About reason: its function and the way it can be transcended
An article by Gregorian Bivolaru
As a tool we use to think about beings, things and actions, reason granted us a great power. People mainly used this power in order to enhance their life resources, to increase their pleasure or their sensitive satisfaction and in order to amplify their ego by means of the control that humans have compulsorily attained upon environment.
Going to different places and countries at a distance, watching on TV in our own house the image of the first man to step on the Moon, studying the complex, psychological features of different civilizations, these are some facts that can only imply admiring and respect for the human mind. However, looking at the city life horrors, such as pollution and its consequences, seeing the wars and murders, also the current ecological disorders, considering the records about neurosis, suicides, drugs (which are often plotted in the shadow by satanic societies such as the Freemasonry), we can’t help wondering whether man’s reason is all we need to be absolutely happy.
At a spiritual, transforming approach, rendered by all wise in the world, reason must be transcended and our efforts and energies quite tenaciously directed to the Eternal Self, the Essence inside of us (ATMAN), in order to escape the final entropy and madness that an exclusively rational consciousness can bring about.
The great physician A. ENSTEIN called upon humankind: “ There is a major demand for a new way of thinking to emerge and develop on humans if they want to survive and strive for the upper levels of consciousness”.
When we want to seize all limitations of a tool we are not supposed to completely give up that tool. In such situation we are going to consider and find a way to use that strong instrument so that we should turn it into a better one. To draw back to our given spiritual context, we are wondering whether we can use our reason in order to get beyond it. This apparently paradoxical approach, where reason is actually used to transcend reason is well known in the Eastern spiritual tradition as JNANA YOGA or the Way of the Discriminating Intuitive Knowledge. This is a spiritual path to provide an exquisite metaphysical purity, starting from some basic mind functioning such as reasoning and discrimination.
Just like the wise, superior use of sexual energy in the tantric methods, reason can also provide the operation upon some tremenduous, mysterious energies and incredible forces to lead the wise aspirant to the state of spiritual freedom whereas the foolish will be tied up in even stronger bounding. Unlike the obvious jeopardy and obstructions for the chaotic use of the sexual energy in the case of a dim-witted, abulic person we must seriously ponder upon the limits and functions of the reason. The mind operates by splitting the subject and the object, or to put it in other words it discriminates the knowing subject and the known object. It is based on the sense information and it appeals to the connecting processes made by the intellect (BUDDHI). The mind operates by sequenced analysis, making use of the systematic processing data, which all stand on the laws of logics.
Reason confines in not being able to properly manage the information that appears paradoxical or illogical (for instance, the fact an “A” thing can also be a “non A” thing at the same time, or the fact that the upper and the lower limit of an infinite unit concur). Also, we must notice that reason cannot know and define the inner ineffable aspects that can only be experienced at a subjective level.
It’s remarkably that great thinkers that have laid a major brick in the understanding of the universal laws and principles confessed in their autobiographies about the role of the mysterious and spontaneously ineffable understanding. This was a key in profound revelations, deeper than any analytical, systematical process ever that they might have unfold by means of reason. There was even mentioned a real mind alchemy in the pursuit of Truth.
“It was not by means of my reason that I attained my knowledge upon the fundamental laws of the universe”, ALBERT EINSTEIN said.
The famous philosopher WILLIAM JAMES pointed to some other existing levels of consciousness that the human being could reach, or to other ineffable paths of knowledge that depict the real knowledge of the laws in the universe such as:
a) discontinuous or penetrated by hiatuses to our reason;
b) concealed, due to the veil of our own attachment to reason. James also warned the humans about the jeopardy of prematurely blocking our channels of communication to the essential reality and to the subtle universes that can be perceived both from outside and inside of us; this might happen before we achieve the various paths of knowledge that transcend reason.
Now at this point, if we understand in a lucid and detached attitude all the elements depicted so far and if we realize the real meaning of practicing YOGA, which (if correctly applied) can essentially provide a state of unity – between our being as a microcosm and the entire manifestation that it belongs to as a macrocosm – and if we also understand that it’s our attachment to different aspects of manifestation (inner or outer) that fetters us in the illusion of dividing, there we will be able to understand more and more the laws governing the whole universe. We will be able to embrace gradually in our consciousness the mysterious world, i.e. the coexisting subtle worlds. By means of such a spiritual research that stands in the meantime for a genuine way of redemption there also occur other discriminating revelations and undreamt understanding, which will lead on to transcending our own conditioning desires. It will all guide us to a more profound and comprehensive understanding of the Whole. This synthetical view actually is the expression of the free conscious access to the causal realm, which can be quite easily attained by awaking and enhancing AJNA CHAKRA in our being.
Drawing to the end of this fascinating spiritual pursuit, we will realize we are at the point to know nearly everything; we are quite wise, also quite pure. But we still have to know that there is one more trap that might prevent us from attaining the paramount achievement and the communion to GOD. We still want to know everything as we want to remain ourselves, in our own personality, “the one who knows”. This is impossible again, for we do know that no matter how much of our finite knowledge we add to what we already know, this will never lead to infinite. In order to take the ultimate step on this path, exceeding for good the limits of knowledge, the one who knows must disappear, this is to transcend all duality between “the known object” and “the one who knows”. This is the only way for him to penetrate God’s mysterious heart of void, in order to know for real all things and beings through total identification.
The Old Testament writes by no accident that there is one single God and there is nothing above Him.
Lots of human beings, even angels having a strong mind fell in this trap as they wanted to be God and they remained in the meantime in the chrysalis of their separated, restrained identity. This fall occurs when such beings keep their consciousness stuck to MANIPURA CHAKRA permanently cherishing their selfish lust for power. There is a quite severe spiritual discipline required in order to avoid this very risk that goes with the Way of Knowledge, JNANA YOGA. In Zen Buddhism joining the KOAN (mind exercises that blur and stun the reason) and the ZAZEN (classical meditation) is a sample of such a discipline.
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