An Analysis of Our Perception of Historical Personalities

In the evaluation of things, we human beings look from the standpoint of our mental functions, and are perforce obliged to ignore certain aspects that are not covered by the functions of our mind. We have, for example, the historical way of looking at things and examining whether such and such personality was a historical person. You might have heard and read about discussions on whether great seers and Avataras are historical personalities - whether they really existed or whether they are concoctions or imaginations of the devout mind. There are people even today who are certain that Christ was not a historical person, that Krishna was not a historical figure, and so on.

Whether or not we gain anything by knowing if they are historical or not, this attitude of the human mind gives us a clue to the manner in which it works. To the physician, the patient is only a case. He takes the patient as an occasion to study certain incidences of physical and psychological phenomena; and there is often the complaint that doctors do not treat their patients as human beings, but as cases. This is also the case with the lawyers.

Looking at human circumstances with a dispassionate attitude, the conditions under which the human mind looks upon things of the world as historical existences should give us an occasion to study the nature of the human situation itself. It is many a time imagined that the historical point of view is the correct one, and this is why we make such bifurcations between history, mythology, theology, Puranas, and so on. Taking for granted that our historical perspective is the complete perspective corresponding to facts, and the unknown personalities and incarnations did not exist, today I wish to make an investigation into this psychological situation which takes for granted the historical as the real and the other aspects as the figurative, or the unreal.

Whether a personality did exist, whether you exist or whether I exist or whether we are historical personalities, is a question to be answered; and when this question is answered properly to the satisfaction of logic and common sense, then, I believe, the general question as to the historicity of any person can be answered. If we can justifiably and intelligently answer this question whether you and I are historical persons at all, we can answer the question as to whether Christ was a historical personality, or whether Krishna or Buddha were historical personalities.

We have a very narrow view of things. Naturally, the imperfect existence cannot be the source of perfect consciousness. The imperfect perspective of the human mind cannot be expected to give a complete picture of things in their true state of affairs. It was during the last few discourses that I tried to point out the cosmic significance that things in the world have, in addition to the historical and the isolated significances that they seem to have in our social and national activities. There is a habit of the mind by which it looks at things in a linear fashion, in a line or a straight vision, as it were, as a series of objects, a line in space and time, and this is what may be succinctly called the three-dimensional perspective or the individualistic perception of the human mind - to look at things as bodies, as isolated existences, with the feeling that you and I are different, that things are isolated from one another in such a manner that there cannot be intrinsic or organic connections among them. This is perhaps the historical way of things. There is no organic connection between events in history. They are mathematically or causally related, so that one follows the other. Studies of history reveal that history is a procession of events, one following the other and one bearing a connection with the other, and history is not a chaotic happening, as many wrong minds would be apt to think.

History is a study from two angles of vision. One vision is like that of a student in college. How does a student study history? Somebody does something and somebody else does something else after some time, and the connection of all this is history. But there is a philosophical significance in history which materialistic minds are not able to discover. This is the philosophy of history, wherein the causal connection of the events which constitute history are discovered, and history is not seen as a combination of bifurcated events. History is not that something happened somewhere, and something else happened somewhere else, and somebody wrote about it in books. History has a wider meaning, a profounder significance.

Now, both these ways of studying history are defective, because they consider personalities to be individual existences. It is a study of personalities appearing in different times and disappearing after the performance of certain deeds. So history is the record of personalities and their actions. But what are these personalities? What is their importance, and how do we evaluate the nature of their existence? We will find we are hard pressed, cornered, and we cannot answer the question. All questions can be answered only superficially, and not in completeness. When we try to completely answer whether a person existed historically, we will find that we are cornered; and we will realise that we are cornered when our mind cannot go deeper than the historical level.

It is futile to study the nature of a person without knowing his health, his social status, his mental condition, his acumen, and so on. There are many factors involved in the existence of a person, and all these have to be taken into consideration in a study. And, a historical person is a citizen of existence as such. By ‘historical’ we mean really existent. That is the quarrel among learned ones: whether a person really existed or was merely imagined by devout minds in religion.

Now that we understand that history itself has a wider significance than the historical level would permit, we have also to study the historicity of a person from a different angle of vision. When we say that Christ did exist or Krishna did exist or Buddha was, what do we mean? Perhaps the child’s answer, as our answer also, would be that such and such a person was visible to the physical eyes of such and such persons during the time he is supposed to have lived. We do not deny the historicity of Gandhi, because we have seen him or believe that people saw him. But if we have a doubt as to the very nature of his existence: I have not seen him, nor do I know if any people saw him - we begin to doubt his very existence. We do not know whether Christ was seen by certain existent people. So, it may mean that perhaps nobody has seen him and, in that case, his very existence may be doubted. That is the case with many others, such as Krishna, Buddha, etc.

However, the wider history of things - the history of philosophy and also the philosophy of history - has no such difficulties because, to it, existence cannot be separated into the historical or the religious or the theological or the mythological. It was the philosopher Kant who said, “We look at things in three manners: we look out and say there is a world in front of us; we look about and conjecture that there should be a God who is the ruler of this world; we look within and remember that we have a soul.” We have no other way of looking at things. In other words, we have the theological, the cosmological and the psychological way of looking at things - or the stated points of God, world and individual.

Today, I want to touch upon the spiritual significance of the teaching of the great divine incarnation Dakshinamurthy. In one of the prayers to him we are told that Dakshinamurthy, the great divine sage, was supposed to have three faces which signified or symbolised God or Ishwara, the Guru and the Atman. Or, we are told he had three aspects: the Godly aspect, the aspect of Guru or spiritual preceptor, and the aspect in which he revealed the Atman.

Dakshinamurthy was not merely an incarnation of the Divine Being, he was not merely a Guru or teacher, he was not merely an imparter of spiritual knowledge, but he was an all-pervading existence, an omnipresent Being, as it were, like space. These four revelations of Dakshinamurthy also give us a philosophical teaching, the manner in which we have to study things, and the way in which things really exist.

As I mentioned, the theological or the divine aspect of things is one which we are forced to accept because of our very acceptance of the existence of the world and the admission that we exist. We may not have seen God, but we believe in God.  We are compelled to believe He exists because there are certain demands of our nature. We see water rising in the Ganges, and we have not seen the cause, but we can imagine that either snow melted or it rained, or perhaps both happened. The sun is very hot and the ice must be melting, and so the water is rising slowly; and perhaps it is due to a little rain. We have not seen the rain and we have not seen the ice melting, but we know such phenomena do occur, and we cannot explain the water rising in the Ganges in any other way.

Likewise, the demand of the inner consciousness of the human being requires that God must exist. If we exist, God must exist; and if God does not exist, we also have no right to exist. That we see a world outside us is itself enough proof that God must exist. Why? How do we interpret the existence of God by mere perception of the world outside? The man in the street also sees the world, just as we see the world, but he understands in a different manner. The child also sees the Ganges, but the child does not understand.

The very fact that we exist and the world is appearing before us as a tentative existence shows that there is also a connecting link, on account of which we are able to say that the world is. It also shows that there is a wider being than our own being. The world alone cannot be, and we alone cannot be. There is a third thing. What is that third thing, that thing by which we are able to see the world outside?

There is a table in front of me. I am not touching the table; there is no visible connection between me and the table, yet I am seeing the table. ‘Seeing’ is only a word, but it must have some meaning. What do we mean by seeing? What is the intention it conveys? What do we feel at that time when we make such a remark?

Unconsciously the feeling is that our knowledge is able to envelop the existence of objects outside of us and make it a part of our perception. Though the mountain is two furlongs away, our knowledge is able to envelop it in such a manner that we are able to take the object into our own being and make it a part and parcel of ourself. Where is our knowledge? It is in the brain, perhaps; and our brain is not able to travel to the mountain. There is a physical entity which is not space. This being aware of a thing outside of us is sufficient proof that our knowledge is able to go ahead and that it is not confined to our body. The knowledge that is contained within us, on account of which we are able to see the world, is not limited to our body. Due to it, we are able to know what is outside.

This shows that the element of knowledge in us is not identical with or a part of the body, but is something exceeding the body. This general consciousness, this general knowledge - knowledge in principle, which exceeds the body and objects - is the third element that is necessary in all human or animal perception. This third element is the existence of God. The seer and the seen are overcome, included and transcended by the existence of God.

If we fly in an aeroplane and look into space, we will not see the sunlight. But if there is an object suspended in space, we will see that the object is illuminated by sunlight. The light itself is not seen, but it is seen when it envelops an object. This element, the intrinsic consciousness in us, does not itself become a part and parcel of our perception, but through the knowledge we see an object. We are unable to see the element of the existence of God in things, but things are seen only on account of the light of God. The light that illumines things is not seen, but the objects are seen. We see the world, but the ‘unseen’ object is God, manifested as the world. It is the light seeing itself as the visible objects. Ishwara, Guru and objects are the three perspectives of the vision of one existence.

We may question whether Ishwara is a historical person, whether Christ or Buddha are historical persons. Is God a historical person? Is the world a historical entity? Are the contents in the world historical existences? We will find the question is inapt, and we will feel there is something funny about these questions; but equally so when it is about persons like Christ, Krishna or Buddha.

The existence of any particular object in the history of the cosmos is seen only when taken in its isolated aspect, and loses its historical meaning when taken in a general universal perspective. In other words, the very definition of existence is changeful. It is not a permanent viewpoint of the human mind, but a shifting viewpoint. We want Krishna and Buddha to be just like us, and only then we will say they were historical persons. If they had an existence that was slightly different from our own, we do not call them historical beings, and we want to deny even existence to them because we want existence to be the same as our own existence.

In Aesop’s Fables we are told of a fox that was caught by a hunter and his tail cut off by the hunter’s knife. The fox was very grieved. He thought, “How can I go and show my face to my friends with my tail cut off?” He thought of a way out. “I will somehow make the best of the bargain.” So he went to his friends and when they saw the fox without his tail, they said, “Oh, what has happened to your tail?” “It is a new fashion,” he answered. “Then we also must have our tails cut off.” They passed through some bushes and managed to tear off their tails in the bushes. “Now we are all up-to-date. We should not have long tails.” Likewise, there was a Frenchman who had only a small moustache, and today we find people with small moustaches. Thus, it becomes a fashion, just as in the case of the fox they thought that was the fashion so they followed suit and also cut off their tails.