About Life, Universe and Everything-II:What about God? Does he exist?

What about God? Does he exist?

Man has always believed that he has an immortal ‘Soul’

Plato believed in it any case, as already mentioned.  The Soul is the seat of the intellect and it predates the human body that we assume in this life.

Plato had a nice theory to describe the restlessness we all feel:

He said the immortal soul, when it enters the body and awakens in this world, is struck by the imperfections of the ‘beings’ that he comes across. And has a vague recollection of the perfect state of all beings.

The soul then experiences a yearning or a ‘restlessness’ to return to its true state and move away from this shadowy world. The soul yearns to be free and returns to its perfect state.

Aristotle also believed in an immortal soul. He had a more complex definition for ‘Soul’.

But not as complex as his definition of God.

Aristotle’ God was not a  simple human God.

God was a being incorporeal, invisible, spaceless, sexless, passionless, changeless, perfect and eternal.

I will not even attempt to decipher what he means by that.

But there are certain things that God is not, as per Aristotle.

God is not the creator. The Universe of ‘matter’ is eternal.

Then what is he?

God is the ‘Prime mover’, the ‘source’/beginner of motion.

Not just a mechanical mover, but he is the total motive of all operations in the world.

God is the final cause of nature.

The divine cause and purpose of things.

He is pure energy.

But that’s not all. God is also a ‘self conscious spirit’

He has no desires, no will, no purpose;

He is activity so pure, he never acts.

He is absolutely perfect, therefore he cannot desire anything; hence does nothing.

His only occupation is to contemplate the essence of things; and he himself is the essence of all things; the form of all forms; his sole employment is the ‘contemplation of himself ’.

And what about the immortal soul of Aristotle?

He qualified the immortal soul as ‘pure thought’ undefiled by reality just as God is pure activity undefiled with action.

Another interesting view of God was by Plotinus(204–270 AD ).

He said that world is a span between two ‘poles’.

At one end is the divine light, which is God or what he calls as ‘the one’

At the other end is absolute darkness, which does not receive light from ‘the One’.

This ‘darkness’ has no existence. It is simply the absence of light.

The soul is illuminated by light from ‘the One’. While ‘matter’ i.e earth and stone, is darkness  that has no real existence

For Plotinus – Everything is one- for everything is God.

The Stoics(4^th century B.C), in their understanding of the world stated that:

“ The innermost essence of the world is harmony and order, both true and beautiful”- and they named it as ‘Cosmos’.

And this Cosmos is ‘Divine’. And we are all parts of this ‘Divine infinity’.

There is no death. Merely rites of passage.

When we leave the body , we merely merge with the divine Cosmos. And achieve salvation.

This ‘salvation’ promised by the Stoics was nothing personal. Because  when you achieve this form of immortality,  you lose your identity when you die.

We just become one with the Universe, and merge with the Cosmos.

In summary:

Cosmos is divine. We are parts of the Divinity. We achieve an impersonal Salvation when we leave our body.

This is where ‘Semitic’ religions gain ascendancy.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam promised a ‘Personal Salvation’.

One only had to follow the commandments laid down in their holy scriptures and a personal salvation was guaranteed.

There was no concept of an ‘Ultimate reality’ as in Oriental religions.

The period upto the 1500s are considered the dark ages. The world plunged into superstition, bigotry and religion was distorted by the powers that be, to keep society in a vice like grip.

The father of modern philosophy, Descartes, revived theological discussions.

Descartes derived that ‘God’ exists by his powers of ‘reason’.

The reasoning is slightly weird:

Descartes had proclaimed : ‘Cogito ergo sum’.

And hence had proved that ‘He was Real’ as he was a ‘thinking being’.

He further said that there was one more ‘thing’ that one could be certain of.

And that was that everyone had  an idea of a ‘perfect entity‘.

Descartes said that  if we have an idea of a  ‘perfect entity’, then it cannot  come from an ‘imperfect entity’.

Hence a ‘perfect entity’ exists. So there is God.

How’s that for logic?

Spinoza as already mentioned considered the ‘substance’ as the sub-strata of existence of this entire Universe.

And this ‘Substance’ was ‘Nature’ was ‘God’.

God is the inherent in all things.

All is in God; all lives and moves in God.

God is the casual chain or process, the underlying conditions of all things, the laws and structure of the world.

A bridge which has been built owes its existence to its design, its structure and laws of mathematics and mechanics.

This is what God is to the world. The world itself is sustained by its structure and its laws; it is upheld in the hand of God.

God is not human in any sense. If a triangle could speak, then it would say God is eminently triangular, A Circle would say that God is eminently circular and so on.

The ‘Will of God’ – is the sum of all causes and laws.

The ‘Intellect of God’ – is the sum of all mind. The mind of God is all mentality scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world.

Spinoza  said that all is god and god is all. There is nothing in this world that is not god. So when one gets inside the toilet to pooh, even the pooh is god.
Question: So if the pooh is god, then we should worship it because gods are supposed to be worshiped?
Answer: No way! Why worship a fellow god?!!

Berkeley, who had said ‘there is no matter only mind’ had  a different take on God, which is similar to Advaitic theories.

The ‘material world’ is an illusion according to Berkeley.

He said the existence of God is far more clearly perceived than the existence of man.

God is “intimately present in our consciousness, causing to exist for us in the profusion of ideas and perceptions that we are constantly subject to.”

The whole world around us and our whole life exist in God. He is the one cause of everything that exists. We exist only in the mind of God.

Advaita proclaims something similar- that the world is simply an illusion.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Hume like Buddha rejected the idea of an immortal soul.

Hume said that the ‘Ego’ is in reality a long chain of simple impressions.

We have no ‘underlying personal identity’ or soul  beneath these perceptions and feelings which come and go.

Mind is “a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.”

We have no underlying “personal identity” beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go.

Again it was ‘Voltaire’ who did some plain talking on the concept of God. Below are a few quotes:

 “It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will.”

“The ‘first divine’ was the ‘first rogue’ who met the ‘first fool’.”

“Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”           

Voltaire’s  story  of  “The Good Brahmin” is interesting.

The good Brahmin says  “I wish I had never been born!”

‘Why so?”

“Because,” the Brahmin says, “I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost…. I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hand … I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.”

In a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor, the lady was asked if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made?

The Lady did not even comprehend the question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed from the bottom of her heart in the metamorphosis of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women.

Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, the philosopher  was asked:

“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automation who thinks of nothing and lives contented?”

“You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire.”

Voltaire also stoutly denied miracles and the supernatural efficiency of prayer. Here’s another of his stories:

“I was at the gate the convent when Sister Fessue said to Sister Confite: “Providence takes a visible care of me; you know how I love my sparrow; he would have been dead if I had not said nine Ave-Marias to obtain his cure.”

 … A metaphysician said to her: “Sister, there is nothing so good as Ave-Marias, especially when a girl pronounces them in Latin in the suburbs of Paris; but I cannot believe that God has occupied himself so much with your sparrow, pretty as it is; I pray you to believe that he has other things to attend to…”

Sister Fessue: “Sir, this discourse savors of heresy. My confessor… will infer that you do not believe in Providence.”

Metaphysician: “I believe in a general Providence, dear Sister, which has laid down from all eternity the law which governs all things, like light from the sun; but I believe not that a particular Providence changes the economy of the world for your sparrow.”

It was left to Kant, once again to bring about some moderation.

Kant said that any attempt, by either science or religion, to say just what the ultimate reality is, will fall back into mere hypothesis.

So such queries like:

Is the world finite or infinite?

Was there a beginning of time?

Was there a first cause? etc cannot be answered as ‘ time and space’ and ‘the law of causality’ are our modes of our perception and conception.

The answers to these require us to go beyond these modes of perception and conception. That is not possible and hence answers to these queries are unknowable.

These queries cannot be answered as we can never have any experience which we cannot interpret in terms of space and time and cause.

Thus even religion cannot be proved by theoretical reason. Religion cannot be based on science and theology. It is a matter of faith.

Hence all religions should be based, not on science and theology , but on faith and morals.

Logic and God

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful(as a Babel fish) could have evolved purely by chance, that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.

“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’

            “ ‘But.’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it?  It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED’

            “ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

            “ ‘Oh that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

 -Douglas Adams,Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It was Nietzsche(1844–1900) who bought a fresh perspective on the speculations on God and the immortal soul.

Nietzsche’s questioned as to why all ideals, whether explicitly religious or not, presumes an afterlife that is better than the ‘here and now’.

In Nietzsche’s eyes, such a fabrication negates us from seeing the beauty of  life on Earth.

He condemned attempts to deny actual truth in the name of false realities, instead of accepting the real as it is.

While Kant strove to find a coherence, an order in the world, by attempting to inject it with rationality, for Nietzsche such an enterprise was an utter waste of time and effort.

Nietzsche accuses all the grand scientific, metaphysical and religious systems, of having systematically ‘despised’ the body and the senses in the interests of reason and rationality.

Hence Nietzsche says:  “I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes.”

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?- Douglas Adams

Nietzsche's  formula for greatness in a human being was  ‘Amor fati’.

That is “ to want nothing to be other than as it is, neither in the future, nor in the past, nor in all eternity. Not merely to endure what happens of necessity, still less to hide it from oneself – but to love it…“

Sartre (1905–1980) also talked of the futility of trying to discover what God or human nature is.

He veered towards existentialism. He said:  “Existence takes priority over essence.”

Man has no soul or any ‘innate nature.’

Man must therefore create himself. He must create his own nature or “essence,” because it is not fixed in advance.

Santayana, (1863 -1952) even though a skeptic when it came to belief in God was wise enough to understand that a world quite divested of deity is a cold and uncomfortable home.

Santayana however says bluntly: “I believe there is nothing immortal…. No doubt the spirit and energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us; and, cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moved.”

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”         -Saint Augustine

About Life, Universe and Everything-I : "Is This world real?"

About Life, Universe and Everything-I

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.        - Douglas Adams

The scope of this blog is pretty simple.

It’s to have a glance as to how philosophers down the ages have addressed certain questions:

• Is this world real?

• What about God? Does he exist?

• Does life have any meaning?

From Socrates to Aristotle, Descartes to Hume, Kant to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche to Santayana……….

The answer to ‘Life, Universe and Everything’ is of course ‘42’, as explained by Douglas Adams.(Read- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

But of course, we are looking for a much deeper answer to the primal queries and we are not satisfied with a simple ‘42’.

If you are looker for a deeper answer, well……there is nothing much that you will find here either.

Primarily because, nobody knows much of it. Period.

As the wise Socrates (469 BC – 399 BC) said eons ago: ‘One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.’

So let’s start with the questions, one by one.

Is this world ‘Real’?

Turns out the answer might not be so simple after all. Philosophers down the ages have spent many a waking hour trying to answer it.

For instance Plato(424 BC – 348 BC) divided ‘Reality’ into two:

The world around us that we experience by our senses is not the true ‘Reality’, says Plato. It is just a ‘transient reality’.

Then what is the true reality?

The only ‘true Reality’ are the  ‘knowledge/ideas’ that we understand with our ‘reason’.

The world of ‘ideas’ acquired through our ‘reason’ or ‘intellect’ alone is ‘true knowledge’.

And how do we get these ‘ideas’ if they are not supplied by our sense organs? Where does this reason/intellect come from?

The immortal ‘Soul’ says Plato.

Plato believed in a soul that transcends the body.

Hence the Sense organs that are part and parcel of the body are not reliable as they are perishable. But intellect or ‘reason’ resides in the soul. Hence by ‘Reason’ you can acquire true Knowledge.

What nonsense ,said Aristotle(384 BC – 322 BC), a student of Plato. He  bunked his teacher’s idea that we are born with an innate ‘knowledge/ideas’, which has its seat in the ‘immortal’ soul’

Aristotle said that we only know what we have comprehended with our senses, and that is all that constitutes our individual consciousness.

We do have ‘innate intellect’ but we definitely do not have ‘innate ideas’

So the battle began. Reason or senses?

The cat –fights between philosophers are legendary. As the joke goes:

The First Law of Philosophy: For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher.
The Second Law of Philosophy: They're both wrong.

The battle lines remain drawn for about 1800 years or so.

The debate got a new lease of life when   Descartes (1596 – 1650) known as the father of modern philosophy, rekindled it with a few provocative queries.

Descartes started with the basics: He asked “What is real? ”

‘When we dream, we feel we are experiencing reality. What separates our waking feelings from our dream feelings?

‘”When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which, with certainty separates the waking state from the dream,”

So  “How can I be certain that my whole life is not a dream?”

So thinking, one thought struck him: It was that he doubted.

When he doubted, he had to be thinking, and because he was thinking, it had to be certain that he was a thinking being.

And thus he arrived at the grand conclusion: 

Cogito, ergo sum-I think , therefore I am.

There’s an old joke of Descartes of how he vanishes in a poof of logic:

Descartes walks into a restaurant and sits down for dinner. 
The waiter comes over and asks if he'd like an appetizer.                                                                                                      

"No thank you" says Descartes, "I'd just like to order dinner"

"Would you like to hear our daily specials?" asks the waiter

"No" says Descartes, getting impatient

"Would you like a drink before dinner?" the waiter asks

Descartes is insulted, since he's a tee-totaler

"I think not!" he says indignantly, and POOF! he disappeared.

For Plato it was ‘reason’ that was important, whereas Aristotle  relied more on his ‘senses’.

Descartes took a cue from Plato’s book – he relied not on his senses, but solely on his ‘reason’.

So Descartes was certain that he was ‘real’.

But what about the world as we see it?

Descartes thought the external world might be a fantasy. At least he was certain that the thinking ‘I’ was more real than the external world.

But there were certain characteristics which one could  perceive with our reason. These are mathematical properties, such as length, breadth and depth. These ‘Quantitative’ properties must be real.

But there were ‘Qualitative’ properties such as smell, color, taste etc that are linked to our sense perception and hence might not actually describe the true reality.

Thus there are two forms of reality.

One ‘reality’ is ‘thought’, and the other is the 'world', which he called ‘extended reality’ or ‘matter’.

The ‘true reality’ of the world is colored by our sense organs.

For a Bat ,the world is in ‘black and white’ only, as he does not have the sensory organs to recognize color. So trying to explain to a Bat, that the world is actually full of myriad colors is an exercise in futility.

Similarly we are also limited by our sense organs from recognizing the true reality.

So Descartes essentially divided ‘reality’ into two: Mind(thought) and matter.

He was what we call a ‘Dualist’

Enter Spinoza(1632 – 1677). He  did not consider ‘Reality’ in dualistic terms.

He coined two terms – ‘Mode’ and ‘Substance’.

The ‘Mode’ of Spinoza combined both ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ of Descartes.

Thus a ‘Mode’ was any  shape, form or even ‘thought’ that ‘true reality’  transiently assumes: you, your body, your thoughts, your planet etc.

And what is the ‘True Reality’?

It is ‘Substance’.

‘Substance’ is the ultimate reality. It is the very structure of existence, underlying all events and things, it constitutes the essence of the world.

And  ‘Substance’ is ‘Nature’ is ‘God’.

There is only ‘Substance’ and nothing else. Spinoza saw the world as ‘one’, hence he is considered a ‘Monist’.

How did Spinoza die? By ‘Substance’ abuse.

But Locke (1632- 1704) bunked the idea of ‘Substance’ or ‘God’. He was an empirist and he only believed what his senses revealed to him.

He said that we cannot have anything in our mind except what  we perceive first in the senses.

Before  we perceive anything, the mind is a ‘tabula rasa’ - an empty slate.

We eat an apple and by its taste and smell, we get the idea that we are eating an apple. Every knowledge that we gain can therefore be traced back to a simple sensation.

But can we rely on what our senses tell us?

In this aspect, Locke said something similar to what Descartes had said earlier. He divided ‘Reality’ as having two ‘qualities’: Primary and Secondary qualities.

Any mathematical quality such as length, weight etc can be objectively perceived, hence they are real  and  are ‘Primary Qualities’.

‘Secondary qualities’ such as color, smell, taste etc are not inherent. It is the effect of the outer quality on our senses. Hence we can only talk of their effect on our senses.

So the irrevocable conclusion that was being arrived at was that since only material things can affect our sense, we know nothing but matter, and must accept a materialistic philosophy.

If sensations are the stuff of thought, matter must be the material of mind.

The thought process tended towards materialism.

Not so fast said Berkeley(1684-1753).

Of course, Locke was right when he said that all our knowledge is derived from sensation.

Therefore all our knowledge of anything is merely our sensations of it and the ideas derived from these sensations.

So any ‘matter’ is just a bundle of perceptions.

We do not perceive things as tangible objects.

To assume that what we perceive has its own underlying substance is jumping to conclusions.

If we sense a table, by thumping on it, it is just a sensation of something hard, but you didn’t feel the actual matter in the table. In a dream also, you are hitting something hard, but there isn’t anything hard. So what’s the difference between your dream and reality?

If you had no senses, and you keep striking your thumb with a hammer, the hammer would not exist for you at all. Hence what you experience as a hammer is just a bundle of sensations, or a bundle of memories; it is a simply a condition of the mind.

All matter, then, is simply a condition of the mind. And the only reality that we know directly is mind. 

So now there was no matter ,only mind!

Overheard in 18th century England: "Did you hear that George Berkeley died? His girlfriend stopped seeing him."

But the debate did not end there for sure. Enter Hume(1711-1776).

He said, who says there is such an entity as ‘mind’? Just as we know matter by perception, so also we know ‘mind’, only by perception, only in this case the process is internal.

We do not perceive any such entity as the “mind”; we perceive merely separate ideas, memories, feelings, etc.

The mind is not a substance or an organ that has ideas; it is only an abstract name for the series of ideas; there is no observable “soul” behind the process of thought.

So there is no mind either!

Locke had said there was nothing but matter;

Which was bunked by Berkeley by proving that only ‘mind’ exists;

And along came Hume who said that no entity such as the ‘mind’ exists either!

So the joke going around was: “No matter. Never mind.”

Voltaire(1694 – 1778) did some plain talk on what he thought of philosophers.

Here are a few quotes:

 “As wise as it is possible for men to be;… he knew as much of metaphysics as hath ever been known in any age,- that is, little or nothing at all.”

“Every chief of a sect in philosophy has been a little of a quack.”

“The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women.”

“Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”           

It took a Kant(1724–1804) to restore some sanity to the proceedings.

Kant agreed with empiricists that knowledge comes only through our senses.

 But hold on, he said- “Not all knowledge”.

The mind of man is not just a  ‘tabula rasa’ or an empty slate as Locke supposed, nor is it, as Hume, theorized a mere abstract name for the series or group of mental states.

Mind is an active organ which functions in three stages:

First stage: It receives sensations through its sense organs;

Second stage: it further applies the sensations received  to ‘forms of perception’

Third stage: It thereafter carries out  coordination of the perceptions so developed into ‘conceptions’.

What are these ‘forms of perceptions’ that mind uses in the second stage?

Space and time, says Kant.  Any sensation that we experience will not have any meaning if it is not ascribed in ‘space’ and ‘time’.

The sensations which have been received are ‘catalogued’ in ‘space’ and ‘time’ by the mind.

Thereafter the mind forms ‘conceptions’ by following the ‘law of causality’.

The  ‘Law of causality’, states : Human mind perceives everything as  a  matter of ‘cause and effect’.

A man, when he sees a ball coming  towards him will try to see where it comes from. But a cat will run after the ball without thinking where the ball came from. That is the ‘Law of causality’, which is a primary human condition.

Kant further says ‘Space and Time’ are not concepts that exist independently. They are also conditions of the human mind.

We are conditioned to think in terms of ‘space’ and ‘time’ as also the ‘law of causality’.

So to get back to Locke’s statement that Mind is a ‘Tabula Rasa’. The answer is ‘no’, as per Kant.

Because the concepts of ‘space and time’ and the ‘law of causality’ exist in the mind even before we have any experience.

They are a priori.

So, what about the world? Is it real?

Kant says we cannot say for sure.

Of course, unlike Berkeley he did not deny that the world exists.

The world that we experience is of course what we know through our senses and thought.

What it ‘really’ is we cannot know.

We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them; through the unique manner of human mind’s proclivity to put all sensations through the rigmarole of ‘space and time’ and the ‘law of causality’.

Science is naïve - as it supposes that it is dealing with reality. But philosophy realizes that the world is just a bundle of sensations, perceptions and conceptions and true reality can never be known.

Hinduism  has also an interesting take on ‘Reality’ too.

Analogous to Spinoza’s ‘Substance’ the wise seers also talks of one ‘Super Self’ or ‘Supreme Consciousness’ which permeates the entire world -  meaning you and  me; the entire world of sentient and non-sentient beings; the universe itself and anything else you can think of.  

Hinduism says there is nothing, but the ‘Self’. The whole purpose of this existence is to comprehend the underlying reality of the ‘true self’. For this purpose Man gets reborn again and again till he is able to get rid of his attachment to this illusory world and become one with ‘Reality’.

In Advaitism, a branch of Hinduism, however, this concept of the ‘illusory world’ goes one step further.

Advaita does not stop at just conceptualizing a ‘Supreme Self ‘ which pervades everything. It says ‘Self’ is the only thing that exists. Rest everything is a ‘Maya’ or a ‘illusion’.

Meaning that everything else, apart from the ‘Self’ is ‘Unreal’.

And why do we not see this reality of the ‘Self’? It is because of our ignorance. This can be explained in the metaphor of a rope and a snake:

“Imagine entering a darkened room and you see dimly, lying in the middle of the floor, a snake ready to strike. You run away scared, and after a little while, mustering up courage, re-enter the room, now armed with a large stick and a good torch. Shining the torch on the floor, you see now that the ‘snake’ was actually a coiled piece of rope.

In the same way, because of our ignorance (=darkness), we  see what appears to be a world of discrete objects, the creation(= snake). When we bring in a torch( =gain ‘self’ knowledge) we discover that we are imposing false names and forms on what is in fact our own ‘Self’.”

This  idea of ‘Non-Duality’ of reality is essentially Adi Shankaracharya’s interpretation of the Vedas and Upanishads. There are other branches such as Shaivism which do not  consider the world to be a dream. They say that this world is ‘real’ but transient, but the ultimate Reality is of course the ‘Supreme Self’.

But  Buddha did not buy this theory of the ‘supreme self’. 

He bunked the entire idea of a ‘Supreme Self’ as a delusion.

Unlike others, Buddha was no armchair specialist. He walked the talk, and followed severe penances and followed the Yogic instructions to the letter in an attempt to achieve and understand the ‘Self’ as had been promised by the Sages.

Buddha’s experience was that the Yoga and penances laid down, gave practitioners only a brief respite from suffering.

That , according to him would be a contradiction in terms, 
since Nirvana was eternal.

He thus walked his own path and attained Nirvana. In his teachings, Buddha taught his philosophy of the ‘Four Noble truths’ and the ‘Eight fold path’, while completely rejecting the concept of an eternal, unchanging ‘Self’.

Buddha saw life as an unbroken succession of mental and physical processes which keep people in a continual state of change. (akin to what Hume said later)

A Buddhist walks up to a hotdog stand and says, make me one with everything. The Buddhist pays the vendor and asks for change. The vendor says, change comes from within.

“The infant is not the same as the adult; I am not the same today as I was yesterday. There is nothing of which I can say “this is mine,” said Buddha.

There is thus no “I” or unalterable ego.

Buddha also rejected the idea of an eternal soul.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”

Role of Sam Manekshaw in the 1971 war

Lieutenant General J F R Jacob, in his autobiography, “An Odyssey in War and Peace”, has heaped criticism on Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, the Army Chief during 1971 war,and the then Army Commander, Eastern Command Lieutenant General J S Arora for their role during the war in which India was instrumental in creation of Bangladesh.

Lieutenant General Jacob, then Chief of Staff, Eastern Command has unabashedly claimed that he had masterminded the 1971 campaign while both the Field Marshal and General JS Arora were actually incompetent figureheads who garnered the credit.

It is not surprising that Lieutenant General Jacob's Books 'Surrender at Dacca' and his recent autobiography are widely read and regurgitated. There are absolutely no authoritative books on the Field Marshal, which scrutinize the role played by Sam in the 1971 war. So there will be speculations and slander and mud slinging and eulogizing. but no attempt at an appraisal of the military achievements of the Field Marshal.

Imagine- India's first Field Marshal, who gave us such an important victory, which gave birth to a nation - but no objective history on the legend exists in the country today. All we have are the jokes that Manekshaw cracked and how he liked to dance.

That Indians have no sense of history is an understatement.

I had chanced upon Lieutenant General Jacob in Delhi a couple of years ago in Nov 2009 and got to chat a while with him. Seeing my interest in his earlier book, 'Surrender at Dacca', he kindly consented to email me Pakistan's assessment of the 1971 war,which corroborates General Jacobs version that he was the mastermind behind the victory in Bangladesh. Given below is a copy of his email to me sent in Dec 2009:

PAKISTANI ASSESSMENTS OF OPERATIONS IN EAST PAKISTAN

There has been much disinformation put out in India about the 1971 operations. My book 'Surrender at Dacca' was published in 1997. I personally gave copies to Manekshaw and Arora. There were no rejoinders.
Am forwarding an extract from Shuja Nawaz's book CROSSED SWORDS . [ He was the brother of a former Pak Army Chief ]

" In the words of a later Pakistan National Defence College study of the war, the Indians planned and executed their offensive against East Pakistan in a text book manner. It was a classic example of thorough planning,minute coordination, and bold execution. the credit clearly goes to General Jacob's meticulous preparations in the Indian Eastern Command.
[ page 301 ]
[note the only public surrender in history]


Niazi had sent a cease fire proposal that specified a withdrawal of armed forces, para military and ethnic minorities under the UN. The government was to be handed over to the UN . No war crimes trials were to be held. There was no mention of India in his proposals. Ihe cease fire proposals were rejected outright by Bhutto. A cease fire was announced by India on 15 Dec.
Jacob was asked by Manekshaw on the morning of 16 Dec to just go and get a surrender. Jacob negotiated the surrender with Niazi on his draft instrument of surrender that he had earlier sent to Delhi but remained unconfirmed from Delhi .
it is relevant to quote from the Hamood Ur Rehman commission of inquiry questioning Lt Gen Niazi--

' Gen Niazi, when you had 26,400 troops in Dacca and the Indians only a few thousand outside and you could have fought on for at least two more weeks , the UN was in session ,[ Polish resolution-Soviet bloc ] and had you fought on even for one more day the Indians would have had to go back, why then did you accept a shameful ,unconditional ,public surrender and provide a guard of honour commanded by your ADC. '

Niazi replied ' i was compelled to do so by Gen Jacob who blackmailed me into surrendering etc etc. this he has repeated in his book ' 'Betrayal of East Pakistan '.
Suppose Jacob had failed to convert Niazi's proposed cease fire under the UN into an unconditional public surrender, the only one in history? the UN would have ordered a withdrawal and taken over the administration.
Thus India became a regional super power.

The above Pakistani excerpts hopefully put events in their proper perspective."




Recently I had happened to meet Lieutenant General Depinder Singh,who was the MA to the Field Marshal in 1971 when Sam was the Chief of Army Staff. The General has also authored a book on the Field Marshal -'Soldiering with Dignity'

The General Officer had his own take on General Jacob's version of the events. He had prepared a small write up on it and had shared it with me. Given below is the article by General Depinder reproduced verbatim:

THE 1971 WAR REVISITED

1. Lt Gen JFR Jacob has written one more book about his experiences in war and peace. Such books, written by military leaders, are to be welcomed as coming generations can read and learn from experiences contained therein. I have not read the book but a few newspapers and atleast one periodical have published reviews and I have perused these. Some of the views expressed by the author are patently unfair and I write this both to try and correct distortions and, more importantly, to reply on behalf of more eminent military leaders who have since passed on to the great beyond. I was Military Assistant to the Chief of Army Staff during the period 1969-1973 and, therefore, while junior in rank to General Jacob, had a seat where the screen was wider. Later I was to serve under General Jacob; I found him to be kind, considerate, fair and courteous, always displaying impeccable integrity and character. Therefore it is all the more mystifying to find him levelling unfair and unwarranted criticism.

2. Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, who was Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) at the time of the 1971 war is accused of lacking strategic sense; not designating Dacca as the main objective; and being obsessively concerned that China would intervene in the war. Additionally, Lt Gen JS Aurora, who commanded Eastern Army during the 1971 war and to whom General Jacob was Chief of Staff in the rank of Major General , is accused of sycophancy; also that Sam Manekshaw did not like the Army Commander.

3. What is strategy? The Websters Dictionary defines strategy ‘as the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war’. In laymans language strategy means the creation of a favourable environment so that the achievement of the national aim is facilitated.
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4. On 25 March 1971 when Pakistan cracked down on its eastern wing, the Prime Minister (PM), Mrs Indira Gandhi, was briefed by the COAS late in the evening in the Army Headquarters Operations Room. On completion of the briefing she asked what we could do to ameliorate the suffering of the people of East Pakistan. The COAS replied that since he had not been permitted to enroll ‘badmashes’ and army formations were widely dispersed overseeing elections, there was nothing he could do at the moment. The PM smiled, thanked him and left. Therefore the claim that, around this time, the COAS ordered the Chief of Staff of Eastern Command, bypassing the Army Commander, to commence offensive action is preposterous. What must have happened is that some cautionary orders would have been issued from Army Headquarters and memories of these may have created a mistaken impression in General Jacob’s mind writing many years after the event. In any case, if an order was issued, how could it have been refused by any soldier let alone a staff officer? In the next few days the BSF was directed to examine the possibility of creating pinpricks along the Indo-East Pakistan border to divert the attention of the Pakistan Army from the genocide they were engaged in. Therefore, the assertion that Mr Rustomji, Director, BSF at the time was planning to ‘invade’ East Pakistan is equally absurd.

5. A few days later when the full cabinet met to consider the situation, the COAS was invited to attend. With almost every minister urging immediate armed intervention, the COAS was the lone voice counselling delay citing the following reasons :-

(a) The Army was widely dispersed at the time, overseeing elections in Assam and Bengal. Units and formations would need time to move back to parent cantonments, marry up with heavy equipment, re-equip and reorganize before they were ready for war.
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(b) The modernization process of the armed forces was way behind schedule (sounds familiar!).

(c) The northern passes were fast opening up and the chances of Chinese intervention was very real.

(d) The monsoons were due shortly, flooding the rivers and countryside in East Pakistan making offensive operations time consuming and more difficult.

(e) World public opinion needed to be moulded to see India as a victim rather than the matter being seen as an internal affair of Pakistan.

(f) Existing infrastructure would permit the opening of only one axis of attack from West Bengal. Time was needed to develop infrastructure for opening more axes from Tripura and Meghalaya.

6. The PM, farsighted and visionary as she was, saw merit in the recommendations of the COAS; closed the meeting and, a day or so later, gave the COAS permission to start operations at a time of his choosing. This was an extraordinary display of strategic sense on the part of Sam Manekshaw, not to mention an incredible show of character, and a rare display of statesmanship on the part of the PM. To diagress slightly, some years later, harsh criticism emanated from another writer of military history, Maj Gen DK Palit, who felt we should have intervened in April 1971 to save lives in East Pakistan. He conviently chose to forget the consequences of starting a war without proper preparation as happened in 1962 against the Chinese. He was Director Military Operations at the time. Some people will never learn. Sam Manekshaw stood firm and had his way to create the right circumstances that eventually resulted in a great victory.


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7. Criticism is also directed over Dacca not being designated as the main objective. When operational plans were being finalised, it was quite clear that speed would be of the essence as world public opinion notwithstanding, the US and China would mount pressure in the security council to stop operations. Therefore the aim was to capture maximum territory in the shortest possible time. Designating Dacca as the main objective would have negated the prime requirement of speed not to mention that it would give Eastern Command two contradictory aims, i.e, capture Dacca and occupy maximum territory in the shortest possible time. When operations commenced on 3 December 1971, the advances were so swift with Pakistan Army defences bypassed, that it became apparent that the apprehension about Dacca being defended in strength was no longer valid. In light of this, around 9 December 1971, Dacca was designated as the objective. This change of plan in the light of developing situations, showed flexibility, another essential quality of a military leader.

8. The next item on the criticism agenda concerns, what General Jacob terms, Sam’s obsession with China intervening. While General Jacob saw the War through the narrow prism of one sector, the COAS, with many more inputs, was seeing a much wider screen. Also, radio intercepts between East and West Pakistan, with the former clamouring for assistance from the ‘Yellow’ and ‘White’ brothers and the wests reassurances that they were ‘coming’ created the justifiable concern. So, rather than terming this as an ‘obsession’ it has to be viewed as prudence, more so as the white brothers did actually venture into the Indian Ocean. In any case, during the first week of December satellite pictures provided by the USSR confirmed that there were no abnormal Chinese moves. Hence the release of two brigades from the Indo-Tibet border sought by Eastern Command was really no secret from the COAS as claimed by the Author.
 
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9. Next we come to the amazing criticism leveled against the Army Commander, Lt Gen JS Aurora. To begin with Gen Aurora was no pushover as a small incident that occurred will confirm. The COAS wanted to speak to the Army Commander one day. He was not available and so also were the other senior officers, the Chief of Staff and Brigadier General Staff. When they finally did get to talk, the COAS mentioned the absence of all three to which the reply was, ‘now you are going to teach me how to run my Army’. How do I know this? I know, because I was listening to the conversation as, those days the MA’s telephone did not get disconnected when the COAS was on the line and the MA was expected to remain on listening watch. After the ceasefire the PM wanted the COAS to take the surrender. He graciously declined stating that it was General Aurora’s victory and he would take the surrender. Does this show dislike ?

10. Remaining with Gen Aurora an incident is referred to where, as host, he poured a drink for the COAS, and Mr DP Dhar a close friend of Sam and, at the time, Chairman of the Policy Planning Division in the External Affairs Ministry. Now I ask you, is it degrading for a host to do this ? It is very much part of hospitality, especially Indian hospitality, for a host to offer a drink to a guest. General Aurora was a great military leader and he discharged the heavy responsibilities that were entrusted to him with great competence and elan.

11. I will conclude with an old saying “Victory has many parents, defeat is an orphan.” Let there be no doubt in anyones mind, the military architect of the great victory in 1971 was Sam Manekshaw.