World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 282

to man. The amalgamation is fatal to philosophy as well as to religiosity. The distinction between the two, human and the divine, is essential for the progress of man's understanding of reality.
Professor K.S. Murty in his Sarada Pitha address of September, 1985 said that scientists and popularisers of semi-scientific and semi-mystic ideas have written a number of books which try to prove that contemporary science supports some form of Eastern philosophy or mysticism, or what is believed to be common to all Eastern thought. He rejects this view with detailed arguments. According to him, no science can or need confirm the truth that reality is non-dual, sat-chit-ananda, nor is it ever opposed to or reject this. This truth, according to Murty, has been and can be confirmed in one way only, that is, by one's own experience. I wish to submit here that philosophy and science pursuits of two different orders. The putative truths of science are verified in sense experience in the respective segment. But the truths of philosophy are not verified in this way. One could say that they are not at all verified in sense experience; or one can say equally, nay more, cogently, that they are verified in any and every sense experience. The sense of reality which logic postulates - never arbitrarily, to be sure - is the sense that is criteriological. It provides the basis for deciding what is real and what is not.
The truths of Advaita Vedanta could be approached in three ways. The approaches are: (1) scriptural, (2) rational, and (3) experiential as Arvind Sharma has sought to show clearly in his recent book, Advaita Vedanta: An Introduction. The Vedantic truths can be approached, assessed and appreciated in any of the ways that are by no means exclusive. They are complementary to one another for. All dualities like that between fact and value, religion and philosophy, fact and logic are overridden by the supervenient truths of Vedanta.
I would like to close with a couple of sentences. In Vedanta, there is no aversion to any view, there is only delightful toleration; no rejection of any view, only harmonising accommodation and the Vedantin leaves everything as it is; there is no question of reduction as some scholars allege. The method of philosophy is logical analysis and hence a darsanika (philosopher) is regarded as a pramanika (logical analyst) in India long before this was seen as a landmark in philosophic progress in the West.
233