Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Aphorisms of Intuition
Subhash Kak
Baton Rouge, 2006
Contents
Preface v
1. Introduction 1
2. The S utras 7
3. Commentary 9
4. The Self and Recursion 53
5. Languages of the Brain 61
6. The Fourth Way 69
7. Afterword 74
Index 75
iv
c Subhash Kak, 2003, 2006
Preface
This book is about the cosmology that underlies con-
sciousness, written in the style of s utras. It considers
questions such as freedom in a world bound by laws,
the connection between the particular experience and the
universal, art and its role, suering and beauty.
The s utras are presented in their Sanskrit original,
together with translation and commentary. The signi-
cance of these s utras to questions of faith and meaning
is also presented.
Baton Rouge, January 24, 2006 Subhash Kak
1
Introduction
These s utras came to me while I was on a Continental
Airlines ight from Washington to Houston on October
13, 2002. I wrote them down very quickly, perhaps in no
more than a few minutes. They encapsulate my intuitions
on the essence of Vedic wisdom, and they could be useful
in preparing oneself for the more complex texts of the
tradition.
The previous night I had given a lecture at George
Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia where the discus-
sion at the end took a philosophical turn. I was struck by
how our argumentation got bogged down in the attempts
to sort out the dening terms, which were understood
variously by dierent people.
In the Western tradition, this diculty is mitigated
by the fact that the concerns are generally regarding the
outer aspects of things that are less contentious. Since
Indian philosophy is concerned primarily with the expe-
riencing self, its questions of denition are more trouble-
some. This is the reason instruction in Indian philosophy
is also given by employing synthesis that is based on sto-
ries. But it is a common error to take word (sabda) in its
literal, surface sense as true cognition (pram an
.
a). Much
of contemporary academic scholarship has failed to sort
through the dierent layers of the Vedic narrative by con-
ating the symbolic with the factual.
The s utras tie together some common symbols used in
the Indian tradition to their deeper intuition. For some-
2 Subhash Kak
one who hasnt the time or the inclination to read the
diverse texts of the Vedic tradition, they could serve as
an introduction.
Why is sabda as literal word problematic? According
to the tradition (as in the Mun
.
d
.
aka Upanis
.
ad), language
can only communicate lower form of knowledge and true
cognition is beyond words. From the point of view of
language theory, the meaning of words is not determined
objectively, for it must be xed by context and other im-
plicit information. Without a proper denition of words,
a statement may be interpreted in dierent ways. Mod-
ern studies conrm the limitations of language and such
limitations extend to other formal systems.
Taking the literal sabda as pram an
.
a, we see commen-
tators parse the great declarations (mah av akyas) into
contradictory interpretations. The same surface sabda
may be interpreted as implying overlordship (svarav ada)
by one group and reductionism (nirsvarav ada) by an-
other! Such enormous dierence in meaning can lead to
equally dierent approaches to reality.
Rather than the question of ontology, most people are
interested in understanding themselves. There are ques-
tions like: Do we have a true self? According to the tra-
dition, this self is the perceiving I who is independent
of location and personal history, and this self is a unity.
But how does one separate this core of ones being from
the usual self who is known to us from our experience in
space and time?
Sometimes, the image of the child, or even an infant,
is used for the seeker in relation to Nature. Should the
seeker have the attitude of the baby monkey who holds
on to its mother, or that of the kitten, held by the cat by
her teeth? The baby monkey as well as the kitten may
be presumed to be in terror of falling, but there is more
of an active role by the mother cat. These images are
The Praj n a S utra 3
merely a means to intimate a structure to the projection
of consciousness in our individual, conditioned selves.
From a practical point of view, one may avoid the
problem of dening this structure by simply surrender-
ing oneself to the inner self. But how do we recognize
the innate spirit that we must surrender to? The prob-
lem is not any specic assertion (v akya), but rather the
method of taking the literal word as the validation of a
premise. The dierences become ultimately an expres-
sion of dierent aesthetic attitudes. Underlying the pro-
cess of knowing lies art.
Appreciation of art depends on the social experience
of the individual and inherited tendencies. For example,
my upbringing reinforced an ascetic aestheticism, a result
of my parents attitudes and circumstances, as also of the
months we spent in literal isolation in our rooms in the
long Kashmiri winter.
There exists an emotional angle to this question also.
We are born with a feeling of mastery, but as we grow
up we discover that things we desire are so desired by
others as well. The experienced life is a contest of wills.
Our failure in matching our expectations creates frustra-
tion, pain and disillusionment. We then use judgment
and interpretation, provided by society or created by us,
to explain why our desires cannot be met. The interpre-
tation could have a basis in morality or magic, and we
learn to see our childhood and the unfolding life through
its lens.
Art represents new interpretive lenses that we have
forgotten existed. It can be viewed as an escape from the
habits of our own mind. But the art that we appreciate
most readily is not radically dierent from our own modes
of seeing. To appreciate art that is removed from our own
necessitates a kind of awakening.
An aesthetic attitude is a combination, in varying
4 Subhash Kak
measures, of the dierent essences (rasas) of it. It is one
of the great insights of the Indian tradition that these
essences are supposed to be discrete, and perhaps this
idea emerged from the Vaises
.
ika atomic doctrine as well
as the idea of Ny aya that mind operates sequentially.
The basic rasas are counted to be sr
.
ng ara (eros), h asya
(humour), karun
.
a (pathos), raudra (anger), vra (heroic),
bhay anaka (fearful), bbhatsa (odious), adbhuta (won-
drous), and s anta (peaceful).
The feelings of fear and compassion are paramount as
we reect on how our ambition is thwarted by the fact
that the whole world is against us. One often calls upon
ones faith in a higher power or magic for rescue from this
situation, passing from materialism to a belief in spirit.
The recognition of the odds against oneself is a crisis that
almost feels like annihilation, but it could also be a new
beginning.
The seeker must be absorbed in the vra rasa of the
warrior. In the battleeld, theories of swordsmanship
are pointless talk, any moment could be the last, and,
therefore, he must be constantly awake to danger and
opportunity from all sides. There is no time to dwell on
any emotion but that of the immediate battle. This leads
to a very austere perspective.
The Vedic tradition insists that pratyaks
.
a, direct per-
ception, is the only way to validation. But it is the
pratyaks
.
a of the inner experience (advaitic or non-dual)
and not that of its description in terms of the evolution
of material processes. One can talk around it, but one
cannot speak of this direct experience. This gap between
true understanding and its description requires that
one use various methods of logical inference (anum ana)
and a proper enumeration of categories (pad artha) to ob-
tain insight.
By moving away from material causes to elds, mod-
The Praj n a S utra 5
ern science has recognized new categories that make the
process of inference of true cause somewhat easier than
before. It is now possible, for example, to study brain
processes that provide insight into the operation of per-
sonal consciousness. One may harness outer science to
infer aspects of inner science even though the sciences of
object and subject remain fundamentally apart.
The conundrums that remain are caused by the prob-
lem of change. The Vedic narrative does not describe
things, but rather transformations. However, our com-
monsense cognitions are sequential, inscribing relations
between objects. It is dicult to represent constancy in
change, as in the history of owers that blossom and fade
away.
Some philosophers consider only linguistic problems
to be worthy of study. But linguistic expressions ulti-
mately are about things and objects and they cannot
properly address the issues of the experiencing subject.
Although everything can be reduced to known or know-
able objects, the self cannot be so reduced.
Our normal experience is shaped by our habits of cog-
nition (sam
.
sk aras) that guide us between the polarities
of world-cycle (sam
.
s ara) and extinction (nirv an
.
a). The
personal journey continues until one has reached a state
where one transcends the fear of life and death, where
sam
.
s ara and nirv an
.
a become irrelevant. This state re-
quires the burning away of ones own sam
.
sk aras, to rise
above the normal ways of seeing. The Vedic prayer for
immortality is a prayer for this freedom, that liberates
from the ordinary conditioned behaviour, which is a state
seemingly beyond the noose of time.
But the Vedic way is more than a psychology to help
us confront our fundamental aloneness by stressing our
connections with all that surrounds us. If science is
the collection of invariances that lie behind the cease-
6 Subhash Kak
less change of the phenomenal world, the Vedic system
represents a science since it presents the cosmology that
lies at the basis of the subjective self nding objective
truths.
It took me some time to decide whether these s utras
should be called the Vij n ana or the Praj n a s utras. I orig-
inally picked Vij n ana but realizing that this word is now
generally taken in the sense of formal knowledge, I believe
Praj n a s utra is the better name. Ths subtitle, Aphorisms
of Intuition, was suggested by my brother Avinash.
2
The S utras
1. bandhu-paroks
.
a-yaj nah
.
vij nanasya tri-padah
.
The three feet of vij n ana are bandhu, paroks
.
a, and
yaj na.
2. deva-bh uta-jvatmanontaren
.
a bandhuh
.
Bandhus exist between the devas, the bh utas, and
the jv atman.
3. manasi pratibimbitam
.
brahman
.
d
.
am
The universe is mirrored in the mind.
4. cidakasasya tadyau s urya-candrau
The inner sky has its own sun and moon.
5. s urya-candrav-as
.
t
.
ottara-sata-am
.
satmakau
One hundred and eight units characterize the sun
and the moon.
6. samanya-adharitam
.
j nanam
Knowledge is based on the universal.
7. sabdah
.
bandhah
.
Word associations lead to paradox.
8. bhas
.
a apara
Linguistic knowledge is of limited kind.
9. viruddhani iva api darsanani paraspara-p urakani
Darsanas, although seemingly contradictory, are com-
plementary.
8 Subhash Kak
10. antarika-sthitayah
.
parisam
.
khya-yogyah
.
The inner states are countable.
11. bhas
.
a-loka-viruddha-abhasa-attam vij nanam
Vij n ana is beyond language and paradox.
12. yaj nat praj na avirbhavati
Praj n a emerges out of yaj na.
13. cittam-avriyate varn
.
aih
.
Colours (of changing hue) are the coverings of the
mind.
14. pasu-asura-raks
.
asa atmani nivasanti
Animals, asuras, and r aks
.
asas reside within.
15. pasutvasya nasanam eva muktih
.
Mukti is the vanquishing of the [inner] animal selves.
16. yaj no yogah
.
parin
.
amah
.
parivartanam
.
ca
Yaj na is yoga, which is becoming and transforma-
tion.
17. sarra-manas asambh uti-sambh ut avidya-vidye paks
.
av-
iva
Body and mind, materiality and life, rules and un-
derstanding are like wings.
18. praj na aisvaryam
.
paks
.
in
.
ah
.
ud
.
d
.
ayanam
Praj n a is aisvarya the soaring of the [inner] bird.
Durga As
.
t
.
am Washington-to-Houston
13th October, 2002
3
Commentary
Now follows a short commentary on the s utras. It
puts each s utra in an appropriate context.
1
bandhu-paroks
.
a-yaj nah
.
vij nanasya tri-padah
.
The three feet of vij n ana are bandhu, paroks
.
a,
and yaj na.
Our knowledge is possible due to the minds inherent
capacity for it. It absorbs information and nds struc-
ture for doing so is its nature. Looking out, it creates a
parallel world within. Its knowledge emerges from a fa-
miliarization with its inner space and it may be seen to be
a consequence of the bandhus (bonds) that exist between
the outer and inner worlds. If there were no such bandhu,
it would be impossible to make sense of the world. Ma-
chines only follow predened rules and they dont have
bandhus, which is why they cannot be conscious. The
bandhus are the ground that make awareness possible.
The bandhus provide the answer to the question posed
in Kena Upanis
.
ad 1.1:
kenes
.
itam
.
patati pres
.
itam
.
manah
.
kena pran
.
ah
.
prathamah
.
praiti yuktah
.
10 Subhash Kak
kenes
.
itam
.
vacam
.
imam
.
vadanti
caks
.
uh
.
srotram
.
ka u devo yunakti
By whom directed does the mind fall (upon
objects)?
By whom yoked does the rst vital air move?
By whom wished are these words spoken?
Which god unites the eye and ear (with the
objects)?
The outer world is innite in size and relationships,
and it appears that the inner world has innite potential.
These two worlds of object and subject arise from a single
reality. Language can deal eectively with outer objects
and their associations, and it is limited in its ability to
provide complete subjective insight. True meaning must
transcend linguistic description. Ordinary knowledge is
objective whereas deepest knowledge concerns the sub-
ject, the experiencer. No wonder that personal language-
based knowledge turns out to be paradoxical (paroks
.
a)
at the intersection of dierent formal categories.
Perfect clarity is impossible in the phenomenal world
not only because of the limitation of our senses, but also
if it were to exist, it would paralyze the will. Paroks
.
a is
the veil that makes the world interesting, and possible.
The subjective self follows its nature, which is to be
like the universal self, which is to be as large and great as
it can be. As the Br
.
had aran
.
yaka Upanis
.
ad (4.5.6) says:
na va are sarvasya kamaya sarvam priyam
.
bhavati
atamanastu kamaya sarvam priyam
.
bhavati
Everything is not dear that you may love ev-
erything
But that you may love the Self, therefore ev-
erything is dear.
The Praj n a S utra 11
It is from self-love that desire to power rises. This
desire gets embodied in the will. But this will is distorted
by our frustrations at not getting our desires fullled.
Our physical nature binds us to the processes of cre-
ation and destruction. Just as we have the instinct to
master and create, we also have the instinct to destroy
what is hindering our progress.
Often, people adopt values whose eect is to dimin-
ish them. They do so because they have embraced false
magical theories in the hope that something good will
come out of it in the end. In the most extreme of these
theories, the good comes out only at the end of this life,
in paradise.
The perception of time in our minds is the basic fabric
of reality. The continuing change around us compels us
to confront nature and we do it in a variety of ways that
reects our unique experience in life.
We play out the movements taking place in front of
us. Man is a mimic animal, happiest acting a part, need-
ing a mask to tell the truth. The core within has no
form. There is a superposition of several persona in the
background, projected serially on the dierent planes of
the self.
The human face projects the complexities and para-
dox of the inner being. It is a juxtaposition of several,
just as reality is a juxtaposition at any moment of several
histories. The gods have multiple faces.
The ordinary pratyaks
.
a of material relationships and
its description by language freezes understanding to
that of surface processes and one must reach for a deeper
pratyaks
.
a. Modern technology has made it possible to
see, through a process of inference (anum ana), layers of
reality that are much deeper than was possible with pre-
modern materialist science. Nevertheless, the seer re-
mains outside the scope of such science.
12 Subhash Kak
Yaj na is sacrice, a process that leads to transforma-
tion, implying that higher states exist. The performance
of yaj na makes renewal possible. As sacred theatre, it
need not be done on an outer stage, but it may also be
performed internally. Each performance changes the sub-
ject. The mystery of life and yaj na is the mystery of time
and change.
Transformation entails an abandonment of the earlier.
It may be seen as a ritual rebirth. According to Mahid asa
Aitareya in the Aitareya Br ahman
.
a 1.3:
punarva etamr
.
tvijo garbham
.
kurvanti yam
.
dks
.
yanti
Whom they consecrate, the priests make into
an embryo again.
The three feet of bandhu, paroks
.
a and yaj na are like
the triple categories of the sun, earth, and the atmo-
sphere that provide structure to our physical experience,
and that of the mind, body, and breath of our inner ex-
perience. They may also be compared to the states of
dreamless sleep, waking and dreaming.
The bandhu makes the world knowable, paroks
.
a en-
dows it with mystery, and yaj na is the doorway to inner
understanding. The veil of paroks
.
a is m ay a, which shines
through as the power that underlies reality. If outer sci-
ence is concerned about laws (r
.
ta) relating to physical
reality, our personal experience concerns choices. M ay a
is the bridge between the laws of the outer and the free-
dom of the inner.
The bandhus represent the laws that hold the universe
together (Vis
.
n
.
u), paroks
.
a is the dance of consciousness
that is ever changing (
Isvara.
According to Pata njali:
klesa karma vipaka asayaih
.
aparamr
.
s
.
t
.
ah
.
purus
.
a
vises
.
a svarah
.
Isvara, 27
Jaimini, 39
joy, 73
knowledge, 18, 26
language, 1, 10, 30, 31, 36,
53, 54, 58, 61-64
language theory, 2
laws, 25
logic, 54
love, 19, 38, 39, 51, 52
machines, 52, 56, 58
magic, 16
mantra, 29
materialism, 69, 70
maya, 12
meaning, 65
metaphysics, 53, 54
Mmam
.
sa S utra, 39
mimicry, 11
mind, 8, 10, 18, 20, 25, 34,
40, 49, 54, 55, 62
mindful emptiness, 72
mirroring, 18, 21
moon, 21, 24
mukti, 44
Nature, 9, 11, 56
nirvan
.
a, 5
no-mind, 45
numbers, 24, 30, 34
3, 7, 9, 12
6, 32
108, 7, 24
Nyaya S utra, 3, 34, 41
observer, 70
order, 54
overlordship, 2
paradox, 7, 10, 31, 36, 54,
73
paroks
.
a, 7, 9, 10, 32, 36
Pata njali, 15, 27, 30, 47
perception, 4
potential, 10
power, 57, 69, 72
praj na, 5, 8, 38, 51
praman
.
a, 1
pratyaks
.
a, 9, 32, 36
prophetic vision, 73
Index 77
psychiatric drugs, 70
quantum theory, 70
raks
.
asa, 8, 42
rasa, 3, 4, 51
rationality, 69
recursion, 14, 15, 53, 54
Recursionism, 59
reductionism, 2
relativity, 70
religion, 66, 69-73
renunciation, 52
representation, 55
R
.
gveda, 12, 13, 14, 28, 29
ritual in meaning, 65
ritual sacrice, 68
sabda, 1
sacrice, 11
samadhi, 26
sam
.
sara, 5, 44
sam
.
skaras, 5
sat, 44
science, outer, 5
scripts, 29
self, 2, 10, 53
selfhood and pain, 67
self-knowledge, 70
Siva, 12
sky, 21
social discourse, 58
songbirds, 33
spirit, 14, 70
spirituality, 70
subject, 10
suering, 3, 27, 30, 32, 36,
61
sun, 21, 24
s utras, 7, 8
theatre, 11
theological lens, 69
time and change, 11
traditions, 63
transcendant, 56
transgressions, 68
transformation, 5, 11, 43
universal, 26, 36
Upanis
.
ad
Br
.
hadaran
.
yaka, 10, 32
Kat
.
ha, 22
Kena, 9, 22, 23
Mun
.
d
.
aka, 1, 17
Taittirya, 17
Vaises
.
ika, 3
varn
.
a, 40
Veda, 1, 5
veil, 12
vibration, 49, 50
vidya, 30
vij nana, 5, 13, 34, 36
visions and prophecy, 71
Vis
.
n
.
u, 12
warrior, 4, 52
will, 11, 51
wisdom, 38
witness, 35
yaj na, 8, 9, 11, 38, 39, 47,
48
Yaska, 13
yoga, 8, 48, 49
Yogas utra, 15, 27, 30, 47