It's quite easy to get the mistaken impression that there is something called "The Teaching" that doesn't change. Or "The Truth". Not at all. What I learned from Mr Jaiswal is that teaching that is frozen in time and does not change is called religion, and the dogmatic part of religion at that.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is:
- without a single authoritative source
- a product of human intelligence, imagination, endeavour and creativity
- evolving continuously
Where does that leave revelation? What about the idea of the Upanishads as "Shruti" (heard)? Is there no place for mystical union with the divine, of intuitions received from the eternal?
All of these things are the lifeblood of philosophy, but they are not transferrable in mere words. Therefore, the philosophy that we have in books is a sedimentary deposit, a fossil record of something that once happened. That something may or may not be exactly the same in every instance, but because it happens at a moment in time it will always be expressed differently. Indeed, it must be expressed differently; it must be expressed, if possible, more fully. A philosopher will scorn to use the words of another, because he knows those words are not there to be worshipped.
Mr Jaiswal spoke once of his first efforts to translate for His Holiness. After he had spoken a few sentences, Mr Jaiswal interrupted him to say that if he were to speak for such a long time, the translation would not be accurate. Shantananda laughed at him, saying, "That's not the way to translate! Don't listen to my words, listen to my meaning." Purists may bridle at this: what they want are the exact words, to get the thing just as it was. Like Jacques, the cynical philosopher of As You Like It, they want "honest set terms". I'm sorry, O fundamentalist, but your little text won't do it for you.
I need hardly add that there is a great (too great) regard for precise words in the School.
I remember meeting a labourer on a building site in the summer of 1991. He was the same age as me, and although his name was Patrick, he was known as "The Horse" for his huge size and strength. He was illiterate. He told me about when he started school, people thought he was an idiot because he couldn't answer any of the questions. But I thought he was most articulate: he said, "I couldn't take the words out of my mouth".
Maybe the teaching is no more than doing what can be done to help people take the words out of their mouths. The first thing is to encourage them to value the meaning they have within them.
So, here we go - another piece of teaching from Mr Jaiswal:
4. Philosophy is the product of human intelligence, imagination, endeavour and creativity. Every living human being, regardless of education or background, has his or her unique contribution to make.
Including YOU ...
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Another thing I learned
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2 comments:
I think that a lot of what you say in your post of June 13th is a sort of half truth, or, to be more polite, an expression of only one side of the truth. I say this because what you say seems to deny the place and the function of true revelation.
Philosophy, as usually understood and as to some extent I see you and Mr. J. using the word, is an after-the-event activity, an analysis of what has first to be revealed to the inner soul of a seer (either that of the philosopher him/herself- as probably in the case of Plato and Shankara - or that of some other recipient of authentic revelation).
A seer in this context means simply a human vehicle suitable for the purpose, sufficiently inwardly pure, that is, or otherwise fitted for reception of a cosmic vision, a vision that necessarily comes through but is otherwise sourced than the limited mental conditioning of the human being. The job of philosophy, therefore, is to seek to make sense of, to explain and to bring down to earth, a primal communication of the Holy Spirit.
Thus philosophy tends to make use of the analytical function of the mind, whereas the original divine vision comes through the intuitive function of human inwardness, which, rather than analytical, is whole, positive, balanced and affirmatory.
On the other hand, if we start from the human end of things, philosophy can be seen as the human search for authentic vision, and this too must eventually - as soon as possible, in fact - pass beyond the activity of the analytical mind.
Now, you may say that true philosophy is ultimately self-knowledge, needing no outside agency, and this may be so. Where then is the place of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit and the long tradition of the masters through which we gain knowledge of the path of self-realization?
This, to me, is a living question and I spend much of my study, which in my case consists of a large part of my life, pondering on and enquiring into just this area. I have noticed that Mr. J. always seems to leave out the divine world, the world of revelation, preferring, as you say, to speak of vision as the ‘product of human intelligence, imagination, endeavour and creativity.’ This, to me, leaves out any higher agency (angels, messengers, divine beings, or Being and higher worlds). It seems to negate any concept of the reality of such things as heaven, supernatural agency and the potency of prayer. It suggests that there are only two realities in relation to spiritual evolution, namely human intuition and the universal Self, perhaps with the teacher standing as the link between. This has always seemed wrong to me. As you say ‘Where does that leave revelation? What about the idea of the Upanishads as "Shruti"? Is there no place for mystical union with the divine,of intuitions received from the eternal?’
There is a lot more I could say on this subject and how Mr. J.’s words often seem so arid to me, but, for the moment I will only add just a little to the above. Indeed, I would love to meet and thrash it out with you and perhaps others. This would probably be more interesting than the average group night.
The result of the ‘reductionism’ I complain of is that there is no proper acknowledgement of the power of poetry, narrative, myth, ecstatic revelation and the like. Short of self-realization, these, in fact, are the only contact we may have with valid truth. The human mind on its own cannot know truth, only its figuring in these other, more original forms, and, as I say, philosophy has the job of midwifery, of translating these otherworldly communications to the ordinary human mind. Whether self-realization can arise without such a connection with Samashti is a question to which I have not yet reached an answer.
Concerning the living power of the scriptural word, revelation may indeed vary in purity, strength and veracity according to the cultural conditioning of the recipient, but it will always be at a different level to ordinary human thinking. It is just this higher level of understanding that qualifies it for the title of ‘scripture’.
One way of proving the potency of such scripture is its efficacy, its fruits. Thus the simple words of Jesus have transformed the world over the last two thousand years in such a way that no other words can come near. Who can say that these are mere words, or, as you put it, a ‘fossil record’ or ‘sedimentary deposit’?
There is a further point to be made before dismissing or belittling scriptures in this way, and seeing them as mere time-bound records, albeit revolutionary statements in their day. I am not alone, I think, in believing the greatest scriptures to be revelations of a ‘divine plan’, consciously given for the evolution of the human race, and also that special incarnations such as Jesus Christ are agents who ‘come down’ from higher worlds to furnish the next step in human evolution, to guide us, or at least to mitigate what would otherwise be great destruction and suffering.
Their sayings are thus relevant for as long as their visitation is current, and I personally get the sense that Jesus together with his vision still have plenty of life left in them and will guide us well through the next millennium.
I find what you are saying of great interest. The question, it seems to me, is how to prepare for a revelation, given its infrequency.
It's been said that a work of art is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. In the same vein, Jack Niklaus, the champion golfer, when asked if he felt lucky, said, 'Yes, I do. And the more I practise the luckier I become.'
So, do we need to practise? And, if so, what?
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