Book Read - Vedanta Treatise by A Parthasarthy

The author A Parthasarthy is considered to be an authority in the subject of Vedas. I must say I had never heard his name but perhaps that may have been due to the fact that I had never done this kind of reading or attended any of his discourses. I am not sure he is an authority for the rich gullible junta desperate for an answer for their seemingly illusionary miseries stemming more out of boredom and nothing better to do syndrome than actual problems. Anyways I had attended a discourse on the Chapter no. 17 of the Sri Bhagwad Gita in Mumbai, India. Why I purchased the book? I believe that even if one is not inclined or interested in a topic or believe that certain books are against thought process and intellect one should still read them as knowing the other side of the argument is also very important to make a better argument.

So at the onset I must admit that I bought the book because the Swami brought in the concept of “reason” in his discourse on Gita. And as I keep writing in my blogs about the problems I have with people applying reason to those facets of life which are based on faith and belief, I thought this book may be something of an anti thought for me. Hence I bought it and finished it in a reasonable time as I was afraid I may lose the connection or may become bored.

The book turned out to be largely what I had thought. The importance of reason given in Vedanta does not hold most of the times as finally all reason based principles including the Vedanta imply that “when you are pursuing truth or God you cannot just go by reason you must make assumptions have some belief and take that leap of faith”. Therefore as the premise itself weakens the whole subject it becomes redundant to read the book. Still I read it and I must say apart from a few knowledge points about scriptures and some technicalities I did not really gained much.

It seems amusing that Vedantis call the world in which we breathe, we grow and develop experience as “illusionary” whereas the seemingly abstract concept of “Self” “Atman” “Brahman” is put across as the “Reality”. Moreover there is lot of condescension and preemption of argument. Therefore if a seemingly rich guy comes up to Vedantis and tell them that “Sir I am really happy in my life” they would comfortably reply “it’s an illusion that you are happy. You are not happy as you are not connected to your Self, your Atman”. Therefore it becomes a self winning argument that Vendatis would never accept anyone saying he is happy and would put that as an “illusion”.

Now whether people who are materially successful and happy are under illusion or Vedantis who believe in the concept of “Self, Atman, Brahman” are under illusion is difficult to state. However one thing is for sure that there are many more numbers of people who are rich and happy in the so called illusionary and ephemeral world than people who have realized “Self”. But then Vedantis also have a reason for this too. The miniscule number of people connected to their Self is testimony to the fact that how difficult it is to get aligned with the Self, the Atman the eternal Brahman.

So the underlying assumption is that people in this world are not happy, they are foolishly running behind material gains which do not give them anything but pathos and they are mesmerized by the illusion and hence are disconnected from their Self. One major issue I found with the book apart from the fact that it was Vedanta based, which means reason based faith is the fact that it used too many analogies to prove its point. It seems the Swami forgot a fundamental principle that we can disprove something by example but we cannot prove it.

Therefore if we say that if something is thrown up it would come down due to gravitation, we just need one thing which if thrown up does not come down to defy this law. However throwing up thousand of objects and their coming down does not prove that ALL the objects would do that. It would only demonstrate that unless an object which breaks this law is found this law holds good. We can never be sure of the fact that there is no object which does not follow this law.

But then I believe there is no point in finding out issues in the book if one does not believe in the underlying philosophy of the book. I was hoping the book to explain how Vedantis go about the concept of God, but then like the Plato doctrine, the Falsafa doctrine of Islam it also reverts to faith and belief.

Vedanta says not to apply things based on their purported merit, but analyze them yourself before applying. Then as expected it talks about the fact that religion has been merely reduced to mindless rituals and hence left the youth baffled. Reading the book you would realize that the target reader is the youth as it’s bemoaned time and again that how today’s youth is dejected with the ritualistic tendency of religion. The usual teaching which are pervasive in almost all religious literature were perhaps stated at the earliest in Vedas like look inside for happiness, do not run behind materialistic wealth, do not be jealous of people, love each one as if they are you etc.

Vedantis would always attempt to have an upper hand in this argument as I had earlier said that they would never accept anyone as happy in this “materialistic” world. Therefore they would conveniently ridicule people who do not believe in the concept of Self as “ignorant” without realizing that perhaps they are ignorant and have this illusion of “Brahman, Atman, Self” as Reality rather than taking the world which is there as the Reality.

But I indeed gained some browny points which I hope are genuine as I do not want to get a false knowledge of certain facts that we have in Vedanta. Like explanation of Om, explanation of God, three schools of thoughts explaining the relation between the God and the human being. Dwaita means God and Human are two and can never be one, a thought popularized by Manjucharya, Advaita which proclaims oneness of human and God, founded by Adi Sankracharya and Vashista Advaita which was founded by Ramanujacharya.

One more peculiarity I found in Vedanta (I hope this is true) is it’s over reliance on dreams. In a nutshell we can make a statement that had there been no dreams there perhaps would not have been Vedanta. The concept of illusion, the ephemeral nature of world etc are explained just because we dream. So Vedanta attempts to explain many dimensions of our lives based on its theory of Waker Dreamer and Deep Sleeper.

However a larger issue which is more philosophical appeared that Vedanta can actually be applied to be really happy and in a blissful state. Not because it has something amazing to offer but it makes the concept of “Self Atman and Brahman” so elevated that people can just delude themselves without doing much in their lives that they have found the Self which means their Godhood and hence now all is them and they are all. Therefore if someone is succeeding that delusion would make the “Self” getter believe that it’s him who has achieved the success and hence there would not be any jealousy or any attempt for the Self getter to improve his own life. As Self becomes everything pursuit of material things end and hence one can practically do not work.

However I must admit that people contributing to Vedanta would have been a bunch of smart guys. They realized this plausible loophole in their argument and hence said that do your action, your obligatory duties but with a sense of “detachment”. Now I would not get into this topic as it is abstract and may actually be an amazing topic in the Vedanta books but as the Swami was summarizing his own understanding in his book he could not have possibly done justice to the whole concept in a few pages.

Overall the book was not much of a value add though I believe it would appeal to its “young target audience” who is reasonably rich, has many materialistic pleasure at its disposal and hence perhaps has become bored of it. And it should appeal to foreigners as well, as most of them it appears are in awe of these kinds of English speaking Swamis and generally take anything from the “mysterious East” as something divine which can give them salvation.

Reason and Belief …the argument continues

It’s a coincidence that I get to write sequel of a blog so early. In fact I have never written any sequel to any of my entries but could not resist myself writing this one. I had earlier written the blog on reason and belief and coincidentally I attended a discourse on 17^th Chapter of Sri Bhagwad Gita by the well renowned speaker Swami Parthasarthy in Mumbai.

The discourse was nothing much to write about as most of the tenets are quite general and if you are someone who believes in the google punchline of “do no evil” you would not find much content in these discourses. Like in Sufi teachings finally most of the tenets boil down to “look within for happiness, help people, spread happiness, pursuit knowledge etc” and this discourse was nothing much different.

However what struck me in the discourse was an inherent superiority assigned to reason over belief. The Swami talked about blind faith, being tamasik (lethargic), ridiculed vastushastra (not that I am any fan of it), had condescending attitude towards people wearing sacred threads around etc. I believe as he is from the “Vedanta” school of thoughts he has an inherent propensity towards reason. Problem is that people do not realize their trust on reason also come from a belief on reason. The dictum that reason is supreme impacts the lives of Vedantis and hence its obvious that they give it more value. However paradoxically not realizing that there is an inherent dichotomy that there is no reason why they should consider reason to be supreme. Apart from the fact which I had earlier pointed out in my blog that what we understand we appreciate. Reason we understand, so basically what our limited cerebral competence gives us as understandable we take it as reason and things beyond that we do not comprehend. However that does not make those things inferior or worthy of ridicule.

The problem is when we start ridiculing belief of someone as “childish” and have a sarcastic and condescending attitude towards it. I am unable to understand why it is difficult for the Swami to understand that the behavior he is considering childish has belief system of other person behind it. And it becomes all the more difficult to fathom that a person of his caliber, so much learned and giving discourse on how perspective change when we see things from the top and from higher cerebral and philosophical standing, cannot rise above prejudice of seeing this so called “childish” behavior from a colored perspective of blind belief or superstition.

It was very difficult for me to understand that how come learned people like him (and the others) fail to recognize that their faith can be termed as blind and ridiculed equally by the same people whose faith they are disparaging. So when he ridicules other when they follow vastushastra or say tie many sacred red threads around their wrist, the Swami forgets that his faith or belief (which they say is reason driven) of say getting up at 4am as the guna “satva” is very active and should be leveraged to connect to a higher being, can also be ridiculed. In those scenarios people like Swami would again bemoan the ignorance prevalent in the masses which are ridiculing their “scripture driven” lifestyle. Point is any belief can be ridiculed equally and supremacy of one over another cannot be demonstrated by force unless someone following a belief wants to learn more and then rectify those things in his life which he believes are not in synch. But till then should his belief be considered downtrodden and not worthy? It’s a tough one to answer. Finally it boils down to one’s own choice. Like Krishna after 18 chapters of Gita still tells Arjun, this is what it is “now do what you want to do”.

What do we mean by blind belief? I am not sure but it seems that people think blind belief is something not backed by a “reason” or something which appears stupid to a third person. Moreover this argument makes me most uncomfortable as it gives precedence to reason over everything. And this argument wants to analyze everything from the perspective of reason, a perspective I do not subscribe. The argument is whether it’s the problem of the person being considered as “superstitious, blind faith holder” or the person who are thinking him as “superstitious and blind faith holder”. Reading stories about Sufis like Bulle Shah you could realize how badly people of those times treated him and how in the coming generation he was considered a Sufi saint. Therefore reasoning is just a cerebral level of thinking and it may fall short for many people. What Bulle Shah could think his peers thought to be “stupid and crazy”. But once the generations following understood what Bulle Shah was speaking he was deified.

So if a person thinks that changing the position of a table in his home (vastu shastra) would bring him good luck, why can’t the so called intellectuals and apologists of logic consider this to be a reason (if that pleases them). I come from a school of thought that we should not assign superiority to any one of them. We should not analyze belief from the perspective of reason and should not dissect reason using belief.

The Swami also talked about how come people do not understand the real reason of doing a yagna (hawan) or prayer and just do it as a ritual. He also talked about a bank Chairman praying for 3 hours daily and then while in office making the lives of his reportees hell. I failed to understand whats the connect here? It seems the Swami wanted to convey that prayers should be used to seek knowledge, to think good of people etc. But then in his office the person is doing his work (in line with the Bhagwad Gita) and this argument of bank Chairman defies the fact that Gita tells us to do what is our work without thinking about its repercussions.

He also talked about people doing hawan but not imbibing its spirit of doing good to others and living in peace. Though I do understand its better to imbibe the real spirit behind a ritual but then doing the ritual in itself may give peace to people doing it. Hence they may not feel any need to imbibe hawan in its true spirit. Problem is when the Swami thinks that imbibing is the best thing to do and just doing hawan does not suffice. I understand after reading so much scriptures and being so knowledgeable people would like to share their perceived wisdom. However what I am uncomfortable with is when these people tend to ridicule those people who are not performing rituals the way they want. However if someone is an authority of a subject then he must intervene if he finds that the subject is not being followed the way it is.

I also had similar feelings towards people who used to call them Ghazal lovers and used to consider Ghulam Ali or Jagjit Singh as the Ghazal singers to follow. I used to ridicule them or had a condescending attitude towards them but then I relinquished that thought. I used to never touch feet of elderly people under the pretence and stupid argument of “unless it comes from within its not respect”. But then I realized I may not be really respecting those elders but then if they feel good when I prostrate before them or touch their feet while greeting them what prevents me from doing that. Why can’t I do this if that makes them feel good? Therefore we can and should do those things which make others happy (as long as it does not violate our sense of self respect and value system).

That is where I think “to each his own” thought comes into picture. What people think and what makes them happy which could be termed as “ignorance, blissful negligence” etc by the esoteric elite, should be done. Though I am a staunch supporter of being good to people and performing more acts of goodness than plain rituals, I do not force my arguments on others and would consider people also not forcing their belief/reason system on others worth appreciating. Moreover knowledge seeker should be humble and should have communion with the God. I found these to be lacking in the Swami.