THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
(Sri Swami Krishnananda)
(Continued from the previous issue)
V
What is knowledge? It is an assimilation of the object into the consciousness. If I assimilate you in my consciousness, I know you, but if you stand outside as a stranger to me, as an object which is totally independent of me, I cannot know you. All knowledge is participation in the content thereof. Participation implies our capacity to enter into the nature of the object and the capacity in the object to enter into the nature of our being, our knowledge; that is mutual assimilation of the nature of things. If I stand outside you totally and you stand outside me wholly, there would be no concourse between the two. I cannot know you and you cannot know me.
This is what has happened to the scientific observations of modern times. If science is an observation of objects, regarding them as objects having nothing to do with the subjects which observe them, then, science cannot give us knowledge. It can only give us descriptive information, the length and the breadth, the weight and the mass, the form and the colour, etc., of an object. I cannot know you, even if I know your height and weight, your girth, colour, shape, geometrical feature, or the chemical structure of your body. Al1 these I may know, yet I would have not known you.
To know you physically, chemically and biologically is not to know you, because physically, chemically, and biologically, one would be the same as the other. The same substance is in each person, each thing—the earth, water, fire, air and ether are the components of the physical body of each and every individual in the world, so that to study one body would be equal to studying any other body. Why are there many people and many things, if everything is equal in bodily structure? The scientific observation is tentatively useful for our physical and social life, but it is not real knowledge; by it nothing can be known, not even one atom, truly if it is ‘outside’.
This world outside is a fantastic world. It has a tremendous, fearsome significance, for anything that is outside is a source of fear, anxiety and insecurity. There is a great saying in the Upanishad that fear is caused by duality. Our fear is because there is another outside us, and as long as there is an ‘other’, we will have to be in a state of sorrow caused by the fear. And the fear is born of the fact that there is something independent of us, vying with us in reality and claiming equal status with us. There may be even one grain of sand there, but we cannot tolerate its presence, if it is outside us. We feel irksome that something is there totally alien.
Suppose you are in the midst of a society where people are aliens; you feel very uncomfortable. You have to get out from that place and go to an atmosphere where people are more friendly. You like friendliness and not ‘foreign’ characters. And what is friendliness? It is a tendency to assimilation of the one into the other. Friendliness is a social word, a term signifying the inclination of an individual to enter into the being of another. You have not actually entered into the being of another, no doubt, but there is a tendency, at least, and that is called friendliness. We have an aptitude to enter into our kith and kin. We might not have taken even the first step, but we have a desire, nevertheless, to take that step in the direction of our becoming a part of the friend’s being. That is love, that is affection, that is friendliness. But if that tendency is absent, we wish to withdraw our being from others’ being. That is the opposite of love, affection and friendliness. So, the tendency of friendliness is also the tendency to unite oneself with the desired object of perception.
All love longs for the union of the subject with the object. It cannot really unite itself, and that is why loves are frustrated for various reasons. It is not possible for us to get into union with anything, ultimately. But there is a desire to be united with things. That desire is what we call love and unselfishness. The desire to exceed ourselves into the region of another is love. We do not want to be locked up in our own bodies; unselfishness is the desire to go out of our bodies and enter into the bodies of other things.
We cannot achieve this purpose easily. We cannot enter into the body of anything, but we have a desire. This desire is what is called love and love indicates the possibility, under given circumstances, of such a union. Under certain conditions the union is actually effected. This is what we are going to study. Under what conditions is it possible for us to unite ourselves with things? Normally, this is not possible, because the structure of the physical world is such that it will not permit this union. There is what we call space which will not allow the unity of any two objects. There is the time factor, there is causality, there are social prejudices and personal ambitions, all which cut the ground from under one’s feet at the very outset.
But that it should be certainly possible is proved by our own urges inside and our longing to achieve this aim. We have tried our best to conquer nature, to know nature, to become one with nature, to harness the powers of nature and be in union with nature. Science has made this attempt but has not succeeded, because, unfortunately, nature has always managed to remain as an outside object to the scientific observer. Like the horizon that recedes the more we go near it, the objects of the scientist,—call them electrons or whatever they are,—recede and elude the grasp of the observer. Nobody has understood what an electron is even today, because it is outside, and how can anyone know it?
Here we are with inconclusive researches of the objective approach of science. We have not found reality in science. We have not found it anywhere in the world. Then what is the way out? As we noticed, we can look at things from three angles. We look outside. We look inside. We look above. These are the three ways of looking at things. Now, we have already looked outside and found nothing, at least nothing satisfactory.
(To be continued)
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The realised soul is all the while happy, and is highly exhilarated due to the immense realisation that he has, the clarity of perception that he has attained, and the absolute bliss that he is experiencing.
—Swami Krishnananda
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