The Riddle of This World

The Agnostic and the Vedantic Unknowable

I do not think anything can be said that would convince one who starts from exactly the opposite Viewpoint to the spiritual, the way of looking at things of a Victorian ag-nostic. His points of doubt about the value- other than subjective and purely individual-- of Yoga experience are that it does not aim at scientific truth and cannot be said to achieve ultimate truth because the experiences are coloured by the individuality of the seer. One might ask whether Science itself has arrived at any ultimate truth; on the contrary, ultimate truth, even on the physical plane, seems to recede as Science advances. Science started on the assumption that the ultimate truth must be physical and objective - and the objective Ultimate (or even less than that) would explain all subjective phenomena. Yoga proceeds on the opposite View that the ultimate Truth is spiritual and subjective and it is in that ultimate Light that we must View objective phenomena. It is the two opposite poles and the gulf is as wide as it can be.

    Yoga, however, is scientific to this extent that it proceeds by subjective experiment and bases all its findings on experience; mental intuitions are admitted only as a first step and are not considered as realisation --they must be confirmed by being translated into and justified by experience. As to the value of the experience itself, it is doubted by the physical mind because it is subjective, not

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objective. But has the distinction much value? Is not all knowledge and experience subjective at bottom? Objective external physical things are seen very much in the same way by human beings because of the construction of the mind and senses; with another construction of mind and sense quite another account of the physical world would be given - Science itself has made that very clear. But your friend's point is that the Yoga experience is individual, coloured by the individuality of the seer. It may be true to a certain extent of the precise form or transcription given to the experience in certain domains; but even here the difference is superficial. It is a fact that Yogic experience runs everywhere on the same lines. Certainly, there are, not one line, but many; for, admittedly, we are dealing with a many-sided Infinite to which there are and must be many ways of approach; but yet the broad lines are the same everywhere and the intuitions, experiences, phenomena are the same in ages and countries far apart from each other and systems practised quite independently from each other. The experiences of the mediaeval European bhakta or mystic are precisely the same in substance, however differing in names, forms, religious colouring, etc., as those of the mediaeval Indian  bhakta or mystic - yet these people were not correspon- ding with one another or aware of each other's experiences and results as are modern scientists from New York to Yokohama. That would seem to show that there is some- thing there identical, universal and presumably true-however the colour of the translation may differ because

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of the difference of mental language.

    As for ultimate Truth, I suppose both the Victorian agnostic and, let us say, the Indian Vedantin may agree that it is veiled but there. Both speak of it as the Unknowable; the only difference is that the Vedantin says it is unknowable by the mind and inexpressible by speech, but still attainable by something deeper or higher than the mental perception, while even mind can reflect and speech express the thousand aspects it presents to the mind's outward and inward experience. The Victorian agnostic would, I suppose, cancel this qualification; he would pronounce for the doubtful existence and, if existent, for the absolute unknowableness of this Unknowable.

October 10, 1932

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