The Philosophy of Life

by Swami Krishnananda

The Reality that is established in philosophy is to be experienced in the state of deep meditation. Here consciousness and being become one. There is no way of entering into communion with it except by being it. There is no such thing as subject-object relationship in regard to the consciousness of what is universal. Either one knows it fully in non-dualistic communion or does not know it at all. The senses, the understanding and the reason are powerless instruments in one’s attempt at perfectly comprehending its nature or realising it in experience. In the realisation of the Supreme Being the mind of the individual is completely transcended, together with all its dualistic categories. The mind does not partake of the characteristics of Reality. It is not conscious and also not universal in nature. The mind is a feeble objective insentient evolute acting as the individual’s instrument in the perception of the external world, which is physical in nature. By its very nature it knows only what is outside it and cannot know what is above it or what is presupposed by it. Hence nothing that is known to the human being in this empirical world can be of any use in the realm of the trans-empirical Consciousness. The objects of the senses get fused, as it were, in the constitutive essence of the Absolute. Space, time and causation, matter, energy and objects vanish in the menstruum of its stupendous existence. The Absolute of philosophy is not an object of consciousness, but is what consciousness itself is in its real and essential nature. Thus philosophy is the pathway to the realisation of the Absolute Consciousness through the ladder of the different stages of the relative consciousness.

Rational Presentation of Experience

Philosophy is not to be confused with intuition, with mystic or religious experience, though it is a very powerful aid in achieving this end. Philosophy in India is based on the revelations of the sages and provides the necessary strength to the future generation of mankind for realising this goal. In mystic or religious experience the intellect and the reason are completely transcended, while philosophy is all intellect and reason, though it is grounded ultimately in deep religious experience. While the intuitional truths are rationally explained by philosophy, it does not pretend to prove the nature of these truths through intellectual or scientific categories. Philosophy has a purely negative value—of offering an exhaustive criticism of sense-experience and logical thought and indirectly arriving at the concept of Reality by demonstrating the limitations and inadequacies of the former. All philosophy really springs from an inward dissatisfaction with immediate empirical experience consequent upon the perception of the inadequacies inherent in its very nature. This leads to a critical examination of the constituents of empirical experience and a profound study of its hidden implications. This is philosophy. A justification of the super-mental and non-temporal Absolute is attempted through a searching analysis and understanding of sense-experience and rational judgment, while the defects and implications of the latter are fully disclosed. Truly speaking, philosophy can neither be purely subjective in its approach, nor purely objective in the sense of an alienation from the perceiving subject. It will be seen in the course of the study of the principles constituting the universe that what is implied within in experience is also implied outside in the contents of experience and in the objects and the conditions that are necessary for bringing about this experience. Thus philosophy becomes a universal approach to Truth made by the subject and the object simultaneously with equal authority, meaning and strength, making no difference in value between themselves. The movement of thought is from the physical to the biological, from the biological to the logical, and from the logical to the spiritual. Philosophy should, therefore, constitute a comprehensive analysis and study of the whole of experience. It has no partialities, no prejudices, no preconceptions, no likes, no dislikes. It marches bold like a heroic warrior with truth, justice and wisdom as its supreme aims. It makes ample use of all the powers that the human individual is endowed with and reaches the farthest limit of these powers, where what it observes and studies is not that which is immediately experienced, but what is inferred from and logically implied in the facts it envisages directly in that borderland between understanding and reason. Man possesses nothing superior to reason, and so philosophy cannot go beyond it. In a way philosophy is a rational criticism of reason itself, when we take reason to mean not merely an isolated abstract power of intelligence, but also all the objective factors and conditions that are necessary to make it what it is. When reason rationally knows its own limitations and also the reason why it is limited, it knows Reality in a negative way. This negative knowledge becomes the starting point of the effort towards its positive realisation in meditation and communion.

Philosophy has no quarrel with science; it concedes that science is necessary and useful in reinforcing its own conclusions, but it strictly warns science that it is limited to physical phenomena. We study the physical, chemical and biological laws in science, the logical and metaphysical principles in philosophy and the moral and the spiritual verities in religion and the higher mysticism. The senses, reason and intuition are our ways of knowledge in the progressive unfoldment of our nature. Science, philosophy and mysticism are true and useful in their own places and together constitute the highroad to a knowledge of life as a whole. Intuition, however, has the special advantage of being able to unfold all that the senses and reason can, and, in addition, also that which these cannot hope to know with all their power. The philosophy of Swami Sivananda is not any partial approach to Truth; it is that grand integral method which combines in itself the principles and laws discovered and established by science, metaphysics and the higher religion and which embraces in its vast bosom whatever is true, good or beautiful in the universe. What he says of the Vedanta is true of all genuine philosophy aiming at the salvation of the human soul: “Vedanta is that bold philosophy which teaches the unity of life or the oneness of consciousness.” “It is that sublime philosophy which elevates the mind at once to the magnificent heights of Brahman-hood, divine splendour and glory, which makes man absolutely fearless, which destroys all barriers that separate man from man and which brings concord, unruffled peace and harmony to suffering humanity.” “It is the only philosophy that, when properly understood and practised, can put a definite stop to world wars and all dissensions, splits and skirmishes that exist in different nations and communities.” “Vedanta is a magnetic healing balm for the wounded and the afflicted in the dreadful battlefield of this dire mundane existence. Vedanta is the divine collyrium which removes the cataract of ignorance and gives a new inner eye of intuition or wisdom.” “It gives real inner spiritual strength. It inspires, renovates, vivifies, invigorates and puts a stop to the never-ending wheel of birth and death and confers immortality, infinite knowledge and bliss” (Vedanta in Daily Life, pp.3-4). To Plato, philosophy is the dear delight, and the philosopher is the spectator of all time and all existence, and is one who sets his affections on that which really exists. For Spinoza, it is the perception of things sub specie eternitatis.

Classification of Themes

Philosophy conceived as metaphysics deals with an extensive reasoned discussion of the natures and the relations of God, world and the individual soul. The latter two are either identical in essence with God, or are attributes or parts of God, or are different from God. The ultimate Reality is either God, or the world of perception alone, or only the individual mind. God either exists or not, and is necessary or unnecessary for an explanation of experience. The world is either material or mental in nature; and consciousness is independent of or is dependent on matter. The world is either pluralistic or a single whole; and is real, ideal or unreal, empirical, pragmatic or rational. The individual is either free or bound. Questions of this nature are usually discussed under metaphysics. It also delineates the process of cosmogony and cosmology, the concepts of space, time and causation, creation, evolution and involution, as well as the presuppositions of eschatology or the discourse on the nature of life after death. The philosophical basis of modern physics and biology also can be comprised under metaphysics. Under epistemology the various theories and processes of the acquisition of right knowledge, as well as the nature and possibility of wrong knowledge, are discussed in detail. Sensation, perception, inference, comparison, verbal testimony, presumption, non-apprehension and non-relational intuition are the various phases of the ways of right knowledge. Intuition, however, is not to be classed as one of the ways of knowing, for it is the one supreme way of right knowledge, transcending all other empirical means. Knowledge is said to be erroneous when one thing is mistaken for another, whatever the reason be for this error. The several causes of error in perception are also discussed under epistemology. Under aesthetics the significance and the nature of beauty are discussed in philosophy. Beauty is either subjective or objective or relative to the subject and the object. It, again, is either real, ideal or unreal. As ethics philosophy engages itself in the ascertainment of the nature of right and wrong, good and bad. It deals with the nature of moral standards and moral judgments, the rights and the duties of the individual, the society and the state, the national and international good, the nature and function of conscience, and the like. Ethics is either naturalistic, hedonistic or metaphysical. Under psychology the constitution, function and behaviour of the mind is discussed in philosophy. Psychology, apart from its dealing with general topics, such as the springs of action, thought, intelligence, emotion, will, feeling, the relation of mind and body, the nature of internal conflict, the mechanism of sense-knowledge, etc., may be distinguished as individual, social, educational, religious, analytic and group psychology. There has been a tendency in recent times to segregate psychology, as a purely objective science, from philosophical studies that are not confined merely to the region of observation. Under axiology philosophy establishes the nature of values in the different stages and views of life, such as physical values, aesthetic values, moral values, religious values, etc. Mysticism is in a way the most magnificent part of philosophical studies, though certain rationalist philosophers, in their enthusiasm to save themselves from falling into irrationalism of any kind, commit the error of not knowing that true mysticism deals with truths that range beyond and determine all rational processes of knowledge. Mysticism mostly concerns itself with the inner relation of the individual to the Eternal Being and with the various techniques of the ascent of the soul in the fulfilment of its religious and spiritual aspirations, with the picturesque experiences it undergoes and the dangers and the difficulties it has to encounter on the way, with the psychology of the phenomenon of religious consciousness and the philosophical foundations and implications of the inner path of the Spirit, and also the meditations which the seeker of Truth has to practise for the ultimate attainment. The Vedanta and the Yoga are perfected and finished systems which comprise all these branches of study, and so deserve in every sense of the term the designation of philosophy. Swami Sivananda has recorded in his works his unequivocal conclusions on these wondrous themes, which point in the end to the self-realisation of consciousness in the Absolute.

Though philosophy, in the system of Swami Sivananda, is mostly understood in the sense of metaphysics, ethics and mysticism, its other phases also receive in his writings due consideration, and are placed in a respectable position as honourable scions of the majestic metaphysics of his Vedanta. For him the basis of all knowledge is the existence of the Absolute Self, and perception and the other ways of knowing are meaningful on account of their being illumined by the light of this Self. Epistemological problems are, therefore, in the end, problems of the nature and the manner of the manifestation of the Absolute through the psycho-physical organism. Beauty is the vision of the Absolute through the senses and the understanding. The main material of beauty is symmetry, rhythm, harmony, equilibrium, unity, manifest in consciousness. The perception of these characteristics is the neutralisation of want and one-sidedness in consciousness, the fulfilment of personality, the completion of being, and hence a manifestation of the Absolute, in some degree, in one’s consciousness. The aesthetic consciousness is thus the result of a partial expression of the universal in conscious experience. The good is that which, directly or indirectly, leads the individual to the experience of the Absolute, which is the ultimate good. Primary virtues are those which are directly concerned with the conscious movement of the finite to the Infinite, and the secondary ones are those indirectly responsible for this attainment. The way of the good is the direction of the right. Ethics is the science of the inner conduct that is good and right. The psychological principles, to Swami Sivananda, are but certain of the several stages and functional points of the appearance of the Absolute in the evolutionary process of the external subtle universe existing behind the gross mass of the five elements. Psychology is thus one of the most interesting and essential of sciences, inasmuch as it investigates and studies the nature of the operations and behaviour of the mind, which is the medium, in the realm of relativity, of the perception of the Absolute. All values, intrinsic or extrinsic, are rooted in the judgment of the supreme value of the realisation of the Absolute, which is the eternal home of all other values and in which all other values find their fulfilment. Axiology has to be referred back to metaphysical studies. Mysticism, for Swami Sivananda, is the path of the practical knowledge and experience of the great truths of metaphysics, the disclosure of the realities of God, the world and the individual, the recognition, in direct intuition, of their true relations, the grand rising of the soul from the slumber of ignorance and its realisation of the beatitude of the Absolute. The several techniques of Yoga and Jnana are comprehended in mysticism of the right type, and it sums up what is usually known as the spiritual path or the way to the Life Divine. Philosophy is a term generally applied to a study of all these aspects of life’s meaning, and so it forms the most attractive pursuit of the human being in general.