Saturday 6 June 2009

Problem of Happiness, Part 3: A Transcendental inquiry

Background:

The Transcendental inquiry in the Chandogya Upanishad is presented as a dialogue between Narada and Sanat Kumara. Narada is very learned in philosophy, science, grammar, astronomy, the arts, the Vedas etc, but he is still discontent despite being a master of so many fields. He goes to a great spiritual master Sanat Kumara and asks as to why he is discontent despite having so much knowledge. Sanat Kumara then tells him, "All you know is name and form" that is that his knowledge is only word-knowledge and it does not bring contentment because he has not gone beyond that to their essence and integrated in into his being. Sanat Kumara regresses him through all the antecedents to the primordial, offering a remarkable scientific unification of the phenomenon with the noumenon. I will now present all the stages Kumara went through and offer commentary on each.

NAME

All phenomena begins with name and form, or signs in general. Everything we know are merely labels for certain forms that we perceive. The name ‘tree’ is just a name for the form of tree.

SPEECH

The names are given by expression and language. That is that there is a pragmatic cause for the nature of giving names. The differentials that we perceive in reality are made sensible to us by giving it a name for us to think about it. Inherent within this is the laws of logic, which allow the expression of language.

MIND

It is the mind that controls the language that names. All names are really just the expressions of though-forms which exist in the mind. The name does not precede the thought-form, but comes after the thought-form. I first have to perceive the object to be named, before I name it. But the paradox arises of how can one have a thought-form of something that is not yet named? There is no paradox the mental process is unconscious. Therefore we do not have conscious thought-forms until we have named them. It will be explained in the earlier antecedents how the mind distinguishes the thought form.

This can be explained by the Navya-Nyaya(neo-logical school of India) theory of discriminate and indiscriminate perception. That which we already know, i.e, that which already has name is part of our discrimination perception. That which we don’t know, which has no name or which we do not attend to is part of our indiscriminate perception.

WILL

The mind cannot distinguish a thought form before an intentional act to distinguish the thought form and that intention is rooted in a disposition or desire to distinguish that object. Hence why there is such thing as determinate and indeterminate perception. If different observers walk into a room, each observer will notice something different and each observer will miss something different. What is noticed is determinate perception and what is not noticed is indeterminate perception. For example somebody who likes shoes may notice the shoes somebody is wearing, and somebody who likes shirts, may notice the shirt somebody is wearing.

The mind only sees what it intends to see. A spider can assume different values based on different observers, that is because each observer is intuiting a different intentional act. Those who like spiders will intuit the value of “good” on the spider, and those who don’t like spiders will intuit the value of “bad” The spider itself has neutral value.

MEMORY

An intentional act cannot take place to distinguish an object, unless there is a memory of that object. The memory of that object could have been pleasurable or painful. If the memory was a painful one, then one is likely to intuit a negative value on the object when encountered and if it was a positive one, one is likely to intuit a positive value. If there is no memory of an object, then one is likely to completely overlook the object.

Thus emerges from this a causal explanation of why the differentiation takes place. The differentiation is not because of some laws of space and time, but it is based on practical experiences of the subject. Thus up until now we have a purely materialistic account of how qualitative values like “good” and “bad” become attached to objects, but this does not explain the actual values itself. The values inhere in the subject itself. It’s capacity to feel pain and pleasure is a qualitative act in the first place.

CONCENTRATION

To concentrate on one thing is to exclude other things. The mind concentrates on the object that is to become an object of memory and isolates that object. The object after coming into contact with the body elicits it either a pleasurable or painful response. How does this phenomenon take place? By difference. The mind cognises the object as soon as it comes in contact with the body and then isolates it, and then begins to process that object, the process leads to a pain or pleasure response.

UNDERSTANDING

The pain or pleasure response is a realization process which involves an a priori condition which realises that pain or pleasure.
Something that is already predisposed to a certain pain or pleasure response from an object will experience that when the object is in contact with it e.g., one who is weak is predisposed to feeling pain when struck with a certain level of force. The same force may not elicit a painful response in who is strong. This weakness need to be a physical thing but can be a psychological thing.

STRENGTH

The next logical antecedent therefore is the strength of the subject itself. If it physically weak, it has a disposition to be affected by a type of object which can give it pain. A weak shin when kicked will engender pain and then one will develop an aversion to being kicked in the shin “I don’t like being kicked in the shin” but if somebody has a highly developed shin muscle, being kicked in the shin will not engender as much pain.

MATTER

The substance that can either be strong or weak must therefore be one composed of matter. If the body and mind is composed of the right material, then it is less liable to physical pain. If one kicks somebody who has a strong shin in the shin, owing to their strong muscles, they are less likely to feel pain and develop an aversion to being kicked in the shin. A great example of this is professional kickboxers.

WATER

The Upanishad now makes the next logical progression of matter to water in the physical sense. The matter before it is formed, exists in a liquid state. As physics informs us before there is solidity there is liquidity, which really is just atoms existing with more kinetic energy - they have flow. The Upanishad is referring to the principle of liquidity rather than liquid itself. In the Vedic physical theory matter exists in principles in the form of subtle manifestations.

Returning to our example of the body, the muscles before they form exist in a blood-plasma state and the mind before it forms also exists in a potential state which is not solid. The Upanishads declare the mind is made up of the essence of the food we eat, thus the mind also is a material.

HEAT

It is energy that what supplies the energy for liquidity and it is this liquidity which then solidifies and forms matter. This corresponds almost perfectly to modern physical theories on how matter arises. It does not appear initially as matter, but gradually forms from a potential state of liquid matter which in turn is oscillating energy and then takes form as matter.

Thus far we have a completely materialistic account of the mind. The intentions arise from pain and pleasure, which in turn result from the disposition which arises from the strength of the material consistency of the muscles, which comes from the blood and energy of matter in a potential state. However, still we have no account of the qualitative feature of feeling. The Upanishad will explain this in due course.

SPACE

Now comes the ultimate materialistic reduction reducing the material phenomena back to space. It is from space that all matter arises, space is the substratum of all material phenomenon. Hence it is also the substratum of the body and matter. All matter forms out of the seeming nothingness of space and thus the disposition that become the substrata for pain or pleasure arises from space alone.

At this point we have a completely materialistic account. The subject feels pain and pleasure because of its material consistency. If the matter which is emerged from space aggregates in a particular manner it begins to build dispositions and feels pain and pleasure because of its interactions with other objects. The disposition of glass for example is brittleness. But if you break glass does it feel pain and pleasure? No, because it does not have consciousness, it is incapable of feeling. However, the Upanishads is clearly indicating here that pain and pleasure have material antecedents. That part of their causality is based purely on material antecedents. A material arranged in a certain manner is predisposed to pain and pleasure.

But from this point on the Upanishad will take a transcendental turn.

MEMORY OR SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

What the Upanishad has demonstrated so far is a material reductionism, but it has reduced material as far as it can go and it has shown that we still do not have an account for qualitative phenomena. There is no more material, it has been reduced to complete nothingness, to space; to its substratum. But we still don’t have an account of quality, quality is still existing. That subject which has the capacity to feel pain and pleasure is still existing. Thus the analysis is not over and now with matter reduced to nothingness, we must take a transcendental turn.

The Upanishad now shows that above space is self-consciousness or egoity. There is no such thing as space, without there being an ego to observe it. If there was no ego, there would be no space. Space is thus imposed by something within the ego and it is within this space that ego experiences the objects of pain and pleasure. Thus the condition of pain and pleasure is antecedent to the existence of space, and therefore space is only a reflection of that condition of pain and pleasure the ego is feeling. This is not to say that physical space does not exist, only that the space that the ego operates within is intuited, and how it is intuited is based how it feels in association with it.

Thus the pain and pleasure of the ego is based on the condition of the world it is experiencing. We have entered into the qualitative territory now; pain and pleasure is a mode that the ego experiences in response to how it perceives the material world. Thus we have a cause and effect relationship. If the world is not how it ought to be, the response is pain; if the world is how it should be, then the response is pleasure. This means that the ego has a natural impulse on how the world should be.

HOPE

The next step is hope. The ego’s existence in the world is not without a purpose, it looks for a particular purpose in this world. In relation to whether it actualises this purpose or not it feels pain or pleasure. Thus pain and pleasure become not just subjective feelings, but almost mechanic responses of dissonance or resonance with the purpose of the ego.

If the ego is looking for a certain kind of food item but does not find it, it experiences pain, pain is the mechanic response of dissonance because it did not get what it wanted. But we are now logically to declare that the ego is before personal identity. As the personal identity is based only on its empirical encounters, it can only forms wants within that domain, but if it has wants which precede empirical encounters, then it follows that there is an ego above personal identity which was pre-existent to it, which formed those wants in a previous empirical existence. It could be called the transcendental ego, but in fact as the analysis continues we will learn that even this ego is temporary and something precedes it.

The Upanishad explains that hope as not a hope for particular things, but a hope for self-existence. In other words it recognises that underlying the many desires of the ego, is an acknowledgement of its finitude and a desire to be more than that, a desire to be perpetuated in time and expanded in space(Swami Krishnanda) In which case the Ego is in a perpetual state of pain, because it is always in a state of finitude. If something is in a perpetual state of pain it will try to get out of that perpetual state of pain by doing things, by wanting things to fill the inner-void. Thus there is a transcendental ego that hopes for transcendence. Hence the ego that is instead hoping for a particular like a food item is subordinate to it and unreal compared to it. This also proves that the transcendental ego comes into the empirical world only because it has desire for things, but its ultimate desire is transcendence. Now I can fill in the gaps on what is it that the ego thinks the world should be like. It thinks that it should be infinite, but experiences pain when it realises it is not like that.

LIFE

What is it that causes the ego to aspire to ideals which are non-existent in the world? It is the life principle. The ego is life itself, it is not something separate from life. It is life living itself out. The life principle is not particular to anything, it is a general to all living things. It is life which inheres in every living thing and it is that life that is the vital force which causes a living thing to want to live and to want to attain expansiveness in space and perpetuation in time. That life principle itself is the vital force, which propels a living being to live life. It is what wants life to preserve itself. In a more baser way it is ones survival instinct. The ideas of the infinite is the ego wanting to realise its survival.

It could be said at this point we have an account now of why ideals and pure concepts exist, it is because of the life instinct itself. This is not dissimilar to what Freud said that the essence of what we are is desire-producing machines. In a sense it is similar, but the explanation is different. Freud considered the life principle to be a naturalistic phenomenon, but it was already demonstrated earlier after the discussion on space that there is no materialistic account for qualitative phenomenon like life, that we are forced to make a transcendental turn. This principle of life cannot have a materialistic account, it is an a priori in the purest sense of the word, it precedes not only just our subjective existence, but even the objective existence. This is a vital impulse from the very core of reality itself; from the very being itself. Materials have been done with now, they have reduced them into their material substratum and rendered into a nothingness. Now all that remains to be accepted is that there is a vital impulse existing within reality itself. That reality, the universe, actually has a qualitative character, a life-force that animates it. This is the truth.


TRUTH

I ended my last paragraph with the sentence with a declaration of truth. This is a very powerful assertion, and an assertion that is sure to offend many in a postmodernist paradigm. But none can deny that life is a phenomenon in this world, and none can also deny that life has arisen in this world from the universe itself. Then how can one deny that there is a vital principle within the universe itself which had lead to life? The Upanishad goes onto tell us that truth is not just what is spoken such as, “this is true, that is true” it is actual knowledge. That which we know , and not just believe is true. The principles of the universe are true. Hence the vital principle is true; life is true; being is true.

The truth is the understanding that we are finite beings aspiring to and moving towards an absolute. It is true because it is knowledge.

FAITH

The Sanskrit word Shradda is translated as faith, but this is not the exact meaning. The word has a more powerful sense, in that it means having full and absolute conviction in the truth of something. Faith can be blind belief, but Shradda is not blind belief, but an actual knowledge. The knowledge that there is a reality, self, an ideal existence, love is so fundamental to our being. We believe in it with such utter conviction.
Why? The Upanishads tell us that it is reality which is pushing us towards the realization of it. That is that they are real, realizable things. Since when was what was only empirically known real? No, the Upanishads tell us knowledge is not empirical at all. The empirical is not real.

HAPPINESS

Now proclaims the Upanishad that happiness is the ultimate of those ideations that we have faith in. Every action, every enterprise, every desire has in it the want of happiness. Nobody acts unless it for happiness. This is the selfish condition that cannot be overcome by any act of volition; everybody wants happiness and will not act without the promise of happiness. As discussed earlier on, the very condition of life is to aspire for the perfect ideal, and this is not to be found in the empirical and thus the ego always exists in a state of pain. It wants to release itself from this pain by achieving transcendence. The Upanishad declares that the vital impulse is happiness itself, it the motive force of everything that happens in the universe. It is the move towards the absolute.

It next poses the question on where this happiness is to be found, does it have a locality? Is it in the mind, in the world outside, or somewhere else? If it is in the mind, then why does the mind pursue happiness outside. If it is outside, then why isn’t there a universal object that can make everybody happy?

“Does the self exist in the mirror”?

Happiness is the false attribution of the subject on objects. There is nothing in the outside world that produces happiness, and likewise there is nothing in the inside world that is producing happiness. In short happiness does not have its locality in the empirical world. Where is its locality then, the Upanishad declares, “Happiness is not anywhere and yet everywhere, it is in the totality of being that you can find happiness”
There is no paradox here, there is a very profound statement on being itself. That happiness is experienced in being. That which is not this or that, that which is the totality or the whole of existence.

INFINITE

That which has fullness, completeness, that which is absolute is what happiness really is. Prior to our idea of happiness is this infinite and absolute being. It is due to this absolute being that the idea of happiness exists and it is due to this that we strive for happiness. We are striving not for happiness but for this absolute being.

In every desire is the acknowledgement of a finitude, that we need something more than what we have and that is this ideal of infinite being manifest in our experience. It is not just an ontological truth, it is verily a reality of life and experience.

The Upanishad now gives a definition of what is infinite and what is finite. “When one sees nothing but ones self, when one hears nothing but ones self, when one understand nothing but oneself, that is the infinite, that is the absolute; and when one sees something outside oneself, hears something outside oneself and understands something outside oneself, that is finite” The import of which is the absolute as non-duality is the infinite, and the non-absolute as duality is finite. Thus this is no mathematical infinity, this is the feeling or consciousness of completeness itself.

Finally the Upanishads concludes its analysis by declaring the antecedent of this infinite and completeness itself to be pure being. The self that it refers to is not the individual self(myself, or yourself) it is referring to the Supreme self, the universal being, the all pervading being, the eternal, perfect, unchanging completeness.

Here ends what has to be one of the most brilliant and vigorous analytics ever done. The analysis begins from the empirical and immanent reality, takes us to the extreme of the empirical and then enters into the transcendent in a series of logical steps. Not missing out a single step and giving us a full account of both quantitative and qualitative phenomena. The conclusion of which ends in the primacy of BEING. It is due to being that reality is made sensible, is understood, and is lived. If you take out being the entire universes collapses into nothingness. But even if one does that they end up with BEING again.

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