T H E S P E A K I N G T R E EN E W D E L H I , F E B R U A R Y 1 , 2 0 1 5

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance— Confucius

Hasya is the rasa of joy, withhumour as its most popular

expression.The favourite subject ofhumour is maya, the illusory aspectof the universe, the eternal play ofopposites that is never the ultimate

truth but merely a reflection of truth.Peter Marchand

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When you realise how perfecteverything is you will tilt your head

back and laugh at the sky.Gautama Buddha

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He deserves paradise who makes hiscompanions laugh.

Quran❖

Everyone is so afraid of death, butthe real Sufis just laugh. Nothing

tyrannises their hearts.What strikes the oyster shell doesn’t

damage the pearl.Jalaluddin Rumi

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I created you human beings because I desired to see you lead a

joyous life.Ofudesaki

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A man of knowing attains to asense of humour. Let this always beremembered. If you see someone whohas no sense of humour, know wellthat that man has not known at

all.…Knowing brings a playfulness;knowing brings a sense of humour.

Osho❖

Laugh as much as possible, alwayslaugh. It’s the sweetest thing one can

do for oneself and one’s fellowhuman beings.Maya Angelou

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There is no limit to joy.Happiness has no end.

When you are standing in the loveof God, every cell in your body

jumps for joy.Sun Myung Moon

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When you laugh, you change andwhen you change the whole world

changes around you.Madan Kataria

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Humour is just another defenceagainst the universe.

Mel Brooks

The upanishads saythat the ignorant goto a world of dark-ness, but the learnedgo into a world thatis even darker.But is-

n’t knowledge a lamp that banishes thedarkness of ignorance? How canknowledge that dispels ignorance, ex-tolled as the panacea for all ills andevils, lead one to a world that is dark-er than the ignorance itself?

The process of acquiring knowl-edge which illuminates a person insideand lets him become aware of the ex-ternal reality, begins with sense data.This data, when contextualised, trans-forms into information which againturns into knowledge when we knowhow to apply it.But knowledge is bipo-lar; depending on the context, some-times one aspect of the knowledge isright and sometimes the other.Thereis no knowledge in the world which isnot dichotomous.Experience coupledwith knowledge during the course ofpractical application leads to the ger-mination of discerning wisdom.Thatis why it is said wisdom dawns as mangrows old.

The External WorldBut what is the teleological objec-

tive of this whole effort of knowing theexternal world? Why at all, this processof knowledge acquirement betweenthe subject and object should take place?Simply put, this is an effort to becomeone with the external world.This processof knowledge acquirement would con-tinue till such time the equilibrium isestablished.That is to say, the processbegins with a state where the subjectand object are two separate realities andtransfer of data continues to facilitatethe identity of the object in the sub-ject.This process ideally would con-tinue till there is no object left to know.

But as the Jains argue in Anekan-tavada and its corollary Syadvada, every

object has innumerable qualities andso it would take very large, if not in-finite amount of time before this equi-librium is struck.Anyone who sticksto this process contendingthat this process of knowl-edge acquirement banishesignorance is really ignorant,because he is never going tosucceed in this process.Theproblem is that we have ashort and limited span of life-time, and there obviously isneeded some other way,some other practice, if we were to at-tain the equilibrium in this life itselfor at least in a definite time frame infuture. And this path is not the pathof knowledge,but the path of pratyab-higna, direct experience.

In his book Tibetan Yoga of Dreamand Sleep, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpocheexplains with a beautiful allegory howknowledge becomes a hindrance to en-

lightenment. He says, in Tibet, newleather skins are put in the sun andrubbed with butter to make them soft-er.When a sentient being enters this

world with the loads of pastsamskaras, it is like the newskin, tough and hard withnarrow views and concep-tual rigidity.

Knowledge is like thebutter, rubbed in throughpractice, making it soft andpliable.But the same butterwhen stored in leather bags

for some years, makes the bags hard aswood and no amount of new buttercan soften them.Someone who spendsmany years studying the teachings —acquiring knowledge, intellectualisinga great deal with little experience ofpractice, is like that hardened leather.The teachings can soften the hard skinof ignorance and conditioning, butwhen they are stored in the intellect

and not rubbed into the practitionerwith practice and warmed with directexperience, the person becomes rigidand hard in his intellectual under-standing.Then new teachings will notsoften him, will not penetrate andchange him.We must be careful notto store the teachings as only con-ceptual understanding lest that con-ceptual understanding becomes ablock to wisdom.

Tenzing Wangyal Rinpoche furthersays that there are many philosophicalsystems that are developed with the in-tention of leading beings to wisdom,but they produce ignorance in that theirfollowers cling to a dualistic under-standing of reality.This is unavoidablein any conceptual system because theconceptual mind itself is a manifesta-tion of ignorance.

Break The CircleIgnorants have a scope of redemp-

tion at least some time in future, butthose believing in the inviolable su-premacy of knowledge and adheringto the path of knowledge acquirementwould continue to tread on the neverending path infinitely.The upanishadswarn us of the danger of being stuckin the furrows of knowledge and wakeus up to break the circle and proceedon the path of direct experience — onethat does not depend on the sense-mindinterface between subject and object.

Osho says, for eons, people havebeen moving round and round in cir-cles in a small room, wondering howenormous their room is, since despitemillions of steps for eons together,theyfailed to find the end of the room.Sud-denly, one among those circling mo-rons decides to move in a perpendicu-lar direction,breaking the accepted pathand lo, there he discovers the door —the entry and exit to this presumablyinfinite-sized room — and gets liber-ated from the room. ■

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S A C R E DS P A C E

Sense Of Humour

Divine CurrentsI vaguely remember that there was asign, saying:“Dangerous Currents.No Lifeguard.” I grew up in the

middle of the United States.At agetwenty, I had hardly ever seen an

ocean and certainly knew very littleabout them, so the sign meant

nothing to me. It was a beautifulsunny day, and there I was in

California at the Pacific Ocean.All I could think about was diving

into those waves. Paddling around inthe water, I reveled in this new

experience.Then everything changed.I was caught in a riptide and it was

carrying me away from shore. Ifought against it, but the current wastoo strong. Farther and farther it took

me out into the sea, until thecrashing surf was tossing me about

like a rag doll. I struggled andstruggled to no avail. I was fighting

for my life and the ocean waswinning. Finally, unable to swim

another stroke, I turned over onto myback and literally went ‘belly up’. Iwas convinced there was nothing I

could do and no one who could saveme.Waves were crashing around me,

but I felt completely calm.I had never considered what I would

do when faced with death. Inhindsight, I am surprised by my

response. I had just startedmeditating, and I knew God was outthere somewhere. I wasn’t sure whatrole He might play in my life, andwhat my relationship was to Him.

Now, as I looked at the vast blue sky,the bright sun, and the ocean around

me, I offered myself completely toGod. No words. I wasn’t asking to be saved. I didn’t pray to diequickly.With all my heart, I justgave myself back to Him.Whathappened next seemed the mostnatural thing in the world. Inresponse to my self-offering,

God gave me bliss.Basking in His bliss, it took me a

few minutes to realise that I was nowfloating in calm water. I rested thereuntil my strength returned.Then Idog-paddled in a channel of calmwater all the way back to shore.

— Loved and Protected,Ananda Sangha

A Day OffOne time, Bob Marley was scheduled

to play at a concert that promotedpeace.Two days before the concert,strangers broke into his house andshot him. Even though he was shotat and injured, he still showed up

two days later to perform at the concert. Someone came up tohim after the concert and asked him

why he did the concert when he could have been recovering fromhis injury. Marley replied,“The

people that are trying to make thisworld worse are not taking a day off.

How can I?”— Devon H, values.com

SOUL SOUPThe many tributes that werepaid toThe Times of India car-toonist R K Laxman when

he shed his earthly vestment to bereborn in the avatar of his immortalCommon Man had one thing incommon: they all remarked on hisuncanny ability to balance a lively ir-reverence with a total absence ofmalice.This is the real secret of hisart, which will continue to live onafter him.

The distinction between irrever-ence and malice is of particular rele-vance today when the world standsdeeply and bitterly divided betweenthose who champion the cause offreedom of expression, as represent-ed by the French satirical magazineCharlie Hebdo which lampooned Is-lam and the Prophet, resulting in thedeath of 13 people, and those whobelieve that matters of religious faithare sacrosanct and beyond the purviewof scepticism and humour.

Such confrontations have takenplace earlier, most notably in the case

of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satan-ic Verses, which resulted in a fatwa be-ing placed on his life. Such face-offsbetween freedom of expression andthe sanctity of religious belief will in-evitably become more frequent withthe proliferation of social media andthe platform for uncensored commentand opinion that they offer.

In a climate in which one man’sbon mot can be another’s blasphemouspoison,humour can become a deadlydangerous business.At the core of theproblem lies the question: Does hu-mour undermine the transcendent au-thority of faith?

How can laughter walk thetightrope between irreverence and of-

fence? The clue lies in the equipoiseLaxman maintained between irrever-ence and lack of malicious intent. Ir-reverence begins by being ready,will-ing and able to laugh at its progenitors,the satirists themselves. If you can firstlearn to laugh at yourself, you legit-imise your laughing at others,becauseyou have shown that your laughter isnot motivated by malice.

The laughter of irreverence is al-ways directed upwards, from a subor-dinate to an entity of higher status.Ajoke made by a beggar at the expenseof a king is funny; a joke made by aking about a beggar is not a joke butmalicious cruelty.That’s the paradox ofirreverence: by its very nature it also

subsumes an upside-down reverence:if we laugh at that which is deemedsuperior to us,we ratify that superior-ity by our laughter.

An example of such reverent ir-reverence — or irreverent reverence— is the Indian custom of referring toGod by the familiar form of address,tu,which is used for children, those ofa lower social status, and lovers. If ourGod can’t stand a bit of kidding at Hiscost,then He doesn’t deserve to be ourGod, worthy of our worship.

The laughter of irreverence sansmalice is laughter directed not at some-one or something, but laughter witheveryone and all things, including di-vinity and the concept of divinity it-self.Sartre called genius “the scandalousaudacity of nothingness”.The geniusthat we call laughter has the same neg-ative capability: it can mock all of cre-ation because it has first mastered mock-ing itself.

That’s the gift of laughter,one thatwe can share with — who else? — theCommon Man and all humanity. ■

Being IrreverentFaith in laughter, laughter in faith

JUG SURAIYA

E D I T O R I A L

Recent neuroscientific re-search on mice reported byNature and New Scientist, sug-

gests that some experiences can influ-ence subsequent generations. For ex-ample, in one such study mice trainedto fear a specific smell seemed to beable to pass on their trained aversionto their descendants,which were thenextremely sensitive and fearful of thesame smell, even though they hadnever encountered it, nor beentrained to fear it. Interestingly,changesin brain structure were also found.The researchers concluded that “Theexperiences of a parent, even beforeconceiving, markedly influences bothstructure and function in the nervoussystem of subsequent generations.”

Scientists are now beginning tospeculate that similar genetic mecha-nisms could probably be linked withphobias, anxiety and post-traumaticstress disorders, as well as other neu-ropsychiatric disorders in humans.

If the Swiss analytical psychologistC J Jung had been around, he wouldonly have called it yet another mani-festation of racial memory or collective

unconscious. “In addition to our im-mediate consciousness,” he wrote,“which is of a thoroughly personal na-ture and which we believe to be theonly empirical psyche, there exists asecond psychic system of a collective,universal and impersonal nature whichis identical in all individuals.” Jung be-lieved this collective unconscious did-n’t develop individually,but was inher-ited. It consisted of pre-existent forms,the archetypes, which could only be-come conscious secondarily and whichgave form to certainpsychic contents. Ourbodies have ananatomical prehistory of millions ofyears, as does the psychic system.

Jung even saw UFOs as an expres-sion of something in the collective un-conscious,as an updated version of ‘thegods’ of old and the ‘little people’ ofpopular folklore. He wrote a bookcalled Flying Saucers:A Modern Myth OfThings Seen In The Skies in 1958.

It’s through the medium of the col-lective unconscious that informationabout a particular time and place canbe transferred to another individual

mind.This was how Jung explained tohimself the feeling of restlessness oneevening and then the dull pain thatwoke him at about 2.00 am, passingfrom the forehead and to the back ofthe skull, the day one of his patientsshot himself in the head.

An alternative view is that an indi-vidual mind has access only to its ownstore of memories from the past —that is, all the experiences and knowl-edge that the psyche has so far ac-quired, not only from the moment of

birth but from parentsand their parents andso on,as the neurosci-

entific study of trained rats mentionedearlier clearly demonstrates.

According to this view, not until amuch higher level of consciousness hasbeen reached will an individual mindhave direct access to other parts of theuniversal mind,even though we are al-ways part of it.This idea doesn’t con-tradict any of Jung’s theories about ar-chetypes. In fact, it makes them morevital because of a slightly different em-phasis: instead of the archetypes exist-ing outside the individual conscious-

ness in a collective unconscious towhich one must first gain access beforecontacting them, they exist within theindividual as real memories.

Zoologist and anthropologist LyallWatson, who had been following suchstudies for a large part of his life,thought there was a need for a newterm for the common awareness thatcan be shared by a group: Sama —composed of two Sanskrit roots — sameaning together, and man meaningthink,‘something that links together oris of like mind’.‘Sama’ describes thoseparts of an individual or society whichshare information, whether they be inthe germ cells or in the mind.

The thalamus and hypothalamus,part of the so-called old brain commonto all animals, controlling the au-tonomous nervous system, has beenthought by some to be the area re-sponsible for memories, impulses andfeelings which we attribute to the col-lective unconscious. On the otherhand, awareness and appreciation ofthe collective unconscious can be ex-tended into a more transcendent expe-rience of cosmic consciousness. ■

One HugeThink Tank

MUKUL SHARMA

Knowledge Is DarknessBookish learning does not always banish ignorance, writes VIJAY SRINATH KANCHI,

commenting on a verse from the upanishads

SCIENCE & SPIRIT

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