Mathomathis would like to continue the discussion from the previous article on:- The Metaphysics of the Law – 101
State of Nescience
State of Nescience is a state without predicates. It is a destiny. It is a law unto itself. The “Nasadiya Sukta” of the “rigveda” stands in assertion of this state of existence. In the ” creative evolution” of Bergson, the faculty represented an intuition is in essence the same nescience. The intuitive and the intellective states in Bergson, correspond respectively to the being and becoming states of existence. Intellect refers only to becoming since it separates in space and fixes in time; it is not made to think evolution but to represent becoming as a series of states. “The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to understand life”. The metaphysics in the “Sankhya” school of Indian philosophy, recognizes nescience as the concentrated creative force in its potential form. The shakti cult of Indian philosophy has denied this creative force in the form of the supreme goddess. “Shakti” literally means’ force, vitality or energy. The conception of Sri Aurobindo’s Mother is not different in calling it as the “unmanifest mystery of the Supreme”.
The nescient content of this creative force, in the “Markandeya Purana” is Yoga Nidra or the poised slumber. The term “yoga” stands for a concentrational exercise with the aim of becoming one with the universal principle. Tire oneness of the self and the absolute is the central theme of the “vedanta” philosophy. The “Durga saptashati“, part of the “Markandeya purana” opens with an allegorical invocation of primordial nescient state of being as the “yoga nidra“, the word “yoga” denoting equipoise, and “Nidra” which is sleep, is only nescience. The “Kal Ratri” or the eternal night, the “Maha Ratri” or the infinite night, the “Moha Ratri” or the impetuous night, are other synonyms denoting this nescient state. The last nomenclature is indiscreet infatuation. It is nescience in the sense of being non-sentient. It is infatuation, since it denotes an impulsion, an inner upheaval, an auto-compunction in the nescient state of being, tending to flow in the course of becoming.
The state of becoming is a downward flow of the creative of the being. The fall of Adam narrated in the “genesis” in the holy Bible is anthropomorphic allegory of the downward release of the creative force. It is indomitable desire of the creature to know his creative power; it is depicted as fall or lapse, denoting firstly a downward movement, and secondly, a breach or departure from the original state where the fruit of creative energy was forbidden. The forbidden fruit is a stage prior to the desire to know or realize the facultative operation of the creative force. Forbidden means as “not yet tried”, and, therefore, potential in the ultimate existence. That which is forbidden to knowledge, operates as desire to know by a pull of passion.
A The Desire to Know
The desire to know is the desire to experience, to realize, to become, or to create, as explained in the first part of “Aitareya Upanishad“. In Bible, the first episode of Adam in tasting the forbidden fruit is an offence attributable to the outburst of the creative force. The divine command was conservation of force, which was condition of being. Ingrained into the fancy for the forbidden, lies the assumed awareness of an ideal, and the impairment of the ideal is actual impulse of the dynamicity concentrated in reality. The awareness of the ideal and the aberration for the breach of it, are the two opposites only of a single structural whole, which is real. The real polarizes itself into the ideal and the actual is quaking motion of it. The actual is a strivance for reversal of the ideal of breach thereof.
The breach sustains the actual but sanctifies the ideal. If is the possibility of the breach that sustains the ideal and keeps the actual sustainable. The process of breach implicates both the ideal and the actual. There is a breach because of the ideal. The force or the “shakti” breaks its bounds, and it is through the breach that the force becomes intelligible. The breach is basically a device for vindication of the ideal. The breach is real, because it synthesizes, in a dialectical sense, both the ideal and the actual. Each phase of becoming is revelation of the creative force of being and the scheme of becoming synthesizes the ideal and the actual and points the way in which the force is put to test or becomes tested.
The force of “shakti” is inherent limitation of the indefinite. It is with accessories of limitations that the infinite reveals itself and becomes finite. In its revelation alone the infinite is apprehended. The limitations are aids to revelation. The limitation is standardized modality of the finite, since the force persists in the revelation of the infinite through finite means. It is in this revelation that the infinite chooses to put its vitality to test. The entire process is an experiment and the creative force is the tested reality, nay the continual testing of hat which is ultimately real.
The genesis in the bible, is testimony of the elan of creative energy. It is elan vital in Bergson’s terminology. The fall of Adam is rhetoric revolt against dormancy of the creative force. The divine command depicts the poised rectitude of force. The divine is slumbering state of force which transcends the creative process. The fall of Adam furnishes the restive passion for creation. The fruit which is forbidden is humanity prior to procreation. The deep slumbering pose of the infinite is averse to creation. The divine command is the first awareness instilled in the being as readiness for creation. The divine command was Adam’s anthropomorphic of the infinite withholding its creative power. It was a stage of forbearance, a stage where procreation had to be forsaken. It was a pint of transition in the creative force for its transformation into tire procreative power. The fall of Adam is rhapsodic imagery of a discourse between the creator and the creature.
The imbroglio of force was premeditated. The creator was aware of the forbidden, and the creature was made aware of that which was forbidden. The difference is not without meaning. The awareness of God was creative energy, that of Adam was procreative power. God is name for creative agency in nature. Adam is creature or product of nature. The character of God or Adam may be legends, and the episode may be phantasy, but the moral is correct to bear evidence that the reality in its mystery of creation carries the burden of some primaeval force. The procreative pleasure of the creature is accountable to a later formality of the operation of this force. It is this force which throughout persists prior to, or even after, the fleeting flux of the world. It is “Lebnitz” knew this by the name of “conatus” the same what Hindus know by the name of “shakti”. The desire to know as well as the knowledge derived, both refer to this force.
The Knowledge Gained
The desire to know, in the creature, as instanced by the character of Adam starts from the first-hand information of the forbidden, and the forbidden, in relation to the desire to know, is mere admission of the unknown. The unknown is one which eludes perception. Knowledge is the facultative art of breaking through the barriers of perception and thereby apprehending the casual nucleus of that which is perceived. Infonnation leads to intelligence, intelligence to understanding, understanding leads to learning, learning to wisdom and wisdom to knowledge; and all this, from first to the last, is a gap filed by a process of transfusion of precepts into concepts. The percept of the tree can never become knowledge of the tree without the corresponding concept of seed.
The seed is cause of the tree but in knowing the seed as cause of the tree, the knower knows of the latent force in which the tree potentially exists; and what is true of the origin of tree is true of the origin of the entire universe ‘which at one stage lay dormant in a reservoir of force omnipotent. The conatus of Leibnitz, the elan vital of Bergson, the shakti of the Hindus, the forbidden fruit of the genesis, the prakrati of the samkhya, or the Maya of Vedanta, stand all as synonyms of this potential force. Knowledge, leaping back from one posterior phenomenon of force to its prior, that is, from one perceptual event to its antecedent casual potentiality, stabilizes itself in the comprehension of the first cause, which implicates in itself the vision of the law.
Vision of Law
The knowledge of this potential force is knowledge of the first cause. Law is but the ingrained tendency of this force. The law of the tree is ingrained in the force of the seed. This is the metaphysical vision of law. Any cult or sectarian religion is mere deification of this vision.
Deification of Vision
Knowledge gained is causation certified and causation certified is the being theorized. The end of all inquiry is ontology. The method of inquiry proceeds from perception of an existing phenomenon to the grasp of its preceding cause and the process of knowledge is thereby completed in a graduated hierarchy of causes in their order of precedence until there is comprehension of the first cause, in a way that each higher phase of causal reality is apprehended through a group of homogenous causes subordinated to a common casual denominator. At each step of the inquiry, the inquirer is filled with a sense of metaphysical sublimity, until the knower feels overawed by the comprehension of the force responsible for causation. The seeker supplicates to the sublime power. The inquisition turns into invocation and the moody inquirer becomes a meek invoker.
This explains, how metaphysics turns into religion. Metaphysics is a perception of knowledge; religion is perpetuation of knowledge. The anthropomorphic device of perpetuation is deification which facilitates the recurrent tone of the subtle experience which the knower has in knowing the unknown. Compelled by an inner urge to give expression to the ripened experience, the cognition becomes emotion and the knower utters and whispers, says and sings. Hymns and incantations are inventions only of the emotive expression. The souvenir of experience is preserved by visualizing a peculiar diversity representing the particular causal force. Imposition of a godhead is simple intellectual imagery of the comprehension of a manifest phase of the law ingrained in the creative force, the form of a god or goddess assigned to the force, merely varying in accordance with the nuances of the vision of law. The Rigveda has defined this vision of basic law in the form of a goddess, the Devi.
