Realism in Indian Thought

We do not know the beginnings of philosophical speculation in India; we have records only from a period in the history of Indian culture when philosophical speculation has reached a very high stage ill its evolution. The thinkers of those early days found themselves in a world and they held the view that “what is experienced is what is real.” If the world is real, then it must have been always in existence. There is absolutely no trace of a belief in creationism in the whole range of the early records of the thought of the Indians. What they experienced was what was always there. That must also be what will ever continue. There is matter with change and movement. Thus there are three elements in the world of experience, namely, that there is matter, that there is change, and movement, and that there is the cognition of that world. The world is a unity of these three factors, matter, change in matter and knowledge of matter. This is the fundamental basis of Indian thought. The three factors are termed Sattva(knowing), Rajas (change and movement) and Tamas(matter). Sattvais white, activity is saffron and matter is dark. Indian thought has never gone out of this groove, though there had been changes in details. How can we say that a thought pattern in which matter, with change and movement, is known to us, contains any element of illusionism?

The world of experience during life is a reality. As such it must be a good world. There is no test for anything being good except that it exists; what exists and what is good is what must produce happiness. The existent world is known as what brings about happiness; this is what is called the unity of Sat-chid-Anand. That is the absolute nature of the world, and the term still persists in the thought pattern regarding the Absolute in the world. The world is a good world and the world is a beautiful world and Man is happy in this good world of beauty. What is true is what is good and what is good is what is beautiful. Dharma indicates its nature as true, Arthaindicates its nature as good and useful and Kamaindicates its nature as beautiful, what will bring happiness. Thus the three goals in life, the three values in life, are equated with the nature of this combination of the three factors in the world.

Concept of Social Service

There is no conflict between heaven as a goal and happiness in life as another goal. As a matter of fact, I have not seen a single evidence of heaven being held as a goal in the early literature of India. Heaven is a destination and the test to know whether Man has taken the right path towards that destination is to ascertain if that path brings him happiness in life.  Heaven can be reached only through proper work in this world. What brings about happiness during life is what will lead a man to heaven. There is no heaven without a good life on the earth. Thus there is frequent prayer in the earliest literature of India that one may not be deprived of any part of the life allotted to him, that one may be enabled to live through the entire span of life allotted to him.

This good work in the world, which first brings about happiness during life and which culminates in the expansion of Man’s life to heaven also, consists of two types. One is what brings happiness in life to oneself and the other is what brings happiness also to others. This second aspect is what is called social service. For happiness in life, two factors are involved; there must be the provision for happiness and there must be the avoidance of what will stand in the way of happiness, and what will bring positive unhappiness. The avoidance of what is prejudicial to happiness is what is called social service and this social service is known as Purthain Sanskrit. It is not enough if there is provision for happiness and if all visible obstacles to happiness and the grounds of unhapiness are strictly avoided. There must also be the preparation of Man for the happiness, both here and hereafter. It is the same happiness. That is what is known as the co-operation of Man with the gods. Man is a manifestation of this three-fold unity of the world, and gods are also such manifestations. There must be co-operation between the two, and this co-operation on the part of Man is what is called a ritual (what is called Ishta). Thus what is called a good life consists of two things, co-operation with the gods (Ishta) and social service (Purtha). The combined term for a good life is found in that early literature as Ishta-Purtha. Gods are not the agents of an autocratic Supreme, with sanction to reward those who remain within the Law of that God and to punish those who violate that law. There is also no power opposed to such a Supreme God who inspires evil in man. In that way there is no conflict of two powers in this world, the good and the evil power. There is only a single power, which is the Law of the world. It is when there is an evil power and when such an evil power inspires man to violate the God’s Law and when such a violation of the God’s Law brings about suffering to the good people who remain within the Law, that the element of justice comes, when there is need for a ‘Just God’. Similarly, when there is such an evil power there is also the need for social service. But when neither of them is prominent, there is no need for a ‘Just God’ and for an active social service. That is why these two elements are not very prominent in Indian ethics. The world is good and Man can be happy in this good world. It is ignorance of the happiness resulting from good life that acts as an incentive to violate the Law of the world. Thus, the ethics of India lay more emphasis on doing what is really good than on avoiding what is prejudicial to the happiness of man. What is good is what is included in the term Ishta-Purtha.

Sin-An Alien Concept

If Man cannot be really happy in his life in this world and if real happiness is only in a world outside of this world, then this world becomes unreal in one sense. What is truly real is what will result in perfect happiness and if there is no such happiness in this world, there is no true reality also in this world. From the philosophical point of view, there is no system of thought in any country in the world which contains the element of realism to the extent to which it finds a place in early Indian philosophical thought. But a change came over in the pattern of thought in India itself. Perfection is the removal of restrictions. If there is a perfection in man, possible to be realised during life in this world or only in another region and in another state, is that perfection the nature of man, to which Man is restored or is it a new factor added to Man? What is inherently imperfect cannot by any means become perfect, and if Man is perfect inherently and if there is only a removal of restrictions that come over him, the question arises how such restrictions came over Man who is inherently perfect? This is what Man with the restrictions cannot know and this is what is called an adrishta, what is not capable of being realised. It is not sin, though later it is equated with sin; but that is not genuine Indian thought. This element of sin in man is a feature in Indian thought that came into India later, from some foreign source; it is a deviation from the original current of thought. When Man is in this world through such a sin then Man free from such a sin cannot abide in this world. This is a natural consequence of the theory of sin which made the perfect Man into the man of restricted powers. Since there is no true happiness possible for Man with such restrictions in this world, what can bring about only a partial happiness in Man’s life cannot be what can lead Man to his destination of perfect happiness elsewhere. Thus, the goal of happiness in life and the goal of happiness in heaven became different, with separate paths leading to them. What brings about happiness in life, which can be only partial, must even be opposed to what will lead him to the state of perfect happiness in heaven. Thus, heaven became a direct goal in Man’s activities, different from the activities that bring Man the partial happiness which alone is possible on the earth. To this extent, some element of unreality entered the thought pattern of India; but this is not Indian. Yet the view that only Man’s activities in life can bring about happiness in heaven endured in Indian thought. Thus, to be born as a man is not at all a calamity; it is a door to the attainment of Man’s goal of an ultimate nature; to this extent, there is the ancient realism continuing in Indian thought.

Life Force

There is no system of thought in India in which the world is not real. The absolute from which the phenomenal world evolved is real and the phenomenal world too is real. There is no Creator nor a creation of something out of nothing. There is only change and the change is from a force within matter. This is called the life force. There is no difference between the Natural force which propelled and guided and controlled change and movement in the dead matter and the life force which made its appearance later in this evolving, dead matter as an accident, Man knows not and cannot know also, how, why and when. There is a unity between the two kinds of force.

There is absolutely no trace of a view in the earliest Indian literature that this activity of Man has a terminus later, though there is no such terminus earlier. Knowledge is only to know the truth of the world and to function in the world according to the true Law of the world. But along with the view of Man being incapable of true happiness in this world, there also arose another parallel view that there is an extinction of the individual, called his Moksha, his release from all activity and their fruits. The heaven theory is only a slight modification of an earlier view but this Moksha view is entirely new to the thought of India. In what are called good activities which bring about happiness in life and also happiness in heaven, there are two sides; there is the performance of actions which bring about a positive happiness and there is also the avoidance of what will be a bar to such happiness and what will even bring about some unhappiness. The second is mainly in the form of an abstinence from activities. Later this abstinence from activities became the door to the final Moksha. But there is really no complete abstinence possible in Man, since Man is a combination of matter and activity and knowing. The abstinence is always associated with the activity that brings about happiness. But in the later thought pattern, there is no such positive activity consequent on abstinence. This means that complete abandonment of activity is the real nature of Man. In that case, what is called activity is unreal. Thus the world and its activities, which, from an integral factor of the world, are unreal the only reality being a state of complete absence of all activity.

Uncompromising Reality

It must be confessed that in such a view of the real nature of the world, there is no scope for social service. I feel that the cloister philosophy of later-day India, evolved and propagated by people in saffron robes contains such an element of unreality in the nature of this world. Instead of the phenomenal world being the real, absolute universe, known imperfectly, the phenomenal world became unreal, and the term ‘illusion’ applied to such a world, is not absolutely wrong. Such a notion of the world has developed in India at a later time. The bifurcation of Spirit with no activity and matter with change and movement, the bifurcation of the universe with reality in the absolute and with no reality in its phenomenal state, the bifurcation of Man’s activities in this world as what will bring about only worldly happiness and what will lead Man to heaven as the goal–these are beliefs that came into India later. We hear much about spiritual progress and material progress and also spiritual force and physical force, as distinct facts. What the Christian Priest has criticised is this un-Indian and even anti-Indian view of the nature of the world. In the Indian thought itself, the world is real. The reality of the world, evolved in the Indian thought pattern, is a reality which no other nation has evolved. In all the systems of thought, in all the texts that teach the nature of the world, in all the literary remnants of yore where the world is presented as it is with Man being active in that world, everywhere, we find only an uncompromising realism. We have to move wards to go forward. The present path, with the saffron robes as guides cannot lead us to the true realism of ancient India. Our political disabilities, our economic wardness and our intellectual inferiority are all the products of this saffron-robe philosophy of the world that dominates the mind of India at present. All the foreign criticisms of Indian thought and belief have also such a philosophy as the true target, and not the real thought of ancient India.