Bharatheeyam : ( 08/11/2012. )

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :  Part-21. Well, there is something very interesting to note in this philosophy of the Sankhya again. Is this satisfactory? The Sankhya thought that for certain obvious reasons the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika were not satisfactory, especially in its theory of God. The liberation, the nature of the soul and such other conclusions of the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika were almost preposterous. No thinking mind would accept them. So, the Sankhya came forward and proclaimed that liberation is a fact. There is such a thing as liberation or salvation. But, salvation is nothing but Purusha resting in himself, consciousness resting in itself, thought merging into its source. It is self-illumination of consciousness, independent of its contact with matter. This is Kaivalya, Ekatva, Absolute Independence. Thus there is no provision for God in the Sankhya system. This is not necessary at a...

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :  Part-20. But something is there outside. That is what you call matter. ''Matter is that which is other than consciousness; it is that which consciousness recognises, sees or comes in contact with. That which has not the characteristic of consciousness is matter." The distinguishing feature of that which is different from consciousness is that it is non-intelligent and, therefore, it cannot think. This is a wonderful philosophy. You can read it in detail in your leisure time. And as a matter of fact, Vedanta is nothing but an amplification of the Sankhya. The seed of the Vedanta was sown by the Sankhya itself. We have to give enough credit to the thinkers of the Sankhya for having paved the way for the onward march of later thinkers like Sankara. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  ....

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :  Part-19. So, there was a logical development of thought from the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika, when the Sankhya philosophy developed its conclusions in regard to what is called Purusha and Prakriti. It is this Purusha and Prakriti that we generally call God and the world, in popular language. Why should we accept two entities? Who told you that there is a Purusha and there is a Prakriti? How do you know that there is consciousness and there is matter? Can you prove this? Can you substantiate this thesis? Yes, was the answer of the Sankhya. No human being can escape noticing an object outside in the world. You may try your best and stretch your imagination to its farthest limits, but you cannot escape the recognition of an object outside. It is there. It may be this or it may be that. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  ....

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :  Part-18. But the Sankhya thought out this matter more deeply, and felt that it is not true that there are five elements. They are only five degrees of the intensity of one element. One element or principle, one being or stuff has modified itself into various densities. This was what Sankhya taught. There are not five elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether. Even the mind is not an independent entity. It is also a modification, in a particular form, of the very same stuff which is the substance out of which the cosmos is made. And if at all we have to accept more than one reality due to the exigency of experience and thought, we can at best accept only two entities : consciousness which sees and that which is seen, the experiencer and the experienced, the seer and the seen – or, to put it more precisely, consciousness and matter. These are the only two things that e...

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :  Part-17. But many questions posed themselves before the minds of people. This philosophy was found not satisfactory. How could we reach this God who is extra-cosmic – what is the way? Is there a ladder from earth to heaven where God lives? His hands cannot reach us and our thoughts cannot reach Him. There seems to be some defect in these systems. This was the decision made by the Sankhya, which was a later development of philosophical thought. According to this School, it is not true that there are many physical entities or realities as the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika thought. All these manifold objects could be boiled down to certain fundamental essences or principles which are the building bricks of the cosmos. While the Vaiseshika and the Nyaya thought that there is earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, soul and so on, all independent of the other, though in their finer...

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :  Part-16. Now, this philosophy of uncritical acceptance of everything that is visible or everything that is sensible, to put it more generally, became the incentive behind the systems of thought called the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika, whose conclusion is that things are physical and psychological. There is no other reality conceivable. This conclusion is arrived at by a system of logic, argumentation, or a systematic, syllogistic process of argument. Inasmuch as the followers of this system entirely depended on the syllogism of human thinking, logical argumentation, deducing things from given premises, the system is called the Nyaya. 'Nyaya' means logic. It is, therefore, a logical system of pluralistic realism. It is logical because it is syllogistic. It is pluralistic because they accept the multiplicity of physical entities. It is realism because the world, according to t...

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :  Part-15. I started by saying that besides the chronological process, there was also a logical reason for the development of this thought which is another interesting stream of the psychological history of man, while what I have said so far is the historical, purely sociological or chronological aspect of the significance of Sankara's work in this country and in the world. Let us now see its logical significance. His thought is a logical consequence of all the thoughts that preceded his coming into being. There were systems of thought called the Darsanas. You must have heard of the schools of thought known as Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and certain other mystical and ritualistic philosophies which were in minority, of course, yet prevalent during the time of Sankara. The immediate or rather the crudest form of human perception is taking for granted whatever is see...