Know Thyself...

Two words that sound so similar, yet mean so different.. but can they actually be as close and correlated in concept as they are in spelling?

Dialect, which in other words symbolizes Language, has been a crucial element in growth and maturity of our species. Just like the origin of the universe or the creation of life on earth, there are no clear and irrefutable theories of how language developed in Humans. Man, as Homo Loquens, owes a lot to language in his philosophical growth. Language, as a spoken medium, allows interchange of ideas and elevates individual creativity to a community level intelligence, and as a written medium, enables successive generations to consistently progress in human thought. Initially, language was considered just as a medium for expression of our thoughts, but as time passed it was realized that language is a mode of our thinking and human thinking and language have complementally evolved together.

In the words of philosopher Dr. Jose Nandhikkara, "Only human beings speak. To the extent that we speak, we become fully human." Dr. Nandhikkara also goes on to talk about a Linguistic Turn that philosophy as a whole has taken in recent decades. The focus of discussions and analysis in philosophy have turned from Metaphysical and Ontological to Semantical.

We live in a pluralistic world - diverse both in culture (thought) as well as language. People of a same linguistic group normally tend to have the same baser instincts. Language tends to be a clustering factor, uniting people together, as much as common culture binds them. In India, we even took it to the point of dividing the country along linguistic lines, which put a stamp of cultural identity on people speaking the same language.

Now, this close association of language and human thought, like two faces of the same coin, makes me wonder if they have been partners-in-crime as much as they are brothers-in-arms. At an empirical level, we know some cultures foster more radical thoughts than others, some favor rationalist approach while others favor the empirical path, some cultures are more ritual driven than the rest. Can we find 'any strands of DNA' in language that are, maybe, responsible for the thoughts in the culture? Did the rubrics of language influence the hermeneutics of cultural thought?

Just as an example, can we, in any way, say that an Indian is more outspoken than a European because common Indian words are comparatively shorter in length? Or that a Tamilian mind has more complicated thoughts than a Kannada mind because Tamil has more letters in their alphabet and hence takes more effort to construct a word? Is it possible an Arab is happier than a Russian because Arabic language has more nasal tones and hence more oxygen pumps closer to the brain? Maybe an American is more scientific than an African because his language is simpler and hence gives his brain more time to think?

I wonder if anybody has analyzed the notes and tones of language in a way to interpret the cultural attitude springing from them..

Biology says the human body "nearly" regenerates itself (i.e. all cells in the body, excepting a few like neurons in the brain, die and give way to new cells) over a period of 7-10 years. So effectively, a person gets to be "re-born" every decade. To add to this, our bodies are changing constantly - growing in size and shape. There is metabolism happening all the time, and so is repair and rebuilding of damaged tissues. With every passing moment, the body absorbs nutrients, from food and air, which get processed into living tissue. Is it this factory of constant constuction and destruction, me?

In my childhood I had pondered if I should call the body as just mine or if it was altogether, me.

Now, if I consign the body as 'mine' then I should be able to treat it just like anything else that I call mine. My dress, my laptop, my bike - they are all mine; I can lend them to my friends and when I am at it, I can choose to trade/dispose them off and procure new ones. I can't do the same with my body (though I dare say that a few parts like teeth, hairs, etc., can still be replaced per my wish) so there is something about the body which is more than just 'mine'.

Now, if its more than 'mine', can I call it 'me'? Is this body, which was so very different 2 decades back, not matching in shape, size, color, and ability, to what it is today, and may be in an entirely different shape 20 years later, me? How do I identify myself with something so transitory and continually changing, when deep in my conscience I know I have not changed a bit. Whatever state of mind I was in 20 years back, I am still the same today. I have the same reservations, the same confusion, the same core. My identity of myself does not regenerate itself every decade. So, I strongly feel, there is something about the body which does not make it as much of 'me' as I feel I am.

There are various philosophies regarding the nature of our body and its connection with our consciousness and I have not read enough to comment on them, so I shall remain at a speculative level here. The body is one compound whole, a miniature universe, with every part complementing another and playing its role to fulfil the mission of the organism as a whole. This multitude of parts that I carry around, flesh, bones and bodily fluids wrapped in a tight package of skin, is supposed to be me? In that case, if I wrap myself with a few layers of cloth, then load a backpack full of books, does that became a bigger me now? If not, then how is it that the food I ate, which was actually lying on a plate on the table, a part of me now? If in an accident a part of my body is severed away, then do I look at that dead part and say its not me anymore? If not, then do I watch the faeces excreated in the toilet and endearingly call it as me?

Maybe the body is not really me but still needed to 'identify me' in this concrete world? Just like a rubber stamp identifies the owner behind it. A body is needed just so that whenever someone is looking for me, they know where to find me.. bodily?

To add to this confusion of identities, Srila Prabhupada, the founder acharya of ISKCON, narrates a beautiful story, which I summarize here: A strong and powerful, but loose charactered, man falls in love with a beautiful girl. Lured by her beauty, he appoaches her with a proposal of marriage. The girl is helpless, doesn't want to accept the offer but can't reject him due to his clout. She asks a week's time to prepare for the marriage and sends him away. Over the course of next 7 days, she gorges on laxatives, induces excessive vomiting and excreting and stores both the vomit and the faeces in beautiful pots. A week later when the man comes to claim his bride, he is shocked to see her lean and sickly, and asks her where is the beauty gone. She hands him the pots, saying she has stored all her beauty in the pots exclusively for him. The divine acharya  may have used this story as a fable to underline the need to differentiate real truth from fake, to look beyond the sense, but in it I see again a highlighting of the fact that our bodies are not to be identified with our selves. The falling in love with the body, either with another or with our own bodies, can be so distracting and fruitless.

There are days when the body makes you proud, when its strong, healthy and well built, and then days when you feel burdened by it, when its sick or handicapped. We use and abuse our bodies as vehicles of pleasure, when in pain we pray for quick exit from that condition, and when things are going just usual, without any sensation of pleasure or pain, we just take our bodies for granted.

The time when we realize the body is neither me nor mine, it may bring a sense of detachment which is needed for the human soul to ascend to a level where it can contemplate and reach God, it may take our existence beyond mere sensual experience to a realm of transcendence, it may take us beyond the necessities of daily life, beyond the vicissitudes of a perishable life into a world of eternal bliss. Doesn't transcendental meditation achieve this exactly?

Every organization needs a hierarchy to efficiently function, which could be of various modalities like administrative, functional, reporting based, etc. Though sometimes we see discriminations, unhealthy practices and other inherent drawbacks, I don't think the hierarchical model can be dispensed with. We see hierarchical formations in political governance as well social structures (like caste system) too. Even the human mind conceives the world in a hierarchical fashion, which is one of the basic factors that drives that mind towards a classifying tendency in gathering and organizing its intellectual knowledge. When the mind runs its cognitional processes it runs both ways, from the particular experiences to generalizations as well as univeral precepts bearing down on individualities. This could be an aspect that is uniquely gifted to human beings alone.

Its in the generalizing ascent of the mind that it sees a substantial unity in the universe and gradually transcends into the concept of a Godhead.

In a similar way, our identities also trace a hierarchical path. Our various names - first name, last name, family names, etc - are, but, a gradation of our identity. When we call ourselves humans, we generalize our self into a pool of humanity all over the world, suddenly our identities are diluted into the multitude, and we regain our individuality with our names. Similarly, we identify ourselves at different idealogical levels - At a national level, we belong to a country that has well-defined boundaries and a historical and political legacy of its own; At a community level, we partake in a cultural ethos and move in a shared existence of communal upheavels; At a family level, one draws an inner circle of belonging and makes it an extension of the individual self. Our mind needs these hierarchies to accordingly gradate our priorities and define the levels of our subsistence.

Now, while family, on one hand, is a building block of the entire social fabric, is it, in so far as it is  the lowermost node in our social order, also a restrictive aspect that boxes the mind and disillusions all aspects beyond it? Is the concept of family, while being unitary in its approach, also being unilateral in its effect? People focus on their families so much today that they refuse to see beyond its boundaries - the idea of belonging to a nation, or a state or even a religion or culture is only worth its weight in words. National pride, Relgious duty, Cultural practice are all subservient to Family welfare. Is there any meaning of universal brotherhood for a people drowned in familial responsibilities?

Is the idea of a Family, instead of being a stream that feeds into the universal ocean, turning on its head, and rather becoming a chain that breaks up the world into smaller worlds where human beings and their thoughts are caged? Is it actually making narrow minded beings out of us?

I recently attended a paper presentation by one Mr. Rudolf Heredia at an international conference in Bangalore, and what a mesmerizing personality he turned out to be. As per the moderator's introduction, he did his doctrate in sociology and then took on a very social role - working for recognition of marginalized groups and championing the cause for improvement in our education system. A jesuit from mumbai that calls himself a social scientist, Rudolf sir is extremely well read, and brilliant in his eloquence, while his affable personality, and humility make him very approachable. He kept us audience in rapt attention with forceful pedagogy peppered with appropriate satire.

Rudolf sir's focus was on globalization from an economical perspective, and its socio-cultural impact in skewing the developmental trajectory. He starts with the European enlightenment that initiated an era of industrialization and rapid progress, [the population boom also finds its roots in this era] stressing on how the values of the renaissance period were quickly overcome by a globalizing current which drowned the micro-identities of individual cultures and, hence, created a regressive spiral in which economical, cultural and educational institutions lost their healthy correlation. He analyzes the failures of both neo-liberal caplitalistic as well communist concepts and attempts to reach a holistic and pragmatic solution that is both integrating as well as liberating. He stresses the need for a paradign shift that foregrounds culture in the respective social aspect, contextualizes development on grounds of equity and changes education from traditional to transformative frameworks. While all speakers before him spoke about alleviating the condition of the poor, Rudolf sir stood up and asked, "Who do you call a poor man? The need is not to define poverty but to redefine prosperity". He ends his paper on an ironic, yet relevant, note that we may fight various battles and, in all unlikelihood, even win them, but we should not end up with a tragic realization that we fought the wrong war.

Fr. Rudolf is an old man yet bubbling with as much energy as an impassioned youth, especially when he takes centerstage on his favorite topics. In the brief chat I managed with him backstage, I complimented that he was like a tiger hidden under sheep's skin, for which he replied he may be a deer but never a tiger. I was very sure Rudolf sir, who calls himself an independant researcher even while being part of so many illustrious institutes, seemed no less than a tiger to me..

"In the whole world there is no study, except that of the originals, so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Oupnekhat [Latin for Upanishads].It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death!" - Arthur Schopenhauer

When a universally respected German says it out loud, it just underlines the wisdom of ancient India. We Indians have always been proud of our "culture" and "heritage". We are aware of the great past that we inherited and in a way this greatness is still very much alive, though implicitly, in our religious attitudes, and as an undercurrent, in our tolerant diversity. The real need, I solemnly feel, is to elevate this pride to a level of realization of the essence rather than just an outwardly and superficial feeling.

The vedic indians were an inspired lot - in the period between 2000 B.C to 600 B.C. (though these time periods are eternally under debate) the indian mind rose up from the annals of mediocre existence and apprehended the great truths of world and nature. The Vedic Samhitas, the oldest literary work known to man, are hymns of the personification of divinity in forces of nature. They not only symbolize a beauty of expression but also signify a transition of the human intellect - an incredible evolution of thought - that reached the pinnacle of transcendental inquiry in the Upanishads. The time of the creation of Upanishads was filled with such creative fervour that major world religions and philosophies (Greek Philosophy, Christianity, Buddhism, etc) were all born around the same time. Ancient Indian literature is a foundation to elevate the inner self and not just a ground to stand on and proclaim our greatness.

These remarkable texts of India established such irrefutable truths that its message is applicable even 2000 years hence, and they are distilled to such a subtle level that new truths will keep emerging for many more centuries to come. All works subsequent to Vedic Literature, were mere footnotes to it. Sankaracharya, Baudhayana, Madhava, Ramanuja, etc wrote commentaries on them. The epic Puranas and Itihasas are just allegorical interpretations to convey Vedic messages to the common man. Vedic Literature can be said to be the constitution for the republic of religion and life.

Its time the core concepts of our history are reborn into the Indian psyche. We are, today, a generation that knows its priorities way too well. We have the courage to flout norms and stand up for what we believe in. We are empowered enough to make smart choices. We appreciate arts, science, commerce and life in general, all in good measure. Its, now, a fertile ground for the wisdom of the ancients to awaken. There has to be a way to trigger this.. and not just in small numbers.

There has to be a way to do it! A way to percolate the philosophical messages down to the simplest mind - a way to make people stop doing ceremonies as mere rituals and look for deeper meaning. A way to convert 'religious belief' into 'critical understanding'. A way to move away from economic upheavels, communal disorders, social emergencies, towards a firm foundation of unwavering virtuous life. A way to transform our appreciation of Indian wisdom from mere solace of our lives into an immanent realization that becomes the solace of our deaths.. and many more journeys thereafter!

Epistemology is the specific branch of philosophy that studies the concept and science of knowledge as a whole. In a way, it attempts to understand the conditions and analyze the various setups under which systems of knowledge are built and hence enables validating the art of knowing itself. This post is not any epistemological theorizing, rather just a curious look at the path of the growth of knowledge.

I started looking at knowledge in a different way, when I heard the opening narrative in the movie The Gods must be Crazy. The narrator compares the lives in the bustling city of Johannesburg with a tribe in a dry desert a few hundred miles north of it. The tribals have limited knowledge and live their life in simplicity and happiness found in natural dispositions, while the city is fraught with challenges. The city life is "civilized" while the tribals are "backward", yet the civilized life has no peace that the backwards possess. The child of the tribe learns his necessary art of survival at a very young age, while city children are still learning even well past their teenage.

Knowledge, however it has grown, mainly through observation and experimentation, and also through imagination, conception, abstracting, or through gross or subtle hypothesizing, has certainly elevated us to a position much higher than we historically were. We have a better outlook (as well as insight) of things than we had decades or centuries ago, and it keeps improving every minute, even as you read this post... The progress of our civilization has piggy-backed on the growth of our knowledge. Even though, many a times, individuals have struggled in gathering complete knowledge, humanity as a whole has successfully scaled the heights of knowing.

Every generation inherits a baggage of information from its fathers and develops it further for its children. We don't just scratch the surface anymore - we have transcended boundaries and pushed the limits of our knowledge much beyond our horizons. We have shot into the far reaches of space, while also plunged into the infinite depths of molecular world. We have crossed-over into the invisible world of radio-waves and electricity.

Take this case for instance - A few centuries ago, it was just enough to know when to plant the seeds and how to harvest the crop, but today one needs to look at weather forecasts, understand seed culture, know the right pesticide and soil combination, and finally have an idea of the machinery needed for sowing, watering, protecting and harvesting the crops. In today's world, A farmer cannot just be born, he should earn his place with the right knowledge.

Human life is finite and hence every new generation should first come "up to speed" with all the knowledge that already exists before they can venture on their own. Yes! we have invented libraries to store this knowledge, but the human brain is not getting any bigger or faster. I believe we have the same intelligence today which Aristotle or Buddha possessed 2000 years ago. So, how does the brain cope up with this ever increasing volume of information? Maybe with evolution our brains will get more 'wired' but the 'growth in our knowledge' is outrunning the pace of natural evolution. We already see that our children spend more time cramming in schools than our previous generations did. In layman terms, about a century ago, a bachelor degree was considered a job well done but today nothing less than a doctrate gets respected. As knowledge keeps increasing, do we just keep interpolating our methods of learning in a linear fashion? Do we just keep loading the school-bags of our children and inventing 'intelligence and memory enhancing hormones' and keep mixing it in their milk? Will it not hit a limit someday - given our finite intelligence and finite lifetimes? Or can we relook at the whole learning process and develop a pragmatic way where the cycle of learning is effectively insulated from the growth of knowledge?

In the Indian system, there are 3 ways of self-emancipation, namely, Bhakti marga (by way of riveted devotion), Jnana marga (by way of illumined knowledge) and Karma marga (by way of selfless action). There are schools for propounding each way, and ISKCON is one such organization that is aligned with the path of Bhakti. They hold devotion to Lord Sri Krisna as the means of self-realization (though they ardently follow the Bhagavadgita which upholds all three ways) and propose the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra as instrumental in effecting the devotion. When I attended a presentation by Mr.Arun Raghavan, a full-time member of the FOLK community, he gave a beautiful correspondence of how chanting can be one of the most effective means of self-purification.

In his own words, it goes thus:

"Imagine a glass filled with muddy water. Our mind is like that glass (Yes! all our cups are already full) - water being our ideas and thoughts, and mud, the negativity filled into us from extraneous sources. This mud clouds our mind and does not let us clearly see the path of realization. Now shake the glass - it is an agitated mind - and the entire water becomes muddy. The mind is even more clouded. Some gurus say that meditating in silence clears the mind. This is similar to keeping the glass still. What happens is that the mud settles down and water temporarily appears to be clean. At the slightest disturbance, the mud unsettles again. Blindly forced meditation does not give long-term benefits, and this is where chanting helps. Chanting a mantra over and over again is like pouring clean water into this muddy glass. Hare Krishna Maha-mantra is one such clear water prescribed by the Lord Himself. As clear water starts pouring in, it begins to displace the muddy water and the cup overflows, throwing out parts of both clear and muddy water. The Lord has given us an unlimited supply of clear water so lets keep chanting and constantly pouring it into our minds. Slowly, our minds get more and more clear. This process takes time but it gives long-term benefits. The mud will be removed for good. Finally, you can follow the chanting by meditation, and as you can see more clearly, it gives better results."

Another practical benefit of chanting is it seems to be an easier approach to mind-control. In meditation, one has to forcefully subdue all distracting thoughts and try to focus the mind. In restless minds (like mine), this becomes extremely difficult. Chanting does not need one to force the mind at all - one can let all the distractive thoughts come and, only in a matter of moments, one can feel those thoughts evaporating away all by themselves.

Mahabharata is the longest epic poem in the world. Written in 2,20,000 lines over 18 books, its written material could outweigh all the vedic scriptures together, hence giving it a new interpretation as a Maha-Bhaar-Ata (Sanskrit for 'therefore very heavy'). The Vedas and Upanishads were not graspable at the common man's level, hence epics like Mahabharata gained importance, which convey the same concepts of Dharma and Karma in more allegorical ways. Over the years, scholars have interpreted the Mahabharata in innumerable ways and tried to imbibe (and sometimes contort) its messages into all facets of the Hindu life.

In the hands of a Ram Gopal Varma, it can look like a commercial thriller, Satyajit Ray could make a documentary out of it and Maniratnam will make it an art epic. We don't know with what perspective Vyasa wrote the Mahabharata (though it was a story of his own grandchildren). I came across an esoteric perspective today, one which Vyasa may appreciate too..

What if Kurukshetra, the scene of the pivotal battle, is, rhetorically, our own body. The duration of war, the time of our one lifetime. The 5 Pandavas, the five senses that hold our fort during this war. Krishna, our mind, who controls and guides the senses, though behind the scenes. The 100 Kaurava brothers are the hundreds of evils in the world around us, that are constantly trying to dominate the kingdom of our souls. All the chapters of Mahabharata before and after the war could be the metaphysical aspects of our souls journey before birth and after death respectively (In fact, the point that there are several chapters after the war may prove that their is a long life even after our death). Bhishma-pitamah and Dronacharya, the mightiest of the enemy side, could be Desire and Attachment, the two toughest bonds for the soul to overcome. Bhishma (Desire) was overcome with the help of Shikhandi, who was neither a man nor a woman, a middle path. Drona (Attachment) was subdued by tricking him with the lie of his son Asvatthama's demise, a painful and forceful detachment.

This allegory should infuse in each of us the belief that the war will be won in the end. Our life is a kingdom that we have to fight to rule over. Our life may be a 'Kshetra' that the Kuru and Pandavas will fight to win but ultimately it is the sacred ground on which the sanctity of divine mind will stand, in preparation for that momentous occasion when the holy revelation (the Bhagavad-gita) will unfold and due enlightement will deservedly dawn upon us!

Bibliography :
Williams, Monier. Indian Wisdom. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1963.


Xenophanes (born ancient Greece, about 500 yrs before Christ) was a wisdom seeker who questioned the origin and nature of the world. In this attempt, he initiated the Pluralist school of philosophical thought that gifted the world with Theistic (on God) and Epistemological (on Knowledge) contributions.

Grhya Sutras - a section under the Kalpa Sutra collection, which are the addendum texts to Vedic Literature, deal with the various Samskaras of Hindu tradition. Samskaras are specific rituals (more appropriately, rites of passage) that mark important milestones in the lifetime of an individual (in fact, they overflow the exact period of a lifetime just a little bit, as the first Samskara happens before birth and the last just after death).

The pre-natal Samskaras of Garbhadana (at time of conception), Pumsavana (around the 3rd month of pregnancy) and Seemanta (around 8th month of pregnancy) are performed with specific intentions for enhancing the chances of bearing a male offspring.
Subsequently, the important milestone of initiating a child into studies, the Samskara of Upanayana is clearly prescribed only for a male child. Upanayana is supposed to give a second birth for the male child as he starts the first ashrama - Brahmacharya - of his life which subsequently goes into a cycle of 4 ashramas. The female counterpart has no similar ashramic connotations at all. Their presence is only felt in the Grahastha-Ashrama due to their part in marriage, family and procreation. The next two important stages of Vanaprastha and Sanyasa have no female presence. The final funeral rite is also permitted to be performed only by a son and not a daughter. Isn't a female being deserving of a chance to meditate on God or introspect on this universe or even seek the final liberation (moksha)?

There are many such instances spread throughout the Hindu scriptures where the male sex is given clear attributions and assignments but nothing is mentioned about the female counterpart. Is this a deliberate miss, an intentional sidelining of the female sex to show the status of subordination to them? They are not permitted the study the vedas (similar to the restrictions imposed on the Sudras - the lowly castes), all references to the supreme and to various administrative and scholarly attributes are masculine in nature.

The Samskaras are obviously sexist, but are our other scriptures sexist too? Why this discrimination, when Hindu's call themselves one of the most liberal and egalitarian religions of the world? When we blame other major (esp. Semitic) religions of debasing women, how can we accept the authority of Hindu texts which also lack neutrality and universality in their messages?

Philosophy - a name as beautiful as the science it refers to. In Greek, Philo means Love and Sophia stands for wisdom so Philsophy is, etymologically, the 'love for wisdom'. How ironic that Philosophy had to be defined using Love, which in itself is a word open to infinite interpretations? The one difference being  - more often than not - the meaning of Love is abused while the meaning of Philosophy is misused.