We now know, as certainly as we can, that the species of the present day evolved from lower animals. Perhaps 100,000 years ago Neanderthals developed; then around 60,000 years ago homo sapiens.
Can we agree then that any idea of a descending series of yugas is untenable? That the Kaliyuga (literally "The Historical Period") is in fact all we know of our history, and that the other three yugas are imaginative fictions?
Come on, you know you want to disagree ... bring it on!
Illustration shows new Judaeo-Christian theory of synthetic evolution. Finally we know where the second and third 'women' came from. Thank you, Charles Darwin!
24 comments:
This one comes high on my growing list of Questions I Wish We'd Pressed HH To Explain...
You can settle for one or the other; or you can try to harmonise the two so disparate views.
There was a great sense of hope in the early days of the School, that we were engaged on work of value to the progress and evolution of mankind. Teilhard de Chardin figured large on the shelves of the tiny School bookshop.
Even the Maharishi implied a rapid progress to a golden future of higher consciousness, in which we would bring the whole world population with us as long as one in (ten, a hundred ?) meditated..
Then I remember the evening when we were introduced to the concept of Yugas.... imagine the deep sadness -- it was all going the opposite way...
Then there was Ficino, and his explanation that it is possible to live a life as of the golden age, in the middle of an (incontrovertible) age of iron...
In other words, a kinda parallel universe where we live simultaneously in a bodily Iron Age, and mentally and spiritually by choice at a possible higher level...
That seemed the most practical way of avoiding some sort of cult 'Only the Followers shall be Saved' thing..
Dr Roles, I think, asked that same question, would have, while bowing to Ouspensky and HH, have reminded us that 'there are three dimensions of space and three of time', and that there are three worlds, of which the physical is but a shadow of the subtle which is in turn but a shadow of the causal -- so keep the mind open to the possibility of laws beyond our normal understanding, but don't expect to understand overnight !
Personally, while I await ilumination on this biggie, I know there is a development in little me which I find encouraging !
'And now over to our correspondents where you are'...
On the subject of evolution, I’ve been reading a bit about ‘sound symbolism’ or phonosemantics which aims to show how sound and meaning are related. What arose is:
- onomatopoeic words like ‘bang’, ‘whoosh’ etc have closest correlation
- words describing physical processes still have some obvious correlation with the sounds, the activity of the mouth, lips etc mimicking the process. Eg, ‘break’, ‘flow’
- subtle concepts still use physical analogies (even in Sanskrit - eg, ava-gam, ‘understand’ literally means ‘go down into’, ‘penetrate’ – ie, physical process and direction is used to intimate subtlety)
- the subtlest is indescribable, beyond language
Does this not suggest that language begins primitively and reaches towards the subtle using physical analogy and ultimately fails to comprehend that beyond its reach? This would suggest an evolutionary theory of language though probably with different terms of reference to your average materialist?
How this fits with mantras and words of spiritual potency is less obvious…?
With reference to the yugas, this is one of these questions that has always irritated me and I’ve never heard any semi-plausible answer to the following:
The yugas are of fixed length, which means it’s inevitable and fatalistic that one yuga must end on a given date and a new one begin. Therefore anything anyone does individually or collectively couldn’t change this, so why bother thinking about it at all?
I’ve heard some suggestions which might suggest a different interpretation…
- we reincarnate in a yuga appropriate to our karma / sanskara
- yugas have nothing to do with karma / sanskara and are merely like seasons or times of day that have different qualities. (this interpretation came from a non-SES Vedic Astrologer who also said something like “The yugas are a measure of time. You can perform a good action during the day and a bad action at night but time is unaffected by your actions.”)
Who really knows? Perhaps the wheel turns awaiting the right time to deliver the package you pre-ordered?
But ultimately, all this seems to me to be like the parable told by Buddha. A man is shot by a poisoned arrow. He wants to know who shot it and why, what velocity, what trajectory, motive, type of poison, it’s effects, his life expectancy etc. Whilst he’s working this out he dies. The advice was “just pull the arrow out”.
Like the man shot by the arrow, I can't see that we will ever work out evolution, yugas, sanskara etc with the analytical mind. It doesn't take much to see that the operation of it is vast. What is it that is still so mesmerising about this sort of question? Why don’t we just “pull the arrow out” ?
“Truth is very simple, don't complicate it.
You must be in the Light to know the darkness:
Just be aware of yourself, the Light.
Jump into the fire of Knowledge
and don't be concerned with what will happen
to your clothing of concepts and vasanas.
This fire will burn all”
- Papaji
I agree with Kapila -- the sensible person deals with the matters of the present moment as best they can.
But the fundamental question lurks behind the whole of culture : did our forefathers know better than we about some or many things, or will our descendants know better than we ?
The idea of 'progress' is written into much of human activity -- most debatably in the arts : concept art is more 'advanced' than abstract art which was more advanced than figurative art, etc.; 'free verse' is more advanced than that old rhyming stricture/structure...
And taking Kapila's example of language : does it mean that Vedic/Sanskrit is more subtle than current language(s) -- or are we moving towards a more subtle sound in language ?... Innit, yeah..?
Most people have a vested interest -- perhaps without ever realising it -- in one or other of these views of history. So that makes it worth giving thought to ?
But even if you forget about the big question of which way it's all going -- there's always the present moment to deal with !
I do feel that the "why worry about this with the analytic mind?" approach is needlessly fatalistic.
The point of the analytic mind is that it moves us forward, now that we have learned to make use of it through science. We now know that the earth is not the centre of the universe. We know that life is evolving upwards and not downwards (although there will be waves up and down in any era, the ocean is actually rising over millennia).
The analytic mind can be wrong, but it can be right; and the intuitive mind can be wrong, or right. (If you want to read a brilliant book on this subject, try Malcolm Gladwell BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING - proving that it IS possible to work out when the analytic mind is being useful or not. Analytically.)
Why is there this great rush in spiritual circles to chuck out all of the fruits of science, just when science is coming out of its childhood and starting to gain in subtlety and penetration?
One of the things that stuck in my mind from when I was studying Eastern philosophy a couple of years ago was Ninian Smart's assertion that none of the traditional systems (except, he said, Zen Buddhism) had successfully engaged with the modern world and its philosophies. I'm agnostic as to whether that's true, but I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there are certain concepts that (as Anonymous 1 above testifies) create gloom and deep sadness ... that are tamasic. The yuga-theory is one of them. It is, in my opinion, just wrong.
Over to you.
Kevin says, “I'm agnostic as to whether that's true”.
He’s not actually talking here about the yuga issue, but I think the yuga issue is a typical example of an issue that prompts us to ask really deep questions about the structure of our ideas. It certainly challenges us in a very direct way, inasmuch as it most certainly does not measure up to the scientific paradigm that most in this age have been conditioned to respect. At the same time it is not easy either to prove or completely to refute, since it seems so central to so many wonderful teachings, not least that of our own Old Testament, a work reverenced for good reason and central to our own civilization (though, thank God, capable of being read on many different levels, like all such special texts).
So what does it mean to be agnostic? In my case it would mean that I am still learning, still trying to work things out. This is really true of my whole outlook on life, more so every day as I climb out of a conceptual straitjacket I have inherited from our beloved School.
And how am I going about working it out? What resources am I bringing to the task, a task, I may add, that is the central passion of my life?
Well, one way is by reading as many respectable texts, listening to as many masters or mistresses (no, I don’t mean that sort) as seem credible, while at the same time relating all this to personal experience. This process has, I would venture to assert, something to do with the exercise of reason.
The exercise of reason implies attempting in one’s weighing up process not to be influenced by such pressures as those of convenience, habitual like and dislike, and fashion, even fashionable views seemingly backed up by science.
It implies an effort to see over the wall of the assumptions of the age (which includes the assumptions of one’s circle, in my case the School).
It implies a strange mix of self-confidence and self-belief together with a willingness to be humble and ready in the face of new understanding to accept the overturning of the fruits of years of hard-won conclusions.
Discourse such as this website offers opportunities for could be of great help in this process. So, incidentally, could groups if they were allowed to be such.
Here's another way of looking at it : that evolution is entirely a true possibility for the physical world; but that the subtle world and the causal world also exist. So everything within the physical world is open to development; but the world of mind and of cause are unaffected, and play by their own rules. So mankind can construct spacecraft, but only by strict obedience to laws already laid down, which cannot be affected by the physical world. And those spacecraft are made by the minds of men and the materials available, provided by the causal world.
Thus, the physical world, the subtle, and the causal, are all fully available for development, but within their own laws.
Have men's minds, or the universe, evolved in any way beyond the physical and the mechanical ? Does 'evolution' exist in the subtle or the causal world ?
There may not be any disparity between evolving within natural law, and the yugas ?
Much was made in those early days of the SES, of entropy -- that all systems run down. Is this so far from the yuga concept ? Or contradictory to the theory of evolution ?
Life is a mechanism to stave off entropy almost indefinitely; and evolution does better - it goes against the flow, making improvements even as matter succumbs to entropy.
I'm not sure why evolution has not been picked up as an analogy for spiritual work. Spiritual entropy (see Yuga-theory) seems to me to be unreasonable, as it follows a lower law than ordinary life. Surely the ordering principle that the lowliest amoeba employs (ie life) should be crowned by a still higher law (consciousness)?
Kevin said: I do feel that the "why worry about this with the analytic mind?" approach is needlessly fatalistic.
That depends upon the bhavana that arises in relation to the words I suppose? From my perspective it isn't fatalistic. I tend to come from the 'belief' that previous ages have existed but I can't prove this and I don't want to try. The 'unknowing' is, as others have said, simply openness to greater understanding that may arise in the future. 'Don't accept or reject' as we were told.
I think your question could be more precisely stated. Not 'do the yugas exist', but 'have we interpreted the concept of yugas correctly?' Presumably the fact that different traditions have said something similar about 'ages' must cause us to give some respect to the idea?
Someone mentioned entropy. I would be more inclined to question this "things run down" idea. I have some understanding of the scientific principle but does anyone know how the "things run down" thought arose in the school? Now I would agree that that thought can be fatalistic and depressing. Forms made of physical stuff may well dissolve over time, sure, but have we misapplied this statement to the psychological and thereby created a gloom and doom bhavana with regard to our spiritual work? I can't see why the mind should necessarily naturally tend towards 'running down' ?
If anyone's interested there is a good summary of alternative views on the yugas at Wikipedia (scroll down to "Other interpretations of Kali Yuga and the Yuga cycle")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga
An attempted answer to Kapila's question (wrote this before I've read Wikipedia):
I think that the idea that 'systems run down' arises, or arose, from the interpretation of the observation of different phenomena, under the 'Gurdspensky' concept of 'three forces'.
In the physical world, a flywheel, spun, eventually runs down, due to the resistance of the air and friction on the bearing. In a vacuum, it would continue to spin for much longer ?
In the mental or subtle world, systems of various sorts, and concepts accepted by the mind in individuals, can eventually run down through laziness, misunderstanding, outside influences, and our favourite SES bogie, 'sheer bloody ignorance'...
And in the causal world, we were told, misery can from time to time overflow in Creation, and bad influences enter the world.. so that a fresh 'sattvic' influence of some sort is required...
In other words, the three forces are always present. (I suppose one could suggest that as sattva works out its effect and expands outwards, the three forces change at the centre ?)
I think that's the way that the yuga system seemed to fit the
'entropy' model..
*
Reasonable men, we're told, should be able to argue the very opposite view... which I guess would be that the idea of 'ancient wisdom', the Golden Age, the Veda,the yugas etc., were the cunning spin of a priestly class to buttress its power..
However, that would go against the belief of the Hindus and the Jains, that revaluation and reassessment of the received scriptures is always essential..
"Things run down" is suspect, as Kapila says. When you hear people saying "Well, that's the way of the Creation" when something happens that ought to make them look at themselves, you know that something is wrong. The idea that things run down excuses all manner of ineptitude, laziness and sloppy thinking, because it means that the worse results you get, the more right you are!
Responding to Son of Moses - I didn't see this till just now - I would just say that although people are generally 'conditioned' to accept the scientific world-view, from where I'm sitting I am much more conditioned to accept the School world-view. Therefore the first step is to examine that.
And also, there is a world of difference between being conditioned to lazily accept something the clever scientist was saying on the TV last night, and actually being a scientist or studying it seriously (just as there's a difference between accepting someone else's potted philosophy and reading Plato). For my part, I think that science has ushered in a new and unprecedented era in the world. As a school of philosophy we MUST engage with this new era, on its own terms. If we don't we leave the field to Creationists, journalists, Dawkins and Dennett.
Kevin, what's so special about 'science', and when did it start ?
The word only means 'knowing'. Making stone wheels ? (Bless the Flintstones and their creator..) Well, OK, making wooden wheels -- wasn't that science ? Does it mean more than 'acquired knowledge from experience' ?
There used to be a distinction between 'natural science' and 'physical science'.
I agree that we should engage with science -- like, where do philosophers stand on black holes (so to speak) ?
But what 'advances' in science are more than an exploration, or exploitation, of the laws of the physical universe ? Can you say that there are comparable advances in the science of the mind, or the science of creation ? (NB I don't know my answer to this...)
Serendipitously, there is a reflection on similar subjects at a blog I have recently found, and now visit regularly, that of Robert Godwin who styles himself ‘Gagdad Bob’. He has written a book called ‘One Cosmos Under God’ which I am reading. I think it very good. The blog is called ‘One Cosmos’ and the posting I refer to is of today Dec.20th, and is titled ‘Catch a Falling Man…’. Enjoy.
Son of Moses, that guy has a very bleak view of science, and of the modern world! I mean, I agree with a lot of what he says, but not with his certitude.
Many modern anti-scientific thinkers appear to believe that there has to be an opposition between science and religion; and on the other side, Dawkins et al, with the same belief. Or so it appears to me.
The key element in Advaita is of course non-duality, and one meaning of this is "not believing one of two opposing views". If there is an Advaita faith, it is that there always has to be a third position which resolves the apparent contradictions of the other two. We find our way back to unity not by 'killing the alternative' (etymological meaning of 'decide'!) but by going forward to a new unity.
Anonymous, I think the old definitions are not really adequate. It's like trying to describe the internet using only words used in the 17th Century. Science is different from all previous methods of discovering truth because it is a public and shared endeavour, with agreed standards. The scientific priests do not hide their discoveries in the temple, but share it with all the other scientists through publication. There are occasionally blind-alleys, deceptions and mistakes, but gradually and inexorably it goes forwards. And that sharing, and shared use of reason, is why the modern West has come to totally dominate the world.
What I would say is that science needs philosophy, just as religion needs philosophy. Most scientists I know are pretty unimaginative, and they don't have a way to talk to each other about philosophical questions. If we bemoan its shortcomings, as a way of not engaging, we're not really helping anyone.
We have an important function in the world; and it's not enough just to say 'no' to the new.
Kevin, you'll have to expand on that idea that 'Science is different from all previous methods of discovering truth', which is a meaningless statement to me..
The Aztecs were the first to discover chocolate. Now that's world-beating science !
OK. In the past an alchemist might try to discover the philosopher's stone, which is partly supposed to enable all kinds of physical transformations, and partly a spiritual quest. The secret of how to go about it would be jealously guarded. Magus So-and-so would be rumoured to have a special method involving brimstone and goat urine, while Paracodeius swears (privately) on the importance of the third phase of the moon.
Today we have mechanisms whereby scientists are required to share their findings with others. A finding is only accepted if it can be replicated elsewhere. There is nothing mystical about it, which is its strength (and of course its weakness, from another point of view).
Science isn't like philosophy or religion or astrology or alternative medicine, because it depends on the empirical and the provable. It's not everything, but it is a tremendously refined discipline that has proven its efficacy over centuries.
For example, it gives us the principle of evolution, which Teilhard de Chardin calls the greatest single discovery of the human intellect, because it teaches us our true history, and replaces earlier myths.
I'm not a scientist, but all I'm trying to say is that we need to appreciate its strengths without overestimating them.
Kevin, Great! Now things are hotting up. Science, its validity, its limitations: a real subject for discussion, and at the root of so many of the concerns expressed in this blog. Could I suggest that you begin another main posting on this subject, since this comments section is getting rather extensive, surely a sign that we have hit on a touched vein (unravel that one).
Perhaps I could kick off the subject by being deliberately provocative and saying that the only way that Advaita manages to include all views is by a system of relative validity. On that scale, science is only one up from the evidence of the senses. It is a very culture-bound view of things and is given far too much credence by our contemporary world. It only manages to be ‘a public and shared endeavour’, as you put it, by inhabiting the lowest common denominator of understanding.
A truer science would accept other modes of knowing, and yes we are debating the wonderful subject of epistemology, the science concerning the valid ways of knowing, a subject the Tradition takes very seriously but which is seldom debated within the School, surely a sign of the latter's limitations.
In the blog you so sweepingly brush aside, Godwin says (himself quoting at times), ‘The superior vertical ambiance of antiquity... more adequately ‘contained’ and answered to man’s vertical needs than any watered down gruel that modern science can offer us. For man was not made for science, nor was science made for man, at least in terms of a place to live spiritually. This is a new, alien world we are living in, as we have essentially allowed a method for investigating material reality to eclipse and dominate the more direct modes with which man has always encountered his universe... Our over-educated blind men insist that we doubt all of ‘the original myths that have made us and sustained us as individuals and as a people across the centuries. In their pointless world, they would have us cast off the old myths and embrace their ‘new and improved myths - complete with evidence'’... Yes, our soulless elites are engaged in the endless project of evicting us from the interiority of things.’
As it happens, in his book, Godwin evidences a thorough grasp of the latest developments in conventional science and suggests some novel ways of interpreting these.
If this discussion flourishes, I would like to invite some of my scientist friends in the school to contribute (yes, there are a few, and they were supposed to have pronounced on the subject of the yugas and evolution years ago. Perhaps such a discussion would jolt them into action), thus furthering the currency and renown of this admirable platform for debate within the School.
Go ahead and invite them anyway - good idea.
SOM
I've done so. I did read the passage you quote, which I'll respond to here. As I said, I don't really disagree with his ideas so much as his approach.
My aim is to break down some of the barriers in the School which prevent us from talking about things. One of these is the reflex dismissal of 'the world' (reinforced, of course, by the yuga-type feeling that we are all going to hell on a handcart), including contemporary science, politics, literature, art, etc. Some of these things are no doubt lacking in the qualities that are needed, but some have qualities that are not yet adequately recognised. The sheen of the new covers a lot. All that glisters is not gold ... but some of it is.
From that point of view, Mr Godwin is playing to the gallery of our preconceptions, in my opinion.
This is my New Yuga Theory: as a human being approaches middle age, he begins to reflect on his youth and what finds that there is a lot of value in it, which he may not have recognised at the time. His children are growing up in a different generation, however, and it seems that the things Dad now values are no longer important. So Dad says, "ah, whatever happened to the idealism of youth? Where are the snows of yesteryear?"
Projecting this back over imaginary time, Dad seems to see a dim shadow of the golden era even before the time when you could leave your doors unlocked (IE because you had nothing worth stealing).
So Dad, by now thoroughly steeping in nostalgia, sits down to write about Eden. A fig-leaf was a fig-leaf in those days ... and you still had change from a thruppeny bit for a bag of chips and a pint, and the bus home.
The disfiguring point is that, if you propound a formula, e.g., we're in the Iron Age and getting worse, then it follows that everything must fit that schema, otherwise it calls into question the entire basis of the belief. It then becomes a non-truthful circle.
This has happened in the School. Others may perceive it in different ways but, for me, the litmus test has been prevailing attitudes to the world.
Kevin is, of course, right. The middle-aged and elderly nearly always understand their youth as a golden age, the age of growth and beauty, the vital age, the age of discovery - sans pareil. And for them....it is. They're not lying by thinking so.
But translated into middle age it gets way off beam. Crime spiralling upwards in the modern age? Well, shouldn't we be thankful to the Victorians for barricading their basements with bars to keep out the London mob rioting in Kensington? Very handy nowadays.
Black Hole of Calcutta? The other day I heard this used to describe overcrowding on a west-country train. Oh dearie me. Fancy a spot of the real thing?
Plagues, pestilences, famine, flooding, refugees, uproar, mayhem and massacres - got them all in the Bible.
It's not that today's world does not have its
troubles. But to see it all as a slide to perdition obscures the opportunity to actually look at what is there.
Not only obscures - it paralyses.
Absolutely. Anyone who thinks we are living in unprecedented moral decline needs only to look at the 18th Century ... same story, but with gin instead of crack cocaine. Personally I think we need another Methodism - a rejuvenation of the values of ordinary people.
I think what Kapila said in his first comment here about language was interesting, although it didn't get picked up.
Maybe the onomatopoetic thing is a bit of a distraction (different cultures have pretty weird concepts of what sounds like what), but I think the idea of language going from the coarse to the subtle is fertile territory.
Kevin and others -- your comments about language and whether it tends to become subtler or not are intriguing to me on two counts.
First -- knowing little about it -- it seems to me that Vedic, which uses words as separate, might be considered a superior language to Sanskrit, but Sanskrit might have deteriorated this language by slovenly oral repetition which was then legalised as 'sandhi' -- whilst simultaneously employing the subtlety of mind which is exemplified by Adi Shankara. In other words, a two-way process ?
The other aspect is poetry. Poets are always seeking to catch from outer sounds, an inner sound which may be more emotionally truthful to what they wish to share with their reader. Poets certainly have a lot riding on the concept 'sound before sense'.
Musicians and composers too. They live in a world of deteriorating and narrowing common speech, yet seek a subtler sound of truth to emotion.
No conclusions offered, but it's an interesting area of discussion. And especially the Vedic-Sanskrit link. Just because it was all brilliantly formalised and systemised, do we believe nothing was lost ?
I think sandhi expresses something valuable - that the joining of two things creates a union that is different from 1 + 1. You know - teacher one side, student other, discourse joining them, knowledge arising.
Post a Comment