When rationality is glorified beyond its reasonable limitations, I wonder what the very reason itself is. When someone like Swami Vivekananda claims that rationality is the only valid evidence (pramana) for any spiritual or religious claims, it creates a tension in me.
From Vivekananda himself:
“Again, ‘Experience is the only source of knowledge.’ The same methods of investigation that we apply to the sciences and to exterior knowledge should be applied to religion. ‘If a religion is destroyed by such investigation, it was nothing but a useless and unworthy superstition; the sooner it disappeared, the better.’ ‘Why religions should claim that they are not bound to abide by the standpoint of reason, no one knows… For it is better that mankind should become atheist by following reason than blindly believe in two hundred million gods on the authority of anybody… Perhaps there are prophets who have passed the limits of sense and obtained a glimpse of the beyond. We shall believe it only when we can do the same ourselves; not before.’ It is said that reason is not strong enough, that often it makes mistakes. If reason is weak, why should a body of priests be considered any better guides? ‘I will abide by my reason,’ continues Vivekananda, ‘because with all its weakness, there is some chance of my getting at truth through it… We should therefore follow reason, and also sympathize with those who do not come to any sort of belief, following reason.’ In the study of this Raja Yoga, no faith or belief is necessary. Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself.”
{Most of the extracts from Vivekananda’s writings have been taken from Romain Rolland’s Life of Vivekananda.}
— Swami Vivekananda, Jawaharlal Nehru, in A. Raghuramaraju, ed. Debating Vivekananda: A Reader, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 9-17, p. 12
The first problem for me is understanding the spiritual and religious experience of a particular tradition through a word or language that cannot convey the original meaning. For example, what is the exact word for “reason” in Sanskrit, Hindi, or Tamil? I am not an expert in any of these languages, but as a Tamilian, I can say that what we call ‘Pahuttarivu’ is not exactly ‘reason’ in English. I honestly can’t fully grasp the word ‘reason,’ but I don’t blame English for that. However, many areas of our own lives, based on experience, cannot be accepted or rejected solely on reason.
Take, for example, Bhagavan Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the guru of Swami Vivekananda. I once read that when Bhagavan Ramakrishna Paramahamsa identified himself as a woman, he even experienced menstrual bleeding. I am not sure how far Vivekananda acknowledged this ‘experience’ of his guru or rejected it based on reason. According to normal standards, it is beyond anyone’s reason how a man could have this occur, even if he was in a trance.
Leaving aside the supernatural events of saints, even one’s own personal experience will show that in relationships with others, a person gets closer to one person and stays away from another based on instinct. In our school days, when there were more than 30 to 40 students in our class, we ended up developing friendships with only a very few. There is no particular reason why we are attracted to one person who becomes our friend and not another. For me, this is also beyond the normal standard of reason.
The same is true when boys and girls fall in love with each other. Though many are attracted by physical appearance, beyond such infatuation, a couple may marry out of love, which isn’t necessarily compatible with other normal standards of attraction between the sexes. Recently, I watched a program on the Discovery Channel where a stout woman weighing more than 200 kg struggled to reduce her weight. What surprised me was her boyfriend, a good-looking young man of normal weight, who not only loved her but continued to live with her and help her in her efforts to lose weight. According to our normal (Indian) standards, it is beyond reason to think that such people can love and live together.
Though I am tempted to quote extensively from other scholars on this topic of reason, I would like to conclude by analyzing reason again, based on Bhagavan Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. According to Swami Vivekananda’s emphasis on reason, he should reject his guru’s menstrual experience. But based on his claim that experience is the only evidence, alongside reason, he should accept his guru’s experience, which stands beyond reason.
I understand that such statements were made in their specific contexts. Swami Vivekananda may have made these points on reason in one context and might have acknowledged his guru’s menstrual experience as real in another. However, for a layman like me, such contradictions are part of life, and we should avoid making dogmatic statements on any doctrinal or ideological views that may contradict our other statements.
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