A Nine-point Master Plan for Value Education to be symbiotically embedded

in the educational system

1. Man's essential qualities are the most welcome qualities of sympathy, compassion, kindliness and brotherhood. These are so because from one point of view his essential core is itself divine and from another point of view man is the child of God created in His own image. It is necessary to tap these qualities of Man in each one of his dealings as a member of the family, of the Nation, of the World.

2. To do this there is no better way than to delve into the biographies of as many great men of the world as possible - scholars, saints, innovators, leaders, reformers, religious heads, social workers, scientists, devotees of the Lord, writers, poets, thinkers, philosophers, performers of the arts, managers, administrators, entrepreneurs, and professionals. At every level of education of the student, Biography should form part of the compulsory portion of his studies, as one more subject like Mathematics and Social Sciences. It is not enough to be just part of his study of Language or Literature. As he rises up in the levels, study of biographies under Biography could become more and more detailed. Ultimately when he completes his education, maybe as a professional, doctor, engineer , manager or what-have-you, he should be able to say that he has specialized in (or has put in a certain amount of intensive study in) certain biographies, not necessarily directly related to his profession or calling. For instance, it could be Mahatma Gandhi, J.N. Tata, St. Francis of Assissi, Abraham Lincoln, Mother Theresa, U.V. Swaminatha Iyer, Benjamin Franklin, Cecil Rhodes, Madam Curie or Guru Nanak, or scores of others. Lessons from Biography could be the greatest lessons that a child picks up. So the fundamental difference between the present-day curriculum and this proposed curriculum is that in every class from the 4th standard (or grade) to the 12th standad (or grade) there would be one more compulsory subject called 'Great Lives' or 'Biography'. To that extent, the load from the other subjects has to be reduced. It does not matter. We are teaching too much too badly, anyway -- and in India at least, we are surviving, because, we are doing that to too few.

3. Education from the primary level should start with the concept of the whole world/planet as a single entity. At each stage of the development of the story of man there should be less emphasis on nationhood and a greater emphasis on world citizenship, environment and human behavior. Most of the social evils of the adult population may be traced to the fact that the mind refuses to rise from the little world of the individual and one’s immediate kith and kin and friendship. The correction for this has to start from childhood and at school.

4. The habit of book reading should be encouraged on a warfront from childhood upward. It should not matter what book the child reads. Reading, comprehension, the art of communicating with others what has been assimilated by reading, and, in due time, writing -- should form part of the compulsory curriculum all the way up even after the student has started narrowing down and specializing. Right now book reading is left, if at all, as an optional and voluntary activity. It would be necessary to institute special awards for this activity and bring it into the mainstream of the student's career in school. It may be said that the modern means of passing information and literature through the facilities provided by Information Technology like the Internet, have compensated the need to go to books and that the Internet has taken over the need for readers to go to books. But the compensation is not adequate enough. Kids use the Internet only to cull out information for their favorite projects either given by their curriculum needs or motivated by their own pet fantasies. They do not stay with the Internet long enough to gulp whole books of substance. Unless kids learn to sit with books and think leisurely on what they have read the thinking habit will get muzzled up. The very Internet that has done all this should now be used to make the student go back to books. Books can be reviewed, summarized, focussed, and recommended by the teachers of the particular locale or school or college. Each educational institution can discover its own means to draw attention to the books that they want their students to read, provide competition for such reading on the Internet itself by announcing awards and incentives. Several innovative measures must be found out as suits the context and the neighborhood. Several commercial booksellers and publishers are doing a wonderful job now on the Internet to draw the attention of those who surf on the net. But non-profit organizations like educational institutions, teachers, professors, thinkers, parent-teacher-associations, social workers and professionals should make it a mission to tell the next generation what to read, how to read and why. If we do not do all this, the twenty-first century citizen in his thirties and forties would not know what to do with a book! And in a century after that, whatever that remains of 'man' will have to start reinventing reading and writing(!) which is probably one of the few things left yet, that distinguishes man from animal.

5. From the age of 5, the practice of silent prayer should become a daily routine irrespective of the denomination or religion to which the child belongs or does not belong. The value of prayer can never be overstated. No one can reveal God to another. But by revealing the value of prayer and inculcating the habit of prayer we place the child in a position to receive God-experience, in due time. Spiritual experience can come only through the correct understanding of prayer. Prayer is the point of contact with God. Silent prayer is the preparation of consciousness for the experience of Divinity within. The child should be tuned up from childhood well enough so that at adult age it is ready to receive the inevitable message that unhappiness and suffering are necessary for the unfolding of the soul within and to stand that unhappiness and suffering, prayer is the nutrition needed. So much does not have to be told to the child; but the habit of prayer must be made a second nature. This should not be left for the child to learn by itself after it reaches adult age -- as is the experience of many a materialist adult who has learnt things the hard way and then, turned to the ways of the Orient in the past few decades. This is where it is not possible to accept the plea of the rationalist that, to pray or not to pray should be left to the individual for a decision on his own, when he becomes an adult. The plea  assumes that each man, without standing on the shoulders of the men of earlier times, begins all over again to learn all that the earlier civilization has already discovered and recorded for us to take the torch from there.  That is not the way Man has ascended to the present state of knowledge.

6. From the age of 7, children should know and learn the habit of sitting for an introspection and meditation. Any time the child errs in its social habits, obligations, table manners, discipline or routine, it should not receive corporal punishment but only an opportunity to introspect. The habit of introspection has all but disappeared in this modern age when everybody uses more than his leisure time to sit glued to the idiot box, without ever devoting any time to think about anything, not to speak of oneself -- except of course, when they worry about something, which any way is not a productive activity.

7. From the age of 11 onwards, regular lessons on meditation should form part of the curriculum. Meditation need not be sectarian. But meditation is an effort to be done at the individual level and since Indian culture has an under-current of unity in spite of its plurality of traditions, it should be possible certainly in India which has the advantage (see No.8 further on) of several religions coexisting over the centuries, to integrate sectarian meditation into a classroom activity.

8.   From the age of 15, the child should be educated on the positive aspects -- not the bizarre, not the fantastic, not the strange, habits and customs -- of all world religions by competent teachers, who, while they themselves would be students of comparative religion, would keep their own bias, if any, towards a particular faith or opinion, in abeyance as best as possible in order to present objectively the commonness of spirituality in all religions. Comparative religion is not competitive religion. Every religion is a blend of macro principles and micro setting. The latter is a mixture of local mythology and ritual and this never appeals to a stranger or outsider. Only a powerful poet, a talented sculptor or a mystic sage may be able to impart some understanding of it to one not born and nurtured in the tradition. But the macro-principles are usually understood, at least as an all-embracing framework, though not followed in its totality, because it speaks to man as man. It is a crisis of intellect that wants to adjudicate among the great religions of the world. What is important for the 21st century citizen is to come together and rediscover that this 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 millenium BC is the most important period of history in this connection. 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. They achieved so much with so little help from any gadgetry -- which, by the way is what is helping us today to unravel further frontiers of knowledge. The philosophers of the first millenium BC achieved what they did by sheer rational thinking coupled with a certain unique intuition of their own. The test of significance of what they left for posterity is in the fact 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 extremely doubtful whether anything of what we call 20th century science and technology will survive as valid knowledge twenty centuries hence! The best guess is that not much of what we hold as science today will survive that long and even what we today call the scientific attitude may mean something entirely different in the year 4000 AD

It all means that we, as world-citizens should have a great pride in the universal heritage of religion and spirituality. This has to be passed on to our youngsters not just because it is great history and tradition but because there is a danger of humanity destroying itself by gradual erosion of these ancient roots. Our religions are our best heritage and safest savior. To say, however, that only the macro-principles of these religions are important is to ignore in the context of a tree the sun and soil from which it draws its sustenance. At the same time any emphasis on the micro-setting should not lead one to nurture an aggressive pride in one's culture and nationality. Pride in one's culture and nationality should only be like pride in one's own mother. This pride, to quote Huston Smith (Religions of Man, New American Library, 1958, p.17), should be

'an affirmative pride born of a gratitude for the values he has gained and not a defensive pride whose only device for achieving the sense of superiority it pathetically needs is by grinding down others through invidious comparison. His roots in his family, his community, his civilization will be deep, but in that very depth he will strike the water table of man's common humanity and thus nourished will reach out in more active curiosity, more open vision, to discover and understand what others have seen'.

In most human cultures religion and culture are highly interwoven; more so in India where religion has been the dominant feeling for centuries. If we build our educational system on the premise that religion is a personal matter students will be left out without the means of understanding any culture beyond a limited subset of their own. Already we see the effect of this error in the educational set-up of the developed countries. The freedom to present a wide spectrum of human belief within a common scholastic context is a major advantage. The fact that in the Indian milieu this wide spectrum is already in the atmosphere should be considered as a great asset rather than a handicap.

9. History should be studied not as history of the different countries but as history of man and as the history of wars against poverty, disease and wickedness. History should bring out the perspective that peace is not absence of war but peace is a mutual understanding of each other's aspirations and rights. Every period of history should be studied as part of a world history from this point of view and not as part of a nation's struggle for domination or ascent to power. The individual histories of each nation in all its details should not have to be studied until the student reaches adult age.

This is the suggestion of a Master Plan for embedding the spiritual and human values in the educational system. If this can be implemented we would be turning out world-citizens who would also be a citizen of the world of Spirituality. It would not then be difficult to mould such a citizen into a rounded personality whose every work in the world would be a yAjnA in the spirit of the Bhagavad-Gita. For such a person, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, (The Synthesis of Yoga by Shri Aurobindo, Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, Third Impression, 1984, pp.132-133),

For such a person the mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political and linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labors and activities by which man subdues and utilizes his world and environment, and the noble and the beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression, -- all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realization of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realization or of divine formation.

SHRUTI

The primary source of Hinduism from which it derives all its authority and inspiration is the body of literature known as the vedas. They constitute the oldest religious literature of the world. They consist of two main divisions, the Mantras and the Brahmanas – the former containing chants and prayers and the latter containing a sort of commentary on the former, but both having equal authority. All are eternal, being revelations to the Rishis. A mantra may be in verse with fixed feet and syllables. Then it is known as a Rik. Otherwise it is called Yajus. A rik that can be sung is called a SAman. The three classes of mantras are grouped into four compilations or SamhitAs. These are the four Vedas which have the names Rg veda, Yajur-veda, SAmaveda, and atharvaveda. Each SamhitaA had one or more Brahmanas only a few of which are extant. Some of the Brahmanas have a portion called AraNyaka in which are found one or more Upanishads. The SamhitAs as well as the Brahmanas had various rescensions or ShAkhAs (branches) according to the original Rishis to whom they were revealed, and after whom they were named. We are told that there were 1180 such branches, but as of now it appears there are only eleven.

The most interesting thing to note is the fact that the Vedas were not written by any single person or persons. In fact they were not 'written' at all, until, in the nineteenth century, they were put into print. Till then, over the centuries, they were transmitted orally. In fact, all traditional teaching in India has gone on in this way for several centuries – from Guru to disciple (Shishya) from mouth to ear and from heart to heart. It is one of the amazing miracles of world heritage that, while even the written literature of great authors like Kalidasa and Shakespeare have today more than one reading or version at several points, the Vedas, which go back to 3000 B.C. have, in spite of being handed down entirely through oral transmission, come down to us in a single version with a scrupulous exactitude. Throughout the length and breadth of India, where the Vedas are treasured as the most ancient heritage, not a syllable of them is different in one place from what it is everywhere else.

How can this be? How was it possible? In spite of their massive content, (Rg veda and Yajur veda have 153,826 and 109,287 words respectively) they have been preserved from generation to generation though it was all done only orally. All this has been preserved (till today) for more than five millenia (at least three millenia according to even the most stinting calculations) without ever putting them into writing. This must be considered a great lingusitic achievement of which India should be legitimately proud. The literature, which consists of diverse poetical and prose compositions were simply learnt by rote, the training being given by the teacher saying each word or combinations of words once with the proper incantations (called svaras) and the students saying it twice. They then learn, almost in the same way, to recite it in continuous form along with the incantations. The continuous recitation of a vedic text is called samhita pATha. The accuracy of the transmitted text is preserved by resorting to an artifice of nine different techniques or modes of recital.

The first is the pada pATha, which simply recites each word of the text separately; pada means word; pATha means reading.The system of euphonic changes that occur from the samhita pATha to the pada pATha is itself very technical (Sanskrit grammar would be crucial here) but makes sense. In addition, there are eight other techniques of recitation, the sole purpose of each is to preserve the original samhita text without the loss or addtion of a single syllable or svara. The svaras are a significant part of the recital of the vedas, whatever be the mode. The eight modes are called: krama, jaTa, ghana, mAlA, ratha, ShikhA, daNDa and rekhA.  In each mode the order of recital of the words is specified as a particular permutation of their original sequence. We give below a sentence from the Yajurveda, obviously without the svaras, in its original samhita pATha form, also its pada text and then the order of the words in the ghana recital. A pundit who has learnt the ghana recital of one complete veda (he takes thirteen years of whole time work to reach that stage) is called a Ghana-pAThi.

First we give the rule for the ghana mechanics of recitation: Let us denote the original order of words in a sentence as: 1/2/3/4/5. Then the ghana recital will go as follows:

12/21/123/321/123/      23/32/234/432/234/      34/43/345/543/345/       45/54/45/         5 iti 5.

Example: samhita sentence:

eshAm purushANAm-eshAm paSUnAM mA bher-mA ro-mo eshAM kincanAmamat //

Meaning: Oh God! Do not frighten these our men and animals, may none of these perish or lack health.

pada text: (the slashes are shown to separate the words; but in reciting the pada text, one gives a half-pause after each pada):

eshAM/purushANAM/eshAM/paSUnAM/mA/bheH/mA/arah/mo-iti-mo/eshAM/ kim/chana/Amamat/Amamad-ity-Amamat/

Note: The ninth break here and the last break are the results of a technicality which the reader may ignore, unless one wants to specialise in this art.

Now for the ghana recital (without the svaras; with the svaras it would be a delight to hear). The recital is a non-stop recital, except for a half-pause at the place shown by /. There is no break anywhere else. The hyphens shown are for requirements of those who can decipher the grammar; they will not be reflected in the recital.

eshAM-purushANAM-purushANAm-eshAm-eshAM purushANAm-eshAm-eshAm purushANAm-eshAm-eshAm purushANAm-eshAM /    purushANAm-eshAm-eshAM purushANAM purushANAm-eshAM paSUnAM paSUnAm-eshAm purushANAm purushANAm-eshAM paSUnAM /   eshAM paSUnAM paSUnAm-eshAm-eshAM paSUnAm-mA mA paSUnAm-eshAm-eshAM paSUnAm-mA /       paSUnAm-mA mA paSUnAM paSUnAm-mA bher-bher-mA paSUnAM paSUnAm-mA bheH /         mA bher-bher-mA-mA bher-mA-mA bher-mA-mA bher-mA /    bher-mA-mA bher-bher-mAro aro mA bher-bher-mA araH /    mA ro aro mA-mA ro mo-mo aro mA mA ro mo /     aro mo mo aro aro mo eshAm-eshAm mo aro aro mo eshAM /     mo eshAm-eshAm mo mo eshAm kim kim-eshAm-mo mo eshAm kim / mo iti mo/  eshAm kim-kim-eshAm-eshAM kim-cana cana kim-esham-eshaM kim-cana /  kim cana cana kim kim canAmamad-Amamat cana kim kim canAmamat /canAmamad-Amamac-cana canAmamat /Amamad-ityAmamat /

The significant point to note here is that in Sanskrit the order of words does not matter for the meaning of the sentence. If you do it with an English sentence, say, ‘Rama vanquished Ravana’, it will go like this:

Rama vanquished vanquished Rama Rama vanquished Ravana Ravana vanquished Rama Rama vanquished Ravana … and so on.

You can now see the absurdity in the meanings thrown up by the sequence of words. In Sanskrit this absurdity would not arise. So a ghana recitation is supposed to be equivalent to a recitation of the veda 13 times and to that extent is multifold fruitful! The 13 is because except for two beginning and two ending words in a sentence the others are repeated 13 times. (It can be checked with the word paSUnAM above).

Orthodox opinion holds that the vedas are eternal. The significance of this will be understood only if the concept of Time in Hindu cosmology is understood. In Hindu cosmology and metaphysics it is not accepted that the universe was created out of nothing at a particular point of time. For if something is created or born, it has to be dissolved, has to die. Strictly the conservation principle applies here. The universe was created, according to the Vedas, only by transformation of something which was latent before that. For instance, one such Vedic statement (M.N.U. 1-13) says: Sun & Moon were created by the Creator as they were earlier.[1]

Creation is just a manifestation of what was unmanifest before. SrshTi and SamhAra, Creation and Dissolution, are only two events in a long cyclic succession of events. There is no beginning or end. This alternation between manifestation and non-manifestation is what appears as the passage of time. Manifestation is when the universe of names and forms appears and non-manifestation is when it disappears. The only Ultimate Reality is Brahman. Even BrahmA the Creator is only a manifestation of the Absolute Brahman at one point of time. He is the womb from which the entire universe becomes manifest. He is the One into which the entire universe dissolves. Each period of this manifestation is a day of BrahmA. From one day of BrahmA to another day, that is, from one period of manifestation to another such, many things survive in their latent forms. Among these are the Vedas – it is in this sense that the Vedas are eternal – and the complex of prints of individual minds with their store of impressions called vAsanAs. These survive the ‘night’ of BrahmA, the period of non-manifestation. The lengths of these days and nights in this long cycle of events have been elaborately described in the scriptures. The units mentioned therein are fantastically large and mind-boggling and a modern mind may be tempted to dismiss them as concoctions. But the consistency with which different scriptures written at different times in the past reveal the magnitudes of these units, called yugas, is remarkable.

To be precise, a mahA-yuga, also called ‘chatur-yuga’, is an age or epoch. It consists of four yugas which repeat in a cyclic order. Each cycle of four yugas consists of

·       A KRta-yuga or Satya-yuga of 1,728,000 human years;

·       a tretA-yuga of 1,296,000 human years,

·       a dvApara-yuga of 864,000 human years and 

·       a kali-yuga of 432,000 human years.

Thus one mahA-yuga has a duration of 4.32 million human years. 1008 such mahA-yugas make a day of BrahmA and is called a kalpa. Cf. B.G. 8–17[2]: Those who know the day of BrahmA as a thousand (mahA-) yugas in duration … . We are told that in this recurrent cycle of yugas we are now in kaliyuga which started in 3102 B.C.E. What is the proof, you may ask. What is the proof that today is, say, Thursday? The only proof is that yesterday was Wednesday. The proof that when you were born it was such and such a day is that your mother told you it was so. Though India has been criticized for its lack of historical sense, people in India have been doing a good job in terms of keeping track of the calendar, irrespective of the life-history of any individual. The rituals that every Hindu goes through, both on auspicious occasions like marriage and (invariably) on inauspicious occasions like death always start with the fixation of time and date in the age-old calendar. In fact those who perform ritual worship daily cannot but be aware of the calendar. In this way the exact date in the eternal cycle of the yugas has been passed on to us from generation to generation.

Let us come to what the vedas talk about. They talk about creation, Nature and God. They sing ecstatically about the bounties of Mother Nature. They glorify the majesty that is transparent in the workings of nature. They contain long, prosaic instructions on rituals to be followed for propitiating various gods. They make impressive poetic appeals to the grace of these gods. They discuss life and death and everything that touches man in his journey through life. The subject matter of the vedas is usually looked at in terms of three categories or parts, called kANDas, technically. These three parts are not physically separated in the vedas. Material relevant to all three subjects are scattered throughout the texts. The karma kANDa discusses the duties of an individual, particularly of a householder, the rites and sacrifices that he must perform and how he should perform them. In the upAsana-kANDa the theme is divine communion and worship. The jnAna-kANDa is metaphysical disquisition about ultimate reality and the transience of ordinary sensory experience. These excursions into metaphysics and philosophy particularly occur in the last portions of the vedas, called the Upanishads. For the meaning of the word ‘Upanishad’ see the name ‘hrImkAra-vedopanishad’ (#294) in 1.12.

Upanishads occur in the last portions of each branch of each veda. From out of the 1180 branches that are supposed to have existed 5000 years ago, at present only around 120 Upanishads are extant. Of these, ten are considered to be most fundamental. These are: ISa, Kena, KaTha, PraSna, MunDaka, MANDUkya, TaittirIya, Aitareya, ChAndogya, BRhadAraNyaka Upanishads. Note that in referring to these Upanishads in this book we use the respective abbreviations : I.U.; Ke.U.; Ka.U.; P.U.; Mu.U.; MA.U.; T.U.; A.U.; Ch.U.; Br.U.

Some other important Upanishads are: ShvetASvatara, MaitrI, KausitikI, NRsimha-pUrva-tApinI, Kaivalya, AmRta-bindu, etc. Over the centuries, the importance attached to the different portions of the vedas has been shifting. In modern times it is the Upanishads that make the strongest appeal. Some of them are very long and some very short. The MA.U. has only twelve very short paragraphs in prose. The Br.U. is as long as the Biblical New Testament. Some Upanishads are in prose, some in verse. But all are discourses and dialogues about spiritual experiences. These dwell on fundamental questions about life, birth, death and man's ultimate objective. What is the nature of the universe? What is meant by Absolute Reality? How was the world created? What is man's place in the universe? What is the purpose of his journey through life? What is knowledge? What are the means to acquire that knowledge? How does one analyze one's mental experience? How does one reach the state of everlasting bliss, if there is one? What is meant by God? What is man’s relationship with God? All such questions are daringly posed and relentlessly pursued. The theme usually ends up declaring:

THE DIVINE IS ESSENTIALLY IN THE DEPTH OF ONE'S OWN SELF.

TAP IT. BE IN CONSTANT TOUCH WITH IT.

RECOGNIZE THAT DIVINITY IN THE SELF OF EVERY BEING.

ACT IN THE LIVING PRESENT GUIDED BY THAT AWARENESS.

THAT IS THE WAY TO BE HAPPY, EVER.

Many portions of the Upanishads have been considered by philosophers all over the world to be the most profound records of human thought. Upanishads are therefore considered to be the crown jewel of the vedas. They tell us that we are not to wander everywhere in search of God. No such quest will reveal Him. He stays very close to us. But we have to transcend the very time and space which limit our vision. It is the alternating states of the mind which are caused by the interplay of time and space that delude us. They tell us to long to be free from the play of time and space and ultimately realise the Truth by self-experience. For a detailed account of the Upanishads see 6.3.

---

[1] sUryA-candramasau dhAtA yathA pUrvam-akalpayat /

[2] Sahasra-yuga-paryantam ahar-yad-brahmaNo viduH.

MIX-UP BETWEEN DIFFERENT LEVELS OF REALITY - A Hairpin bend on the ascent to advaita

MIX-UP BETWEEN DIFFERENT LEVELS OF REALITY  

A Hairpin bend on the ascent to advaita

Questioner: Prof. VK, to state that "Buddhi" is doing everything because of the presence of  Consciousness while the Absolute Consciousness itself  is doing nothing is like saying that in a dream state "TAIJASA" is doing everything but "dreamer" is doing nothing. In fact neither taijasa nor the dreamer is doing anything since there is no act of doing there. It is just a dream. Similarly, even in waking state there is neither doer nor doing. Why even the question of who the doer is while there is no doing???

My dear friend, you are inadvertently slipping  into a standard  mistake that we, learners of Advaita, make. It is the mistake of mixing up one reality with a higher reality . Advaita itself loses its significance if it is interpreted as a ‘kriya-advaita’ (advaita in action), rather than as a ‘bhava-advaita’ (advaita in attitude). All our shastras emphasize and insist on bhava-advaita only. If ‘You’ and ‘I’ are one and the same according to advaita, it does not mean that your property is mine! It is only the attitude of oneness that is recommended, not the actual oneness in the vyaavahaarik (=transactional) plane. (Gita 18 – 20). The attitude of oneness must imply first of all that ‘your’ sorrows must be ‘mine’ before any other oneness is declared, recommended or practised. Again this sentence could be distorted by using the advaita plank itself. For example, when I use the word ‘sorrow’ one could say: Where is sorrow for an advaitin? Sorrow is there only when there is duality!. This is again another example of mixing the vyaavahaarik)  plane with the absolute.

Most of our misunderstandings in advaita discussions can be traced to this single fault in the logic. As a mathematician I used to say that this is like ‘division by zero’ in mathematics. This single fault of ‘division by zero’ made explicitly or implicitly can lead to all sorts of fallacious statements in mathematics. So also by mixing the vyaavahaarik plane and the paaramaarthik plane one could tear to pieces most of the statements asserted by advaita.

This mixing of two planes itself is a cause of confusion to the beginning advaitin. I have recently discovered an analogy from the world of TV serials (soup’ plays). Mostly the same actors play different roles in the different serials. Several serials are telecast every day. Now let us think of someone who is watching several serials day by day. Actor A is a husband in one serial of actress B. In another serial (say, which has a time slot adjacent to the other one in the TV schedules), actress B is the sister of Actor A. A new entrant to the audience of these serials, confuses himself with the roles of A and B in the different serials and asks a question: Why do they show such scenes as somebody going to bed with his sister?  Well, the veteran watcher of these serials knows what kind of confusion the new watcher has landed himself into. The latter has mixed up the roles of A and B in the two serials!. 

This is exactly the case with our initiate in advaita, who asks: If there is only one non-dual reality, then what is the need to pray or worship or do bhakti? The existence of the one non-dual reality is in the absolute level, whereas the praying or worshipping or doing bhakti is in the vyaavahaarik level. A Jivanmukta is so called because he can be in either of the planes according to ‘his will, which, if you ask him, he will ascribe to ‘divine will, because he has no other will except divine will. When we understand him in the Absolute plane as a Jivanmukta, we are looking at one of his roles only. When we understand him in the vyaavahaarik plane, he appears to be one among us. Those of us (Don’t include me -- I have never had that good fortune) who have seen Ramana Maharshi in action, going about asking people at their lunch to have one more serving, or asking a visitor about his travel, must be thinking how is it this Jivanmukta cares to delve into these mundane questions?

The same thing about mAyA.  In the absolute plane there is only one non-dual reality. There is no mAyA there.  But in the vyaavahaarik  plane, everything is mAyA. The vyaavahaarik plane itself is a mAya; but mark it, not to  somebody in the vyaavahaarik plane, but to some one who is outside of it!  To be outside of it, you have to surrender to Him when you are inside of it. Those who surrender to Me when they are in the vyaavahaarik plane, I will take them out of the vyaavahaarik plane to My Absolute Plane, -- says the Lord, in so many words, very explicitly in 7-14 and 18-66. 

Now let me take the statement of the Question:. My comments are in red:

Prof. VK, to state that "Buddhi" is doing everything because of the presence of  Consciousness while the Absolute Consciousness itself  is doing nothing is like saying that in a dream state  (This ‘state’ concept is for the vyAvahaarik plane)"TAIJASA" is doing everything but "dreamer" is doing nothing (this is in the Absolute plane). In fact neither taijasa (this is a vyAvahArik concept) nor the dreamer is doing anything since there is no act of doing there (this ‘not doing’ is in the Absolute Plane). It is just a dream (Dream is only with reference to the dreamer in the waking state, which is a vyAvahaarik concept). Similarly, even in waking state (vyAvahaarik concept) there is neither doer nor doing (this is in the Absolute Plane).  Why, even the question (in the vyAvahaarik plane) of who the doer is (in the vyAvahaarik plane)  while there is no doing (in the Absolute plane)???

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FREE WILL VERSUS DIVINE WILL: Part 4 of 4

FREE WILL VERSUS DIVINE WILL

Part 4 of 4

TD: Your logic is certainly reasonable. But you are missing one more bit of information from the fifteenth chapter of the Gita.

DFW: What is it that I am missing from the fifteenth chapter of the Gita?

TD: It is the fact that there are two purushas instead of one.

DFW: Both sentient?

TD: Yes, both sentient. By themselves mind and intellect are not sentient. The spark of the Infinite Consciousness that resides in us as the sentient Purusha is the source of this sentience. This spark is the JIva But the JIva cannot express itself in any manner except through the BMI. When it so expresses itself, an identification takes place between JIva on the one side and the BMI on the other side. This identification results in a conscious personality which is what goes by the ordinary name of ‘I’. This is one purusha. It is the perishable purusha (kshara-purusha). If on the other hand JIva disassociates itself from the BMI and remains as the spark of Consciousness that it really is, then it is the imperishable purshha within. It is known as the akshara-purusha. Thus there are two purushas.

DFW. So who is responsible for my actions, good or bad? Who is the doer?

TD: It is only the perishable purusha. The other one is imperishable, unattached, unaffected, unpolluted, and immutable. It is the real ‘I’. The perishable purusha is the false ‘I’ or the lower self. The real ‘I’ is the higher Self.

DDW: Shall we say then that the real doer of actions is this perishable purusha?

TD: In a sense, yes. Not only he is the doer but suffers the result of his doings. He it is that goes from body to body and suffers all the fruits of actions.

DFW: Then what does the other purusha (the imperishable) do?

TD: He is untouched by anything. All our Upanishads as well as all the great teachers of advaita from Shankara downwards tell us to identify ourselves with the divine within and thus be unaffected by the ups and downs that the kshara purusha goes through.

DFW: I still don’t understand it. What exactly do you mean by ‘identification’. Is it just a posture? How does it translate into action? The discussion has now taken such a turn that we have forgotten why we started the discussion. Where have the Free Will and Divine Will gone now?

DDW: We have not strayed. We are still trying to understand Divine Will. Because it is the purusha within, whose presence in us makes us will, act and feel through our BMI, it is common in Vedanta to say that the outer self has no control and it is the inner self that is the motor behind it.

TD: One of you mentioned earlier the concept of ‘action in inaction’. This is it. The inner Self does nothing but in its presence everything happens. But for its presence nothing would happen.

DDW: This concept of the inner self as the power behind all our actions gets translated for general understanding to say it is all divine will. Common folk understand by this statement that God is sitting there in his throne and dispensing all decisions and actions! The bottomline lesson is that we have to be in harmony with that ‘divine will’ in order to live and die in peace. The identification means that you should be constantly aware that you (the real You) are neither the doer of actions nor the experiencer of the consequences. ‘na ahaM kartA, na aham bhoktA’. Your mind thinks, your hands and feet act; but You are only a witness to all of these.

DFW: I feel this identification business is tricky. I think there is some blurring here.

TD: Let me try to explain. Whenever we act, we think we are the doer of the action. Actually we are thinking of the false ‘I’ here. The 18^th chapter of the Gita elaborates four others that have a part in the action. One is called ‘adhiShTAnaM’, the support or base of all action. In other words it is the conglomerate of natural forces that constitute the field of action.

DDW: The next is the totality of the different senses which form the instrument of action. The third is the set of circumstances or the context. The fourth is variously called Fate or Divine Element; actually it is the set of vAsanAs as we know, that have inspired the action.

TD: Thus the false ‘I’ together with these four accessories become the agents of action..

DFW: The difference between this false ‘I’ and the real ‘I’ is only in the attitude. Right?

TD: But the attitude or bhAvanA is everything. This is the crux of the entire philosophy of advaita. The doer or kartA is the individual mental attitude which unifies itself with the external things like body, senses and the mind to the extent that it thinks they are itself. This process of attitudinal unification is what is called identification.

DDW: On the other hand, the real ‘I’, the deeper Self, stands aloof as Witness, sAkshI.

TD: If now our mental attitude is perfectly tuned to identify itself with the sAkShI behind, then the five participants to the action are outside us. We can then clearly say “na ahaM kartA, na ahaM bhoktA” (I am not the doer or the experiencer).

DDW: But all the four agents of action belong to PrakRti or its effects and the fifth namely the kshara purusha, is also an effect of the mAyic spell over us. So it is also right to say that PrakRti is the doer.

DFW: But earlier we concluded that PrakRti, being insentient, cannot be the doer and it is He, the inner self, that is the doer.

TD: It is now clear, after the analysis in the 18^th chapter, in what sense we are saying that PrakRti is the doer. It is the false inner self along with the four other agents of action that is the doer. Thus PrakRti together with the sentience of the false self becomes the doer.

DFW: It is all pretty complicated.

DDW: That is why, to the common folk, we simply say, that the spirit within us, which is divine, is the doer. And they further simplify it by saying that it is all divine will.

TD: ... which is right after all, since it is the spark of Consciousness that sparks the mAyA that causes our false self to say what it says.

DDW : I feel greatly relieved now. I feel I understand it all.

DFW. Do you, really? Then can you answer the question: Does the ‘divine’ have free will?

DDW: I know you are trying to trap me. To say it does not have free will is absurd because we ourselves have free will in some measure. To say the divine has free will also leads to absurd supplementaries.

DFW: Like what?

DDW: Like what you yourself pointed out earlier. Free will implies options to choose from. Does the divine choose from several options? Why does it choose one of them? In that case is the divine so ignorant of the future to have to choose from its options? What governs its choice? Nature or PrakRti? Is the divine a slave to Nature? It cannot be. What desire makes the divine choose? If the divine is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, why does He have to have options, choices, freedom to choose or not to choose? Why? Why? Does it not all add up to saying that the divine is a bundle of contradictions?

TD: Wonderful. The divine Godhead in Hinduism is difficult to conceive of because it simultaneously possesses ‘contradictory’ qualities. There is no parallel in this finite world of ours. The divine has no desire, yet He has will! He chooses and chooses not! He intervenes and He also never intervenes, only watches! He has options but each option is His own Will! He knows the future, yet He chooses to act! The future is what He makes of the present. Nature or PrakRti is His slave, yet He allows Nature to take its course. He is Personal, but not personal in the ‘worldly’ sense, because He is all-knowing. He is perfect, not in the sense of free from limitations, because limitations don’t exist outside of His will! Yes, He is a bundle of contradictions, if you yourself don’t have Faith in your Self!

DDW: Therefore the plea for us is only this: Be the instrument of the Will of this Self and nothing more.

TD: The so-called free will itself is in the ultimate sense an expression of Grace as MA AnandamayI would say. If one makes the right spiritual effort Divine Power would be with him. Thereafter whatever he does would be nothing but expressions of the divine will. This identification with the divine will and to work in the world simply as an instrument of His will, form the crux of the theory of Surrender to God.

DDW: But we should beware. Such injunctions like ‘Be the instrument of God’s Will’ and associated ideas about the not-so-free free will are only for those who are already a few steps up in the spiritual ladder.

DFW: How does one know that one is up in the ladder?

TD: Ask yourself, whether these injunctions make sense to you. If they do, then you are ready to rise further. If they do not, then your will is still free!

Om ShAntiH ShantiH ShantiH!

FREE WILL VERSUS DIVINE WILL : Part 3 of 4

FREE WILL VERSUS DIVINE WILL

Part 3 of 4

TD: Yes, first let us dispose of Fate. Then we can discuss Free Will and Divine Will more understandably. Fate and Free will are interwoven just as the threads of a fabric are crossed and interlaced. We cannot rewrite our past or fly like a bird or breathe under water. These are our limitations, inherent in our nature, our fate. Our past is our fate for the future. But it is only our tendencies that are determined by our past (and the so-called fate). Our actions are not determined by our fate. Actions are ours.

DFW: Then why does DDW say that everything is Divine Will?

DDW: Just now we decided to dispose of the concept of Fate before we make the final lap of discussion between divine will and free will. Don’t bring in divine will now. TD is doing alright; please allow him to go his own way.

TD: Only actions are ours. Fate has nothing to do with it. Fate, that is, our prArabdha, might have created the circumstances that led to our action, but the action is ours. Fate might have contributed by shaping our tendencies, which led to our action, but the action is still ours. It is our mind that dictates our action. All spiritual teaching pleads for the Will of Man to become stronger than the mind. Everywhere in the upanishads the appeal is to the will. It is not as if man is a helpless creature as a leaf in the storm or a feather in the wind. Man’s will has an element of complete freedom. It is the power which enables him to act in directions opposite even to his spontaneous bad tendency (dur-vAsanA). In this sense he is the architect of his fate. Indeed this is the time when he should not slacken any of his self-effort. Ultimately man’s will must prove stronger than fate, because it is his own past will that created his present fate.

DFW: Wonderful. I have heard Swami ChinmayAnanda say something like this. I cannot take shelter under ‘Fate’ and refuse to act in a morally elevating manner. I cannot argue, for instance, that ‘I will not go to the help of a suffering man, because it is his karma that makes him suffer; let him suffer’! Maybe the other person suffers because of his karma but my action or karma of not going to his help is my own decision, out of my own free will.

DDW: And that will be a debit entry in your kArmic accounting, for which you have only yourself to blame.

TD: In fact this cover for inaction will start a chain reaction of vAsanAs in your future conduct and will gradually consume you in its own way. I was saying therefore, that it is by our own will that we must face our fate, that is prArabdha. Of course we cannot rewrite our past. We may not be able to repair our wrong actions, but we can learn lessons from them and act accordingly, by a determined free will, in the future.

DFW: Maybe we can try to avoid repeating them.

TD: Fate is only our prArabdha karma which nobody can escape. It seems even divine intervention cannot change it. Many of our stotras which promise eradication of all sin as the result of recitation of that stotra, are careful to imply only the destruction of sanchita karma and not prArabdha karma. Sometimes it says this explicitly as in “sanchita-pApa vinAshaka lingam” in LingAshhTakaM. PrArabdha karma has to be exhausted only by experiencing it.

DDW: But it is our attitude to the experience that changes according to our trust in God.

TD: That is where our level of spiritual evolution enters the picture. A trust in God and his omnipotence does not mean that we ‘believe’ in Fate. It is wrong to think so. It is the first step for the correct understanding of Hindu philosophy and spirituality.

DFW : Does not the omnipotence of God mean that unless He wills it we cannot become spiritual?

TD: You are raising the right question at the right time. Your question brings home to us another point that is mentioned in our smritis. You know there are four goals of life. These are called ‘purushArthas’ in Sanskrit. They are dharma, artha, kAma and mokSha. – meaning broadly, Duty of Righteousness, material prosperity, satisfaction of sensual desires and release from the samsAra bondage. Of these, the smritis would say, only artha and kAma are obtained as per one’s prArabdha karma. The other two, dharma and mokSha are obtained only by self-effort. That is why ‘satyam vada’ and ‘dharmam chara’ are specific injunctions to us. Self effort is the most essential ingredient for lifting ourselves upward in the ladder of spiritual evolution.

DDW: If the upward path to higher levels of spirituality has to be chalked out only by our effort then where comes the question of divine will? You are confusing me now.

TD: We have to go slow now. We all have to start our lives with the hypothesis of absolute free will. It is the sheet-anchor on which we base all our actions. But as we move forward along the journey of life, we learn lessons from the world and we become wiser to the ways of the world as also to the ways of the Lord.

DFW: Are you saying that our world experience takes us away from belief in free will? I feel it is the contrary. For it is by persistent and continuous self-effort great achievers have achieved what they are known to have achieved.

TD: I don’t deny that. By the same persistent and continuous self-effort one learns that unless we bid farewell to a self-centred life we cannot rise spiritually. So the path to higher levels of spirituality needs a strong free will to strengthen the inner life rather than the outer life. That is why the smritis say the goals dharma and mokSha are sought only by self-effort.

DDW: The common man thinks Faith in God is superstition. Superstition is what holds you when you think negatively. But Faith is some kind of intuition which makes you, through your own free will, reach out and contact the most positive thing in the universe, namely, the Supreme Almighty.

TD: Wonderfully said, DDW. It is that spark of Faith which we have to keep fanning until with the blessing of a Guru it blows up into a Fire of Wisdom (jnAnAgni). That way one develops a God-centred nature.

DFW: Earlier you said that it is world-experience that gradually takes us into the belief in a divine will. Where does that stand in the light of this necessity to fan the so-called Faith?

TD: If we carefully analyse the world-experience of ourselves as well as of others, slowly it would appear that, try what we may, certain happenings which seemed to be totally in our control have slipped away from us and we feel that an invincible but invisible force is pulling us. This inevitability of events strikes us in the face.

DFW: But as we grow older I think we move from the childhood beliefs of naivete, myth and superstition to the adult days of self-effort and freedom of free will.

TD: You have to move farther to learn the lessons of philosophy. All along we have been thinking that prArabdha karma starts our life with its own prescriptions of initial conditions and limitations on our mind, intellect and environment and that all the rest is our free will. All along we have believed that it is our prakRti which is the result of our prArabdha karma, that does everything and is the cause of all action. But this theory is too mechanical to be ultimate. Even though Lord Krishna says this in the third chapter of the Gita, later he modifies it. PrakRti is inert and to say that it is the doer and enjoyer is to accept the sentient self to be in the control of the insentient prakRti.

DDW: I see you are referring to the theory of purusha and prakRti in the thirteenth chapter of the Gita.

TD: Yes, we have to bring in the sentient Purusha now. In the innermost recesses of man there is a Consciousness which is Purusha rather than PrakRti. PrakRti is only the force of the Purusha. It is this Purusha that makes the PrakRti work through the lower self.

DDW: The free will that we have been holding on to is not any more free. Our will, though powerful as we thought, has only a limited power.

DFW: Will aims at the end; but Power is the means to attain that end.

DDW: Will without power is helpless to provide the means to attain the end. Power without will is purposeless because it has no end in view.

TD: There cannot be any Power without Consciousness. And there cannot be Consciousness without Power. The will-power we thought was ours comes really from the consciousness within. And that Consciousness is the Purusha.

DDW: The Gita makes a very impassioned appeal for us to surrender to the Purusha within. After showing His cosmic form to Arjuna, Krishna declares: I have already conquered and vanquished all your enemies; be only an instrument of my action. Go and fight.

DFW: You already quoted this in Sanskrit at the beginning of our conversation and I said that is what always confuses me.

TD: But now we can understand it. The plea of the Gita is for us to be the instrument of the Will of God, that is, this Purusha. We have to be like the needle in a gramaphone which only traces the channels already chalked out for it by the designer of the record.

DDW: In other words, we only walk over the path already dictated by God for us.

TD: Listen to Him for His voice. Throw the responsibility on Him. Abandon all your dharmas, meaning, abandon the doership attitude of all actions. You are not the doer. He is the doer. This is the greatest renunciation, greatest surrender.

DFW: But still we have not found an answer to the fundamental question I raised earlier. I can now rephrase that question in the light of the theory that the Purusha within is what makes the PrakRti the doer. In that case, then, the same Purusha should be held responsible for all my bad thoughts and actions. Originally I asked whether God is the one who should take responsibility. Now we have come to the conclusion it is the Purusha. But the Purusha is the same as the cosmic Almighty, if I understand advaita right. So then, that brings us back to square one!

(To be continued)