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SECTION
NINE
Passing Thoughts
ACHARA
— is a mould in which the thing
itself rests and feels stable, it is not the thing itself. It is this sense
of stability, which is the greater value of ācāra; it gives the thing
itself the śraddhā, that it is meant to abide. It is a conservative
force, it helps to preserve things as they are. But it is also a danger and a
hindrance, when change becomes necessary. Conservative forces are either sattwic or tamasic.
Ācāra with knowledge, observance full of the spirit of the thing itself, is sattwic
and preserves the thing itself; ācāra without knowledge, looking
to the letter of custom and observance, disregarding the spirit,
is tamasic and destroys the thing itself. Intelligent observance
and custom are always ready to change, when it is needed, for
they know themselves to be important, but not essential; whereas
ignorant observance prefers to rot rather than change. Tamasic ācāra must be broken that the thing itself may be preserved.
But if it is broken to pieces by anger or prejudice, the thing itself
is likely to withdraw from us. It must be loosened and split
asunder by the heat of knowledge. The present mould of
Hinduism has to be broken and replaced by knowledge and Yoga
and not by the European spirit.
Vicāra — the use of vicāra is urgent in times of transition.
Revolutionary periods generate a sort of minds who are avicārī,
without perception and deliberation, the mind which clings
fiercely to the old, because it is old, and that which runs violently
after the new, because it is new. Between them rises the self-styled moderate man, who says, "Let us have something of the
old and something of the new." He is no less an avicārī than
the extremes. He swears by moderation as a formula and a
fetish and runs after an impossible reconciliation. It was this kind
of thought which Christ had in view, when he said, "You cannot
put new wine into old bottles." Vicāra never sets up a formula,
never prejudges, but questions everything, weighs everything.
When a man says — alter your notions and habits on the lines of
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European enlightenment, vicāra answers: "Let me consider it.
Why should I assume Europe to be enlightened, India barbarous? It is possible that Europe may be the real barbarian,
Indian knowledge the true enlightened one, I must see." On the
other hand, if a man says, "Be an Indian and do as the Indians,"
vicāra replies, "I am not sure that I must do as the Indians to be
an Indian. It may be that the present men of the country have
become something which the Indians were never intended to be.
I must see what Indians have been in the various epochs of our civilisation and
find out what is eternal in it and what is temporary. It may be that Europeans have certain things really Indian,
which we have lost. It is good to be Indian, but to be Indian because of knowledge, not because of prejudice." Hinduism itself
is based on vicāra, viveka and jñānam, deciding what ācāra is best
for the preservation of human society and the fulfilment of our
individual and associated manhood.
Viveka — Indian vicāra guides itself by viveka. Vichara, by
itself questions and considers, weighs, examines and ponders and
so arrives at certain perceptions and conclusions, by which it
guides itself. This is European vicāra and its supreme example is
Socrates. The danger of vicāra is, that if it does not start with certain
premises and assumptions, it will end in absolute uncertainty of the academic philosophers, who could not be sure
whether they existed or not. On the other hand if it starts with
premises and assumptions, there is danger of these premises and
assumptions being erroneous and vitiating the conclusions. For
this reason modern science insists on all the premises being thoroughly proved before the vicāra commences and its method of
proof is experiment. Modern science is an application of this
principle of experiment to politics, society and every human
belief and institution. This is a rather dangerous business. In
the process of experiment, you may get an explosion, which
may blow society out of existence and bring a premature end
to the experiment. Moreover you may easily think a premise
proved, when it is not. Science has had to abandon notion after notion, which it
thought were based on unshakably proved premises. Nothing was thought more certainly proved than that the
process of breathing was necessary to life. But we know in India
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that a man can live without breathing. The principle of proof
by experiment was known to the ancient Indians, but just as the
Europeans, dissatisfied with vicāra, progressed beyond it to
vicāra guided by experiment, so the Indians, dissatisfied with
experiment progressed beyond it to vicāra and experiment,
guided by Viveka, intuition and inspired judgment, gained by a
previous purification of the organs of thought and knowledge.
The modern Indians have lost this guide and are compelled to
rely on āptavākyam or authority, the recorded opinions of men
who had viveka, or traditions and customs founded on an ancient enlightenment. This is unsatisfactory, because we do not
know that we have the opinions correctly recorded or that the
traditions and customs have not been distorted by time and
error. We must recover and go back to the fountain-head.
Jñānam — There are four operations in the Indian method of
knowledge. First, the inquirer purifies his intellect by stilling
of passions, emotions and prejudgments and old samskāras or
associations. Secondly, he subjects received knowledge to a rigid
scrutiny by sceptical vicāra, separating opinion from ascertained
truth, mere conclusions from facts. Even the facts he takes as
only provisionally true and is prepared to find his whole knowledge to be erroneous, misapplied or made up of half-truths.
Thirdly, he experiments to get upalabdhi or personal experience.
Fourthly, he again uses vicāra in order to ascertain how far his
experiment really carries him and what he is or is not justified in
concluding from it. Lastly, he turns the light of the viśuddha
buddhi on the subject and by inspired discrimination arrives
at jñānam. The conclusions of viveka he does not question,
because he knows by experience that it is a fine and accurate
instrument. Only he is on his guard against mistaking vicāra for
viveka, and is always prepared to balance and amplify his conclusions by fresh truth he had not considered and to find that
there is another side to truth than the one with which he is familiar. He does not like the European scientists, wed himself to
previous generalisations and theories or consider every fresh
enlargement of knowledge an imposture.
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