Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

When we see that everything is attached to the Ground, we do not ask for evidence because we see it. We are adwaitins, non-dualists.

When we see that some things are attached to the Ground, occasions arise when we feel a need for evidence and we dig it up ourselves. We are vashista-adwaitins, qualified non-dualists.

When we see only things without attachments — and, obviously, we don’t see the Ground — we feel a continual need for evidence and pester any and all to provide it for us. We are dwaitins, dualists.

However, operationally, the only evidence we will accept is that generated by our own senses and even this we don’t trust because we know the senses to be among the world’s crudest and least reliable evidence gatherers because their operation is closely affected by realms of the personality which have little and often negative interest in evidence collection. And even when we get evidence, it does not give lasting stability because, lacking sight of the Ground and everything’s connection to It, we are unable to grasp its integration. When we are dualists, and therefore, our requests for evidence are trivial.

There is one other circumstance in which we ask for evidence. That is the occasion upon which our fundamental stochastic structure has received such a jolt from the reverberations of a fresh insight that our entire cognitive array is temporarily — and usually seriously — destabilized while we look for the whats, wherefores and wheretos.

A newsman of the day — early 20th Century — quipped that the United States was prepared to give Philippinos a measure of freedom when they shall have stood still long enough to get measured.

Then, seriously, there is this: Measurements measure measuring means. Nothing more. All one has to say is that the measuring means do not make sense and one is relieved of any compulsion to examine evidence. It is in the nature of nature that there is no proving any of it because there is nothing outside it by which to measure it. Amrit is Amrit only to Amrit. There is nothing outside Amrit by which Amrit can be measured, validated, etc.

This fact of adwaithin logic — which is true logic — should be clear now. When every argument is a tautology — and every one is — there is no argument, therefore, no proof. Measurements measure only themselves. And from the other side, the object to be measured is incomparable and so immeasurable by anything other than itself. This is the case for all objects.

Wittgenstein and Godel, from different directions but to the same end, made this point earlier in this century. Zeno made it for the Pythagoreans, in some piquant terms.

The general principle is that nothing is provable because everything is adwaithin and therefore incomparable.

James Randi is not really trying to prove or disprove anything. He is an entertainer. The premise of his act, however, is a philosophical position of some history and wide appeal therefore adherence, which gives him a good house. That premise is the classical Nominalist (Ockham, Abelard) one: the only thing that exists is one I say exists. In psychology this is called autism. In politics it’s called either Fascism or Communism, depending on who is allowed to own property. With this premise, which is an epistemology of some elegance and great appeal, one can agree or disagree to anything at all, leaving one free to make decisions with reference to agendas other than ones having regard for facts.

An easy example is the classification of Jews as vermin — Himmler, constructing reality with disregard for facts — followed by appropriate action to efficiently eliminate (“solution”) them as one would any so categorized. The epistemology involved is simple, direct and honored by extensive use in this Kali Yuga.  For example, again, Stalin and Cossacks and Kulaks.

Another example is the classification of life as starting when a foetus is viable outside a womb — a condition measured, interestingly, by a calendar rather than an opinion from the subject — followed by appropriate action to eliminate it if the bearer desires or the medical establishment — staffed by more than a few doctors calling themselves Jews — needs it for biochemical experimentation or production.

The epistemology involved in Randi’s act and these examples is the same. In European history it is known as the epistemology of Nominalism.

So when I say Randi is right that one cannot prove the Amritha, I mean that he is right given his epistemology, which is all he is going to use this time ’round.

The thing is also unprovable because the maya-ness of maya cannot be proven (to try it would be tautological, which ipso facto cannot be taken for a proof) but also, and most importantly. because of Vedanta Philosophy itself.  In Vedantha we are aware that there is no second to anything. If there is no second to God, there is no second to anything. This fact gives rise to people saying they are God.

What has no second has nothing to be measured by. And again, what has no second has nothing to stand under it so neither can it be understood.

And if something cannot be measured it cannot be proved one way or another. It cannot be called truth (sathya) and it cannot be called maya. Maya itself is indeterminate and therefore unprovable. Maya has no second. It is the inseparable other. She. Maya and Truth at this level of the discussion are synonyms. But that is a high level of discussion and I do not mean to move there for any dwelling.

The more proximate level of discussion I wish to dwell upon is this one where we merely note that Vedantha Philosophy precludes effort to prove or to disprove anything because it assumes that there is no second to any subject by means of which that subject can be measured and thereby proved or disproved. Vedanthins discriminate, observe and enjoy. They cannot prove a thing because they have no means to that end.

And, in addition, Vedanthins are aware not only that a thing without a second has nothing by which to be measured and so proved or disproved but also that any measuring means measures only itself, nothing outside itself, because it, too, has no second.

Thus, both from Randi’s Nominalist epistemology and from our Vedanthin (Realist) one, we come to the same conclusion — a point worthy of note — namely, that nothing can be proven or disproven.

Kurt Godel demonstrated this without-a-second-truth earlier in this century by means of the mathematics of topology. His demonstration is the huge “monster” sitting in the background, shut in a tightly bolted closet of our so-called scientific community’s making.

It is a source of continual amusement to me that Roger Bacon, the founder of the scientific method, was a Franciscan Vedanthin. Without us Vedanthins, the world could not even tie its shoes, much less make toast. 🙂

Randi makes money from the phenomenon of unprovability because he is outside the protection of the Emperor.  We are not allowed to do that because we are under the Emperor’s protection. Personally, I think we got the better circumstance, but Randi would not agree to that.

Mention of the three yogas reminds him of “And another thing …!”:  the sense of distinction is different in each of the three stages of yoga.

In karma yoga (thamasic, no vedantha), it is vivid, and necessarily so.

In bhakthi yoga (rajasic, qualified vedantha), it is denied, and necessarily so.

In jnana yoga (sathwic, plenary vedantha), distinctions are present but not the sense that they are distinctions. Instead of distinctions, they are tinctions.

Some Gita commentary is from denying the sense of distinctions: a work of bhakthi yoga.

This observation mirrors an interesting discussion I had at Puttaparthi in 1971 with a fellow polio patient (Swami corrected that language, calling it “light paralysis”), Camille Lust, who went then by Kamala (meaning Desire; how Providence names us!).,

Kamala said that in the upper stages of awareness all distinctions fade away. I said that I think so but that they all come back again even farther on but without leaving any impression of being distinctions.

Chesterton mentions how for Francis a bird flying across a sky was not a bird flying across the sky but an arrow of Divine Light speeding prettily on an errand of salvation. A view from jnana yoga ….

Something like that ….

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA