{"id":6939,"date":"2016-04-17T13:05:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T11:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=6939"},"modified":"2016-04-17T13:07:15","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T11:07:15","slug":"conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=6939","title":{"rendered":"Conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

By Ravindra Svarupa dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Doubt is the motor of the modern mentality, the indefatigable engine that drives the spirit of our age. Such doubt was honored with an early recognition in the essays of the Renaissance courtier Michel de Montaigne<\/a>: \u201cWe are, I know not how, double within ourselves, with the result that we do not believe what we believe, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Montaigne\u2019s time, religious wars of unbearable cruelty rent Europe. The absolute certainty of the raging antagonists began to taint conviction itself with bad odor. But Montaigne saw deeper. He descried the doubleness within the very certitude of the religious partisans. He recognized their zeal as a kind of cover up, overcompensation for a hidden, an unacknowledged, lack of faith: \u201cWe do not believe what we believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

In modern times, disbelief has so far entered into the essence of our existence, that both faithlessness and faith have become fundamentally two varieties of faithlessness.<\/p>\n

It is the secret unbelief of true believers that energizes the armies of the night in Mathew Arnold\u2019s poem<\/a> of 1867:<\/p>\n

The Sea of Faith
\nWas once, too, at the full, and round earth\u2019s shore
\nLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
\nBut now I only hear
\nIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
\nAnd we are here as on a darkling plain
\nSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
\nWhere ignorant armies clash by night.<\/p>\n

William Butler Yeats delivers the ominous news in his prophetic<\/a>, apocalyptic 1919 poem<\/a> \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d:<\/p>\n

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
\nAre full of passionate intensity.<\/p>\n

Others, of course, celebrated unbelief\u2014it bestows liberation\u2014and proselytized it. Leave it to Friedrich Nietzsche<\/a> to push it as a jagged little pill: \u201cConvictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.\u201d (Aphorism 483, Human, All Too Human<\/a><\/em>: 1878 )<\/p>\n

So it happened that, as a child of the times, and all too human, I swallowed the pill. I served at the altar of doubt. Unbelief became my credo.<\/p>\n

It took half a dozen years in academia for me to recognize that unbelief\u2014skepticism, relativism, nihilism\u2014had itself become dogma. Departments of religion were pledging themselves en masse<\/em> to the hermeneutics of suspicion<\/a>. To confess any conviction other than mistrust of all convictions was to court anathema.<\/p>\n

All joined in choir to hymn unwavering faith in faithlessness. This dogmatism began to rankle me. Something was wrong. I brooded, irritably.<\/p>\n

And then, my breakthrough: We doubters were failing at doubt<\/em>. We had failed to take our doubt far enough. If we are going to be thoroughly skeptical, then we must be also skeptical about our own skepticism. If all things are relative, then so must be our relativism itself.<\/p>\n

I stated my case at an informal religion department gathering.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must feel like you\u2019re walking a tightrope over an abyss,\u201d responded a fellow grad student, only recently a nun.
\n\u201cYeah, but I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s a rope either,\u201d I said. Everyone laughed.<\/p>\n

Let us be bold enough to remove the very ground we stand on and miraculously levitate on nothing.<\/p>\n

And so we come full circle. Doubting our own doubting, we find a surprise awaiting us: a tiny crack opens for the possibility of faith.<\/p>\n

Just the possibility. Even less\u2014just the openness<\/em> to the possibility.<\/p>\n

This turns out to be a crack even God can squeeze through.<\/p>\n

One thing led to another. Several years after the manifestation of the crack, I joined\u2014to my permanent amazement\u2014a high-demand \u201corganized religion.\u201d A religion committed to preaching. Labeled by one academic as \u201cevangelical Hinduism.\u201d (For a systematically misleading expression, this is spot on.)<\/p>\n

Then came a time, fifteen or twenty years later, that I realized that I was utterly and completely certain that, as they say, \u201cGod exists.\u201d (For a systematically misleading expression, this is spot on.) I did not merely hold that a feasible case for divine existence could be made, that \u201cGod exists\u201d can be reasonably affirmed, that the assertion is true with (of course) the possibility that it just might be false. Not at all. I was absolutely, totally certain.<\/p>\n

This upset me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still a modern person. I assailed my own conviction: How could I be so sure? What right<\/em> did I have to be so certain? How was it possible? How was I entitled to such a degree of certitude? What was wrong with me?<\/p>\n

I attacked my own faith, and it repelled my assaults. I couldn\u2019t shake it. It was as if it were simply there<\/em> of its own accord, an irrevocable fact; it really didn\u2019t depend<\/em> upon me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I put the matter before some judicious devotees. \u201cIt\u2019s K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a\u2019s causeless mercy,\u201d said one. \u201cIt\u2019s a gift,\u201d said another. A Ph.D. who once taught Christian theology to divinity students, she cited the distinction between certainty and certitude.<\/p>\n

These conversations relieved me of my anxiety and allowed me to accept the gift wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n

Yet\u2014not to look the gift horse in the mouth\u2014I found myself still impelled to understand better what I had been given.<\/p>\n

I began my inquiry with this question: Is there anything at all that every person can be absolutely certain of? The question, of course, summoned me back to the origins of modernity, to the very \u201cfather of modern philosophy,\u201d Rene Descartes<\/a>, who turned Montaigne\u2019s doubt into a methodology. Sweeping away, in his Discourse on Method<\/em>, everything dubitable, he was left with only his own indubitable existence as a cognizant being. He could doubt everything except that he was doubting. Cogito<\/em>, ergo<\/em> sum<\/em>, he famously wrote: \u201cI think, therefore I am.\u201d Descartes explained that by \u201cthought\u201d he meant \u201cwhat happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it.\u201d His own existence as a conscious subject was absolutely certain.<\/p>\n

Here I got my own clue and cue: Start, like Descartes, with myself.<\/p>\n

But in this, it seemed to me, I was able to be more clear that Descartes. To \u201cstart with myself\u201d means, to be precise, to start with \u0101tman<\/em>, the conscious self.<\/p>\n

We commonly use the English \u201csoul\u201d or \u201cspirit soul\u201d to denote the same entity, but without the same clear meaning. The Sanskrit word \u0101tman<\/em> (in the root form) or \u0101tm\u0101<\/em> (in the nominative singular), is a noun meaning \u201cthe self.\u201d (The same word also serves as the reflexive pronoun, the \u201c-self\u201d in words denoting myself, yourself, herself, etc.)<\/p>\n

When I take note, as Descartes did, of my own consciousness, I understand that I am aware, at least to some degree, of the \u0101tman<\/em>, of myself as a conscious, experiencing living being, now bearing and animating a certain material body and mind.<\/p>\n

For two decades preceding my own Cartesian investigation, I\u2019d been engaged in spiritual practices amounting to researching of \u0101tman<\/em>. To try to understand my own certitude about God, I began to reflect upon those practices.<\/p>\n

\u0100<\/em>tma<\/em>\u2013tattva<\/em>, the science of the self, like any science, presents itself first as a theory, as kind of picture, or conceptual map, of spiritual reality. A theory, like a map, is the fruit of the experience of previous researchers, prepared as a guide for later explorers. The only purpose of theory is to guide practice, just as a road map is drawn up to facilitate a successful automobile journey.<\/p>\n

\u0100<\/em>tma<\/em>\u2013tattva<\/em> also includes practical instructions on how to undertake the spiritual journey, how to use the map correctly. It is, in this way, an applied science dedicated to the clarification and expansion of consciousness.<\/p>\n

We do not find any enterprise like this in modern Western philosophy. Modern philosophy certainly speculates endlessly about consciousness and experience, about knowledge and the knower and the known, but it has lost the applied element so prominent in the ancient classical traditions of Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Plato. There is now no distinctive \u201cphilosophical way of life.\u201d It\u2019s just another job.<\/p>\n

I had taken up a tradition from India, yet it returned me to the very foundations of Western philosophy. When I recognized this, I felt that I\u2019d come back home.<\/p>\n

The applied knowledge, the spiritual way of life, requires a commitment to a relatively rigorous and demanding discipline. This is called yoga<\/em>. The discipline is required to remove the material veil so that one can attain direct experience of spiritual reality: of the \u0101tm\u0101<\/em>, the self, and of param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>, the superself or God.<\/p>\n

The necessity for such a disciplined life is stated succinctly in Bhagavad-g\u012bt\u0101 (14.17<\/a>): spiritual knowledge depends on goodness, on sattva<\/em>. If our awareness is covered by the material modes of passion (raja-gu\u1e47a<\/em>) and ignorance (tamo<\/em>\u2013gu\u1e47a<\/em>) we will not be capable of direct perception of \u0101tm\u0101<\/em> and param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>. Therefore, we who undertake this project live a regulated and radically simple life designed to minimize the demands of the senses, to decrease lust, anger, greed, and so on.<\/p>\n

Modern materialistic culture fosters values and activities that expand the modes of passion and of ignorance, so it is necessary to insulate oneself from its influence. Spiritual culture has the contrary aim of developing goodness and reducing passion and ignorance.<\/p>\n

After several decades of practice in \u0101tma<\/em>\u2013tattva<\/em>, the science of the self, my own consciousness had become somewhat clarified and expanded. I had gained at least some awareness of my own spiritual identity, and, along with that, of God.<\/p>\n

A master of yoga named Kavi has stated (\u015ar\u012bmad Bh\u0101gavatam 11.2.42<\/a>) that for one practicing properly, three things develop simultaneously: devotion, direct perception of God, and detachment from everything else. This happens in the same natural way that for a person who is eating, satisfaction, nourishment, and relief from hunger increase together with every bite.<\/p>\n

In the yoga discipline, the practitioner realizes his or her own identity as \u0101tm\u0101<\/em> and also encounters God initially as param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>, as the interior, guiding superself, the self of all selves. In this experience we find the Cartesian key. For knowing God, the param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>, is something like knowing our own self. Thus the experience engendered total certitude in the experiencer. As one cannot doubt one\u2019s own consciousness, when that same consciousness has expanded somewhat, God becomes known as I know myself, for God is the very self of my self. Then I can no more doubt God\u2019s existence than I can my own.<\/p>\n

I can, of course, doubt my experience of objects perceived in this world. It is possible, Descartes noted, that one is being deceived by some evil demon. (Here he anticipated the premise of The Matrix<\/em> by some four centuries.) Even so, one still cannot be deceived about one\u2019s own consciousness.<\/p>\n

Knowledge of God is not like knowledge of the external world, of this table I write on, of the garden outside my window, of the people relaxing in the garden. In this case, I am spirit knowing matter. There is a far more intimate connection between me and God: Not only are \u0101tm\u0101<\/em> and param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em> of the same spiritual nature, but \u0101tm\u0101<\/em> is part and parcel of param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>. For this reason, once there is experience of param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>, doubting God becomes impossible. After that expansion of consciousness, God remains part of the content of every experience I have. I experience my own being as part of God\u2019s being.<\/p>\n

It is not that in this experience, I perceiving something novel, like a new next-door neighbor or the latest cool thing from Apple. Rather, with consciousness purified and expanded, I now perceive what had always be there, merely unnoticed, unrecognized, unacknowledged.<\/p>\n

In this state of expanded consciousness, I am aware that I cannot see anything without God\u2019s seeing it first, hear anything without God\u2019s first hearing it, and so on. I cannot doubt God\u2019s seeing and hearing anymore than I can my own.<\/p>\n

The experience of \u0101tm\u0101<\/em>\u2013param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>, which renders doubting God\u2019s existence as impossible as doubting one\u2019s own, is evidently not exclusive to my own or historically related traditions. A natural and unwavering certitude concerning God has appeared in advanced practitioners in many theistic traditions. Those traditions may have various theories (theological doctrines) about God and the worshipper, but, so far as I can see, the simplest and soundest explanation for the experienced certitude of advanced practitioners everywhere is found in the understanding of \u0101tm\u0101<\/em>\u2013param\u0101tm\u0101<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We can also conclude that we are made<\/em> for belief, for conviction. There is no way around it.<\/p>\n

Herein lies the foundation, I propose, for authentic conviction, for conviction arising from the opening up of the self. Without that, we seem contemned to verify Montaigne\u2019s observation: \u201cWe are, I know not how, double within ourselves.\u201d Authentic conviction may serve as antidote to the current global wars between modes of doubleness: Militant belief born from despair at its own unbelief clashing with militant unbelief born in denial of its own belief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Ravindra Svarupa dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n

In modern times, disbelief has so far entered into the essence of our existence, that both faithlessness and faith have become fundamentally two varieties of faithlessness. During Montaigne\u2019s time, religious wars of unbearable cruelty rent Europe. The absolute certainty of the raging antagonists began to taint conviction itself with bad odor. But Montaigne saw deeper. He descried the doubleness within the very certitude of the religious partisans. He recognized their zeal as a kind of cover up, overcompensation for a hidden, an unacknowledged, lack of faith: \u201cWe do not believe what we believe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6939"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26492,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939\/revisions\/26492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}