Postmodern Worldview
David M. Brookman[Editor’s Note:] Professor David M. Brookman, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania), holds degrees in theology and the history of religions. He has served as Protestant campus minister at Fort Hays State University, Hays, Kansas and currently serves Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan in the same capacity. He is teaching in the Department of Philosophy, University of Alaska.
His monograph, Teilhard and Aurobindo: A Study in Religious Complementarity, was published in 1988 by Mayur Publications of Bhubaneswar, India. His dissertation on S. Radhakrishnan, considered as an interpreter of Indian thought, is currently under publication. Recently he coedited Children’s Mahabharata (retold by Pandit Nilakantha Das) with his wife, Rebecca M. B. Brookman. This paper was originally presented during the International Congress of Vedanta held at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in April 1990.
"Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans... We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions, if they are to be moral, is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success—responsibility to the order of being where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where and only where they will be properly judged."
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excerpted from Vaclav Havel’s address to a joint meeting of the United States Congress, Feb. 1990The term "postmodernism", while used in a variety of ways, points not so much toward a commonly recognized body of though or set of doctrines. Rather, it suggests an increasingly generalized dissatisfaction with modernity as a norm for human society and a growing sentiment that modernism, now perceived by some as an aberration, must be relinquished if humanity is to avoid self-destruction and the destruction of most of life on earth.
[2] As a result "The modern worldview is increasingly relativized to the status of one among many, useful for some purposes, inadequate for others.[3]David Ray Griffin’s distinction between deconstructive and construc-tive postmodernism helps to clarify the use of the term in philosophical and theological circles. Whereas deconstructive postmodernism eliminates factors—such as God, self, purpose and meaning—necessary for a world-view, constructive or revisionary postmodernism. ".... seeks to overcome the modern worldview not by eliminating the possibility of worldviews as such, but by constructing a postmodern worldview through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts. This constructive or revisionary postmodernism involves a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such but only that scientism in which the data of the modern natural sciences are alone allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview."
[4]The extent to which certain members of the scientific community have become concerned about and interested in the possibility of developing a postmodern worldview is exemplified by Nobel laureate Roger Sperry who wrote the lead article for the 1981 Annual Review of Neuroscience. In this article, entitled "Changing Priorities," Sperry noted that ".... recent conceptual developments in the mind-brain sciences are seen to bring changes in worldview perspectives that revise the ultimate criteria and frame of reference for determining human values priorities and resolving value differences."
[5] After giving due consideration to the ne-glected area of subjective values in scientific debate, he then highlights a development with far-reaching implications for the future of scientific discourse concerning human nature and the significance of life experience. According to Sperry:"Current concepts of the mind-brain relation involve a direct break with the long-established materialist and behaviorist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for many decades. Instead of renouncing or ignoring consciousness, the new interpretation gives full recognition to the primacy of inner conscious awareness as a causal reality."
To posit the primacy of inner conscious awareness is causal reality is to implicitly question the authority of empiricism as the primary method for ascertaining truth. What is now known as the "scientific revolution" of the seventeenth century held that truth is established through scientific inquiry. From that time until the present the Western world has affirmed that observation and experiment are the final arbiters of truth rather than the medieval tradition of Scholasticism. Consequently, objective data have been more highly regarded than subjective experience. Nevertheless ".... it is.... in this realm of the subjective, the transcendent, and the spiritual that all societies have found the basis for their deepest value commitments and sense of meaning."
[7]Hence, a question arises: can the modern Western world begin to overcome the destructive consequences of a cultural imbalance induced by overemphasizing empiricism at the expense of subjectivity? If this is to be taken seriously as a direction for the continuing development of Western civilization, then it will be necessary to revise modern scientific premises concerning the nature of reality which were bequeathed to us as part of the legacy of the Copernican revolution. Furthermore, by emphasizing the potentiality of human consciousness with all of the respect for value commitments and for a sense of meaning that this implies, it may be possible to facilitate the emergence of a revisionary, postmodern worldview that will effectively transform twentieth century Western thought just as thoroughly as Copernican ideas transformed sixteenth century thought in Europe.
If the pervasive problems of the Western world are bound up with the view that empirical knowledge is the source of "salvation," then Ð
ānkara’s Advaita Vedâînta provides a critique that is, in its own way, every bit as startling. For, according to Advaita, complete freedom is the realization of Brahman, an experience which sublates percepts that are unreal in the sense of being illusory or imaginary. Indeed, "The great theme of all Vedāntic teaching.... is the identity of the individual life-monad with Brahman, which is of the nature of pure consciousness or spirituality."[8] According to Śānkara, this identity is to be realized through the path of knowledge (jñānayoga) which includes contemplation (dhyājna) and constant mediation (nididhyāsanaw) upon the latter section of the Vedas.[9] Discursive thinking does not provide an adequate tool for knowing the self since the real self ( tman) is pure consciousness and ".... since thought itself is a part of the flux belonging to the region of the not-self."[10]In a certain sense Advaita Ved
ānta constitutes a radical form of therapy that mercilessly critiques all of the false identifications commonly made between the self and the world. Accordingly, there arises a confusion of subject with object in which activity, agency and enjoyment are attributed to the tman.[11] Likewise, the self is mistakenly identified with the emotional states which accompany the continuous changes of mental attitudes.[12] Paradoxically, "All our knowledge is non-knowledge (avidyā), and the ascertainment of the ultimate consciousness by the exclusion of all that is imposed on it is vidyā, or wisdom."[13] The genesis of this non-knowledge is the error of judgment involved in the perception that sense organs and the neural processes of the body apparently give rise to consciousness. But the senses, the mind and the understanding are not self-sufficient. Rather, they are merely instruments, the functioning of which requires preception and perception belongs only to the Self.[14] Thus, the non-conscious cannot cause the conscious. The converse would be more nearly correct; that is, the conscious is the cause of the non-conscious."But this consciousness, which is the cause of the non-conscious, is not the finite consciousness but the ultimate one, for ever so many objects and events that do not exist in this or that finite consciousness still exist in reality. So we must assume an ultimate consciousness of which the finite is only a fragment. The fundamental consciousness which is the basis of all reality, is not to be confused with the human consciousness, which appears rather late in the cosmic evolution."
In what sense, then, is consciousness causal vis-à-vis the world and objects within it? This much can be asserted with regard to the Advaitic worldview. Brahman, that one without a second, appears as the objective universe and also as the individual subject. However, objectivity is only an illusory manifestation of Brahman, while subjectivity is Brahman that appears under the limitations which are part of that illusion. the Advaitic view of causality, as might be expected, "is that the conception is wholly empirical and is without any ultimate significance."
[16] In the most fundamental sense, then, nothing new can come into being. For example, neither a pot nor its material cause a lump of clay, are truly related to Brahman. "The causal relation holds between one phenomenon or appearance and another, but not between phenomena and reality."[17] Advaita would admit the practical significance of causality in everyday life. Yet it has no ultimate significance since Brahman, the ground of all cause and effect, transcends that realm.Advaita shares with other traditional Indian disciplines the intention to focus the renunciate’s attention upon something--preferably a single point--which does not arouse desires.
[18] But the severity of the challenge presented by Advaita virtually amounts to a kind of deconstruction of one’s experience. In this respect Advaita resonates with the deconstructive postmodernism insofar as".... knowledge is not a territory over which one can gain every more control; acquiring knowledge is not a colonizing, imperialistic activity, and it is misleading to talk about the ‘acquisition’ of knowledge at all, for that implies a getting-possession of what is alien to deconstructionist attitudes."
One could paraphrase the above quotation in the following manner: consciousness (the least unsuitable translation for Jñ
āna)[20] is not a territory over which one can gain every more control; realizing consciousness is not a colonizing, imperialistic activity.The disidentification experience which Advaita Ved
ānta enjoins for the individual is intended to undo all of the false identifications which lead to the appearance of things where they are not (adhāsa). "That particular application of adhyāsa which inclines us to break up the nature of the one absolute consciousness into a subject-object relation results from the very constitution of the human mind." Discursive thinking, however extended, does not lead to an apprehension of that which is ultimately real. Therefore, one may question how objective the knowledge gleaned from scientific investigation really is. As Radhakrishnan points out, this view does not necessarily imply skepticism with regard to science and common sense. The conclusions reached by these means are valid although they remain on the same plane as their premises.[22]If
Śānkara’s Advaita Vedānta represents a via negativa, then Aurobindo’s integral nondualism (purnadvaita) is a via positiva. For Aurobindo divine existence (sat), divine consciousness (cit) and divine bliss (anada) are enfolded into the fundamental reality which is Brahman. Beside it nothing else exists. However, movement, energy and process are equally real and so it is necessary, according to Aurobindo, to acknowledge the fact of becoming. The real monism, the true advaita, writes Aurobindo, does not seek to bifurcate existence into truth and falsehood, Brahman and non-Brahman, self and not-self.[23] Not only does Aurobindo reject Śānkara’s conception of the world as illusion; he also affirms an attitude toward the world which sets his philosophy apart from Śānkara’s."Essentially, he insists that the reality and value of the world follows from the dynamic or creative aspect of Brahman—or, conversely, to deny the reality and value of creation is to render Brahman an inert absolute. Hence the significance of Ananda as a rationale for creation: Aurobindo offers a wide variety of arguments against S
In his The Life Divine, not only is the force of consciousness identified as "the real creative Power;" all things are regarded as "formations of consciousness."
[25] Thus the perspective which Aurobindo’s vision describes suggests that the world is "....a limited expression of the divine Ananda, but Ananda nonetheless."[26] Just as Brahman indulges its power of movement and formation for the sole purpose of delight,[27] so also the individual, when realizing some unmanifested potentiality, experiences the delight of becoming."Therefore whatever comes into the world, seeks nothing but this, to be, to arrive at the intended form, to enlarge its self-existence in that form, to develop, manifest, increase, realize infinitely the consciousness and the power that is in it, to have the delight of coming into manifestation, the delight of the form of being, the delight of the rhythm of consciousness, the delight of the play of force and to aggrandise and perfect that delight by whatever means is possible; in whatever direction, through whatever idea of itself may be suggested to it by the Existence, the Conscious-Force, the Delight active within its deepest being."
For Aurobindo, then, the world may be described as an objective field into which the consciousness-force of subjective life expresses itself. The distinction, however, is a relative one because the crux of Aurobindo’s system lies in the insight that the opposites of temporal and eternal, finite and infinite, relative and Absolute are already united. The root of the whole matter, says Aurobindo, is found in the movement of eternal and immutable delight of being out into finite and variable delight of becoming. Since the evolving temporal world and every individual are essentially Absolute, there is no need to build a bridge between the finite and the infinite. "All levels of being and consciousness are ‘saved’.... as all are gradually assimilated by the supramental consciousness and power."
[29]In sum,
Śānkara’s nondualism and Aurobindo’s integral nondualism can be said to comprise two movements capable of facilitating the transition from modernity to a postmodern worldview. Advaita can provide the impetus for disidentification from empiricism in which the modern Western worldview is presently embedded. That is to say, it can assist in the activity of deconstructing the modern world view by showing that cause and effect relationships, insofar as they can be demonstrated in the so-called objective world, are, in fact, dependent upon pure consciousness for their existence. Therefore, such relationships possess an explanatory power that could be characterized as relative or incomplete. But the other movement, represented here by integral non-dualism, can provide the impetus and rationale for selective identification with particular forms in time and space that convey, however tentatively, the delight of becoming. This describes, only in the most general way, how two expressions of Vedānta can be viewed in a perspective that is mutually complementary. In short, it offers a specific example of the more general observation that "Asian mystical philosophies and disciplines aim for, describe, and philosophize from, the perspective of multiple states of consciousness and claim that these states provide insights, understandings, intuitions, logics and philosophical vies less obtainable and sometimes incomprehensible in our usual state."[30]The challenge Ved
ānta presents to the West is formidable. Recent research on states of consciousness and on certain capacities which occur in particular states of consciousness provide support for the claim that contemplative practices may be essential in order to achieve an indepth understanding of the premodern and modern exponents of Vedānta.[31] In seeking to address this challenge, Western philosophers could contribute to the transformation of their own discipline from one that is almost exclusively unistate [?] to another that not only recognizes the limitations of intellect but is willing to accommodate mystical states as well. This new direction was prefigured thirty years ago by W. T. Stace when he asserted that "mystical experience is not merely subjective, but is in very truth what the mystics themselves claim, namely a direct experience of the One, the Universal Self, God." [32]Such insights depart from the supernaturalism of early Western modernity and implicitly affirm a vision "that can be called naturalistic panentheism, according to which the world is present to deity and deity is present in the world."
[33]"By recovering a vision of deity in which norms and values can have a natural abode, and by affirming a nonsensory level of perception through which such norms can be perceived, postmodern spirituality overcomes that complete relativism which followed from modernity’s disenchantment of the world. This direct perception or intuition of norms does not obviate the necessity for aesthetic and ethical debate. . . The point is that this direct perception of norms and values makes it possible for there to be genuine debate, for there to be rational, cognitive discussion about ethical and aesthetic judgments."
[34]Thus, revisionary postmodern thought recognizes that "every society’s knowledge system is parochial"
[35]—including that of modern science. But it also recognizes, in accord with the teachings of Vedānta, the transforming power of human consciousness which implies "a dispersion of spiritual energy throughout the universe."[36] Richard Falk has suggested that, with the exhaustion of modernizing energies, a second axial upheaval may be taking place. As with the initial axial age several centuries before Christ, this new axial age would profoundly alter the content of human consciousness and bring about a reorientation of normative outlook and guiding values.[37] It was a characteristic of the first axial age that several of the great religions were established in diverse geographical and cultural conditions. One aspect of a second axial upheaval may be the transformation of Western thought according to the precepts of Vedānta. For it is the sort of transformation that will enable a postmodern world to emerge.
Notes
[1]
"The Revolution Has Just Begun," Time Magazine, March 5, 1990, pp. 14-15.[2]
David Ray Griffin, "Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought," in The Reenchantment of Science, ed. by David Ray Griffin (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. ix.[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., p. x.
[5] Roger Sperry, "Changing Priorities," Annual Review of Neuroscience, IV (1981), 4.
[6] Ibid., 7.
[7] Willis Harman, Global Mind Change (Indianapolis, Indiana: Knowledge Systems, 1988), p. 29.
[8] Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. by Joseph Campbell, Vol. XXVI of the Bollingen Series (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 417.
[9] Karl H. Potter, Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 41.
[10] S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol. II (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), p. 476.
[11] Ibid., p. 506.
[12] Ibid., p. 479.
[13] Ibid., pp. 506-7.
[14] George Thibaut, The Vedānta Sūtra of Bādarāyana with the Commentary by Śānkara, Part II (New York: Dover, 1962), p. 57.
[15] Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, p. 481.
[16]M. Hiriyanna, The Essentials of Indian Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), p. 158.
[17] Ibid., p. 159.
[18] Potter, Presuppositions, p. 41.
[19] Robert Detweiler, "No Place to Start: Introducing Deconstruction," Religion and Intellectual Life, V (Winter 1988), 7.
[20] P. T. Raju, "The Existential and the Phenomenological Consciousness in the Philosophy of R~ m~ nuja," Journal of the American Oriental Society, LXXXIV, 396.
[21] Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, p. 507.
[22] Ibid., p. 504.
[23] Aurobindo Ghose. The Life Divine (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1982), p. 31.
[24] Robert A. McDermott, "The Life Divine: Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Evolution and Transformation," in Six Pillars, ed. by Robert A. McDermott (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Wilson Books, 1974), p. 176.
[25] Ghose, Life Divine, p. 779.
[26] McDermott, Six Pillars, p. 174.
[27] Ghose, Life Divine, p. 91.
[28] Ibid., p. 113.
[29] Beatrice Bruteau, "Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin on the Problem of Action," International Philosophical Quarterly, XII (1972), 202.
[30] Roger Walsh, "Can Western Philosophers Understand Asian Philosophies?" Cross Currents, XXXIX (Fall 1989), 291.
[31] Ibid., 298.
[32] W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1987), p. 207.
[33] David Ray Griffin, "Introduction: Postmodern Spirituality and Society," in Spirituality and Society, ed. by David Ray Griffin (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 17.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Harman, Mind Change, p. 28.
[36] Griffin, "Introduction: Postmodern Spirituality," p. 17.
[37] Richard A. Falk, "In Pursuit of the Postmodern," in Spirituality and Society, ed. by David Ray Griffin (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 88.
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