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Haribhadra and Phychosynthesis
is facing such a crisis that it is on the brink of destruction. Not only in the field of knowledge but in almost all fields of human life, there are conflicts and disintegration throughout the world. Inspite of man's advancement in knowledge and that too at such a speed that he cannot copo up with it, he has proved himself a plaything of the very forces he has released. The human psyche makes a very poor show before these forces of his very creation and man looks a pygmy before them. It is like releasing a Jion and the Jion is threatening to devour the man who set him free. This shows that the human psyche has great capacities but they are not integrated, nor its immense capacity for integration is still probed. Alexis Carrel points at the very root of the chaos and disintegration prevailing in human society when he says; “Man has grasped only one aspect of reality. He has plucked the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge before it was ripe. It gave us knowledge of all things save ourselves." Man knows too much and still does not know himself ! Information and technical knowledge is so fast increasing from year to year that scholars and researchers cannot cope up with them. Even the technician himself does not know what he is after ! Maslow defines a technician with subtle humour. "A technician is defined as a man who understands everything about his job exccept its ultimate purpose and its place in the order of the universe.”2 The reflections of a scientist and a psychologist on the present condition of knowledge suggest that there is a sort of knowledge explosion in the present age and man is confounded and is taken aback: by his very creations of science and technology. This means that he does not khow himself even though he knows a great deal about the world and the globes and the atoms. Carrel charges present day human life and says, “Modern life is opposed to the life of the mind."3
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Consciousness as the Basis
Haribhadra has provided a key word for such a science and philoso- : phy of synthesis. In Kārikā 445 and 456 of Yogabindu, he states the key-word 'Caitanya' i e. Consciousness and expounds on it at some length. His purport is that the Caitanya is the very stuff of the very exitence. It is this word which can be very well used for the science of life and its technology. Shri Aurobindo has based his philosophy on this word Caitanya or conciousness. Gandhiji too calls supreme truth as Chaitanya.5 Even modern Philosophers like Charles Golbert Davis supports the statement that the final stuff of the universe is consciousness. "I say that thought is omnipotent, that the mind is all powerful." But he does not stop there but says that things are thoughts. "Thought is the stuff of which things are made.” Here too he does not stop and going still further
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