Tolstoi’s novels, we can see what it is that Aristotle means. If we had to choose between reading Shakespeare or Freud in order to obtain and understanding of human nature there are few of us who would choose Freud. Systematic philosophy or science is not necessarily a better way of describing ourselves and the world. It depends upon the quality of the vision of the scientist or the poet. If the view is one-sided or distorted, then however it is expressed it will be a limited view.

The mind is our instrument of experience and the quality of our vision depends on the state of our mind. The mind can be full of imagination and fantasy but it can also be truth-bearing and it is about the conditions which make it truth-bearing that we are concerned here.

The mind is sometimes thought of as a glorified computer, comprising an intellectual unit concerned with reasoning and logic, backed, as they say, by a memory-bank containing the records of past experience, and powered by a number of biological drives, such as hunger, the sex-urge, ambition, and the urge to dominate others, and so forth. If this were really an adequate picture of the mind, then the mind would be only programmable and not truth-bearing. The results of thinking would be, and could only be, simply to work out in practice the set of prejudices, beliefs, and expectations which had been programmed into memory by past experience.

To some extent one can say that the learning prescribed by totalitarian regimes is based on a belief in the power of propaganda to obscure and distort the truth, and to make people think exactly as the regime wishes them to think. Some scientists, for example, working in the 1960s, were influenced by certain half-truths derived from the ideas of the great physiologist, Pavlov. They thought of ‘higher nervous activity’, (which is how they regarded thinking) as simply an example of conditioning. But if thinking is only conditioned reflexes, the only kind of learning which would be possible would amount to no more than learning parrot-fashion, by rote with the mind believing what it is told by higher authority, and asking no awkward questions.

In fact, the really important learning in human experience is not this sort of learning at all, but what is called by the psychologists ‘insight learning’, where a new vision of things comes to the mind, through what used to be called intuition. This ‘insight learning’ has claims to be called the only really creative kind of thinking that there is. It produces something completely new in knowledge, which was not present in the elements which led up to it, but is not simply an imaginative creation with no relevance to reality. It is, indeed, a new insight into truth itself. Newton’s insight into the law of gravitation after seeing the apple fall, or Einstein’s theory of relativity, have changed the world for us; they have produced an entirely new view of truth. Of course, they have not really changed the world at all, but they have changed our world, because they have enlarged our understanding of the universe around us.

Countless people had seen apples fall before Newton did, and had learnt that they do so, and had come to expect that they would do so. This is simply a conditioned reflex. One learns to expect that when the apple loses its connection with the branch it falls to the earth underneath, but Newton had insight and realised why this happened.

What are the conditions, then, which make the mind truth-bearing, capable of new insight into reality, and not a mere parrot repeating second-hand information? The answer to this question is hinted at in a story from the Sufi tradition. It concerns a man and a parrot, and a remarkable point about the story is that in it, it is the man who behaves like a parrot, and the parrot who shows real insight.

A certain merchant had a beautiful parrot which he kept in a cage in his shop. One day he decided to visit India, the parrot’s original home, and when he talked to the parrot before going, the parrot said to him: ‘If you see my fellow parrots, greet them for me and tell them that I am thinking about them, and that I wish I were free to be with them.’ The merchant saw no harm in promising to do what he was asked, and he went off on his journey, and when he came to India he found a number of the same parrots living in the wild. So to keep his bargain he said to them: ‘I have a parrot just like you at home, and it asked me to greet you on its behalf, and to say that it wished it was free to be with you.’ And as soon as he had said this, one of the parrots there uttered a little cry, and fell down apparently dead.

Now the merchant was a kindly man, and he was sorry that he had said something in complete innocence that had caused such a tragedy. But the incident made an impression on him, and he remembered it. And when in due course he got back to his shop, he told his own parrot about it: ‘I gave your message to those parrots,’ he said, ‘that I saw in India, and to my dismay, one of them uttered a little cry, and fell down dead.’ As soon as he finished speaking, to his horror, his own parrot too gave a little cry, and fell down motionless on the bottom of its cage. He was terribly distressed, and started reproaching himself for being such a fool as to go on transmitting these apparently devastating messages, which seemed so innocent and harmless. And as he opened the cage-door to lift the body of the parrot out, it slipped from his hand and flew away into the trees.

The surprising thing is the intelligence shown by the parrot, and the stupidity shown by the man. For the parrot in India had clearly been indicating to the parrot in the cage how it might escape. But the man had no insight into what was happening. He could only repeat his message and the account of what happened, parrot-fashion. The caged bird had immediate insight into what the other parrot was doing, and the truth he had realised was, that by apparently dying, he could gain his own freedom.

This legend provides a perfect illustration of the difference between insight learning and learning without insight. But there is more to it than that, for it also illustrates the conditions under which the mind becomes truth-bearing. It is precisely when the mind loses itself in concentration on a topic to such an extent that the ego-consciousness in it is temporarily lost, that it becomes truth-bearing and gains the freedom of real insight.

The ego in the mind is the self-assertive parrot, demanding its rights, and making its voice heard, unasked, the whole time. It becomes a disturbance to all those around it, and is never quiet. We may be amused and delighted by its antics at first, but if we have to live with it, it becomes a great bore and a curse. Like a parrot it has a few stock phrases, which it repeats endlessly: ‘I want it.’ ‘I did it.’ ‘Look at me, aren’t I wonderful!’ And everybody else in time gets sick and tired of these phrases. We even get sick and tired of them ourselves. Unless this ego can be persuaded to abrogate its perch, and, so to speak, to die: that is to say, unless the voice of the ego can be silenced, and the assertion of narrow individualism can be given up, so that the ego consciousness is lost, then that state of mind called ‘ritambhara’, truth-bearing, cannot be achieved. This is one of the main objects for which the Yoga of Self-Knowledge is practised.

The mind is like an organ, on which we can play. It is ordinarily being played on by the spoilt child of the ego, but if the ego once abdicates, even for a short time, then that master-musician whom the sages call the real Self, Atman, who stands behind the mind waiting to produce the music of inspiration on it, will start to play. That transcendental element, the infinite and immortal essence in us all, uses this same instrument to produce inspired works, or the visions of truth of the philosophers and the mystics.

We have to find the method of allowing the mind to become the instrument of inspiration from the universal Self. This is not something which is going to happen by chance: we have to make conscious efforts to achieve this state, just as the parrot had to make conscious efforts to find out how to free itself.

It is a modern heresy that the individual should be subject to no coercion of any kind. There is a misunderstanding, based on Freudian psychology, which maintains that any so-called repression of the mental urges is bad, and that no force of any kind is ever justified. This is a deluded view of freedom. By all means let us avoid using force on others, and violence is always to be avoided, but we have to use some force on ourselves. We need to make efforts if we are to achieve anything; and we need the voluntary application of the force of will to the mind, if anything is to be made of it. If you tell an experienced gardener that he should just leave everything to nature, and that he shouldn’t coerce the plants by preventing them from growing where they want to, and forcing them to grow where he wants, just see what his response will be! The mind and personality need at least as much cultivation as a garden, if they are not to become a wild jungle of weeds and brambles. Therefore we cannot afford to adopt the policy of laisser faire with the mind.

If we are really looking for that which restricts our freedom, it is the state of our own personality which we have to examine, and the best object of protest for us, is the behaviour of our own recalcitrant lower mind. Then our protest will be effective, and really fruitful.

Good and evil are like living organisms dwelling in the field of our mind, and we nourish or starve them according to the value of our thoughts, words and deeds.

There are three things which we need if we are to transform the mind and render it in a fit state to become truth-bearing. These are: faith, endeavour and consciousness of the goal. It is by these three means that the ego-consciousness is silenced, and the mind becomes enlightened.

Faith is necessary because one must believe in the possibility of inspiration. No one who has read the accounts given by the scientists and the creative artists, can really have any doubt about the reality of inspiration as a phenomenon. In one of his writings the poet Shelley says: ‘The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within... Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results.’ And the composer Tchaikovsky, in the letters he wrote to his friend and patron, Frau von Meek, says: ‘Generally speaking, the germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly... If the soil is ready, that is to say, if the disposition for work is there, it takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches, leaves, and finally blossoms.’

One of the characteristics of inspiration is the sense of being possessed by something outside one’s own individuality, and used, so to speak, as a channel. The writer George Eliot said that in all she considered her best writing, there was a ‘not herself’ which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting.

Many other examples of the same feeling could be quoted. There is a feeling at the time of artistic inspiration, that something greater takes charge of the mind, and that the ego-consciousness is in abeyance. This is a fractional form of the inspiration, or enlightenment, which the spiritual paths lead to. In fact, what the artists, poets and musicians have experienced only at times of creative inspiration is the continuous experience of the illumined sages.

The way to realization, to insight, at whatever level, is getting to that state where the consciousness of the little personality is altogether lost. The very moment inspiration is there, the idea of ‘I know’ and ‘I do’ is absent. Nobody can be inspired and be conscious of the fact that he is inspired. When one becomes that consciousness itself, then is the point of inspiration reached. It has been said: ‘You cannot be inspired, and at the same time enjoy (as an actor or spectator). If you try to enjoy a thing, you are no longer inspired. Others will enjoy you, the world will enjoy you, when you are inspired, but you yourself will not be an enjoyer and one who is inspired at the same time. You will be no enjoyer—you will be better still—you will be joy Itself’.

Complete absorption is required for that insight which is conferred by inspiration, and this is the result only of prolonged meditation on subtle things. Even in the inspiration enjoyed by creative artists, long-continued concentration of the mind always precedes the inspiration. The artist or thinker must have learnt to still and focus the mind on the object of his quest, whatever it may be, over a long period. Then like the sky before rain the mind becomes saturated with this focused inquiry through that which the yogis call shravana, manana, and nididhyasana.

It is through hearing (shravana), through cogitation (manana), and then through one-pointed meditation (nididhyasana), that all other elements are eliminated from the mind, and then comes inspiration and enlightenment. Before the enlightenment of the World-Honoured Buddha, or when Jesus was taken into the wilderness in the account in the New Testament, their minds were presented with many temptations, temptations of power, of sovereignty, of promised adoration, and so forth. And they were all attempts by the forces of the lower mind, to re-establish the empirical ego-consciousness, to re-establish the parrot whose cries of: ‘I want it’, ‘I am doing it’, ‘How wonderful I am’, disturb the inner peace and prevent inspiration. Only if the one-pointedness of the mind is sufficient to overcome these distractions, can it avoid being dragged again into the realm of the individualistic efforts of the empirical personality. And only if it can do that will inspiration result. For as soon as this happens, as soon as it gets dragged down, then our higher Self is replaced with the ego.

The mind that we are concerned with, is not a special mind: it is the same mind which we all possess; the same mind which has been used by the artists, writers, and thinkers of all ages. This feeling of the mind being taken over by a higher power, together with the feeling of joy, is common to all true inspiration, although it is only a fractional form of it in the artistic experience—a glimpse, so to say, of the realm of true insight—‘to see in’—the vision of reality which pierces behind appearances to the truth which they hide. Practice of the non-dual teachings is a preparation for insight into the highest Truth which is called ‘jnana’, or enlightenment. Yoga is defined by Patanjali as the restraint, or inhibition, of the functions of the mind, through practice and non-attachment, with a view to know truth. Why restraint? Why inhibition? Because it is only when the parrot of the empirical ego has been silenced, and dislodged from its perch, that the mind becomes ritambhara—truth-bearing.

A.M.H.

Basho’s Pilgrimage

many would regard Basho (1644-1694) as the foremost Japanese poet. His poems and written works—chiefly short travel diaries—are regarded as classics. Basho is of interest to students of the non-dual teachings because his life was a quest for ultimate fulfilment, and his writings, with their freshness and beauty, often contain deep insights.

By birth and background, Basho was a Buddhist, but he identified himself with no special sect or creed. He once went to the great temple of Zenkoji, which, at that time, provided living quarters for four different Buddhist sects. There he wrote:

Four gates

And four different sects

Sleep as one

Under the bright moon.

The outer aspects of religion, for Basho, were less important than the need to become ‘religiously enlightened’. He never regarded himself as a master of inner peace, but rather as a seeker, and one who was often dissatisfied with his inner state. He wrote with characteristic modesty:

I was clad in a black robe, but neither a priest nor an ordinary man of this world was I, for I wavered ceaselessly like a bat, which passes for a bird at one time and for a mouse at another.

Yet Basho undoubtedly knew more than he cared to express in the written word. For he had fathomed many secrets which are only available to a quiet mind. He knew the value of such a mind, both for creativity and for inner peace. This is also a key element of the non-dual practices, where it is held that an excited or over-active mind is of far less value than one that is tranquil.

Basho lived in Japan in the second half of the 17th century. There are two important facts to bear in mind. First, Japan was then a land at peace. Secondly, it was a country comprising a group of islands that was isolated from the outer world. Europeans had come in the previous century introducing Christianity, but now there was a reaction, and Japan had closed its gates on the outer, non-Japanese, world.

The Japanese style of poetry which Basho developed consisted of just three lines, called haiku. This brevity of expression was familiar in the East, where deep thoughts and sentiments could be expressed simply and tersely. Chinese artists often added a short poem to their pictures, and Zen monks, when they had a sudden illuminating insight, would likewise hint at their experience in a short poem.

In Japan this tradition was taken up with enthusiasm. It was considered an essential skill for courtiers and aristocrats to be able to produce short, polished verses. Later the warriors began to write poetry and, lastly, the art was taken up by the people. In remote regions hundreds of miles from the centres of civilisation, Basho found villages with poetry societies.

Basho particularly admired the twelfth-century monk, Saigyo, who forsook the court in order to spend his long life wandering and communing with nature. One of Saigyo’s verses runs:

People pass away

And the truth of the passing world

Impresses me now and then.

But alas! my dull mind

Lets this truth too pass away.

Basho was born in Ueno, near Kyoto. He was a member of the privileged class, the Samurai, but his family had fallen on hard times. He was put into service as a page boy and companion to the son of the Lord of his province. It was a deep friendship, and the two young men loved poetry and culture. Then, in his early 20s, the young man sickened and died. Basho, defying feudal custom, ran away to Kyoto, and there remained for five years. For part of the time he stayed in a temple, applied himself to the study of Chinese and Japanese classical texts, and soaked his mind in the poems of the past masters. Later he wrote: ‘No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.’ During this time, he probably had the companionship of a woman named Jutei, who re-enters his story towards the end of his life.

Basho recognized the importance of tradition, which, for him meant absorbing the best and drawing strength and inspiration from those who went before you. Always on his travels, he has comments such as: ‘Saigyo was in this place.’ Indeed, he would be moved to his roots when present in a place associated with one of the masters. For instance, at a temple founded by Kobo Daishi, he wrote: ‘To say more about this shrine would be to violate its holiness.’ While there, he wrote a poem:

It was with awe that I beheld

Fresh leaves, green leaves

Bright in the sun.

In 1672, at the age of 28, he went to live in Edo, now called Tokyo, then a relatively young city. In time we find him well- established there, in fact famous as a poet and teacher of poetry.

There is a story about a disciple learning to write haiku which may date from this time. They were sitting by a stream, when the disciple noticed some red dragonflies gracefully hovering over the waters. He said: ‘Master, here is a haiku.’

Dragonflies

Tear off their wings

And you have red pepper pods!

Basho felt unable to approve this offering, and suggested:

Red pepper pods

Add wings to them

Bright dragonflies!

All this was artful and elegant, but still somewhat superficial. Basho wanted to be famous, and this had been accomplished. There was even an anthology of poems called ‘The Best Poems of Tosei’s Twenty Disciples’. (At this time, Basho was known as Tosei.) Yet, though famous, Basho was unhappy. During these years of increasing renown, an inner conflict was going on. There is a saying of the wise: ‘Worldly success and happiness are two different things.’ Something within Basho was whispering: ‘This is not what you wanted.’ He felt he was living on the surface, and that he was still ruled by the fickle life style of what was called in Japan yukiyo, meaning ‘the floating world’. If he was to be a real poet, he had to dig deeper.

Basho turned to meditation. He practised under a Zen priest, Buccho. He wanted to follow the spiritual path wholeheartedly. But he could not renounce poetry. To attain stillness of mind, was it really necessary to give up the poetical imaginings which he felt rising up within him with such irresistible force? This was a real problem. Perhaps there was a way of life which could be profoundly meditative and also poetically creative?

During these years, Basho also endured some personal mis-fortunes. The little hut built for him by his disciples was burnt down in one of those terrible fires which used to devastate old Tokyo. The following year, 1683, his mother died. He expressed his feeling in the following haiku:

On a bare branch

A crow is perched

Autumn evening.

He began to feel that life was so uncertain that it was a matter of some doubt whether any of us could lay claim to something called a home. Then, when he was 40, an answer came. He would get away from Edo. He would take to the road. He would throw off the superficial layers of his personality, and try to transcend his egoism in communion with nature. He would be like Saigyo. And, if necessary, he would die on the road.

It is noteworthy that Basho started the first of his three major journeys, not in the spring with warm days to look forward to, but in the autumn. He wrote:

Following the example of the ancient priest, who is said to have travelled thousands of miles caring naught for his provisions and attaining the state of sheer ecstasy under the pure beams of the moon, I left my broken house... amid the wails of the autumn wind.

Determined to fall

A weather-exposed skeleton I cannot help

The sore wind blowing through my heart.

He was usually accompanied by a disciple, journeying mostly on foot, though occasionally mounting a horse. He carried very little in the way of possessions and hence had no fear of thieves. He would try to put up at a farmhouse, but often slept out, for pleasure or necessity. But when he found friends or patrons in distant parts, he would be well looked after.

One great lesson Basho wanted to teach himself was to make his mind one with nature in all seasons. He wrote that the great masters ‘had a mind to obey nature, to be one with nature, throughout the four seasons of the year’. This is followed by a statement about the way a true artist looks on the world:

Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon. The first lesson for the artist, therefore, is to learn how to overcome such barbarism and animality, to follow nature, to be one with nature.

These words are without sentimentality, and show that Basho had his full measure of both sensitivity and toughness. Implicit here is the attitude of not minding when things go wrong, or when a certain view or outing is spoiled. Once Basho had set out to view Mount Fuji from a particular spot. His poem runs:

In a way, it was fun

Not to see Mount Fuji

In foggy rain.

Basho recorded his impressions in travel diaries—prose mixed with haiku poems. After travelling for about nine months, he returned, a changed man and a much more profound and meaningful poet. He writes: ‘I reached home at long last towards the end of April. After several days of rest, I wrote:

Shed of everything else

I still have some lice picked up on the road

Crawling on my summer robes.

Basho learnt by observing nature with a tranquil heart. Many of the poems he wrote at this time indicate that his mind was in a state of perfect tranquillity. It was during this period that he wrote his famous haiku about a frog. Translated by Ueda it goes:

The old pond

A frog leaps in

And a splash.

At a first hearing the poem does not sound impressive or even poetic. But an eye-witness account indicates the atmosphere of peace that led to its composition:

This poem was written by our master on a spring day. He was sitting in his riverside house in Edo, bending his ears to the soft cooing of a pigeon in the quiet rain. There was a mild wind in the air, and one or two blossoms of cherry blossom were falling gently to the ground... Now and then in the garden was heard the sound of frogs jumping into the water. Our master was deeply immersed in meditation, but finally he came out with the second half of the poem: [here, a different translation into English is used, indicating some of the depth and range of meaning carried by the original]

A frog jumped into water

A deep resonance

One of the disciples sitting with him immediately suggested for the first half of the poem:

Amidst the flowers

Of the yellow rose.

Our master thought for a while, but finally he decided on:

Breaking the silence

Of an ancient pond.

The disciple’s suggestion is admittedly picturesque and beautiful but our master’s choice, being simple, contains more truth in it. It is only he who has dug deep into the mystery of the universe that can choose a phrase like this.

Basho formulated a precept which embraces an important phase of the non-dual teachings. He writes:

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine. Go to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in so doing, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn...

Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one, when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.

It is a precept that applies to all art, and life itself becomes an art when we learn to meet experience in this spirit of unity.

About this time Basho conceived the longing to go on another journey. This time he wished to go the deep north of Japan. The journey was about 1500 miles, again travelling on foot. He had never been to that region and had few acquaintances he could visit on the way. He was 45 and not in good health, but he felt he had to go. ‘The gods seemed to have possessed my soul and turned it inside out, and roadside images seemed to invite me from every corner.’ He sold his little hut before setting out. This suggests he never expected to return. Now he really was homeless.

He visited many holy places, prompting deep reflection on life’s transiency. In a certain shrine, he saw the helmet of the brave old warrior, Sanemori, who, in old age, had dyed his hair black so that he could go into battle against an army of young soldiers. Basho wrote:

How pitiful!

Under the helmet

A cricket chirping.

But on this journey, Basho also gives illustration of that thorough merging of the individual ego in the infinite life of the universe. These are poems where the poet himself is negated. While journeying alongside the swollen Mogami river, he wrote:

Gathering the rains of summer

How swiftly flows

The Mogami river!

Similarly, while walking at night along the coastal road, he could make out, far in the distance, the island of Sado.

Rough sea

Extending toward Sado Isle

The Milky Way.

When Basho eventually returned to Edo in 1691, he encountered difficulties and tensions. Everyone wanted to see him. There were no free days. A sick nephew came to live with him, whom he looked after. Jutei re-appeared, needing support. For a time it became more than he could deal with. The nephew died, and then Basho decided to lock his door to all callers. He would welcome only the morning glories—the lovely flowers growing alongside his threshold, but no more dealings with people. At this time Basho wrote:

I am one

Who eats his porridge

Gazing at the morning glories

But after deep meditation, this phase passed. After all, he had earlier formulated another principle for dealing with life:

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of daily experience, to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing on our everlasting self, which is poetry.

Predictably, Basho set off on another journey. This time he would go westwards, visiting friends and relatives on his way to explore the south. While lingering near Osaka, he fell ill, and was forced to take to his bed. With his mind still pervaded by images of the open moorlands, and his heart pregnant with pure and poetic sentiments, this great master left his physical body on October 12th 1694. Two weeks before his passing, he had written the following haiku at the house of a friend:

A white chrysanthemum

However intently I look

Not a speck of dust!

A.H.C.

What Did Descartes Certainly Know?

It is well-known that the philosopher Descartes, while searching for some truth beyond all doubt, observed: Je pense, donc je suis. He restated this idea in various places, once in Latin, as: Cogito, ergo sum. The phrase is widely known as The Cogito and is usually translated into English as ‘I think, therefore I am’. Descartes thus concluded that he knew something with absolute certainty.

Descartes’ line of enquiry here has some similarities with a practice adopted by students of non-duality and others: saying ‘not this’ to all thoughts and finite conceptions in search of the Self and the Real. The non-dual philosophy holds that the existence of Self is incontrovertible and requires no further proof. So here we find what seems to be common ground between the theory and practice of non-duality and a pre-eminent thinker in the Western philosophical tradition. This article will consider how far the two approaches do overlap, and also where their methods and conclusions differ, in order to see what help and guidance both offer in our own pursuit of Self-discovery.

Rene Descartes was born in 1596 in France. His family were aristocratic, and he never needed to work. He was educated by the Jesuits, who provided one of the best educations available anywhere at the time. As a young man, he travelled and studied widely, and among his early intellectual achievements were developments in analytical geometry so important that we still speak of ‘Cartesian coordinates’. With his roots in Jesuit Catholicism and the ambition of finding new and secure foundations for all departments of knowledge, Descartes has been called the ‘father of modern Western philosophy’.

In 1637 he published his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences. The style is clear and accessible, and it contains much insight, a true spirit of enquiry, and some humour. It begins:

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

He describes how he came to perceive the need for a revaluation of learning:

From my childhood, I have been familiar with letters; and as I was given to believe that by their help a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life might be acquired, I was ardently desirous of instruction. But as soon as I had finished the entire course of study, at the close of which it is customary to be admitted into the order of the learned, I completely changed my opinion. For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance.

The problem, he concluded, was not merely personal:

And yet I was studying in one of the most celebrated schools in Europe, in which I thought there must be learned men, if such were anywhere to be found... I was thus led to take the liberty of judging of all other men by myself, and of concluding that there was no science in existence that was of such a nature as I had previously been given to believe.

So he gave up book learning and sought life experience.

For these reasons, as soon as my age permitted me to pass from under the control of my instructors, I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world. I spent the remainder of my youth in travelling, in visiting courts and armies, in holding intercourse with men of different dispositions and ranks... and, above all, in making such reflection on the matter of my experience as to secure my improvement.

He saw clearly how easily one falls into error and confusion:

I had become aware that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be imagined, which has not been maintained by some one of the philosophers...

He decided, therefore, to adopt four guiding principles in his pursuit of knowledge. They may be summarized as follows:

1. Only accept what is certain.

2. Break complex problems into as many parts as possible.

3. Proceed from the simplest to more complex.

4. Be thorough and omit nothing.

He also adopted three moral maxims to guide his practical life:

1. Obey the law and customs of the land in which he lived, avoiding extremes and following the most moderate opinions.

2. Be firm and resolute in decisions.

3. Try to change himself rather than the world.

This last is a finely expressed summary of stoicism, worth quoting at length:

My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be held, as regards us, absolutely impossible: and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented...

Then, mentally equipped with these maxims:

During the nine subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another, desirous of being a spectator rather than an actor in the plays exhibited on the theatre of the world; and, as I made it my business in each matter to reflect particularly upon what might fairly be doubted and prove a source of error, I gradually rooted out from my mind all the errors which had hitherto crept into it.

After these years he finally settled, in the Netherlands, and began to seek a way through confusion and error to a new source of certainty. He began by pressing doubt to its limit. He thought:

that I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable... Seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us... Because some men err in reasoning, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations... Finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams.

And here, in the deepest possible scepticism, he found what he believed was a foundation on which to start rebuilding philosophy and science:

But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think therefore I am, was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.

On this ground, he quickly established three more principles which he thought were equally secure:

His nature is a thinking being: he is a something that thinks.

What is true is what is ‘clear and distinct’ (self-evident).

God exists, being the perfect being on which all imperfect beings depend.

Descartes later expanded and restated his ideas in the Latin text Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641. There he began by supposing that he might be under the power of a malevolent demon. Even so, he concluded:

Let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something... I must conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist (Ego sum, Ego existo) is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.

Once again, he proceeded from this starting-point to find with equal certainty that his nature was a thinking being, that what is self-evident is true, and that the perfect Being, God, exists.

Descartes’ Discourse and Meditations are among the most-read works in the Western philosophical canon. But rather than establishing anything with certainty, he initiated philosophical controversies that continue unresolved to this day.

Several weaknesses have been identified in Descartes’ reasoning. The Cogito can be understood in two ways. One is as a syllogism, the simplest form of deductive reasoning. If it is a syllogism, it is an incompletely expressed one, which filled out would be something like:

[Major premise] All thinkers exist (or, more generally, anyone who does anything, exists),

[Minor premise] I do something (namely, think),

[Valid conclusion] Therefore, I exist.

Understood this way, the cogito is simply an example of a syllogism, plenty of which had previously been formulated and analysed. A syllogism shows where a valid conclusion may be drawn from two related premises, but it says nothing about whether the premises, and hence the conclusion, are true or not; it establishes no knowledge with any certainty.

In response to criticism, Descartes specifically denied that the cogito is a syllogism, and says that its truth is recognised ‘as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind’.

This is the second way of understanding the cogito: as a ‘self-evident’ truth. But how can we be certain that what appears to be ‘self-evident’ to the mind is true in reality? Descartes’ solution was that God is perfect and would not allow him to be deceived by what is self-evident. How then can one be sure of God’s existence? Because, said Descartes, it is self-evident. This has been called the ‘Cartesian circle’. It is somewhat disguised by his fine prose style, but on examination, it is unavoidable.

So much for the certainty of Descartes’ conclusion. There is a further problem with its content. He begins with ‘I think’ as if that were a completely simple and incontrovertible statement. But in fact, it implies the existence of both thinking and a thinker, an enduring self who thinks. This is a philosophically significant distinction. It may be correct, but that needs to be carefully established, not just taken as given. According to Bertrand Russell, all that Descartes could legitimately say with certainty was ‘there are thoughts’. David Hume and some schools of Buddhism would concur with Russell.

Having accepted the existence of the ‘I’ as well as the thoughts, Descartes goes on to assert that the I, being a ‘something that thinks’, is entirely unlike the body and is therefore immaterial and immortal. This and his ‘proof’ of God’s existence, are, according to his critics, remnants of scholastic theology, not results that have been independently established by logical or empirical methods.

And so, Descartes’ project, however stimulating, leads at best to open questions, not to a way out of uncertainty and confusion. How does this compare with non-dual theory and practice?

First, it should be said that the non-dual philosophers, following the Upanishadic sages, do not try to prove that anything is certainly true by purely intellectual means. Any attempt to prove, with the intellect, that what the intellect believes is true, must be circular. Reality can only be known through direct experience. The intellect is seen as an instrument, and reasoning as a method, which, if rightly applied, can overcome obstacles on the way to direct experience.

Descartes concluded ‘I am something that thinks.’ The essential non-dual insight is precisely that I am not thought, I am aware of thought, and all mental states. It is possible to observe these, and to not identify with them. When we practise saying ‘not this, not this’, to all thoughts and moods, we not only confirm the logical difference between subject and object, we also experience the effect of less constriction and growing clarity.

Positively, we find that self is awareness, pure consciousness. Both rationally and in practice, it is not possible to separate oneself from awareness; if this is attempted, we continue to be the unchanging consciousness of these mental efforts and contortions! Awareness is the inner light and subject of all possible experience, which is not affected or limited by any experience. Self is not a thing, and not nothing. Here too, reason and inner exploration reach the same liberating conclusion.

As we saw, Descartes’ reasoning led to a sharp distinction between himself as a thinking being, and the body. This was important to him because it opened up the possibility of his true nature being incorporeal and immortal. Thus appears in his philosophy the divide between mind and body, mental and physical, and the associated philosophical issues are still sometimes referred to as ‘Cartesian dualism’ (although many thinkers have found such distinctions while following different lines of enquiry.)

Does the non-dual view lead to a similar division, between consciousness and everything else? The answer is no, because those distinctions are aspects of thought, and do not remain when the true nature of thought is known from the perspective of the transcendental reality.

Underlying the mental world of the individual is consciousness. Further guided enquiry leads to the realisation that beyond our individualised experience is an unbroken consciousness in which the phenomenal world subsists. Consciousness and phenomena are not a duality, because phenomena have no existence independently of consciousness, which is not compromised or affected by phenomena. This is the kernel of non-duality. It is first understood as a guiding theory, and is to be confirmed in direct experience when the sense of identification with the mind is fully removed.

There are flaws in Descartes’ reasoning. Still, we observed in him a true sincerity and spirit of enquiry. He laboured alone, without the benefit of enlightened guidance, and his efforts arouse admiration. At the end of his third Meditation, he writes:

I should like to pause here and spend some time in the contemplation of God; to reflect on his attributes, and to gaze with wonder and adoration on the beauty of this immense light, so far as the eye of my darkened intellect can bear it.

Descartes’ example may inspire us to consider what is possible when our efforts are guided by the great insight that the seeker and the sought are ultimately identical as non-dual absolute consciousness-being.

P.H.

Is the World an Illusion?

Some text books on non-dual philosophy tell us that Shankaracharya designated the ultimate Reality by the term ‘nirguna Brahman’ or quality-less Brahman. They say he thought this was quality-less, changeless and beyond the realm of cause and effect. If we are to look, therefore, in his system for the cause of the universe of qualities spread out before us, we must turn to his conception of ‘saguna Brahman’—Brahman with qualities, that is, associated with the creative power, Maya.

Saguna Brahman is thus taken to be the principle that mediates between the changeless Reality and the world of changing forms. It is also said to be called Ishvara. And, since Reality is actionless and quality-less, both Ishvara and the world are illusory.

Sometimes those who expound Shankara in this way and take the term nirguna to mean without features, declare that nirguna Brahman is a bare abstraction, an empty concept, not merely less than reality, but actually indistinguishable from non-reality.

In the following paragraphs an attempt is made to show why these interpretations are mistaken. Our view is that nirguna Brahman is not an empty concept; there is not, in Shankara’s own writings, a special metaphysical principle called Ishvara postulated to mediate between the changeless and the changing; and the external world is not an illusory system of qualities that contrives for a time to overspread and hide the qualityless Reality.

Nirguna Brahman is not an empty word or a mere concept. It is the supreme fact. Our ordinary empirical experience of facts conditioned by time, space and causation does not yield knowledge of anything that exists independently.

Nirguna Brahman is the name for the supreme fact, the fact that exists independently, and on which all other facts depend. It is called nirguna in the Upanishads and by Shankara, not because it is quality-less, but because it is not a substance in which qualities in any sense independent from itself inhere. It is not a concept, because it is not known or knowable by the mind. It is known by anubhava or immediate experience. It is infinite, and the limited mind merely obscures it.

When do we know this reality in direct experience? We know it when we realise that all finite things have no existence independent of it. We know it because we are it, and its nature is knowledge. We cannot know it through scripture, though scripture points the way. Scripture is the record of the anubhava of the enlightened sages. It is partly distorted by the fact of its having to be written in words. Words stand for limited conceptions and inevitably deform the infinite Reality.

Nevertheless manana, or mental cogitation, is part of the discipline for approaching the knowledge of Brahman, and therefore we find in the Upanishads and in Shankara descriptions of Brahman involving conceptions which are familiar to the mind. They are not strictly true of Brahman as such, but are intended to direct the mind towards Brahman. But when these passages are known from the context to be descriptive, it is to Brahman that they refer, and Brahman is always nirguna.

With this in mind we can see the cause of the second misconception discussed in this paper. The scripture speaks of Brahman as being nirguna and also as being the cause of the world. Now we find in Shankara’s writings a conception of saguna Brahman or Brahman with qualities. Hence it is said that nirguna Brahman cannot be the cause of anything, and that saguna Brahman, must be the cause of the world.

This view is indeed found in some later writers, but not in Shankara or his closest followers. For Shankara, the statement found in scripture, ‘That from which this came forth’ refers to Brahman, and Brahman is always nirguna. The phrase is known to refer to Brahman the Reality, because it is a definition. All definitions in scripture are concerned with jnana or knowledge. Their object is always Brahman the Reality, that is, nirguna Brahman. Saguna Brahman is, in Shankara, a conception without metaphysical significance. It is Brahman as deliberately conceived with this or that form for the purpose of worship (upasana).

Worship is an activity and hence dependent on the human will (purusha-tantra). Hence, Brahman may be conceived in worship in this form or that, as Vishnu or Shiva, Rama or Krishna, according to the will of the worshipper. But jnana is not an activity but a state, and is not purusha-tantra (dependent on the will of man), but vastu-tantra (conditioned by reality).

Hence from the standpoint of knowledge, we are not free to conceive Brahman in this form or that. It follows that in any mention in scripture of Brahman as having a particular form, we have to ascertain from the context, whether the passage is meant to be a definition of Brahman or whether it is an incitement to worship Brahman conceived in a particular form. If it is a definition, then the object defined is nirguna Brahman, and the pictorial element is the result of a conscious use of metaphor designed to direct the mind as close to nirguna Brahman as the mind can go. If the passage is an incitement to worship, the description bears no direct relationship to knowledge or to ultimate Reality and has no metaphysical significance.

Hence it is incorrect to think that Shankara assumed the existence of a saguna Brahman as the source of the world. For him, nirguna Brahman was the cause of the world. He applied the term Ishvara indifferently to Brahman the Reality and to Brahman as conceived for purposes of worship, so the meaning of the term in his writings has to be settled by the context.

The multiform objects of the world do not arise from nowhere and hide a pale and quality-less reality. In fact, the world of names and forms is not foreign to Brahman. Considered in abstraction from Brahman it has no existence whatever. Considered as the effect of Brahman it is real (see Shankara on Vedanta Sutra 2:1:14). The effect is non-different from the cause, as a clay elephant is not distinguishable from the clay of which it is composed. Brahman is fullness, perfection, existence absolute. Nothing exists outside it to obscure it.

What then is the nature of perishable objects? Shankara neither affirms nor denies their reality. Like his predecessor, Gaudapada, he offers no theory of creation, whether attributed to Ishvara or to any other force. He held that the passages describing creation in scripture were metaphorical and that their aim was to bring home that Brahman was the Self of all.

The objects of the world, including our minds and bodies, are limited, perishable and not self-existent. That we attribute to them the independent existence that belongs properly to existence absolute alone, must be the result of false knowledge, and it inevitably brings pain and disappointment in its train.

If we want to know facts about objects, sense-perception and inference are the proper means of knowledge. For knowledge of existence absolute, the proper means of enquiry are scripture and immediate (i.e. supramental) experience (anubhava).

But Shankara insists that the findings of one means of enquiry do not contradict those of another within the latter’s sphere. ‘A hundred scriptural texts will not make fire cold,’ as he puts it. Thus the knowledge obtained by sense-perception, and inference based upon it, is valid within the sphere of the perishable and the dependent. If we want to attain our highest good (paramapurush-artha) we have to resort to the special technique given in the scriptures and the tradition for knowing Brahman.

Even then, the knowledge yielded by sense-perception will not be contradicted within its own sphere. But, as Shankara says, the knower of Brahman knows that ‘all that one sees or knows or touches is the Lord Vasudeva’.

A.J.A.

Simple Factors of Joy

Leaving aside the metaphysical flights of the Advaita, let us consider the practical side of it. Every human being has a deep- rooted desire to be peaceful and happy and to avoid pain. Peace and happiness are not negative qualities; they are positive achievements. You have to pursue them daily and in all seriousness or they will leave you dry.

Our peace and happiness must be creative. An artist finds peace in the creation of art forms which cause tranquillity of mind to others, and finds satisfaction in their appreciation. Happiness is not a gift of nature; it is to be achieved. Individual sense-satisfaction produced by a good meal, deep sleep or listening to music is a poor sort of happiness on account of its temporary character and its individual and narrow range. Our material wants must be satisfied, but they are not the end in themselves. Petrol is poured into the tank of a machine so that the combustion may bring the machine to a desired end. Our experiments with joy of various kinds are ultimately meant to prepare our mind for higher creations of peace and beauty and to satisfy our hunger for Truth.

We are social beings. We must not expect to be happy and peaceful without contributing to the peace and happiness of those amongst whom we live. Happiness is a group achievement. This is an important point to be kept in view. How can there be peace for a normal man if his mother is delirious with fever, his father lies ill with consumption or his wife suffers from insomnia? There is great happiness in the efforts one makes to relieve the sufferings of neighbours and to cause joy to little children. Justice is a great factor in happiness-production and yet another is sympathy or compassion. A hard, feelingless heart is a barren wilderness in which no fruit trees of peace and contentment will grow.

Happiness is a mode of the mind. It does not exist in any object. It is the nature of the soul. But as long as our mind is in the grip of passions and wrong ideas, the self will not express happiness and peace. Mental darkness must be met and enlightened and not suppressed. Freud has exposed the great value of truth and the evils of insincerity and hypocrisy. Man in his normal state wants to be acceptable and to give devotion to somebody. To love and be loved is natural. Our happiness and peace depend on the nature of the persons to whom we give devotion and from whom we receive love. Passionate, narrow-minded and conceited, fanatical persons can be the object of pity but not of love. ‘I will love you if you do what I tell you’ is the motto of a slave driver, and not of a rational and free man.

We must give devotion to somebody or to some object. Nature endows us with a surplus of energy which we can employ for the development of our soul, for acquiring knowledge of philosophy and science, meditation and contemplation of God in our own being. We can dissipate our surplus energy in trivial pleasures or fanaticism, patriotism and love of power. But there is a great and real joy in store for one who becomes a devotee, pursues a great ideal, relieves human misery and reduces egoism.

Life is like a book which has many blank pages. You cannot and need not alter your stature, the colour of your skin, your response to the climate, but you can alter your view of the world and give up material tendencies. You can improve your appreciation of beauty and love of Truth. There is always room in your soul for benevolence and self-sacrifice. These are the real sources of joy which enrich the soul. We need tranquil joys and not those which are the outcome of excitement. The joys which we create and which we can share with others to their moral advantage, are praiseworthy.

Hari Prasad Shastri