Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. [Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)]
These abilities and experiences work and can be verified because the structure of man’s reason (Logos) is identical with the structure of being, the universal reason (Logos), to include across all knowable and unknowable universes, of which there are n numbers, all interpenetrating, mutually immanent. As Parmenides says, Wherever there is Being there is also the Logos of Being.
During the Middle Ages, the recognition of this truth was called Realism, e.g., Bonaventura. Nowadays, that word means something more like its opposing attitude during the Middle Ages, namely, Nominalism, e.g., Abelard and, more powerfully, Scotus and Ockham.
All Americans since the beginning, really, are born Nominalists, whether they know it or not, so decisive is that attitude here. It produces our great scientific achievements, and it contributes to our self-confidence and zest for construction. It is not a wrong attitude.
Yet it is unsatisfying and indeed incapable in the quest for the transcendent unity of unambiguous life that compels men, groups and nations sooner or later. Then we turn to various forms of the monistic attitude (Realism) and finally meet an answer at the point called religion, which of course does not necessarily mean in organizations that proclaim a religious agenda.
The great thirst for Eastern Religion starting in the 1920s, especially in Chicago, and continuing through today in this country is just the quest for Realistic (in the Medieval sense) solutions to the quest for unambiguous life, or, the power of unity. Foreign-born answers to that quest easily appear more attractive than native-born ones when the latter have been lost sight of, as in our decisively Nominalist society.
The drive for intelligence – knowing the enemy – is, ironically and fortuitously, also a drive for the all-encompassing knowledge that is a hallmark of the experience of the transcendent unity of unambiguous life. That outcome may also be described as aware, cognizing movement between interpenetrating universes AND/OR simultaneous macro/microcosmic cognition of this specific universe in which we have taken/been granted form – particularly human form. When this aware/cognizing power is loosed and assigned in these contexts, particularly the latter one, significant intelligence achievements are possible, as the experience of Joe McMoneagle demonstrates.
Not surprised he was a LLRP. That job requires deployment of this cognizing ability that he has. Scots, which anciently include Irish – that is, Celts – have a sobriquet that has followed them around for centuries: Perfervidum Ingenium Scotorum: The intensely earnest character of the Scots.
The more one knows the less one publishes. Publishing is part of the search, not an outcome of it.
When Aquinas finished the Summa and laid it in his oratory as a gift to God, he realized that it was, as he said, so much straw, meaning, not wrong but just not the outcome, just a step on the journey, therefore worthless to him now that he had taken it. After that experience, he wrote hymns only, what today we would call poetry. (The hymn is the words, not the music, which is a tune to which the hymn is set.)
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
