Second Assignment for Inner Retrospection

Due Date : '09. 4. 9 (木), 번역 및 내적 성찰, Home Page 탑재

Second source is inference. That is secondary, but that too is worth consideration because, as you are right now, you don't know whether there is a self within or not. You have no direct knowledge of your inner being. What to do ? There are two possibilities. You can simply deny that there is no inner core of your being, there is no soul, as charvakas do; or in the West as Epicurus, Marx Engels and others have done.

But Patanjali says that if you know, there is no need for inference, but if you don't know then too it will be helpful to infer. For example, Descartes, one of the greatest thinkers of the West, started his philosophical quest through doubt. He took the standpoint from the very beginning that he will not believe in anything which is not indubitable. That which can be doubted, he will doubt. And he will try to find out a point which can not be doubted, and only on that point he will create the whole edifice of his thinking. A beautiful quest - honest, arduous, dangerous.

So he denied God, because you can doubt. Many have doubted and no one has been able to answer their doubts. He went on denying. Whatsoever could be doubted, conceived to be dubitable, he denied. For years continuously he was in an inner turmoil. Then he fell upon the point which was indubitable: he couldn't deny himself, that was impossible. You cannot say, "I am not." If you say it, your very saying proves that you are. So this was the basic rock - "I cannot deny myself, I cannot say I am not. Who will say it ? Even to doubt, I am needed."

This is inference. This is not direct cognition. This is through logic and argument, but it gives a shadow, it gives a glimpse, it gives you a possibility, an opening. And then Descartes had the rock, and on this rock a great temple can be built. One indubitable fact and you can reach to the absolute truth. If you start with a doubtful thing you will never reach anywhere. In the very base, doubt remains.

Patanjali says inference is the second source of right knowledge. Right-logic, right-doubting, right-argument can give you something which can help towards real knowledge. That he calls inference, anuman. Directly you have not seen, but everything proves it; it must be so. There are situational proofs that it must be so.

For example, you look around the vast universe. You may not be able to conceive that there is a God, but you cannot deny; even through simple inference you cannot deny that the whole world is a system, a coherent whole, a design. That cannot be denied. The design is so apparent, even science cannot deny it. Rather, on the contrary, science goes on finding more and more designs, more and more laws.

If the world is just an accident, then science is impossible. But the world doesn't seem to be an accident, it seems to be planned. And it is running according to certain laws, and those laws are never broken.

Patanjali will say that design in the universe cannot be denied, and if once you feel there is a design, the designer has entered. But that is an inference; you have not known him directly - but the design of the universe, the planning, the laws, the order; and the order is so superb, it is so minute, so superb, so infinite - the order is there. Everything is humming with an order, a musical harmony of the whole universe. Someone seems to be hidden behind, but that's an inference. Patanjali says inference also can be a help towards right knowledge, but it has to be right inference. Logic is dangerous, it is double-edged. You can use logic wrongly, then too you will reach conclusions.

For example, I told you that the plan is there, the design is there; the world has an order, a beautiful order, perfect. Right inference will be that there seems to be somebody's hand behind it. We may not be directly aware, we may not be in direct touch with that hand but a hand seems to be there, hidden. This is the right inference.

But from the same premises you can infer wrongly also. There have been thinkers who have said... Diderot has said that, "Because of order I cannot believe there is God. In the world there seems to be perfect order. Because of this order, I cannot believe in God." What is his logic ? He says if there is a person behind, then there cannot be so much order. If a person is behind it then he must commit sometimes mistakes. Sometimes he must go whimsical, crazy, sometimes he must change. Laws cannot be so perfect if someone is behind them. Laws can be perfect if there is no one behind them and they are simply mechanical.

That too has an appeal. If everything goes perfectly, it looks mechanical because about man.... It is said, to err is human. If some person is there, then he must err sometimes; he will get bored with so much perfection. And sometimes he must like to change.

Waters boil at one hundred degrees. It has been boiling at hundred degrees for millennia, always and always. God must get bored. "If someone is behind," Diderot says, "so just for a change, one day he will say, 'Now, from onwards the water will boil at ninety degrees.'" But it has never happened, so there seems to be no person.

Both arguments look perfect. But Patanjali says, right inference is that which gives you possibilities of growth. It is not a question whether the logic is perfect or not. The question is, your conclusion should become an opening. If there is no God it becomes a closing. Then you cannot grow. If you conclude there is some hidden hand, the world becomes a mystery. And then you are not here just by accident. Then your life becomes meaningful. Then you are part of a great scheme. Then something is possible, you can do something, you can rise in awareness.

A right inference means one which can give you growth, that which can give you growth; a wrong inference is that, howsoever perfect looking, which closes your growth. Inference can also be a source of right knowledge. Even logic can be used to be a source of right knowledge, but you have to be very aware about what you are doing. If you are just logical you may commit suicide through it. Logic can become a suicide - for many it becomes.

Just a few days before one seeker from California was here. He traveled long...he had come to meet me. And then he said, "Before I meditate or before you tell me to meditate - because I have heard that whosoever comes to you, you push them into meditation - so before you push me in, I have got questions." He had a list of at least a hundred questions. I think he has not left any that is possible - about God, about soul, about truth, about heaven, hell and everything - a sheet full of questions. He said, "Unless you solve these questions first, I am not going to meditate."

He is logical in a way because he says, "Unless my questions are answered how can I meditate ? Unless I feel confident that you are right, you have answered my doubts, how I can go in some direction you show and indicate ? You may be wrong. So you can prove your rightness only if my doubts disappear."

And his doubts are such that they cannot disappear. This is the dilemma: if he meditates they can disappear, but he says he will meditate only when these doubts are not there. What to do ? He says, "First prove there is God." No one has ever proved it, no one ever can. That doesn't mean that God is not there, but he cannot be proved. He is not a small thing which can be proved or disproved. It is such a vital thing, you have to live it to know it. No proof can help.

But logically he is right. He says, "Unless you prove how I can start ? If there is no soul, who is going to meditate ? So first prove that there is a self, then I can meditate."

This man is committing suicide. No one will be ever able to answer him. He has created all the barriers, and through these barriers he will not be able to grow. But he is logical. What should I do with such a person ? If I start answering his questions, a person who can create a hundred doubts can create millions, because doubting is a way, a style of mind. You can answer one question, through your answer he will create ten because the mind remains the same.

He looks for doubts, and if I answer logically I am helping his logical mind to be fed, to be more strengthened. I am feeding. That will not help. He has to be brought out of his logicalness.

So I told him that, "Have you ever been in love ?"

He said, "But why ? You are changing the subject."

I said, "I will come to your points, but suddenly it has become very meaningful to me to ask have you ever loved."

He said, "Yes !" His face changed.

I asked, "But you loved before or before falling in love you doubted the whole phenomenon ?"

Then he was disturbed. He was uncomfortable. He said, "No, I never thought about it. I simply had fallen in love, and then only I became aware."

So I said, "You do the opposite: first think about love, whether love is possible, whether love exists, whether love can exist. And first let it be proved, and make it a condition unless it is proved you will not love anybody."

He said, "What are you saying ? You will destroy my life. If I make this a condition, then I cannot love."

"But," I told him, "this is the same you are doing. Meditation is just like love, you have to know it first. God is just like love. That's why Jesus goes on saying that God is love. It is just like love. First one has to experience."

A logical mind can be closed, and so logically that he will never feel that he has closed his own doors to all the possibilities for all growth. So inference, anuman, means thinking in such a way that growth is helped. Then it can become a source of right knowledge.