The evolution of one’s philosophy is almost synchronous with the evolution of one’s personality or rather its maturation. The broad outlines of the development of one’s philosophy however are conditioned by more factors than one. The very climate of one’s traditional and cultural situations mould the formation of one’s philosophy. Not all are called upon to accept the challenge of these hereditary conditions in the changing situations such as have faced the modern world and in India.

The east that was content to accept the traditional interpretations and act accordingly through a millennium of undoubtedly provocative changes had at long last to rise up and seek a new way of living its old life and this is above all one revealing fact in the attempts that have been made during the past half a century - the meeting of the East and the West, the intelligent appreciation of the good in both and an active intelligence that makes the blend a real organic synthesis useful not merely for the East or the West but for the Global world that we have grown into. The critical estimations of our reactions-the traditional reactions to the shocks administered by global science, global economics and strategies for health and warfare not restricted to meteorology, have in recent times produced quite a good amount of direct and sincere thinking of our metaphysical assumptions, a new. Old dichotomic and dialectical theories have been forced to meet with the transcending factors which refuse to oblige their interpretations. Thus those who have been both in the age-the age of transcendent change-such as our present, have been forced to examine presuppositions and question our postulates and never under any cover accept then as axioms or proofs.

These forces have had their main say and man is seeking a philosophy for man rather than a truth about reality. This is the most ancient problem when man was confronted by physics his discovery of himself became important. Not because reality exists for him, but because the reality he knows depends upon what he is.

The problem about the nature of the external world-its reality or unreality, its relativity and so on are subject to the most important factor-the individual who arrives at the solution to the problems. There is clearly the need for inspecting the instruments of our knowing as a preliminary to the attempt to know or understand the nature or reality-the objective world as well as the subjective. The basic discovery is then the discovery of the nature of the individual who is claimed to be the knower, for whom this knowledge is necessary. This led to the psychological inspection of one’s nature, one’s ways of knowing reality or whatever confronts him in his life. The sensory world known through the senses are undoubtedly about the most clear and sensory knowledge began to occupy a very large canvass in one’s thoughts. These fragmentary knowledges through the senses however were discerned to be limited activities of the mind behind and useful for all activities in the world-catering to the body which seems to be made part of it so to speak. The inferential modes of connecting or linking up experiences that have been seen to recur opened up a wider world for action and the knowledge of this phenomenal world became extended. There it stopped. Man is not merely a being who senses and acts with his body, but a dreamer-a new world opens up to one in this vast domain of independence and still more the vast sleep-consciousness in which all the senses find their sleep and yet renew their power and ability to act. Man is multi-personal, his waking, his dreaming and his and his sleep awarenesses are new frontiers to his being and unless be integrates these three his knowledge itself falls into three irreconcilable, mutually stultifying experiences. The integration of the physical or mechanical (jagrat), the emotional (instinctive) (svapna) and the su-supti (deep sleep) is the basic necessity for being able to be a knower of Reality. This integration was envisaged by the seer of the Mandukya Upanishad and he called this integrated being-the fourth, turiya which pervades and suffuses all the others. The sensory itself would undergo changes even as the dream would open up extra-sensory or manasa-possibilities and the susupti would reveal the basic ground of human integrative oneness-the calm that abides.

All these are facts which have to be experienced and that is the most important fact about the literature that speaks the language of attainment or experience or intimate awareness. The path towards this integration is not limited to the cogitations of the mind, but rather the attainment of this integration at the level of superconsciousness (turya). This has been said to be the process of becoming unified in oneself and getting over the processes that have divided. This has come to be known as Yoga: the yoking of the triple forms of the person (purusa), which have got divided and into apparently irreconcilable dualities and trinities. Yoga became the one great preoccupation for philosophical understanding not the mere cogitations or the logistics or even ennobling dialectics. This is a strictly scientific methodology to arrive at that real awareness which is known as self or atman or Brahman because it is vaster than the three severally as well as jointly taken.

To one who has arrived at that awareness of oneself as an integrated person alone is possible that vision of the Kavi who sees beyond the three, and who sees Reality as it is in itself as from eternity yatha tathyato arthan vyadadhat sasvatibhyah samabhyah).

It is clear that to depend upon our senses alone or along with the reasoning process that connect these sense observations themselves could hardly lead to our apprehension of the world out of which much is left out as meaningless for our immediate human needs. The individual psychology of today is in pretty difficult condition and does not go with our physical sciences. With both out of tune, our knowledge today is unenviable condition. Thus when the ancient opening is available it is best to explore this methodology of integration of the human person-who becomes a real self capable of integrated knowing –leading up to real and ultimate knowledge – absolute knowledge so to speak.

The seer having been attained as the Rsi, Kavi, Drasta, His knowledge becomes the pramana. This in fact is the aptajnana without illusoriness or fragmentariness or negations.

The attainment of aptajnana may be considered to be the attainment of real experience (anubhava). Not all experience is capable of being the carrier or bearer of the true nature.

The wisdom that comes from exercising this ‘experience’ that has reached its fullest integration is something that transcends the world values and instils the dynamism of eternal values.

There is an ancient myth-and myths of this higher world order give us transcendent clues to the inner knowledge of this world itself. It is not only to Plato we owe this recognition but to the ancient seers of the Upanishads and the Puranas.

Every one must have the double fold knowledge of this world and yonder. Some called this the knowledge of the life and death. The Upanishads indeed have spoken of avidya and vidya (knowledge of works and knowledge that leads to freedom) as both necessary; they have also spoken of the knowledge of birth and non-birth also (sambhuti and asambhuti). Both have to be known in order to gain the status of freedom from death and immortality.

The myth that refers to the moon and the Sun as the two eyes of God refers to the twofold vision of the world of man through the Moon (symbolic of knowledge through manas) and world of Gods through the Sun (symbolic of knowledge that is of the atman or dhi). The great gayatri mantra of the Vedas speaks of this higher knowledge from Savitar as the dhi. Later thinking may have reduced this dhi to the status of the Samkhyan buddhi which is the mirror of the soul in Prakriti or matter. The knowledge of the Moon-knowledge or manasa-knowledge has to be interpreted in and through the sun-knowledge which is of the eternal. The Moon-eye which is said to be the left eye is outward turned (paran chikhani) whereas the sun-eye the right eye ought to be in turned (pratyak) and develop the inner vision in dhyana – the path of the dhi (dhiyana): thus the twofold knowledge procures the fullest meaning of the outward world and the inner worlds-and thus we are enabled not merely to state that one is the shadow of the other or merely an inversion or perversion of the other (vivarta) but also as the majesty of the inner Light world as it has manifested even to the very eye of the mind. Thus the myth of two headed Janus is in a sense repeated in the myth of the twofold eye of the divine. Greater than the two eyes a third eye also has been spoken of – the third eye not always of anger or fire of destruction but that which reveals a transcending of the solar worlds too-for such is the Infinite, unfathomable, that sustains the worlds of light (Sun) and the Moon (shadows).

This integration of the world-consciousness with the higher world consciousness, alone can confer a vision that is eternal verity.