The
crisis of intellect – Part 4 of 5
We
have been referring to the crisis of intellect within Hinduism, or to put it
abstractly, within one religion. The larger crisis of intellect finds
expression in wanting to adjudicate among the great religions of the world.
What is important today is to come together and rediscover that this larger
crisis of intellect can be resolved only by going back to the very ancient
thoughts that have remained with us for more than twenty centuries now. The
period of the first millennium B.C is the most important period of history in
this context. That was the time when the axis of the world’s thoughts shifted
from a study of nature to the study of man’s life and his inner aspirations.
Then in India we had the Upanishadic seers, Mahavira the Jina and Gautama the
Buddha; in China we had Lao Tse and Confucius, in Iran there was Zoroaster, in
Israel there were the great prophets and in Greece, Pythagoras, Socrates and
Plato. That surge of activity and investigation and the profundity of thought of
that period have never since been matched. Yes, modern Science has made
phenomenal, even miraculous advances. But what should amaze us is that the
ancients achieved so much with so little help from outside. The gadgetry which
one can command today is certainly unequalled in its sweep and power. But note
that the philosophers of the first millennium B.C achieved what they did by
sheer rational thinking coupled with a certain intuition of their own. The test
of significance of what they left for posterity is in the fact that they have
survived twenty centuries of war and peace, strife and hatred, and all the ups
and downs of great empires and civilizations. It is really questionable whether
anything of what we call 20th-21st century science and
technology today will survive as valid knowledge twenty centuries hence!
Let
me not be mistaken as decrying intellect. The heights to which reason can rise
today, the accuracy with which we can make our observations even at the frontiers
of the galaxy, the comfort with which we can handle nature’s forces to suit
ourselves are all forward leaps of the highest order in human evolution. No
doubt about it. But Science is only one kind of response of the finite to the
infinite. There is another kind of response which is mystical. Mystical
experimentation through meditation can never be verified by methods of science.
That these experiments have to be considered valid in the total scheme of
things is the lesson that we should learn from modern physics and its philosophical
consequences. This is not to dethrone science from its high pedestal. But the
limitations of science as a means of knowledge in revealing the universe have
however to be accepted. By its only instrument of knowledge, namely
sense-perception, supported of course by various gadgetry, and the inferences
made from this ‘direct’ perception, it can reveal only the non-infinite side of
the universe. The infinite side of the universe, has to be a fullness (pUrNaM in Sanskrit) that by its very
definition and nature has to be revealed, if at all, only by scriptural
authority (called shabda pramANa in
Hindu philosophy) and intuition. Scriptural revelation is the instrument of
knowledge for spirituality. Can the ear
corroborate or contradict the colour seen by the eye? Can the eye corroborate
or contradict the decibel value of the noise heard by the ear? So also Science
has no way of corroborating or contradicting the spiritual truths revealed by
scriptural authority and intuition. However, let not the mystic and the
religious immediately condemn science for its emphasis on intellect rather than
tradition and faith. But just as the benefits that mankind derived through
blind faith in the past were washed away by the primitive and superstitious
jungle to which man mistakenly confined himself and thus blocked the progress
of civilisation, so also, in modern times the emphasis on the intellect has
done more harm than good. The only way
out of this situation is to readjust our attitudes in such a way as to restore
balance between intellect and intuition.
Modern
man needs a spiritual counterpart to the phenomenal external advance he has
made. All his scientific temper and
technological output cannot hide the inner emptiness in his life. Our modern
culture in general has gone overboard in testing how far we can go with
sexuality, promiscuity, pornography, acquisitiveness, selfishness, aggression
and violence. Many of us, though against all this, do not have either the inclination or the
stamina to react against these and this I would say is again a crisis of
intellect, namely the crisis of isolation from what happens around. The need of
the hour is to turn this culture spiritually inward and to make us look Godward,
thereby getting the spiritual strength of a Vivekananda to fight and correct
these ills of society, which do not have anything to do with religion. Scientific
intellect has certainly made major contributions to man’s needs but they are
not the major needs of man. They are only his minor needs, the needs of material
happiness and physical survival. But
when this physical survival itself is threatened by the very inventiveness
which humanity has displayed and sharpened through its collective intellect,
the threat has to be faced by sustained and conscious efforts of man. He has to resolve the greatest problem facing
him – namely the conflict between the divine and the undivine in him. If today
the terrorist elements of the world are indulging in untold massacres of
innocent men, women and children and property, the only way by which we may
hope to stop them is not just by more intellectual advances in science and their
applications to technology but by complementing them with more and more of
proper education soaked in human values.
It has been rightly said that humanity is a brainwashed species
indoctrinated from childhood into the prejudices of nationality, race, colour,
language and of narrow fundamentalist dogmatic religion. True religion is far more than a system of
beliefs and far more than a formalized effort to wheedle a little pity out of
God by offering Him naïve self-condemning prayers and propitiatory rites. Once we enter the area of spirituality we
would discover that Truth is not unearthed by Science alone, but it has an even
faster rate of unfolding via Spirituality.
(To be continued)
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