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Scholars have tried to
explain that the following are the ways of
knowing God. (1) immediate experience of God,
(2) Revelation ,communication of truth by God
directly, (3) Faith, which is a gift of God, (4)
A priori principles of Reason demanding the
acceptance of God as necessary ground, (5)
Action which is the will to believe and act on
the hypothesis of the existence of God, and (6)
Coherence- God as the principle of coherence in
the universe.
Briefly explaining the
‘ways’, we find that the direct and immediate
experience of God is like an epistemological
immediacy, which gives rather the intuitive
experience of oneself rather than God. Mystic
institution hardly leads up to the universe as
such or God. It is the beginning of the
experience of oneself which willy nilly enforces
a further step towards the Godhead. But such a
transition happens in some.
Revelation as the truth
spoken by God or got from God by the prophets
might accompany the former intuitive
apprehension of oneself and leading up to the
Godhead. The scriptures form the written down
truths. One is demanded to verify these
experiences and reach up to the Vision which was
the possession of the Propherts and Seers.
Without this urge and command by the scripture
to realise, the Godhead remains a statement – a
meaningless thing.
Faith in Indian Thought
means sraddha, a willingness to follow the paths
laid down in the scriptures and revelations and
intuitions, to the end with a feeling of
certainty about their truth. But this is a gift
of God to the inner being. It may turn out to
be to be barren. Usually the substance of faith
is in the believed veracity of the revelations
and the propherts – their truly realised word
and truth. (Aptavacana).
A priori principles depend for their acceptance on the self-certainty to
reason that they grant. Being not inconsistent
with reason, though inconsistent with the
perceptual and other evidence, a priori
principles are one way by which one begins to
ask such questions as the need for the
Substance, Causality etc., which will make life
and experience intelligible. Without these life
will be chaotic. God thus becomes the postulate
for system, cosmos and intelligibility. The
assumption of a priori principles regarding the
ultimate values involves the notion of the
ultimate Good and this is equated with God. The
meaninglessness of the world becomes the central
conclusion if God is denied.
Action is said to be the way of knowing God. Action by itself is a type of
activity assuming that God exists, truth
triumphs, and goodness is what all pursuing get
happiness and so on. But are these those that
lead to God knowledge or God realisation. Love
of man and instrumental values cannot lead to
the highest notion of God at all. One however
thinks that he would realise God if he does act
as if God exists and order prevails and truth
will succeed and so on. Indian Thought at any
rate held that karma-yoga is the yoga that aims
at union through performance of works prescribed
by scripture as capable of leading to that union
with God. Karma yoga has of course been extended
to cover cases which are actions dictated by or
counselled by prophets and saints, such as
disinterested activities towards all creatures
and acts of kindness, charity and so on. This
however is not theconcept of the means of the
modern scholars.How actions can be the way of
knowledge is difficult to comprehend, for even
the will to believe and act is an instrumental
way.
The existence of coherence will make us assure the existence of One
supreme God who alone can confer coherence to
the world. The idealist conception that one must
assume a system in order to arrive at it or
believe that one is arriving at it is rather
native. Coherence as a test of reason, is
capable of being used along with experience
through verification. It rests on the belief
that the Reality being rational cannot but be
coherent in respect of all truths and consistent
is respect of each truth. How this can be a way
of knowing God is difficult to comprehend,
though it may be said that it is neither a proof
for the existence of God nor an evidence of the
personality of God.
The general approach to this chapter thus is to show that it is
essentially a superficial theoretical approach.
The ways of knowing God are definitely two :
Revelation and Immediate Super-knowledge or
Intuition, atma-saksatkara a soul-knowledge
unmediated by intellect or perception or even
poetic inspiration, (intuition). The ways are
thus through knowledge (or this intuitive –
revelation), through works (Actions prescribed
by saints), and through devotion or love of God
and God only (bhakti). Altogether they all
demand a total integral dedication
(self-surrender), and reason may help and
promote.
The pragmatic approach in the main believes that we can never know
anything for certain but can always make an
attempt towards the same. In fact the analysis
of Deweyean technique has been precisely to
abjure the quest for certainty, but aim at
coherence of our present knowledge which is
being modified however by new discoveries and
techniques. Thus new techniques creative new
environments and they in turn throw up new lines
of possibility.
Coherence theory is said by him to be a way of knowing or understanding
God, since He can not be seen.
Requirements of his method are (i) collection of pre-scientific religious
data, (ii) construction of working hypothesis to
interpret all the facts collected, and the (iii)
verify the hypothesis. These three are indeed
the method of the empirical science.
Inductive enquiry such as this cannot but be problematical knowledge. The
Indian thought is more systematic and has been a
time tested one. |
