Bab 13
Sisi nyata dan tersembunyi dari kehidupan. Positivisme sebagai studi tentang aspek fenomenal kehidupan. Apa yang merupakan 'dua dimensi' dari filsafat positivis? Membayangkan segala sesuatu di satu bidang, dalam satu urutan fisik. Aliran mengalir di bawah bumi. Apa yang dapat dipelajari oleh studi kehidupan, sebagai sebuah fenomena? Dunia artifisial yang dibangun sains untuk dirinya sendiri. Tidak adanya, pada kenyataannya, fenomena lengkap dan terisolasi. Perasaan baru dunia.
There are visible and hidden causes of phenomena, there are visible and hidden effects. Let us take an example. In all the text-books on the history of literature it is said that in its time Werther produced in Germany an epidemic of suicides. What did produce these suicides? Let us now imagine that some 'scientist' appears who, being interested in the fact of increased suicides, begins to study the first edition of Werther according to the methods of exact positivist science. He weighs the book, measures it by the most precise instruments, notes down the number of pages, makes a chemical analysis of the paper and the printer's ink, counts the number of lines on each page, the number of letters and the number of punctuation marks and, finally, he calculates how many times the letter A is repeated in Werther, how many times the letter B, how many times the question mark, and so on. In a word, he does all that pious Muslims used to do with the Koran of Mohammed. And, on the basis of his investigations he writes a treatise on the relation of the letter A of the German alphabet to suicides. Let us imagine another scientist who, studying the history of painting, decides to put it on a scientific basis and undertakes a long series of analyses of the pigments used in famous paintings with the object of defining the causes of the different effects produced on us by different paintings. Let us imagine a savage, 'studying' a watch. Let us suppose that the savage is intelligent and cunning. He has taken the watch to pieces and has counted all the wheels and screws, has counted the number of teeth on each wheel and knows the watch like the palm of his hand. The only thing he does not know is - what it is for. Nor does he know that the hand travels round the dial in twelve hours, i.e. that one can tell time by the watch. All this is 'positivism'. We are too accustomed to 'positivist' methods and fail to notice that they lead to absurdities and, if we seek the explanation of the meaning of something, they completely fail to achieve this. The truth is that for explaining the meaning positivism is no good. Nature is for it a closed book of which it only studies the outer aspect. In the matter of studying the action of nature positivist methods go very far, as is proven by all the innumerable achievements of modern technical sciences, including aviation. But everything in the world has its definite sphere of action. Positivism is very good when it seeks an answer to the question how something operates in given conditions. But when it attempts to go beyond its definite conditions (time, space and causation), or begins to assert that outside the given conditions nothing exists, it obviously trespasses on a sphere alien to it. It is true that more serious positivist thinkers deny all possibility of questions 'why' and 'wherefore' in 'positivist investigation'. Positivist philosophy regards the search for meaning and purpose as almost an absurdity. There is, of course, more truth in this, because teleology, from the positivist point of view, is indeed an absurdity. But as a matter of fact the positivist point of view is not the only one possible. The usual mistake of positivism lies in the fact that it sees nothing but itself and either considers everything to be possible for it, or regards as generally impossible many things that are actually quite possible but not for positivist study. However, mankind will never stop seeking answers to the questions why and wherefore. In relation to nature a positivist scientist is almost in the same position as a savage in a library filled with valuable rare books. For a savage a book is a thing of a certain size and weight. However long he may puzzle over the purpose of this strange thing, he will never understand it by its appearance, and the content of the book will remain for him the unfathomable noumenon. And the contents of nature are just as unfathomable for a positivist scientist. But if a man knows of the existence of the contents of the book - the noumenon of life - if he knows that a mysterious meaning is hidden under visible phenomena, it is possible that, in the end, he will get to the essence of the thing. For this it is necessary to understand the idea of the inner content, i.e. the meaning of the thing in itself. The scientist who finds tablets with hieroglyphs or wedge-shaped inscriptions in an unknown language, deciphers and reads them after a great deal of work. And in order to read them he needs only one thing: he must know that these signs represent writing. As long as he regards them as mere ornament, an external embellishment of the tablets, or an accidental design unconnected with any meaning, their significance and meaning will remain completely closed to him. But as soon as he presupposes the existence of this meaning, the possibility of grasping it arises. Every cipher can be read, even without any key. But one must know that it is a cipher. This is the first and indispensable condition. Without it nothing can be done. The idea of the existence of the visible and the hidden aspects of life has been known to philosophy long ago. Events or phenomena were admitted to represent only one side of the world, an apparent one, devoid of real existence and coming into being at the moment of our contact with the real world; a side infinitely small as compared with the other side. The other side, noumena, were regarded as really existing in themselves, but inaccessible to our perception. But there can be no greater mistake than to regard the world as divided into phenomena and noumena - to take phenomena and noumena as separate from one another, existing independently one from another and as capable of being perceived apart from one another. This is complete philosophical illiteracy, which manifests itself most clearly in dualistic spiritualistic theories. The division of phenomena and noumena exists only in our perception. The 'phenomenal world' is merely our incorrect representation of the world. As Karl du Prel has said, the world beyond is only this world strangely perceived. It would be more correct to say that this world is only the world beyond strangely perceived. Kant's idea is quite correct that the study of the phenomenal aspect of the world will not bring us nearer to the understanding of 'things in themselves'. A 'thing in itself is a thing as it exists in itself, independently of us. The 'phenomenon of a thing' is the thing in that aspect of it which we perceive. The example of a book in the hands of an illiterate savage demonstrates quite clearly that it is sufficient to be unaware of the existence of the noumenon of a thing (the contents of the book in this case) for it not to manifest itself in phenomena. But the knowledge of its existence is sufficient to open up the possibility of finding it by means of the very same phenomena the study of which would have been utterly useless without the knowledge of the existence of the noumenon. Just as it is impossible for a savage to come nearer to understanding the nature of a watch by studying the phenomenal aspect of it, i.e. the number of wheels and the number of teeth in each wheel, so in the case of a positivist scientist studying the external, manifesting side of life, its secret raison d'etre and the purpose of separate manifestations will remain forever hidden. For a savage the watch would be a very interesting, complex, but quite useless toy. Similarly, in the eyes of a scientist-materialist a man appears to be a mechanism which came into being in an unknown manner, infinitely more complex but no less unknown as regards the purpose of its existence. We pictured to ourselves how incomprehensible would be the functions of a candle and a coin for a plane-being, studying two identical circles on its plane. To a scientist who studies man as a mechanism, his functions will be equally incomprehensible. It is clear why this should be so. It is because the candle and the coin are not two identical circles, but two quite different objects, having a totally different meaning and use in the world which is higher than the plane-world. Similarly, a man is not a mechanism, but something having a purpose and meaning in a world higher than the visible world. The functions of the candle and the coin in our world are, for the imaginary plane-being, an inaccessible noumenon. It is quite clear that the phenomenon of a circle cannot give any idea of the function of the candle and its difference from the coin. But two-dimensional perception exists not only on a plane. Materialistic thought tries to apply it to real life. As a result curious absurdities arise, the true meanings of which are, unfortunately, incomprehensible to many people. One of such results is the 'economic man' quite clearly a two-dimensional plane-being which moves in two directions those of production and of consumption, i.e. a being living on the plane of production-consumption. How is it possible to represent man in general in the form of such an obviously artificial being? And how is it possible to expect to understand the laws of man's life with his complex spiritual pursuits - with the main impulse of his life being desire to know, desire to understand everything around him and within him - by studying the imaginary laws of life of an imaginary being on an imaginary plane? The answer to this question remains the secret of the inventors. But the economic theory attracts people as do all simple theories which afford a short answer to a series of long questions. But we have become much too involved in materialistic theories and see nothing beyond them. Positivist science does not fundamentally deny the doctrine of phenomena and noumena; it only affirms, in opposition to Kant, that by studying phenomena we gradually approach noumena. The noumena of phenomena are, in the opinion of science, the movements of atoms and of ether, or the vibrations of electrons. Thus science regards the universe as a whirl of mechanical motion or as a field of manifestation of electro-magnetic energy which, on being perceived by the organs of sense, assume for us 'phenomenal colouring'. Positivism asserts that the phenomena of life and consciousness are merely the functions of physical phenomena and are no more than a certain complex combination of the latter; and further, that all the three kinds of phenomena are actually the same, and the higher, i.e. the phenomena of life and consciousness, are nothing but different manifestations of the lower, i.e. of one and the same physico-mechanical or electro-magnetic energy. But one argument can be advanced against all this. If this were true, it would have been proven long ago. Nothing is easier than to prove the energetic hypothesis of life and consciousness. All that is needed is to obtain life or consciousness by mechanical means. Materialism or energetics are 'concrete' theories which cannot be true without proof because they cannot fail to have proofs if they contain even a grain of truth. But in actual fact these theories have no proofs; on the contrary, the infinitely greater potentiality of phenomena of life and mental processes as compared with physical phenomena points to exactly the opposite. The above-mentioned fact of the tremendous liberating, releasing power of psychological phenomena is by itself sufficient to place the problem of the world of the hidden on an entirely real and firm basis. And the world of the hidden cannot be the world of unconscious mechanical motion, of an unconscious development of electro-magnetic forces. Positivist theories admit the possibility of explaining the higher by means of the lower, they admit the possibility of explaining the invisible by means of the visible. But, as has been pointed out in the beginning, this is an attempt to explain one unknown by means of another unknown. There is still less justification in explaining the known by means of the unknown. And yet that 'lower' (matter and motion) by means of which the positivist theory attempts to explain the 'higher' (life and thought) is itself unknown. Consequently it is impossible to explain anything else by it. On the other hand, the higher, i.e. thought, is the only quantity we possess, the only thing we know and are aware of in ourselves, the only thing about which we cannot be mistaken or have any doubts. And, since thought can evoke and release physical energy, whereas motion can never evoke or release thought (a rotating wheel can never evoke thought), it obviously follows that we must strive to define not the higher by means of the lower, but the lower by means of the higher. And, since the invisible, such as the contents of a book or the purpose of a watch, defines the visible, we must also strive to understand not the visible, but the invisible. Starting from the false assumption of the mechanical character of the noumenal aspect of nature, positivist science, on which the view of the world of the majority of modern educated humanity is founded, makes yet another mistake in examining the law of cause and effect or the law of function - namely, it mistakes what is cause for what is effect. Just as the two-dimensional plane-being regards the phenomena which reach its consciousness as lying on one plane, so the positivist view strives to interpret on one plane all phenomena of different orders, i.e. to explain all visible phenomena as effects of other visible phenomena and as the inevitable cause of subsequent visible phen omena. In other words, it regards as having causal and functional interdependence only those phenomena which take place on the surface, and it studies the visible world or the phenomena of the visible world, refusing to admit that causes not contained in this world could have penetrated into it or that phenomena of this world could have functions outside it. But again this could be true only if this world contained no phenomena of life and thought, or if phenomena of life and of mental processes were actually derivatives from physical phenomena instead of being endowed with an infinitely greater hidden force than the latter. Then we would have been justified in examining the chains of phenomena only in their physical or visible sequence, as positivist philosophy does. But if we take into consideration the phenomena of life and thought, we are forced to admit that the chain of phenomena very quickly passes from a purely physical sequence into a biological sequence, i.e. one which already contains much that is hidden and invisible to us, or to a psychological sequence where still more is hidden. We must admit too that in the reverse transition into the physical sequence from the biological and the psychological spheres actions proceed, often if not always, precisely from those sides which are hidden from us, i.e. that the cause of the visible is the invisible. As a result we are bound to admit that it is impossible to consider chains or sequences solely in the world of physical phenomena. When such a sequence touches the life of a man or that of a human community, we see clearly that it often goes out of the 'physical sphere' and then once more returns to it. Looking at the matter from this point of view we shall see that both in the life of an individual man and in the life of a human community there are many streams which at times emerge upon the surface, breaking through in boisterous torrents, and at times go deep underground and become hidden from view, not disappearing altogether, but merely biding their time to emerge once more upon the surface. We observe in the world continuous chains of phenomena and we see these chains pass from one order of phenomena to another without interruption. We see how phenomena of consciousness -thoughts, feelings, desires - are accompanied by physiological phenomena, possibly even creating them, and give rise to a series of purely physical phenomena; and we see how physical phenomena, in becoming the object of sensations of sight, hearing, touch, smell and others, provoke physiological phenomena, and then psychological. But, looking at life from outside, we only see physical phenomena and, having persuaded ourselves that they alone represent reality, we may not notice the others at all. Here is where the enormous power of suggestion of current ideas makes itself felt. To a sincere positivist every metaphysical argument proving the unreality of matter or energy seems sophistry. To him it seems something unnecessary, annoying, interfering with the proper progress of thought, a senseless and aimless attack against that which, in his opinion, is alone firmly established, is alone immutable and lies at the foundation of everything. He impatiently waves away 'idealistic' and 'mystical' theories as he would a buzzing mosquito. . . . But the fact of the matter is that thought and energy are different in their essence and cannot be one and the same thing because they are different aspects of the same thing. If we were to open the skull of a living man and see all the vibrations in the cells of the grey matter of the brain and all the quiverings of the white matter, it would still be only motion, i.e. manifestations of energy, and thought would remain somewhere beyond the field of investigation, receding from it at every approach, like a shadow. When he begins to realize this, a 'positivist' feels the ground crumbling under his feet, feels that by this method he will never come nearer to thought And he sees clearly the necessity of a new method The mere thought of this makes him suddenly notice all around him things he had not noticed before His eyes become open to things which formerly he refused to see Walls, which he had built round himself begin to crumble one after the other and, beyond the crumbling walls, infinite vistas of hitherto undreamt-of possible knowledge begin to unfold before his eyes And then he completely alters his view of everything surrounding him He realizes that the visible is produced by the invisible, and that, without understanding the invisible, it is impossible to understand the visible His 'positivism' begins to totter, and if he is a man of daring thought, then one fine day he will see that precisely that which he considered real and true is unreal and false, whereas what he regarded as false is real and true He sees, first of all, that manifested physical phenomena often disappear from view, like a stream gone underground But they do not vanish completely, they continue to live in a latent form in some minds, in someone's memory, in some people's words or in books, just as the future harvest is latent in the seed And then they again burst out into the open, pass from the latent to the manifest, producing noise, uproar, motion We witness these transitions of the invisible into the visible in a man's personal life, in the life of peoples, in the history of mankind These chains of events go on continuously, interwoven among themselves, interpenetrating one another, disappearing at times from our view, and reappearing once again I find an admirable description of this idea in the chapter on 'Karma' in Light on the Path by Mabel Collins Consider with me that the individual existence is a rope which stretches from the infinite to the infinite, and has no end and no commencement, neither is it capable of being broken The rope is formed of innumerable fine threads, which, lying closely together, form its thickness And remember that the threads are living - like electric wires, more, are like quivering nerves But eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into the shine This illustration presents but a small portion - a single side of the truth it is less than a fragment Yet, dwell on it, by its aid you may be led to perceive more What it is necessary first to understand is not that the future is arbitrarily formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole of the future is an unbroken continuity with the present, as the present is with the past. On one plane, from one point of view, the illustration of the rope is correct.* The quoted passage shows us that the idea of Karma, evolved in remote antiquity by Hindu philosophy, is the idea of the unbroken sequence of phenomena. Each phenomenon, however small, is a link in the endless and unbroken chain, stretching from the past into the future, passing from one sphere into another, now appearing in the guise of physical phenomena, now disappearing in the phenomena of consciousness. If we examine the idea of Karma from the standpoint of our theory of time and space of many dimensions, the interconnection of separate events will cease to appear to us miraculous and incomprehensible. Since events, even the most distant from one another in time, are in contact with the fourth dimension, this means that, in reality, they take place simultaneously, as cause and effect. And the walls dividing them are nothing more than an illusion which our weak mind is unable to overcome. Things are linked together not by time but by an inner connection, an inner relationship. And time cannot separate things which are inwardly close and follow one from another. Certain other properties of these things make them appear to us divided by the ocean of time. But we know that this ocean has no real existence and we begin to understand how and why events of one millennium can have a direct influence on the events of another millennium. The hidden activity of events becomes clear to us. We understand that, in our eyes, events must become hidden in order to preserve for us the illusion of time. This we know, that today's events were yesterday's ideas and feelings, and tomorrow's events lie today in some person's irritation, someone's hunger, someone's suffering and maybe still more in someone's imagination, someone's fantasy, someone's dreams. We know all this, and yet our 'positivist' science stubbornly continues only to see the sequence of visible phenomena, i.e. regards each visible or physical phenomenon as the effect of only another physical phenomenon, just as visible. This tendency to see everything on one plane, this reluctance to recognize anything outside that plane, narrows our view so terribly that it prevents us from grasping life in its entirety. Together with the materialistic attempts to explain the higher as a function of the lower, it is the chief obstacle to the development of our knowledge, the main cause of dissatisfaction with science, of complaints about the bankruptcy of science and of its actual bankruptcy in many respects. Dissatisfaction with science is well grounded and complaints of its insolvency are perfectly justified, because science has actually come to an impasse from which there is no way out, and it is only a matter of time before it is openly admitted that its main tendencies have led it completely astray. We may say - not as a supposition but as a definite affirmation -that the world of physical phenomena represents as it were a section of another world, which also exists here, and the events of which take place here, but invisibly to us. Nothing is more miraculous and supernatural than life. Take a street of a large town, in all its details, and you will get an enormous diversity of facts. But how much is hidden behind these facts and cannot be seen at all! How many desires, passions, greedy and covetous thoughts, how much suffering both petty and great, how much deceit, falsity, lies, how many invisible threads - sympathies, antipathies, interests - linking this street with the whole world, with all the past and all the future. If we picture all this to ourselves we shall see clearly that a street cannot be studied merely by what is visible. We must probe deeper. The complex and vast phenomenon of the street will not reveal its infinite noumenon, connected both with eternity and with time, with the past, with the future and with the whole world. Consequently we have every right to regard the visible phenomenal world as a section of some other world, infinitely more complex, which at a given moment is manifesting itself for us in the first one. This world of noumena is infinite and incomprehensible for us, just as the three dimensional world in all the variety of its functions is incomprehensible for the two dimensional being. The nearest approximation to 'truth' possible for man is contained in the formulation: each thing has an infinite variety of meanings, and to know all these meanings is impossible. In other words, 'truth' as we understand it, i.e. the finite definition, is possible only in a finite series of phenomena. In an infinite series it is bound, somewhere, to become its own opposite. This last thought was expressed by Hegel: 'Every idea, extended to infinity, becomes its own opposite.' It is precisely this change of meaning which is the reason why the noumenal world is incomprehensible for man. The essence of a thing, i.e. the thing in itself, is contained in the infinite number of functions and meanings of the thing which cannot be grasped by our mind. And it is also contained in the change of meaning of one and the same thing. In one meaning the thing is an enormous whole including a great number of parts; in another meaning it is an insignificant part of a vast whole. Our mind cannot bind all that into one; therefore the essence of the thing withdraws from us as we strive to know it, fleeing before us like a shadow. Light on the Path says: 'You will enter the light, but you will never touch the flame.' This means that every knowledge is conditional. We can never embrace all the meanings of any one thing, because in order to do that we must embrace the whole world with all the variety of its own meanings. The chief difference between the phenomenal and the noumenal aspects of the world consists in the fact that the former is always limited, always finite, embracing those properties of a given thing which we can generally know as phenomena; the latter, the noumenal aspect, is always unlimited, always infinite. And we can never know the end of the hidden functions and the hidden meaning of any given thing. Properly speaking, they do not end at all. They can change endlessly, i.e. appear different and for ever new from new points of view, but they cannot disappear any more than they can end or stop. All that is highest in the understanding, to which we may come, of the essence, the meaning, the soul of a given phenomenon, from another, a still higher point of view, in a still wider generalization, will again have a different meaning. And there is no end to it! This is the majesty and the terror of infinity! Moreover, we must remember that the world as we know it does not represent anything stable. It must change with the slightest change in the forms of our perception. Phenomena which appear to us totally unrelated may be seen by another, wider consciousness as pans of one whole. Phenomena which appear to us completely identical may look totally different. Phenomena which appear to us as something whole and indivisible may in reality be very complex, including in themselves very varied elements which have nothing in common with one another. And everything together may form one whole, but in a category quite incomprehensible to us. Therefore, side by side with our view of things, another view is possible - a view as it were from another world, from 'over there', 'from that which lies on the other side'. But 'over there' signifies not another place, but another method of perception, a new understanding. And we shall begin to look not from here but from over there if we regard a phenomenon not as something isolated, but in conjunction with all the chains intersecting in it.