The Aim of Human Existence – Post - 6 : Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday,  19  Sep,  2023.  09:30.

Philosophy :

The Aim of Human Existence – Part 2/3 -2

(Spoken at a Conference in Delhi on Sept. 21, 1980)

Post-6.

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The notion of God will be accepted to be a simple notion and, therefore, we need not acquiesce in the attribution of any reality or existence to this idea or notion of the existence of God or perfection. Accepted. But the refusal to accept the presence of any reality or the element of existence in the idea or notion of God is an idea which will not again agree that it also should be identified with a mere idea minus existence. This is a very great subtle point that is hidden behind the workings of our minds.

A denial of a thing does not wish to be denied itself. If that denial is denied, its value goes, and it ceases to be a denial. So the idea that the idea of God cannot be equated with existence cannot be an idea merely, minus existence. It has to have some existence, some reality. Otherwise, we run into an infinite regress of arguments where we do not come to any conclusion at all. And this inconclusive way of arguing is called logical fallacy. It is not logic at all. It is not argument. It is not any acceptable statement. The insistence on the preceding idea, namely the idea of the refusal to accept the idea of God as identical with reality or existence, is a proof that the idea of God is identical with the existence of God.

Here we are in a very satisfactory position. We seem to have won a victory over this battle of philosophical controversies and theological disquisitions and religious warfare. Somehow we seem to have won the battle because, in the midst of this conglomeration of inconclusive arguments and positions assumed in religion, theology and philosophy, we seem to have a stand of our own, a status which cannot be rooted out from its position – namely, the impossibility of isolating thought from reality, idea from existence. And, therefore, an idea of perfection has somehow, perforce, to have a relation to the existence of this perfection. Therefore, such a perfection has to be.

Yesterday we were contemplating the implications of the answer to the question as to the aim of human existence. We seem to be somewhere near the answer to this question when we go further along the line of approach we have taken today, namely, the idea of perfection, which is another way of putting the same thing when we say the idea of infinity. The conception of the infinite is the same as the idea of perfection. The recognition of the finitude of an individual or the limitation of any particular object in the world is, at the same time, an acceptance of the presence of a larger than the finite. In philosophical parlance, this is called the argument of the contingency of things. The contingency of what is mundane proves the non-contingency of what is not mundane.

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To be continued

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