Consciousness
and mind: They are both empirically discoverable, and also they have
non-empirical characters of things. Through the centuries, science aimed to
describe to describe the facts, to find and learn about consciousness, to
discover the connections among the not-further-analyzable elements of sensation
and to recognize these connections instead of seeking to explain them by
metaphysical assumptions. It compares with the ancient thinking of Sages, and
what are the links of association with the knowledge of 20th
century? Yes, there is a wide scope of drawing wisdom from old thoughts:
Society remains a pure spiritual structure as long as it does not sink in mud
created by superstitions. Then those materials of personal lives ooze out power
of mind.
Such
a religion can become vision of something which stands beyond, behind and
within, the passing flux of immediate things, something which is real and yet
wants to be realized, and something that gives meaning to all that passes
something which is the ultimate ideal. No single group of men on earth has true
religion. Every thing is “As if”. The central connection of the philosophy of
the “As if” is that the concepts and theories achieved by mathematics and the
natural sciences, by economic and political theory and jurisprudence, by
ethics, esthetics and philosophy, are convenient fictions, devised by the human
mind. Charles S. Peirce wrote: In order to ascertain the meaning of an
intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might
conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception.
Metaphysics,
which includes both epistemology (Science of knowledge) and ontology (Science
of being and reality), is an observational science wrote Peirce (American
physicist, mathematician and logician is ranked among germinal thinkers like
Socrates, St. Augustine, whose fertile minds reached out in many
directions and provide the leading ideas for later more systematic western
philosophers. The idea of western philosophers changed in favor of Indian
philosophy after they heard Swami Vivekananda in Chicago, while the impact of Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg
was shifting the paradigm of the scientific community, Krishnamurthy was laying
the foundation for the future evolution of the Human species. Yogi Aravida
Ghosha was churning out philosophy that was available in Upanishads. Tilak gave
new interpretation to Bhagavad Gita to suit the new time frame, new
environment, and new required new thinking by the people, as was the message of
Vedas.
All
this is discussed elaborately in Vedanta, which shows the positive approach to
life. It explains the constitution of Human personality. According to Jean Le
Mee, a French Sanskritist, the fountainhead of Eastern thought for millennia,
the Veda has left the lasting imprint on the West, pervading so much of the
Eastern philosophical and religious thought influencing Western society.
Great
Sage Vyasa’s idea: Human mind was needed to be thoroughly investigated. He
wanted human skepticism to be alleviated into sound religiosity. It was
possible to activate the powers of human mind. So he said man needs to be
deeply moral; man must commit to himself to go in search for the truth – he
must control his passions and emotions. He must be obsessed with virtues in a
practical sense. Only that takes a man deeper into his philosophical insight.
Human actions under any prevailing circumstances are always noticed to be
complex. Vyasa was more concerned about the Rational Principles” of action,
even though he accepted that animal instinct will crop up every now and then.