Gita Rahasya -Tilak
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CHAPTER VI
THE INTUITIONIST SCHOOL AND THE CONSIDERATION OF THE BODY AND THE ATMAN
(ADHIDAIVATA-PAKSA AND KSETRA-KSETRAJNA-VICARA) The decision of the doability or non-doability of an Action arrived at after a far-sighted consideration of pain and happiness will meet the same fate as that of a decision which may- have heen given by a judge who has not received proper authority from the king. Mere far-sightedness cannot tell a person to do something, or that he must do some particular thing ; because, far-sightedness being a human product, it cannot control human beings. On such occasions, there must be some one else having a higher authority than ourselves who gives the command ; and this function can be satisfactorily discharged only by this God-given Conscience, which is superior to man, and therefore, in a position to- exercise authority over man. As this deity is self-created it is also usual, in ordinary parlance to say : "My Conscience- (manodevata) tells me a particular thing". The fact that when, a man has committed a sinful action, he is subsequently ashamed of it, and that his inner consciousness bites him, is- nothing else but the punishment of this Mental Deity ; and that proves the existence of this independent Mental Deity. For otherwise, we cannot, according to this school of thought,, explain why our Conscience pricks only ourselves. The summary given above is of the opinions of the Intuitionist School in the Western countries. In these- countries, this body of thought has been principally promulgated by Christian preachers ; and in their opinion, this- God-given method is superior to, and easier to follow than the purely Materialistic methods for determining the righteousness- ot unrighteousness of an Action, and is, therefore, the method which should be acted upon. Although in India there was no such independent section of the science of Karma-Yoga in. ancient times, yet we oome across similar opinions in many places in our ancient treatises. We find in many places in the Mahabharata that the various mental impulses have been given the forms of deities. I have referred in the foregoing pages to the story of the deities of Morality (dharmam), Prosperity (sri) etc. having left the body of Prahlada and entered the body of Indra. This deity who discriminates between doability and: non-doability, or righteousness and unrighteousness is called: 'Dharmam', and there are stories that this deity had manifested himself in the form of a syena bird for testing the truthfulness- of the King Sibi, and first in the form of a yaksa and later on in the form of a dog for testing Yudhisthira. Even in the Bhagavadgita [1], Fame (kirti), Opulence (sri), Speech(vak), Memory (smrti), Acumen (medha), Perseverance (dhrti), and Forgiveness (ksama) are called deities; and out of these, memory, acumen, perseverance, and forgiveness are qualities of the mind. The Mind itself is a deity, and the worship of it has been prescribed in the Upanisads, as being a symbol of the Parabrahman [2] When Manu says: "manahputam samacaret"[3]i. e., "Do what the Mind believes to be pure", he may be said to have intended the Mental Deity by the word 'manas' (Mind). |
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