English
Take, for example, the philosophic defence of Authority that we have in one of his initial observations on the point: ‘ even ratiocination or dialectic is recognised by us so far as it is ancillary to Sruti or revealed * Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy , Vol. I, p. 51. t W. S. Urquhart, The Vedanta and Modem Thought, p. 75. 78 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY Of THE VEDANTA knowledge.’* It is only with a variant of language that the same attitude is expressed in the recogni¬ tion that it is only such dialectic or reasoning as is subservient to the Sruti that is accepted here, as being contributory to experience.! Such frank statements as these do not, however, convict Samkara of ‘ implicit reliance upon authority ’ nor justify a comparison of him ‘ with the scholastics of Europe.’ The comparison is anything but happy, and betrays a clear lack of insight into Samkara’s position. In a more intelligent render¬ ing of it, it is recognised that Samkara’s ‘ subjec¬ tion to authority is not necessarily inimical to philosophical spirit,’ and the much too common imputation of unphilosophical authoritarianism is redeemed in the recognition of what has been, in strict fidelity to Samkara’s position, called the ‘ internalizing of authority.’! Accodingly, author¬ ity ostensibly imposing a bond does not, after all, bind; for the fetters that are thus forged are of our own making and the undoing of these is also ours. Its pre-eminent service lies in warding off the doubt¬ ful asset, if not the downright liability, of an un¬ chartered freedom, and in the positive prescription of a chartered freedom in thinking, which alone can see us to the safe anchorage of experience, as the * ttwarw^raui—Com. on Y.S., I. 1. ii. —Com. on V.S.’, II. 1. vi. t W. S. Urquhart, The Vedanta and Modem Thought, p. 84. FROM AUTHORITY TO FREEDOM 79 acknowledged terminus and goal of all discursive thinking and dialectic ( TOfrgPm ).* It is along this road—and not along the by-path of anti-intellectualism which eventually leads us nowhere—that a proper co-ordination and adjust¬ ment of the respective rights of Sruti and Pnni- samati, Revelation and Reason can come about. Even the suspicion of an antagonism between the two, precipitating a hasty compromise, can only lead to disaster in the end. It gives rise, on the one hand, to barrenness of philosophic thought—the like of which is to be seen in Mediaeval philosophy —and, on the other, it fosters the blessedness of simple faith which is the crying curse of all Faith Philosophy. Even if we were to class Samkara with the average thinkers of the Middle Ages, we should do well to remember that the much mis¬ understood scholastic phrase —philosophia ancilla theologies (which is only the European replica of Samkara’s dictum: ^ —is suggestive of a collaboration between theology and philosophy, although it apparently means the sterilisation of the philosophic impulse. As a matter of fact, the subordination of Scholastic philosophy to Scholastic theology is only material 'and not formal. If science is but common sense rendered coherent and systematised, theology or a philosophy of religion () must neces¬ sarily draw upon religious experience and mystical * Com. on V, S., II. 1. iv. 80 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA intuitions as its appropriate material. In thus assigning a primacy to the Sruti as the repository and fountain-head of all inspiration in matters pertaining to a philosophy of religion or Brahma- jijMsd, Samkara may, indeed, be called a Scholastic thinker in the truer sense of the term. But this label does in no way implicate the suggestion that Samkara is a mere theologian, or commentator on revealed scriptures, like the schoolmen of mediaeval Europe, and is called a philosopher only by courtesy. Samkara, surely stands in a class apart—if that be the implication of the term ‘ Scholasticism ’— inasmuch as he has never, in assigning a methodo¬ logical priority to Sruti or faith in Revelation, lowered the prestige or dignity of rational appre¬ hension or of an enlightened faith in the matter of attaining unto the bonum consummatum, the highest good (Paramapurusartha) of man. So did St. Augustine, the first of the Patristic [hilo- sophers, claim that the appropriation of wisdom or divine knowledge is effected not so much by in¬ sight, as through faith or belief. Nevertheless, full rational insight is, in his opinion, first in dignity, but faith in revelation is first in time. This is exactly the position in which Satpkara stands respectively to Sruti and Tarka or Vicara .' Rooted as he was in an inflexible orthodoxy, Saipkara had yet the sufficiency to assign to reason its rightful rank even in the matter of attaining unto the highest bliss of mankind. His verdict— namely, that a man who somehow espouses a creed without prior discussion or critical reflexion FROM AUTHORITY TO FREEDOM 81 is dispossessed of beatitude and incurs evil ’*— may be regarded as being typically illustrative of the Vedantic position concerning the issue of Eevelation vs. reason. So far as Samkara is con¬ cerned, it is a pronouncement which is hardly ever given the prominence it deserves in respect of a foundational significance attaching to it. In thus accentuating the rights of private judgment (fspjptt) and the functional importance of experience in itfc integrity, Samkara may be said to have cast off the out-worn badge of mediaeval ism, and taken on that of modernism. Tn view of an outspoken utterance like this, the apologetic strain in which some .people speak of the claims of Samkara as a philosophic thinker seems to be altogether uncalled for. It is to be noted that what is valued here by Samkara is not the blessedness of unreflecting acquiescence or implicit faith—the bliss in other words, of a 1 fool’s paradise ’—but what is cherished and invoked by him is the bliss of that enlightened faith, which, although differing from logical ratio¬ cination or discursive knowledge, is yet to be regarded as the inspiration, ‘ the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.’ This single statement of Samkara’s though not a solitary one of its kind, is potent enough to dispose of the baseless charge that he is a mere theologian or at best a Kcvela- tionist propounding a system of dogmatics with uncritical reliance on the Vedas. —Com. on V.8., I. 1. 1. 11 82 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA Now, what is Revelation? There is nothing inherently religious about it, unless the term ‘ religion ’ be understood in a very wide sense. It is a kind of inspiration or illumination that lights up the depths of the unknown—an experience to which artists and mystics, seers and prophets, poets and scientists, in a word, all classes of genius have testified. It is the experience, in psychological language, of persons having ‘ thresholds of excep¬ tional mobility,’ so that a very slight effort or departure from normal conditions will enable their latent or subliminal powers to emerge and occupy the foreground of consciousness. This abnormality is indicated by the very term ‘ ecstasy ’ meaning literally that mental state, in which one is beside oneself, that is to say, beyond one’s normal con¬ sciousness. The ‘ wise passiveness,’ which is characteristic of such ecstatic states, baffles an accurate psychological analysis. But that is no reason why such experiences should be condemned to live in the outskirts of Psychology as an un¬ touchable class having an original taint in them. It will be nothing short of an historical anachronism to stick, in the face of recent psychological advances, to the old classification of ‘ normal ’ and ‘ abnormal ’ mental states, the normal itself being, in these days, in a state of shifting equilibrium. The border-land between them is being steadily narrowed down, and the normal psychology is slow¬ ly, but surely, increasing its territorial limits by annexing much of what previously passed in the name of the * abnormal,’ For example, in direct fBOM AUTHORITY TO FREEDOM gg defiance of the customary distinction between the normal and the abnormal, modern psychology has expounded a psychology of insanity, and entertained the possibility of co-ordinating insanity and genius. The new baptism and philosophic conse¬ cration that the abnormal has been receiving at the hands of Psychology may reasonably be extended to the supernormal, that is, the contents of Revelation which had been so long accorded the treatmeut meted out to the ‘ sub-normal.’ Psychology, as a positive science, should make no distinction between ‘ super-normal ’ and ‘ sub-normal ’ or ‘ things above reason ’ and ‘ things below reason ’—which are only distinctions of value. It may be, perhaps, premature on our part to indicate, except in main outlines, how the changed outlook will react on our search after truth and the problem of Revelation. Even a subtle meta¬ physician of Bradley’s eminence was not slow to acknowledge the first fruits of modern research. The position that ‘ my waking world ’ dominates and ought to dominate, because as a system it is vastly more rational, is peremptorily met by the remark that ‘ the abnormal mind is often wider than the mind called normal, and at times it may be said to include and comprehend the normal mind,’ and thus ‘ the contention that our vaking world is the one real order of things will not stand against criticism.’* All this is distinctly fore¬ shadowed in Advaita-Vedanta and presented with * Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, pp, 462-64. 84 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA the force of a metaphysical construction. Accord¬ ing to it, there are four states of the soul: waking (SITO?0, dreaming (W.)> dreamless sleep (sjfir.