Some Elements in Indian and Greek Thought

An article by Phiroz Mehta reprinted from the June 1957 issue of Latin Teaching

Continued from part 1 and part 2

Let us now ask what precisely is this wheel of births and deaths? What exactly is the escape from the burdensome circle of lamenta­tion, from suffering and from sin? What really is this god-becoming, this union with Brahman, this pure vision of the Supreme Reality, this ultimate beatitude which we call the kingdom of heaven or Nirvana, the Immortal state? And is it something concerning the hereafter, beyond the death of the person, or is it a factual realisa­tion in the here-now?

Learned scholars have given us the fruit of their great labours interpreting Greek and Indian thought. We must be grateful for the privilege of being indebted to them. At the same time it is our duty to remember our responsibility for progress in correctly understanding ancient thought. We cannot fulfil this responsibility by being mere adulators of the great scholars of the near past, nor by only being destructively critical. We must look at ancient teachings with a fresh eye, the fresh eye of the well disciplined, harmonized person. Let us not forget that Greek thought has been examined by scholars who have undergone an European, Christian conditioning, and that Indian teachings have been studied by Christian Europeans soaked in their own understanding of the classical tradition. May it then be suggested that we now try to look into the Indian theme as if for the first time, unconditioned and free.

In hymn 113 of the Ninth Book of the Rig-veda, the Rishi Kasyapa sings thus:

“O Pavamana, place me in that deathless, undecaying world wherein the light of heaven is set and everlasting lustre shines. Make me immortal in that realm where dwells the king, Vivasvan’s son, Where is the secret shrine of heaven … Make me immortal in that realm where they move even as they list. In the third sphere of inmost heaven where lucid worlds are full of light.”

In hymn 120 of the Tenth Book of the Rig-veda, the Rishi Brihaddiva declares:

“Brihaddiva … repeats these holy prayers, this strength to Indra … and all the doors of light hath he thrown open. Thus hath Brihaddiva … spoken to Indra as himself in person.”

At least eight centuries before the birth of Jesus, it is stated in the Aitareya Upanishad (5.4) that the Rishi “Vamadeva having ascended aloft from this world … became immortal, yea became immortal.” The Katha Upanishad ends thus:

“Then Naciketas having gained this knowledge declared by Death and (having also gained) the whole rule of yoga, attained Brahman and became freed from death. And so may any other who knows this in regard to the Atman.”

The Kaushitaki Upanishad says (2.14):

“Having reached THAT, he becomes immortal.”

The Kena says (12):

“When known by an awakening IT is conceived of, truly it is immortality one finds.”

The greatest of the Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka, affirms (4.4.14):

“Verily, while we are here we may know this. If you have known it not, great is the loss. Those who know this become immortal. But others go only to sorrow.”

The Adkyatma Upanishad ends with the words:

“This is the teaching of Nirvana, and this is the teaching of the Vedas, yea, this is the teaching of the Vedas.”

And the Mundaka Upanishad gives the assurance (3.2.9.):

“Verily, he who knows that supreme Brahman becomes very Brahman. He crosses over sorrow. He crosses over sin. Liberated from the knots of the heart he becomes immortal.”

Let us particularly note the words: He crosses over sin; he crosses over sorrow. From the Chandogya Upanishad we learn the meaning of the word sorrow. The saintly sage Narada says to his chosen teacher Sanatkumara: “All this (enumerating the knowledge of the times) I know. But, Venerable Sir, I am only like one knowing the words and not a knower of the Atman. It has been heard by me from those like you that he who knows the Atman crosses over sorrow. I am one of the sorrowing ones. Do you, Venerable Sir, help me to cross over to the other side of sorrow.” Thus the terms sorrow and suffering mean, fundamentally, not knowing the Atman. In India, vidya, and especially brahmavidya meant the knowledge which is realization through complete experience and not merely knowledge in the sense of information, of thoughts which are strings of words. It is this deep meaning of suffering which we must bear in mind in connection with the Buddha’s great declaration: “One thing, and one thing alone I teach: suffering, and the deliverance from suffering.” In association with this, his first words after his enlightenment are profoundly significant: “Hearken monks, the deathless has been found. If you walk as I teach, you will ere long, and in the present life, learn fully for yourselves, realize, and having attained, abide in the supreme fulfilment of Brahma-faring.” The Buddha confirms Yajnavalkya’s splendid affirmation in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that whilst we are here we may be united with Brahman and realize immortality, and thus escape from the wheel of births and deaths.

Throughout our life our awareness is characterized by succession. We are aware of every experience, thought or mood as something which begins, proceeds and comes to an end. Uprising-proceeding-­ending, or birth-death, in constant succession, distinguishes the nature of our ordinary awareness of our whole existence. In other words, we may say that as we are at present constituted we are usually conscious in the mode of mortality of a space-time world. This constant, unbidden uprising-proceeding-ending, this endless, uncontrollable stream of births and deaths which flows on as our own moment to moment consciousness during our single lifetime on earth, is a real meaning of the Indian doctrine of rebirth, a doctrine so misconceived all over the world. The Maitri Upanishad clearly states (6.34):

“Samsara (i.e., the cycle of births and deaths) is just one’s own thought.”

As long as all that makes up our exis­tence is apprehended by us in the mode of mortality, such appre­hension is the wheel of births and deaths. Every entity, every speech-thought structure, is an item of our mortality.

But now, through the ages there have always been those who felt anguish as long as they apprehended all that made up their life in the mode of mortality. They longed for unbroken, holy relation ship with the fount of being, and for a fully satisfying knowledge through experience of the Supreme Reality. They felt that if only they could break the thorny bounds of the unawakened state, fling away the fetters of mortality and triumph over the Lord of Death, they would assuredly win the beatific experience of the Immortal and realize here-now that freedom and serenity which is ineffable bliss.

Several are the ways to such realization, as the great teachers of the religions and the world’s yogis and mystics have shown. Yet all these ways have certain elements in common. They all involve a moral discipline and an intellectual training, and thereafter, the development of the faculty of paying attention. In the first stages of the moral discipline, the emphasis is laid upon abstention from evil, because without such abstention the practice of the positive exhor­tations is frustrated, often beyond bearing, and time and again, even the meaning and implications of the positive values elude us. The core of the moral discipline consists in becoming free of all egoism, and above all, from all craving or desire. Craving binds us to the condition of mortality. Hence it is necessary to become disinterested in all worldliness, that is, disinterested not in the world and the daily business of living rightly, but in our cravings in relation to the world. This is the true mortification. It saves a man from bestowing the kiss of Judas under the stress of difficult cir­cumstance in the hour of his trial.

The essential part of the intellectual discipline is the process of becoming free of all bias and prejudice, of all preconceptions and assumptions. The moral and intellectual discipline is effected, mainly, by dispassionate observation of one’s own thoughts and feelings, speech and action. Such observation, devoid of either praise or censure, enables us to know ourselves — atmanam atmana pasya: know thyself by thyself. This is possessed of a deeper meaning than the gnothi seauton attributed to Thales. We begin to walk out of the cave into the light, and to put aside philosophical and theological systems as we put aside playthings. Not that the systems are altogether false. But, as we grow in the power to see for ourselves, we do not need, and we must not rely upon the conditioning doctrines and theories given to us from without. They are only as useful as the shadows in the cave. The pure flame of the word of God remains the pure flame. But when the spark within us catches light helped by the inspiration of that flame — Heraclitus’ Central Fire, or the Holy Fire of Zarathustra — then we ourselves experience the whole reality of Revelation, and the Vedic theme reaches its climax.

To reach this climax, we must learn, after having undergone the moral and intellectual discipline which is purification, to pay attention. Pay attention to what? To nothing! To nothing in particular, nothing in general. In reality, we learn to pay attention to that which is nothing. That no-thing is indescribable in terms of words, discursive thought or feeling, because all these commonly describe things. Things are, one and all, limited entities; and our awareness of them is in terms of succession, of the stream of mor­tality. But when we transcend this altogether, our super-conscious experience of that overwhelming, supreme, absolute, void and full no-thing is the ineffable realization of that in which there is no succession, no birth, no decay, no death. It is the entry in to the Immortal here-now. When we can deliberately stop the flow of discursive thought and feeling, then we are super-consciously aware of this very world in the mode of immortality. This precisely is that something more I mentioned earlier, which the Great Rishis and Munis, and the Buddha and the Christ, possessed in full measure — this ability, in meditation or prayer, to pacify and to deliberately stop all sense-mind activity, and super-consciously experience the fount of all things. And further, because they could enlighten their situation and the whole of their ordinary everyday life with the Divine Vision, they are beacon lights to all mankind.

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Continued in part 4

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