Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume
A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday
Philosopy is a Need
by Prof. Shashi Khosala
The central fact of man's being is his Divinity. To live only on the pleasure-plane of the senses is to be truly dead. To be awake in God-consciousness and withdrawn from the outer world is to be really alive, for this is the true state of the Being, the Soul. The importance of philosophy in the life of man lies in its ability to show the way, clear the doubts and take man to the Divine realm.
The word 'Philosophy' is usually misunderstood by the common man who thinks that it has nothing to do with life, that it is barren and empty speculation. It is a wild-goose chase and a time-wasting pastime, because it simply discusses such metaphysical problems as are intellectually uncertain and practically useless. But, all these notions are completely wrong.
Philosophy is love for wisdom. When this is so, how can it be a mad man's business or a useless affair? It is the most sublime of human pursuits engaged in by the wisest men of the world. It is not a peculiar business of the gods, or of the specially endowed; it is human business; it is everyone's business.
Philosophy is the sum-total of one's beliefs, ideas and opinions, and so, naturally, everyone has his philosophy, however ignorant he may be of scientific lore. Philosophy is concerned with Truth—the discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.
Of course, philosophy has certain spheres which deal with super-sensual things, but it is not completely divorced from practical utility. That is why Hume says: "Be a philosopher, and amidst all your philosophy, be still a man". Actually, philosophy is a goddess whose head is in heaven but whose feet are upon earth.
Philosophy is as old as human thought. Modern philosophy has its start in the spirit of doubt. Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt, and when thoroughly explained, dispels it. Plato thought that philosophy began in wonder. Primitive man, when confronted with the bewildering elements of nature, could not but look at them with curiosity and wonder as the child's mind would do. The child-like, naïve Greek mind had the first incentive to philosophical enquiry in the feeling of wonder. Plato very rightly emphasised an eternal truth—a truth which holds good times and climes—when he said
that administrators should first and foremost be philosophers, not merely lovers of wisdom but possessors of wisdom in a practical way, and then the world would certainly march towards real progress, peace and harmony, leaving behind conflict, chaos, distraction and disaster.
Philosophy has a great significance in human life; human life needs it. Man is a reflecting or thinking animal. He not only lives, but knows that he lives. Not only does he act, but knows that certain ways of acting are expedient or right. The reflective side of man is his chief convenience and chief glory. His inconvenience lies in his uneasiness and his constant effort to find out the answers to those problems which he cannot avoid and which transcends his powers. The reflective capacity of the human mind is a glory, because from it springs the magnificent achievements in culture and civilisation. It is out of this reflective capacity that philosophy originates. Man does not live only by bread and technological discoveries. He lives by values and realities which are above time. Aristotle remarked, when asked what good his philosophy did him, "It enabled me to do willingly what other men did out of fear of the law". That man is free who is the author of the principles and laws by which he lives and which are good for humanity at large. Hence, philosophy is well considered dear delight of reason, the of understanding. True philosophy is not confined to the intellectual categories merely; it is the solace of the human heart, the peace of man's mind and also his refuge.
In this modern society, we have made a lot of material progress, but morally we have lagged quite behind. We have become more civilised, but less cultured. We have made scientific and industrial progress, but this progress is more prone to distraction than to construction. Hence, we need in our lives philosophy which can motivate our choices in better ways. Divorced from philosophy, religion degenerates into superstition, economics into exploitation and politics into tyranny.
It is a philosophy of a comprehensive spirituality, rational and practical, that man the modern age needs to rescue himself from his stagnation of worldliness and place himself on the high road to creative living and ultimate fulfilment and perfection.
The human being is a changing and growing process of personality and experience and philosophy is a need for human advancement. Especially, the emphasis in Eastern philosophy busies itself with the process of the unfoldment of Reality through the valuable vehicles of human thought and body.
It is only in the daring declarations of perfect philosophy, the philosophy that discusses the vital and final experience of man in the realms of the spiritual, the Vedanta, that we find an unequivocal and emphatic declaration that man is God.
A great philosopher in his perfection is but That. As That, he has once for all dropped all his wrong identifications with his body and his psychological entity. He has become pure Spirit, and as Spirit, his relationship with the Absolute is one of perfect identity. Though the Vedantic philosopher seeks Truth within himself, yet in the discovery of It, as though in his bosom, he experiences himself as the Whole. That large-heartedness which is uncanny and unveiled in a personality of this type, very few of us can have.
Through intense Tapas and Vedantic meditation, our saintly philosopher, His Holiness Sri Swami Krishnanandaji, the popular and beloved General Secretary of the Divine Life Society, has attained that exalted and blissful stage to a great extent as we can judge. His philosophy is more and more of practice and less and less of theory. He can be called as the harbinger of a better new world fashioned in accordance with our ancient spiritual values. As it seems, his happiness is within, relaxation within, light within; he tries to see the One in the all and the all in the One, and very often his equal vision does not apparently make any distinction between the high and the low, the rich and the poor.
The secret of India's spiritual life still exists despite storms of political agitations and industrial strikes. Saintly philosophers like Swamiji are the back-bone of India's spiritual glory and purposeful prosperity. May the God Almighty and Satgurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj bless Swami Krishnananda with long life and glorious health to guide humanity for decades to come is my prayer.