Given this system, are the following statements a part of the assumptions based on what is known/ according to your understanding? If not, could you place these statements in one of the 4 categories & state the relevant assumptions? If possible, state all the / more assumptions required for the model to explain the spiritual philosophy. The statements are:
a) Truth has to be realized from the heart.
b) Everyone, regardless of their biology (example – sociopath can’t feel empathy) or how they were raised, shall realize the same truth from the heart when they start practicing a common spiritual culture after a particular point in their lives. This can be tested by asking them questions like the one I asked in my previous email, where a person Xβs answer to a yes/no question will determine the lives of several innocent people.
c) Ultimate truth exists.
d) Ultimate truth isn’t relative, that is, no 2 people can claim different/ contradicting ultimate truths.
e) Ultimate truth can be realised by following a certain spiritual culture.
f) The main rule of life is to follow sattwic ways to bring order in society.
g) Sattwic way (/ action required to understand ultimate reality) and action required to bring order in society can never be contradictory. Example β prison for criminals.
h) A person who has realised the ultimate reality won’t do anything wrong. They can’t revert back to a person who isn’t capable of accessing the ultimate reality at that point in time.
I) Newborns have access to the ultimate reality & lose that ability with time.
The reason behind this question is to learn about the extent to which logic can be applied to understand this spiritual philosophy.
2) Please comment if this is theoretically possible.
My thoughts on a possible way this spiritual philosophy evolved are that humans are pleasure-seeking animals. A person may derive pleasure even when feeling some pain in the body/mind, for example, scratching back to relieve an itch or watching a sad movie. So, the claim that the most important rule of life is to follow sattwic ways to bring order in society is just a way to maximise pleasure in most people in a sustainable way. Greed, ambition, bliss, sacrifice/service, altruism β all these are derived from a pleasure-seeking nature. The people who proposed this deliberately used false statements/ partial truths/ got misunderstood over time and claims like the existence of Ultimate reality or particular ways of achieving it were merely used to recruit people to follow a sustainable culture to maximise pleasure.
3) Is there a reliable way to determine whether a person has realized the ultimate reality? If not, according to your mail, people donβt really know the truth to start with and the claim that ultimate reality can be achieved through spiritual culture could be told by a human who could be ignorant and therefore wrong.
Importance of having a way to determine how realized a person is:
The definitions can often be vague enough that one could just say β you made this mistake, then you havenβt realized the ultimate truth, regardless of how well you followed the spiritual culture. Even the one who is believed to be realized could be misunderstood, as people tend to worship/ consider someone as an idol. Over time, the history could get misunderstood.
Please share your thoughts about these questions.
My thoughts are very simple.
These constructs, theories are mental ways of trying to understand something that the mind does not know. It does not want to undertake the journey yet wants to guess, hypothesise from afar. It is like trying to guess the experience of the journey to the Himalayas by asking a number of people. Can one ever form a correct picture? Each has taken his own approach, and as is their approach, so does the Himalaya appear to them! That is why the Gita speaks of samagram maam, knowing the Reality in all Its aspects and powers, which it declares is so rare, and understandably so. To explore the inner subjective spaces, even to break through the lids and barriers of consciousness to enter into realms of higher consciousness, is difficult enough.Β
What can, however, be done and in fact has been done to take a record of the experiences of those who have crossed through these perilous spaces. There are quite a few researches of this kind and they all testify that there is indeed a consciousness higher than the rational mind and its processes that changes not only our subjective and objective perception of self and world but also the way we deal with it, including through the emergence of new powers and possibilities. For the rest, one has to undertake the journey oneself. As in Science, so in the Spiritual realm, there is no pramaan, evidence, as pratyaksha, direct vision of the Reality.Β
As to whether there is an ultimate Reality or not, it is common sense to say that there would be some original Source of everything. All existence, consciousness, joy, power, beauty, love we experience must have some origin, call it the Mind of our mind or whatever else, it doesn’t matter.
Rest is an assumption about spiritual life and each is free to make their assumption and believe in it, creating yet another belief system, a religion of no-religion, so to speak. For example, it is an assumption that the spiritual consciousness is synonymous with the sattwic or spiritual people advocate the sattwic way of life. In any case, Sociology is a different subject and does not necessarily base itself on spiritual truths.
Similarly, it is an assumption that everything is based on pleasure, including the soldier willingly sacrificing his life, or a mystic refusing to tell a lie and preferring the cross or the poison. Of course, we can generalise the definition of pleasure from the sensual to the spiritual. But that is playing with words and discounting the actual experience involved.Β
Whether all can or will find the ultimate Reality or not is a question that applies only when they begin the search. Until then, we can only make a general statement that there is a spiritual destiny for everyone, but there are also many a sips and slips between the cup and the lip.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
