1 00:00:00,640 --> 00:00:15,030 In ancient times, both in the East and the West, the impulse towards philosophic enquiry 2 00:00:15,030 --> 00:00:22,570 arose out of the perception of the wonder of creation. 3 00:00:22,570 --> 00:00:38,292 Look at the sun and the moon and the stars, the sky above, all which defy our 4 00:00:38,292 --> 00:00:47,541 understanding. We are under the impression that we are seated on this Earth. 5 00:00:47,541 --> 00:01:00,791 Actually, you are all now moving in a spaceship, which you have not thought of 6 00:01:00,791 --> 00:01:17,041 during your day-to-day life. You know the planet Earth is rattling around empty space. 7 00:01:17,041 --> 00:01:25,470 That is why I said you are in a veritable spaceship just now. 8 00:01:25,470 --> 00:01:32,820 You are in the middle of space. 9 00:01:32,820 --> 00:01:36,770 Is it not a wonderful thing to think? 10 00:01:36,770 --> 00:01:45,780 You are not on this Earth, sitting cozily on a solid surface, as if you are stationary, 11 00:01:45,780 --> 00:01:57,860 and everything is there, moving for your wonderment and perception of mystery. 12 00:01:57,860 --> 00:02:14,629 The structure of this creative, or creational, phenomenon really passes understanding. 13 00:02:14,629 --> 00:02:26,206 What precision in the working of nature! What system! What beauty, and what 14 00:02:26,206 --> 00:02:36,290 breathtaking profundity, if you are only able find time to think over these matters. 15 00:02:36,290 --> 00:02:41,623 What are these stars? How are they hanging in space? 16 00:02:41,623 --> 00:02:50,640 Why does not the sun fall on our head without any support in the empty space? 17 00:02:50,640 --> 00:02:54,706 And nothing seems to have a support anywhere in this world. 18 00:02:54,706 --> 00:03:03,789 Everything is moving, but not helter-skelter. The movement methodical, harmonious, 19 00:03:03,789 --> 00:03:12,830 systematic, beautiful, and utter mathematical precision 20 00:03:12,830 --> 00:03:20,997 is the way we can describe this wonder of what you call this creation. 21 00:03:20,997 --> 00:03:27,914 It is necessary for us to find a little time to think like this. 22 00:03:27,914 --> 00:03:30,289 Look at the sky. 23 00:03:30,289 --> 00:03:34,110 Where is the sky? 24 00:03:34,110 --> 00:03:36,289 You are in the sky. 25 00:03:36,289 --> 00:03:40,530 Why should you look up to the sky, as if the sky is above you? 26 00:03:40,530 --> 00:03:44,705 You are in the sky, in the middle of empty space. 27 00:03:44,705 --> 00:03:49,038 What do you feel when you hear all these things? 28 00:03:49,038 --> 00:03:55,497 For a moment your breathing will stop. 29 00:03:55,497 --> 00:04:13,288 I am moving perpetually, rapidly through space, as if I am in a pilgrimage around empty space. 30 00:04:13,288 --> 00:04:19,880 There is nothing stationary in this world. 31 00:04:19,880 --> 00:04:28,871 This you will observe by a careful noticing what is happening in nature. 32 00:04:28,871 --> 00:04:35,413 Nothing is stationary, right from the atom to the galaxies. Movement and 33 00:04:35,413 --> 00:04:38,746 movement and movement, but movement towards what? 34 00:04:38,746 --> 00:04:44,246 There cannot be a movement without a direction, but towards what are 35 00:04:44,246 --> 00:04:57,070 you moving? We are likely to think, like little children, that the movement 36 00:04:57,070 --> 00:04:58,770 is linear, as if there is a beaten track, a road leading to Delhi. 37 00:04:58,770 --> 00:05:09,370 It is not like that; it is not a straight line movement. If it is not that kind 38 00:05:09,370 --> 00:05:14,204 of movement, what other kind of movement can you conceive in your mind? 39 00:05:14,204 --> 00:05:28,662 Two great wonders are observed by a careful investigation into the nature of things. 40 00:05:28,662 --> 00:05:34,745 The impossibility of understanding what is all this around us. 41 00:05:34,745 --> 00:05:40,870 The other one is, the impossibility to know how we are alive at all. 42 00:05:40,870 --> 00:05:51,940 Do you go to bed and you are asleep? 43 00:05:51,940 --> 00:05:54,370 Everything is silenced. 44 00:05:54,370 --> 00:06:02,640 But the heart does not sleep, the breath does not sleep. 45 00:06:02,640 --> 00:06:07,970 Why do they not sleep, if you are sleeping? 46 00:06:07,970 --> 00:06:13,369 Have you any say in this matter? 47 00:06:13,369 --> 00:06:16,786 You are a free bird. 48 00:06:16,786 --> 00:06:20,411 We are all independent persons. 49 00:06:20,411 --> 00:06:24,077 We ask for freedom. 50 00:06:24,077 --> 00:06:34,452 We are not bound to anything; we are totally free. What kind of freedom are you 51 00:06:34,452 --> 00:06:42,535 exercising in the operation of the lungs and the heart or your brain? 52 00:06:42,535 --> 00:06:50,009 Are you contributing anything as an individual to the function of this magic structure of 53 00:06:50,009 --> 00:06:52,720 this psychophysical organism? 54 00:06:52,720 --> 00:07:05,368 Have you thought over this matter? These considerations lead to a deep 55 00:07:05,368 --> 00:07:14,035 questioning spirit into the realm of what we generally call philosophy. 56 00:07:17,035 --> 00:07:25,868 I told you, in ancient times, wonderment was the beginning of this enquiring spirit. 57 00:07:25,868 --> 00:07:31,010 It was so in Greece, it was so in India. 58 00:07:31,010 --> 00:07:43,930 There must be something which is controlling this mathematically precise activity of the 59 00:07:43,930 --> 00:07:56,993 universe. You cannot say anything is unintelligent or dead. 60 00:07:57,030 --> 00:08:05,409 Everything is perfect, utterly clear. 61 00:08:05,409 --> 00:08:20,169 The movement of the planets and the stellar system is so wonderfully precise that you 62 00:08:20,169 --> 00:08:31,810 can predict today if an eclipse is going to take place one hundred years afterwards. 63 00:08:31,810 --> 00:08:33,960 What kind of arrangement is this? 64 00:08:33,960 --> 00:08:40,575 From a theorem, you come to a corollary. 65 00:08:40,575 --> 00:08:46,959 From a basic proposition, you come to a conclusion. 66 00:08:46,959 --> 00:08:52,030 You may call it mathematics; you may call it logic. 67 00:08:52,030 --> 00:08:58,908 How can you know that hundred years ahead or two hundred years ahead there 68 00:08:58,908 --> 00:09:04,908 will be an eclipse of the moon or the sun? It is the wonder of mathematics, 69 00:09:04,908 --> 00:09:17,991 which is the brother or alter ego of physics, including astrophysics. 70 00:09:18,570 --> 00:09:26,366 Who is responsible for all this wonderment, inside as well as outside? 71 00:09:26,366 --> 00:09:32,324 Have you, as a person, individually, contributed anything to this wonder? 72 00:09:32,324 --> 00:09:41,699 You seem to be a helpless cog in the wonderful movement of the wheel of 73 00:09:41,699 --> 00:09:56,032 this clock of creation. Your self-assertion that you are a very important person in 74 00:09:56,032 --> 00:10:04,740 this creational panorama gets subdued a little bit. 75 00:10:04,740 --> 00:10:12,074 Your ego is slowly tending towards extinguishing itself before the might 76 00:10:12,074 --> 00:10:18,074 and the magnificence of creation. 77 00:10:18,074 --> 00:10:24,448 There are two kinds of wonder. 78 00:10:24,448 --> 00:10:30,110 One is the wonder of beauty, another is the wonder of sublimity. 79 00:10:30,110 --> 00:10:44,990 If you look at the clear full moon on a clean sky, go on looking at this beautiful moon, 80 00:10:44,990 --> 00:10:58,448 you will not like to take your eye away from that round, soft, beaming with nectarine rays. 81 00:10:58,448 --> 00:11:07,114 How beautiful! How beautiful! How beautiful is a blossoming rose! 82 00:11:07,149 --> 00:11:18,720 This is a small example of your feeling towards beauty. 83 00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:27,540 Your aesthetic sense is roused by the perception of what you regard as beautiful. 84 00:11:27,540 --> 00:11:34,209 Why does a thing look beautiful is a different subject. 85 00:11:34,209 --> 00:11:39,190 We shall look into a little later on. 86 00:11:39,190 --> 00:11:47,550 Apart from the perception of beauty, there is another thing, the perception of sublimity. 87 00:11:47,550 --> 00:11:55,490 You see a huge elephant standing on the road, you like to see it again and again. 88 00:11:55,490 --> 00:11:57,070 Look at it. 89 00:11:57,070 --> 00:12:00,614 What for are you looking at it? It is not going to give you anything. 90 00:12:00,614 --> 00:12:10,697 But you would not like to take your eye away from that elephant, elephant. Oh, elephant! 91 00:12:10,697 --> 00:12:17,697 You go to the shore of the ocean where the mighty waves are dashing this way 92 00:12:17,697 --> 00:12:20,780 and that way. Look at the ocean. 93 00:12:20,780 --> 00:12:32,000 We are fear-struck, we are wonderstruck, we are awestruck at the magnificence of the ocean, 94 00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:37,405 which terrifies you and puts your ego down. 95 00:12:37,405 --> 00:12:45,821 You look so small before the mighty waves of the tremendous, incomparable mass of 96 00:12:45,821 --> 00:12:55,613 ocean. Before the elephant also you look very small. You cannot go near it. 97 00:12:55,613 --> 00:13:04,779 Why do you admire the elephant? Because the mightier and larger is the 98 00:13:04,779 --> 00:13:12,737 compass of what you see, the smaller is the ego at that time of yours. 99 00:13:12,737 --> 00:13:24,695 The lesser is the feeling of your self-assertive nature, the greater is your appreciation of 100 00:13:24,695 --> 00:13:26,445 sublimity of anything. 101 00:13:26,445 --> 00:13:37,240 The greater is your self-assertion and egoism, the less you know anything of the world. 102 00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:50,779 In the perception of beauty, you lose yourself for the time being in a kind of attunement, 103 00:13:50,779 --> 00:14:03,153 as if you are embracing it, making it your own, and your other-than-beautiful personality 104 00:14:03,153 --> 00:14:07,861 is imbued with the beauty of that which you call beautiful. 105 00:14:07,861 --> 00:14:15,600 If you yourself are equally beautiful as the one which you are looking at as beautiful, 106 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:17,459 you will not enjoy that beauty. 107 00:14:17,459 --> 00:14:23,750 There is something lacking in you, which is compensated by that object which you regard 108 00:14:23,750 --> 00:14:25,209 as beautiful. 109 00:14:25,209 --> 00:14:26,569 What is lacking in you? 110 00:14:26,569 --> 00:14:33,028 Let the philosophy professors tell you. 111 00:14:33,028 --> 00:14:45,980 Beauty is an aesthetic completion of your personality in a type of perception which 112 00:14:45,980 --> 00:14:49,800 is unique by itself. 113 00:14:49,800 --> 00:14:56,490 Subliminity, I mentioned to you, is underlying. 114 00:14:56,490 --> 00:15:03,680 You wonder at the perception of a beautiful thing, and the wonder is such that you cannot 115 00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:11,444 say anything about it. A wondrous architectural presentation, a beautiful 116 00:15:11,444 --> 00:15:16,230 sculpture, a marvellous painting of Michelangelo 117 00:15:16,230 --> 00:15:29,027 or Ravi Varma, a wondrous music, and a great literature like Shakespeare's or Milton's, 118 00:15:29,027 --> 00:15:33,079 or Mahabharata or Ramayana. 119 00:15:33,079 --> 00:15:41,769 You are taken out of yourself; you become something more than, other than, yourself. 120 00:15:41,769 --> 00:15:53,443 Architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing, music, literature, these are forms of 121 00:15:53,443 --> 00:16:01,401 aesthetic beauty. You go on looking at it again and again, and you are not tired of 122 00:16:01,401 --> 00:16:08,359 seeing it. The lover likes the beloved; the beloved likes the lover. 123 00:16:08,359 --> 00:16:13,699 There is no meaning behind it, because it transcends meaning. 124 00:16:13,699 --> 00:16:23,930 Here logic and equations will not work, because finally the world does not seem to be made 125 00:16:23,930 --> 00:16:26,920 out of mathematics and logic. 126 00:16:26,920 --> 00:16:37,817 It is a super-mathematical and super-logical surpassing presentation before us. 127 00:16:37,817 --> 00:16:46,025 The only word we can use to explain this situation is wonder, wonder, wonder! 128 00:16:46,025 --> 00:16:50,870 From where all this has come here? 129 00:16:50,870 --> 00:16:56,734 Philosophic enquiry commences. 130 00:16:56,734 --> 00:17:00,480 This is how ancient philosophy was started. 131 00:17:00,480 --> 00:17:07,108 But in modern times, skepticism and doubt seems to be the beginning of 132 00:17:07,108 --> 00:17:13,900 philosophical enquiry. A scientist does not take anything for granted. 133 00:17:13,900 --> 00:17:20,108 Things may not be as they appear. 134 00:17:20,108 --> 00:17:24,567 It may not be like this; it may be otherwise. 135 00:17:24,567 --> 00:17:39,150 It is doubtful whether our perceptions are really genuine or valid. Science advances 136 00:17:39,150 --> 00:17:47,233 because the earlier discoveries are set aside by newer discoveries, so what 137 00:17:47,233 --> 00:17:54,910 was considered as a final statement earlier is now considered as redundant, and we have 138 00:17:54,910 --> 00:17:56,900 a new perception. 139 00:17:56,900 --> 00:18:05,733 Where do you end, then, with this kind of advance in scientific understanding? 140 00:18:05,733 --> 00:18:09,220 Doubt everything. 141 00:18:09,220 --> 00:18:24,524 What I am thinking now also may not be free from a doubtful involvement. 142 00:18:24,524 --> 00:18:32,982 The world may not be in front of me, really speaking. I may be under illusion. 143 00:18:32,982 --> 00:18:39,815 I may not be thinking correctly. 144 00:18:39,815 --> 00:18:47,690 Some genie might have entered my brain and is perhaps compelling me, propelling me to 145 00:18:47,690 --> 00:18:49,648 think entirely in a wrong way. 146 00:18:49,648 --> 00:19:00,857 I may be having a topsy-turvy perception. Nothing is certain; everything is doubtful. 147 00:19:00,857 --> 00:19:13,773 One of the philosophers went along these lines of investigation. 148 00:19:13,773 --> 00:19:19,440 The world may not be there. What is the proof that the world is there? 149 00:19:19,440 --> 00:19:25,690 I myself may not be there. How can I prove that I am here? 150 00:19:25,690 --> 00:19:33,314 Let me doubt the world. Let me doubt people around me. 151 00:19:33,314 --> 00:19:35,814 Let me doubt myself also. 152 00:19:35,814 --> 00:19:45,689 You cut the ground under your own feet, and you cannot stand anywhere. 153 00:19:45,689 --> 00:19:55,689 Scepticism begins its argument in this manner. 154 00:19:55,689 --> 00:20:08,397 But it many a time loses its manoeuvring, direction and steering, and does not know 155 00:20:08,397 --> 00:20:12,522 what it is saying. 156 00:20:12,522 --> 00:20:26,730 If your statement is doubtful, the fact that it appears to be doubtful also may be doubtful. 157 00:20:26,730 --> 00:20:31,760 What are you talking? 158 00:20:31,760 --> 00:20:36,813 This question arose in the mind of a great thinker of the West, once upon a time. 159 00:20:36,813 --> 00:20:44,140 He was called Rene Descartes. 160 00:20:44,140 --> 00:20:47,310 But I am somehow thinking. 161 00:20:47,310 --> 00:20:49,660 Who is thinking? 162 00:20:49,660 --> 00:20:59,530 His great dictum was cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. 163 00:20:59,530 --> 00:21:04,700 He made a mistake in this statement. 164 00:21:04,700 --> 00:21:10,438 You are, not because you are thinking; you think because you are existing. 165 00:21:10,438 --> 00:21:12,021 It is the other way round. 166 00:21:12,021 --> 00:21:14,729 If you are not there, the thinking will not be there. 167 00:21:14,729 --> 00:21:18,729 Why do you say, I think, therefore I am? 168 00:21:18,729 --> 00:21:25,789 You should say, I am, therefore I think, is a point which is scored by the Eastern 169 00:21:25,789 --> 00:21:32,060 thought over this kind of Western thinking. 170 00:21:32,060 --> 00:21:36,521 I have to be there in order that doubts may be valid. 171 00:21:36,521 --> 00:21:41,280 Doubt cannot doubt itself. 172 00:21:41,280 --> 00:21:50,970 The doubter has to be there in order that doubts may be valid. 173 00:21:50,970 --> 00:21:54,270 The doubter's existence cannot be doubted. 174 00:21:54,270 --> 00:22:06,850 All right, let us accept that the doubter is there, else doubt cannot be there. 175 00:22:06,850 --> 00:22:18,100 We are not entering into a mental hospital to cut everything, the branch on which we 176 00:22:18,100 --> 00:22:26,500 are sitting, and cut off our thought itself, and endeavour to cut ourselves also. 177 00:22:26,500 --> 00:22:29,910 Such a thing is not possible. 178 00:22:29,910 --> 00:22:34,640 Wisdom was there behind this sceptical approach. 179 00:22:34,640 --> 00:22:36,510 I have to be there. 180 00:22:36,510 --> 00:22:43,240 But what kind of I is there? 181 00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:48,311 I think; that means to say, I am conscious. 182 00:22:48,311 --> 00:22:54,061 There is no such thing as unconscious feeling of one's own existence. 183 00:22:54,061 --> 00:23:00,529 The feeling of one's existence is a conscious affirmation of being. 184 00:23:00,529 --> 00:23:13,570 So, I am, because if I am not, my investigations and my doubts also vanish simultaneously. 185 00:23:13,570 --> 00:23:17,900 So, I have to be. 186 00:23:17,900 --> 00:23:24,936 But what kind of I am? Where am I? 187 00:23:24,936 --> 00:23:40,360 If I separate all accretions involved in this consciousness of I am, and keep only the bare 188 00:23:40,360 --> 00:23:50,110 principle of I am, you will see that there will be nothing left except a pure feeling 189 00:23:50,110 --> 00:23:57,919 and awareness of your being: I am conscious that I am. 190 00:23:57,919 --> 00:24:05,170 You cannot say anything else about anything else, because already you have set aside the 191 00:24:05,170 --> 00:24:09,185 validity of there being anything outside the consciousness of your being. 192 00:24:09,185 --> 00:24:16,190 All right, let me go deeper into this question. 193 00:24:16,190 --> 00:24:21,789 I am conscious that I am. 194 00:24:21,789 --> 00:24:29,726 Generally, in studies of psychology and epistemology, consciousness is defined 195 00:24:29,726 --> 00:24:36,726 as that which is conscious of something other than itself. 196 00:24:36,726 --> 00:24:45,143 There must be something of which consciousness should be conscious. 197 00:24:45,143 --> 00:24:48,767 Otherwise, where is the meaning of consciousness? What are you 198 00:24:48,767 --> 00:24:54,190 conscious of? There is an object of consciousness. 199 00:24:54,190 --> 00:24:58,130 This is how we generally think in ordinary parlance. 200 00:24:58,130 --> 00:25:04,184 But here, the object has gone; it has become an object of doubt and it may be there, 201 00:25:04,184 --> 00:25:06,267 it may not be there at all. 202 00:25:06,267 --> 00:25:15,309 The only doubtless thing is that I am, and this I am cannot be anything else but just 203 00:25:15,309 --> 00:25:25,559 a feeling which is identical with awareness, a consciousness. 204 00:25:25,559 --> 00:25:35,183 A startling conclusion! Who am I? 205 00:25:35,183 --> 00:25:45,669 Very hesitatingly, you say I seem to be only consciousness of being. 206 00:25:45,669 --> 00:25:56,100 Where is this consciousness sitting? Has it any location? 207 00:25:56,100 --> 00:26:04,600 Abruptly, glibly like a little child, you will answer, due to the affirmation of this 208 00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:09,390 physical body, that consciousness is within me. 209 00:26:09,390 --> 00:26:15,120 How can it be within anything? 210 00:26:15,120 --> 00:26:21,290 That which is only within is certainly not without. 211 00:26:21,290 --> 00:26:30,010 When you say consciousness is within me, you are indirectly assuming that it is not without. 212 00:26:30,010 --> 00:26:37,039 Who is telling you that consciousness is not without? 213 00:26:37,039 --> 00:26:42,840 Only consciousness has to say that. 214 00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:48,620 Consciousness says: I am inside, I am not outside. 215 00:26:48,620 --> 00:26:55,974 The outsideness has to become a content of consciousness. Be attentive to what I am 216 00:26:55,974 --> 00:27:04,807 saying. The outsideness has to become a content of consciousness in order that 217 00:27:04,807 --> 00:27:10,265 consciousness may feel that it is not outside. 218 00:27:10,265 --> 00:27:21,549 It has to transcend its within-ness, and gallop outside the boundary of this body, and feel 219 00:27:21,549 --> 00:27:27,740 itself in some other place, where it is denying itself at the same time. 220 00:27:27,740 --> 00:27:36,140 Think over this matter deeply. The consciousness that it is only inside, and 221 00:27:36,140 --> 00:27:41,980 not outside, is not possible unless the consciousness 222 00:27:41,980 --> 00:27:47,181 is, at the same time outside, so that it may be conscious that it is not outside. 223 00:27:47,181 --> 00:27:53,779 Very carefully you must meditate on this matter. 224 00:27:53,779 --> 00:27:55,931 What does this mean, finally? 225 00:27:55,931 --> 00:28:04,264 It is not inside, because if you say it is inside, you are creating great trouble for 226 00:28:04,264 --> 00:28:12,139 yourself because in denying its absence outside, you are virtually asserting its 227 00:28:12,139 --> 00:28:18,097 presence, because the denial of a thing is not possible unless the denial has 228 00:28:18,097 --> 00:28:22,370 already become a content of the denying consciousness. 229 00:28:22,370 --> 00:28:28,514 Thus, it means consciousness is not only inside, it is outside also. 230 00:28:28,514 --> 00:28:34,680 The outside has no limit; it is an endless expanse. So, what does it mean? 231 00:28:34,764 --> 00:28:44,279 This I consciousness seems to be an endless expanse of being-as-such. 232 00:28:44,279 --> 00:29:00,430 What do you call this consciousness? In Indian philosophical circles, this 233 00:29:00,430 --> 00:29:08,638 consciousness is called Atman in the Sanskrit language. Again, don't make the 234 00:29:08,638 --> 00:29:14,596 mistake of saying Atman is inside the body, because the idea of insideness 235 00:29:14,596 --> 00:29:21,055 has been ruled out because of the impossibility of that assumption, 236 00:29:21,055 --> 00:29:27,130 if the Atman is not at the same time outside also. 237 00:29:27,130 --> 00:29:38,138 It is the pure Selfhood, or the assertion of pure subjectivity, that is designated by the 238 00:29:38,138 --> 00:29:44,013 word 'Atman' in Sanskrit language. In English, we call it Self. 239 00:29:44,013 --> 00:29:52,179 Inasmuch as it is everywhere, as it has been now discovered by a little analysis, 240 00:29:52,179 --> 00:29:56,820 it is Brahman at the same time. 241 00:29:56,820 --> 00:30:01,710 The Self is the Absolute. 242 00:30:01,710 --> 00:30:07,679 Because it is also inside you, it is the pure subjectivity of yours, it is called the Self 243 00:30:07,679 --> 00:30:10,887 or the Atman. Because it is not merely 244 00:30:10,887 --> 00:30:17,137 inside you but everywhere, it is a universal plenum of completion. 245 00:30:17,137 --> 00:30:23,137 In Sanskrit, we call it Brahman. Call it the Absolute Being. 246 00:30:26,137 --> 00:30:35,720 This is where we are led to by our critical examination. It started with a doubt. 247 00:30:35,845 --> 00:30:48,262 Whether we go with the wonderment of creation or the conclusions of a sceptical outlook 248 00:30:48,262 --> 00:31:04,029 in philosophy, you seem to be landing yourself on the lap of a common, uniform conclusion. 249 00:31:04,029 --> 00:31:11,570 Eastern thinking has been mostly intuitional and universal. 250 00:31:11,570 --> 00:31:28,620 Western thinking has always been empirical, individual, and limited to the reports of 251 00:31:28,620 --> 00:31:33,740 the sense organs. 252 00:31:33,740 --> 00:31:52,635 The perception of qualities you call primary and secondary, these qualities which you see 253 00:31:52,635 --> 00:32:04,177 in the things of the world, secondary qualities which directly impinge upon our senses, like 254 00:32:04,177 --> 00:32:11,885 colour, sound, etc., and primary qualities like geometrical shape and the very structure 255 00:32:11,885 --> 00:32:27,593 of existence of the object, these phenomena are the starting point of Western thinking. 256 00:32:27,593 --> 00:32:36,051 Empiricism is the foundation of most of Western thinking. 257 00:32:36,051 --> 00:32:42,049 I do not say it is everywhere so, but mostly it is so. 258 00:32:42,049 --> 00:32:52,010 Inductive method is more predominant in the West, the deductive system is predominant 259 00:32:52,010 --> 00:33:00,384 in the East. Something is finally taken for granted as unavoidable, 260 00:33:00,384 --> 00:33:10,384 that is the beginning of deduction, and from this unavoidable acceptance 261 00:33:10,384 --> 00:33:16,540 of there being some truth, you deduce certain conclusions. 262 00:33:16,540 --> 00:33:23,740 From the general, you come to the particular. 263 00:33:23,740 --> 00:33:27,870 But the Western way is to go from the particular to the general. 264 00:33:27,870 --> 00:33:44,870 When you say that the observation of certain events in the world 265 00:33:44,870 --> 00:34:02,550 which are, to ordinary perception, distinct particulars, when you see these particulars 266 00:34:02,550 --> 00:34:14,341 you behold a generality around them, you are actually following an inductive method. 267 00:34:14,341 --> 00:34:21,649 It is not that inductive method is absent in Eastern thought. 268 00:34:21,649 --> 00:34:28,339 Philosophy and religion have always been inseparable in the East. 269 00:34:28,339 --> 00:34:43,190 But in the West, religion stood apart, and philosophy took a purely scientific turn, 270 00:34:43,190 --> 00:34:46,619 especially in the modern period. 271 00:34:46,619 --> 00:34:57,591 Wherever you move, whether through the inductive process or the deductive 272 00:34:57,591 --> 00:35:07,674 process, you seem to be landing at a particular point. Go farthest into the 273 00:35:07,674 --> 00:35:21,215 remotest point of empty space, go as far as possible to the circumference 274 00:35:21,215 --> 00:35:29,599 that limits entire space, if at all there is such a circumference, you will find 275 00:35:29,599 --> 00:35:38,609 that you are back, like a boomerang, on the very point you started with. The 276 00:35:38,609 --> 00:35:49,423 innermost depth becomes identical with the most exterior depth of scientific 277 00:35:49,423 --> 00:36:00,256 observation, the farthest becomes the nearest, the most objective becomes 278 00:36:00,256 --> 00:36:02,715 the greatest of subjectivities, 279 00:36:02,715 --> 00:36:24,430 where you begin to feel a commingling of the observer and the observed, whereby you will, 280 00:36:24,430 --> 00:36:35,390 at the same time, notice that all observation involves the activity of the observer. 281 00:36:35,390 --> 00:36:48,800 You cannot stand apart as an observer, and keep observation outside in a laboratory, 282 00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:54,630 and have the object of observation still further away. 283 00:36:54,630 --> 00:37:07,220 The observing spirit, the observational process, and the object of observation seem to have 284 00:37:07,220 --> 00:37:19,713 a common ground, and unless you stand on that ground, you will not know either yourself 285 00:37:19,713 --> 00:37:27,569 or the process of observation or the object that is observed. 286 00:37:27,569 --> 00:37:35,570 By pure scientific experimental or observational methods nothing can be known finally it its 287 00:37:35,570 --> 00:37:44,480 core because you, as a scientist, try to stand outside the object, forgetting that your very 288 00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:52,250 attempt to know the object conditions the nature of the observation and the very structure 289 00:37:52,250 --> 00:37:53,750 of the object. 290 00:37:53,750 --> 00:38:06,119 So, you will not know anything unless you know everything; it comes to that, finally. 291 00:38:06,119 --> 00:38:14,379 The philosophical conclusions, therefore, of both the East and the West meet at a 292 00:38:14,379 --> 00:38:26,171 common point, and it is not always true that the East is West and West is West, 293 00:38:26,171 --> 00:38:28,530 and the twain shall never meet. 294 00:38:28,530 --> 00:38:39,837 Though it is said so, it is not always like that. The feeling now that the farthest 295 00:38:39,837 --> 00:38:52,837 point of the Bering Strait touches the farthest corner of Alaska. 296 00:38:52,837 --> 00:38:58,378 If you see on a map, they are so far away. The Bering Strait connects them together. 297 00:38:58,378 --> 00:39:05,837 The world is round, and not flat. So is perception; it is a rotund process. 298 00:39:05,837 --> 00:39:13,378 It is a circular arrangement, where you cannot know which is the beginning 299 00:39:13,378 --> 00:39:19,660 and which is the end. In a circle, there is no beginning and there is no end. 300 00:39:19,660 --> 00:39:23,378 The beginning is the end; the end is the beginning. 301 00:39:23,378 --> 00:39:30,003 The commencement is the goal; the goal is the commencement. 302 00:39:30,003 --> 00:39:40,003 Here, we bring together Western adventure and Eastern intuition. 303 00:39:40,003 --> 00:39:53,800 So, by being a true philosopher, not just a fundamentalist or a parochial linguistic 304 00:39:53,800 --> 00:40:01,260 theoretician, if you are broad enough to think in this manner, you will see you are a citizen 305 00:40:01,260 --> 00:40:10,836 of the world, not of India or Europe or America, of this country, that country. 306 00:40:10,836 --> 00:40:21,640 The winds of the cosmos blow through our hearts. 307 00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:28,720 You are not a citizen of merely this human Earth. 308 00:40:28,720 --> 00:40:36,550 You seem to be lifted to the galaxies, to the cosmic space, and you are a citizen of 309 00:40:36,550 --> 00:40:40,250 the universe. 310 00:40:40,250 --> 00:40:44,877 What are the prerogatives and the liberties of a citizen? 311 00:40:44,877 --> 00:40:48,002 He is fully protected. 312 00:40:48,002 --> 00:40:54,630 A citizen is fully protected by the laws wherein and whereby he is the citizen. 313 00:40:54,630 --> 00:41:01,780 If you are a citizen of the universe, the universe will protect you. 314 00:41:01,780 --> 00:41:04,700 You are guarded from all sides. 315 00:41:04,700 --> 00:41:14,540 You are never without a friend, and you have no enemies, because the world has come round 316 00:41:14,540 --> 00:41:21,751 into a point of singular observation of a totality of Awareness. 317 00:41:21,751 --> 00:41:29,501 You may call this the most wonderful humanistic way of perception, 318 00:41:29,501 --> 00:41:40,459 a Universal United Nations that we have created or perhaps, God Himself has 319 00:41:40,459 --> 00:41:44,126 entered your heart and taken possession of you. 320 00:41:44,126 --> 00:41:59,030 All these wonderful conclusions are before you by a totally dispassionate enquiry into 321 00:41:59,030 --> 00:42:03,890 the nature of things, which is what you call philosophy. 322 00:42:03,890 --> 00:42:05,540 God bless you. 323 00:42:05,540 --> 00:42:07,730 Hari Om Tat Sat.