Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

IT is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most categorical of its canons is that a thing is always itself and cannot be anything else (it is the famous logical law of identity and law of contradiction). One is always one and cannot be two. So by extension the mind affirms if the reality is one it cannot be also many. If the Brahman is there, the world cannot be, and if the world is there, Brahman cannot be. There begins also the unending theological dispute that either God has a form or He is formless. He cannot be both at the same time.

What the mind forgets or ignores is that the law of self-contradiction belongs exclusively to the finite. It does not hold good in infinity. The Infinite is infinite because it has trans­cended the laws and categories of the finite, even as Eternity has transcended the temporal. In the transcendental consciousness the reality is single and multiple at the same time, simultaneously (although the conception of time is not there at all); also God is both with form and without form at the same time. The mind may not be able to conceive it but the fact is that, for one can rise above the mind and see and experience the reality.

There are other dualities that are confusing to the mind. It is said two objects cannot occupy together the same spot or position. One object must drive out another to occupy its position. Obviously this is a truth belonging to the material world – for it is said matter is impenetrable. But this law, however valid in the material plane, becomes less and less applicable in regions subtler and less and less material. Two

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movements or two vibrations of consciousness, may exist together without annihilating each other's identity, being a total identity.

And there is a law, a law of scientific rational inquiry which they have posited and called the law of Parsimony which means that a simpler solution to a problem is always to be preferred to a complex solution. But if it means that a simpler truth is more true than a complex one then we would be on a doubtful and even dangerous ground. To find a simple truth one may be tempted to slice off truth, that is to say, reject or ignore or shut one's eyes to some forms or aspects of the truth, even those that belong to its very essence. In fact the real world is not a very simple thing, it is complex to its core. Contraries and even contradictories co-exist in the universe and they have to be equally accepted in an inevitably complex solution. Modern science is in such a delicate situation. How can the same thing be a particle and a wave at the same time? How can a point be also a line at the same time? How to reconcile, assimilate, synthetise electric energy and gravitational force which seem to be two distinct and incommensurable entities governing, between them, the universe in its ultimate analysis? In other fields also, social and political, there are ideologies, forces that run contrary to each other but claim equal allegiance of man­kind.

There are no unitary solutions to these problems; the unitary solutions are constructions of the mind that lead nowhere except in a merry-go-round. We have to rise out of the mind and go beyond and realise that unity in plurality or plurality in unity is a self-evident fact, somewhere else than in the mind.

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