Theosophy - The Tyranny of Views by Will Ross
The
Tyranny of Views
by Will
Ross
Right
views are called “transcendental”,
Erroneous
views are called “worldly”,
But
when all views, both right and erroneous are discarded,
Then
the essence of Wisdom manifests itself.’ [ Dwight Goddard; A Buddhist Bible. ]
Theosophy
has usually been called Divine Wisdom. So the Theosophist is one who is searching
for wisdom. Wisdom lies beyond all views, right or wrong, and can only manifest
itself when they are given up. The source of wisdom, whatever it may be called,
lies beyond the mind and beyond all the expressions and views that are part
of the mind’s activities.
...to
‘know’ the real we must give up all our ideas and views about the
appearance of things.
Patanjali
emphasizes the same point. He says that to abide in our own nature and to discover
what we really are, we must overcome the modifications of the thinking principle
and restrain the whirlpool of the mind. Analysing the states of the thinking
principle with which we usually identify ourselves, we find them listed as right
understanding, wrong understanding, fancy, sleep and memory, emphasizing once
again that to ‘know’ the real we must give up all our ideas and
views about the appearance of things.
It is
frequently stated that when the Buddha was asked questions about ultimates,
beginnings or endings, the nature of nirvana, ‘he retained a noble silence,’
not because he did not know the nature of the ultimate, but because he realized
the impossibility of putting this knowledge into words. To have an idea
about reality would have hindered our search for reality. As stated by
Tsong-kha-pa, ‘He...in whom all preconceived ideas have vanished, has
set out on the path in which all Buddhas delight.’ [Quoted by Herbert V. Guenther in Treasure on the Tibetan Middle Way. ]
The
Web of Words
But our
lives are occupied by our ideas. Though our ultimate concern may be with the
ground of our being, our lives are concerned with the relationship between the
figures which emerge on that ground, the relationship that exists between the
figures and the ground and the relationships between the figures themselves.
In other words, as human beings, as thinking creatures, we are trying to understand
the world and our relationship to it. This attempt to understand is expressed
in words, and words about things tend to be confused with the things themselves:
in fact, they frequently become substituted for the thing itself.
We
formulate ideas and produce views about the world and about ourselves and then
these views dominate our lives.
Wittgenstern
has said that ‘ the limits of my language are the limits of my world,’
and this concept adequately expresses what takes place. Our words describe our
world. We formulate ideas and produce views about the world and about ourselves
and then these views dominate our lives. We are, as has been said, trapped in
the ‘web of words with which we overlay our world.’ To discover
the real we must escape from the trap.
We
accept the tyranny of the views of others rather than undertake the hard work
of trying to find truth for ourselves.
It is
interesting to look at the changes that have taken place in the language of
western scholars. In the classical period the language was Latin - the language
of the Church - but as artists and craftsmen developed their knowledge they
began to write in the vernacular. It was mostly from these people that scientific
investigation and theorizing arose and they gradually developed a language of
their own - mathematics - which has become more and more the language in which
scientists communicate with each other. This makes it very difficult for the
layman to understand and, in part, accounts for the faith so many people have
in science which they find incomprehensible. They have the same faith in the
statements of the scientists that earlier generations had in statements of the
Church; to accept truths in this manner is to accept enslavement to them. Yet
this is what we so often do because it saves us from the effort of personal
choice. We accept the tyranny of the views of others rather than undertake the
hard work of trying to find truth for ourselves.
The
Language of Mathematics
The growth
of dogmatic religions with their views on the nature of God and the world which
were accepted without thought or question by their adherents is well known and
the conflicts and antagonisms that they have created are part of the history
of mankind. But we sometimes forget that science, too, has had its dogmatic
presentations and it is only in comparatively recent times that the growth of
scientific knowledge has indicated that when you are looking into the real nature
of the physical world you are not looking at mere ‘things’ but at
relationships within an unknown ultimate Something. And it is because mathematics
deals with relationships that it has been so productive in scientific research.
During
one of a series of symposia held in Washington, D.C., in 1973 to honour the
five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Nicolas Copernicus, Werner Heisenberg
said that science tends to speak in mathematical terms because scientists try
to be precise; the relationships they deal with are most clearly defined in
mathematical terms. Speaking of the mathematical forms, ‘according to
which,’ he says, ‘the world was made.’ he points out that
‘the forms are always present in matter and in the human mind, and are
responsible for both....The mathematical structures are actually deeper than
the existence of mind or matter. Mind or matter is a consequence of mathematical
structure. That, of course, is a very Platonic idea. But I feel that it is a
reality.’ Surely this is a very theosophical idea also, emphasizing that
order underlies the whole cosmos.
At another
symposium in the same series it was brought out that the basic structure of
the physical world is ultimately determined by the way we look at it. John Archibald
Wheeler, Professor of Physics at Princeton, in speaking of quantum research
- the delving into the ultimate particles in the structures of the universe
- points out that when we come to measure an electron, we can measure its position
or we can measure its momentum, but we cannot do both. We must decide
which we want to do and choose our instruments accordingly, and, he goes on,’...whichever
it is, it has an unpredictable effect on the future of that electron. To that
degree the future of the universe is changed. We have changed it.’
Beyond
the Measuring Mind
Nature
does not create laws; it simply acts lawfully.
Surely
what is being said is that the structure and phenomena we observe in nature
are nothing but the creations of our measuring and categorizing minds. Nature
does not create laws; it simply acts lawfully. Now, are not all our views
about the cosmos and our relationship to it part of the measuring and categorizing
process? We discover what we want to discover. We can never find the complete
picture which is felt, realized, intuited, by processes outside of or beyond
the measuring mind.
It is
the process beyond the mind (if it can properly be called a process) which we,
as Theosophists, are trying to discover.
Michael
Polanyi has an amusing but very perceptive summing up of Plato’s Meno.
It goes something like this:
To search
for the solution of a problem is an absurdity. Either you know what you are
looking for and so there is no problem, or if you do not know what you are looking
for, you are not looking for anything and so cannot expect to find it.
What
is our problem? What are we looking for? I think that we are looking for a
real self, but whether we spell that self with a small ‘s’ or
a capital ‘S’ we tend to equate that self with ego, a fixed and
permanent I, something we can hold on to.
But this
permanent ego does not conform to our experience which, as the Buddha pointed
out twenty-five hundred years ago, is from moment to moment.
The I-now
is qualitatively different from I-yesterday. Gardner Murphy tells us
that we cannot speak of achieving perfection by adding to an individual, for
the individual is qualitatively - not quantatively - different as he grows.
...overcoming
ignorance involves, first of all, that we recognize that we are ignorant.
The Hindu
concept is that everything around us - all our views of the external world -
are created by the mind under the influence, or the spell, of Maya. It is in
our attaching deep significance to these views that the basic human delusion
lies. This is Avidya, or ignorance. And overcoming ignorance involves, first
of all, that we recognize that we are ignorant.
Which school we belong to or
whatever words we use, the basic conflict that confronts us is the distinction
between vision or illumination and reason or logic. In the drama of life, vision
raises the curtain on the play while reason and logic define its plot. In this
technological age it often seems that we are only concerned with the mechanics
of the play and that we have lost sight of its significance and meaning.
Options
and Views
Today,
it is opinions and views that are written and talked about. The ordinary political
process is largely a conflict between views. Even in the Theosophical Society,
we stress that members can hold any views rather than they should try to rid
themselves of all views.
Wisdom
lies beyond all views and can only manifest itself when they are given up.
One of
the major factors in society today is science, which is perhaps the greatest
achievement of reason and logic in changing world conditions. Sometimes it has
claimed (and certainly many seem to believe it) that it has replaced illumination,
but when one reads something of its history one becomes aware that many of its
most significant discoveries are the result of vision rather than of the processes
of logic and reason that it holds so sacred.
The university
structure tends to distort science. The power and prestige-seeking, the competition
for endowments and grants, distort the scientific effort. Some time ago Ortegay
Gasset said that the universities lost their effectiveness when they ceased
to be custodians of culture and become the training ground for technicians and
teachers.
The Church,
as an institution, distorts illumination. You cannot find illumination according
to a pattern laid down by someone else however much it may be rooted in tradition.
In other words, fixed ideas and institutions tend to crystallize ideas, to distort
and prevent growth and limit creativity.
The influence
of fixed ideas can be seen in so many areas in the history of man, especially,
perhaps, in the development of science and technology. Many have noticed that
China did not develop science although it was ahead of the West in its technology.
Science in the West developed by questioning accepted viewpoints and this resulted
in conflict between the guardians of the old ideas, particularly the Church,
and the exponents of the new. Many of the new ideas were in the field of astronomy,
the development of which changed the thinking of man from a geocentric to a
heliocentric view of the solar system with all its implications. In China the
situation was different. The Emperor was the guardian of moral, that is celestial,
order in earthly affairs. Speculation about astronomy, therefore, could serve
no useful purpose. It was tantamount to questioning the ruler and was viewed
with suspicion. If continued, the penalty was likely to be severe.
In every
large city we can see around us examples of how things change when man is no
longer in touch with nature and with the materials of the earth but stands apart
from them and uses them for his own selfish ends.
The early
craftsmen and builders were men who worked with the basic materials of their
trade. They felt at home with them and from them created the things needed both
for ordinary domestic purposes and for the erection of the buildings in which,
through ritual and ceremony - the symbols of their religious life - they celebrated
their recognition of the order of nature. One sees examples of their artistic
craftsmanship in the great Christian cathedrals. These buildings were designed
on the site. There were no scale-drawings - simply sketches which indicated
the proportions. The mathematics involved was not primarily for the purpose
of calculation but developed after the construction to show the Pythagorean
proportions of the structure. But gradually a change took place. As mathematics
developed, scale-drawings began to be made; designs no longer rose out of the
craftsman’s feeling for the materials, but abstractly, in the mind
of the architect. The buildings constructed since that time no longer express
the underlying sense of man’s relationship to nature and the sacredness
of life, but are abstractions concerned with economics, advertising, competition,
and prestige - with non-human rather than human ends.
Two
Kinds of Clarities
There
are two ways of looking at the world. One is with the ‘innocent eye’
which sees things as fresh and new without any preconceived notions. The other
is through study and the gathering of information. This latter may contribute
to our aesthetic understanding, it may even improve our powers of perception,
but so often it merely prevents our looking except through the distorting
veil
of our fixed ideas. Scholarship is an instrument that may elicit meaning.
Anais Nin writes: ‘Bergson said there are two kinds of clarities, “The
perception of the artist, of the intuitive mind, will always seem obscure to
those who prefer clear Cartesian perception,” He speaks of “the
fringe of nebulosity which surrounds the luminous core of intelligence, affirming
by its presence that that part of our existence so clearly perceived by our
intelligence is not the essential or most profound part. This penumbra is what
must be penetrated if we would seek reality. An orientation inward implies
an
enlargement of our mental horizon.” He denied that “reality could
be attained by the intelligence, by conscious thought.[Anais Nin; The Novel of the Future. ]
This,
surely, is what ‘giving up views’ is all about. It is the recognition
that reality cannot be attained by conscious thought but by penetration of ‘the
fringe of nebulosity,’ the penumbra that surrounds the core of intelligence.
We must take care, however, that although our ideas about it may be vague,
incomplete, approximate, inchoate, we do not fall into the error of vagueness
about reality itself.
Historically,
three methods have been used in the study of reality. One is to speak of it
in the Buddhist fashion of the ‘void’. Reality is none of the things
we know, but neither is it annihilation nor nothingness; it is not something
separate from forms and appearance. It is the silence and the darkness.
Another
way to think of reality is to call it the Absolute, as does H.P.Blavatsky in
The Secret Doctrine. In the first fundamental principle she speaks of
this Absolute as the vast, immutable principle about which all speculation is
impossible. Yet how we speculate about it! She says that it is essentially without
relationship to finite things. This is, perhaps, the crux of the whole matter,
yet this is the difficulty for the ego at whatever level. As egos, we want to
be in relationship to the Absolute and therefore, instead of letting go of ego,
we let out minds distort the picture.
Momentarily,
when you are free of all bias and prejudice and partial views, reality reveals
itself.
The third
way avoids all the problems that arise with the other two ways of thinking about
reality; it might, perhaps, be called the ‘prescriptional’ method.
This method does not try to define reality, or point it out, but simply says
that if you live the right kind of life you will become existentionally aware
of the root of being. Momentarily, when you are free of all bias and prejudice
and partial views, reality reveals itself.
But the
prescriptional method, although it avoids the problems posed by the other two,
has its own pitfalls. If we are drawn to it, it may be because we want to be
told what to do; we want a pattern to be laid down that we can follow. It is
so easy to do what one is told except when one is told to think for oneself
or to live creatively.
Living
Creatively
As we
look at nature, as we observe the cosmos, we are looking at and observing a
creative process. Not that there is a creator doing something outside the process
- that is to fall into anthropomorphism - but that the fundamental ‘nature’
of nature is to create. We, as human beings, are part of that nature and, as
H.P. Blavatsky says, co-workers with nature in the cyclic task. And we are co-workers
in this process so long as we are creative. Charles Hartshorne has pointed out
that each one of us, at each moment, creates the immediate experience
of that moment. Each momentary experience has many causes - objects being perceived,
past experiences remembered - but the experience is one. It is immediate, synthetic,
creative.
To
live creatively is to decide anew at each moment. To do this we must be free.
We must make free choices at each moment...
‘Creative’
implies that which is new, unpredictable, not determined in advance by causal
conditions or law. It emerges from the darkness of the unknown. Our life is
predictable in so far as it is not creative, but mechanical, automatic, compulsive,
habit-ridden and conditioned. To live creatively is to decide anew at each moment.
To do this we must be free. We must make free choices at each moment - free
from the bias of sect, of creed, of caste, of colour; and free also from the
psychological wanting and craving that influences so much of our lives. The
cause of sorrow is ignorant craving, says the second of the Four Noble Truths,
because so long as you crave for anything you are bound.
History
(which should teach us how to solve some of the problems of the present) shows
us many examples of ways in which fixed ideas have hindered and distorted creative
development in all fields of human endeavour. One, from which arises many of
the problems of the modern world, is the notion developed by modern science
that man can and will conquer nature. Fortunately, this idea is being recognized
by many of the foremost modern scientists as a false and foolish one. Today,
we hear expressed the concept - so much in accord with the ancient wisdom -
of a participatory universe. When one realizes that everything one does - good,
bad or indifferent - affects not only oneself and one’s immediate circle
but the whole universe, one begins to be aware of what it means to live more
fully the oneness of life. Such awareness presents one with responsibilities,
without which there can be no freedom. We are responsible for what we
do. No one - no teacher, no guru, no organization - can relieve us of that responsibility.
H. P Blavatsky says, ‘The feeling of responsibility is the beginning of
Wisdom. Taking responsibility for all we do is an inextricable part of freedom
and as in freedom there is the possibility at each moment of looking at life
afresh, uncluttered by the accumulations of the past, so our responsible actions
can become free of the tyranny of views. Seeing things in this way we may indeed
become ‘co-workers with nature.’ Being free, we are no longer concerned
with a self of any kind, for we now realize that in any creative act there is
no ego, no self. The action is all.
[See Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis
and Philosophic Method, S.C.M. Press Limited, for further development of these ideas.]
The Theosophist
1978
From
a talk given at the 102nd International Convention, Adyar. December
1977
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