Sridham Mayapur I

SRIDHAM MAYAPUR, situated on the central one of the nine islands constituting holy Nabadwip, contains the abode of Sri Jagannath Mishra, the house of God in which the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna Chaitanya, was born 443 years ago, in the year 1486 A.D. The islands were formed by the branching arms of the Bhagirathi. We reserve for a subsequent section the discussion regarding the identification of the holy site of Nativity.

But before we proceed to do so we desire to offer certain considerations which will make it appear that the quest of the holy site of Advent is part and parcel of the eternal function of all pure souls. It is not the purpose to prejudice the reader against, or, in favour of, any local sect or narrow creed. We assure the reader that we have no ambition of leading a crusade against rationalism (which by the way is allowed, on grounds that will hardly bear scrutiny, to be the chartered monopoly of the empiric sciences) in the venerable, but withal much-abused, name of dogmatic theology. Neither do we bind ourselves down to credal methods that are followed by non-theological thinkers who engage in investigations, no doubt very useful for limited purposes, of water-tight compartments of truth. We stand against all unnecessary dogma whether scientific or otherwise. We, therefore, in announcing our purpose and method at the very outset hereby crave the patience of the modern reader for extending his and her unprejudiced hearing to a free rational discussion of a universal subject that vitally concerns everybody. The real Truth has the eternal quality of being one. So there need be no sectarianism among those who are not really resolved to avoid the Truth, when It presents Itself, under the fatal lure of prejudices and interests less than the universal.

The objection that is naturally to be expected on the very threshold of a discussion on the holy Site of Nativity is that an unimportant village belonging to a particular region of this mundane earth need not be claimed to be identified in any special sense with the activities of the Divinity. Such a procedure it is apprehended would be a contradiction in terms as it would localise the universal and particularise the general. As such objection is likely to suggest itself in a more or less conscious form to all persons who are given to speculate on the Absolute it is best to begin with an attempt to offer a rational answer to the question.

The Absolute can be neither abstract nor concrete in the sense in which we ordinarily understand those two terms that is to say by reference to the phenomena of this world as objects of our sensuous experience. The concrete and abstract, the particular and general, are equally relative notions. If the Absolute at all exists It must be identical with none of those. So we need not oppose those who say that the Absolute is concrete, by the argument that It is abstract. We should base our objection on a more logical ground and say that the Absolute cannot be identical with the concrete of our experience and should require the teacher of the Absolute to explain what he means when he considers that the Absolute is concrete.

No one, therefore, need object to Sridham Mayapur being of the nature of the Absolute on the ground that it is not an abstraction but merely a concrete entity. Everyone is fully justified in objecting to accept as the Absolute Truth the village of Mayapur of our experience. If Sridham Mayapur be an absolute entity It cannot be the familiar hamlet in Bengal bearing the name of Mayapur. Therefore, those who are anxious to find out the site of the old village of Mayapur in the firm and honest belief that it is identical with Sridham Mayapur and advertise their supposed discovery of the geographical site as that of the Absolute, contradict themselves and deserve no hearing from those who are at all disposed to think clearly on the subject. The search for Sridham Mayapur is a very different affair from the search of the archaeologists for the geographical site of the old Bengal village. The latter need not be advertised as a piece of news which it is obligatory on all persons to know for the purpose of knowing themselves. It is necessary for every one of us to search out Sridham Mayapur to be delivered from the delusion of all limited location for good.

Our experience tells us that truth as an abstraction of the concrete is not substantially different from the concrete. If we choose to hold the view that the concrete is explained by the abstract we only travel more in a vicious circle. Because it may be affirmed with equal truth that the abstract is explained by the concrete. So our view amounts to no more than this that our experience of them explains the concrete and the abstract. Our experience is, therefore, the only test of truth. What we experience we declare to be true. The geographical village of Mayapur is true in this sense. The Absolute has no existence by this test.

But our experience can never be identical with the object of such experience. If we suppose a blind man to be capable of seeing objects this experience cannot be held to be correct as it is corrigible by more careful observation. Therefore, all experience is not true as it is capable of being modified by further scrutiny of the object of experience. Thus we make a distinction between subjective and objective truth. What a thing is in itself we call its subjective truth. What a thing appears to our consciousness we call its objective truth. The question we are discussing is really this. Is subjective truth related in any way to the objective truth? This relationship is the subject of investigation of those who are engaged on the quest of the Truth.

This at once gives rise to perplexing issues. What is subject? What is object? What really is the nature of the relationship that we actually experience as existing between them?

It is the conclusion of those who believe in Sridham Mayapur that our experience cannot furnish any satisfactory answer to these questions which are part and parcel of our nature and which imperatively demand a true solution if we are not prepared to move aimlessly in a state of perpetual ignorance of ourselves. The only way of getting rid of this ignorance is by honestly engaging in the quest of Sridham Mayapur, the eternal dwelling place of the Divinity, Who is the source of true enlightenment.

If the nature of the quest is admitted it follows that the method of such quest is also bound to be different from archaeological or any other method with which we are familiar and which for the reason share in the same imperfection and unsuitability inherent in ignorant activities which we call experience.

Of course it is left to us to adopt any course we like. But if reason is allowed a voice in our choice it will declare to us on the grounds set forth above that the search of the village of Mayapur will tend to lead to the discovery of the geographical hamlet while the quest of Sridham Mayapur, the eternal dwelling-place of the Divinity, will tend to result in the discovery of the realm of the truth. The method as well as the object of seekers bound on the different quests, differ radically from one another. Those who are really seekers of Sridham Mayapur can never expect to find It by following the lead of the votaries of the village of our experience. Under such lead they will always arrive at the geographical village and remain at the same distance from the Absolute after this discovery of the said village as they happened to be before they reached the destination.

Those who are content with speculation for its own sake are likely to object to the truth the actual appearance of which is bound to put an end to all necessity for speculation. These speculationists suppose that speculation itself is the truth or, at any rate, the service or quest of the truth. They should be scandalised to know that speculation is neither itself the truth nor it is the quest of the truth. Speculation is a barren pastime of the mind with its delusive experience. It is mental dissipation just as activities to which the senses are addicted by their nature are physical dissipation. They form respectively the paths of knowledge and work which promise to lead their victims to salvation and elevation respectively. But as a matter of fact they always make them move in a vicious circle and engage them in a perpetual wild-goose chase. The speculationist, however, is a willing victim. He has no intent to ceasing to speculate. He is under the impression that it is his duty to seek but seek in such a manner that he may never have to cease to seek. This is plausible if the quest is really progressive. But when speculation definitely makes up its mind to move perpetually in the blind groove of experience which is by its nature limited can it in the same breath claim to be a seeker of the real Truth if that is free from all limitation? The quest of the limited can never, nor is intended to, lead to the real truth but only to itself.

We on the contrary believe and want everyone, who is rational and not dogmatic, to believe that the real truth is attainable here and now by all who really seek for it. This is the only dogma to which we want our readers to subscribe.

It would appear that the Absolute or real Truth is not attainable by the inductive or deductive methods of search directed to experience. True, the laws of Physical Nature have been actually discovered as the result of progressive empiric enquiry and by the genius of a band of specially gifted persons. The proposition that two and two make four and every other similar ‘law’ may, indeed, impose upon the imagination as being the real Truth but they do not certainly deceive even the thinkers themselves who offer them for our acceptance as the truth. We are not sure that they hold good or are admitted by the inhabitants of even the next planet where all the conditions, mental and physical, may differ. The real Truth must have its own substantive and unconditional existence like the everlasting hills of the legends. The empiric attempt of the mind to accommodate the universe into a number of assumptions is necessitated by the limited and local nature of our present organs of sense which are in fact not a help and must be always a hindrance in any serious quest of the real Truth. By their very nature they can only distort and never ‘establish’ the truth. The badness of the medium is responsible for our present hallucination.

A perfect medium would enable us to obtain the correct vision of the truth which does not require any other ‘help’ but its own for its existence or communication.

Those who are content, under the lead of the empiric philosophers, to wander mechanically and endlessly in the labyrinth of the fictitious, speculative quest of the so-called truth are apt to object to these all-important basic considerations. They do so on the ground that such a policy would render all search of the truth impossible by preventing all speculation on the subject. In other words they suppose that if we once admit the search of the truth to be the object of our activities we necessarily cease to function. They have really no love for the Truth but a great desire for remaining perpetually and actively ignorant.

If they have really any love for the Truth, as fortunately they always profess to have, we have a right to claim their attention for considering seriously a method which is not based on experience of the defective senses nor regulated by the limited powers of the mind and is capable of meeting every demand of our limited reason, as a substitute for the admittedly futile methods, In the quest of the Truth.

In empiric epistemology the knower, the object of knowledge and the process of knowing are each of them limited and changing entities. The observer is wholly separate from the observed and the gulf between the two is bridged over by a process which is also distinct from either and which has its temporary existence only when and just so long as, the observer is in touch with the observed directly or indirectly through the medium of the senses belonging to the observer. This contact is established on the physical and the mental planes. The uncertain nature of our knowledge is due to the perpetually shifting character of all the constituent factors viz. The observer, the observed and the medium of observation: unless these conditions are changed it will never be possible to know the Absolute. The condition that requires to be fulfilled if the Absolute is to be realised is that all the three factors must also be themselves absolute. In other words if the observer and the observed are not subject to change of any kind it is possible for the knowledge or the relationship between them to be absolute also. In absolute knowledge the observer, observed and the process of observation are, therefore, categorically different from what they are in empiric knowledge. If, therefore, we are to engage in any serious investigation of the Absolute it is necessary to adopt the modification of the empiric epistemology.

Sridham Mayapur, the observer of Sridham Mayapur and the observation of Sridham Mayapur are all of them categorically different from the village Mayapur, the observer of village Mayapur and the observation of the Bengal hamlet.

But can there be such a thing at all as an absolute locality? Is it not self-contradictory? the reply should be that there is nothing impossible in the Absolute. Nay, more. Everything is not only possible but actually existent in the Absolute. We should go still further and affirm that the Absolute is the only and fully real existence. Nothing can really exist out-side the Absolute. There is also nothing that does not really exist in the Absolute. It is not the existence of the Absolute, which by definition is existence itself, that need be at all a matter of doubt or objection. Such doubt or objection applies properly only to the phenomenal. What is really this world? What is the real value of empiric knowledge itself? As soon as we are forced by the pressure of sheer logical necessity to certain such doubt we find ourselves at the end of our resources. What is Truth?-said the jesting Pilate to Jesus, and did not wait to listen to any reply, supposing that he knew fully well that the question is unanswerable.

Yes, it is no doubt unanswerable in the estimation of the empiric epistemology which is stunted by the limitations of the physical and mental plane to which its speculations are confined. But should it be, therefore, the conclusion that there is no way of ever knowing the Truth?

The method of revelation is regarded by empiricists as an unconditional surrender to irrationality. But why should we try to tie the hands of the Absolute and prevent Him from coming down to us although this may seem impossible to our admittedly poor reason? That which we cannot do ourselves we are also egoistically disinclined to admit as possible of accomplishment by anybody else. This may be natural. But is it rational? If we cannot reach the Absolute by our own effort how can we realise Him unless He chooses to reveal Himself to us in a way that is beyond our conception?

If the reasonableness of this position is fully admitted we at once get the answer to the following questions viz.-‘Is this world true?’ ‘If it is not true what is it then?’ We get the reply that it is true but not absolutely true. It exists but conditionally. It is dependent for its truth and its existence on the Absolute.

So the village Mayapur of our empiric experience happens to exist at all because there is something absolutely true of which it is the reflected image. This world is the reflected image of the Absolute world. Empiric knowledge is the reflected image of the real knowledge.

As reflected image of the Reality this world is necessarily inferior to its prototype. This element of inferiority consists in its deceptiveness. It is not really true but at the same time appears as true. The observer, observed and observation appear as existing but do not exist as reality. This apparent existence is no-doubt also apparently true. This proof of its apparent existence being also the indirect proof of the real existence-the reality to which it must correspond as shadow to substance even for its apparent existence.