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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
Page – 437 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
Page – 438 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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