The Upanishads vs. Socrates
The Upanishads are very different in their style of exposition from the dialogues of Socrates written of by Plato and the tradition of western analytical philosophy.
Socrates posed questions to various people and pointed out logical consistencies in their answers, if any, thereby leading the protagonist to a deeper understanding of the subject under discussion. A typical conversation might proceed as follows:
A - The Gods are never wrong
Socrates - Do the Gods ever argue with each other
A - Quite frequently, according to the legends.
Socrates - If the Gods disagree on a certain point then at least one of them must be wrong?
A - That must be true logically
Socrates - So we can conclude that the Gods cannot be infallible.
The method of exposition is therefore of doubting existing conclusions, questioning them, applying Aristotelian logic and reaching new conclusions. The advantage is that anybody who pays attention can follow the logic or spot the logical inconsistencies in the argument. The disadvantage is that the style can be experienced by some as pedantic, painstakingly slow and boring.
The Upanishads, in contrast to the 'wisest is he who knows he knows nothing' style, classify their claims as 'Sruti' or 'divine revelations'. The sages who composed them do not seem to believe that it is possible to prove (or disprove) what they are saying through logic, but maintain instead that if you are willing to follow the path they suggest then, you will experience the truth of their claims for yourself.
An analogy might be that if someone points out a very faint star in the night sky to you, they cannot prove to you that the star is actually there through logic. But if you are willing to look where they are pointing and concentrate then you may see the light for yourself and, if you do, then you will know indisputably that what they said was true.
The advantage of the Upanishadic expositional style, that assumes 'revealed' wisdom, is that it is startlingly direct and poetically appealing. For example, here's a small piece from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that predates Freudian psychoanalysis by 3,000 years:
You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.
The disadvantage of this style is that, until you have experienced for yourself the truths that the seers claim they have experienced, you will have to take their word for granted. Here is an example from the Katha Upanishad that requires more faith:
Only the one-pointed mind attains this state of unity.
There is no one but the Self.
He who sees multiplicity but not the one indivisible Self
Must wander on and on from death to death.
The word Guru literally means one who points you towards the light (Gu-towards, Ru-light). The question is what happens if you squint and look where the Guru is pointing but see nothing. You can only conclude three things - either that your eyesight is weaker than that of your Guru's or that your Guru is mistaken or that he is lying.
Part of the Guru relationship is being completely devoted to your Guru and disciplined in following his teaching (hence the words devotee and disciple). But part and parcel of the Guru relationship is that you must trust his judgement more than you do your own. Some people trust their Guru enough to do that and others find it difficult to 'Pluto' their own judgement to a secondary status. I find myself falling into the second category. I'd rather trust my own judgement and take ownership for my mistakes rather than be a back seat driver of my life (unless there are extremely compelling reasons to believe that someone else's judgement is clearly better than mine in a certain area - I wouldn't attempt to wrest control from the pilot of a plane for example).
The primary claim that the mystics make in the Upanishads is that there is an individual consciousness (atman) and a universal consciousness (Brahman) and these are actually the one and same thing. All aspects of the universe are manifestations of this non-dual consciousness that is eternal and unchanging and all forms of change (such as death) and separation (into different forms) are superficial and transitory illusions that shield us from seeing the real nature of ultimate reality.
Let me break up my reaction to this claim into two pieces - the part about it that I find attractive and the part of it I find myself resisting.
The part I find attractive is that it sets forth a world view that implies we are all connected at a very deep level and I think if people truly believe this then we could live far more harmoniously with one another. In addition, if people believe in this philosophy then it would allow them not to 'sweat the small stuff' because your looks, your bank balance, your promotion, etc. would all seem relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. This way of looking at things might free you up to enjoy life to the fullest, largely free from unnecessary worrying over trivial matters.
The part I find myself questioning is the assertion that this is not just a 'way of looking at things' but it's actually 'the way things are'. Let me explain why, in a little bit more detail:
We break up objects into units of thoughts called 'things', so we can see how these 'things' fit together so that we can get a better understanding of the object as a whole. And there are different ways we can slice those objects from an analytical point of view. For example, a man could be viewed by a tailor as being composed of a head, torso, arms and legs, or he could be viewed by a doctor as being made up of skeleton, blood, organs, muscles, nerves, etc. The divisions are man made and so, in some sense, 'artificial'. Another way of looking at the man would be to see him as a whole undifferentiated being. What the Upanishads suggest, using the man as analogous to the universe, is that seeing him as a whole is the 'truth' and in some way the 'analytical breakup' is in some sense 'false'.
The Upanishadic view is that Maya or illusion occurs when we cut things up using our mind - the words 'metre', 'measure', 'matrix' all come from the root word Maya. I, personally, don't see any one perspective as being objectively being more true than the other; I see them as different ways of looking at something, each of them mutually complementary and cumulatively providing a deeper appreciation of the object under consideration. Which way of looking at the object can be considered best is contextual - it depends on why you are looking at the object. A surgeon who had to perform a life saving operation on the person, for example, would hardly be served from not being able to distinguish between the various organs. And, you could legitimately study a bacterium present in the man's body as an entity in itself no more or less real than the man.
How would a 'believer' answer me. I think he would say 'Kanishka when you have experienced what the seers have experienced then you will see that there is only one true way of seeing things. You need to transcend the artificial distinctions imposed on reality by your mind. In fact you need to go beyond your mind if you want to experience the nature of pre-analytic real truth'.
But I think that for any claim to be a meaningful description of reality, it has to be a falsifiable statement. If someone closed their eyes and said "I feel like I'm floating", I could easily prove that his subjective experience did not match with the objective reality of him remaining stationary on his chair. However if someone says "I am one with the Universe" I could not disprove that any more than I could if he said "There is a weightless purple hippo sitting next to me that only I can see". The truth validity of his statement would also depend on his technical definitions of the words 'I', 'am', 'one', 'with' and 'the Universe'. I am not arguing his subjective personal experience. I do feel however that if it is impossible to prove or disprove the objective existence of someone's claim, then the non-falsifiable statement cannot be considered a description of the way world actually is. It's simply one of many ways of looking at or subjectively interpreting the world.
The second thing that I have resistance to is the claim that our consciousness is deathless and can be delinked from our physical bodies. Just because we can make our body the subject of our consciousness and therefore distinguish our consciousness from our body doesn't mean that by logical necessity our consciousness will continue post the dissolution of our bodies. An illustrative analogy is that I can see my body with my eye and I can deduce that my eye is therefore a separate entity from the rest of my body - this doesn't mean that my eye will continue to see if I have been shot in the head or that it won't decay with time post my death. I believe that consciousness is tightly linked to life and, to a large extent for humans, the brain. It has been demonstrated medically that if the brain is damaged in an accident, various aspects of consciousness, memory, cognitive functions are affected significantly and this, to me, by extrapolation implies that, when the entire brain stops functioning, consciousness ceases entirely. There is a very tightly established link between brain waves as measured by scientific instruments and self-described subjective states of consciousness. Again, this to me implies a high linkage between subjective conscious experience and the objective measurable physical activity occurring in a living brain. I think that indicates that consciousness ceases on physical death. I don't believe credible evidence exists for life after death or transmigration of the soul. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The only way I would be tempted to reconsider my view on these matters would be if 'enlightened' beings could demonstrably do something miraculous that 'ordinary' humans were not able to do. Apart from saying 'I am enlightened', is there anything that they can do? Read minds? Levitate? Predict the future? When there is compelling evidence that they have some truly special abilities then I will consider that they might have truly privileged knowledge.
As an Indian, part of me wishes that I could confidently say that Indian philosophy is superior to Western philosophy but, at least based on what I have learned so far, I prefer the Western tradition. I feel the focus in India is less on 'teaching you how to think' and more on 'teaching you what to think'. I wonder sometimes if this is why our education system is geared towards rote learning rather than understanding and whether this is why our best companies do low end data processing rather than creating Google or Facebook type breakthrough technologies. I acknowledge that maybe that is an inductive leap too far. It might be a bit of a stretch but I wonder about it sometimes.
I guess my conclusion on the teachings of the Upanishads is that although it's great literature, a wonderful achievement of thought from our ancestors, and that it presents a philosophy for living that could help in attaining happiness in this life, it's not a grounded description of reality. For a deeper understanding of reality, Physics is likely to be a superior vehicle of exploration. For a deeper understanding of ethics, western philosophy is likely to be a more holistic study since it incorporates a meta-analysis of many different theories of ethics. And for a deeper understanding of consciousness, meditation is perhaps a more direct route to experiential wisdom in that area.
I hope that, for me, further reading of Indian philosophy will not turn out to be increasingly semantic detailing of 'revealed knowledge'. That would be disappointing. I hope it'll be rich and reveal new vistas of knowledge and exploration.