Page 101 - Wisdom Unfurled

object and also vanish in the attempt to know the Supreme Reality. There is no other way of knowing Reality except merging yourselves in it, to live in it and be of it and never think of ‘knowing it’’ as Revered. K.C.Varadachari puts it. This implies that we have to go beyond the best ways of knowing adopted in science and philosophy.
The Upanishads pray, ‘asato ma sadgamaya’, lead us from unreality to Reality; ‘tamaso ma jytoirgamaya’, lead us from darkness to light. Traditionally darkness is associated with avidya or ignorance and light is associated with vidya or knowledge. Master has declared that light is not our goal. Light is but an intermediary stage we pass through our march to the Ultimate which is neither darkness nor light but beyond both. The Upanishads did make an effort to indicate the higher altitudes in spirituality when they said that ‘neither the sun nor the moon shines nor the fire glows there’. But the Master exhorts us to soar far higher and farther than the highest states in consciousness ever fathomed in earlier eras of spirituality, imperience the state of Tam, the Complete Ignorance and not only that, He inspires us by His own lofty example to abide in that state as yogis of caliber and participate in the cause of the Divine which is transformation of the human consciousness to the Divine.
Means: Tarka, Sruti and Anubhava
The Master discusses the means for attaining to the knowledge of the Ultimate Reality and begins by observing straightaway, ‘Generally, philosophers have attempted to reach the innermost core of things through reason (tarka) and not through vision.’, thus almost equating reason with tarka, usually interpreted as logical debate. Tarka, the method of dialectics in the IndianNyaya school was initially a method of inference by which the opposite positions are shown to be untenable because absurd.
It is in argumentation and debate that this method is much used and tarka got gradually transformed into a powerful instrument in controversy and debate. It was fervently hoped that truth or light would emerge from the clash of the opposites or a synthesis will come out of thesis and antithesis. But the interest in ascertaining truth or reality is usually relegated to the background in the logic of the debate; the categories of logic initially devised for leading to truth or naya (nyaya should become naya, a lead, as it has been said) are subverted to score victory in debate. There is more thunder than lightening or illumination when scholars of opposing persuasions clash in a debate. Battling with words will not be able to lead us to Reality. The nature and limitations of ordinary reason or inference are based as it is on sense perception characterized by its own errors and possibilities of illusion. This type of inference will be utterly inadequate to grasp super-sensuous Reality which has