He said faith and stupidity looks same to me, as both of them have the same characteristics like lack of logic, rationality, etc. He says you are not “mind you are not the Body and these are accumulations”, which is stupidity and is like saying you are peeling an onion and not finding the onion at the end. “You are the onion”. I know he is being foolish here, but I want some logical answers to his points from you.
The logic is flawed on three counts.
If Mind were everything, then what about the emergence of the material world when there is not yet a mind to analyse and know? In other words, the emergence of creation is the work of a stupendous Power that ante antedates the human mind or even the animal mind. In its creative workings and actual operations, this power is evidently far greater than what the human mind can even conceive. In fact, the human mind itself seems to be a byproduct of its tremendous cosmic workings. So to believe that all is a play of the mind and can be known by the mind is foolish arrogance. The last word of reasoning is agnosticism because one understands that the mind cannot know everything, including the most basic things, such as the intent in a person’s heart or the event that will take place the next moment. With all the knowledge at its disposal, the best human minds together can only play with possibilities, not with certainty. So agnosticism is the last limit of the mind.
Of course, someone may argue that well, but nobody can predict the future with certainty. To this, I would reply that this is an assumption being made by the human mind and it is not a fact. In actual operations, even of plants and ants, there is a lot of intuition involved. The phenomenon of Intuition and inspiration itself cannot be explained by the rational operations. All artists, including the writer in question, knows it that creative inspiration is not a rational act and to understand it, one has to cultivate insight rather than reason. How does one explain inspiration, intuition, revelations, insights, even imaginations, unless one admits that there are operations that are other than what the rational intellect allows? To date, the process and methods behind it are ill-understood.
There are several other questions that reason alone cannot answer. For example, where does the sense of purpose, goal, aim emerge? Reason can argue about this or that purpose, but equally, it can argue against it. Where does the aspiration for Truth, for Peace, for Harmony, for God come from when all our reason is dependent upon the senses denies its existence? In fact, logically, if the Mind is all, then it is sheer folly to go on living, as then there is nothing else but a deadly cold material reality at the origin and end of things. Where then does the will to live emerges and pushes us to progress, to achieve, to exceed ourselves? Of course, one may say that all this is but the mind. That is playing with words, though unwittingly admitting that at last the rational mind is not all and secondly, there is perhaps a submerged cosmic mind at work in atoms and plants and subhuman species, a cosmic Mind of which the human mind is just a small little operation. But since we see in the cosmic operations the work of a tremendous cosmic intelligence, one with power (else randomness alone cannot explain the cosmic order), we might as well call it a Supermind if we like, a mind far greater in its scope, intelligence and creative power than the limited human mind. If this be so, as logically it seems to be, then what prevents reason from taking the next logical step that there are ranges of mind operating below reason, yet with great accuracy and possibly there are ranges of mind beyond our reason which we can access in dreams and mystic experiences. But the closed and narrow mind will simply deny this possibility of mystic experience a priori and not even care to investigate. Such a person has reached the limits of his little mind and will suffer a breakdown if pushed further. But the limits of Reason are not the limits of creation, which abounds in mystery and marvel and wonders that Reason struggles to understand or explain.
As to faith, well, even faith in Reason is a faith and the sense of I is a faith and the will to do and plan my tomorrow is a faith. All human beings move necessarily aided in their blindness with the lamp of faith. One cannot say that my faith in Reason and mind is faith and your faith in things that are not and yet can be is foolishness. Thanks to these few foolish men, then that the world has advanced beyond its animal state and hopes for an age of Truth and ideal love and flawless happiness. Though reason denies, yet faith pushes us through the portals of the unseen Ideal.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
