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<span style="font-weight:700"><font size="4">Darshana
and Philosophy</font></span><font size="4"><BR>
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<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height:150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>THERE
is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a<I> </I>direct
and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though
through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less opaque veil, and the
thing envisaged presents a blurred and not unoften a deformed
appearance. The mind has its own pre-dispositions – its own
categories and terms, its own forms and figures-which it has to use
when it seeks to express that which is beyond it. Naturally the
object, the truth as it is, it cannot apprehend or represent; it
gives as it were the reverse side of an embroidery work. It goes
round about the thing, has to take recourse to all kinds of
contortions and gymnastics and grimaces to ape the natural gesture of
the truth. But mind acts in this way, as a veil rather than' a
medium, when one is stationed in it or below it and strains to look
at what is above and beyond. On the other hand, if the consciousness
is stationed above the mind, that is to say, if it has direct access
or contact with the truth, the spiritual reality, in that case, mind
need not act as a veil, it too can be made transparent, and sufflused
with the higher light, it too can translate faithfully, present and
embody the reality beyond somewhat as it actually is, in its native
rhythm and figure and not diffracted and diffused through a hazy
atmosphere.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>European thought, European philosophy particularly,
moves under the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind
and from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and
therefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception,
its most intimate contacts with spirit-truths are 'sicklied o'er with
the pale cast of thought'. The Indian standpoint, on the contrary, is
first to contact the truth by a direct realisation – through
meditation, concentration, an uplifting and a deepening </FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 343</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>of the consciousness, through Yoga, spiritual
discipline, and then endeavour to express the truth thus realised,
directly intuited or revealed, through mental terms, to make it
familiar and communicable to the normal intelligence. Mind, so
subordinated and keyed to a new rhythm, becomes, as far as it is
possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the main
systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as their
background. Each stands on a definite experience, a spiritual
realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth and in and
-through that seeks to give a world-view, building &quot;up an
intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that are
natural to it or derive inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which
preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet
mentally systematised or logically buttressed: truths were delivered
there as self-evident statements, as certitudes luminous in their own
authenticity. We accept them without question and take them into our
consciousness as forming its fundamental norms, structuring its most
intimate inscape. This is <I>dar<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ś</FONT>ana,
</I>seeing, as philosophy is named in India. One sees the truth or
reality and describes it as it is seen, its limbs and gestures, its
constituents and functions. Philosophy here is fundamentally a
recording of one's vision and a translation or presentation of it in
mental terms.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The procedure of European philosophy is different. There
the reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light is
cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and happenings
and then proceeds to find out a general truth – a law, a hypothesis
– justified by such observations. But as a matter of fact this is
the ostensible method: it is only a make-believe. For mind and reason
are not normally so neutral and impersonal, a <I>tabula rasa. </I>The
observer already comes into the field with a definite observational
angle and a settled viewpoint. The precise sciences of today have
almost foundered on this question of the observer entering
inextricably into his observations and vitiating them. So in
philosophy too as it is practised in Europe, on a closer observation,
if the observer is carefully observed, one finds not unoften a core
of suppositions, major premises taken for granted hidden behind the
logical apparatus. In other words, even a hardened philosopher
cherishes at the back of his mind <I>a priori </I>judgments and his
whole</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 344</FONT><BR>
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<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height:150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>philosophy
is only a rationalisation of an inner prejudgment, almost a
window-dressing of a perception that came to him direct and in other
secret ways. That was what Kant meant when he made the famous
distinction between the Pure and the Practical Reason and their
categories. Only the direct perceptions, the spiritual realisations
are so much imbedded behind, covered so much with the mist of mind's
struggle and tension and imaginative construction that it is not
always easy to disengage the pure metal from the ore.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try
to illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The character
of European philosophical mind is well exemplified in this remarkable
modern philosopher. The anxiety to put the inferences into a strict
logical frame makes a naturally abstruse and abstract procedure more
abstruse and abstract. The effort to present suprarational truths in
terms of reason and syllogism clouds the issues more than it
clarifies them. The fundamental perception, the living intuition that
is behind his entire philosophy and world outlook is that of an
Immanent God, a dynamic evolving Power working out the growth and
redemption of mankind and the world {the apotheosis of the World, as
he puts it). It is the theme which comes last in the development of
his system, as the culminating conclusion of his philosophy, but it
is the basic presupposition, the first principle that inspires his
whole outlook, all the rest is woven and extended around this central
nucleus. The other perception intimate to this basic -original
perception and inseparable from it is a synthetic view in which
things that are usually supposed to be contraries find their harmony
and union, <I>viz., </I>God and the World, Permanence and Flux, Unity
and Multiplicity, the Universal and the Individual. The equal reality
of the two poles of an integral truth is characteristic of many of
the modern philosophical systems. In this respect Whitehead echoes a
fundamental conclusion of Sri Aurobindo.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>There is another concept in Whitehead which seems to be
moulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with regard
to the working out of the process of creation, the mechanism of its
dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the occult functioning of the
world forces. Whitehead speaks of</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 345</FONT><BR>
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<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height:150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>two
principles that guide the world process, first, the principle of
limitation, and second, the principle of <I>ingress. </I>The first
one Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of concentration (and of
exclusive concentration) by which the infinite and the eternal limits
himself, makes himself finite and temporal and infinitesimal, the
universal transforms itself into the individual and the particular.
The second is the principle of descent, which is almost the
corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo's system. There are layers of reality:
the higher forces and formulations enter into the lower, work upon it
and bring about a change and transformation, purification and
redemption. All progress and evolution is due to this influx of the
higher, the deeper into , the lower and superficial plane of
existence.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>There is one concept in Whitehead which seems rather
strange to us; it is surely a product of the brain-mind. God,
according to him, is not the creator: he is only the Redeemer, he is
a shaper but not the source and origin of things. That is because he
thinks that if God is made the creator of the world, he would be held
responsible for the evil there. This difficulty comes when one thinks
of God too much in the popular anthropomorphic way, like someone
seated above the world and passing judgment upon a world which is not
his doing. God is perhaps a lover of the world, but not its Master –
a certain Christian outlook says. According to Sri Aurobindo, God is
a triple reality in his transcendental, cosmic and individual aspect.
In creating the world, God creates, that is to say, manifests
himself. And Evil is an evolute in the process of God's self-creation
through self-limitation: it proceeds to self-annihilation and even
self-transmutation in a farther process of God's self-unfoldment in
world and Nature.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>To return to our main theme, we should point out,
however, that in Europe too at one time (during the whole Middle Age,
the Age of Scholasticism) philosophy was considered only as a
handmaid of Religion, it had to echo and amplify and reason out the
dogmas (which were sometimes real spiritual experiences or
revelations); but the New Illumination came and philosophy declared
her autonomy, only that autonomy did not last long. For today in
Europe, Philosophy has become the handmaid of Science. It was
natural, since</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 346</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Reason is not a self-sufficient faculty, it is mediatory
and must be ancillary either to something above it 'or something
below it – either to Revelation or to sense-perception.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 347</FONT></P>
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