The Philosophy of Life

by Swami Krishnananda

The philosopher Bradley supposes that the self and its object are interchangeable, that any particular appearance of the Absolute can be either a subject or an object according to the standpoint from which we judge a particular appearance and the emphasis which we lay by making it the exclusive subject of our consideration. It does not require much thinking to understand that the true self can never become an object, for the object is always insentient in nature, and the self is always sentient. The two are opposed to each other in their constitution and mode of operation in the process of perception. Further, the self and its object are two different appearances whose difference may have to be known by another larger self which would be required to synthesise by a relation the self and its object. To reduce the self to the state of an object would be to make it one of the appearances themselves. If the self is a phenomenon, there ought to be a knower of it; otherwise even the phenomenon cannot be known to exist. The self is not a phenomenon among phenomena, but a unity through which phenomena are presented as a connected system, in which is reflected a perfect order, a rhythm and symmetry which really belong to the transcendent self. The ordered nature of the world owes its existence to an indivisible self which is its knower. The self is, therefore, not an empirical subject; it is beyond the space-time manifold. Even space-time is what is presented as an object to a knowing subject. It refuses to be grasped by knowledge through the categories in terms of which the senses and the mind operate. The existence of the self is established negatively by the predicates of experience and positively by the self-evident consciousness which one has of oneself at all times. All things and relations, space and time are known to a single subject, because they are all equally present to consciousness. The objects of knowledge may be different from one another, but they are present to a common subject which knows them all in one synthesised perception. The subject, the object and their relation have to be comprehended in a universal Self, which would mean that the true Self of man is not the empirical bundle of psychic contents, which is interchangeable with other such congeries and which one, by mistake, confuses with the real Self.

The realist view that the mind and its objects are on par with each other, differing only in their properties and functions, again, commits the same mistake of not detecting the necessity of a unifying self above the mind and its objects. It cannot be said that cognition is a mere relation and that the mind and its objects are known to be related to one another in a compresence in which the related terms stand to each other in the position of objects having the same reality. But it will be found that the compresence of the mind and the objects is possible only if there is a self which knows them both in a single act of perception. Neither the mind nor the objects can be known to exist if they are entirely different from one another. A knowledge of two different entities implies a consciousness obtaining between them, without which not only their relation but even their being itself can be doubted. The existence of a permanent self beyond the mind and the objects remains self-proved by the fact that without it none of our experiences can be satisfactorily accounted for. The self is not merely one among the many items of relational experience, but the centre to which all the items of experience are referred, the source of being, making all understanding and explanation possible, the life, light and love of the whole world. The self is spiritual being, the precondition of knowledge. Objects, facts and conditions cannot be posited unless they are known to a subject which rises above them in knowing and being. Even in ordinary perception the self remains an unaffected witness uniting all relations, but existing unrelated to the related terms. The self is the Absolute. If knowledge is a relation by compresence, this knowledge cannot know the terms related, unless it transcends them.

The self is different from the assemblage of the psychical functions and conditions which contribute to the manifestation of knowledge. It is not a product of any collocation of circumstances externally related to one another. It is not also a totality of situations or a series of appearances or of the nature of difference itself without a unifying subject existing independently of its terms. The view that every passing thought can be considered as the true subject of knowledge cannot be accepted. If any particular thought is to be considered as the ultimate knowing subject, it would be unrelated to the other thoughts that occur in the mind. Further, it would be impossible on this hypothesis to account for memory of the past or anticipation of the future. The self cannot be identified with a stream of consciousness, for a stream is a movement, and a movement cannot know movement, as its very essence is change. We do not know of a flow or a stream without assuming a permanent bed on which the flow or the stream can be possible. The self cannot be any kind of process, for every process is an object of knowledge. Any part or item of a process cannot itself be aware of the entire process. A process has a meaning only when it is known by a being which is not involved in the process but remains as its witness. The self is not analysable into further constituents, for anything that is subject to division is temporal and perishable.

The self is of the nature of self-luminosity and intelligence. If the self were something other than a self-illumined or self-conscious being, it would have to he known as an object by another being which ought to be self-luminous. But if the self is not at all to be self-luminous, we would be led to an infinite regress of positing a self behind self, so that there would be no end of our search for the origin of knowledge. The self is not momentary in nature, for what is momentary is destructible and cannot be the source of knowledge. The perception of momentariness is due to a succession of the appearance of objects at different instants of time. It is not the self or the consciousness that is momentary, but the perception of objects determined by the nature of the appearance of objects to consciousness. Momentary elements are what are known by consciousness as its objects. The self is not made manifest by external proofs as outward things are. The proofs by which objects are known are based on the self-evident consciousness of the self. As light illumines others but does not stand in need of another light to illumine itself, so does the self, being the source and essence of consciousness, illumine the whole world, but is not in need of another self or proof to know itself or determine its existence. The self is not one with the objects which it knows and is not on the same level of reality with them, forming an organism or an organ. If it were so, there would be darkness enveloping all things, for want of a knowing self. The objects do not determine the self, for it ranges beyond them in every way. It is not of the nature of difference,—in fact it has no relation to difference—and the differences that are observed in the forms of knowledge are due to the difference in the structure and conditions of objects presented to consciousness, but not of consciousness itself. Consciousness does not create objects but reveals them in perception. They appear to be related to consciousness on account of their apparent association with it through a Vritti or a mental modification. The self and its object are opposed to each other as light and darkness. Their difference is not usually known because of the delusion of Adhyasa by which one superimposes the attributes of the self on the objects and of the objects on the self. The objects are not also modes in the perceiving consciousness: they are different from it, and it becomes aware of them, though the essence of both is the Absolute.

Though the objects that are known in consciousness are different and of various kinds, consciousness is one. It is what integrates all sensations and perceptions into a coherent whole. If consciousness were a changing phenomenon, such a synthesis of knowledge would be impossible, and there would arise the contingency of introducing different consciousnesses at different times. Such consciousnesses, in order that their existences might be justified, may have to be known by another consciousness, which, after all, we have to admit as the real self. That the self is one and not more than one need not be proved, for no one ever feels that one is divided, that one is two or more. Everyone knows that one’s self cannot be cut or divided into segments but always retains its unity. Even supposing that the self can be manifold, we would be led to the necessity of asserting a unitary consciousness knowing the difference between the parts assumed in the self. If the self were not self-luminous and non-dual, there would be, when it manifests objects, a doubt as to whether the cognition of the objects is there or not, whether or not the objects are really known to exist. But no one at the time of cognition ever doubts the fact of cognition. The self knows the objects and it is not the objects that know it. The self is different from the very notion of difference, while it knows different objects and their differences. Memory and cognition also establish the self-identity of knowledge. The passing forms of perception are not the self, for they require another self to know them as mutually related.

The self never becomes an object. If it could become an object, one would feel the ‘I’ at the time of a particular cognition of a ‘this’ or a ‘that,’ and there would be no such thing as an I-consciousness or self-consciousness. Moreover, the self, while becoming an object, would also become inert and a transient material entity like the other objects of the world. The very admission of a world-process requires as its justification a consciousness which is not determined by anything outside it.

The view that there can be many selves is involved in a difficulty. If selves were many, they could not be known to exist for want of a knower of their existence and difference. The moment we assert the plurality of selves, we admit unconsciously that our consciousness is superior to and knows the plural selves. Plurality is rooted in unity. A division of consciousness is never possible. A consciousness that is divided is not really consciousness but an object, isolated and changing. Division and limitation are known to consciousness which itself is not divided or limited. Division is the same as finitude, and if consciousness cannot be divided, it cannot be finite, also. The self is infinite and so it cannot be many. Consciousness can be conscious of finitude, but, thereby, it does not become the finite. If there were many selves, their manifoldness would be a truth, their relations would be real. To know their many-ness a larger consciousness would have to be introduced, for without it there would be no knowledge of many-ness. Somehow, we are thrown back upon an absolute Self, unrelated and supremely real. The position of many selves would give rise to the difficulty of there being no common world to all selves, for their worlds would differ from one another and have no link to connect them. Every limit has to become a content of knowledge, and the knowledge of limit would only prove that knowledge is limitless.

The self cannot be identified with the principle of life or an elan vital considered as supreme in experience, of which matter and consciousness are only expressions or to which they are subsidiary or adventitious. It is held that matter is but a self-created obstruction to the march of the elan vital, and consciousness is only a self-created light for illuminating the path of its evolution. It cannot be said that consciousness is a product of the life-principle, for even the life-principle can be known to exist only on the assumption of a consciousness already. If consciousness is a product, it is subject to destruction, and it cannot be the reality underlying the life-process. Also, matter is not an auxiliary to consciousness, for it is an object of consciousness. What we call the life-principle is but the bond that subsists between the body and the mind. Life is above matter, but below mind, intellect and consciousness. Matter, life, mind and intellect are empirical categories, and so they cannot be identified with the self.

Attempts were also made to reduce consciousness to a kind of expression of some neutral stuff existing as its raw material. According to William James, experience is a relation which has subject and object as its terms. Knower and known are divisions within a primordial experience. He says: “There is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff ‘pure experience,’ then knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one another, into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience; one of its ‘terms’ becomes the subject or bearer of knowledge, the knower; the other becomes the object known.” Mind and matter are constructed out of neutral stuff and entities. The same difficulty noted above once again presents itself in this view of consciousness. The neutral stuff of pure experience has to be either consciousness or non-consciousness. lf it is the former, then, there cannot be another consciousness proceeding from it, as there cannot be two consciousnesses existing in the relation of cause and effect. If it is the latter, it is unconscious, and the production of consciousness from it becomes unintelligible. What is present in the effect has to be contained in the cause. When the effect is consciousness, the cause cannot be unconsciousness, and if the cause is unconsciousness, the effect also would be of the same nature. Either the pure experience of James has to be identical with conscious, or it has to be admitted to be only the primordial condition of the manifestation of an empirical consciousness behind which there is a universal intelligence of which even the pure experience is a kind of object.