When rationality is glorified beyond its reasonable limitation, I wonder what the very reason itself is. When someone like Swami Vivekananda claims that rationality is the only valid evidence (pramana) for any spiritual or religious claims, it creates a tension in me.
From Vivekananda himself:
“Again, ‘Experience is the only source of knowledge.’ The same methods of investigation which we apply to the sciences and to exterior knowledge should be applied to religion. ‘If a religion is destroyed by such investigation it was nothing but a useless and unworthy superstition; the sooner it disappeared the better.’ ‘Why religions should claim that they are not bound to abide by the standpoint of reason no one knows…For it is better that mankind should become atheist by following reason than blindly believe in two hundred million gods on the authority of anybody….Perhaps there are prophets, who have passed the limits of sense and obtained a glimpse of the beyond. We shall believe it only when we can do the same ourselves; not before.’ It is said that reason is not strong enough, that often it makes mistakes. If reason is weak why should a body of priests be considered any better guides? ‘I will abide by my reason,’ continues Vivekananda, ‘because with all its weakness there is some chance of my getting at truth through it…We should therefore follow reason, and also sympathise with those who do not come to any sort of belief, following reason.’ In the study of this Raja Yoga no faith or belief is necessary. Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself’. {Most of the extracts from Vivekananda’s writings have been taken from Romain Rolland’s ‘Life of Vivekananda’.}
‘Swami Vivekananda’, Jawaharlal Nehru, in A. Raghuramaraju, ed. Debating Vivekananda: A Reader, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 9-17, p. 12
The first problem for me is understanding the spiritual and religious experience of a particular tradition through a word or language that cannot convey the original meaning. For example, what is the exact word for reason in Sanskrit, Hindi, and Tamil? I am not an expert in any of these languages, but as a Tamilian I can say that what we call ‘Pahuttarivu’ is not exactly ‘reason’ in English. I honestly can’t understand the word ‘reason’, but I don’t blame English for that. However, there are many areas in our own life based on our experience which cannot be accepted or rejected based only on reason.
Take for example of Bhagavan Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the guru of Swami Vivekananda. Bhagavan Ramakrishna Paramahamsa identified himself as a woman, he even got menstruation bleeding which is possible only to a woman.1 I am not sure how far Vivekananda acknowledge this ‘EXPERIENCE’ of his guru or reject it based on reason. But according to the normal standard of reason, it is beyond anybody’s reason how a man, however in his trance identify himself with a woman could have menstruation?
Leaving aside the supernatural events of the saints, even one’s own personal experience will show that in her own relationship with others, a person gets closer to one person and stays away from another based on instinct. In our school days when there were more than 30 to 40 students in our class, we ended up developing a friendship with only a very few. There is no particular reason why we are attracted to one person who became our friend and not another. For me, this is also beyond the normal standard of reason.
The same is the case when boys and girls fall in love with each other. Though many are attracted by physical appearance, even beyond such infatuation, a couple gets married out of love, which isn’t compatibility with other normal standards of attraction between the opposite sexes. Recently I watched a program on the Discovery Channel were a stout woman weighing more than 200 kgs struggled a lot to reduce her weight. What surprised me was seeing her boyfriend who was a good-looking young man at a normal weight who not only loved her, but continued to live with her and help her in her efforts to reduce her weight. According to our normal (Indian) standard it is beyond our reason to think that such people can love and live together.
Though I am tempted to quote a lot from other scholars on this topic of reason, I would like to conclude this by analysing reason again based on Bhagavan Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. According to the words of Swami Vivekananda, based on reason he should reject the menstrual experience of his guru. But based on his claims of experience as the only evidence along with reason, he should accept the experience of his guru which stands beyond reason.
I know when such speeches were made, they have their own context. Swami Vivekananda could have uttered this point on reason in some other context and might have acknowledged the experience of guru’s menstruation experience as real. However for a layman like me, such a contradiction is part of life and we should not make any dogmatic statement on any doctrinal or ideological views which will contradict our other statements.
Endnotes
- …Ramakrishna’s lifelong love for women’s role–acting feminine parts in boyhood, dressing up as a woman for a time in Mathur’s house, even allegedly having periods53–was chronicled with respect and admiration by Mahendranath Gupta and other biographers….–Sumit Sarkar, ‘Kaliyuga, Chakri and Bhakti’: Ramakrishna and His Times, in A. Raghuramaraju, ed.,Debating Vivekananda: A Reader, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp.149231, p. 167
- Life of Sri Ramakrishna Compiled from Various Authentic Sources(Mayavati 1924, Calcutta, 1964), p. 176
Vivekananda should be reasonable enough, based on his doctrine of experience as the evidence to accept the experience his guruji’s menstruation, however rationality won’t agree with such experience based on scientific evidence.