Swami Siddheswarananda’s views on Bhagavan’s Teachings

Though Bhagavan did not accept the solipsist position that only mental data are valid, he did occasionally adopt solipsisitic arguments in an attempt to demonstrate there is no real external world, independent of the observer of it. Here is the best example I know, taken from Maharshi’s Gospel:

Devotee: As I said before, we see, feel and sense the world in so many ways. These sensations are the reactions to the objects seen, felt, etc. and are not mental creations as in dreams, which differ not only from person to person but also with regard to the same person. Is that not enough to prove the objective reality of the world?

Bhagavan: All this talk about inconsistencies and their attribution to the dream-world arises only now, when you are awake. While you are dreaming, the dream was a perfectly integrated whole. That is to say, if you felt thirsty in a dream, the illusory drinking of illusory water did quench your illusory thirst. But all this was real and not illusory to you so long as you did not know that the dream itself was illusory. Similarly with the waking world; and the sensations you now have get co-ordinated to give you the impression that the world is real.

If, on the contrary, the world is a self-existent reality (that is what you evidently mean by its objectivity) what prevents the world from revealing itself to you in sleep? You do not say you have not existed in your sleep.

Devotee: Neither do I deny the world’s existence while I am asleep. It has been existing all the while. If during my sleep I did not see it, others who are not sleeping saw it.

Bhagavan: To say you existed while asleep, was it necessary to call in the evidence of others so as to prove it to you? Why do you seek their evidence now? Those ‘others’ can tell you of having seen the world (during your sleep) only when you yourself are awake. With regard to your own existence it is different. On waking up you say you had a sound sleep, so that to that extent you are aware of yourself in the deepest sleep, whereas you have not the slightest notion of the world’s existence then. Even now, while you are awake, is it the world that says “I am real”, or is it you?

Devotee: Of course I say it, but I say it of the world.

Bhagavan: Well then, that world, which you say is real, is really mocking at you for seeking to prove its reality while of your own Reality you are ignorant.

You want somehow or other to maintain that the world is real. What is the standard of reality? That alone is real which exists by itself, which reveals itself by itself and which is eternal and unchanging.

Does the world exist by itself? Was it ever seen without the aid of the mind? In sleep there is neither mind nor world. When awake there is the mind and there is the world. What does this invariable concomitance mean? You are familiar with the principles of inductive logic, which are considered the very basis of scientific investigation. Why do you not decide this question of the reality of the world in the light of those accepted principles of logic?

Of yourself you can say ‘I exist’. That is, yours is not mere existence, it is Existence of which you are conscious. Really, it is existence identical with consciousness.

Devotee: The world may not be conscious of itself, yet it exists.

Bhagavan: Consciousness is always Self-consciousness. If you are conscious of anything you are essentially conscious of yourself. Unselfconscious existence is a contradiction in terms. It is no existence at all. It is merely attributed existence, whereas true existence, the sat, is not an attribute, it is the substance itself. It is the vastu. Reality is therefore known as sat-chit, being-consciousness, and never merely the one to the exclusion of the other. The world neither exists by itself, nor is it conscious of its existence. How can you say that such a world is real? And what is the nature of the world? It is perpetual change, a continuous, interminable flux. A dependent, unselfconscious, ever-changing world cannot be real. (Maharshi’s Gospel, pp. 60-62)

Note how Bhagavan’s argument runs through familiar solipsistic territory before moving on to a transcendental position that the world cannot possibly be real because it is impermanent, changing, and does not reveal itself independently of the perceiver’s perception of it.

The solipsistic notion that there is only one individual self, and that all ‘other selves’ are created and imagined within it, has an advaitic parallel in the teaching of ‘eka jiva’, ‘one jiva’. This states that there are not many jivas, all of whom project a world and live in it; there is only one. Bhagavan laid out the premise of this position in this passage from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 534:

Bhagavan: Jiva is called so because he sees the world. A dreamer sees many jivas in a dream, but all of them are not real. The dreamer alone exists and he sees all. So it is with the individual and the world. There is the creed of only one Self, which is also called the creed of only one jiva. It says that the jiva is the only one who sees the whole world and the jivas therein.

Bhagavan did not commit himself to this philosophical position in this particular quotation, but he firmly accepted it in verse 534 of Guru Vachaka Kovai. In this verse Bhagavan stated that eka jiva, though true, is such a counter-intuitive position to adopt, even jnanis generally say that there is a multiplicity of jivas:

Let the heroic one who possesses a powerful intuition accept that the jiva is only one, and thus become firmly established in the Heart. In order to satisfy those persons in whom this intuition has not blossomed [jnanis appear to] agree with their view that jivas are many.

The following comments and the subsequent quotation come from the discussion on eka jiva that appears on pages 231 and 232 of Guru Vachaka Kovai :

It is a fundamental tenet of advaita that the world is projected by the individual mind that sees it. Some people think that this means that each individual jiva projects its own world, but Bhagavan taught that this is not the correct perspective. He maintained that the jiva which sees the world is the only jiva that exists, and that all the other people whom this jiva sees are merely imagined projections of the first jiva. Since all things and all beings are merely the externalised projection of the jiva who sees them, it follows that when this jiva is absent or destroyed, the other beings and things simply cease to exist.

Chadwick once questioned Bhagavan on this topic: ‘If the world exists only when my mind exists, when my mind subsides in meditation or sleep, does the outside world disappear also? I think not. If one considers the experiences of others who were aware of the world while I slept, one must conclude that the world existed then. Is it not more correct to say that the world got created and is ever existing in some huge collective mind? If this is true how can one say that there is no world and that it is only a dream?’

Bhagavan refused to modify his position. ‘The world does not say that it was created in the collective mind or that it was created in the individual mind. It only appears in your small mind. If your mind gets destroyed, there will be no world.’ (Living by the Words of Bhagavan, 2nd ed. p. 236)

Bhagavan himself addressed some of the arguments for and against the eka-jiva position in talk 571 of Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi:

Multiplicity of individuals is a moot point with most persons. A jiva is only the light reflected on the ego. The person identifies himself with the ego and argues that there must be more like him. He is not easily convinced of the absurdity of his position. Does a man who sees many individuals in his dream persist in believing them to be real and enquire after them when he wakes up?

This argument does not convince the disputant.

Again, there is the moon. Let anyone look at her from any place at any time; she is the same moon. Everyone knows it. Now suppose that there are several receptacles of water reflecting the moon. The images are all different from one another and from the moon herself. If one of the receptacles falls to pieces, that reflection disappears. Its disappearance does not affect the real moon or the other reflections. It is similar with an individual attaining liberation. He alone is liberated.

The sectarian of multiplicity makes this his argument against non-duality. ‘If the Self is single, if one man is liberated, that means that all souls are liberated. In practice it is not so. Therefore advaita is not correct.’

The weakness in the argument is that the reflected light of the Self is mistaken for the original light of the Self. The ego, the world and the individuals are all due to the person’s vasanas. When they perish, that person’s hallucinations disappear, that is to say one pitcher is broken and the relative reflection is at an end.

The fact is that the Self is never bound. There can therefore be no release for it. All the troubles are for the ego only.

I have wandered around a bit so far on this post, covering many aspects of Bhagavan’s teachings (drishti-srishti-vada, eka jiva, and so on) and explaining the difference between solipsism and Bhagavan’s advaitic teachings. I want, now, to go back to my starting point: Swami Siddheswarananda made two claims in his first sentence, that Bhagavan did not teach drishti-srishti-vada, and that solipsism is the same as drishti-srishti-vada. I hope I have presented enough evidence here to demonstrate that both assertions are unsustainable.

There is one further claim in his first sentence that I have not so far addressed: that drishti-srishti-vada is ‘a sort of degenerated idealism’.

Idealism is a strand of western philosophy that stands in opposition to materialism. The materialist position is that there is an external, real world comprising interacting energy and matter. This is the standard, almost universally accepted, srishti-drishti view of the world which says that a real world exists independently of a perceiver, that it was there before he was born, and that it will continue to exist after he dies. Idealism, on the other hand, insists that the mind and its thoughts are the only thing that exists.

Idealism is actually a theory in the philosophy of perception. It describes the relationship that exists between the experiencer and what he experiences.

There are two main divisions of idealism: subjective idealism and objective idealism. The subjective idealist is a solipsist. He would maintain that the thoughts which generate the world we see come from inside the perceiving subject. Everything that is seen is something that has been thought up by the seer. An objective idealist takes the line that objects in the world originate outside ourselves, which is why we all see the same things ‘out there’. However, they are not material objects; they are just ideas. All things are mental creations, which begs the question, ‘in whose mind, or created by whom?’

George Berkeley, probably the most famous of the objective idealists, proposed that all ‘things’ are just ideas in the mind of God. According to him, there really is a world ‘out there’, but it is one comprised wholly of God’s thoughts, not independently existing matter and energy.

This is his most famous statement about the nature of objects: ‘Their esse [to be] is percipi [to be perceived]; nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds of thinking things which perceive them…’. (Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge).

Taken in isolation this would indicate that if an object is not being perceived, it simply doesn’t exist. Seeing brings it into existence. However, the universe is sustained in its entirety, according to Berkeley, because God is simultaneously aware of all things, thus allowing an orderly world to appear and persist. This intriguing theory was delightfully summarised in two limericks, the first composed by Ronald Knox, and the second anonymously:

There was a young man who said ‘God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there’s no one about in the quad’.

‘Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.’

Bhagavan also taught that the act of seeing brings objects that are seen into existence. In this he agrees with the idealists.

Every time it [the mind] sees, it is in the act of seeing that the many scenes appear as if real to the seeing consciousness. (Padamalai, p. 269, v.1)

Bhagavan: Creation is not other than seeing; seeing and creating are one and the same process. Annihilation is only the cessation of seeing and nothing else; for the world comes to an end by the right awareness of oneself. (Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad, v. 147)

Question: What is the relation between mind and object? Is the mind contacting something different from it, viz., the world?

Bhagavan: The world is ‘sensed’ in the waking and the dream states or is the object of perception and thought, both being mental activities. If there were no such activities as waking and dreaming thought, there would be no ‘perception’ or inference of a ‘world’. In sleep there is no such activity and ‘objects and world’ do not exist for us in sleep. Hence ‘reality of the world’ may be created by the ego by its act of emergence from sleep; and that reality may be swallowed up or disappear by the soul resuming its nature in sleep. The emergence and disappearance of the world are like the spider producing a gossamer web and then withdrawing it. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 25)

However, there are key differences between idealism and Bhagavan’s teachings. Bhagavan taught that when the seer and the seen (the individual self and the world) are absent, the Self remains, consciously known by the jnani, but unknown to those who mediate their knowledge and perceptions through a knower and a perceiver. It is this extra dimension of a permanent substratum, knowable through direct experience, rather than mediated by the senses, that distinguishes both idealism and solipsism from advaita. A solipsist and a subjective idealist will only accept as real those things that their senses and their mind consciously register. Bhagavan teaches that the mind, far from registering what is true and real, actually hides reality. There is a world of difference between these two positions.

Solipsism and subjective idealism give primacy to thought and perception. In these systems things exist not because they have inherent beingness, but because they are sensed or thought about by the mind. Descartes took this to its logical conclusion by asserting that thinking even proved that a person existed: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Bhagavan ridiculed this position in no uncertain terms:

The existence of their own Self is inferred by some from mental functioning, by the reasoning, ‘I think, therefore I am’. These men are like those dull-witted ones who ignore the elephant when it goes past, and become convinced afterwards by looking at the footprints! (Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad, v. 166)

For Bhagavan ‘being’ is self-evident and real; idealists and solipsists, on the other hand, only accept as real objects that the mind is capable of registering.

Swami Siddheswarananda claimed that drishti-srishti-vada was some form of ‘degenerate idealism’. He didn’t say in what way it might have degenerated, but in the forms I have presented it here, idealism is clearly distinguishable both from drishti-srishti-vada and from Bhagavan’s teachings in general.

I started out with the intention of critiquing the whole of Swami Siddheswarananda’s comments in a few pages. Looking at my computer I find I am now on page eleven, and looking at the clock I find that I have spent most of a day getting this far. I don’t have the time to post detailed critiques of all the other things he said. I will simply say that there are many other things in his comments that I disagree with. Before I end, though, I want to comment briefly on his second sentence which says:

That Maharshi never subscribes to that view [solipsism, idealism or drishti-srishti-vada] can be known if we study his works in the light of orthodox Vedanta or observe his behaviour in life.

The notion that we can discover Bhagavan’s teachings by observing his behaviour is an intriguing one. I think I wrote elsewhere on this blog that, during the Bhagavan Centenary Celebrations of 1980, I ended up having to mark some student essays whose set topic was: ‘Bhagavan’s teachings are best exemplified by the life he lead. Discuss.’

The answers were, unfortunately, uniformly bad. Nevertheless, I think all of us would agree that we could learn a lot about Bhagavan by observing his daily routine and by studying the way he lived his life and dealt with all the events and incidents that were going on around him. I don’t, though, believe that we could find out whether or not he was a proponent of drishti-srishti-vada from making such observations. For that, we would have to go to his writings and to the verbal replies he gave on this topic. I don’t agree that we can discover what views Bhagavan subscribes to by studying his teachings ‘in the light of orthodox Vedanta’. If we want to find out what Bhagavan intended by a particular comment or written sentence, the best place to look is in the publications where Bhagavan himself explains his teachings in more detail.

If there are no direct comments or writings from Bhagavan himself on a particular subject, we can look in the books of devotees who were given personal instructions by Bhagavan on the meaning of his writings. Muruganar and Lakshmana Sarma, for example, were both given extensive private tuition by Bhagavan on the meaning and interpretation of Bhagavan’s Ulladu Narpadu verses. If we want to find out what Bhagavan intended to communicate in a particular line of his writings, we should first look at any comments Bhagavan might have written or spoken on the topic under discussion. Then, if there is still some doubt, we should consult those texts which incorporate Bhagavan’s own explanations.

Bhagavan’s views on drishti-srishti-vada were expressed many times. The first few pages of this post have many direct quotes from Bhagavan on this topic. These quotations, not the texts of orthodox Vedanta, are the places to go for an understanding of what Bhagavan said and intended.

To be fair to Swami Siddheswarananda, he could not have been aware of most of these statements by Bhagavan since virtually none of them were in print in the era he visited Ramanasramam. I am guessing that he did not know Tamil. That would leave him an English body of work that included Maha Yoga, Maharshi’s Gospel, and English translations of Who am I?, Spiritual Instruction and Ulladu Narpadu. I am assuming that he also went through Sat Darshana Bhashya in Sanskrit.

The contents of Sat Darshana Bhashya might have persuaded him that Bhagavan did not teach drishti-srishti-vada, but as an educated and discerning vedantic scholar, he should have found sufficient textual evidence in Bhagavan’s other works to come to the conclusion that Bhagavan did teach drishti-srishti vada. In Who am I?, for example, he could have found the following very clear paragraph:

There no such thing as ‘the world’ independent of thoughts. There are no thoughts in deep sleep, and there is no world. In waking and dream there are thoughts, and there is also the world. Just as a spider emits the thread of a web from within itself and withdraws it again into itself, in the same way the mind projects the world from within itself and later reabsorbs it into itself. When the mind emanates from the Self, the world appears. When the world appears, the Self is not seen, and when the Self appears or shines, the world will not appear.

Since Bhagavan often used the terminology of Vedanta, it is understandable how some vedantic scholars might want to consult their texts to get a better understanding of what Bhagavan was teaching. In my opinion this is not a valid interpretive route since Bhagavan’s teachings and comments are not derived from a study of vedantic texts but from his own experience. The fact that they mostly agree with these vedantic texts does not mean that one should give precedence to these writings when one is looking for a proper understanding of what Bhagavan taught.

As the following and concluding dialogue indicates, Bhagavan used his own language to express his own experience:

Mr M. Oliver Lacombe, a middle-aged Frenchman who was on a visit to India, being delegated by the Institute of Indian Civilisation of the University of Paris, came here from French India. Among others, he had desired to meet Maharshi; he came and stayed here about three hours. He had read, in the Sanskrit original, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the Sutras with commentaries by Sri Sankara and Ramanuja.

He asked: Is Maharshi’s teaching the same as Sankara’s?

Bhagavan: Maharshi’s teaching is only an expression of his own experience and realisation. Others find that it tallies with Sri Sankara’s.

Devotee: Quite so. Can it be put in other ways to express the same realisation?

Bhagavan: A realised person will use his own language. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 189)