Jaiswal said, “You may be right and I may be wrong, but if we disagree, we are both wrong”. Then he told us he read that on a poster on a church in Golders Green.
Someone asked him about meditation and he said, “the Indians have had mantra for quite a long time. Look at their society and their level. Mantra will not do it for you alone. You need to find the balance”.
Jaiswal announced that “There is no divine revelation that man cannot evolve for himself. There is no divinity ‘up there’, but there is a divinity ‘here’ (pointing to his chest) and ‘here’ (pointing to various members of the audience).
He said that the Shankaracharya was always gentle and never criticized his questioner. He said that sometimes his answers left the groups in London without any questions, so people had to manufacture questions in order to have something to talk about.
He said that the Shankaracharya came from a very orthodox tradition, but that he was beyond it, and so he spoke for himself. He said that HH said, “There is no Shankaracharya. There is no tradition.” Mr Jaiswal said that only His Holiness could have said such a thing.
He said that everyone had to be free, and that to be free meant to be independent. To be independent is to become the Shankaracharya, to become the teaching.
He said that in the West we believe not in reason, but in faith. Reason is supposed to be the handmaiden of faith, but in fact faith is the daughter of reason. When you have understood properly, you will have no doubt and will have faith.
He said that in the tradition there is a statement which says, "Crack the Absolute", analyse the Absolute.
He said that there is a competition “between you and the Shankaracharya. Between you and Mr Jaiswal. Between you and Mr MacLaren. Between you and you.”
He told us that we couldn’t be the Absolute, but that we could all march together into the Absolute. What that means I have no idea, but I’d like to find out.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Gospel According to Jaiswal
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10 comments:
In addition to what you have said I was particularly interested in what Mr Jaiswal said about limits and language: Every study of language is to help us to be free even within the limits of the school of philosophy. All your questions should be to break the limits in your life. In order to be free you have to act like a free man, and that freedom is expressed in questions.
Whatever is of interest is the seed of that question.
Yes, I think the point about the School was that it should be without limits and without an agenda.
In your first sentence about disagreement, I think you may have simplified what he said a little. I was scribbling away while he was speaking and recorded him as saying, of the poster, 'You may be right and I may be wrong, but if it creates a division between you and me, we are both wrong.'
'Division' is rather stronger than disagreement. I see no reason why, on occasions, we shouldn't 'agree to disagree' and yet remain in amity - if not in complete unity - pending further invetigation, as it were
Yes I agree (har de har).
But ultimately there can't be a disagreement - "when the wise man speaks dispute is ended" - because there is only one truth.
I think that "agree to disagree" is tolerance - the 20th Century's highest virtue. Theodore Zeldin has a chapter on this in An Intimate History of Humanity in which he argues that tolerance is not enough.
If there is even a friendly disagreement then perhaps neither of us has the truth. I think that's what he was saying.
I agree.
Funny how agreement stops the conversation. You'd think it mightn't.
Is there only one truth? In my experience 'truth' is very subjective.
There is only one truth. That isn't a dogmatic statement, but an essential quality of the word "truth", if it means anything.
Subjectivity, however, means that anyone's grasp on the truth is only partial. There's no contradiction between a single absolute truth and multiple relative perceptions of it.
To put the opposite case, let us suppose that there is no actual truth at all, but only perceptions. So for example the question, "Did he shoot the gun?" would be a question about lots of people's impressions of that event, but there would be no actual event at all.
Bertrand Russell said of that philosophy that, if I believe myself to be a poached egg, the only argument against it is that it is a minority view.
I'm not so sure. You've said previously that instructions/arguments have to work in all situations. I can say truthfully that I enjoy eating brussels sprouts. Other people can say truthfully that they do not enjoy eating them. Both statements are true. Not just cultural it appears but the physical qualities of the tastebuds we inherit from our parents. Or do we have to live with truths so generic as Brussel sprouts can be eaten. Is there no room for the individual at all?
Of course there is room for individuality.
The truth is not "Brussels sprouts are delicious", but "Anonymous says she enjoys eating Brussels sprouts, while Vayukesha says he hates them". We could be lying, of course.
But the real truth has to be something more interesting. Physicists aim at a 'Grand Unified Theory' ... something that would explain all the contradictory phenomena. So I would say the real truth has to be at a higher level than phenomena and fact. Like the law of gravity is at a higher level than the fact that apples fall downwards when dropped.
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