Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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According to Bhattacharya, man cannot realise utter freedom on rational plane. Reason moves in the realm of duality between content and consciousness. This duality can be resolved in higher consciousness. The higher consciousness is spiritual realisation of pure-subjectivity. Freedom can be realised when the subject is completely dissociated from the object. In the states of bodily subjectivity and psychic subjectivity, there is a definite connection with the object that is meant When man enters the realm of spiritual subjectivity, this connection is transcended. It is seen there is no connection with the object as meant even in feeling, which is the first and the lowest expression of spiritual subjectivity. At the stage of feeling, if there is any reference to meaning, it is only to meaning as felt. This shows that 'spiritual', according to Krishnachandra, means detachment from the objective. The cult of the subject involves dissociation of the subject from the object. The subject is self-evident. K.C. Bhattacharya observes, "The intuited subject is not only revealed but revealing : it is directly known as self-expressing in the spoken word I without being meant by I.”28 Spiritual consciousness is fundamentally different from rational knowledge. Spiritual consciousness transcends both meantcontent and felt-content. Spiritual life lies in 'inwardness'. The objects and animals of the world do not have any 'inwardness'. The inner or conscious life of man is much more fundamental and basic than his outward life. K.C. Bhattacharya says that man, in the way of the realization of his true nature, steadily moves away from the external and objective to the inner and subjective. This progress toward inner life has been given a name 'spiritual progress'. Spiritual progress implies the realization of the subject as free. The demand is for the intuition of the subject as absolute freedom. Freedom lies in dissociation of the subject from the object.
K.C. Bhattacharya believes that freedom is the basic nature of man. Pure freedom, which has no definite content, is the goal of man. In intuitive experience or spiritual consciousness, man gets awareness of freedom from all 'contents'. He realises a state of freedom in intuitive awareness of the subject as free from the object. Krishnachandra's account of the progression of man is an account of the gradual realisation of freedom. While discussing Kant's view as freedom and morality, K.C. Bhattacharya thinks about two kinds of freedom, the freedom of the elective will, which is more or less the freedom of choice and the noumenal freedom. The noumenal freedom characterises the true nature of man. Man has got power to realise the Indefinite. Reason cannot realise the Absolute. Intuition transcends reason and resolves the duality between content and consciousness. Man has got power to go beyond reason and realise the Absolute in intuition.
The possibility of self s transcendence of the introspective self
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