A Response to:
Doubt and Certainty in Krishna ConsciousnessOriginal article
by Suhotra Swami appeared in ICJ Vol. 3, No. 2

Lydia Gazziano

In the last issue of ISKCON Communications Journal an article appeared, written by Suhotra Swami that introduced an old philosophical question  the eternal, universal problem of knowledge, or how to define the value of an affirmation related by someone else. This problem has been discussed with sympathy and ability using a tale written by C. S. Lewis. In this tale there is a clever and diligent little girl that asserts to have visited a strange country called Narnia, passing through a wardrobe; but the real characters are the elder brother and an old eccentric professor. These two characters represent empiricism and rationalism respectively. We could condense and resume the two opinions with two sentences. The first one says, 'I can't believe because I didn't perceive what Lucy is saying.' The second one says, 'Nothing could be more probable. I don't guarantee that it's true, but science hypothesises the existence of innumerable possible worlds, so why couldn't Narnia exist?'

An old method to strengthen our assertions used in medieval scholastic theological tradition was the saying ipse dixit, with which they alluded that what we were saying was true because an authoritative person said it previously. The author of the article who presented this dispute, wants to call our attention to the fact that this kind of three-element dialectic is also present in the philosophical tradition referred to as the Vedas, and that the authoritative method, defined by the word sabda, differs in character and superiority by the previously mentioned Western ipse dixit.

Although I do not want to disagree with the final thesis which could be true, or at least tenable, I feel the need, for the sake of a productive discussion, to show some perplexities about the course of the argument that led to this thesis. It will be my intention to reconstruct the article bringing to light the strategies used, and then to try to rebuild, using in part Suhotra Swami's material and that taken from my reference stock.

The central question that remains the guiding thread of the whole discussion is 'How can I be certain that what you are telling me is true?' Suhotra Swami proposes the three solutions of the epistemological Indian tradition. These are pratyaksa (life experience), anumana (deductive method, which is used in this article as a synonym of logic) and sabda (or rather authoritative testimony, where the authority is represented by the guru, the Vedic Scriptures and the other religious practitioners).

The technique used to affirm sabda is, after the presentation of the three methods, to show that sensorial perception and logic are insufficient tools to acquire cognitive evidence. After dismissing the first two, it remains that only the third possibility can be the right one. This reasoning is not correct, because it is not definite that they are the only three possibilities, nor that, among these, there is an operating method.

I would like to focus attention on an intrinsic problem of the treatise about which method has the priority. In fact, this sort of discussion is destined to a petitio principii or circular course. This problematic has been discussed countless times and by countless philosophers; I will choose one of the easier and incisive formulations.

We have at our disposal a finite number of possible criteria of acquisition of certainty; we must establish which is the best, if there is one. However, to establish this, we need a criterion of choice and the one I choose will be arbitrary because I have not yet established the priority. This idea is simplified by the famous sentence of Wittgenstein, 'Every observation is soaked by theory'.'

Accepting the conclusion of hermeneutics and semiotics over the last decades, it is not possible to observe the world and then to theorise it. The way that I observe the world always implies a theory that selects and classifies in a certain way the countless psycho-sensorial data that strike me.(Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)

This brief digression on gnosiology helps me to introduce the next point. In Suhotra Swami's article, it is possible to distinguish two different linguistic and argumentative registers which are very distant from each other and, in my opinion, they are not compatible or justified.

In its pars destruens, the article faces the logic, pointing out its limits. This thesis is led with the support of contemporary logical and philosophical reflection. Within it, there appear some explicit and implicit references to B. Russel, K. Ferguson, J. Willson, A. J. Ayer and K. Popper. In the pars costruens that try to present the priority of sabda, the linguistic register is coloured by the unique style of religious institution; to show that sabda is the best method, the author takes for granted the fact that sabda is an effective method. As is in every good tale, this article also finishes with a happy ending:

As Srila Prabhupada writes in Bhagavad-gita As It Is: Perfect Knowledge, received from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is the path of liberation. Liberation of consciousness from the dictation of the mind and senses, and from ignorance and vice, is self-evident in the devotees who take to the path. And when a devotee comes to the end of this path of hearing the Vedic sabda, Krsna personally reveals Himself as Absolute Knowledge, the Absolute Knower and the Absolute Object of Knowledge. This state of full realisation of the truth is called Krsna Consciousness. (cf. Suhotra Swami, 'Doubt and Certainty in Krishna Consciousness', in ISKCON Communications Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 31).

Simply, the logic is contested by the logic itself and sabda is made valuable both by logic, that has just been refused, and by sabda, that has not yet been proven.

I should say that we need a little more courage to deal with such an issue; to open ourselves to the dialogue, sharing to the end the rules of the world we are talking to. If this could be the case, the solution of sabda seems to appear less strong because it will be at the same level of the other hypothesis, but at least in this option the topic will be coherent.

The following development of the analysis can lead us to suppose that sabda is a reliable method, and that in this case it is surely the best one. However, this surmation has no strong foundation because it is founded on a supposition, but I believe this is the price of comparison and of a real sharing process. The other solution, as coherent as the first one, is to offer new rules to conversation where the one who speaks is the tutor, who instructs the learner about an unknown culture without trying to get credit, according to the listener's parameter.

I am loath to admit that in the author's paper I have noticed a substantial closure to a deeper level of comprehension of the opposite theory; in fact I don't think that the counterpart has been treated with sufficient objectivity. The first sign of this is that the variegated and contradictory panorama of contemporary thought is compressed into the limiting denominations of 'modernists', 'modern intellectuals' and 'the philosophers', or rather rationalists on one hand and empiricists on the other.

The article contests the opinions of stereotype intellectuals rather than those who actually exist. It is true that some distinctions between rationalists and empiricists are still present, but it is very difficult to find someone who professes himself integrally like this, without perplexity, openings and grafts arising from other styles of thought.

The description of modern intellectuals in this article surely does not have all the philosophical updates as references, but represents only part of the contemporary schools, in particular logical neo-positivism which, even though it may be an important branch of present thought, remains partial and identified. Furthermore it has been surpassed and discussed by its own adepts.

Another sign of lack of comprehension is demonstrated in the way the author uses Cartesio in the last paragraph. According to him, Cartesio was not able to distinguish the soul from the mind. But in the culture where Cartesio lived there was no such distinction. In the European languages we have words such as 'psyche', 'mind' and 'soul' that in the course of time assumed different meanings; but they nonetheless come from a linguistic tradition where they existed separately and led to an unique meaning that is synonymous of life, with a particular reference to breathing. Therefore Cartesio has not confused the soul with the mind, he has simply used a different classification of reality. At this point, therefore, the only thing we can affirm is that the classification of the Vedic tradition is more detailed and more effective for those who want to adopt a certain way of life.

To conclude my critique, I want to re-examine the article's conclusion. Suhotra Swami gives three criteria by which we can sift the ipse-dixit and sabda. They are in summary:

1. know what the statement means

2. know the right way to verify it

3. have  good evidence for believing it.

Suhotra Swami asserts that to understand a word we must follow the discipline to which it belongs. Thus, to understand that 'sabda is the sound incarnation of Krsna', we have to accept the system of discipline (parampara) through which sabda is handed down. Then, in order to verify the statement 'sabda is the sound incarnation of Krsna', we have to consult guru, sastra and sadhu. Finally, it is possible to believe in the statement if we look at the development of consciousness reached by the listeners of sabda.

I would like to show the danger of the consequences of these arguments, which could ultimately be detrimental to the integrity of the tradition that we want to defend. In fact, in order to understand the meaning of the sentence in question, we must refer to the discipline from which the sentence comes; in this case it is to make the concept of parampara relative  that the only way to verify the authenticity of sabda is to ask those who assert it. What this means is that we can only understand the sense and superiority of sabda if we accept the paradigm it imposes on us. There is therefore no objective method that establishes its value independently from itself. Furthermore, a discipline is strongly tied to history and contingency; it acquires its terms from the context, it re-processes them for its finality and it transforms and is transformed by the surroundings. This is not necessarily wrong, but I do not believe this is our intention when we talk about parampara.

Moving on to the second part of my paper, I would like to suggest that we can look at the issue of sabda from another perspective, taking into consideration a suggested definition for it found in the Bhagavata Purana, Third Canto, Chapter 26, Text 33.

The text defines sabda as, 'what conveys the meaning (artha) of an object and is the laksanam (the clue) of the presence of an orator'. This concept can also refer to a passage in the Vedanta Sutra  (V.S. 4,4,22), where sabda is defined as the origin of matter, the means to possess things and the means of liberation from matter.

I think that these lines that deal with the idea of 'sound' related to 'meaning' could raise enthusiasm in many of those 'modern intellectuals'. The 'language' used over the last century and in particular, the last few decades, has been protagonist of the philosophy, and many researchers (fsuch as Heidegger, Deridda and Jacobson) have opened themselves up to a broad analysis and global approach to the language, a fact which gives a peculiar value to the sound; it also gives value to the sound as origin of the language and the philosophical source of Being.

Therefore sabda is a very special concept to be conveyed, because in it there is no longer distance between shape and content, between sound and meaning. Sabda, being the cosmic origin, is a relative or ancestor of the Biblic logos, where the sense of things precedes their presence, where the duty of being is priority to being itself. Fascinating discussions can be developed by reading Ricour, Heidegger and Maritain.

The definition of sabda as the means to possess things, to use or to make them, indicates that sound is also action, and this image recalls Austin's theory, presented in his famous book, Creating Things With Words. This concept also leads me to think about the semioticians I briefly quoted (Sapir and Whorf), who assert that people speaking in different languages inhabit different worlds. Things and the possibility to own and declare them as private property, have as conditio sine qua non the language or the significant sound.

In the conception of many Hindu schools of thought, to be in the world of matter means to deal with the divine energy trying to possess it; the primal and elementary way to possess something is to impose a name on it. To define etymologically means to put borders on our declared territory. The name is also what stays at the location of the thing, not the thing itself; it is what separates me from what cannot be named. Thus language, seen as a means to name things and therefore to use them, is also what comes between me and the thing.

Language, amongst all mystics, is the greatest limit between us and God. God is undefinable, unmentionable, indescribable. But the interesting Vaisnava solution consists of conceiving sabda not only as a means but also as a purpose. The sound becomes simultaneously shape and content, and when the object and its name stop being different things, the mystic revelation comes. God reveals Himself in sound or as Suhotra Swami says, 'sabda is the sound incarnation of Krsna'.

References

Derrida, J. Grammatology.

Gadamer, H.G. Truth and Method.

Heidegger, M. Holderlin and the Essence of Poetry.

Quine, W.V.O. The Two Dogmas of Empirism.

Rorty, R. The Consequences of Pragmatism.

Sapir, The Language.

Whorf, Cultures, Language and Personality.

Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Research.

_______________________________________________

A Response to:
NRM is a Four-letter Word: The Language of Oppression
by Mukunda Goswami, Vol. 3, No. 2

Timothy Miller

I sympathise with Mukunda Goswami's chagrin at having the term 'new' applied to ISKCON. Certainly that is an inaccurate characterisation for a religious movement whose clearly discernible roots go back several thousand years.

Mukunda correctly notes that 'spiritual movement' fits ISKCON more precisely than any phrase containing 'new', but that term does not distinguish between mainstream and non-mainstream movements. Unless a non-pejorative way to make that distinction is employed, the default option for non-mainstream groups will be 'cult', which is what we are all trying to avoid when 'new religious movement' somehow became the generally accepted non-pejorative nomenclature.

This terminological conundrum has no obvious, ideal solution. My own usage of choice is 'alternative religion', which I think conveys non-mainstream status in a non-pejorative way and avoids the potentially misleading 'new'. But that construction is not widely accepted; somehow 'new religious movement' has become the standard in academic discourse, despite the fact that we all understand that it is not accurately descriptive. I find myself forced to use it more than I would prefer, and in that I share Mukunda's terminological despair.

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