CONFIDENCE IN COMMUNICATION - Part X

Do not predict and prophesy. Remember that your prediction is an element in the process of action.

John William Waterhouse - The Crystal Ball, Public Domain

East and West are useful as Navigational guides. As applied to human behaviour they are useless.

Vintage compass on a vintage map, Calsidyrose, via Wikimedia Commons

Trying to modify the environment to solve a problem confronting one, to the best advantage of oneself may be taken as an important element in what one considers as the Western approach.

To modify oneself and one's bodily resources in order to maintain a harmonious relationship with the universe in and around may be taken as the outstanding element in what what is called the Eastern approach.

The Devil is a technical term for the capacity to produce very simple and ingenious solutions to problems which it itself creates and which automatically gather further problems needing further solutions with the same in-built capacity to produce problems.

Where is your home?

Your home is your body, answers Krishna.

Odissi - Koushikd284 - 

If you are not comfortable in and with your body which is your real home, and is always around you, you will not be happy in a five star hotel or a palace.

***

What is Indian?

Since independence there has been a great deal of effort, exhortation and expenditure devoted towards Indianising something or the other: Indianising dress, language, industry, psychiatry and so on.

The content of an observation on variable material very much depends on the standpoint of the observer. I am a worker in the field of human interactions. The problems of harmony, disharmony, individual and collective, confront me in the actual attempts at rectification of the machinery involved, namely, the human body and mind, its parts and functions, forces and energies, fields of action and lines of effect, purpose and economy. Such is the necessary concern of my work. Accident of personal circumstance had driven me to the portals of a medical college. Over thirty years of contact showed me the limitations of the grossly mechanistic models of thought to which medical science or at least its practitioners confined themselves. The next years revealed to me the tragedy of medical practice, not only holding on to this model, but cherishing it with suicidal delight, long after the merely mechanistic model of thought was being, literally, blown beyond the sky. The socio-economic factors in this game of self-inflicted blindness require separate consideration.

I was forced to look into the question of what is Indian, firstly by my clients, who by and large, related themselves and their sufferings to some Indian scriptural sanctions, and by the brand of culturally-oriented psychiatric fashion of smuggling in the words Yoga, Indian, etc., and presenting the scriptures
as some sort of appendix to Freud, Jung, ECT. as hallmark of Indianisation. The patient uses or implies the words, Karma, Maya, Dharma, Guru etc., and the psychiatrist works scientifically on the place of Yoga on ECT, on the psychotherapeutic effects of Krishna on Arjuna, Yogic postures in Catatonia as different from Catatonic postures in Yoga, polygraphic concomitants of yogic states etc.

Nervous and mental diseases, 1900s, Wiki commons

In this interesting maze of possibilities in the use of the word, Indianisation, I was forced to search for tools necessary for my interactional use in daily work, not necessarily for absolute truths.

At an early stage in my search, I found that there was little resemblance between the strictly practical and experimental approaches of Krishna, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, etc., and the bizarre medley of professional peddlers of Indian philosophy who profess to be propagating the teachings of the above persons. The thing that struck me was that none of the above were preoccupied with concepts of Indianising anything or anybody. They never set out to maintain or perpetuate any tradition, Indian or Western. They  meticulously used their bodies and their faculties to grow into a wider and greater harmony. They occasionally commented on their practice and its results, and help interested persons to personally verify for themselves and grow. For them, the scriptures were a platform from which to launch out into interactional growth, rather than umbrellas to shelter under, or costly mausoleums and glossy philosophies to be entombed in. To engage the body in its totality in verifying the beliefs one holds, and modify body and belief, and never to be obsessed with fossilising a tradition were the hallmarks of these few but formidable Indians I looked to for guidance. 

Abhyasa, practice, is the keynote to engage the body in implementing the beliefs it is given, and in this exercise to become aware of the detailed components in human action: the body and the 'I' which holds the belief, or aim or goal or purpose or pragna, allowing for an evolution of both to an ever elaborate expression of harmony. The evolutional nature of the manifest universe underlies the essence of the teachings of these forebears. Vivekananda called Yoga a means of speeding up the processes of human evolution.

Ramakrishna Mission Delhi , Public Domain

Krishna gives the law of all human knowledge: the body and its knower, the I; the knowledge of the interaction between these two is knowledge. All else flows from this dialectic nucleus. It does not require ages of tapasya to verify this basic law - but there it is. Can anyone know more of himself or the world around him except by what his body and its faculties bring to his awareness.

This is the foundation of all epistemology. Reciting the slokas with reverence and forgetting the implications in practice is the origin of much personal and social chaos.

Idam sariram khalu dharma sadhanam - verily, this body is the instrument of harmony. The instrumental nature of the body has been emphasised by those great experimenters, the Vedic and Upanishadic Rishis, and by the great line of Sufi saints. This instrument had to be personally cultivated and experienced. That the body is a burdensome appendage mysteriously thrust on us, and to be quickly rid of by the seeker of Mukti or liberation is a distortion that crept in at some stage, gaining respectability as a religious dogma.

That it is merely a more elaborate mansion for the dinosaur of yesterday is another popular view. The I and the body seen as a ceaselessly interacting dialectic unit in evolution - that is the implication of the Gita. The exhortations towards a long life and skill in action would appear meaningless if the body was merely regarded as a burdensome baggage, a mere caprice of nature. Too, there is a repeated reference to the necessity of rebirth of the 'I' in successive bodies before it reaches some state of perfection.

The 'I' first becomes manifest in the human body.

There can be, and there are numerous views and treatises on the implications of these statements - but what is truth for is that I exist; my body exists; I know nothing about myself or the world around except by the interaction of these two which constitute ME.

Even in a simple machine like a car, you can only learn its full possibilities by actually driving it. You can only learn while doing. Krishna states very simply, very clearly that your realise your full possibilities in the performance of your daily actions: He distinguishes between works done in consciousness of the 'I' within which are helpful, and acts outside of one's real self-awareness under the impulsion of uncontrolled instincts or equally strong conditioned responses derived from society. A distinction is made between Swadharma, Samanya Dharma, Sarva Dharma, etc., - a discussion of which is beside the point at issue, here.

The essence of the matter is the interaction between yourself and your body. In all action there are two results: that which happens to the thing you are working on, and that which is happening to you and your body during the course of action. You are acquainted with the results of a drunken driver driving his car, vaguely aware of the road, and thoroughly unaware of his own state. You can also visualise the state of affairs when a large body of drunks are in charge of making and enforcing rules of the road for safe driving!

At this point I can restate what I learnt from these Indian teachers. I AM. My Body is My First Instrument, vehicle and weapon. The growing awareness of the interaction between the two is knowledge. This awareness, realisation is gained by and during one's daily actions. The operation of this vehicle, to run harmoniously, requires to be learnt. Abhyasa or practice is the key. The dashboard is Dharma which is your perception of harmony or disharmony. And your attempts at rectification constitute steps. 

The concepts of truth: Here, the Upanishads elucidate the dialectic nature of truth. It is a progression from inaccuracy to greater accuracy. Sa is the truth, ta is untruth, yam is the integrated result in a higher truth, in a ceaseless evolution.

A is truth, U is untruth, M is truth - represented by the trisyllabic - AUM. It is good the Upanishads say this, because I see it in my own experience. Truth is not a mystery. It is said to be Sat, real. It is also said to be Ritam, harmony; and truth can never be for you other than what you and your body have realised in their interaction.

Adhara, and Adhikara, the concept of constitutional equipment of the person and his fitness for a particular task is another framework of reference for assessing a particular action. Thus a person may be a born genius for music, but in the absence of proper training and discipline in the subject  might be considered unfit, say, to be a teacher of music. An awareness of these factors might help in a more balanced judgement of the particular action of a particular person.

The recognition of compassion as the basic law of life. Now, this word compassion must be taken literally - Anukampa - to vibrate with, to resonate. The word, love, prema, occurs long, long after the time of the Upanishads and the Gita. The word prema has many other connotations, and is less evocative of the essential significance f the law of yagna, sacrifice, the law of resonance underlying all interaction without which this universe is unthinkable. The awareness of this property is what makes one essentially human. It is the energy behind all action. All our organs are mechanisms for mediating this law of compassion. Whether the immense energies which the law of compassion opens to you lead you to a chaotic or harmonious interaction is your headache and starting point of inquiry. The more egoistic and constricted your personality, the more restricted your senses, the less compassionate you are likely to be, ad the smaller is the amount of energy available to you, and the more miserable and destructive you become.

Compassion is not pity which is the painted front of a parasitic ego which makes virtue of necessity - the necessity of giving up what it cannot digest.

Desha, Kala, Patra - this is the most useful concept for effective social interaction. This is the call to be aware of the need to see that every action is appropriate to the place, time and person. Krishna, as portrayed in the Mahabharata is a perfect example of this awareness. For me, an Indian is one who recognises the basic truth that his whole knowledge of anything at all rests on the awareness of the world and of himself which his body and its faculties provide in their interaction with himself and the world around, and who systematically tries to enlarge his total self towards the evolution of a more harmonious being.

More catastrophic than the fission of the atom has been the fission that occurred between the I and Its Body, the inseparable dialectic unit. This artificial fission takes the I to an imaginary Heaven, and the Body through real Hell. Somewhere there is the saving link which can  only be forged out in the crucible of ontogenetic or phylogenetic processes as experienced by the individual.

Schumacher says to the effect that civilised man operates on the outside world with his limited capacities and unlimited technology and this he calls science. To deal with himself as a scientific instrument has not yet become fashionable. 

Whether Krishna or Buddha or I said something or not is not so important as what you say, and how you give substance to it, and if you have found it necessary to verify this in your daily life. If what you, or Krishna or an ancient X said is not felt as necessary for you, useful for you, personally verified by you, then it is what explains the irrationality of the world you complain of.

To be an Indian has little to do with philosophy, Eastern or Western, or being committed to the maintenance of any tradition or religion.

I and My Body is the foundation , the seed of all else.

***

THE BICYCLE MODEL

Watch a person learning to ride a bicycle. The first day on the bicycle, he seems to be doing everything possible to facilitate falling off. He loses balance, seems to do things to accentuate and accelerate the loss of balance - so to say, positive feedback comes into play.

The second day, you find that he is countering the loss of balance by over-correction. You see him wobbling or jerking from side to side. There is a latent period between the loss of balance and recovery of balance: poorly timed or delayed negative feedbacks.

The next day he is seen riding smoothly. The latent periods between loss of balance and regaining it have been drastically cut down. It is this constant loss of balance with instantaneous recovery that causes a smooth forward movement of the bicycle.

Nagarjun Kandukuru

The student of the profession of self-realisation experiences the same sequences.

In trying to modify his harmful responses to situations that provoke what is termed anger, for instance, he will go through these phases:

1. He does everything possible to accentuate these responses raised voice, abusive language, breaking objects, hitting people, each feeding fuel to the fire and arousing him similar positive feedbacks in equally stupid people around.2. Then he wobbles. He over-corrects himself, and overshoots to the opposite extreme. From shouting he lapses into sulky silence etc., and then back to violent rage, then to silence, repentance, remorse, etc.

3. Sooner or later, he learns to shorten the latent periods, and smoother, creative interactions become possible.

Some persons doing one or the other yogic sadhanas complain that even after years they get disturbed. They believe that the perfect yogi is an undisturbable corpse. On the other hand, the perfect Yogi is the most sensitive and most easily disturbed person. But this is not outwardly apparent, since the Yogi has learnt to instantaneously correct the disturbance by balance or satva. Ramana Maharshi said that the apparent immobility of the Yogi is like the apparent immobility of a fast spinning top.

The constant loss of equilibrium replaced by instantaneous recovery of equilibrium is the condition for creative interaction on the road of life.

G. G. Welling [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The first illusion to get rid of for the aspirant of self-realisation is the illusion that the object of self-realisation is some state of dead indifference, static peace. 

Some others, first want to learn balance and peace of mind and then go on the road. If the aspirant for bicycle learning were to first learn the art of balancing by sitting on a stationary bicycle in an air-conditioned room, and after six months of this intensive training, sat on a moving bicycle and then finally decided that the best way of not losing balance was by fixing the bicycle on a platform driven by others, you have the model of a man trying to learn control of anger reactions in a sanctuary for sadhus.

The object of trying to learn to ride a bicycle has been replaced buy the object of maintaining balance at any price, Undisturbable equanimity is not a goal by itself.

To say that getting angry is bad and that not being angry is a moral virtue completely misses the point at issue. It is, that in certain conditions the person is subject to a group of responses, like raised voice etc., which are hurtful to himself and to others, and that his own body does not heed his intention. In a given situation, a raised voice, may be necessary. In other situations, a scowl on the face may be very effective. A man controlling anger as a permanent moral virtue is like a man who permanently muffles the bell of his bicycle.

Personal autonomy and self-realisation have nothing to in common with teaching the art of making friends or moral preaching - though more solid moral action might result as a corollary to self-control.

You learn bicycling on a real bicycle on a real road. A few hours on a small, isolated stretch of road may be needed.

Self-realisation is an aim that can only be realised in a real body in real life. Special, temporary conditions may become necessary - but the object is not to make the subject a permanent inmate of a shangri-la, somewhere, It is in the self-consecration to one’s daily work that one achieves realisation, says Krishna.

GOAL-FAITH-ACTION

(Random notes: It is a pity that certain Sanskrit words acquire English equivalents and then, the Indian who acquires his knowledge of Sanskrit works through his English handbooks enjoys, suffers or colours his whole outlook on the roots of his culture with paralysing patronage. An example is the word faith, a word whose meaning has no relation to the word ‘sraddha’ to which it is popularly equated. Sraddha means perseverance, dedication and effort and so on: Never faith with its connotation of trust in something above and beyond.The same misfortune applies to the word, Karma, in the manner that suits his impressions of the Indian he meets; and even if that man happens to be a pundit, the weight of the patronage ensures the pundit a happy appreciation - the sahib is very perceptive and very wise. And this junk gets into the very bloodstream of the native reader.)

“Verily, a man is his faith”, Krishna says in the Gita; utter nonsense, when he says in fact: “Verily a man is his sraddha” and all that it connotes. May the Gods help us! Why do Krishna and Buddha speak of disinterested work; action without expectation of or interest in result; and of joy in action. Only personal experiment of some kind or other can give a clue and not verbal dissertations.

My experience is thus: in as much as words can convey a whole bodily experience.

1. I do not undertake even the smallest of actions without some goal, distant or close, in the time and space. a. To reach out my hand to take the cup of tea from the table; b. to go to an office to be at an interview for a job.
2. Faith is involved in that some pleasing possibility, as against so many thousand unpleasant consequences of my action, is the promoter of my action. 

If I definitely knew that the metal cup of tea will scald my fingers, or it is empty, I should not lift a finger. I would not move out of the house if I definitely knew that the plane bringing the interview officer has been cancelled and that the interview is being postponed or if I definitely knew that I was going to be knocked down by a car. Let alone the result of the interview, every step, including finding the right tie or coat, to the task of getting a taxi - these numerous subsidiary elements in the action have implied goals and faiths. Every step ahead is a move into the unknown; and every move is initiated by the lure of the goal and faith in its reality.

Anyway, the trouble with this computation is that it presumes that for fitting in with your beautiful plan, the whole world of circumstances around you will remain frozen at that point. Of course one can never argue with a deluded person; he will reply, “oh, but I have made time projections of this and that; and anyway you have not got a degree in higher algebra!”

I admire them. But for me it is a matter of experience to know 1. that I move myself with some goal in view, 2. I have faith in the reasonably advantageous consequences of such an act. If I am a soldier, I take pride in moving to the firing line, for fear of getting shot by my own side for certainty as against the chance of a narrow escape from the enemy's artillery; or pleasure of doing my duty and so on. Even here, I shall not put my foot forward if I know there is a mine beneath my feet. Anyway, this is not the point at issue here.

What are the consequences for me and my body of the above points. The reasons or goals that set me in motion rarely respond to the results obtained. This discrepancy almost constant, between my objective and the actual reached point instantaneously produce a frustration reaction, or one of its numerous variations, anger, depression and so on. All these lead to distortion of further perception and greatly reduce the capacity to make the best of the situation actually reached. Perhaps, there are constitutional variations in these responses, but the direction of response in the ego-based culture is essentially the same. This constant, minor or major discrepancy between the set-goal and reached-result, leads to a constant avoidable wear and tear of the body mechanisms, and diminish enjoyment.

It is at this point Krishna’s observations become relevant for action.

1. Action is an inescapable law of the universe. The universe is an action continuum.
2. Your personal goals have nothing to do with it. Even if you do nothing, action is continuously going on within you and outside of you. You are not the starter or master of action - called the universe. 
3. Therefore, to assign the significance of pleasant and unpleasant can only apply to goals and not the actions. (In this you are making no special concession as a sort of benediction to the world. It is a fact.) The source of misery is not in action but in the attachment to the goal, whose realisation is not in your hand, and which perpetually leaves you in an anticipation-frustration complex, leading to perceptual distortion and delusion formation.
4. This investment in the very narrow personal-goal oriented behaviour is characteristic of the ego in constant cannibalistic discord with the world around. The body becomes its rapacious instrument, and suffers the consequences.

a) The suffering which is the direct consequence of the deluded behav the ego-centered person and society. The primary delusion being that the ego is some sort of supra-natural master of nature, and not its product and component.

b)A dharmic or harmonious interaction with the universe is possible.

c) A body liberated from the prison of narrow personal goal is capable of expressing unconditional joy.

d) Effort is necessary for the seeker of harmony.

e) A systematic and methodical inquiry into the mechanism of one’s own perception of disharmony will enable the person to liberate himself from the bondage of narrow goal-oriented action; liberate him into wider enjoyment of the many possibilities of universal action.

f) The inquiry will lead to the discovery of the basis of compassion with all - the capacity to vibrate with; and such a person is truly a master of himself.

g) Such a person’s perceptions and actions, liberated from the narrow personal goal, acquire and express the increasing power of conscious compassion in mutually sustaining harmony with the world around, all the world, not just another man only.

h) Compassion is the law of the universe of action; action is compassion in expression and manifestation; all action is joy; and our bodies are but one item in this flux.

i) The particular ‘I’ which is personally bothered about these questions is responsible to find the solutions.

j) Such an inquiring person personally taking the line of inquiry into the personal roots of reality of his behaviour might be riled revered for being spiritual; mystic or unrealistic; by collective founded on the delusion of separation from and domination of the world.

k) Disinterested action does not mean indifferent action. Skill in action is Yoga. Said Krishna. He and Buddha and successors lived and spoke of the how of the matter.

Additional note on goal of action with reference to the phrase Nishkama Karma - action with detachment to the result:

We have seen how the evaluation of the goal or result as advantageous is a most important element in the average man’s action and how illusory such evaluation is and damaging the consequences. It is also unrealistic to include a factor, in this case, the result, which is not yet a fact into the process of present action. This corrupts the purity of present action. Much of the world’s misfortunes might be due to the fact that almost everyone seems to act in the interests of long-term goals, high principles and so on, and hereby one who is bothered about the appropriateness or correctness of the immediate action. No wonder people kill one another to preserve peace! More than that, there are thousands who do extremely sloppy work in the name of detachment towards the result.

No wonder Krishna asks Arjuna not to confuse the average man by preaching his Nishkama Karma Sloka!

https://archive.org/details/bhagavadgt00besagoog

HATE BINDS, LOVE LIBERATES

One’s memory of things that hurt appears to be more sticky than the things that one enjoyed.

For thousands of persons who spend sleepless nights because of the supposed ingratitude or insult offered by someone, there may be hardly one who keeps awake thinking of the kindness someone has shown him.This hate poisons one’s own body first of all.

Of course, one can say that love also binds - as for instance, conjugal or parental love. But if this results in mutual constriction rather than growth, then it is because the basis of such love is a contractual obligation, a love that is based on the expectation of return and the feeling of frustration or rejection that is experienced by real or threatened non-return of the affection. This is not often openly acknowledged, but is concealed buy demands of respectability. The insecurity of this possessive love is only matched by the hate it engenders.

The love that is true compassion, a joy in a thing for its own sake is of a different order, and perhaps to be met with once in a millennium, in someone like Krishna, Buddha, or Christ. Krishna spoke of the binding nature of negative or demonic emotions, and the liberating nature of positive or divine emotions.

While patiently trying to train the body to express and experience the positive or the divine emotions of the liberating kind, one can assiduously avoid the pitfall of cultivating hate, not only in its crude forms but also in the more subtle garbs in which it presents itself: Love of one’s country subtly hiding the hatred for others; I am a Buddhist full of love for all, only the others are ignorant sheep that have to be cudgled or cajoled into the system; praying to Christ for the effective physical annihilation of the enemy; telling the son that you are beating him for his own good and because of your immense love for him and so on.

Hate should be discouraged in all its forms by observing that its first effect is on one’s own body. Hate can destroy or deform, never transform.

Hate should be counteracted by its antidote love.

This unconditioned compassion practiced and professed by the pacemakers, the Avatars, is difficult, but is the hallmark of the coming Man; and has nothing in common with the doctrine of love sold in the market by those who conveniently append the pacemaker's name as a trade mark, to more faithfully serve the existing social organization, an expression of its collective ego.