Translated from the Sanskrit with Introduction and CommentaryBy NATARAJA GURU
INTRODUCTION:
Most people know that the Indian philosophical schools of thought are only six in number. There is the Nyaya-Vaisesika pair, with a common methodology and epistemology between them, one complementary to the other in a very subtle way. Then there is the couple called Samkhya-Yoga, which again form a pair with a more subtle penetration into the structure of the Absolute as seen from the sides of both the fully Absolute and the relatively Absolute; the Samkhya, as its name signifies, specialising in numbering the categories, and the Yoga, its complementary counter-part, specialising in the aspects of personal discipline in a manner in keeping with the dualism as recognized between the two schools.
The last two systems form not merely a pair, but may be called, as they have been by those who know, twin schools - the Purva- Mimamsa of Jaimini and the Uttara-Mimamsa attributed to Badarayana (sometimes also called Vyasa). These twin schools or systems of philosophy are so closely related that they become inseparable in the sense that one presupposes the other. Jaimini and Badarayana quote each other and the Karma- or Dharma-Mimamsa, as the anterior exegetic critique might be called, pertaining to the ritualistic and Vedic background, and the Brahma-Mimamsa, the posterior critique can be called, have much in common, like twins who might resemble the twilight hours of the morning and evening. The name Sariraka Mimasa, sometimes seen applied to the latter, seems to indicate that while the former refers to action in the context of the Absolute, this latter comes near to envisaging more globally the same situation, not as the field of ritual action but as referring to the very body or Self of the agent of all action in the same context of the Absolute.
A common epistemological and methodological thread must run through the six Darsanas or systems, although individually they are still perfect gems of thought-systems. Although each gem has to be cut and adjusted to fit into one integral necklace or garland, actually they are found to have been ground too much on one side or left crude on the other. The very fact that even at present they have been treated in pairs to make any complete natural system of philosophy, is sufficient to show the lop-sided nature of each of the gems taken separately.If they are to make one necklace under the aegis of the Absolute, which is the norm for all philosophy, a revaluation and arrangement in graded order will be needed. What the expert jeweller , therefore, will do to the collection of precious gems of thought that he has inherited will be first to polish each gem and then to string them together so as to make them accord with an integrated Science of the Absolute.Each jewel is a value to be conceived with an inner symmetry of structure and as comprising a unitive or global whole. The beauty of the necklace would depend on such correctness of grinding of even the smallest of its facets, so as to require, by analogy, on the part of the maker of the garland of the visions the minutest of attention to detail and workmanship in respecting the slightest shades or angles of view possible in making each gem conform structurally within itself to the requirements of a complete garland of visions representative of all philosophical points of view possible anywhere in the world at any time for anyone. This would demand an over-all normative notion of the Absolute as a reference for each of the Darsanas which make up the series, as also a graduation as between each vision, so that when the garland reaches its end it would be capable of being linked naturally and normally with where it began.
Sankara called his work on the Vedantic Absolute the Viveka-Chudamani (the Crest-Jewel of Discriminative Wisdom). Narayana Guru continues the same tradition after him, and thinks of not one ornament for the head, but of a whole garland in which no vision of any religious or philosophical school would be neglected or left out. Each would be kept in mind by him as the architect of the total integrated edifice. Thus would be commemorated the dignity and wisdom possible for humanity, from which alone should be derived the legitimate ornament to enhance his human quality as homo sapiens.The garland further represents, in the symbolic gesture- language of India , the whole of one's precious wealth: it is implied as when a bride gives herself to the bridegroom at the time of marriage. It represents the Sarvasvam (total good) that one surrenders to God or the Absolute or submits to Humanity itself, in an extended sense of the analogy.
The garland is thus meant to enhance human dignity to the highest possible point, as when one man wearing a garland like another would find points of agreement and not difference between them, thus promoting the cause of human solidarity and fellow feeling through a common ideology. Cold or hot wars which "begin in the minds of men", as the United Nations Charter states, consist of the same stuff out of which comes what is currently referred to as "ideological warfare" in the journals of our days. By the integrated, unitive and scientific understanding implied in the garland of visions here presented to the world by a wise Guru, such seeds of war would tend to be neutralised, while the natural man of total understanding could be regained and re-established through the teaching of such a philosophy in the universities and academies of the future.
What science seeks is a really a certain degree or kind of certitude arrived at by proper methods, conforming to an epistemology and having a workable, useful or direct significance in human life, in understanding or conduct. There are two kinds of certitudes, which can be called apodictic and dialectic.The former is in the domain of the probable, while the latter is in the domain of the possible and the intentional (which is not necessarily that of the visible or actual). The final instance of dialectical certitude is the axiom itself, such as A = A , which requires no proof. Between the two certitudes there is a dichotomy or bipolarity which expresses itself in terms of ambivalence or antinomian principles in various branches of knowledge. The synergisms in physiology represent the same polarity in the physiological sense. The psyche, the libido and the Self, too, present psycho-dynamically the same alternation of phases resembling the systole and diastole of the heart-beat. One complete cycle of thought has its inductive and deductive phases, as also its systole and diastole. One hears too of the "sex-diastole" which has a similar alternating figure- eight rhythmic process, resembling quantum mechanics and the mutations which occur in plant-life where certain stages are jumped or alternate with others.The structural details within the notion of the Absolute present paradoxical enigmas to the novice in the Science of the Absolute. One has to be a well-practised dialectician and absolutist to see the difference between the vertical and the horizontal (i.e. unitive and multiple, perennial and transient, etc.) aspects which refer to the Ksetrajna (perceptual) and Ksetra (actual) aspects of the Absolute in the language of the Bhagavad Gita. In distinguishing these twin but intersecting axes of reference, the whole of wisdom itself finally becomes comprised, as stated in the Bhagavad Gita (XIII, 2).When this epistemological secret has been understood in all its bearings and applications in science or philosophy, a man becomes able to see clearly through mazes of percepts and concepts. He can then organize them into ramified hierarchies representing values ranging from the actual to the nominal, with the perceptual and the conceptual fitted between these extremes. The structure of the series of visions in Narayana Guru's Darsana Mala conforms broadly to the scheme that we have just referred to in passing. Experimental proof of the empirical sciences corresponds to the Pratyaksha of the Indian Tarka or Nyaya school, and complete a-priorism corresponds to the Sabda Pramana of the Vedantins. Possibilities and probabilities belong to the Arthapatti and the Anumana respectively of the Samkhya and other schools. Anupalabdhi is impossibility, where probability is ruled out completely. All these ways of reasoning have between them a reciprocal or complementary nature. When the subtlest kind of certitude is involved, as in the case of the notion of the Absolute which has to be defined, one employs analogy and hypothetical predication to be verified later on direct experience of the Absolute. This is the method of Upamiti (hypothetical analogy), which is the highest instrument of all. What in the West is known as the "method of agreement and difference" is the Anvaya-vyatireka method of Vedanta, which is of great use when the final stage of speculation about the nature of the Absolute is in question.Thus the fully scientific status of the verses of the Darsana Mala does not present a problem at all to those who are conversant with dialectical and absolutist methodology, epistemology and the scale of values leading to the highest value in the Self as the Absolute. Certitude resides neither in the subject or the object, but in the neutral or central Absolute which is the norm for all thought.
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