Resurgent Culture - Chapter-1.6. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, November 10, 2021. 6:00.AM.

Resurgent Culture - Chapter-1.6. - Swami Krishnananda.

Chapter 1: The Goal of Life-6.

6. The Underlying Unity

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In this connection it would be profitable for you if I recall to your memory an interesting system of philosophy expounded in recent times by the famous professor, Alfred North Whitehead, on the basis of the discoveries made by Einstein in his theory of relativity. It is the opinion of Whitehead, not a mere fantastic belief but a rational conviction, the things in the world do not exist as localised bodies or static substances in a three-dimensional space, but are really certain phases of force entering into one another and forming a marvellous completeness wherein everything is a cause and an effect at the same time from different points of view. In an interrelated cosmic family we cannot say which is dependent on what, for all are mutually included, and nothing is independent. There can be no being but only becoming and process in this world of relativity. The Vedanta, however, goes above the concept of Whitehead and envisages the Eternal Being existing at the background of the world process. In fact, the conclusions of the theory of relativity shift the entire position of scientific thinking and even the commonplace method of popular philosophy, and brings about a reorientation in the conception of matter, motion and force. The discovery that perceptions depend on the position and velocity of the observers makes it impossible for one to state anything as an invariable truth about the things of the world. Curiously enough, the observers themselves would be relative to one another, and there would be none to observe even the fact of relativity! Here we rise to a tremendous intuition, above all thought, and visualise an incredible infinite which ought to be the real Observer of the whole universe of relativity. The 'ingressive evolution' of Whitehead gives a hint to a terrific unity underlying all evolutionary process. Whitehead himself does not seem to have noticed the great significance of his system—it points to something beyond what he intended to tell us. We are lifted to the eternal, the immortal.

Let me make the matter clear to you by another observation. You are acquainted with principle of gravitation, a law by which bodies attract one another in a particular manner. The centres of gravity should be relative, because there is attraction of everything towards everything else, under the governance of the same law. Not only material objects and masses of matter but even we as bodies are relative centres of gravity, determining one another in characteristic as well as existence. That there is an internal relationship among bodies, which is exhibited in the form of gravitation and attraction, indicated that the bodies of the universe are in some mysterious way held together by a single force-we may call it the universal centre of gravity. Unless such a centre is accepted, the system, the order and the method observed in the working of the universe cannot be explained. Mystic philosophers are used to say that this cosmic centre is everywhere, with its circumference nowhere. We may call this the God of the universe, if we so wish.

We know the world; but what about that by which we know it? How can we know the knower? The great sage, Yajnavalkya, prominent in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, makes a significant reference in his immortal instructions to his consort, Maitreyi, to the awe-inspiring existence of the Self which is the seer and the knower of all things, but which itself cannot be an object of anyone's knowledge. This Self is not an element among many others in the world, for it is the observer of the elements. The two different elements-beginning from two common objects up to the individual as set against the universe—cannot be known except by a consciousness which is all-embracing. The intimacy that subsists between the knower and the known is accounted for by the objects being phases of Vishayachaitanya, or consciousness in a state of configuration. We understand, then, that matter is nothing but spirit discerned by the senses.

To be continued ....

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