The Philosophy of a Guru.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A GURU

CONTENTS

[The numbers shown within brackets along with certain
subtitles indicate the stanzas of the Atmopadesa Satakam
under reference.]

INTRODUCTION iii

1 STRUCTURAL KEY TO GURU-PHILOSOPHY 1

The two anterior positions 2
Guru-Philosophy reconciles the two rival positions 3
A Guru's philosophy is based on personal experience 4
Reason need not counter experience 5
The grand flux of psycho-cosmic becoming (50) 7
Cosmic absorption into the plus side (52) 9
Tree-structure evidence in verse 51 11
Other instances from Guru-literature suggesting
structure 12
Structural limits if speculation and experience 14
The common integrated import of all varieties of
wisdom 16

II THE ELEMENT OF WONDER 17

Indian Philosophy more scientific 17
The fuller scientific status if Sankara's Advaita 19
Each verse and topic fits into an overall plan 21
The homogeneous matrix into which the vision of
the Self us fitted 23
The nature of proofs 25
Proofs here as valid as science 26
Wonder has a place 27
Ascent implied in the Guru-philosophy 28
Bracketting of the wonder (35, 65) 29

III TRANSCENDING THE PARADOX 32

Facing the paradox frontally 33
The 'Oddness' or 'Mystery' of paradox in
mathematics and philosophy 36
The place of the paradox fully recognized in
Guru-philosophy (94, 33) 37
Subtler paradoxes examined (79, 80, 73) 40
Paradox is transcended by reconciling
opposites (96, 97) 43

IV HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL VALUE WORLDS 46

Psycho-physical ambivalent alternating process 47
Mathematical factors 48
A tensorial psychology and cosmology 52
A space within the heart of the Upanishads and
its structural implications 53
An alternative process in the Guru's verses (15, 51
68, 72, 81, 83, 89, 76, 67) 57

V THE SELF AND NON-SELF IN
SPIRITUAL PROGRESS 61

The Self placed in its axiological content 62
The Guru's method of laying bare the content
of the Self (10, 11, 12) 64
The Self as seen within the context of its
axiological counterparts (48) 67
The axiological field of interest analyzed (36-42) 70

VI THE UNIVERSE OF CONTEMPLATIVE DISCOURSE 75

One-many, part-whole, big-small are all extraneous 76
Percepts and concepts meet from opposite
poles in the universe of discourse 78
Dualities merge in the neutrality of
the Absolute Conciousness (89, 73, 36-42) 80

VII THE METHODOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY
IN GURU-PHILOSOPHY 90

Usual logic falls short of paradox and does not
attain the Absolute 93
The compatability ot measurability of the Absolute
is summarily rejected (32) 96
Axiomatic and experimental certitude (90) 98
Apperception resides a the core (63, 20) 100
A scientifig epistemology is neutral to scepticism
and belief (30-33) 102

VIII PROTOLINGUISTIC IMAGERY 107
Crystalline or cryptic language of
profound philosophy 107
Hypostatic and hierophantic versions of Reality 109
Examples of verses with structural implications 110
(a) Transcending initial paradox (8) 110
(b) The double domain of concepts and
percepts (17) 112
(c) The apperceptive core of conscious
becoming (34) 113
(d) The spiritual progress of the Self (69) 114
(e) Three perspectives of the same
process (75-77) 115
A living picture of the contemplative process 116

IX ETHICS, AESTHETICS AND RELIGION IN
GURU-PHILOSOPHY 119

Obligatory injunctions different from free
ethical principles 120
A dialectically conceived ethics 121
How aesthetics is derived from philosophy 123
Kindness as the common basis of religion and
ethics (25) 124
The non-dual basis of all morality (20) 125
The ego as the epicentre for all conduct (23, 24) 126
The formation of closed static units in society
and their unethical status (21, 22) 126
The One Religion of the Guru 128
(a) All religions have the overall aim of
happiness (49) 129
(b) The deep mutual adaptation implied in
religious affiliation (48) 130
(c) Rival religions really plead for the
same value (47) 131
(d) The nature of the irony implicit in
religious rivalry (44-46) 131

X GURU-PHILOSOPHY SUMMARIZED 133

Appendix
One Hundred Verses of Self-Instruction
by Narayana Guru
Full text translated from the Malayalam 145

THE STRUCTURAL KEY TO GURU-PHILOSOPHY

A Guru is a contemplative man of Wisdom. He
combines science and mysticism in the neutral value that
he represents in his person. He is understandable only in
the context of absolutism, his visible aspects being only
incidental.
We have hitherto spoken about Narayana Guru, but now
we shall be turning our attention to the understanding
of such a person more definitely in terms of a generalized
abstraction of the concrete universal necessarily belonging
to the notion of Guruhood. What is concrete and what is
abstract merge finally into a neutral notion of the Absolute
where duality is absorbed and abolished. Such are some
of the leading ideas we shall keep in mind in the pages
that follow.
We can insist on seeing before believing, or more
simply on believing before seeing. The former is the
a posteriori approach if the sceptic while the latter is
natural to a man willing to believe. The total knowledge-
situation in which both these possibilities lie, when fully
and philosophically understood, reconciles both the
approaches through simple unitive understanding where the
gap between mysticism and science tends to be abolished
by an approach of one or the other as it were, from
opposite poles.

The philosophy of a Guru corresponds or should
correspond to this unitive understanding which alone can
banish fear and doubt and help to bring about universal
brotherhood. Such truth makes one free and is a pearl of
price for humans.

THE TWO ANTERIOR POSITIONS

Scepticism and belief are two poles of the total
knowledge-situation, and the philosophy that can unite or
solve both these antinomies is that of a normal neutral
notion of the Absolute. Such a notion would be insipid
and seem contentless when not equated to the Self of man.
Guruhood is the notion that gives us meaning to the
Absolute. A correct appraisal of Guruhood gives us that
final certitude which alone is the significant value that
can make life purposeful.
By whatever name called or understood, in whichever
context, geographical or historical, a Guru marks the
meeting point, reconciling two opposing positions which
are those of science and scientifically revised mysticism.
Modern philosophers like Bertrand Russell stand for what
they themselves call a scientific or analytic philosophy
which leans on the side of scepticism rather than on the
side of belief. They have no use for wholesale solutions
to overall problems of life, but prefer to tackle problems
peicemeal by experimental or trial and error methods,
rather than relying on the a priori or synthetic approach.
They call themselves operationalists, pragmatists, positivists,
or logical mathematicians, forgetting that science is
linked intimately with mathematics which leans very much
on axiomatic thinking fully a priori in status.

The observables and calculables on which science thrives are
the counterparts dialectically understood, of the same visible
and intelligible aspects within which metaphysics also moves.

GURU-PHILOSOPHY RECONCILES THE TWO RIVAL POSITIONS

Two anterior positions have thus to be taken account
of by us in placing the Guru's philosophy, viz. where he
fits into the context of modern sceptical thinking and
where he starts to make his own contributions to Vedantic
and contemplative traditions, coloured by mysticism,
natural to the Wisdom of the East. We can grasp the
nature of Guru-Philosophy better and more easily if we
state here in advance, that we find in it a natural culmination
of both modern scientific scepticism and mystical
will-to-believe. His was an integral approach in which
scepticism and beleif cancelled each other out into a
neutral unitive notion which was fully human and within
the reach of all men.

His philosophy is a prolongation of Vedantic correction
and revision of its excesses and vague one-sided
accentuations, making of it a unitive and universal science
based on a normative notion of the Absolute. Such are
some of the claims we have to justify by examples from
the work we are directly concerned with here (1) and as also
seen in the Guru's philosophy revealed elsewhere.
Scientific scepticism and a revised form of mysticism were
the rival positions that he was able to revise and reconcile
unitively in the light of a full-fledged and normative
Science of the Absolute which his philosophy in fact
represents.

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1, viz.Atmopadesa Satakam. See One Hundred Verses of
Self-Instruction, translation and commentary by the present author.
A Naravana Gurukula Publication

A GURU'S PHILOSOPHY IS BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Experience and experiment are complementary dialectical
counterparts belonging to a totally or globally
understood knowledge-situation. Inner experience of
Truth tends to make a mystic, while factual experiments
make a scientific sceptic. Mysticism has been described
as the 'cultivation of the presence of God.' Outside
events support certitude in science whil the mystic's
certitude is derived from himself. Both are resultants of a
bipolar situation involving scepticism and belief. Where
a priorism leaves off, a posteriorism steps in to take over
the conduct of the process called human enquiry or under-
standing, which circulates between ambivalent aspects of
the total knowledge-situation.

Analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the
general and the speciic, mark phases or points in the cal-
culatory course of reason that seeks certitude. All facts or
events emerge thus from the homogeneous transparent
fluid matrix of thought-stuff which a rich inner zone and
poor peripheral aspects, osmotically alternating in a grand
cosmo-psychological respiration in which subtle essences
from opposite poles are interchanged. A Guru is a man of
intuition, who is aware of such pure acts taking place
within the Self as the 'unmoved mover' or the 'thinking
substance.' Phenomenal and noumenal aspects of the
Self or the non-Self keep equalizing essences by such a
circulation.

Although such statements might sound strange, too
bold or untenable to modern ears, a Guru's philosophy
is able to fit all these versions or visions into one unified
and integrated organic scheme with a methodology,
epistemology and axiology hanging together by a central
normative notion in the Absolute Self.

It is experiment as well as inner experience that confirms the normal total
central Absolute Truth involved here. Without any implications
of vagueness associated with the term 'mysticism'
a Guru can be said to be such a contemplative whose inner
experience tallies or does not contradict what outer
experiment teaches any man through laboratories, observatories,
telescopes or microscopes.

Guru-philosophy is thus a science a precise a mathematics
and as experimental as physics or biology. The kind
of mystical visions that are natural to a Guru are indicated
in Narayana Guru's One Hundred Verses of Self~Instruction
(Atmopadesa Satakam) with which we are concerned in
presenting here as representing broadly the outlines of his
philosophy. Let us, therefore, linger a moment to examine
some verses whose mystical contnet is unmistakeable before
passing on to some other of the important distinguishing
features of a Guru's philosophy, as correcly representing
a natural culmination of Vedanta and a normalized scienti-
fic philosophy in a fully modern sense,

REASON NEED NOT COUNTER EXPERIENCE

One has only to read three of the most central of the
One Hundred Verses of Self-Instruction which we are treating
here as outlining the Guru-philosophy for our purposes, to
be convinced that the Guru is speaking his own inner
experience through them, and that they are of a fully
contemplative and mystical order. At the same time.
however, the critical student of philosophy on closer
scrutiny finds that the thoughts do not represent just
merely a passing mood, a state of emotion, agony, exaltation
or trance, often attributed to mystics who cultivate the
prescence of God in vague sentimental, unsystematic or
unscientific terms.

When the student has taken pains to examine the whole series
of verses in the light of reason, supplemented by the dialectical
approach where what is vaguely classed as intuition plays its part
with full play of the critical faculty natural to human reasoning
or understanding as employed from Locke to Hegel in the West, he
will be able to appreciate that the whole series of verses
is fully consequential and conform to the requirements of
valid speculation, with a method of orderly doubting like
the one introduced by Descartes,

Here we have to part company with those who claim
to be uncritical mystics, whether in the West or in the
East, and with those interpreters of mysticism who speak in
merely sentimental or emotional terms, looking upon
contemplative visions as passsing moods unconnected with
the normal reasoning faculty of man. Bertrand Russell is
one such representative modern thinker who writes:

"Belief in reality quite different from what appears
to the senses, arises with irresistible force in certain
moods which are sources of most mysticism, and of
most metaphysics. While such a mood is dominant
the need for logic is not felt and accordingly the most
thorough-going mystics do not employ logic but
appeal directly to the immediate deliverance of their
insight. But such fully developed mysticism is rare in
the West." (2)

We shall not stop to discuss here the merits of this
statement not the case of the 'thorough-going mystics'
alluded to here, especially as Russell himself admits that
'fully develped mysticism is rare in the West.'

-----------------------------------------------------------
2 Mysticism and Logic, by Bertrand Russell, Allen and Unwin
London, p. 19 1959.

Both in the East and the West there are those who think vaguely of
the closed domains of logic and mysticism, and hold
that one has to counter, compromise or contradict the
other. The Guru-philosophy as presented here, at least,
does not fall into such a category. Here criticism, experiment
and experience all co-exist integrally at the core of
the Absolute which can ontain so-called 'empricism' at
one pole and so-called 'idealism' at the other. Both
together give content to the central notion representing
Existence, Subsistence and Value. The closely-reasoned
verses which are prior to the central verses have a contemplative
metaphysics not far different from what Bergson
has explained in his Introduction to Metaphysics, which
differs from usual metaphysics in that it takes an inner
view of the total knowledge-situation, and is not satisfied
with putting together snaps or cliches statically understood
This distinction is a vital key to the understanding of the
Guru-philosophy.

THE GRAND FLUX OF PSCYHO-COSMIC BECOMING

The following is Verse 50 from the One Hundred
Verses of Self-Instruction:

"With earth and water, air and fire likewise,
Also the void, the ego, cognition and mind,
All worlds including the waves and ocean too,
Do all arise and into awareness change."

'All worlds do rise and into awareness change,' is, it
must be admitted, strange-sounding to modern ears
unfamiliar with Bergson, Kant, Hegel, and the Upanishadic
way, or with indeterministic nature of the physical world
that modern relativism has brought to the forefront of
thought in recent years. The mechanistic outlook has to
be discarded and the notion of a process included in our
vision of Truth or Reality.

Under the verse in question in the commentary we have tried to
touch upon some of theaccepted philosophical positions
supporting such an apparently bold statement that this verse
presents. We have also devoted many pages in The Search for A Norm
in Western Thought (3) to elaborate the same normative
philosophical viewpoint persistently kept in mind by
Western philosophers, ranging from sceptics or empiricists
like Hume and Locke, through rationlists like Descartes,
to Kant, Hegel and their modern followers. We have even
quoted philosophers of science like Eddingon to find just
those presuppositions that would lend 'justification' to the
apparently too mystical and sweeping statement implied
here. Yet, nothing incompatible with modern thought and
nothing inconsistent with Vedanta has been stated here.
To recognize this would be our first step in the direcion of
becoming more fully familiar with the philosophy of a
Guru, fully alive to all the modern currents of thought.

We have to take note firstly of the categories men-
tioned in the verse in graded and methodical order as well
as of the schematic or strucutral features respected by the
Guru in writing this verse, which should be quite patent
to one who is aware of such implications natural to
mystical language, as has been explained by us elsewhere.
The series of elementals first mentioned, beginning from
the most gross to the most subtle, pass beyond matter with
the fifth item in an ascending series of sets, groups or
ensembles that belong together to each level as phenome-
nological existential epoches with a unitive consistency of
monads within each, till the implication of both matter and
mind merge in the homogeneous transparency of pure
schematism in the reference to the waves and the ocean
bracketed together.
------------------------------------------------------------

3. A. Narayana Gurukula Publication (forthcoming).

Here the waves have the horizontal implications of plurality,
phenomenality or a practically manifested analytic aspect which can be called effects
rather than causes, or the cause, and the ocean understood
globally as a unit comprising the knowledge-situation as a
whole repreents the pure noumenal or vertical implications
of the same situation, both belonging together to
the same structural scheme.

In a universe that is subject to expansion and
contraction and under the sway of an alternative process
of a grand cosmic-psychic respiration within the homogeneous
matrix of transparent essences, osmotically
exchanged between the plus and the minus aspects, it is
not difficult to think of a dialectical ascent and an
alternating descent making up together a circulation, such
as that of a wheel that the Bhagavad Gita alludes to in
Chapter III, Verse 16. Other verses of the Guru also
help to confirm this living picture of what takes place at
the core of Absolute Self-consciousness. Many passages
in the Upanishads are also suggestive of the same
interesting content without which the notion of the
Absolute should have ever remained empty and insipid.

COSMIC ABSORPTION INTO THE PLUS SIDE

Without further aplogy for taking the above view,
seeing that we have specifically devoted space already to
clarify most of the implications brought together under
this one verse here, let us now pass on to the verse after
the next, skipping the 51st, to scrutinize for a moment its
presentation of the same living picture of the cosmic-cum-
psychic dynamic process viewed rather from the plus side
than from the minus side as in Verse 50. Verse 52 reads
as follows:

"Filled with word-content, that day the firmament shall radiant blaze,
And into it shall be absorbed to extinction all the visionary magic,
Then, too, that small voice completing tri-basic cognition
Shall cease, and, lo! Self~radiance prevails."

This verse may be said to touch the high-water mark
attainable to speculation when it manages just to remain
still within the scope of philosophy proper, although to
practical ears even these bare outlines might still sound
strange.

It is evident that here we have a mystic's vision
represented, but a closer scrutiny, as with Verse 50, reveals
the same process structurally understood as taking place
at the core of the significant Absolute in terms of Self-
consciousness. The process is one of circulation and
becoming, absorbed at unitive, more unitive, and universal
levels, whose meanings gain more and more absolute
significance or value till all truth, fact or value, gets
merged in the highest Value of all. This is like an 'echo
and a light unto eternity,' as some English poet has
described such a culminating experience. Reason is
here not abandoned, but in the ascent of thesis and antithesis
cancelling each other out into a syntheses at higher
and higher levels in Self-conciousness is a resultant
containing the thesis aspect, ever becoming purer or
brighter and more significant as a value.

Thus, Existence, Subsistence and Value aspects of
the Absolute remain without any taint of inner conflict
between any two pairs taken in the ascending scale. Light
here represents the visible and sound the intelligible,
which fuse together into one ineffable and ultimate Value,

TREE-STRUCTURE EVIDENCED IN VERSE 51

Lest the student should think that these structural and
other implications are read into the verses which are really just
ordinary mystical effusions as known in the East and also
familiar in the context of European mysticism, let us take
Verse 51, situated between the two we have cited already.
The subject matter of this verse might seem, at first, to
have nothing at all to do with the two verses with which
it is bounded before and after. The analogy of the
structure of a tree with two ambivalently complementary
reciprocal branches, one growing at the expense or a least
depending organically on the other, is clearly seen here:

"From awareness, the "I" sense first emerged,
Comes then with it "This-ness" as counterpart beside,
Like branches, these two do overcover
Hiding the whole of the Maya tree."

The tree in mystical language stands for all ramified
values, conceptual as well as perceptual, that claim
attention or interest in a given field of consciousness at a
given time. The stream of consciousness or flux of
becoming is like a tree growing and putting out fruits or
flowers peripherally and horizontally. The pure process
takes place, as it were, vertically in full transparence
between the perceptual and cpnceptual entities both
entering the matrix of consciousness. When correctly
focussed between the plus and minus, the tree tends
to cancel itself out but, when the least tinge of negativism
or quality is retained, as between the dual and the non-
dual Absolute, the ramified set-structure becomes evident
with two zones covering the plus (conceptual) and the
minus (perceptual ), both in terms of abstract and generalized
intuitions. This takes place alternately in the framework of
warp and woof of time and space categories.

The whole field is filled with relation-relate complexes of
infinite number, with a harmony pre-established in the overall
situation. The multiplicity of monads thus formed are
implied in the monas monadum which is the normative
notion of the Absolute. Bergsonian growth, division and
becoming within the core of the eternal flux of the élan
vital, phenomenological epoches, monadological schematic
and structural dualities, have all to be elaborated and fitted
together integrally and unitively as living like a tree or
flowing like a river of Maya, the relativist aspect of the
Absolute.

OTHER INSTANCES FROM GURU-LITERATURE
SUGGESTING STRUCTURE

The Guru has a large number of philosophical
compositions, mostly in verse, where the same structural
scheme is implicit and sometimes even explicitly used. As
an instance of explicit reference to structuralism in the
Absolute, one can readily use the fourth verse of the
common prayer composed in Malayalam by the Guru,
called Daiva Dasakam (A Prayer for Humanity):

"Like sea, wave, wind and depth
Let us within see
Ourselves, Maya (relativism), your glory and Thee."

The schematic implications here are unmistakable.
When we attempt to paraphrase the above line using the
language evolved by us, we can say that the dimension
of depth of the ocean, in the analogy consisting of four
quaternion factors by which the total situation is intended
to be comprised, is the vertical aspect of the Absolute
which is, by far, the most fundamental of all. We have
elsewhere shown that, in the general context of Vedantism
the material cause gains primacy over all other forms of
causes which can be used for speculation.

Upadana Karana which is its name in Vedanta, is fundamentally
basic andinclusive of its horizontalized counterparts. Formal cause,
as known in the context of Arisole, is an extreme
abstraction implied within the scope of this master cause
of all, which is the verticle principle itself. All pure
mathematical equations live within the core of this vertical
axis, here compared to the depth of the sea. The water
does not wet the depth nor the wind dry it. The Absolute
that is at the base of all phenomenalism is thus attained in
this root-principle which is no more or less than a
dimension in the total Absolutist situation where alone the
noion of the Absolute can properly be said to belong. In
the six verses following Verse 36 of the One Hundred
Verses of Self-Instruction which we treat here as presenting
us the broad outlines of a Guru-philosophy, the further
implications of this total knowledge-situation are seen to
be fully elaborated by he Guru himself. We shall have
more to say on theses aspects when the proper contexts
present themselves. Here what we just wish to underline
is that a normative and structurally understandable notion
of the Absolute is the key to Guru-philosophy. Verses 50,
51 and 52 of the One Hundred Verses are strikingly bold
and deserve full scrutinizing on the part of any student
who wishes to be introduced into the heart of Guru-
philosophy. The total knowledge-situation in which the
logical form of Aristotle, the dialectics of Parmenides and
Zeno, the antimonies or dichotomies that Kant or Bergson
alluded to, the bracketting as understood in phenomenology,
and the pre-established harmony of Leibnizian
Monadology, with Hegelian absorption of thesis and
antithesis into a higher synthesis, will all be seen to be
only particular aspects of the way of Guru-speculation
when fully and properly understood.

14
The recognition of abhava (non-actuality) as a padartha
(category) is one of the other important distinguishing
features of Guru-philosophy. Bergson's "flux" and his metaphysics
that give to becoming and process a fully open
and dynamic status, is another feature of a proper Guru-
philosophy. The three verses considered together here
reveal these broad features implicitly or explicitly, and we
shall have occasion to come back to each of the particular
aspect as we proceed.

STRUCTURAL LIMITS OF SPECULATION AND EXPERIENCE
.
Experience, inner or outer, meet in the Guru's person.
When speculation is based on inner experience, when no
laboratory experimental arrangements are needed, we tend
to have literature that resembles metaphysics. Otherwise,
it comes under the scope of physics. Physics and metaphysics,
broadly understood, belong to the same total
knowledge-situation in which inner and outer experience
confirm each other to give apodictic or dialectical
certitudes. Pure mathematics based on equations lives
and moves in this same vertical axis within the range of
possible human understanding.

We have, in one of our anterior studies of Vedantism (4)
given the instance of how in one of the Upanishads the
double value factor called ananda (Absolute Bliss) is
pictured structurally as having a head, a right side, a left
side and lower part, which last is treated as the most
important of all as representing the Absolute. A similar
verse (15) by the Guru in his composition entitled Advaita
Dipika ( The Lamp of Non-Duality) gives us a striking instance
----------------------------------------------------------
4 See page 122. Vedanta Revalued and Restated by the
present author.

where the unity of speculative factors belonging to inner
or outer experience are brought together, juxtaposed and
integrated to serve as a basis for correct scientific speculation
in respect of the Absolute. The verse under reference
reads as follows:

"Bliss exists, it looms (in consciousness), it is One alone;
If thought of disjunct from Self, it exists not,
And nothing then can attain consciousness at all;
Then mirage-water, sky-blue would become non-existent
and sky-flower and mirage-sky ultimate value attain."

The above is one of the most complex and complicated
verses ever written by the Guru, presenting in compact
form a methodological and epistemological problem set in
the context of bliss or value factor. To penetrate beyond
the reductio ad absurdum method used masterfully by the
Guru in his scientifically valid speculation will acquire the
knowledge of the same strucural secret that we have tried
to explain and elaborate all through our writings. Without
such a key hinted at here, most of the validity of the Guru's
writings are likely to remain a closed book to a majority of
students of philosophy.

Hence the importance of this first chapter, which when
grasped will open many doors in the many-apartmented
mansion which is Guru-philosophy. We can do no more
here, in passing, than to just indicate the nature of the
reductio ad absurdam method implicit in the above verse.
The two sets of examples are bracketed in a certain way
fully respecting structuralism so as to avoid giving to
merely nominal or concepual factors primacy over existential
and subsistential ones.

THE COMMON INTEGRATED IMPORT OF ALL
VARIETIES OF WISDOM

Concluding his composition called Anukampa Desakam
(Scriptures of Mercy) the Guru strikes an important note
himself with the following verse slightly retranslated here. (5)

"High scripture-meaning antique, rare,
Or meaning as by Guru taught,
And what the quiet recluse conveys,
Wisdom's varieties of every sort,
Together they are all of one kind,
One in essence, in substance same!"

When the integrated knowledge-pattern implicit in
various kinds of wisdom literature is properly nderstood
it will be found that a simple human quality such as
kindliness or mercy emerging as a human value can be
fitted into a common context of Absolute value or significance.
The Koran, the Dhammapada, the Upanishads
not excluding the Vedas and the Bible, have all their secret
contributions to make to the totality of the heritage of human
wisdom. The integrative 'structural element' hiding at the core
of all such teachings is not different from the structuralism,
selectionism and subjectivism that modern philosophers of
science like Eddington and Einstein also share and wish to
communicate to humanity seeking science or wisdom.

Thus side by side with Guru's conforming to the
prototypes of Guruhood understood in the Vedantic context, it
would not be altogether absurd to think of Gurus or wise
men of the Western context where science holds the field.
The underlying integrative factor is what gives all of them
high wisdom content as Guru Narayana evidently wishes to
express in the above lines.
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5. For a commentary on this work see The World of the Guru
by the present author, pp. 355-372

THE ELEMENT OF WONDER

Having understood the structural key to Guru-
philosophy, as explained in the last section, we have also
to discover the over-all plan of the hundred-verse-
sequence, to be able to see clearly the scope, limits and
amplitude of speculation, within whose four walls,
together with the structural reference that we have pointed
out, Guru-philosophy is to be understood in living terms.

Then and only then will it give up its secrets and
become an open book to all, instead of remaining a
cryptically compact sequence of verses, succeeding each
other without any visible sub-sections, and seemingly
without a method or any critically understandable theory
of knowledge, respected by the author.

It is natural to expect that philosophy proper must be
capable of being critically examined according to
recognized norms and standards of resoning or thought
in general, which instrument of human understanding
should find full play in any philosophy worth the name. A
Guru-philosophy, however, tackles problems wholesale,
instead of piecemeal, but this should not detract from its
fully scientific status.

INDIAN PHILOSOPHY MORE SCIENTIFIC

How philosophy is to become scientific is a matter
about which there could be radically different opinions,
even among modern philosophers of the status of
Bertrand Russell and Max Mueller.

We are familiar with the views of Russell tending to discredit
a wholesale approach to philosophy altogether, and thus Indian
philosophy too. Max Mueller, however, thinks that Indian
philosophy is more strictly philosophical than modern
Western philosophies, with both of which he can be
credited as having sufficient familiarity. Comparing Indian
and Western philosophies, Max Müller writes:

"We know what an enormous amont of labour
had to be spent and is still being spent in order
to ascertain the exact views of Plato and Aristotle,
nay, even of Kant and Hegel, on some of the most
important questions of their systems of philosophy.
There are even living philosophers whose words often
leave us in doubt as to what they meant, whether
they are materialists or idealists, monists or nihilists,
theists or atheists. Hindu philosophers seldom leave
us in doubt on such important points, and they
certainly never shrink from the consequences of their
theories." (1)

While Hegel condemned Indian philosophy as
adolescent or immature thinking, here is a scholar and
a philosopher, originating from the same country not
many decades later, who has taken the trouble impartially
to examine both Eastern and Western philosophies. His
unstinted praise helps to counteract the aspersions cast
on Indian thought by some Westerners like Edward
Erdmann and others. Max Müller's further remarks in the
same context above are therefore worth quoting:

"What I admire in Indian philosophers is that they
never try to deceive us as to their principles and the
consequences of their theories.
-------------------------------------------------------------
1. Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, Calcutta 1952 p.x,
Intro. Vol. 1

"If they are idealists, even to the verge of nihilism they say so,
and if they hold that the objective world requires a real, though
not necessarily a visible or tangible substrratum they
are never afraid to speak out. They are bona fide
idealists or materialists, monists or dualists, theists
or atheists because their reverence for truth is
stronger than their reverence for anything else". (2)

A downright apodictic quality has characterized Indian
thought and the Six Systems do not err on the side of
vagueness or speculation. The definitions, though cryptic
in linguistic formulation, are precise and clearcut when
properly understood. No doubt Prof. Max Müller had in
mind these systems that have come down to us in clear-
cut aphoristic formulations, when he applauds as above
the merits of Indian philosophy as against Western philo-
sophical speculation in general.

THE FULLER SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF SANKARA'S ADVAITA

When we come to the Advaita Vedanta of Vyasa or
Badarayana, and especially as restated critically by Sankara,
the degree of certainty attains to a more fully scientific
status, The Absolute, treated wholesale and whole-heartedly,
in downright or frontally facing outright
terms of intellectual attack and emotional onslaught, then
becomes fully apodictic. The emotions naturally resemble
those of a mystic, while the intellectual approach would
correspond to the pure vision of a man of dialectical
wisdom.

Closely argued ways thus can co-exist in Guru-
philosophy without violating the codes of right speculation,
----------------------------------------------------------
2. Ibid. p.xi

although to minds conditioned by he divorce of speculation
and spirituality, as in modern Western thought, such
speculation, even when corect, might seem strange,
vague or sentimental. The mystical vision too, on the
other hand, would be too strong for them to gaze at,
compared to twilight worlds of easy or complacent speculation,
in which modern philosophy has had to thrive. To
the modern Western student, especially in academic life,
philosophy is only one of his many side-interests in life.

In the case of Guru-philosophy, as is only to be
expected in the present case, speculation not only becomes
red hot but attains to an incandescent white heat and
melting point at times, as we shall presently see. All we
want to point out in advance here is that this wholesale
and frontal character of the approach of Guru-philosophy
should not be considered by the modern reader as
detracting in any way from its true status of critical and
correct speculation. Its value is only enhanced when it
conforms to the requirements of a normalized absolutist
method, theory of knowledge, and an axiology which does
not exclude the over-all human problem of minimizing
suffering or bondage and of securing human happiness, indi-
vidual or collective, from its scope. Lukewarm, piecemeal,
trial-and-error, ratiocinative, eristic or sophistic approaches,
dabbling in mere opinions and counter-opinions,
do not serve the purpose of healthy, wholesale and correct
speculation that Guru-philosophy is meant to be.

No apology is therefore needed here for the bold
speculative flights found in the verses we are particularly
presenting here, which at first might confuse the modern
reader in resepct of their normality, sobriety or critical
validity, from the standpoint of the so-called man-in-the-
street.

EACH VERSE AND TOPIC FITS INTO AN OVER-ALL PLAN

Besides the key of structuralism which we have to
keep in mind in order to appreciate methodically and
critically the contents of this sequence of verses, there is
the equally important fact of the symetrically conceived
over-all plan within which the speculation lives and moves.

The first verse refers to the seeker for higher Wisdom
and the last verse marks the culmination of his search in
the realization of the Absolute as an Existent Subsistent
Value, as finally equal and non-different from the Self
within each man or in human consciousness treated generlly.

Between these extreme limits various topics, inclusive
of ethics, religion, logic, error aspects of the soul, cosmic-
pyschic correlation, states of consciousness, alternation
between poles, vertical and horizontal value-worlds, epistemological
and methodological laws or rules, dichotomy,
ambivalency ot polarity between aspects of the self or the
person, the principle of compensation in spiritual life or
in contemplative progress to wisdom, orthodoxy and
heterodoxy, adoption and disadoption, the place of the
a priori, the limits of logical reasoning, semantic analysis
of thought in the core of the Absolute, sublimation of
action, participation of mind and matter, are all brought
within the scope of the discussion contained in these
hundred verses, and there is an innate unity of subject-
matter and structure so compact as to constitute and come
within the amplitude of one sweeping vision of an
awakened Self.

The items are so compactly presented that they defy
analytical enumeration, and, as stated in the very first
verse, are meant more for meditative purposes, as in the
case of a sacred song, chant or scripture. The Vedas
and the Vedanta too, in India, are conceived on similar
cryptic, protolinguistic, schematic, unitively compact terms
of a vision that defies critical scrutiny and verification by
norms or human standards of thought and reasoning.

Each verse, or sometimes a sequence of two or three
verses, are seen to hang together, harping on the same or
a kindred theme. Sometimes the vision given to ascending
dialectics is balanced by the same vision stated soon after as
seen from the point of view of descending dialectics. There
is sometimes a sequence of four or five verses, whose
subject-matter is sometimes seen left off to be taken
up again in a subtler or improved form at a higher level of
speculation at a later stage. The change-over from topic
to topic takes place in such a gentle gradation that, unless
the reader or student is aware himself of the methodological
and epistemological unity kept in mind by the Guru,
he will see no reason why a certain thought should follow
rather than precede the previous one.

These sets have to be distinguished by the careful
student after a first acquaintance with each of the verses
separately. Then, when the sets are seen to be interrelated,
he will be able finally to appreciate how the work
as a whole has been strung ogether with a sense of symmetrical
beauty when viewed megascopically as a whole.

The verses that have been translated and commented
upon (3) will be seen to be sufficiently self-explanatory.
Here in these remarks our purpose is limited to seeing
the connecting links and logical or critical implications
as between one section and another, and between one set of verses
----------------------------------------------------------
(3) See the One Hundred Verses of Self-Instruction by the
present author.

that belong together and another similar set elsewhere,
and to see also in each verse how the structural scheme
of each respects the over-all message that the verses
as a whole wish to convey. The verses are transparent
in content for each other and all together.

We shall travel from the apparently most mystical
verses to those which are more analytically and critically
conceived, as we come up against each set or counterpart
in later sections. The element of wonder characterizes the
former mystical verses, and the emphasis on reason or analysis
characterizes the critical group. Mythological imagery
belonging to the soil of South India is sometimes advantageously
employed by the Guru, as also an appeal made
directly to the Upanishads. These however are done in
such a way as not todetract or damage the fully critical
status that the verses are meant to have as a whole. It is the
exigency of language alone that makes the Guru resort to
such ideograms rooted in the popular mind of India. Besides
ideograms, protolinguistic devices too are seen to be
freely employed by the Guru. A strict scheme, semanti-
cally correct, is adhered to even here.

THE HOMOGENEOUS MATRIX INTO WHICH THE VISION OF THE SELF IS FITTED

Pyschostatics and psychodynamics are terms that are
sometimes used to make a distinction between living and
still pictures of the working of the Self. As in the case of
the thinking substance of Spinoza, there is a paradox
implied here as between natura naturans and natura naturata.

The very first verse puts its finger on a core (karu)
which is the source of all activities, whether thought of in
terms of an unmoved mover within, or, in more overt
terms, of a cosmological phenomenology. One of these
is a counterpart of the other.

When the first few and the last few verses are carefully examined
from this standpoint of psycho-phenomenal dynamism, one is able to see
how doctrinal items cling together and are set as stones in
a homogeneous matrix which is neither mental nor material.

Maya itself, which is the principle of error, illusion, or
false value, finds a place in the most central of the verses as
at the beginning and end. Maya has plus, minus and
neutral aspects, according to the over-all epistemology respected
and kept in mind throughout the composition, The
gems of doctrine have also to be fitted by us into the
matrix made up of pure consciousness so that they stand
out and do not stand out apart or differenly, in quality
at least, from the matrix. Advaita or non-duality implies
this rule of homogeneity (samanadhikaranarva) as its inevitable
corollary.

The vision of the Self is revealed as meeting at a
neutral point between two aspects of the Absolute,
a priori and a posteriori, which are represented in each
instance, as it were, by two limbs of an equation, one of
which is to be understood in terms of the other. The
proof of either statement is brought about naturally by the
cancellation of a thesis by an antithetical aspect of the
same. Analogies are thus equations in which the less
familiar is understood in terms of the more familiar. The
two limbs always cancel out into the synthetic unity of the
homogeneous matrix of the Self and its knowledge, which
are dialectical counterparts. A Hegelian methodology is
clearly implicit here, though in a more complete and perfected
form, perennial and not merely historical, and as
understood in the wisdom texts from the time of the
Upanishads, through the Buddha and down to our time.

The dialectical approach in our own time has become
more or less overlaid and forgotton, except in certain
schools such as that of Marx and Engels, who apply it
only to limited socio-economic fields, The full-fledged
dialectical approach, employed to the best advantage by
the Guru here, when discovered by the critical student,
will afford him one of the important keys by which he
can make the sstudy of these verses most fruitful. Their
critical validity will then become fully evident to him.

THE NATURE OF PROOFS

Critical speculation is best when the arguments are
cut and dry without giving room to ambiguity. The
experimental method of the physical sciences answers to
this purpose. When Newton says that, just as an apple
falls to the ground by the force of gravity, there is a law of
gravitation applicable to the whole of the physical universe
of all bodies, his reasoning is acceptable to the scientist
although it is the force rather of an analogy upon which
the demonstrable proof rests. Physicists might call it
induction, but scrutiny of instances shows the analogical
rather than the experimental logic at the basis of the
proof.

Here the experimental aspect on which the grand
generalization is based is so simple and negligible that it
can easily be admitted by men of commonsense from their
everyday experience that the proof is not different from an
analogical one. The relation between the experimental
aspect and the law is one only of comparison between
what is familiar, and what is unfamiliar, i.e. analogy. No
one can say, strictly speaking, if there are not exceptions
to this law, at the central, peripheral or stratospheric limits
of the universe. This law however, is today universally
respected as an over-all statement of something that is
basically and scientifically true.

If we think in terms of equations such as: "momentum
equals mass into velocity (M = m x v)", which we easily can prove
at any time by calculation and measurement in any
given case, the proof is all the same one of equating less
general actualities to more general concepts, and when the
letters Q.E.D. are put at the end of the calculation, the
physicist accepts it as proof. The Pythagorean Theorem
is provable both by the actual cutting out and
pasting of triangles or squares, or by a blackboard sequence
of propositions based on axioms of a graded order, whether
known as postulates, riders or lemmas. Whether the a priori
is more valid than the a posteriori is not certain. Both
together lend validity to the truth.

The nature of a proof has itself been called into
question by no less a philosopher of science than Eddington
who says, 'Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathe-
matician tortures himself.'(4) It is a form of idolatry or
superstition according to him. If the positive sciences are so
weak in their proofs how can we expect speculation to be
any better?

PROOFS HERE AS VALID AS IN SCIENCE

When we look at the present series of verses we find
that it consists of a number of definitions and instructions
given to the aspirant in contemplative wisdom of the Self.
If the proofs of the modern physicists can rest on such
flimsy grounds as analogy or interchangeability of the
terms of an equation, then in such a subject as contempla-
tion of the Self, where introspective experimentation of
commoner and rarer experiences are alone possible and
are the rule, the validity of the proofs for each of the items
of Self-instruction contained here should be less open to
question by a critical student, however highly developed
his critical faculty might be.
------------------------------------------------------------
3. The Nature of the Physical World, (London 1928) p.49

In fact, the more acutely it is developed in him the more he should
desist from asking for the more ordinary experimental demonstrations
here. Whether experiments prove axioms or vice versa is the
question. The best proof is what proves itself.

WONDER HAS A PLACE

There is no need for science to be cold-blooded.
Under what compulsion should it limit itself by excluding
the element of wonder, mystery or legitimate inspiration?
To be happy and be in a mood to sing a ditty is as natural
enough to the man in the street as it is to rare mystics
reputed to live in caves of the Himalyas.

If the proper study of mankind is man, and if man must
know his environment fully and globally to live in it
correctly, a complete philosophy of life which would help
him do so, must needs take into account all his subjective traits,
and match them with their counterparts inthe objective world.
Correlations, cosmic, physic or both, counterparts of the Self and
the non-elf, innate correspondences, have all to be matched through
analogies or equations implying one or the other aspect, or both
aspects at once, so as to reveal the full mechanics as well
as dynamics of life. The more fluid the resulting truth, the
better it would be.

It is such an inclusive way that the Guru-philosophy
is expressly meant to represent, and here it is only
following and keeping alive in revalued terms the Upanishadic
tradition. A healthy, wholesale and wholehearted
philosophy, in which dialectical counterparts are juxtaposed,
so as to yield a unitive vision of the Self in the light of the normative
Absolute, is the task which the series of verses boldly sets before itself.

How far it has accomplished this great task which the span of these
verses is the question we have to anser after detailed
and critical scrutiny of the verses themselves, sometimes
taken in recurring and non-recurring groups of two, three, four or
five, as we shall see.

ASCENT IMPLIED IN THE GURU-PHILOSOPHY

Contemplation implies a form of ascent through
intensity of thought, as it were, under high pressure.
Passive and lukewarm attitudes are not conducive to yielding
the results of true contemplation, where the inertia, the
aches and pains of the body, or even love of easy-chair
comfort are to be left behind by the aspirant. There is a
factor called tapas (burning up) which presupposes an agony
of some sort, and implies intensity in research, full alertness,
supported by clear memory, willingness to give full
attention to the subject or problem at hand, and power to
listen or will to believe on a basis of correct scepticism
which balances belief. Such are some of the known prerequisites here.

The very first verse in this series
of verses, stresses in its opening phrase just this prerequisite on the part of
one who wishes to grasp the Guru-philosophy. The same
requirements have been enumerated by Sankara and others.

Bergson also says:

"But the truth is tht the intelligence can follow
the opposite method. It can place itself within the
mobile reality and adopt its ceaselessly changing
direction; in short, can grasp it by means of that
Intellectual sympathy which we call intuition. This is
extremely difficult. The mind has to do violence to
itself, has to reverse the direction of the operation by
which it habitually thinks, has perpetually to revise
or rather to recast all its categories. But in this way
it will attain to fluid concepts capable of following
reality in all its sinuosities and of adopting the very
movement of the inward life of things." (4)

Contemplative metaphysics therefore has to be
approached with a revised attitude about what is to be
expected. Bergsonian philosophy comes nearest to it.
There are many other features of the Guru-philosophy
which we can only touch upon when occasions arise.
Here we shall focus our attention in concluding this
section, on the element of wonder as admitted into correct
metaphysical speculation by the Guru in his philosphy.

BRACKETTING OF THE WONDER

The Absolute Self is an enigma and a wonder. It has
been called a mysterium tremendum (a tremdous
mystery), and the Gita (II. 29) states this unequivocally:

"A certain person sees this as a wonder, likewise
another speaks about this wonder. Another hears
of it even as a wonder, but even hearing no one
understands this at all".

We have in the previous section examined three of the
most central verses of the series before us. The rise and
circulation of elements of thought at the core of the
Absolute were pictured there.
-------------------------------------------------------------
4. An Introduction to Metaphysics, (Liberal Arts Press, New
York.) p. 51

How the visible world itself can be effaced in the full wonder of the
Absolute in terms of meaning or sound, was also boldly touched upon
in Verse 52. We shall now select two other verses where
again the element of mystery or wonder is pronounced.
Verses 35 and 65 are turned in opposite directions like the
outer brackets in an algebraic sum. First let us scrutinize
Verse 35:

"Like the dawning altogether of ten thousand suns
Wisdom.s function comes, Such verily is what
Can tear asunder the knowledge-hiding impermanent darkness of Maya here,
And, as the primordial Sun on high, prevails."

The overwhelming and total nature of Wisdom treated
as a wonder here is unmistakeable. By its position in the
total series (as Verse 35) we have to take note that this
wonder reaches out from the negative to the positive side
of the total knowledge-situation. The arrow points upwards
to the glorious vision possible to the contemplative. If
this verse is taken as the opening of the brackets enclosing
the content of general wonder of the Absolute vision of
the Self, which is the subject-matter of the series here,
we can see that Verse 65 suggests the closure of the same
pair of brackets. The arrow is reversed here. Instead of
suggesting endless possiblity for the contemplative vision,
there is here to be imposed a limitation lest too much
positiveness of the vision should disperse the unity of the
Self that is to be located in its middle neutral ground.

Verse 65 reads:

"There is nothing here that we have not already once known.
Hidden by form, knowledge fails us, wakefully
To know all this there is none at all, limitless as it is,
Oh, who can there be at all to know this wonder dear!

Here the limitlessness of the wonder is stressed to
show that the contemplative can have only such visions
as his own self can contain. The Absolute Self is enclosed,
as it were, between two opposite tendencies, one that is
of limitless expansion to the plus side and another that
points its arrow to the core of the neutral zero point of the
total knowledge-situation. The position of the verse in
the second half of the series, well towards the end, is
what alone can justify this seeming contradiction when Self-knowledge
and its wonder are understood as the content of the work
as a whole, with its plus and minus limiting factors.

Besides these limiting verses there are others in the
body of the work which the student would do well to find,
and analytically and critically scrutinize himself, according
to the contexct of each.

III

TRANSCENDING THE PARADOX

A philosopher does not merely dabble in information,
opinions or rival theories arrived at through trial-and-
error methods.

He is interested in findind reality behind appearances,
distinguishing truth from falsehood and facts from mere
superstitions. He employs experimental reasoning, logic
and valid general ideas, for determining what is existent,
subsistent or of value in life. The general and wholesale
approach is more natural to him than any piecemeal one,
and mere possibilities and probabilities cannot satisfy that
fully human curiosity or thirst for knowing which distinguishes
him as belonging to Homo sapiens.

It is thus that speculative literature differentiates man
from the anthropoid apes. He seeks the 'Truth that shall
make him free' and that 'pearl of great price' or 'the little
leaven that leaveneth the whole lump.' The Bhagavad
Gita states the same verity, 'the slightest measure of a
way of wisdom alone can save man from great fear.' (**)
The 'master-knot has to be cut' and 'doubts sundered in
his heart' to liberate or emancipate him.

Unlike the halting methods of inductive scientific
disciplines, which are less ambitious in this aspect, the
central problem of all philosophising anywhere or at any
time by humans has had the same problem or enigma to
solve. As the Guru puts it, they can be said to be
contained in the primary questions of all philosophy such
as, 'Who am I?' and 'How does this phenomenal world
come about?'

A wholehearted and wholesale approach to
such problems can alone make philosophy worthy.

From most ancient times the world over speculation
has gone on to unravel this mystery, solve this
enigma, or save man from the dilemma in which he is
caught. His spirit of research cannot rest satisfied till he
correctly locates the problem at the core of life. How
does matter interact with spirit? How are body and mind
articulated? How is the mind inserted into matter? How
can there be participation of the inner and the outer
factors of life?

All these refer to the same central problem of solving
paradoxes. Variously labelled by philosophical schools under
couples of terms such as the phenomenal and the nouemnal,
the visible and the intelligible, the experimental (or
observable) and the calculable, form and matter, in
endless variety, whether brought under the Self or the
non-Self, the subjective or the objective, or under spatial
or temporal dimensions in which life has its being or
becoming, all the dual aspects have an implied paradox
between each of the pair of terms. Mathematically they
can be comprised under the vertical (pure) and the
horizontal (practical).

FACING THE PARADOX FRONTALLY

The primary task of a philosopher is to face this
problem frontally. Modern philosophers like Russell tend
to bypass the central problem in the name of a scientific
approach. At the same time there are to their credit such
doctrines as that of 'neutral monism' which reflects a
total or wholesale doctrine or approach. Instead of a total
annexation of Truth in terms of an absolutist approach,

The so-called analytic philosophers prefer, in the name
of science, to annex bits of a territory at a time, by methods
resembling those of experimental science. The hollowness
of such a claim has been discussed by us elsewhere more
than once. In speculation, relativism and absolutism are
terms ill-defined by modern philosophers.
Neither of these terms can have a meaning apart from its
dialectical counterpart, for one of them must presuppose the
other for them to have any meaning at all. How even the Relativism
of Einstein has some Absolute notion at its core is
brought out clearly in the following lines which we
quote from a recent authority without entering into the
discussion here at any length:

After explaining (on page 292),
"The consequences of the Einstein theory are that distance
and time are relative, and hence measurements of them by another
observer need not agree with ours,'
and deriving further implications of the Lorentz Transformation, the writer
continues;
'This means that although time and space are relative, a certain
mixture of them is absolute. It is an error to think that because
Einstein's theory is called Relativity, all measurements are relative.
The mathematician Whitehead chose the name 'seperation' for the
absolute invariant t2 - x2 ."(1)

Further light on the status of the velocity of light
as an absolute normative notion at the centre of the
theory of Einsteinian so-called Relativity is afforded by
another atatement:
'.......no material body can have a velocity equal to or
greater than the speed of light.' (2)
------------------------------------------------------------
1. The Main stream if Mathematics by Edna E. Kramer Ph.D
(Fawcett Publication, New York,) 1961 p. 295
2. Ibid. p. 292

Thus there is a paradox hiding even at the core of the
meanings of the two terms "relative" and "absolute". If
what is absolute is real the relative must be called false
because there cannot be two truths. If there are two
truths one should either contradict the other or be merely
a tautology of the other. In Vedantic parlance the
former is an asambhava (impossibility as a contradiction
in terms) and the latter is vitiated by the evil of atmasraya
(begging the question).

Between accepting tautology or contradiction there
hides, at the core of even the most recent of speculation,
supported by the strict rules of mathematics used in
modern science, a master enigma, dilemma or problem,
like a Gordian knot, intricate and difficult to resolve, which
has taken all the intelligence of wise men of all times and
climes to resolve once and for all.

Modernism mistrustingly looks upon such a solution
as resembling the search for a philosopher's stone, or the
search for a panacea for all ills. In spite of this modern
prejudice in the name of the experimental approach of
science, we can see from the above citations that even at
the very core of the theory of relativity, there is hiding a
paradoxical absolute element. The Guru-philosophy that
we are attempting to present in these introductory chapters
attempts to approach this very problem that Einsteinian
theorems or theories involve. A fresh and bold approach
is warranted by our times and this is exactly what Guru-
philosophy as we wish to present in the pages that follow,
claims to bring into view, as representing the central
problem of all philosophy which cannot be bypassed
without detracting from the full dignity and purpose of
philosophy itself.

THE 'ODDNESS' OR 'MYSTERY' OF PARADOX IN
MATHEMATICS AND PHILOSOPHY

We have just seen how paradox hides at the core of
the Relativity Theory. There are certain unresolved para-
doxes which are known in mathematics. Leibniz prefers
to call them contradictions while Bertrand Russell would
dismiss them as mere "oddities." What anyone
prefers to call such a paradox is a question of personal temperament.
The sum of the odd numbers in a series must give
rise to a different total than the sum of the even numbers,
thus giving rise to two paradoxical values of infinity.
Whether merely 'oddness' or 'copntradiction' is recognized
here, the paradoxical dilemma remains to be solved. On
their solution, Runes in his Dictionary of Philosophy says:

"Russell's solution of paradox is embodied in what is now
known as the ramified theory of types....Because of its
complication this has now been largely abandoned in
favour of other solutions."(3)

No proper solution has been made acceptable, either
by logicians or by mathematicians. The dialectical approach
of Bradley to logic brings him up to this very problem
of the difficulty of transcending paradox when he states:

"And we seem unable to clear ourselves from the old
dilemma. If you predicate what is different, you ascribe to
the subject what it is not, and if you predicate what is
not different, you say nothing at all." (4)

Philosophically, scientifically, logically, and mathematically
we are thus finding it still very difficult to transcend paradox.
-----------------------------------------------------------
3. Cf. under 'Paradoxes, Logical,' p.224.
4. Appearance and Reality, 2nd ed. p.17

Between full paradoxes, dilemmas and enigmas, ranging
from mild implied paradoxes to open contradictions
There can be endless grades in the type of paradox we
might have to solve, but in order to transcend paradox an
absolutist philosophy like neutral monism, which is neither
one nor the other but unites both aspects of being or
becoming, is inevitable. The Bhagavad Gita states this
problem of all philosophy in the following words:

"What is unreal cannot have being and non-being cannot be real,
the conclusion in regard to both these has been known to philosophers. (II, 16).

In the light of the last part of this verse, any philosopher
who does not face this problem with its paradoxes
squarely cannot be ranged by the side of philosphers
who are fully alive to their problem. As we shall see, it is just
because the Guru-philosophy faces this paradox at the heart
of all serious speculation, that it might appear unusual to moderns
who wish to bypass this central question by taking refuge in
verbosities or in piecemeal approaches such as Russell seems to
recommend. The modern notion of a space-time continuum is an
attempt to transcend an implied paradox between space-like
and time-like elements.

THE PLACE OF THE PARADOX FULLY RECOGNISED IN
GURU-PHILOSOPHY
The subject-matter and the object-matter of philosophy
constitute together in Guru-philosphy a master enigma
or wonder in which each is to be understood unitively in the light
of the other, and even thus only in its broad outlines
and in its most generalized categories, as a totality and
as unity in terms of the Absolute.

We have already seen: first how the secret of structure
holds the key to the understanding of Guru-philosphy, and how
secondly, the Absolute which underlies it is of the nature of a wonder.

The reasoning man is not going to rest with the thought that Truth
or Reality is merely a wonder. He wishes to critically analyze it
further and break it up, if possible, into its components,
subtle or gross, to see how the various aspects
hang together to give unity to Truth, without which it
would be meaningless in life. Logic, ratiocination,
induction, deduction and the application of the various
measures of validity to arrive at conclusions - all of these are ways
that have been open to speculation as ordinarily employed
by philosophers. The negative method of first determining
what aspects of reality are not valid is a more scientific
approach than the inductive-hypothetical empirical method
of piecemeal experimentation based on experience. The
a posteriori approach by itself cannot penetrate into the
mystery presented by life. This is evident from the fact that
the hand of God or of Nature is still hidden in science. Even
such simple questions as sex determination in nature
eludes scientific clarification. The nature of the self and
its destiny is not within the reach of usual commonsense
reasoning. Intuition or dialectical methods, when perfected
as instruments of thought, as we can hope they may be in the\
future, are alone adequate to penetrate behind the
mystery that life presents in its totality of the subjective
and the objective treated together. In such a wholesale
and wholehearted philosophical approach as that of
the Guru here, the confrontation of the most central of the
problems of all philosophy - which is that of the paradox at
the centre of life - is all important. The Guru questions its
nature in the work before us, in the following pointed
manner:

"As a mixture of what is the world and what is the real
That which presents itself before us is a great iniquity indeed!
This is what is indeterminate beyond grasp of word or mind;
How can the course of right reason move within its domain? (5)

This verse as we notice, occurs at the end part of the
series of one hundred verses. This might give room to
the question whether the paradox is still valid after all the
speculation of Guru-philosophy. Such a conclusion
would be both true and false at once, because as we see
finally the paradox is transcended. All the preceding
verses are meant only to lay the foundations for the final
conclusion in fully unitive terms. The method, the theory
of knowledge and the value notions, each proper to the
finalized position, are clearly indicated in the last verses.

Almost all the verses contain elements of the duality
at the base of the paradox, and almost all the verses or
groups of them indicate too, how the paradox is to be
transcended by the unitive vision given to the philosophy
of the Guru. Both the a priori and the a posteriori go
hand in hand in Guru-philosphy. Axioms and everyday
experience come together to coalesce and give certitude
or conviction, as far as is possible in such a domain of
pure wisdom. Let us take another verse which suggests
more clearly how the paradox is resolved in terms of a
dynamic circulation of existence and essences at the core
of Absolute Self-consciousness:

"Knowledge, in order to know itself, the Earth and other manifestations became.
In inverted manner thus, now mounting, now changing over
Like a circulating fire-faggot, it keeps turning round. (6)
-------------------------------------------------------------
5. Atmopadesa Satakam, Verse 94.
6. Ibid. Verse 33.

The dynamism at the core of the unitive vision of the
Absolute is thus sufficiently indicated quite early in the
series, and after referring to the implications of the
same vision stage by stage in a certain methodic
order, the Guru refers to the same paradox again at a
later stage, to confirm that a form of higher intuitive
and dialectically perfected reasoning is needed to get
behind appearances to the core of the reality that they
hide. There are various contemplative, ethical, aesthetical,
logical and commonsense findings or conclusions incorporated
in the body of the work, each of which has to be
studied in its own context. Here we are concerned with
the over-all paradox involved in Guru-philosophy in order
to see how, in each of life's problems, the way he
unitively resolves paradox is applied by him to arrive
at the main guiding conclusions within the scope of
contemplative Self-knowledge. It is the Self as the
Absolute and as the Highest of human values that should
act as the normaive reference or regulative principle in
all matters of import in life. Such a vision lies beyond the
duality of paradox. Between tautology and full contradiction,
elements of paradox can hide the truth as a mere dilemma,
enigma, doubt or incertitude. All these dual elements,
referred to under the head of maya in Vedanta, tend to
indeterminism and confusion of right values. Transcending
such an 'either-or' or 'neither-nor' situation in favour of
both at once is the task that Guru-philosophy boldly sets
before itself.

SUBTLER PARADOXES EXAMINED

The Paradoxes of Zeno and Parmenides (revalued in
Plato's Socratic dialogues) have occupied a central place
in western philosphical speculation from pre-Socratic days.

The one and the many, the big and the small, the
part and the whole, the Self and the non-Self, have all been
subjected to dialectical treatment, and various attempts have
been made to resolve them unitively, sometimes statically,
sometimes dynamically, whether in the context of being
or becoming. Cosmic or General Self-Consciousness is
the unified field or ground on which dialectical revaluations
themselves have to live and move. Hegel's thesis, antithesis
and synthesis refer to a process of dialectical revaluation
on the basis of the Absolute on which they depend.
In Bergson's philosophy of the flux to which the élan vital is
subject, we have the same pure dynamism which had been
previously discussed in the paradoxes of Zeno and which was
given by him a new lease of life after it was nearly forgotton by
rationlist speculators in Europe after Descartes. The two verses
of the Guru that we quote below are highly reminiscent of the
fluid reality that Bergson, based on Zeno's paradoxes, had postulated:

"At birth-time being there is none,
And the one born at another instant cannot be;
How ever does this exist? Death too is even likewise.
All is but a flux and becoming of the mindstuff pure.

Contraries like being and becoming, how can they
Like creation, endurance and dissolution, in one place co-exist?
For these three to pass into, there is nothing either
Thus viewed, the earth and other things are mere words alone." (7)

-----------------------------------------------------------
7. Atmopadesa Satakam, Verses 79, 80.

From the time of Heraclitus, whose famous saying
was that one cannot enter into the same river twice,
this doctrine of the flux has been central to many and varied
schools of speculation both modern and ancient, Eastern
or Western. The difference with Guru-philosophy here is
that the Guru is not limited to perceptualism, nominalism,
conceptualism or even empiricism schematically understood,
but gives due place to them all in a unified manner and
even in a methodic order, based on a strict spistemology
and axiology. Later chapters will perhaps amplify this and
justify this claim further, as we proceed.

While we are on the subject of transcending paradox
let us refer to another verse in which the transcending of
paradox is accomplished in as delicate a way as in the
dialectics of the One and the Many in Plato, who refers to
Zeno in his Parmenides where the contention of Zeno is:

"Being cannot be many, because if it were, it would be
like and unlike at the same time, which is impossible." (8)

Here the paradox is not transcended but only a sort of
reductio ad absurdum or ad impossibile is arrived at. The
Guru, as seen tackling the same problem in the verse below,
merges the impossibility into the neutrality or unity of Absolute
Consciousness, which is the rare 'secret' clarified in his philosophy elsewhere:

"Of one thing there could be many, as in many objects
One single meaning could reside: by such knowledge we can know
Consciousness as comprising all, diferencelessly without any remainder;
This ultimate secret, however, is not given for all to know. (9)
-------------------------------------------------------------
8. Plato's Dialogues translated by B. Jowett, (Random House,New York.) p.88
9. Atmopadesa Satakam, Verse 73

Cubic crystals of common salt or an orchard of apple
trees of the same variety and of the same age, when taken
as examples, will easily be seen to justify the seeming
puzzle of the above verse. What tends to give specificity
overtly combines in meaning innately, and what tends to
be generic in meaning, tends to be overtly distinguishable
as separate entities. Word and meaning belong to the
matrix of pure mind-stuff, where both the mechanistic and
the vitalistic aspects co-exist without conflict or contradiction.
This is one of the ways in which the paradox
that life presents is seen to be capable of being
transcended in the philosphy of the Guru. This kind of
approach which is most subtle, as the Guru himself warns,
need not be the only way of transcending the contradiction
in life. At different levels of the total knowledge-
situation, different appraoches, some factual, some
demonstrable, some logical, intuitive or dialectical, may
be seen to be employed, even with the limited range of
the hundred verses before us.

PARADOX IS TRANSCENDED BY RECONCILING OPPOSITES

If the Unified Field Theory of Einstein, where gravitational,
electromagnetic, and geometrically understood space or
world-ground, with a common unified schematic basis, in
which micro- and macro-cosmos participate, as it were,
from opposite poles of the same homogeneous totality of a
time-space continuum, has become familiar and acceptable
to modern ears; then the heights of Guru-speculation here in
the verses before us, need not necessarily have a strange,
outlandish or antique ring in our ears either. Its full
implications have been explored and scrutinized in our
An Integrated Science of the Absolute.

Without going into the merits of these verses, we
quote below two more verses from the Guru in order to
show how his speculation at the beginning of the century
echoes and complements those very generalizations to
which human minds, more in touch with the physical
world than the mental, have been able to attain.
The daily newspaper before me today (22nd March, 1965)
has, on its front page, a photograph of how two
Russians have accomplished the feat of stepping out into
space 300 miles from the earth. These conquests might
change the complexion of the war situation from one pole,
but from the other pole too human speculation has to
catch up with such outer victories with equally significant
victories of the spirit of man that can attain equal depths
more significant for peace. The sublime synthesis of opposites
in transcending the paradox of life, even in the domain
of concrete universals, and not merely in the world of
semantics, is reflected in these verses which we quote by
way of conclusion, without comment. The serious student
will himself scrutinize them and derive from them all their
implications, when he comes to them in more orderly fashion
in the text as developed by the Guru.

"The atom and the infinite, thus as being and non-being,
Loom from either side; this experience too
Of being as well as non-being, shall thereafter extinction gain,
And devoid of any basis, shall forever cease to be!

Within the glory of pure knowing the atom bereft of all parts, shall extinct become,
And the infinite too, shall thereafter its own plenitude attain.
Direct experience alone can reveal this boundless
Stuff of Intelligence Pure, this silence-filled ocean of Immortal Bliss. (10)

--------------------------------------------------------------------
10. Atmopadesa Satakam, Verse 96, 97.

HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL VALUE-WORLDS

This term "Absolute" would be a mere word without any
content significant to human life if we did not look at it
from the side of the phenomenal world known to us through
the senses, supported by our powers of inference, deductive or inductive.

Abstraction and generalization lead us, step by step, to
categories of facts, truths or realities of value in life. The
lesser values are inclusively covered by the more general
and the more abstract. This is the way of speculation known
as the via negationis or neti neti of the Upanishads. When
the limit of such a negative way is reached, there is a residue
still left in the thinking mind which, when understood
globally and schematically, gives us the first key to the
understanding of Guru-philosophy, as we have tried to
explain in the first of these essays.

Beyond this limit of the negative approach from the
phenomenal to the noumenal, the Absolute cannot be
appraised by the human understanding except as a vague
wonder. The wonder or the mystery that the notion of
the Absolute thus presents has been dealt with by us in
the second section of this series. We have further
explained that when critically scrutinized at closer quarters,
a paradox lurks at the very core of philosophical speculation
in general. We have indicated how Guru-
philosophy faces frontally this problem of transcending
paradox.

So now the stage is set for us to consider another
aspect, which will afford us further ease in
following the broad outlines which speculation as under-
stood in Guru-philosphy adopts.

A strict methodology and epistemology are implied
in Guru-philosophy which is for the keen student to
follow up further when examining the text of the hundred
verses. He can also reasonably expect further clarification
from our final work on the "Science of the Absolute"
based on the Guru's Darsana Mala (Garland of Visions
of the Absolute) which attempts a more scientifically
systematic treatment. (1)

PYSCHO-PHYSICAL AMBIVALENT ALTERNATING PROCESS

Like the heartbeat, psycho-physical life presents
an alternating ambivalent process between two poles.
Guru-philosophy as we are able to understand it gives
full recognition to this process. We have travelled far
and wide in our other expositions to lay bare the structure
and dynamism of this process, and found that this same
structural dynamism is seen implicitly or explicitly referred
to in the efforts made by great minds from most ancient
times world over. Pairs of dialectically reciprocal
counterparts are referred to wherever a subtle intuitive
understanding is called for in solving the problems of
life. In our section devoted to the problems of trans-
cending paradoxes, we have made it amply clear that there
is always a dual aspect present in the basic field on
which paradoxes can thrive. This ground whether cosmlogical,
psychological or axiological, or all three of these
combined, is lodged at the core of the Absolute.

The very fact that all words representing percepts or
concepts can be arranged in two columns of synonyms or
----------------------------------------------------------
1. See An Integrated Science of the Absolute, by the author.

antonyms shows that there is an antinomain principle, a
dichotomy or polarity, which enters into a kind of subtle
mathematical intersection in which two elements participate,
as when time and distance participate in the notion of
velocity. All phenomena are capable of graphical
representation as correlated elements into which two
antinomian factors enter. Matter and energy are so
related that both cannot be measured together without
indeterminism getting involved. The Self and the non-
Self are also to be looked upon either as proper or
improper elements, relation or relata, cause or effect,
in respect of each other. Life is a process of such
alternating ambivalent factors.

MATHEMATICAL FACTORS

Modern algebra and geometry have many common
axioms on the basis of which sums and products of
mathematical elements with the laws of commutation,
association and distribution obey or answer fundamantal
axioms accepted by mathematicians. There is a modern
branch of the 'algebra of geometry' wherein what are
called proper and improper elements enter and reveal
the nature of pure space or number.

Such a new mathematical treatment of algebra and
geometry together is a branch of the science which has
not yet been fully explored. Its promise is, however,
great, we have to remember here too, that mathematics
becomes real only to the extent that its possible applications
become significant in the context of human
experience or solve problems in life. New conventions
based on old axioms and laws of mathematics, such as
referred to above, are permissable in respect of both
algebra and geometry.

These two branches can be made to come together
to interpret for us the nature of pure space or pure number.
Complex numbers as well as pure
space, subjected to strict though arbitrary treatments
based on axioms or laws, can yield us frames of
reference to be expressed metalinguistically or protolinguistically,
i.e. algebraically or geometrically. (We have dealt with these
possibilities elsewhere.) In order
to show that the implications of the new branch of the
'geometry of algebra' has arrived very close to the next
step which will bring it to what we want to represent
here, it might be helpful for the student to read the
following extract translated from the book Les Nombres et
les Espaces (Numbers and Space) by G. Verriest (2) even if
we do not stop here to explain the full implications of
the extract:

"In order to give in all possible cases a signification
for the sum and product of two elementals, they have
introduced two new elementals; elemental sero V (or
absence of points, lines or planes) or universal element
U (or the totality of thses elements, that is to say,
space). By definition the element sero V is contained in
all elements and it is conventional that it has a negative
number -1 of dimensions: In the same way the universal
lement U, contains all elements and three dimensions.
These two new elements are called improper elements,
the others are the proper elements. Let us suppose now
that A and B represent for example two lines which
do not meet in space; we would have A + B = U and
A.B = V, and we can see that the sum and the product
of any two elements represent always an element
which would be either proper or improper."

Dichotomy is thus seen between proper and improper
elements in the science of the algebra of geometry dealing
with numbers and spaces.
--------------------------------------------------------------
2. Collection Armand Colin, Paris pp. 180-181. (our translation)

It is not difficult to see that the abstractions of space and number
implied in this kind of geometry of algebra or vice versa, set
limits of the improper elements V and U, the latter being more
philosophical than physical: as when we say with
W. de Sitters that there is pure motion in the cosmology
of the universe without matter; or with Einstein that there
is primacy for matter in the physical world without motion.
The time-space continuum and the Unified Field Theory
have some sort of mathematical structure or scheme which
is difficult to be visually represented, but which depends
on an algebraic abstract language. Philosophers need
not give primacy to either matter or motion, and with the
attitude of neutral monism, could make an effort to build
up, for their own purposes of valid or correct speculation,
a mathematical frame of reference that would help in
guiding though,t especially in the metaphysical rather than
in the merely physical aspect of the universe.

The freedom for a correct speculator to invent, if
needed, such a frame of reference for the use of the
philosophy of science is recognized by two senior mathe-
maticians and scientists of the eminence of O. G. Sutton
F:R:S: and Albert Einstein himself. That they envisaged
such a frame of reference and even encouraged it may be
gathered from the following extracts from each of them
respectively. Sutton writes:

"....mathematicians are no respecters of tradition;
but incorrigible heretics who are prepared to change
their ground and invent new systems of thought
as soon as the old is seriously challenged. It must not
be thought that this breaking of rules always leads to
significant advances. To build a geometry on a new
set of axioms demands skill but not necessarily genius.

The chances are, however, that any such
geometry will excite little interest. The true touch of
genius appears only when the new algebra or
geometry opens up fresh fields of thought and this is
a very rare event" (3)

On the need for not discouraging bold speculation
in the matter of bridging the gulf between observed facts
and axiomatic certitudes, Einstein says:

"Here too the observed fact, is undoubtedly, the
supreme arbiter; but it cannot pronounce sentence
until the wide chasm separating the axioms from
their verifiable consequences has been bridged by
much intense hard thinking. The theorist has to set
about his Herculean task in the clear consciousness that
his efforts may only be destined to deal the death blow
to his theory. The theorist who undertakes such a
labour should not be carped as 'fanciful', on the contrary
he should be encouraged to give free rein to his
fancy, for there is no other way to the goal. His is no
idle day-dreaming, but a search for the logically
simplest possibilities and their consequences." (4)

The Unified Field Theory of Einstein was released
to the world only in February 1950, but the freedom with
which he was approaching that task, is already reflected
in the above citation of about 1934. That the logic of
modern mathematics is not rigidly fixed is amply evident
from these citations. Mathematicians like Sutton and
scientists like Einstein, would welcome any bold attempt
to integrate all thought elements on the same lines as in
the Unified Field Theory.
---------------------------------------------------------------
3. Mathematics in Action by Sir O.G. Sutton, Bell, London
1958, p. 36
4. The Philosophers of Science, Pocket Book Inc., New York
U.S.A., p. 479

If we now attempt below a simple scheme which respects
primary axioms with some ingenuity and fancifulness which
is not only allowed but even encouraged by these authorities,
in order to give to the otherwise wild speculation that often
tends to be lost in verbosity, at least some tangible supporting
points of a visible rather than merely intelligible order,
as when the geometry of algebra is kept in mind, we
hope there should not be any reason for us to be blamed.

A TENSORIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY

Scalar and vectorial spaces as represented in geo-
metrical figures are particular instances (the former more
so than the latter) of another kind of geometrical space
called tensorial, in which it is easier to represent
cosmological models or of psychological stresses and
strains which require more than three numbers for their
specification. As the present writer is not an expert
mathematician himself, at this stage of our discussion
he proposes to be guided in mathematical questions by
finding support in the writings of modern experts. It
might therefore be permissable here to quote from Sutton
as before:

" .....there exist certain important quantities
such as stress in an elastic body which require more
than three numbers for their specification. To deal
with these quantities mathematicians have devised
a very general algebra of tensors in which scalars and
vectors appear as special cases. Tensor algebra
is of prime importance in the development of world
models of cosmology." (5)
-----------------------------------------------------------
5. op. cit. p. 33

The same authority further quotes Whittaker and adds:

"It also appears that one such algebra is peculiarly
fitted to deal with another feature of quantum
mechanics, that of indefiniteness or imperfect
description, a fact which Whittaker has called 'one
century.'" (6)

There is also a modern branch of psychology which
uses vectorial mathematical language which could be
improved on the same lines into tensorial terms to
represent stresses and strains of a psychological order.

These significant advances in the language of modern
mathematics, as applied to quantum mechanics, cosmology,
or psychology, are fully suggestive of great possibilities in
the future even in the domain of a scientifically revised
philosophical specualtion. One more bold step forward
in the same direction as these developments, might bring
us to a common structural frame of reference in which
the dynamics of life as a process need not be sacrificed
but included with all its stresses and strains. The simplest
desiderata for such a frame, common to all aspects of
absolute speculation, are vertical and horizontal axes of
reference, to correlate two antinomian elements of any
philosophy whatsoever, including theology as a particular
instance of it. Cosmology, psychology and theology
could be combined under one 'unitive frame of reference.'

THE SPACE WITHIN THE HEART OF THE UPANISHADS
AND ITS STRUCTURAL IMPLICATIONS.

Only a running appraisal of our position in respect
of a process in a frame of reference is called for here
after all our elaborations of different aspects of this
problem elsewhere in our writings.

---------------------------------------------------------
6. Ibid. p.33.

1º Minkowski's contribution of a time-space-continuum
implies the same homogeneity of spatial and
temporal dimensions which is in essence the same as the
principle of samanadhikaranatva (homogeneity as between
mind and matter) as recognized also in the doctrine of
neutral monism as well as in Vedanta.

2º The limits of the V and U that modern algebra
of geometry has fixed in the improper elements spoken of
above, refers to a polarity or antinomian ambivalence at
the core of Existence, Subsistence or Value. These
improper elements could be referred to as belonging to a
vertical axis in the domain of the pure noumenal aspect
as its limiting poles. In Vedantic parlance we know it as
the fourth or the turiya limb of the Absolute Self. It is
sometimes referred to in the Upanishads figuratively as
the Supreme Person entered into the cavity of the heart
and hypostatically located sometimes also in the orb of
the Sun.

3º Ambivalence as known in biology is like the
double aspects principle, and Ramanuja's Vedanta recognizes
this more explicitly than Sankara's where too it is
found implicitly in various parts of his comments. The
name in Sanskrit for this is ubhaya-linga-adhikarana (the
section referring to the double aspect).

4º The horizontal axis consists of all work-a-day
values and interests in ordinary life of a practical nature
called vyavaharika as opposed to the vertical world of
values called paramarthika. We shall be quoting below
a verse from the Guru which explicitly defines these two
value references under bhokta (enjoyer) and bhogya
(enjoyed).(7)

5º Existence, Subsistence and Value are three levels
of the pure vertical reference of significant values in life.
The immanent and the transcendent, the ontological, the
propositional (or syllogistic), and the teleological worlds
of value, have to find their places in a series both
ascending and descending at once, in the total Absolute
which has the limits represented by the improper elements
of V and U as in the geometry of algebra above.
Einstein's world is slightly prejudiced in favour of a world
in which matter has primacy over motion, but W. de Sitter's
version gives motion primacy over matter. These
two versions put together unitively will give the two limits,
one concrete universal and the other abstract universal,
between which all possibilities of manipulations with
relation-relata causes and effects, or all such elements in
the thinking mind, could be inclusively comprised. All
thought-values must lie either in the vertical or the
horizontal reference. The former is refered to as the
domain of the kshetrajna and the latter as the kshetra
in the Bhagavad Gita. The Guru-philosophy here will
be seen to imply the same broad divisions or references.

6º A cyclic process of progressive becoming,
whether as ascent or descent in the scale of spiritual
values, is implied in the notion of samsara chakra (the
wheel of becoming) and the pravartitam chakram (cyclic
dynamism of becoming) as in the Gita, III, 14. Microcosmic
cycles in orbits and alternations are found in
particle physics and in quantum mechanics. Mutations in
life cycles and other systolic and diastolic phases in
chains of behaviour or of biological synergisms and
functionings are all known.
---------------------------------------------------------
7. Atmopadesa Satakam, Verse 81.

No less an authority than Erwin Schroedinger in his
What is Life? has given recognition to this common structure
underlying mutations in life and quantum pulsations in physics.

7º When two persons are referred to, as in many
Upanishadic contexts, as in the right eye and in the orb
of the Sun, we have to think of two tensorial models with
a one-one correspondence between them, hierophantically
understood.

Many other instances could be cited where a unitive
schematic, selective and structural frame of reference can
be arrived at by the exercise of a certain intuitive or
imaginative method by way of extending or extrapolating
the finds of modern higher mathematics, which has already
become acceptable and in full use in science. We have
elsewhere suggested that the colour-solid itself could give
us the basic model for integrating all thought factors in a
sort of tensorial continuum where all possible colours
differing in tint, brilliance, saturation or shade could
be specified by three or four symbols representing
dimensions.

Such a colour-solid is actually in use with international
colour dealers where the vernacular for each
colour is replaced by indices of specification. This solid
has a vertical axis grading from black to white with a core
which is grey. All colours of the spectrum can be
represented on a double cone with their apexes as poles
and their bases juxtaposed. As the colour variety range
is not unlike the range of other sensations or even shades
of thought which underlie them, such a way of correlating
thought elements would not be merely fanciful. Whether
valid or not, one thing in favour of such schematic model is
that it would help to regulate specualtion and keep it within
recognizable limits.

AN ALTERNATIVE PROCESS IN THE GURU'S VERSES

The following verses from the Guru illustrate the
possibilities of a schematic reference of the kind outlined
here, which is evidently repsected in the Guru's writings:

(1) The two ambivalent aspects are contrasted by
the Guru in terms of the sense of duration as between
pure and practical time, as follows:

"Ten-thousand years doe a moment make to those favoured ones
Suckled in the milk of the pure transcendent; when knowledge
Is within the scope of relative immanent nature,
Half-a-second would seem a thousand years long."
(Verse 15)

The intersection of the double aspect is quite evident here.
(2) Again the same two aspects are brought together
in a vertico-horizontal correlation:

"From awareness the "I"- sense first emerged,
Comes then with it "this-ness", as a counterpart beside;
Like twin branches these overcover entirely
Hiding the whole of the Maya tree. (Verse 51)
The double aspect of the ambivalent factor is clear here."

The same ambivalence is again stated revealing its
fully living process of alternation as follows:

"As the ego-sense enters into the snake-rope forms
Now as knowledge, now as a limbed agent in alternating duality,
It becomes pure now and then again profane,
Thus should he understand, the intuitive man."
(Verse 68)

Sacredness and profanity could alternate in the
consciousness of the same contemplative when the
ambivalent process asserts itself. Restated in terms of
action, which is negative, and knowledge, its own
dialectical counterpart, we have again:

"Now there is action which is nescience, and again
There is the pure knowledge, which is science;
Ordained by maya though these stay divided thus,
The meta-dual attitude, the unitive turiya yields".
(Verse 72)

Nature in which man's destiny is placed has a choice
between two cross-purposed worlds, whcih enter his life-
interests alternatley as follows:

"Nature dividing one time as the enjoyer
As everything outside, immanent or transcendent in glory looms,
At another time again, by 'this-ness' expanded
It spreads out as the enjoyable universe."
(Verse 81)

(3) The figure-of -eight progression within the
ambivalent poles is under reference more evidently in the
following:

"Breaking up, staying on, or rising again after a change, ever
To continue, such is the course of the bodily nature here;
Watchful of all the three from its position ultimate
Is the one clefless Self that free from all change remains".
(Verse 88)

(4) In other verses of the series this dulaity of
reference is more unitively brought together, as in the
analogy of sparks of fire which are not different from the
fire itself. The underlying scheme, however, is not
affected by the change in analogy.

"As out of knowledge, sparks of fire innumerable arise
Asserting the being of non-being so as to make the world emerge.
Know that outside of knowledge not a thing exists;
Such knowing unitive awareness yields."
(Verse 89)

(5) Subtler analogie,s in which the duality between
the twin aspects is further reduced, are found in other
verses of the series. An analogy so rich and graphic in
suggestive imagery of the dual process is contained in
this verse:

"As with a well into which measureless sand is wafted
By succesive gusts, tier on tier, so too
Exposed to the waftings of untruth's hierarchy,
The inner Self, inwardly multitudinous forms it gains."
(Verse 76)

(6) The categorical finality with which the Guru
brings strictly under the two references of the absolute or
the relative, the infinite or the finite, represented by the
vertical and the horizontal references as understood here
in mathematical language, all relations, or relate, causes
or effects, giving rise to forms, entities or elements
known through names, without anything being left over
as remainder, is stated in the following verses which we
quote here by way of concluding this section:

"One that is beyond all count and the ordinary-
Besides these two what is of other form
In memory, in sleep nor in any city on high
Could such have any existence, indeed!"
(Verse 67)

In other words, the totality of Absolute Reality is
comprised completely within these two references, the
vertical and the horizontal.

THE SELF AND NON-SELF IN SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

The Self and the non-Self can be treated as
dialectical counterparts and both placed in one unitive
context of the Absolute.

Fichte, among Western philosophers viewed these
in such a perspective, although the dialecical implications of
his methodology and epistemology were not quite clear.
In Vedanta it is normal to speak of atma
(Self) and anatma (non-Self) as pratiyogis (counterparts)
with an intimate bipolar relation (samavaya) between
them, and not merely a contiguous relationship (samyoga).
These two can be looked upon as fitting into a one-one
relationship in tensorial space, one having its locus here
and the other having it in some hypostatic value-world
beyond or elsewhere, such as in the orb of the sacred
Sun known to the Vedas.

The non-Self can be thought of in a more work-a-day
sense as fitting into a horizontal world of practical values,
while the purer Self with its dialectical counterparts,
one ontological here, and the other of a teleological or
transcendental order elsewhere in the beyond, above or
the ultimate or infinity, referring to vertical value worlds,
could represent all values possible for the Self to be
affiliated to in contemplative life. We have already
explained and justified the use of these references in
previous studies.

The Self can be thought of as a big fish swimming
in midstream in the direction of the current,
alternately avoiding the two banks, if we may take an
analogy dear the the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The
two banks will represent its limits in the horizontal axis
of reference while itself and its almost motionless motion
would represent the Self, whether thought of as a sphere,
elipse or the tractix that mathematicians like Lobachewsky
have sugested for the structure of space tensorially
undersood and independent of size.

The Upanishads often speak of a person, of the size
of the thumb and entered into the cavity of the heart, who
has his counterpart in the Sun. There is a subtle
dialectical equation of these into the unitive terms of
thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The Self and non-Self
have to be fitted into a schematic structure before what
we should understand as the purpose of all scriptures such
as the Upanishads can be fulfilled or justified. Such is the
scope of this section.

THE SELF PLACED IN ITS AXIOLOGICAL CONTEXT

From the time of early Buddhism the one controversy
that has raged in the polemical wars in the domain of Indian
specualtion, has been over the existence of a soul
or Self called the atman. Early Buddhism pronounced
its verdict clearly against any such substance or entity
and distinguished itself from later Buddhist schools by
this one feature, referred to by scholars as the anatma vada
(the doctrine of the denial of the Self). Brahmanism and
Buddhism were ranged in opposite camps, based on this
rivalry or contention.

In the three main schools, from the time of Asoka to the
Gupta period in Indian history, later modifications, each of
five hundred years duration, have turned the

tables against the position of the first five hundred years,
and having done so twice over, the present position of
Buddhists in this matter is a delicate question balanced
between what is generally referred to as the sunya-vada
(doctrine of nothingness) and the vijnana-vada (doctrine of
mind-stuff).

This latter is of the order of mere simple events
understood as being like waves or as a flux of
moments in consciousness . There are many sub-varieties
even as between the two positions ( of sunya-vada and
vijnana-vada) according to Vasubandhu, Asanga,
Dignaga and Dharmakirti. These polemical battles, involving
subtleties, like those which raged before the age of
enlightenment in the history of European thought, remain
still, in our time, on a basis of thin and airy speculation.
It is hard to determine what kind of content remained as a
residue either in Buddhism or in Sankara's version of
Vedanta, after all that was extraneous to final or Absolute
Reality was subtracted from the given total in consciousness.

Logic of the subtlest kind from one pole of the
knowledge-situation, together with yogic intuition, as it were
from the other, have to give us an understanding of the content
of Absolute Truth through their combined cooperation or harmonized effort.
In the matter of understanding the Self in relation to its
counterpart of the non-Self, as properly belonging to its
general context of value, so that we can get a correct
perspective and focus our attention on what remains after
all extraneous factors have been eliminated, the Guru-
philosophy here adopts three distinct measures:

Firstly, it devises a method of experimentation or
regulation under selected conditions of common experience,
in order to throw explicitly into proper relief the nature of the Self
and thereby that of the non-Self also, necessarily, though only implicitly.

Secondly, it undertakes to lay bare the axiological
structure of the non-Self aspect or the environment of the Self,
so as to enable us to distinguish the stages of spiritual or contemplative
progress in the world of interests or values in which life hereunder
is cast. And thirdly, it employs the semantic world of the
meaning of meanings so as to bring to light the progress
of the Self through value aspects, both external and
internal treated together, so that a student endowed with
some intuition can visualize for himself the various value
worlds or stages through which the Self has to pass
before it comes to realize itself in terms of full -self-
knowledge or Wisdom, as marking the point of culmination
of the process of emancipation or salvation.

While these sections will be seperately touched upon
below, with relevant citations from the hundred verses
before us, it is for the interested student also to note that
the implications of these three topics, with justificaations
where necessary, overlap other verses in the series.
Without such mutual presuppositions this idea of progress
to the goal of all Self-contemplation must remain partial
or otherwise, as it were, truncated in total consistency or
unity. The total vision alone can satisfy scientific
curiosity. There is a vertical axis of reference, in which all
spiritual progress, which consists of a dialectical descent
or ascent, in a scale of values, some positive and others
negative, and a horizontal axiological reference which
intersects or cuts across its grain. Subtle indications or
implications herein will have to be recognized by the
student himself as he proceeds.

THE GURU'S METHOD OF LAYING BARE THE
CONTENT OF THE SELF

Experiments, examples, analogies and even common
parlance supporting commonsense are pressed into the
service of speculation by the Guru, whether called
scienific, philosophical or both.

The best experiment conducted under the strictest of selected or regulated
conditions still has only a certitude of a hypothetical and
inductive status. Theories which are based on degrees
of 'expectation' or guess-work are tentatively formulated
as laws, often only to be superceded by better-formulated
laws of greater abstraction and generality and of more
universal applicability in a wider field.

Such is the course of certitude in speculation through
the history of thought, anywhere in the world. For the
commonsense example of an event as simple as the falling
apple, which was the basis for Newton's
formulation of the Universal Theory of Gravitation, no
laboratory was needed. The experiment and the familiar
example come to have a similar value in making a law
valid. Analogies, parables, fables or other graphic
representations serve the same purpose of making the
hypothetical construcions of scientific or philosophical
speculations, more firmly grounded in validity. If all
these help in the degree of certitude, why not make use
of imaginary experiments which tally with commonsense
or commonly known experience or facts? This question
is legitimate and it is therefore quite in order
that the Guru employs, as seen below, a 'supposed'
experimental situation in which one human consciousness
controls the other, when both are fitted into a darkroom situation
to ensure a certain degree of subjectivism, necessary for the
experiment to give the requisite certitude.
We shall see at the end of this section how the Guru also uses
semantics with advantage to lay bare the structure or
dynamism of the Self.

Each word of the precise experimental situation, as
conceived by the Guru in the following verses, is important
to note. The translation has therefore erred on the side of
literalness rather than on the side of the exigencies of
English usage or style on purpose, so that the keen student
may not miss the full import and purpose behind these verses.

When two men or persons exchange meaningful words
in a bipolar situation in which the Self of the one is the
non-Self of the other, and are unitively included in a
trans-subjective and inter-physical sense, such as that of
the schéma moteur that Bergson speaks of, we have a
supposed experimental situation, most suited to examine
the content of the Self. What one says and what one
hears are both meant to help certitude in respect of the
Self, which stands neutral, as it were, between the
subject and the object. The darkroom would eliminate
the visible aspects which would interfere with pure
contemplation for the purposes of laying bare the content
of the Self. We read:

"Who is sitting in the dark? speak," says one,
Whereupon the other, intent himself to know likewise,
On hearing the first, he asks; "Who may you even be?"
For both of these the word of response is one alone.
(Verse 10)

"The repeated 'I, I' contemplated from within
Is not many, but one; divergent egoity,
being multiple, in the totality of such
The Self-substance too, continuity assumes."
(Verse 11)

"With skin and bone and refuse and many an inner factor of evil end
Lo, weilding these, one ego looms;
This which passes is the other; that greater Self which grows to perfection
O, grant the boon, that it may not the ego swell!"
(Verse 12)

The experimental situation of an order in which both
the inter-physical and trans-subjective sensori-motor
factors come into interplay on a basis of parity, bipolarity
or one-one correspondence, is sufficiently real in the first
verse above. Both the persons involved ask questions
with an earnest desire to know. The replies meet unitively
on a ground neutral to both persons involved, in the
common situation.

In the second verse the content of the common
response of thetwo people concerned is further analyzed
into its vertical and horizontal implications. The horizontal is
multiple and the vertical is unitive in status. A warning is
however sounded against the mistaking of mere megalomaniac
egoism for the pure realization of one's Self.

In the third verse the vertico-horizontal implications
within the structure laid bare in mathematical terms in the
second verse are further made explicit, so as to bring out
factors that help or hinder contemplative life.

THE SELF AS SEEN WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF ITS
AXIOLOGICAL COUNTERPARTS

When the same structure is extended beyond the limits
of the psycho-physical range within which tendencies
operate, we reach all the numerous objects of interest,
some given to the senses such as colour, and others given to
deeper-seated instincive dispositions, like sex, hunger
etc., which make the Self reach out to the external zone
where interests can meet their corresponding objects of
satisfaction.

Hunger meets food; sex meets the mate of
the opposite gender; the eye meets light; the ear meets
sound etc. Favourite ideologies too, cluster together
into systems of value dear to each man, here or herafter.
These axiological clusters that belong together, sometimes
called religion or at other times associated more closely with
tribal or atavistic memory factors, tending to be orthodoxies,
establish a bipolarity of the interest-factors involved, as
between such value systems on the one side and the Self,
equated with it axiologically, on the other. This kind of
bipolar affiliation can sometimes bind two lovers and make
them enter into a suicide pact. From all these familiar
instances, it should be gathered, as the verse below
clearly points out, that there is sometimes possible
a bipolar affiliation of the 'enjoyer', which is the Self, with
horizontal values of the 'enjoyable' world.
The 'enjoyer', as the Self, fits into the vertical reference axis;
while the 'enjoyable' world of interests spreads out in multiplicity
in space along the corresponding axis that we have distinguished as
horizontal. (Refer for this correlation to Verse 81 which
we have cited in the previous section). The concerned
verse here is:

"The dweller within the body, from its own status in pure being
In respect of each possible thing, treats all
As 'that is mine' or 'this is mine' transcending bodily sense;
All are in reality realized when we think of what this means."
(Verse 48)

In other words, all persons in ordinary life, when they
say that a certain object of interest is their own, unconsciously
reveal that the pure substance of which the Self consists, is
capable of being related in bipolar parity of status with items
of interest pertaining to the non-Self pole of the total situation
implied in spiritual life.

As such a bipolar link would mean a certain homogeneity
or transparency between the Self and the non-Self aspects
have merged into unity - which is the essence of the state
of Self-realization.

The Guru avers here that the rare stage of spiritual
Self-realization is thus found to be familiarly present in
common life around us, as when a mother will endanger
her own saftey for the sake of the child in danger. Suicide
pacts exemplify the same truth, as we have already said.
The same lesson is intended by many of the Greek tragedies.
Here if we add that higher and higher bipolar
interests which bind the Self with the non-Self can be
imagined: some having proportionately more horizontal
values implied in them than others; and some which can rise
vertically in the Absolute itself to the limits of purity of
fully conscious affiliation to absolutist values - then the
modus of spiritual progress will be fully outlined.

Whether such a unitive goal is attained in principle
only or whether it is real in the workaday sense is itself
a question, which in principle should not arise. On
finaly analysis such a doubt would negate itself by the very
principle that is being asserted here. It would be like a man
asking for the time of the first train in the morning and
then, having got the answer, asking if by chance there
is an earlier one. The first answer must cover the second.

THE AXIOLOGICAL FIELD OF INTERESTS analyzeD

There are seven verses in the present series which
belong together as pertaining to the semantic analysis of
thought processes within the consciousness of the Self,
when the Self is related unitively and homogeneously to the non-Self,
which could be subjected to analysis through the semantic
world of meanings or the 'meaning of meanings' - the
possibilities of which, and its employment in Vedanta by
Sankara and the Purva Mimamsakas have already been
discussed elsewhere. (1)

Just as the elements of the algebra of geometry are
divided into 'proper' and 'improper' elements; and all primary
mathematical operations refer only to one or the other of
these, as we have alrady explained in the previous section;
all propositions in the world of interested or significant
discourse in life can refer only to the worlds either of the
'pure' or the 'practical', which correspond to the improper
or proper references respectively in the language of modern
graphical mathematics, where symbols and figures coalesce.
The 'improper' element here is the verical reference and
the 'proper' the horizontal.

Verses 36 and 37 quoted below, arrive at a similar
generalization in resepct of all possible predications,
propositions or postulates. Causes and effects, relations
and relata, quantative and qualitative aspects - all are
covered, or meant to be covered, as so many particular
instances of sets or classes or categories by the terms
'same' and 'other' (sama and anya) as used by the Guru
and brought together into the same unified field of discourse
or knowledge-situation in these two verses.
--------------------------------------------------------
1. See Vedanta Revalued and Restated

This is done in just the same way as time and space dimensions
are brought under the same unified field in Einsteinian
mathematical physics. The normalized Absolute of the
wisdom context can be thought of in the same way as
mathematicians will abstract and generalize variables or
elements, proper or improper, to cover all contingencies,
necessities, probabilities or possibilities.

In the first of the total of seven verses from 36 to 42
(inclusive) the pure epistemological aspect is covered.
Then, taking two familiar predications known to the world
of discourse in common human life, the Guru establishes
a scheme of semantic correlation. Definitions and striking
examples follow. Within the scope of these seven verses
the Guru accomplishes, at one stroke, what otherwise
would have filled verbose volumes. The exposition is
crystal clear and would do credit to the best of academically
trained professors that I have known. We read:

"The powers of understanding are many; all of them under two sets
Such as the 'same' and the 'other' inclusively can be brought;
Merging into that form of 'other-sameness' of these,
To clarity of vision one should awake."
(Verse 36)

"To subdue, even somewhat, the obduracy of the 'other'
It is hard indeed without understanding's limitless power;
Even by such should one gain mastery over it and thus attain
Close access to Her who is discrimation's anti-sensous one."
(Verse 37)

These verses are clothed in the language of contemplation
and at the end of the second verse there is clear indication of the way
of contemplation.

The two aspects named, referring to the vertical 'same' (sama)
and the horizontal 'other' (anya) are further elaborated and
precisely defined with reference to familiar semantic examples as follows;

"What appraises manifold variety, the 'other' that is;
And the 'same' is whatever unitively shines on:
Thus grasping the situation above, into that state
Which yields sameness, melt and mix and erect sit."
(Verse 38)

Even here, a direction for the contemplative aspirant
to follow in his meditations is indicated. The masterly
semantic analysis is clarified more elaborately as follows:

"Following up further the said powers, a further bifurcation there is,
One of these is an attribute of the 'same' while the other
Qualifies the harsh 'other' that never detachment gains;
Thus making two kinds of each of these".
(Verse 39)

The recognition of the two axes of reference in these
verses is not at all difficult to see. The dynamism by which
both these axes come to have, on their plus sides, their
own respective specific aspects added on, as it were, as
when zero is added on to a number to enhance its value,
is indicated in the next verse as follow:

"On to the 'same' as on to the 'other' there constantly alight
Their respective specifying factors; although not proportionate,
Through the spinning phase of these two in all
All predictions whatsoever there are do come to be".
(Verse 40)

Not satisfied with the definitions of the two axes, and
indicating their possible respective specificatory factors,
the Guru in the next two verses goes on to give concrete
examples from the context of semantics. Commonsense
sanctions the truth of well-known expressions or vice-versa,
just as experiments or experience can support
conviction. Untenable or unsound thought cannot endure
through generations if it is not based on support even
from language, and conversely, what language has long
and generally sanctioned can be relied on to give validity
to otherwise subtle realities as the Purva Mimamsakas and
Sankara in his commentaries have largely relied upon.

The Guru uses this recognized method with full clarity
and advantage. Pure semeosis takes place in the vertical
axis as in the sentence "This is knowledge," and practi-
cal and pragmatical meanings run between the plus and
minus limits of the horizontal axis where there is a muli-
plicity of possible discrete interests spread out in the
world of the 'enjoyable.' The rest of the implications of
these two verses are sufficiently clear when they are read
side by side with our comments on them. (2)

"In 'This is a pot' the initial 'this' is the harsh
While the 'pot' is what makes its specific attribute;
For the mind with its myriad indra magic to come,
Understand, that 'this' is the basis of functioning."
(Verse 41)

"In 'This is knowledge' the initial 'this' is the 'same'
While its specifying factor is the cognitive consciousness;
For the mind and all else to be effaced for the good path to gain,
'This' it is that one should contemplate".
(Verse 42)
-----------------------------------------------------------
2, See One Hundred Verses of Self-Instruction

The last 'this' can be seen to refer to the bottom of
the vertical axis in which pure contemplative values live
and move. This pole, although negative in status like the square
root of minus-one in geometrical algebra, is the richest
of all poles or zones in consciousness generally and abstractly
understood. If any aspect of these very subtle discussions
is still unclear, further reading of the comments (2), in the light
of the mathematical structure of correlation we have developed
stage by stage in these pages, may be profitably relied upon by
the serious student.
--------------------------------------------------------------
2. Ibid

THE UNIVERSE OF CONTEMPLATIVE DISCOURSE

The word was with God and the word was God is
the way in which the central normative notion of the
Absolute is referred to in the Biblical context in terms
of the Universe of Discourse. The Verb, the Logos or the
Word and its meaning, thought of together semantically,
mark the mathematical core of the notion of the Absolute.

The Guru's own prayer recognizes this verity when
it says that, "The word we utter is even Thee" (Verse 7,
Daiva Dasakam). The Mandukya Upanishad too gives the
word 'AUM' the supreme position of representing the
Absolute completely without any remainder. That the
notion of the Absolute and the Universe of Discourse are
related to each other directly is thus a fully recognized
secret in the Hebrew, Greek, Hindu and the Guru contexts,
with all of which we are here concerned.

Sankara's philosophical speculations too lean largely
on the semantic polyvalence of words, as we have already
examined elsewhere in more than one context. (1) A
mathematically understandable schematic universe where
thoughts and their linguistic expression overlap or
coincide, as when names and forms coincide when we
say 'rose' and visualize it, is at the core of the notion
of the Absolute, when everything gross or inert and in
--------------------------------------------------------
1. Cf. Sections IV and V of the Vedanta Revalued and Restated

reality extraneous to the Absolute, comprising or
hiding it through degrees of opacity or ignorance, are
shorn from its pure luminous and transparent nature.
The veil can be thickly or thinly laid on but it is the degree
of veiling that makes for all the gradations or apparent
manifestation which are, in fact, extraneous to the notion
of the Absolute as such.

The Unified Field Theory of Einstein also reduces
all the elements, categories or factors of reality -
whether material or mental - to one homogeneous space-
time-continuum. This matrix is neither mental nor material,
but conforms to the requirements of a neutral monism
that has become acceptable even to positivists or
empiricists of the present day, not to speak of pragmatists
like William James. The Universe of Contemplative
Discourse is only a similar attempt to find a basic ground
for all significant thoughtsor words.

ONE-MANY, PART-WHOLE, BIG-SMALL
ARE ALL EXTRANEOUS

The world of mechanistic discourse should be first
distinguished from that of contemplative discourse. The
latter is schematic, selective and subjective, and excludes
all quantative attributes belonging to the horizontal mechanistic
world of brute events and inert things that are actual,
gross, raw, material, before any abstaction or generalization
of mathematical or philosophical thinking has
been applied to them. Commercial competative values
of the busy life of towns or shipyards where cranes load
and unload merchandise, are farthest removed from the calm
contemplative world where peace is the key word.

These aspects do exist within the scheme of the Self
as the Absolute; only they do not loom into rival values
of conflict or strife between man and man.

Sheer necessities might reduce even a contemplative to a compromise,
more or less, with the same mechanistic world in which
all men are obliged by absolute necessity to live. It is
the aim of the contemplative to orient his spirit in the
direction of pure verticalized values where conflicts tend
to become minimized till they are finally absorbed and
abolished by the highest or most crowning and all-inclusive
of human values, which is the Wisdom of the Absolute.

To distinguish these horizontal values in life and treat
them as of secondary importance is thus the only task
left for the contemplative. When all that is extraneous
has been detracted from the universe of discourse in
general we get a residual pure world of contemplative
discourse where thoughts can freely live and move.
The possibilities of thought thus to live are endless in
gradation or variety. All semeotics, syntactics and
pragmatics of language have in this universe a possibility
to live in an inner ordered fashion. The various words in
the dictionary find place either in the conceptual or the
perceptual half of this universe, the more positive being
conceptual in status. Such a pure mathematical space,
free from quantative implications, comes nearest to the
tensorial space known to modern mathematics.

When we find references to the space in the cavity
of the heart or in the orb of the Sun in the Upanishads,
we have to think in terms of this kind of space which
is neither big nor small, one nor many, and neither part
nor whole. Cartesian analytical geometry has a notion
of space, and the vectorial space that is now known to
the geometry of algebra is a further abstraction and
generalization of it.

If we proceed in the same direction of generalization and
abstraction so as to afford a frame of reference or unified field
for quantum mechanics or particle physics, or even to
accomodate the general or the limited theories of Einstein,
we come to a tensorially conceived space. If this idea is further
purified for contemplative purposes, we come to a structure
of space which belongs to the universe of discourse in the
contemplation of the Absolute. As man is the measure of all
things, this space is sometimes referred to in the Upanishads
as having a size proportionate to the thumb of each man (angusthamatra).

PERCEPTS AND CONCEPTS MEET FROM OPPOSITE POLES
IN THE UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE

Let us now think of a colour-solid along the lines we have
elaborated in our writings. The achromatic colours could
be located in a vertical axis, the top plus pole representing
the fully brialliant white or lesser tints, while the bottom is
its opposite, grading to the shade of fully dark black. Grey
occupies the centre of the solid, consisting of two
cones stuck together at their bases. On the surface of
the cones we can think of all shades or tints of different degrees of
saturation or brilliance graded upwards and spiralling centrally,
peripherally or downward through each of the specific
areas - giving room to each possible colour in graded fashion
and merging between the colours of the spectrum at the
peripheral circumference of the bases. Now the percepts,
being related to the senses given by actual objects seen or
otherwise sensed, would refer to the lower cone and all
possible shades would be representable there. The lighter
tints could be represented on the top cone in a similar spiral
succession, grading finally into the brilliance of the white
apex of the cone. Where the horizontal surfaces of the
bases of the two cones juxtaposed cut the vertical line
joining the two apexes of the cones, we can imagine a point
of origin where the grey colour is to be located.

Being achromatic it has no status as a surface quality but only
as an inner one like pure thoughts or apperceptions; while the
chromatic colours like red or green are more actual or
practical in their status in the structure, being also most
peripherally removed from the origin marked by the grey
point at the core of the total structural situation.

Now in order to give definiteness of structure to the
universe of contemplative discourse, we should think of
the white point or apex at the top of the upper cone as representing the
conceptual aspect of thought; while the perceptual is the
corresponding point at the bottom of the dark lower cone.
Concepts grade into mere names on the plus side of the total situation;
and percepts grade into pure intuitions of actuality on the minus
side . The universe of discourse thus gets a structural, schematic,
subjective, and selected frame of reference, which has its existence
in the core of the normative notion of the Absolute. The justifications
for all these statements have been made already in our
allied writings elsewhere, (4)

From the neutral point of origin or reference we can
imagine innumerable specificatory rays of cognition as
emanating in the centre of what we think of as the
core of the human power of understanding; just in the
same way as we can visualize rays from a central Sun -
whether we should think of such a Sun within us or without
us, schematically, nominally or both. This distinction of
inside and outside should not arise in respect of pure
consciousness, strictly speaking, although by habit
we sometimes speak of consciousness as being inner or outer.
----------------------------------------------------------
4. See Wisdom's Frame of Reference

All we have to distinguish here is that the pure immanent-
cum-transcendental world of existence,subsistence or
value ranges from the bottom of the vertical axis to the
top, and that the practical relativistic horizontal factors
range peripherally in sets in graded saturation, tint,
shade or brilliance. The horizontal reference is to actual
objects, whether thought of as universal concretes or
discrete individual entities given to the senses. The dialectics
of the one-and-the-many can alone resolve this final
vestige of paradox.

DUALITIES MERGE IN THE NEUTRALITY OF
THE ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS

All semeotic processes take place within the
consciousness of man. Communicability of language
presupposes at least this truth. Thoughts and the language
that expresses them correspond with a one-one parity
between them - thoughts being more definite than words,
which can be arbitrary and may differ with each
vernacular. One name can refer to many discrete
objective entities, and many discrete entities given to the
senses objectively can all be inclusively thought of as
having the form of one meaning-content which would
include all the particulars together.

In the world of contemplative discourse and the
thoughts that underly all possible discourses, we have
thus the possibility of all percepts and concepts, names
or forms, being inclusively comprosed schematically and
nominalistically, at least in the general consciousness of
the absolute contemplative self. This is a high secret
which the Guru-philosophy has underlined. Without
recognizing this, most of the verses under review will
remain a closed book to students of the philosphy intended
by the Guru.

At the risk of possible repetition let us quote here
two significant verses which underline this basic verity:
that all events that belong to the world of contemplative
thought and its resultant discourse have their basis in
the common ground or amorphous matrix of contemplative
consciousness, which itself can remain formless or even
crypto-crystalline in respect of the thought-elements
contained in the matrix.

"As out of knowledge sparks of fire innumerable arise
Asserting the being of non-being so as to make the world emerge;
Know that outside of knowledge not a thing exists;
Such knowing unitive awareness yields." (Verse 89)

Even anterior to this the Guru has gone so far as
to say that this is a secret most people cannot get:

"Of one thing there can be many as in many objects
One single meaning can reside; by such knowlege we can know
Consciousness as comprising all, differencelessly without any reaminder;
This ultimate secret, however, is not given for all to know." (Verse 73)

After thus locating all semantic events or relation-
relata consciousness within the matrix or common
ground of general consciousness, which itself knows no
specificity, the Guru in a sequence of verses elaborates
masterfully the content and structural perculiarities of
the universe of contemplative discourse.

When studied side by side with a similar series found
in the Guru's more mature and more systematically
conceived work on the Garland of Visions of the Absolute
(Darsana Mala) we can see in this analysis one of the
major contributions made by the Guru to Advaita Vedantic
speculation.

What Jaimini and Badarayana, and after them Sankara, tacitly took
for granted in their grand visions, Narayana Guru has here laid bare
more explicitly, both in its analytical and synthetical implications
at once. The position this discussion occupies in the later work referred
to above further guarantees, by its nearest approximation to
the very central position of the symmetrically-conceived series,
that the Guru meant it as a kind of key-stone to the whole of the
speculative superstructure that he had in mind in the monumental
vision implied in his work as a whole.

Consciousness itself has here a subjective and an
objective aspect. The most intimate equation between
them is established in the 50th verse of the Guru's
Darsana Mala, (2) in the actual words of the maha vakya
(great dictum) known to Vedanta as "aum tat sat" in
that most central of verses. This circumstance must be
noted by the careful and critical student here to help him
to view the secret here alluded to with all the importance
that the Guru himself meant to give it at the centre of his
later work. Heee too in the Atmopadesa Satakam, the
series beginning from Verse 36 to 42, both inclusive,
is perhaps the longest section of the series in which a
single philosophical aspect is consistently developed by
the Guru.
------------------------------------------------------
2. yad bhasyate tad adhyastam anadhyastam na bhasyate
yad adhyastam tad asad apy anadhyastam sad eva tat.

What is object of consciousness, that is conditioned;
What is unconditioned, that is not object of consciousness,
What is conditioned is non-existent
But what is unconditioned, itself THE EXISTENT IS THAT.

The Guru's major contribution to Vedanta may be said
to consist of this analysis of the content of the
universe of contemplative or absolutist discourse, in which
he gives equal place to the pure and the practical, the
phenomenal and the noumenal, and a due place to the
relative and the absolute, in a globally, unitively, and
neutrally conceived normative notion of the Absolute.

It is also to be noted that a one-one correspondence
is implied here between the self and the non-self aspects.
In our study of the later work, the Darsana Mala, these
implications have been made clearer. (3) In chapter V of this
work, the broad lines of the structure of the universe of
contemplative discourse is kept in mind by the Guru. It
gives to speculation that scientific status so desirable to
Vedanta, which at present is so much steeped in a lingua
mystica of its own, both esoteric and cryptic in its secrecy.

Verse 36 of the Atmopadesa Satakam distinguishes the
two structural reference axes which we called the vertical
and the horizontal, as corresponding to the 'same' and the
'other' respectively. The point of intersection marks the
origin of these mutually exclusive aspects that diverge as
we go further from their common point of junction within
the neutral contemplative Self, here referred to as 'other-
sameness'. Except for the Cartesian coordinates that we
have introduced for the sake of precise mathematical
reference, the implications of the two axes and their
common point of participation in the Self are quite evident.
The verse reads:

"The powers of understanding are many; all of them under two sets:
The 'same' and the 'other' conclusively can be brought,
Merging into that form of 'other-sameness' of these,
To clarity of vision one should awake".

-------------------------------------------------------------
3. Cf. An Integrated Science of the Absolute.

In Verse 37 the contemplative implications of these
two axes of reference are indicated for the guidance of
the spiritual aspirant or the contemplative who seeks
full self-realization. The horizontal world of values is
not favourable to spirituality or contemplative progress
because of the ignorance of which it is the product, The
rest of the verse is sufficiently clear:

"To subdue even somewhat the obduracy of the 'other'
Is hard indeed without understanding's infinite power;
Even by such should one gain mastery over it and thus attain
Close access to Her who is discrimination's anti- sensuous one."

In Verse 38 the Guru gives very precise definitions
distinguishing the horizontal which has multiplicity from
the vertical which is unitive in outlook. In any set of
entities, whether perceptually or conceptually understood,
the central verity is one, and its semantic implications on
the side of the peripheral are many. Unitive factors are
ranged along the vertical axis of the total knowledge-
situation, and the multiple aspects along the horizontal.
To take an example dear to the context of Platonism,
beautiful things are horizontal while Beauty with a
capital letter is vertical. The same holds true values such as
Truth, Justice, etc. God is one and creation many.

The verse reads:
"What appraises manifold variety the 'other' that is;
And the 'same' is whtever unitively shines on:
Thus grasping the situation above, into that state
Which yields 'sameness', melt and mix and erect sit."

In Verse 39 the implications of the two main references
or correlates are further elaborated into their respective plus
and minus aspects, the more virtual and universal remaining
negative and the more actual and particular being brought
under the specific (visesa). Each of the two main aspects
thus become subdivided into two.
In terms of the Cartesian correlates that we have been
adopting to clarify linguistic complications, each of these
axes can be understood to have its own plus and minus
aspects, according to the convention already acceptable
to mathematicians who deal with complex numbers. Except
for the epithet "never-to-detachment-gains" applied to
the horizontal plus aspect of the universe of contemplative
discourse, all else is clear in the verse which reads as
follows;

"Following up further the said powers a further bifurcation there is,
One of these is an attribute of the 'same' while the other
Qualifies the harsh 'other' that never-to-detachment-gains;
Thus making two kinds of each of these."

In Verse 40 all predications possible in the manifested
world of objects, or in the thought world proper to metaphysics,
are inclusively and integrally brought under the
purview of the two main references with the specificatory
factors belonging to each of them. There could be a
disproportionate blending of the four elements of the total
situation by constant alternating circulation to which all events
in consciousness are subject.

Consciousness is a sum-total emergent, the resultant of a process
of alternating circulation of thought - whether such an alternation takes
place within the span of a split second, or takes its own
proper unit of duration, like the rhythm of a heartbeat or a respiratory cycle.
There is also a subtle osmotic interchange of essences, substances of existent factors,
conforming to the four-fold pattern in which different
proportions come into play to determine the world that is
mesured out objectively as opposed to the Self which is
the measure itself. This bold and sweeping generalization
about the emergence of all phenomenal aspects of the
world from the inner structural elements which have been
analyzed side by side, is perhaps a major contribution of
the Guru to Vedantic speculation, never before so clearly
analyzed. Verse 40 reads:

"On to the 'same' and to the the 'other', there constantly alight
Their respective specifying factors; although not proportionate.
Through the spinning phase of these two in all,
All predictions whatsoever there are do come to be."

Verse 41 and 42, the remaining two verses of this
section, give clear definitions of the notions so far indicated
in respect of the four divisions in all. We know that the
Samkhya philosophy had a scheme based on the theory
of the three gunas with Nature and Spirit (prakrti and
purusa) as its two poles. When the three gunas attained
equilibrium, peace or equanimity would be attained.
Improving on such a scheme, the two Mimamsakas had each
their own scheme based more on the semantic polyvalence
of the word.

Jaimini and Badarayana both relied on semantics for arriving
at the notion of the Absolute, although in the former school this
notion was only implicit to the context of the Vedic ritualism.

We have elsewhere(4) devoted sections to this aspect
and referred to vacyartha (literal meaning) and laksanartha
(indirect figurative analogical meaning), on which Sankara
himelf, although an anti-ritualistic Vedantin, largely relied.
To analyze the universe of contemplative discourse to
reveal the structure of the Absolute, therefore, is not a
new departure which the Guru here adopts for the first
time in Vedantic speculation. To reject the extraneous
and adopt the intrinsic in interpreting the great dicta of
the Vedanta such as tat tvam asi (That Thou Art), etc.,
by the method of bhaga-tyaga (rejection of parts), belongs
properly to the methodology of Vedantic speculation. The
Guru has definately improved on these ancient methods
by giving here a complete structural analysis of the
universe of contemplative discourse with every aspect
fully defined. He gives indications also of how the contemplative
should adapt or adjust his meditation in order
to establish himself in the wisdom of the union with the
Absolute for spiritual progress, liberation or salvation.
These two remaining verses bear comparison with Verses
2, 3 and 4 of Bhana Darsana in Section V of the Darsana
Mala of the Guru (5). Verses 41 and 42 of the Atmopadesa
Satakam read:
-----------------------------------------------------------
4. See Vedanta Revalued and Restated
5. sthulam sukshman karanam ca turyam cedi caturvidham
bhanasrayam hi tannama bhanasya pyupacaryate (2)

drsyatam iha kayo'ham gha oyam iti dysyate
sthulam a s y tya yad bhanam sthulam tad iti manyate (3)

atra kayo ghara iti bhanam yat tad visiyate
tathaham aya iti yat samanyam iti ca smytam (4)

"In "This is pot" the initial 'this' is the harsh
While the 'pot' is what makes its specific attribute;
For the mind with its myriad Indra-magic to come,
Understand that 'this' is the basis of functioning."
(Verse 41)

"In "This is knowledge" the initial 'this' is the 'same'
While its specifying factor is the congnitive consciousness;
For the mind and all else to be effected for the good path to gain,
'This' it is that one should contemplate". (Verse 42)

It would be profitable to note here that the mind in
the last verse here belongs to the harsh or 'other' aspect
and is therefore one that is to be assigned to the limbo of
the horizontal and the absurd in the universe of contemplation.
Full contemplation is thus referred to with
complete definitions of terms used and full directions
given to the contemplative for his guidance to attain
the goal in atma vidya or the Science of the
Self which is the same as the Science of the Absolute.
------------------------------------------------------------

"As the concrete, the subtle, the causal and the Absolute,
Basic Consciousness (is) of four kinds
So these names even of basic Consciousness
Are also applicable to consciousness." (Verse 2)

"Lo here "I am the body, this is the pot"
Depending on the concrete
What looms as consciousness
That is known as the concrete." (Verse 3)

"Here what is the consciousness of the body
And the pot, that is the specific
Likewise too, what is (the consciousness) of "I" or "this"
Is known as the generic." (Verse 4)

For purposes of the universe of contemplation, the Self, the
Absolute and Supreme Felicity through contemplation are
all here treated as interchangeable terms having reference
to the same normative notion of the Absolute.

The Guru himself has underlined this interchangeability
in Verse 5 of the 8th Chapter on bhakti of his later work,
the Darsana Mala.(6) The vertical minus zone thus stands
revealed as the richest of the aspects of the Absolute
known to contemplation accoding to the universe of
discourse that has been structurally analyzed above.
----------------------------------------------------------
6. ananda atma brahmeti namaitasyaiva tanyate
iti miscita dhiryasya sa bhakta iti visrutah.

"Bliss, the Self and the Absolute
Are said to be names of this alone.
In whom there is such awareness
He as contemplative is well known."

VII

THE METHODOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY IN GURU-PHILOSOPHY

The Guru-Philosophy is not argumentative or polemical
in its approach to its problems. It is a simplified way
suited to higher critical as well as intuitive speculation
on contemplative values. It is full of precise definitions
or definite intuitive personal experiences of the mystic
contemplative.

At the same time a certain apodictic certitude is
given to the statement made, as it were, from the side
of the a priori by appeal to the common experience known
to all, meant as general knowledge enshrined in the form of
collective experience that can safely be taken for granted.
Proverbs and common linguistic usage are seen to be
employed to serve the purposes of proof in the arguments
of Sankara and in the Upanishads which are his models
in this matter. Proverbially known truths have almost
an experimental value in that they constitute the
experience of mankind, lasting through the tests or
corrections possible through generations of usage.

When we say that "the proof of the pudding is in the
eating thereof", we rely on such a simple methodology
that, instead of questioning such a statement, most people
smile assentingly and remain silent. This is because
there is nothing to be argumentative or polemical about.
The certitude is like hitting the nail on the head and
is characterized as downright or apodictic.

Two aspects of reality have merely to be juxtaposed to induce
the conviction which silences further questionings or
doubts. They tally or become evident together, the
one lending certitude to the other, so that the point is made
straightaway.

It is only where experience is weak that an elaborate
experiment under laboratory conditions becomes necessary.
Scientific problems, mostly in connection with the
manufacture of articles of trade, may need such
elaborate arrangements. But for the main problems of
life which have to be faced by all men or women, young
or old, there is available a large body of accepted opinion
which, when weeded out of rank superstitions, will yield
support to verities, particularly those of a general and
abstract nature with which metaphysical speculation has
most to do.

Just as grass need not be cultivated in a garden or
nursery, there is common experience to support many
philosophical truths which are significant for wise or
intelligent living for man seeking his happiness freely.
Eristic, sophistic, syllogistic or propositional calculi, in
which induction and deduction move haltingly up or down
the scale of generalities or particularities, through middle
terms and arbitrary premises, are only important when rival
relativistic values tear man's mind this way or that at once,
and even at that they are highly questionable. Often there
are too many items to be taken into account and
sometimes the opposite is also possible by, as
they say, "the same token". In the course of higher
contemplative reasoning where such rival values of everyday
life do not loom large, the polemics of logic or mere
ratiocination do not have to play an important part.

As with Spinoza's approach to speculation, which
resembles Euclid's in its method of axioms, postulates, etc.,
proved through theorems or corollaries certified by
apodictic verities; speculation with the Guru, when not
directly based on the intuition of the man of higher contemplation,
is supported by the homeliest of analogies or examples
which already exist and are available to any linguistic tradition.

That a child mistakes a mirror image for reality, or
treats her doll as if it had life, are examples of such found
in the Darsana Mala of the Guru, side by side with
generalizations made directly from mystic experiences.
Mistaking a rope for a snake or a post for a ghost are
classical analogies of the same order used in Indian speculation.
One is meant to clarify, justify, or to give to the
other whatever semblance of support might be possible.
The certitude is not the effect exclusively of the
one or the other but is a natural emergent resultant of both
together, as in the case of the theorem of Pythagoras which
can be proved in two ways, i.e., by actually cutting and
pasting the figures, or algebraically by axioms and riders as
the teacher will demonstrate on the blackboard. Analogies certify
definitions and vice versa. No more verification is called
for nor is possible.

Guru-philosophy is critically convincing by the mere
bringing together of the visible and the intelligible aspects.
This is the secret of the methodology of the Guru, which
necessarily presupposes an absolutist epistemology of its
own which is inseperable from it. The axiomatic and the
demonstrable aspects meet here. When we add to these
two factors the final regulative requirement that for any truth
to be true it must also be of value-significance in human life,
the three factors required for the scientific certitude of any vision
of truth will be sufficiently guaranteed.

In the particular work we are presenting in this series
of introductory essays, the Atmopadesa Satakam, a strict
academic treatment is still not respected by the Guru and,
as he indicates in the very first verse, he is content to
present his contemplative mystical experiences with either
definitions or a critical analysis of topics, in a manner
of thinking aloud; rather than in the style required for
convincing an opponent. Instructions and hints to the
contemplative are strewn here and there in the text . His
way is to take the disciple by the hand and lead him
upward step by step, as Virgil did to Dante in the Divine
Comedy. The guesswork is primarily meant to be an aid
to the contemplative aspirant in Self-knowledge rather
than as a regular textbook on the subject. It is, however,
rich in Guru-philosophy proper.

USUAL LOGIC FALLS SHORT OF PARADOX AND
DOES NOT ATTAIN THEABSOLUTE

Intuition, and not logic, can attain the Absolute. Even
within the scope of logic proper there are two main kinds,
viz.: one which recognizes contradiction and excludes the
middle ground; and that which is dialectical in approach,
which proceeds by cancelling out thesis and antithesis
into a central synthesis. The former moves horizontally,
the latter vertically. Bain and Brdley represent these rival
schools respectively. Aristotelian syllogistic logic has its
place in the former kind of textbooks where the forms of
syllogisms reveal themselves with their four alternatives of
logical form. Logical form opens the door to some
mysterious element at the basis of all reasoning, whether
inductive or deductive. That they fall within four groups,
and four only, must have something to do with the structure
of thought itself, fundamentally understood.

Syllogisms ascend or descend through middle terms from
major to minor premises: deductively to more particular,
or inductively to more general judgments, in this four-fold
fundamental fashion. By playing with premises and
inferences of different kinds an endless alternation or
variety of conclusions become possible.

The status of syllogistic reasoning is thus quest-
tionable. Its results do not yield to any degree a firm
ground of certitude but get lost in the maze of 'ifs' and
'buts', of 'either-or' or 'neither-nor', 'both' or 'none' etc.
- all of which come within the range of the possibilites
of the propositional calculus. The mechanistic structure
of thinking in the world of necessities and contingencies,
with multiple and rival claims for truth at a given time,
is the region or domain in which such reasoning is called
upon to solve problems mostly of minor incidental
significance in life. Fundamental questions lie outside
its scope. Just as a mechanic has to decide which part
of a machine has to be pressed down or raised up, or
loosened or tightened in repairing it, these are intricate
interdependent clusters of cause-effect propositions to be
tackled alternatively or in graded steps, to set right
relative aspects of a situation. The total situation
itself is beyond the scope of such piecemeal reasonings.
Intuition or dialectics deal with more important aspects
of human understanding and help in problems of life-and
-death significance.

In common with Vedantic methodology, Guru-
philosophy bypasses the usual piecemeal instruments of
reasoning in favour of overall ones of a truly philosophical
order.

Some of the perculiarities of such a methodology which
presupposes its own epistemology can be studied
under the heads of: (1) non-being as a negative something
(abhava), (2) primacy of cause over effect (sat-karana),
(3) primacy of material cause over incidental or efficient
cause (upadana karana), (4) the dialectical relation
(samanvaya or ubhayalinga), (5) admitting the principle of
indeterminism (anirvacaniya), (6) treating immanent
and transcendent as belonging to a homogeneous
epistemologically neutral context (samanadhikaranatva),
(7) viewing reality without seeing subject, object and
meaning disjunctly, i.e. without accepting triputi, and (8)
including value (priya) as a final regulative reference for
fact or truth as the third, with asti (existing) and bhati
(looming in consciousness). This is the same as viewing
the Absolute in its entirety as Existence, Subsistence and
Value, i.e. sat, cit, ananda. These several items of
methodological and epistemological importance in Guru-
philosophy are common to Vedanta in general. Even a
passing explanation of each of these would take us
beyond the scope of our present enquiry.

The elements of pure reasoning employed in Guru-
philosophy are inseperable from their own presuppositions
and implications in general epistemology and axiology,
many of which we have already covered in the present
series or in Vedanta Revalued and Restated. A more
systematic and complete discussion of these items is
moreover to be covered in a future work entitled An
Integrated Science of the Absolute based on the Darsana
Mala (Garland of Visions of the Absolute) of the Guru. Here
our object being limited to presenting preliminarily the kind
of intuitive reasoning that the Guru adopts, which mainly
consists of definitions and explicatory analogies, it will
serve our purpose to show at least the kinds of reasoning
he did not specialize in.

They could be referred to as belonging to pramana sastra
(the science of valid reasoning),

THE COMPUTABILITY OR MEASURABILITY OF
THE ABSOLUTE IS SUMMARILY REJECTED

The measures applied in the validity of truth in
Vedanta are six: viz.: pratyaksa (what is directly given to
the senses); anumana (inference); arthapatti (hypothetical
postulation); anupalabdhi (impossibility of a conclusion);
upamana (analogy); and sabda or agama (scriptural
assent). In his Darsana Mala the Guru mentions only
three for the purposes of his methodology. These are
perceptual (pratyaksa), inferential (anumiti), and knowing
through anaology (upamiti). With him subjective experience which
is verified by the last-mentioned measure of vailidity (analogy)
takes the place of sabda, or the authority of the scriptures
accepted dogmatically. The hypothetical inductive approach
is omitted by the Guru as ambiguous. All pramanas
(measures of validity) which are ratiocinative in status are
discredited as being of no use as the final means of knowledge
of the Absolute which is behind the paradox of maya's
uncertainty principle. He states this unequivocally in
Verse 94 of the Atmopadesa Satakam, which should be read
with Verse 32 quoted at the end of this essay. Verse 94
reads:

"This which presents itself, as a mixture of the world
And what is real; is a great iniquity indeed;
Indeterminate and unknowable to word or thought,
How could valid reasoning move therein?"

Sankara comes to a similar conclusion at the end of his
commentary of the first four verses of the Brahma Sutras.

We have to invert the course of philosophical specualtion
and take an inner view of flowing truth as a whole as
Bergson would put the same difficulty in An Introduction to
Metaphysics. Christian mysticism also knows of the via
negationis which is the negative way of approach of neti
neti recommended by the Upanishads and adopted by the
methodology of Vedanta. The effect is false and the cause
which is, as it were, anterior to it, more real. This way is
the sat-karana vada, the method of giving primacy to cause
over effect, and thus progressively cancelling them out
backwards. Backward sublation of effects in reverse
series till an epistemologically revised ontology arises by
double negation, from the level of immanent realities to
transcendent ones where general ideas prevail by double
assertion, through dialectical intuition consisting of canceling
counterparts into the unity of absolutist status - such is the
complex and complete cycle that Vedantic methodology
adopts in its reasoning process.

At the core of the total knowledge-situation is the
principle of pure apperception as known in Herbartian
psychology, from which point the process of double assertion
takes over, and finally brings general concepts to refer
to the core of the central normative apperceptive Self.
Thought passes through grades of richness or indigence in
such a course: sometimes more transparent, sometimes
opaque, sometimes dark-splendid or at other times fully
self-luminous- according to its position in the alternating
process propagated like quantum pulsations in the atom
or unit-wave particles. Mystic experience alone can
confirm the verity on such matters, just the same way as
the physicist has to rely on observation as the final arbiter.
The experience of the mystic and the experience of the
physicist belong to opposite extremities of the same total
knowledge-situation.

Possibilites and probabilites coexist on a neutral ground here,
one lending certitude to the other.

AXIOMATIC AND EXPERIMENTAL CERTITUDE

Scientific certitude can reside with equal force at two
poles of the total knowledge-situation. Metaphysics fixes
its faith on axiomatic a priori theoretical certitudes given
to the experience of the race or what is given to rare
philosphers who have fully benefitted by the heritage
or experience of the contemplative philosophical insight
of the race through eternal years. As Homo Sapiens, man
is born with a right to be wise if not perverted therefrom.
General ideas thus forming the human heritage give us a
frame of reference for the guidance of speculation. Just
as it is difficult for a mariner to guide himself easily if
latitudes and longitudes are omited from a map; it will
not be easy for the reader who has some other
loosely coherent scheme to follow the line
of thought that the Guru develops in his writings, if the
total knowledge-situation with the two opposite poles,
which we have just referred to, is ignored.

Let us , for example, take Verse 90 of the Atmopadesa
Satakam, where reality, based on the experience of the
race, theoretically vouches for a world-order called rtam
which, with its opposite anrtam, are brought to bear upon
the fundamental notion of existence in the observational
sense - which latter is to be distinguished as coming under
sat (existence). Sat may be said to be physical in origin
and anrtam its metaphysical counterpart. Sat would be a
kind of essential existence while rtam would be an
operationally valid existence. There is running through
both these orders of truth or reality the same common
principle of verity.

The reader unfamiliar with the different elusive connotations
of the words sat and rtam in this verse would find it helpful to
keep to the structural plan of the total knowledge-situation in
order to follow the two-sided implications of the scheme in
the mind of the Guru. Verse 90 reads:

"What has no basis in reality (anrtam) can never hide what exists:
Experience vouches for this, asserting the reality
Of what exists, at every step: by Existence (sat) all is here enveloped
The body and such effects have been made up of Existence."

A block of marble rid of what is extraneous makes
for its value as well as its existence as a piece of sculpture.
There is assertion of truth on one side of existence, which is
complemented on the other by the non-contradicion of
what inheres in the world-order. These together give us
a vertical axis in which at every level there is pure Existence,
Subsistence and Value. The Bhagavad Gita too
makes a similar assertion in XVII, 26. Vertically existence
prevails, and horizontally the breezes of phenomenal unreality,
uncertainty or indeterminism blow, giving rise to
an interplay of possibilites and probabilities. The general
value-subsistent and existent content of sat is not in reality
affected by the hierarchy of falsehood's waftings to
abolish truth.

In Verse 76 of the series this same picture is
brought out more graphically by the Guru as a process by
using the analogy of a well in which gusts of wind
continuously waft in sand. Both ascending and descending
dialectical reasonings meet from opposite poles of the
total situation to give one and the same reality. The reality
of the one is proved by the other. By full apperception
one coincides with the other.

100

Such are some of the methoological and episemological secrets
of a schematically unified Guru-philosphy.

APPERCEPTION RESIDES AT THE CORE

If for the purposes of clear visualization schematically
understood, for any man at any time and place, we divide the
totality of the content of knowledge into two halves
by a horizontal line passing through the centre as a
diameter dividing the circle representing such a knowledge-
situation, giving a top and a bottom half; we can visualize
the content of consciousness into two different divisions.
The top half would contain 'conceptual' relations or
relata, and the bottom half would contain their 'perceptual'
counterparts which have a one-one correspondence to
the conceptual elements. To give a familiar example,
there is a rose that that is conceptual and one that is perceptual.
The latter is more directly related to the actual rose, while
the concept of the rose has its reference to a nominal rose
which resides in the pole of abstract imaginings of which
the human mind is capable.

In other words, concepts are nearer to 'names' while
percepts are nearer to 'forms'. These two divisions that
cover all relations or relata possible of being contained in
human consciousness, schematically generalized and
understood for purposes of semantic clarity, interact in the
form of apperceptions. There all conceptual or perceptual
accentuations or slants in thought are cancelled out and
absorbed in neutral terms. Apodicticity resides here.
According to the methodology and epistemology of the
reasoning employed in Guru-philosophy, certitude results
when this kind of union or fusing from opposite poles
takes place.

101

Although this way of looking at the result of
contemplation is developed in different contexts of the
writings of the Guru, it is in the following verse of the
Atmopadesa Satakam that this truth is clearly stated:

"This which is non-distinct from knowledge, then knowing which knowledge
Straightaway, here there is none other to know
As any ultimate knowing beyond; such the supreme secret
Of the most informed of men; who is there to know?"
(Verse 63)

In the name of orthodoxy or heterodoxy men are used
to treating the perceptual and the conceptual aspects of
knowing as disjunct or dualistic. Both the alternative
lopsided positions are wrong. At the core of the total
knowledge-situation, direct apperception makes it possible
for knowledge to be known without ratiocinative
effort or ascetic tortures. Knowing one aspect in terms
of the other in the neutrality of unitive fusion between
them, is the supreme secret pointed out. One of hese
aspects proves the other. Such is the sectret of reasoning
in the Guru-philosophy.

When read together with another verse in the series
where the same is referred to from the standpoint of a
'thing-in-itself' rather than in terms of the apperception
of two aspects coming together, we get a further clarification
of the central unitive nomative notion of the Absolute
proper to Guru-philosophy. This other verse
refutes the possibility of separate realities in the world
of the 'intelligibles' as in Plato; as opposed to the world of
'entelechies' originating in prime matter ontologically
as in Aristotle. The central meeting point is the unitive
factor where the notion of the Absolute is proved by
itself.

102

Verse 20 reads:

"Another reality this world can have none; contrary assertions
Made by men in the world, lack understanding all;
Although an ignoramus could mistake it for a reptile
Could a flower garland beneficial ever a snake become?"

This 'thing'in'itself' is not known by syllogistic
ratiocination but is to be appraised directly by the tallying
of its two possible epistemological counterparts: one of which
is perceptual, agreeing with the other which is conceptual.

A SCIENTIFIC EPISTEMOLOGY IS NEUTRAL TO
SCEPTICISM AND BELIEF

Guru-philosophy accepts the broad outlines of
Vedantic epistemology inasmuch as it does not rely wholly
on the pramana sastra (the science of valid measures of
reason), while recognizing its findings in a general overall
fashion. The man of uhapoha (dialectical intuition) is
the proper adhikari (qualified or fit man) to unravel the
secrets of atma-vidya or the Science of the Self, i.e.,
Vedanta. This is categorically stated by Sankara in his
Vivekacudamani (Crest-Jewel of Discrimination) in Verse
16. (2)

All the five pramanas are respected only to bring into
relief the uncertaintly principle of maya or anirvacaniya
hiding reality paradoxically at its very epistemological
core. Sankara, while voting for the validity of the
pratyaksa (observable evidence) tends to emphasise the
sabda pramana (the validity of the a priori knowledge
implicitly contained in the scriptures).
---------------------------------------------------------
2. "The superior man of wisdom, well versed and fully socialized
in dialectical intuitive understanding (uha poha) where analogy and
its subject are involved, is one qualified for Self-knowledge."

103

He tends to think of the Hindu scriptures more particularly than any
other scriptures and, to this extent tends to be non-universal
in his outlook, though with natural excuse.

The five pramanas (measures of what is valid) are
revised and restated for Vedantic purposes in the Vedanta
Paribhasa, a recognized textbook for determining the
accepted position of Vedanta in this respect. This work,
attributed to Dharmaraja Adhvarin, goes into the matter
thoroughly. It gives to the pratyaksa (observables)
sufficient validity to let it remain consistently homogeneous
with an overall epistemological scheme in which all such
valid measures of reasoning enjoy equality of status
under the aegis of the master notion of the Absolute.

To a scientific epistemologist who tends to give more
importance to observables than to mere scriptures which
only believers tend to extol, there is, in traditional Vedanta
as it is actually handled by its protagonists at present, a
touch of orthodoxy in favour of the believer in closed
scriptures like the Hindu Vedas. Static and closed
aspects tend to be treated more favourably by them than
the fully open Upanishadic outlook which does not
support any static religious ideas.

In revising and correcting this assymetry and giving
to Advaita a fuller scientific status, the Guru replaces
arthapatti (postulation) and agama (the Vedas and other
sastras treated vaguely together) by the third pramana
referred to in his Darsana Mala in Section VII, Verse 8,
by an inclusive pramana (measure of valid truth) based
on analogy which he calls upamiti (knowing by analogy).
The language of analogy, parables or protolinguistic
representations is widely used in all the scriptures of the
world for dealing with a priori aspects of truth.
Mythology arises from the free use of such literary devices.

104

Mathematics deals with the same a priori through axioms
or their corollories, supplemented by structural verifications
when possible as in the quantum and relativistic theories of
the present day.

The mathematically revised use of such analogical
language has not yet taken its full place in scientific
epistemology, although thinkers like Eddington have
initiated such an approach. (3)

Such attempts, however, remain still at a tentative
stage. This will be sufficiently evident from what
Eddington writes on page 88:

"Even in relativity theory which deals with the Absolute
(in a somewhat limited sense) we continually hark back to the
relative to examine how our results will appear in the experience
of an individual observer."

It goes without saying, therefore, that the selective subjectivism
and structuralism that Eddington introduced into the philosphy
of science needs more revision and adaptation to overcome its
tentative status at present.

Vedanta on the other hand has to shed its tendency
to adhere to closed, static, traditional scriptures and regain
a normality vis-a-vis other scriptures of the world, to
become universal, dynamic and open - as a scientific
epistemology would require. The revisions of the Guru
and his neutrality between scepticism and belief, or as
between the a priori and the posteriori, give to it that
very normative scientific status that at once puts his
metaphysical speculation on a par with that of physics.
------------------------------------------------------
3. Cf. Chapters V and VI, The Philosophy of Physical Science,
by A.E.Eddington, Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press,
1958.

105

As we cannot afford to elaborate these aspects except
through a fuller treatise, we shall not linger here longer
for the present. In the projected work on the Guru's
Darsana Mala we shall have another occasion in which
we shall go into the same question somewhat more
thoroughly.(4)

There are four verses in the present series of a
hundred that we are more directly concerned with
in the present series of essays, which we shall be content,
in this concluding study, just to quote with hardly any
comment. A careful scrutiny of these verses will reveal
the neutral normative nature of the position that the Guru
maintains in his attitude which he intends to be fully universal
and scientific, neither taking the side of the believer
nor the sceptic, the orthodox or the heterodox of any
traditional context of any time or any part of the world. It is
here that Guru-philosphy excels in being fully scientific.
Verses 30 to 32 of the Atmopadesa Satakam read as follows:

"The inert, no awareness can have, awareness no cogitation needs.
Nor does it hold discourse; knowing this awareness to be all,
And giving up all, transparency of spirit one gains,
And in bodily bonds confined, one suffers never more indeed!"
(Verse 30)

"Without prior experiencing, no inference there could be
And this has never before been experienced by the senses
The existence of the operator
Is never given to inferential thought."
(Verse 31)
-------------------------------------------------------------
4. Cf. An Integrated Science of the Absolute.

106

"It is not the operator but the operation that we know;
The said operator being ever unseen, the world and all else
Is nought, while lending it outer semblance of shape.
It is awareness alone that really remains."
(Verse 32)

The overall scheme into which such statements fit is
seen from the very next verse;

"Knowledge in order to know itself
The Earth and other manifestations became.
In inverted manner thus, now mounting, now changing over
Like a circulating fire-faggot, it keeps turning round."
(Verse 33)

It is thus an integrated picture of the process of higher
reasoning that emerges, instead of any piecemeal methodology
as in unit judgements or other ratiocinative elements of thought.

VIII

PROTOLINGUISTIC IMAGERY

The Unified Field Theory of Einstein was the atttempt of
a mastermind of our time to bring together under one
scheme the gravitational and the electromagnetic versions
of the universe, which were beginning to make the universe
fall apart into two distinct worlds, one where gravitation
operated and the other where electromagnetic waves were
given the status of reality.

The theory is said to be of epoch-making importance in
the world of physics. An equally needed synthesis of the
world of names and the world of forms, one referring to the
'intelligibles' and the other belonging to the context of the
'visibles' has equally held out a challenge to speculators and
metaphysicians through the ages, eluding their unified
integration in one and the same context in the world of
thought, whether physical or metaphysical.

CRYSTALLINE OR CRYPTIC LANGUAGE OF
PROFOUND PHILOSPHY

The more profound the philosphy the more cryptic
the language it is obliged to employ. Like mathematics,
where the main task is to create certitude by bringing
together two aspects of reality so that one throws light on
another, forming the limbs of an equation revealing a law,
a rule of logic or a truth of value - philosophy is obliged to
use sign or symbol. The limbs of any equation in mathematics
or physics significantly bring together two aspects in the
world of absolute discourse.

108

Experiments, experiences treasured in language in the form
of general ideas forming the heritage of humanity from antiquity
spoken of as Wisdom in general, are all based on understanding
one thing, which is a 'proper' element as known to modern
algebraic geometry, in terms of another which is its own
'improper' version. The interplay of proper and improper
elements is a matter that modern mathematics has discovered
and when analyzed finally consists of the same principle as
explaining a deep seated truth with convenient picture language,
analogies or parables.

The world of pure mathematics is the one that belongs
to the richest zone of the Absolute, which comprises the
objective universe, just as a corollary is covered by
a theorem, or as an axiom includes all possible postulates
that are particular instances of the same generalized fact
or principle.

If all men are mortal some men must be necessarily so
a priori. This is an epistemological verity which we shall
not linger here to discuss in detail. We have had occasion
to do so already in several contexts and we shall be doing
so again moe fully in pages to come in the next work
dedicated to the 'Science of the Absolute'. Here we want
to indicate only that when thought attains to white heat it
tends to become conceptualized into a compact correlated
whole in symbolic, cryptic or generalized language which
can be said to be the metalinguistic version of the truth
expressed in the light of the fundamentals of algebra as a
pure science.

When, on the contrary, thought descends negatively
into itself through a descending scale, imaginable in and
through the vertical axis wherein all thought must move up
or down in its dialectical or semiotic process, it tends to
become held together in a different way of globality or
unity which resembles more a geometrical crystal.

109

The crystal expresses the 'form' of things mathemaitcally,
while the axiomatic togetherness where, by lack of contrast
between general ideas, the obverse and converse of
propositions imply or presuppose each other, even when
understood by different class concepts that exist in the
language of any philosophy or religion, we have some
notion like that of divinity where all attributes fuse into
unity. By whatever name known, it means the same. If
we called the Sun the source of heat or the focal point
of all light rays, we mean only the Sun. All attributes
of the Sun can thus refer to the same object without inner
contradiction between any two of them.

HYPOSTATIC AND HIEROPHANTIC VERSIONS
OF REALITY

There is thus a hypostatic version of truth or reality
and a hierophantic version of the same at the other pole.
The latter is solid while the former is pure radiance at its
origin in the mind of man.

The "I" in man is shared by the other men who use
similarly the first personal pronoun in any part of the world
at any time. The "I" thus viewed comes to have a status
that is universal and eternal, which can be thought of
positively and algebraically as belonging to a class of all
classes as the "I", or more as a concrete Absolute given
to the schematization of pure geometry where, like a crystal,
it tends to be existent like a Monad of monads. Here the
characteristics are visible rather than intelligible. The
colour-solid thought of as a crystal independently of its
bigness or smallness would mark the negative second pole.
This is the existent ontological aspect of the same Absolute.

These matters cannot be finally discussed except in a
work devoted to such aspects as a whole, and we therefore
reserve the fuller elaboration of these ideas for a future work.

110

As we want at present to do is to review the Absolute here
summarily in the light of its structural, schematic, subjective
and selected implications and possibilities as belonging together.
We are interested here in just the 'togetherness' itself of all
possibilities and probabilities. These accord with a secret innate
structure where all relations and relata meet with polarities,
antinomies, contradictions, middle grounds included or excluded
as the case may be, in a correlated global whole. The human
mind can think of or visualize this in its best of speculative
or mystical moods. TheGuru Narayana was one of those
fully capable of soaring to such philosophical heights and
reaching such depths of mystical self-awareness. The few
examples from the Atmopadesa Satakam (One Hundred
Verses of Self-Instruction) below will throw light on the
nature of the immanent and transcendent worlds that came
within the scope of his meditations on the Absolute.

EXAMPLES OF VERSES WITH STRUCTURAL
IMPLICATIONS

(A) TRANSCENDING INITIAL PARADOX

As early as the eighth verse we meet with the complex
structural figure of speech that is used by the Guru as a
literary device with masterful advantage as in the Upanishads
to which we have made allusion elsewhere. Instead
of establishing one analogy at a time, the Guru is here
seen to treat a cluster of analogies together, as given to
his global intuitive mystical version. There is no evil of
mixed metaphor here because of the organic togetherness
implied.

111

Descartes makes use of the analogy of a complex
mechanized fountain found in a Royal Palace where he
lived in Sweden with a Princess of that country before
he died, to show the mechanistic nature of the human body,
and how the spirit is like the pressure of water acting at
different levels to produce the variety of phenomena
called life. Instead of understanding this as a figure of
speech, most critics of Descartes nicknamed him a dualist
who believed "monstrously" that the body was a machine.
The manner in which the bones articulated, unmistakably
reveal the mechanical character of the body.
The spirit of man is compared here to the vertical aspect
of the mobility of water which has its horizontal counterpart
in the body as such. The laws to which is submitted are mechanistic,
but this does not apply to the spirit, which is like the water
circulating inside the machine as in the mechanized
fountain. The water is meant to be the real; while the body
and its varied phenomena are horizontally derivable from it.
The élan vital, of which Bergson spoke much later, uses
another analogy. Philosophy has to rely either on the
schematic language of mathematics or on analogy to
express itself. When the Guru here employs complex
systems of organically conceived multiple analogies held
together by the unitive epistemological, methodological,
or even axiological principle, this would not be considered
as outside the scope of critical philosophy as understood
in modern times. The mechanistic aspects of life here
in the Guru's analogy of the gun is itself the means by
which the contemplative has to figuratively transcend
paradox and gain unitive vision. The duality inevitable to
initiate a discussion is abolished by itself as the gun is what
shoots down its own peripheral counterpart, the birds.

112

Verse 8 of the Atmopadesa Satakam reads:

"Eating of the fruits five, such as light,
Perched the while on a shot gun foul-smelling,
Ever in wily change, what can bring down is shreds these five,
Such a lucid inner form-wielding, the Self must brilliant become!"

The world of peripherally alluring values given to the
five senses and their corresponding objects, referred to as
the five fruits, is what is under reference here. The ends
and the means of transcending this world of peripheral
mechanistic values are here compared to a gun on which
such sensual values are perched. Contemplative life can
begin only by a radical attitude to this world of puerile
and evanescent values which are in a constant state of
whimsical and fanciful change through the variety of interests.
The tragic situation is pictured by making the birds sit on
a gun which is the same evil means to transcend all evil
in life, in the same way as a thorn could be used to remove
a thorn in the leg. Paradox is to be transcended in and
through itself. Such is the reasoning implied.

(B) THE DOUBLE DOMAIN OF CONCEPTS AND PERCEPTS

In Verse 17 we have another equally complex imagery
bringing the two-sided structural aspect of the content of
the Absolute, thought of in terms of Self-consciousness.
The analogy belonging to the world of mechanics and
sense pleasures as such, gives place here to that of a
lamp, which suits contemplative life better for the next
step in the direction of more non-dualistically conceived
self-introspection.

113

We read:

"Suffering (fire) filled, with petals five and tiers two,
Rotating beginningless, such is the lamp hanging high
Which is the Self burning on in shadow form, with past habits
For oil, and function verily for wick".
(Verse 17)

The Self has two stages which revolve, one as the
shadow or reflection of the other. The 'conceptual' world can
be said to be made of light while the 'perceptual' is made
of shadow, which, however, belongs together with the light
coming from above, which is the world of the intelligibles.
Apperception is the flames; each sense having its own,
duplicated by afferent and efferent nervous energy circulating
between subject and object or the 'Self' and the'non-Self'.

(C) THE APPERCEPTIVE CORE OF CONSCIOUS
BECOMING

In the next verse (34) with structural implications,
which we shall examine now, the core of the consmo-psyschological
ground within the schematically understood structure of the Absolute
is ably compared in terms of pure duration as with Descartes and Bergson.
We read:

"Half-a-second is what is the prime hub
Of the wheel of the car, mounted whereon, the universe rolls on;
Know this to be the sport of that beginningless One,
Ever growing on in the core of awareness pure".
(Verse 34)

The wheel of phenomenal becoming, ever active but
without motion, as the unmoved mover in a pure sense, is a
paradox in its 'pure act' - here described as purposeless
sport. All life activity is apperceptively situated at the core
of consciousness and is centrally understood as infinitessimally
small while at the periphery it could be elaborated and
multiplied to the limits of the expanding universe of the
outermost of the galaxies. This process is beginningless
and alternates with is complementary half of negative
contraction as indicated elsewhere in the same series in
Verse 72.

114

Here the use of the analogy of the wheel and the location
of pure consciousness at the core, and the universe at the
periphery, are mainly intended to explain the structure of the
Self within which the universe itself is comprised.
The theological, the cosmological and the psychological
aspects of the Absolute are brought to refer to the same
local neutral or central point of all apperceptions, whether
of time or of space in an eternal context of causality or
absolute becoming.

(D) THE SPIRITUAL PROGRESS OF THE SELF

The same progression of a chariot mounted on a wheel
of time is under reference inVerse 69 which elaborates
the imagery further;

"With hearing and such as horses linked, while bearing within
The image of the Self, and controlled by the master of faculties,
Is the libido-chariot mounted whereon the ego rides
Dealing unceasingly with each thing of beauty as it proceeds."
(Verse 69)

The complexity of a mixed metaphor cannot be
stretched further than in this verse where every word refers
conceptually or perceptually to the progress of the Self
through the phenomenal universe in life. One is reminded
of the analytical psychology of Freud and Jung as well as of
the Upanishadic verses (1) where the horses and the
charioteer have been used similarly. The tradition started
there, has only been completed here.
---------------------------------------------------------
1. Cf. Katha Upanishad III. 3-9.

115

(E) THREE PERSPECTIVES OF THE SAME PROCESS

Then we have a beautiful series of three verses in
sequence of subject-matter, but taking different structural
persepctives of the Self in its cosmo-psychological set up.
Complex graphical imagery which remains still dynamically
true to the flux of life can find no more perfect expression
than in these verses.
We read:

"Nature is water; the body, brine; the Self, the deep;
The "I", "I" rumbling within, the magic of the waves that arise.
Pearls they are each flowering of Wisdom within;
And what one drinks of oneself, immortality, verily it is!

As with a well into which measureless sand is wafted
By successive gusts, tier on tier, so too
Exposed to the waftings of untruth's hierarchy
The inner Self inwardly multitudinous forms it gains.

The ultimate is the sky; wind, that power expansive;
Awareness, the fire; water represents the perceptive organs;
What is given objectively to the senses, the earth;
And what thus keeps as five principles burning, has its secret in the One alone."
(Verses 75, 76, 77)

Here schematic thinking of the relation-relata
complex, with the psycho-cosmic fore of the Absolute as
its content, is treated in fullly dynamic terms; not statically
as with the rationalists of Europe beginning from Descartes
and ending with Leibniz, but fully in living terms revised by
Bergson in terms of the élan vital.

116

The central thinking substance here implies a
schéma moteur rather than merely a geometrically conceived
static entity. The process of becoming finds its full place
in the analogy of the well that is being gradually sanded
up as described in the central of the three verses. No aspect
of life, abstract or concrete is omitted.

A LIVING PICTURE OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE
PROCESS

In order to extract correctly for philosphical purposes
the implications of these culminating verses bearing on
structuralism, subjectivism and selectionism; revealing the
process of being and becoming together within what
constitutes the cosmological as well as psychological
content of the Absolute; one has to keep in mind the
following rules and peculiarities of the philosophy of the
Guru:

A) The subject and the object are treated unitively
here in terms of the same psycho-cosmic dynamism within
consciousness. Whitehead spoke of the 'togetherness' of
all things and the 'process' which was the basis of his
rather Platonic picture of the universe. The pre-Socratic
hylozoists, however took another perspecive of the totality
of the structure of the universe in which the elementals
like fire and water played their respecive roles within the
'megascopic' and 'microscopic' structure of a Monad of
monads. Both these rival perspectives, one hypostatic and
the other hierophantic, are treated of in the first and last
verses of the sequence of three verses above (i.e., 75, 76, 77).
One has to place oneself within the total knowledge-
situation without difference of subject or object before
the implications here become clear to the student of
contemplative metaphysics or of mystically understandable
speculation.

117

B) In all three verses together a normative notion of the
Absolute is implied. One looks, as it were, upward
from lying down on earth, when viewing the relation-relata
complex revealed in the first of the three verses. Ascending
dialectics leads one to the world of values like the Supreme
Good which belongs to a universal class of all classes in
notions such as that of God, or of the attributes of divinity
known in theologies such as that of St. Thomas Aquinas
or Ramanuja of the Indian context. The same speculative
process can descend into concrete universals of a material
ontological status as represented by a crystal such as a
dodechahedron or a tetrahedron. Reality, when visualized
existentially, gives varied philosophies such as modern
existentialism or phenomenologies of the mind.

C) Pragmatic or social values hide in an intermediate
zone from these extreme positions. Bergonsonian
instrumentalism and the social utilitarian and pragmatic
values covered within the scope of the philosophy of a John
Dewey or a William James, are comprised within this
intermediate zone where uncertain winds, some pluralistic
or material in content and others more neutrally monistic
in status, can alternately come into play - always implying
a principle of inevitable incertitude as found in the work of a
Heisenberg. Subject and object have to be fused into one
generalized entity before general ideas can be made to ascend
again into the world of supreme or idealistic ultimate values.
Utilitarian interests in social life are many at a given time.
From the refrigerator to the television set, we can think of
various utilities or luxuries between which a pragmatist
can be torn every minute in his life of rival and multiple
attractions and repulsions.

D) When we think of philosophy in the West it is of
course more usual to think in terms of the heritage of

118

metaphysics or speculation as found in the legacy left to
Europe by philosophers like Plato and metaphysicians like
Aristotle. There is separation in modern Western Philosophy
between ontology and teleology; and subjects that
imply any judgement of Value are often relegated to the
sections that are seperately treated as Ethics or Aesthetics.
After Kant much confusion remains between what is
analytic and synthetic, transcendental and immanent,
a priori and a posteriori, and between phenomenal and
noumenal values in life. The divorce of theology and philosophy,
which is to be laid directly at the door of the nightmare of
the Inquisition and the burning at the stake of "unbelievers"
like Bruno, has spoiled the structural unity of Western
Philosophy for all time. A God in a theological or Christian
sense is outside the scope of the best metaphysicians or
methodic speculators like Descartes. The ontological
proof of God became necessary because of the repugnance
for the dogmatic a priorism of belief in a God, as in the
prophetic religions. The Guru-philosphy remains whole
and pure and untainted by the fissiparous trends of
modernism. The total global situation is thus transparently
revealed to his vision.

More of such implications could be derived endlessly
from the notion of the Absolute contained in these verses treated
together. It is not our purpose here to treat all of them
exhaustively. We are interested for the present only in
pointing out that, when the core of the 'subject-matter'
and the 'object-matter' of philosphy in general are understood
unitively from a normative standpoint, such knowledge
helps to put much desirable order into both metaphysics
and speculation while minimizing mere verbosity.

IX.

ETHICS, AESTHETICS AND RELIGION IN
GURU-PHILOSOPHY

It is usual in the Western philosophical tradition to treat
of ethics and aesthetics, together with a way of life that can be
said to be good and based on a right sense of values, as
apart from philosophical speculation proper. This separation
of all that involved any judgement of value into a kind of
appendix to philosophy proper dominated life in the West,
where the horrors of the Inquisition have left an imprint on modern
thought which refuses to recognize or be reconciled with
any value judgement or way of life which resemble religion.

Philosophers like Descartes had to recant, rewrite or
at least suppress, parts of their normal writing for fear of
offending the Pope. Bruno was burnt at the stake for
resembling a pantheist, and is a martyr to the cause of
modern science. Indian philosophical tradition, however,
has remained innocent of these dark chapters of the
ancient regime in Europe. In the interests of a global,
integrated and complete world-philosophy it would be a
virtue for modern philosophy to incorporate matters of
axiological (i.e. value) import more organically into the
total corpus of correct methodic specualtion.

Guru-philosophy, as we have seen hitherto, is of a
global and synthetic order where mere rationalism sinks
into the background, bringing intuition and dialectical
reasoning to the fore.

120

Values in life err rather by being treated seperately as something
strictly falling outside its scope. The analytical and synthetical
tendencies are more equally blended and refer to an overall scheme
of the Absolute as a normative value-reference to guide all
speculation, while criticism acts still as a corrective
throughout. When we come to the question of ethics and
aesthetics, we have to remember that value considerations are
spread out evenly everywhere in the writings, and
the meagre space given to them should not hastily be
interpreted to mean that such questions are considered
unimportant. A spiritually sound sense of values and way
of life are held implicit within its scope, with all value
considerations regulating man's relations with God as well
as his relations with fellow man.

OBLIGATORY INJUNCTIONS DIFFERENT FROM
FREE ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

The Guru here therefore puts his finger not on conduct
as such but on the fundamental principles on which human
relations and conduct are based. According to Sanskrit
tradition respected through the ages, and respected by the
Guru too, jnana (wisdom) and karma (action) above all when
they are dualistically conceived, had to be kept apart,
while there is open a unitive way in which, without
duplicating each other, they can have fundamental aspects
that mutually presuppose each other.

The perennial sources of human goodness, relations
or conduct are one thing, while changing standards of
good behaviour subject to historical fluctuations are
another. The latter are treated in smrtis or dharma sastras,
of inferior status to Wisdom-texts such as the work
before us.

121

A DIALECTICALLY CONCEIVED ETHICS

To derive ethics out of a speculative body of doctrines
or truths has always been a delicate problem for all
philosophers. Thus the categorical imperative of Kant
has to depend on the 'thing-in-itself' or on a metaphysics
that is both transcendental and immanent at once. When
ends and means are treated dualisitically, justifying each
other, we have a Machiavellian brand of ethics. There
are closed and static religious or ethical attitudes where
relativism may be said to prevail resulting in hedonism or
in getting lost in teleological aspects rather than stressing
the ontological.

Nichomachean ethics is the result of recognizing the
specific forms of value whereby life is expressed through
matter, through its potent possibilities or entelchia, in the
context of Aristotelian ethics. The Golden Mean is goodness.
Platonic ethics would stress the ability to appreciate
the True, the Good and the Beautiful, at the level of ideas
rather than things. Epicurean and Stoic ethics fall apart
by their stress or absence of austerity as a virtue. Vedism
in the Indian context has a hedonist and relativist ethics
whild Buddhism and Vedanta err, if at all, on the side of
the opposite tendency of severe austerity. Books like the
Bhagavad Gita strike the balance between these opposing
trends.In the Bhagavad Gita a subtle axiological interplay of
dialectics may be seen to regulate aesthetics and ethics to avoid
killing all joy in life. A balanced outlook regulated by a neutral
attitude is substituted, dictated by a wisdom of the Absolute
understood in a unified perspective, integrating into unity
epistemological, methodological and axiological considerations.

The method proper to such an approach is not in
ratiocinative reasonings but in an approach based on
dialectical treatment together of counterparts.

122

What is good for the king must by the same token be good for
the subjects; and what is good for the servant must also be
good for the master. Cause and effect must be capable of
being interchanged as limbs in the dialectical reasoning
process. If a wife is kept happy the husband has peace in
his house; or when the son is famous the father shines too
by his reflected glory. Such are some handy examples of
the dialectical approach. This can also be called the Yoga
Ethics of the Gita.

Dialectical methodology is thus different from the
method of simple syllogistic reasoning of Aristotle,
which is in reality the domain of the incertitudes of "if", "but",
"or", "neither-nor", "both", "neither", "only", "when" etc.- full of
hesitant puzzlements in thought. Direct intuitive or
imperative certitude is apodictically given by the reasoning
that the Guru adopts here, where the two limbs of the
same equation, as it were, lend certitude each to the
other. In biblical dicta such as "Love thy neighbour
as thyself," we have a tacit recognition of this
variety of dialectical reasoning which is, in axiological
matters, more direct and telling than the hesitant faltering
steps of ratiocinative thinking which, by mistake, some
philosophers of the West still insist on assuming belongs
to a more philosophical method.

The Socratic analytical appraoch that eliminates error
by questioning the opponent, employing the basis of
reductio ad absurdum and the Aristotelian approach through
ascending or descending from the particular to the general
or vice versa, through syllogisms where the excluded
middle implies the principle contradiction, are both
inferior to the pre-Socratic approach of a Parmenides or a
Zeno, who were the last of the real dialecticians.

123

Closely scrutinized, the Guru's method gives full
recognition to this old-time method of reasoning. It is by
bringing together the counterparts of an ethical or religious
situation that the Guru makes his conclusions apodictic,
necessary or imperative, whether dealing with questions of
ethics or of religon. As for aesthetics, the two counterparts
are the self and the non-self in cosmo-psychological
or spiritual progression through the phenomenal that we
have to visualize imaginatively. Every vestige of cosmo-
psychic duality becomes abolished here in the non-duality
of the self and the non-self in the same Absolute Self.

HOW ETHICS IS DERIVED FROM PHILOSOPHY

We have already examined under another section
Verse 69 of the Guru as an example of structural
imagery. This verse(1) pictures graphically the course
of spiritual progress in any man and there is a significant
sub-clause to it which we have now to notice.
The self is said to be in constant relation with the world
outside in a subtle subjective and dialectically understandable
manner. There is a constant interchange of enjoyable
essences, a kind of osmosis that everlastingly goes on,
between the two aspects - the self and the non-self.
This dialectical interplay of value factors from subject to
object and vice-versa is, according to the Guru, the source
of all joy which covers the best instances of what we call
aesthetical appreciation of values. Of course there are
grades of joy ranging from pleasures comparable to small
change to Absolute Bliss which is that of the gold coin.
They are all, however, comprised under he same general
law of all-aesthitical joy.

--------------------------------------------------------
1. With hearing and such, as horses linked, carrying within
The self-image and ruled over by the master of thinking powers,
Such is the libido-chariot, mounted whereon, the "I" sense
Ceaselessly deals outwardly with each form of beauty as it proceeds.
(Verse 69)

124

KINDNESS AS THE COMMON BASIS OF RELIGION
AND ETHICS

The very first verse of another composition by the Guru
dealing with kindness gives us the key to his method in all
ethics. He starts with the most general of the postulates of
his absolutist outlook in life by stating that all belong to
one common brotherhood in the Self. At the next step he
asks, how then we can kill living beings, knowing that they
belong to the same content of universal joy that is the
essence of this same Truth.

The Good, the True and the Beautiful are lasting
values in the context of Abolutism. Hence killing and
eating mercilessly of animals is said by him to be untenable
on the basis of a very direct reasoning belonging to an
imperative order. By hurting another one hurts one's self
in a dialectical context; though this aspect may not be so
evidently clear in a mechanistic context. This verity is
brought out in so many words in Verse 25 of the Atmopadesa
Satakam (One Hundred Verses of Self-Instruction) as
follows:

"What is favourable to one and for another trouble brings,
That conduct is what is against the Self.
That flame of fire that another's suffering great involves
Falls and burns its flame in the ocean of infernal flames."
(Verse 25)
In conversation the Guru has taken even the example
of speaking ill of another as a factor that tended to make
oneself spiritually weaker.

125

This suble law of reciprocity, dialectically and subjectively
understood, reveals for use the basis of the ethics that the
Guru derived from the first principles of his philosophy.

Ethics, when implicitly understood in its mystical or
religious form, is found in almost all the verses of the series.
The reader can look for them and find them explicitly or
implicitly presupposed everywhere. All religious life presupposes
kindness, as the Guru explicitly states in one of his compositions,
Jiva-Karunya-Pancakam (Kindness to Life).

"All are of one Self-fraternity,
Such being the dictum to avow,
In such a light how can we take life,
And devoid of least pity go on to eat?"

THE NON-DUAL BASIS OF ALL MORALILTY

Guru-ethics can be reduced to its simplest form when
we say that, when one serves two masters or accepts a
double standard of values, one is following wrong. Truth
in life is to be found as existing in and through life for
itself, and not as something to be discovered disjunctly in
some place 'elsewhere'. This verity is a guiding principle
of applied ethics, of which the Guru treats in Verses 21 to
24 inclusive. The fundamental law of ethics is however
implied in Verse 20 which introduces this section of ethics
consisting of four verses:

"Another reality this world can have none, contrary assertions
Made by men in the world, lack understanding all,
Although an ignoramous could mistake it for a reptile
Could a flower garland beneficial ever a snake become?"
(Verse 20)

Ethics has thus its origin in one's Self where the non-
self is articulated with it or participates non-dually with it.

126

THE EGO AS THE EPICENTRE FOR ALL CONDUCT

The moral dictum that says one should do unto others
as one should do unto oneself is derived from the same
dialectically absolutist ethics that the Guru adopts, as seen
in these verses. He puts it however in a form in which
duality in the philosophical context is abolished at one
and the same stroke as the duality of serving two masters.
Verses 23 and 24 are nearer to the origin of morality than
the other two verses, 21 and 22, derived more indirectly.
When loving one's neighbour as oneself one avoids the
duality between egotistic interests by cancelling out
dialectical counterparts. These verses read:

"For another's sake, day in and out
Unstinting strives the generous and kind man,
The niggard, lying prone, whatever frustration's toil undertakes
Is for his own sake alone!
(Verse 23)

What here we discriminate as this man or that
Is the prime form of the Self alone!
Conduct that for one self-happiness spells
Must another's well-being bring about at once."
(Verse 24)

THE FORMATION OF CLOSED STATIC UNITS IN
SOCIETY AND THEIR UNETHICAL STATUS

Many kinds of relativistic preferences are possible in
the group-life into which man is born and ekes out his existence
necessarily as a gregarious animal. Each group can consider
its own interests egocentrically. When a man, for example,
wishes that his own caste, tribe, race, sex or nation
win over another, he is committing one of the fundamental
errors or sins against the interests of a humanity thought
of as a unit in the absolutist context. The possible rival claims
for relativist unilateral interests are many; while when
the same situation is viewed dialectically and unitively, without
duality or contradiction between the component units, whether
of family or nation, peace and happiness become naturally
spelt out.

When understood and applied correctly, the dialectical
approach acts as a universal solvent of problems of a
competitive character, and makes for orderly cooperation.
The ancient division in India of human society into four
varnas (social levels) according to the value-world natural
to each, as seen in the so-called 'caste system' has proved
a failure, though perhaps based on sociological principles
fundamentally valid and well intentioned. The great mistake
was that, instead of viewing the matter as fluid and as a
process of dynamic formation or everlasting flux, static
and closed hereditary caste, rigidly conceived on the basis
of watertight groupisms, petrified the whole process and
made of the experiment, otherwise theoretically bold,
a Himalayan blunder and a monumental failure.

In spite of its failure, however, wise individuals can
apply in their lives the dynamism of the open dialectical
approach implicit therein in their personal lives, instead of
attempting to erect any socio-political system thereon.
The mechanistic levelling of personal values at the present
day tends to make such a thought impossible. Trying the
experiment again would cost India too much. The formation
of closed static groups prefered by each member of
society as against a rival one is fraught with great danger.
In Verses 21 and 22 the Guru points out the origin of the
confusion involved, as follows:

128

"A certain group is dear, that to me is dear,
What is dear to me and what is to another, thus it is
That round each item of value-interest confusions come, know, therefore,
That one's own preference must accord with another's dear desire".
(Verse 21)

"What is dear to the other, that is mine and what I prefer
Accords with the preference of the other man, such is the course
Of discreet conduct, therefore the act that aims the good of a man,
In the love of fellow-man must its motive have".
(Verse 22)

Thus the seal is put here in the last lines above on the
dialectical basis of all human conduct involving relations
between man and man. Such a scientifically-thought out
absolutist attitude can be seen to cover inclusively many
features that schools of ethics, from Machiavellianism to
Nichomacheanism, in themselves all partial speculations
in ethics, have left out of purview. The Kantian 'imperative'
as well as the Bergsonian 'creative' brands are all covered
here by the Guru's dialectical absolutist approach.

THE ONE RELIGION OF THE GURU

Of all closed static groupings in society the one most
fraught with danger to man is the formation of rival
religions on a relativist dualist basis. Conflicts become
possible under such conditions. When what contributed
to such a life of internal strife between men in the formation
of wrongly motivated relgious groups is once discovered
and eliminated from religious life; all falls into unity, by
analogous tendencies becoming revealed in different groups
or religious formations.

129

Moses and Jesus differ in their outlook as also the
Old Testament from the New Testament, through the
value-sets implied in each. Vedism likewise differs from
Vedantism. Analogously, on the other hand, the obligatory
aspect represented by the Ten Commandments can be
found in the Pentateuch as well as in the Christian Bible.
Taboos and bans prevail here and there, overtly or tacitly, in
all religions, and exclusive fanaticisms are possible in every
case where orthodoxies might clash against rival orthodoxies.
The delicate way of Wisdom in this matter is discussed by
the Guru in Verses 44 to 49 inclusive, which we shall
examine here.

In order to be able to lay bare the philosophical
implications of the One Religion that is in the mind of the
Guru, let us read this sequence of six verses in a selected
order of our own. The topics covered by each can be
enumerated as follows:

(A) ALL RELIGIONS HAVE THE OVERALL AIM
OF HAPPINESS

All religions, when viewed horizontally as different
from others in expression, reveal many features that
make for contrast. When we take a verticalized, inclusive
or contemplatively dialectical view of all religions understood
together, a mutual agreement or transparency of context reveals
itself between them, because the overall aim and end of all
religions, however diverse, is none other than happiness in life,
here or here-after, or both.

130

Verse 49 enunciates this unequivocally
as follows:

"Every man at every time makes effort in every way,
Self-Happiness to secure, thus in the world
Know there is this One Relgion alone, known thus and
Avoiding evil, one should his inner self attune."

(B) THE DEEP MUTUAL ADOPTION IMPLIED
IN RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

When a man accepts or adopts a certain religion as an
ideology or as a pattern of behaviour he likes or calls his own,
there is a deep-seated fusion of the self and the non-self factors
which takes place within him. Egoism tends often to fan and
exaggerate the disparity of religions, but when the relation is
contemplatively bipolar and verticalized, wherein the true Self in
man and not the ego participates, adoption does not result in
conflict.

The possibility of adopting a relgion as one's own is
itself, as the Guru points out, only a recognition of the
homogenous parity in the participation of the self and the
non-self factors involved. By itself this possibility belongs
to the pure Self, and when understood in such a pure
persepctive, is fully dignified and conducive to Self-
realization. The danger, however, is that this pure nature
of biploar adoption becomes misapplied. Then adhyasa or
superimposition mutually of non-Self factors on to the
Self and vice versa takes place. Herein alone danger lurks.
We read in Verse 48:

"The dweller within the body, from its own status as pure being,
In respect of each possible thing, treats all
As "that is mine" or "this is mine" transcending bodily sense,
All are in reality realized, when we think of what this means."

131

The possibility of such mutual addoption already
implies, in principle at least, a homogeneity between the
two aspects of the Self and the non-Self.

We see that the protagonists of any religion dream of
uniting all humanity under one faith. Just as a member of
a certain nation might want all other nations to come under its
sway, there is an error implied in zealots for any particular
religious formation. Hindus might want all the world to
become Hindu and so on. If each religious zealot only
realized that, in this kind of plea, all sailed in the same boat,
rival antagonisms could be minimized. This travesty
implicit in the unwise rivalry between religious groups
such as Unitarians and Trinitarians, causing much trouble
that can be avoided, is alluded to with telling effect in
Verse 47:

"All plead but for one religion to prevail,
Which the disputants fail to remember withal,
Those wise ones freed from disadoption of another's faith
Can know here wholly the secret of all this."

(D) THE NATURE OF THE IRONY IMPLICIT IN
RELIGIOUS RIVALRY

After understanding the secet mentioned above, the
three verses, 44, 45 and 46 can be read and understood
without much comment. They read as follows:

"Ignoring that in substance various religions are the same,
Like the blind men in respect of an elephant, fools wander
In this world, imitate not their way,
And not agitated like them, one should calmly settle down!

132

One religion is not good enough for another and the doctrine cardinal
Stated in one, according to another's calculations is found defective,
Until that day the unitive secret herein is known with certitude
There shall continue to be confusion prevailing in this world.

Victory by flight is impossible here, one as against one,
No religion by fighting gets exterminated, not knowing this
The opponent of a stranger faith,
His own doom shall be in vain fight for, beware!"
(Verses 44, 45,46)

Verse 44 underlines the need for taking a global view
of religious systems. Treated piecemeal, one tends to
compare, as it were, the leg of one with the hands of
another. Comparative religion must tend to establish
the points of affinity in corresponding structural aspects
of religions, rather that stress differences based on
aspects torn out of the proper context or perspective. The
familiar analogy in the fable of the blind men with the
elephant is used advantageously by the Guru here.

Verse 45 stresses the need to see the underlying unity
of religions.

Verse 46 underlines the fact that persecution only
makes unilateral faith firmer. The martyrs to any deep
belief prove the irony of the situation in the history of
any religion, and this is contrary to what might be expected
by mechanistic reasoning. The apolcalyptic touch of the last
line above gives a prophetic touch to the Guru's philosophy of religion.

GURU-PHILOSOPHY SUMMARIZED

1.0 Guru.philosophy represents a total neutral and
normative approach to what is philosophically significant
or valuable to human life, from both the existential and the
subsistential aspects of the Absolute, to the context of
which such a wholesale approach belongs.

1.01 Such an approach involves a regulative action
for a way of life as well as a way of understanding facts,
truths or reality.

1.02 It calls for initial scepticism as well as full
willingness to believe. In other words, the a priori and
the a posteriori are equally respected in Guru-philosophy.

1.03 Many other antinomies, polarities, dichotomies
or ambivalent factors enter into the structure of the
certitude that Guru-philosophy seeks. Such precise and
valid forms of speculation tend to make it a science rather
than a mere verbose or wild speculation. In other words,
there is implicit in it a unitive methodology, an epistemology
and an axiology proper to it.

1.04 The phenomenal and the noumenal, the pure
and the practical, the perceptual and the conceptual, the
quantative and the qualitative, action and understanding,
are pairs of antinomies belonging to different zones or
levels of consciousness, within which lie the visible or the
intelligible universe given to the eye of to the mind. They
belong either to the vertical or the horizontal value-worlds.

134

1.05 What is given to the senses objectively is the
horizontal, and what is given to the self as "I" or "my" or
"mine" belongs to the vertical. To categorize the given
contemplative data as belonging to these axes of reference,
is the first key to the easy understanding of the Guru's
philosophy. The enjoyable nature of the spread-out-
universe is treated unitively with the Self, while the
enjoyer is the vertical counterpart of the same paradoxical
dialectical situation.

1.06 Both human nature and cosmological nature-
aspects participate herein by a sort of mathematical
intersection rather than as a psycho-physical parallelism.

1.07 The vertical component is that of the Self and
the horizontal that of the non-Self. The Self which is not
given to the senses comprises all possible levels of value
from the most immanent to the most transcendent.

1.1 There is a constant osmotic reciprocal exchange
of knowledge, as if through a retroacive exchange between
the rich and fully transparent aspects of the Self and the
non-Self, and this results in presenting value factors and
interests that rise and circulate. They comprise psychological,
cosmological and theological factors in a constant flux of
change and becoming. This process goes on eternally as
between these two axes of reference.

1.2 This alternating play of inter-physical and
trans-subjective factors tends to horizontal activity at a
given moment when nescience prevails, and again gets
absorbed into pure verticality of reason at another moment.

1.3 An absolutely and purely active principle of
thinking substance lies beyond or behind the paradox of
the plus and the minus in the many layers of life-interests,
belonging to the four-fold status of the actual, the
perceptual, the conceptual or the nominal, which are
integrally held together and envisaged in Guru-philosophy

135

1.4 Such an Existent-Subsistent-Value, when
understood in all its secondary implications gives satisfactory
answers to major doubts and dissolves conflicts in life.
Such knowledge makes one free and yields a peace that
passes understanding. Banishing sin, decreasing suffering,
being a pearly of great price, or a leaven that can permeate
subtly the whole of life, are other known ways of stressing
the value of the same science of the Absolute. Even a
little of this can banish great fear, as the Gita would
prefer to put this same verity.

1.5 Salvation and heaven mean only the same High
Value of Wisdom represented by this Science of all
sciences.

1.6 Cosmogony, cosmology and psychology,
approached phenomenologically rather than merely
objectively, ethics and aesthetics, with a chapter that corresponds
to theology, together with an eschatology that covers questions
pertaining to apocalyptic images of prophetic import
in life here and hereafter, all treated unitively in terms of
normalized human understanding - such are some of the
branches covered in Guru-philosophy.

1.7 It is an inside contemplative view that Guru-
philosophy takes. It covers the same ground as some of
the world's great scriptures, but in a positive and less
mythological, merely theistic or fable-like style of discourse.

1.8 Strucural and schematic imagery as a precise
protolinguistic device is seen to be retained in the Guru-
literature in such a revised and modernized form that it
becomes possible to erect a mathematically precise science
on the foundations laid by the Guru in his philosophy.

136

1.9 A veritable Science of the Absolute is foreshadowed
in his writings of which the Darsana Mala marks a more
culminating point of attainment.

2.0 Vedantic schematism, structuralism and selectionism
are further boiled down to reveal the protolinguistic
and the matalinguistic patterns underlying the world of
discourse, and corresponding to the semiotic, syntactic
and pragmatic processes of thought and tendencies within
the informative cybernetics of consciousness. Axiomatic
thinking reveals its utmost possibilities in the correct
mathematical logistic of the Guru. It avoids mere mythology
and theology except where he wishes to clarify some
protolinguistic aspect.

3.0 Speculation attains apodictic, dialecical and
rhetorical finality in the Guru's writings, so that by one
step further one is able to step on the firm land of a
veritable Science of the Absolute, still to be formulated in
the light of modern knowledge.

4.0 By sight and sound our human intelligence inserts
itself correctly and, as it were cybernetically, into a world
of automatic and retroactive discourse or semantics, with a
surprisingly uniform symmetry of structure that all theories
or laws of nature seem to respect; where concepts and
percepts equate themselves into circulating processes that
are sometimes reversible and at other times not so.

5.0 The living organism fits itself into a universe
which is both physical and metaphysical at one and the
same time, and what formalism or mechanism belongs to
it schematically, has its range of extrapolated applicability
in the microscopic and megascopic realities, without
being limited by experiment or more than experimental
experiences natural to the human race.

6.0 Science in its latest version lends support to
Guru-philosophy, and its method and theory of knowledge
are beginning to resemble each other.

137

Some very bold flights of speculation in Guru-philosophy seem
now togain validity which they could not have had from science
as undersood fifty years ago. (1)

7.0 The physical and the metaphysical aspects of
reality are beginning to be treated as belonging complemenarily
to each other, as the vision of the Guru clearly
envisages. A whole hierarchy of classes that can rise
perceptually, making for classes of classes analytically or
synthetically, is not a matter any more of mere verbose or
vain speculation, either in science ot in philosphy at
present.

8.0 Science now calls for bolder and bolder speculative
flights, instead of the caution that it recommended a
few years ago. The task of bridging the wide gap in
scientific thought that at present seperates axiomatic
from experimental thinking, calls for fuller freedom for the
philosopher capable of flying very high in pure speculation.
It is exactly herein that Guru-philosophy excels and scores
where hesitant atitudes that fail to face the situation
frontally fail miserably. Such efforts are neither philosophy
nor science.

9.0 Instead of failing doubly it is thus that Guru-
philosophy succeeds doubly in laying the foundation of a
science of all sciences, not merely remaining lukewarm as
a philosophy of science or as a science of philosophy.

10.0 The philosophy of the Guru, like mathematical
calculations, respects a formalism that it shares in common
with all logical or correct thinking. Where common sense
fails, a calculus strictly conceived, which makes allowance
for tautology as well as contradicion within its scope,
regulates its speculative procedures.
--------------------------------------------------------
1. This was written in 1965.

138

10.1 When the limits even of such empirical
positivist reasoning have been passed, the Guru depends
on a dialectical approach where double negation is
employed with advantage, as when language makes one
"yes" for two "nos" or when in algebra two minuses
multiplied make for a plus.

10.2 Such reasoning trancends paradox.

10.3 The hierarchy of classes, wherein propositions
are true or false, whether logically or factually, get neutrally
absorbed in the class of all classes from both sides.

10.4 Instead of excluding the middle ground of the
syllogistic structure of thought, speculation can ascend or
descend at will between alternaive values in which subject
and object become interchangeable terms.

10.5 In stating the implications of the second law of
thermodynamics, we have in the heart of modern physics
a bold generalization, which, if it could be thought of as a
reversible process, would come nearest to this kind of
dialectical ascent or descent in respect of factors of
universal import, whether concerned with notions such as
positive or negative entropy, or between heat and work, or
any other pair of metaphysical or physical elements or
factors, related through complementarity as understood
by Niels Bohr, or tending to indeterminism as in
Heisenberg's theory.

11.0 What we wish to underline here is merely the
fact that modern laws of physics when they speak of a
physical universe, deal with abstractions and generalizations
at least as vague as any classical speculator dared to venture.

11.1 Metaphysics and physics are hardly distinguishable
in the formalized language that they both use.

139

11.2 If parables and literal analogies are replaced by
a precise mathematical language, one becomes as good or
as bad as the other, according to the correctness or
arbitrariness involved.

11.3 It is neither experiment nor calculus that should
be considered the final arbiter but both as belonging to a
normative notion of the Absolute.

12.0 Knowledge seeks to know itself. All things rise
and change into pure thought. Pure space would then
remain self-radiant. The self and its knowledge together
make one reality. The pure thing-in-itself knows no dual
alternative. There is no truth other than or dualistically
apart from what is given here itself. All things are real in
themselves but cancel out when examined as consisting of
exclusive classes.

13.0 Semantically all diverse or discrete entities
merge in the semiotic entity of the pure Meaning of all
meanings.

14.0 Halting speculation that ratiocinates piecemeal
with propositional "ifs" and "buts", is a weak instrument
for the Guru in his bold, unitive, wholesale, neutral, frontal
and global approach and vision of he Absolute.

14.1 Although analyzable into its own structural and
schematic elements, the vision is one that is downright
and totally convincing. Experienced normally as a wonder
or a tremendous mystery, the understanding of this could
even strike one down by its poweful onset within the
consciousness, prepared by a harmony or transparency
established between the Self and the non-Self.

14.2 In the corect and normal mystical state experimental
truth is not degraded nor logical reason effaced, but both exist
inclusively at a higher level of dialectical intuition.

140

14.3 The analysis and the wonder of the Absolute go
hand in hand in Guru-philosophy.

14.4 Instead of one gaining a symmetrical primacy
over the other, the total knowledge-situation envisaged in
its perfectly symmetrical structure thus gives due place to
the will to believe as also to the will for critical disposition
or systematic doubting.

15.0 Guru-speculation lives and moves in a vertical
axis where the Self holds in unity the aspects of Existence
(sat), Subsistence (cit) and Value (ananda).

15.1 The evidence of the eye which is experimental
cancels here into the evidence of the name or word.
The Logos thus meets the Nous of the Socratic and pre-
Soctratic contents of Western speculation.

15.2 There is a neutral stratum or zone in thought or
consciousness of the absolutist context, which is the
richest of the stuff that consists of pure human understanding
or reason. It is transparent to this double aspect;
giving wonder on one side and revealing the schematic
structure at the core of the Absolue on the other.

15.3 Wonder may be said to refer to the positive
aspect of the vertical axis; and schematic structuralism,
into which all mathematically understood elements of
the physical world enter as components or ingredients
consitutes the negative aspect of the same.

15.4 Speculation is best, not when it is accentuated
positively or negatively, but when both of these remain in
the neutral ground between the two polarities. When
metaphysics and physics are treated unitively without
duality between mind and matter, we have two limbs
of a universal equation. As with the notion of positive or
negative entropy, speculation can proceed irrespective of
their reversibility that is free from the mathematics that
confines itself only to irreversibility, as in that of Carnot.

141

16.0 An extrapolated series of ensembles or classes
can be subjected to an ascending or descending series of
value-factors: in the ascending order of Existence-
Subsistence-Value (sat-cit-ananda); or in descending order
with value significance first, next, in a reverse series, merging to
subsistence, and then spreading out into manifold existences
simultaneously manifest, as in ordinary life. Contiguity or
continuity can thus hold together the one and the many.

16.1 The books of nature, truth or value should be
capable of being read both ways to abolish all partiality of
points of view, so as to yield that neutral Absolute which
is beyond all blemish of one-sided predications.

16.2 All values could be Subsistence or Existence
interchangeably, to yield one and the same unitive Self.

16.3 Maya, as understood in Guru-philosophy, is the
overall philosphical category of all possible errors:
starting from simple optical illusions, through the eidetic
representations of phenomenalism, to the noblest and
subtlest forms of philosphical error that could vitiate
wisdom even through such factors as science (vidya) and
nescience (avidya), and nominalism or conceptualism.

16.4 All horizontal factors are meant to be covered
by this omnibus term (maya), and it stands equally for the
negativität of Hegel and the Uncertainty Principle of
Heisenberg. It comprises all phenomenological, eidetic,
ontological or psychological presentiments.

17.0 Even the faintest vestige of duality as between
self and non-Self, or subject and object, is repugnant to
Guru-philosophy.

142

17.1 Guru-philosphy has a theology that avoids all
equivocation in respect of the problem of evil; and instead
of trying to explain it away by any solipcism or principle
of "the best of all possible worlds", it lays it squarely at
the feet of God himself as part of the wonder or tragic
element of his creation, which is neither meant to be
good nor evil but beyond both.

17.2 God trancends paradox in his most high stature,
rising without apology to the heights of his proper absolutism.

17.3 Paradox can be transcended either frontally
facing the fact of evil as a contradicion, or bypassing it by
a dialectical approach of absorbing all middle grounds.

17.4 An immanent-transcendent absorption in the
Self of all possible selves is involved here.

17.5 God then drinks his own poison, inevitable in
creation.

17.6 To put the same in different rhetoric, to his
sense of comedy or sport, evil is to be treated as a part of
the game of creation. Although evil is not explained away,
it is included in a larger scheme of reality where good and
bad cancel into the sheer Glory of the Absolute. Then the
horizontal evil given to human eyes would only crown
them vertically with more enhanced goodness by its double
negation.

17.7 The last vestiges of the negative taint of maya
get abolished in the brave contemplative seeking absolute
freedom or happiness through the negation of negation,
till, passing through an ascending stage, it touches positive
heights of the Value of values. Any name becomes good
enough for each value and when universally and expansively
understood as the crowning glory of God instead of as the
principle of Evil, maya purifies and perfects itself further
by a descent into the levels of the universal concrete.

17.8 Both concrete and abstract reside as aspects of
the Self that holds all possible antinomies together as one
bundled sheaf of corn.

143

17.9 The paradoxical elements tending to duality in
the Absolute might persist till the final vision of a supreme
union between the vertical and the horizontal takes place
in the contemplative who has correctly and clearly attained
his term.

18.0 Then, the atom refuses to be split further.
Seeking its own perfection or plenitude from the other pole
of the same total situation infinity gains its ultimate fullness
of term. Both meet in the high neutral value of the
Absolute, which involves neither positive effort nor
negative passivity to attain. The knower of the Absolute
is the Absolute.

18.1 When the paradox that life presents to a thinking
man, whether a philosopher or a mystic, is transcended
through a correct method and discipline combined, one
being complementarily positive to the other, in a complex
four-limbed epistemological quaternion or frame of
reference, a high value of happiness, peace, fearlessness
or clarity of spirit is attained.

18.2 The hierarchy of men or gods, the alternation of
birth and death, are abolished for him. Being and becoming
get merged into one inner Self-experience when man
attains Peace.

18.3 Horizontalism that yields errors drops its innermost
veils, and man stands face to face with the universe in himself.

18.4 Eschatological value-worlds hereafter and apocalyptic
visions of a doomsday vanish, self-effaced.

18.5 A simple scientifically understandable cosmogony;
a mathematically precise logistic guiding thought and conduct
held unitively under the aegis of the overall regulative notion of
the Absolute Value; an after-life that leaves behind a corpus of
good repute as real and valuable as actual life lived here and now;
a transparency and a

144

perfectly detached equilibrium between rival interests or
activities; and the boldness to identify oneself with the
Absolute in full reverent non-egoist humility, always with
an unlimited kindliness that is present as a corollary to
fully sympathetic understanding of the unity of all life;
with recognition of all normal values in life at their proper
times and places; without any exaggerated unilateral
outlook - such are come of the directive characteristics of
Guru-philosphy and the way of life it holds high.

18.6 The promise of peace, immortality and the joy
of freedom, are all comprised in this attitude that knows
no distinction of ends or means or disparity between ways
of piety or wisdom.

18.7 Like the notion of a thermodynamic equilibrium
with an overall independent autonomous cybernetic system,
where action and retroaction cancel out into a zero
state of sameness, in a fully reversible process of forward
becoming and regression; contemplative life implies a
principle of equality or equanimity where all osmotic interchange
factors in grand respiration of life come to the pause of Self-identity.

18.8 This is the ultimate secret of the pundit to which
few can attain as the Guru himself sadly deplores.

18.9 It is at this point alone that the many manifestations
of the One, and the One Supreme Meaning that holds
manifoldness in its unified semantic grasp of the Meaning of
all meanings, can be realized. There is neither that nor this,
nor Existence (sat) different from Subsistence (cit) or Value
(ananda). All these aspects fuse to make the grand confection
of great value called the Absolute within oneself. Such
are other bold conclusions of Guru-philosophy which he
himself underlines as difficult to grasp.

19.0 Axiomatic and experimental thinking meet in
this wonder!

APPENDIX

ONE HUNDRED VERSES OF
SELF INSTRUCTION

(ATMOPADESA-SATAKAM)

(The numbers given against certain stanzas show the page
of the present book wherein the stanza is quoted.)

Rising even above knowledge, what within the form
Of the one who knows, as equally without, radiant shines,
To that Core, with the eyes five restrained within,
Again and again prostrating in adoration, one should chant.

The inner organ, the senses, and counting from the body
The many worlds we know, are all, on thought, the sacred form
Of the supreme Sun risen in the void beyond,
By relentless cogitation one should attain to this.

These phenomenal aspects five such as the sky
Which as emergent from outside is here seen to be,
By contemplation one should bring to non-difference
As the sea is to the waves that rise in rows thereon.

Knowledge, its meaning known, and the personal knowledge
Subjective, together makae but one primal glory,
Within the unrarified radiance of this great knowledge
One should merge and become that alone.

People here on earth, they sleep, wake and think
Various thoughts, watching over all of these with intent eye
There dawns a priceless light, whicn never shall dim again,
Led onward by this, one should forward wend.

One has to wake, then go to sleep, of food partake, or mate,
Thus do promptings dissipating keep coming round,
Whoever could there be, therefore to wake
Unto that reality's one and changeless form?

To wake never more, ever sleepless to remains, as awareness,
If for this today you are not fit, then in the sevice
Of those silent ones who ever dwell awake to AUM
Absolved from birth, steadily fix the form.

Eating of the fruits five, such as light
Perched the while on a shot-gun foul-smelling,
Ever in wily change, what can bring down in shreds these five,
Such a lucid inner form, wielding the Self must brilliant become! (112)

He who dwells in contemplation beneath a tree
Whereon climbing, a creeper bears aloft on either side
The blossoms of the psychic states, mark, such a man,
By inferno unapproached ever remains.

"Who is sitting in the dark? Speak!" says one,
Wherupon the other, intent himself to know likewise,
On hearing the first, he asks, "Who may you even be?"
For both of these the word of response is One alone. (66)

The repeated "I, I" contemplated from within
Is not many, but one, divergent egoity
Being multiple, in the totality of such
The Self-substance too, continuity assumes. (66)

With skin and bone and refuse, and many an inner factor of evil end,
Lo, wielding these, one ego looms! This which passes,
Is the other, That greater Self which grows to perfection,
O, grant the boon, that it may not the ego swell! (67)

Unto the Master who dons the ashes of the three modes,
Offeringthe flower of the inner self, inclining before him,
With all sense intersets effaced, divest of all and cool,
Even from the grandeur of loneliness bereft, into glory sink!

That light, rid of three-fold view, that ever brighter burns
Upsurging and brimful beyond the bounds of the triple worlds,
Remember that it will never come within the reach
Of a hermit untrue, as Upanishadic secret lore declares.

Ten thousand years do a moment make to those favoured ones
Suckled in the milk of the pure transcendent. but when knowledge
Is within the power of the scope of relative immanent nature
Half-a-second, would seem ten thousand years long. (57)

If an arid desert most expansive whould become overflooded
By river water all at once, such would be the rising symphony
Falling into the ears, to open then the eye, do therefore
Daily become the best of sages endowed with Self-control.

Suffering (fire) filled, with petals five and tiers two,
Rotating beginningless, such is the lamp hanging high
Which is the Self burning on in a shadow form, with past habits
For oil, and function verily for wick. (112)

The "I" is not darkness, were it so blind
Unaware of this 'I, I' we should have remained,
Because of such awareness, the I-consciousness is not darkness
In order to know thus, to one and all declare.

"Bottom, top or tip, reality here, there or that" -
So do conflicts come: Prime Substance is all there is:
The inert here, all change and pass, how could a wave
Apart from the water's form, another reality have?

Another reality this world can have none, contrary assertions
Made by men in the world, lack understanding all,
Although an ignoramous could mistake it for a reptile,
Could a flower garland beneficial ever a snake become? (102, 125)

A certain kind is dear, that to me is dear,
What is dear to me and wat is to another, thus it is
That round each item of value-interest confusions come, know, therefore,
That one's own preference must accord with another's desire. (128)

What is dear to the other, that is mine and what I prefer
Accords with the preference of the other man, such is the course
Of discrete conduct, therefore the act that aims the good of man,
In the love of fellow-man must its motive have. (128)

For another's sake, day in and out
Unstinting strives the generous and kind man,
The niggard, lying prone, whatever frunstration's toil undertakes
Is for his own sake alone. (126)

What here we descriminate as this man or that
Is the prime form of the Self alone!
Conduct that for one self-happiness spells
Must another's well-being bring about at once. (126)

What is favourable to one and for another trouble brings,
That conduct is what is against the Self
One whose acts another's suffering great involve
Falls and burns in the ocean of infernal flames. (124)

All limbs suppressing and standing as a bolt
The limb-owner mere vapour enshrouds within,
'This' man he takes different from 'that' therefore
Owing to the weakness of unwisdom alone.

27

What in darkness remains aware, the Self indeed that is,
And knowledge that which as name and form,
As senses with inner organ, as actor and action,
Looms here as everything, like great Indra's magic, lo!

Bereft of bottom as of top, from bottom to the crest
What transparent awareness has, that is turiya consciousness,
The inert no knowledge has, what it cogitating tells
From in-between, is no knowledge at all, do mark!

The mind-blossom plucking, who offers to the Great Master,
No need has he, other works to perform,
Else, let him pluck blossom wild, or otherwise
The maya-spell let him repeat. the Maya goes.

The inert, no awareness can have, awareness no cogitation needs,
Nor does it hold discourse, knowing this awareness to be all,
And giving up all, transparency of spirit one gains,
And in bodily bonds confined, one suffers never more indeed! (105)

Without prior experiencing, no inference there could be
As this has never before been experienced by the senses
The existence of the operator
Is never given to inferential thought. (105)

It is not the operator but the operation that we know,
The said operator being ever unseen, the world and all else
Is naught, while lending it outer semblance of shape,
It is awareness alone that really remains. (106)

Knowledge in order to know itself
The earth and other manifestations became,
In inverted manner thus, now mounting, now changing over
Like a circulating fire-faggot, it keeps turning round. (39, 106)

Half-a-second is what is the prime hub
Of the wheel of the car, mounted whereon, the universe rolls on,
Know this to be the sport of that beginningless One,
Ever growing on in the core of awareness pure. (113)

Like the dawning altogether of ten thousand suns
Wisdom's function comes, such verily is what
Can tear asunder the knowledge hiding impermanent darkness of maya here,
And, as the primordial Sun on high, prevails. (30)

The powers of understanding are many, all of them under two sets
Such as the "same" and the "other" inclusively can be brought,
Merging into that form of "other-sameness" of these,
To clarify of vision one should awake. (71, 83)

To subdue, even somewhat the obduracy of the "other"
Is hard indeed without understanding's limitless power,
Even by such should one gain mastery over it ans thus attain
Close access to Her who is discimination's anti-sensous One. (71, 84)

What appraises manifold variety, the "other" that is,
And the "same" is whatever unitively shines on,
Thus grasping the situation above, into that state
Which yields sameness, melt and mix and erect sit. (72, 84)

Following up further the said powers, a further bifurcation there is,
One of these is an attribute of the "same", while the other
Qualifies the harsh "other" that never detachment gains,
Thus making two kinds of each of these. (72, 85)

On to the same as on to the other there constantly alight
Their respective specifying factors, although not proportionate,
Through the spinning phase of these two in all,
All predictions whatsoever there are do come to be. (72, 86)

41

In "This is a pot" the initial "this" is the harsh
While the "pot" is what makes its specific attribute,
For the mind with its myriad Indra-magic to come,
Understand, that "this" is the basis of functioning. (73, 88)

In "This is knowedge" the initial "this" is the "same"
While its specifying factor is the cognitive consciousness,
For the mind and all else to be effaced for the good path to gain,
"This" it is that one should contemplate. (73, 88)

By Nature's action caught, and turned,
Men of good action too, alas, keep turning round!
Mis-action to counteract, non-action avails not,
Gain-motive bereft, Wisdom one should attain.

Ignoring that in substance various religions are the same,
Like the blind men in respect of an elephant, fools wander
In this world, imitate not their way,
And not agitated like them, one should calmly settle down. (131)

One religion is not good enough for another and the doctrine cardinal
Staed in one, according to another's calculations is found defective,
Until that day the unitive secret herein is known with certitude
There shall continue to be confusion prevailing in this world. (132)

Victory by fight is impossible here; one as against one,
No religion by fighting gets exterminated; not knowing this
The opponent of a stranger faith,
His own doom shall be in vain fight for, beware! (132)

All plead but for one religion to prevail,
Which the disputants fail to remember withal,
Those wise ones freed from disadoption of another's faith
Can know here wholly the secret of all this. (131)

The dweller within the body, from its own status as pure being
In respect of each possible thing, treats all
As "that is mine" or "this is mine" transcending bodily sense,
All are in reality realized when we think of what this means. (68, 130)

Every man at every time makes effort in every way,
Self-happiness to secure, thus in the world
Know there is this One Religion alone, known thus and
Avoiding evil, one should his inner self attune. (129)

With earth and water, air and fire likewise,
Also the void, the ego, cognition and mind,
All worlds includng the waves and ocean too
Do all arise and into awareness change. (7)

From awareness the "I" sense first emerged,
Comes then with it "This"ness, as counterpart beside,
These, like creepers twain, do oevercover entirely,
Hiding the whole of the Maya tree. (11, 57)

Filled with word-content, that day the firmament shall radiant blaze,
And into it shall be absorbed to extinction all the visionary magic.
Then too, that small voice completing tri-basic cognition
Shall cease, and, lo! Self-radiance prevails! (10)

That primordial potency that herein resides
Is the seed that gives birth to all here we see;
Merging the mind in that, never forgetting,
Maya-mind to end, ever do contemplation pursue.

The waking state, it obtains not in sleep
And sleep again does not attain consciousness
When awake; day by day these twain are born
Of Maya's womb and keep alternating on.

A long drawn out dream is this, and like sleep each day,
It gets extinguished; dream too likewise!
We can never see extinction thus to this; as it is
Hitched on to the pure aloneness, it goes round for ever.

Like waves instantly arising on the ocean
Each body one after one rises to subside again;
Where alas! is the term for this? Know this as action
Taking place perpetually in awareness-ocean's prime source.

Within the waveless ocean, there do abide
Endless Maya-traits which as potent configurations that assume
Bodies with such as water and taste remain
As beginningless effects forming various worlds upon worlds.

Thinking not in terms, ever new, of yesterday, today
Tomorrow or even another day, never-endingly
Know, all things we count or measure
As of confusion's making; difference there is none at all!

Apart from awareness I have no being;
As distinct from me awareness cannot remain
As mere light; both knowledge and knower, contemplation
Reveals beyond doubt as of one aubstance alone.

Even when knowledge to egoism is subject in any prediction
And one is unmindful of the ultimate verity of what is said
Yet as with the truth however ultimate, such knowledge
Can never fall outside the scope of the knowing self.

Outside objects hold the field each distinct from each
With the sense that measures, whose function is nescience,
And these in turn with many sets of names such as that of directions,
Or the sky, keep rising up and into awareness change.

Mere orthodoxy which keeps saying that one should not adopt
As one's own a doctrine belonging to another side, how can it
Trud knowledge bring? Lip service does not avail;
One has earnestly to contemplate the state supreme.

This which is non-distinct from knowlege, than knowing which knowledge
Straightaway, here there is none other to know
As any ultimate knowing beyond; such the supreme secret
Of the most informed of men; who is there to know? (101)

This which ever prevails, summounting each interest-item,
One's proper retrospection alone can comprise:
By means of extremely lucid memory, however, the revealing
Of ultimate-wisdom-treasure is still not to be ruled out.

There is nothing here that we have not already once known;
Hidden by form, knowledge fails us; wakefully to know all this
There is none at all, limitless as it is,
Oh, who can there be at all to know this wonder dear! (30)

Earthy factors shall come to be evermore;
One alone remains not subject to becoming;
What we know, what it is, what we are, are that same;
And all others too remain conforming to its form.

One that is beyond all count and the ordinary -
Besides these two what is of other form
In memory, in sleep, not in any city on high
Could such have any existence, indeed! (60)

As the ego-sense enters into the snake-rope forms
Now as knowledge, now as a limbed agent in alternating duality,
It becomes pure now and then again profane,
Thus should he understand, the intuitive man. (57)

With hearing and such as horses linked, while bearing within
The image of Self, and controlled by the master of faculties,
Is the libido-chariot mounted whereon the ego rides
Dealing unceasingly with each thing of beauty as it proceeds. (114)

The one libido it is that as the "I" sense, the senses,
The inner instruments, the body and all these becomes
Unravelled: where is the term to this? The knower remains
Distinct only till knowledge becomes known.

Bereft of becoming none stays here on earth
In equalized state; a beginningless sport is all this!
In its global fullness, when, as a whole, one knows this
There comes to him unbounded happiness.

Now there is action which is nescience and again
There is the pure knowledge which is science
Ordained by Maya through these stay divided thus
The meta-dual attitude, the unitive turiya yields. (58)

Of one thing there could be many, as in many objects
One single meaning could reside; by such knowing we can know
Consciousness as comprising all, differencelessly; without any remainder
This ultimate secret, however, is not given for all to know. (42, 81)

Particles there are innumerable in a world
As within such a particle a world too abides;
The inert merges thus in the mind-stuff, as the mind-stuff too
Within the body; thus, on thought they are One.

Nature is water; the body, foam; the Self, the deep;
The "I", "I" rumbling within, the magic of the waves that arise;
Pearls they are each flowering of Wisdom within;
And what one drinks of oneself, immortality verily it is! (115)

As with a well into which measureless sand is wafted
By successive gusts, tier, so too
Exposed, to the waftings of untruth's hierarchy
The inner Self inwardly multitudinous forms it gains. (59, 115)

The ultimate is the sky; wind, that power expansive,
Awareness, the fire; water represents the perceptive organs;
What is given objectively to the sense, the earth;
And what thus keeps as five principles burning has its secret in the One alone.

Neither is there death nor birth nor life duration here,
Nor men or gods not others of that order; all name and form!
Like a mirage based on desert sands, is this thing that stands
Nor is it a thing at all with any content, note.

At birth-time being there is none
And the one born at another instant cannot be
How ever does this exist? Death too is even likewise;
All this but a flux and becoming of the mind-stuff pure! (41)

Contraries like being and becoming, how can they
As creation, endurance and dissolution, in one place co-exist?
For these three to pass into, there is nothing either;
Thus viewed, earth and other things are mere words alone. (41)

Nature, dividing one time as the enjoyer,
As everything outside, immanent or transcendent in glory looms
At another time again, by 'this-ness' expanded
It spreads out as the enjoyable universe. (58)

Like the fire that emerges out of churning sticks
That boundless Wisdom that from within those who seek prevails
As the Sun ascendent in pure reason's firmament supreme
It stays burning and to its flames consuming, fuel everything becomes.

Breaking up, staying on, or rising again after a change over
To continue, such is the course of the bodily nature here;
Watchful of all the three from its position ultimate
The one clefless Self, that free from all change remains. (58)

Because of cognition, if one should say there is
Earthiness as a reality, that is not true; what there is, is sod;
Without stable content all the limitless entities that stand
Are but Nature-configurations abiding within awareness.

No shadow could exist eithout depending on a model original
Since the manifest world is seen to have no original model anywhere
Neither shadow nor actuality is this; all seen
Like a snake that a gifted artist might cleverly sketch.

The body and other things all have no being one in another,
Thus the converse position becomes untenable;
As from day to day this remains without setting
It gains the status of verity emerging once again.

Each taken by itself all things here do exist; treated mutually
Each class excludes the other; considered in this way
The body and other things are neither real
Nor lacking in verity; they become unpredictable.

All things are real enough; the philosopher, however,
Grasps all things here as One; when not viewed
Through the inward eye, that great tribulation
Which is Maya, yields much puzzlement, indeed!

As out of knowledge, sparks of fire innumerable arise
Asserting the being of non-being so as to make the world emerge,
Know, that outside of knowledge not a thing exists;
Such knowledge unitive awareness yields. (59, 81)

What has no basis in reality can never hide what exists;
Experience vouches for this; asserting the reality
Of what exists, at every step, by Existence all is here enveloped;
The body and such effects have been made up of Existence. (99)

The effort that is made in view of something dear to one
As ordained too, remaining always constant and same
There is a dear value, unborn, unspent, unpredictable,
One and secondless, which ever endures as one's happiness.

As there is the law of energy remaining ever unspent
By outwardly directed action, there must needs be inwardly
A dear value that is inseperable from it, for which here
The action, is merely a symbol of outer recognition.

To one who has cut connection with the changeful body
There is nothing which surpasses in value his own Self;
As the interest that prevails in respect of oneself, as ordained also,
Never-ceasingly endures, the Self, eternal is.

This which presents itslef, as a mixture of the world
And what is real; is a great iniquity indeed;
Indeterminate and unknowable to word or thought,
How could valid reasoning move therein? (38, 96)

This expansive display of operative artifice as by Maya ordained
The shining creative principle of the universe is she;
And she, descending here, her limbs they are that become
The crust of the cosmic egg in number ten million.

The atom and the infinite thus, as being and non-being,
Loom from either side; this experience too
Of being as well as non-being, shall thereafter extinction gain,
And devoid of any basis, shall forever cease to be! (44)

Within the glory of pure knowing, the atom bereft of parts, shall extinct become,
And the infinite too, shall thereafter its own plenitude attain.
Direct experience can alone reveal this boundless
Stuff of intelligence pure, this science-filled ocean of Immortal Bliss. (44)

Till now, not a thing have we here known, as we have kept saying.
In every case, that there is something still of greater happiness;
Although the mind and other factors might vanish
The selfhood of the Soul (Atman) must be said to be Wisdom ever unspent.

Knowledge and "I" are both one, for one divest of all veiling curtains;
Another might have reason to argue still;
If the "I" could be taken as other than knowledge
None there is to know knowledge here a all!

100

Neither that nor this, nor the content of existence and I
But existence, subsistence, joy-immortal; thus attaining clarity
Emboldenend, discarding attachement to being and non-being,
One should gently, gently, merge in SAT-AUM.

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AdvaitaVedanta

The Philosophy of a Guru.

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