Food-based philosophy

I found an awesome little budget bookshop a few weeks ago, so naturally I picked up a a bunch of philosophy books. First on the reading list was one I'd never heard of : the Upanishads. Written between 900-600 B.C., but expressing ideas developed over millennia, this Vedic text has a fair claim on being the oldest work of philosophy in existence. Seems like a good place to start.

The Upanishads don't read much like later Western philosophy, where authors try and spell out their positions clearly and distinctly (to coin a phrase). Whereas Plato proceeds in a very systematic, methodical way, never advancing an argument by anything beyond the smallest increment (a method I call "tautological analysis" because successive statements are so similar to each other), arguments in the Upanishads are stated directly, fully-formed and (apparently) decisive. They are explicitly not an attempt at rational inquiry. They are more a blend of theology, philosophy, mysticism and spirituality. Oh, there's a rational aspect to them, but that's not really what they're for.

Despite this, they contain a few fair ideas which are strikingly similar to near-contemporary Greek philosophers and much later medieval thinkers. Reading the Upanishads is an interesting experience, but sometimes the mystical weirdness can be laid on a bit thick - there are large passages I make no claim to understand (not without good reason, as we'll see). So here I thought I'd try and cut through all that, and offer a few selections I thought made for an interesting illustration of how like and unlike the Upanishads are to more well-known (in the Western world) ideas.


Food, glorious food

Okay, the Upanishads don't develop an entirely food-based system of reasoning. But they are weirdly obsessed with it, to the point where if you ever met the authors you might want to keep your arms and legs to themselves. It's not that the authors advocate cannibalism, but it comes close enough, on occasion, that you feel the need to state "it's not that the authors advocate cannibalism." Take for instance this manic hymn :

I am food, I am food, I am food ! I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food ! Him who eats food, I eat as food.

By any modern standards the author of that little ditty was clearly a rabid lunatic who needs to be locked up fast (i.e. I have no idea what they're on about). Other parts feel like they were almost profound until some hungry nutcase got their hands on the text :

From food are produced all the creatures which dwell on Earth. They live on food, and in the end they return to food.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust... if there's one message from the Upanishads (there isn't, but if there was it would be this) it's the essential oneness of all things. Food is no exception to that, but it's one the text dwells on quite a lot.

The earth when eaten becomes threefold; its grosses portion becomes faeces, its middle portion flesh, its subtlest portion mind.

Mind-food duality ? I dunno what Descartes would have to say about that because I've only just started reading the Meditations. Certainly the Upanishads have a lot more profound comments than "you are what you eat", even if sometimes they are deliberately inscrutable.


Knowledge

Before examining what the Upanishads have to say about mind itself, perhaps it's worth considering what they say about what we can know at all. Despite (or arguably because of) being full of mystical woo woo (I'd have used a less derogatory term, because I'm genuinely interested in it, but a) I couldn't think of one and b) "mystical woo woo" is slightly amusing), the Upanishads do contain many interesting and important insights. For example, they recognise that our perception does not directly reveal the true nature of external reality, but only our own internal sense of it. The mind is, in effect, a sensory organ :

As people say, "My mind was elsewhere, I did not see; my mind was elsewhere, I did not hear", it is clear that a man sees with his mind and hears with his mind. Even if a man is touched from behind, he knows it through mind. 

Thou couldst not see the true seer of sight, thou couldst not hear the true hearer of hearing, nor perceive the perceive of perception, nor know the knower of knowledge. This is thy self, who is within all. Everything else is suffering.

There are certainly plenty of Platonic overtones to all this : the idea that we cannot know the true "form" of anything. But these explicit statements about own knowledge only being of our own perceptions is not really very Platonic, with Plato explicitly denying that knowledge is perception (Descartes and Spinoza, on the other hand, were much more sympathetic).

So what exactly is knowledge ? Being a text seemingly designed for one's own reflection, rather than presenting much in the way of well-defined conclusions, it seems to me that the Upanishads don't offer any firm commitments. Sometimes they tend towards the view that perception of the external world is knowledge after all :

"What is the nature of knowledge ?""Your majesty, speech itself. For through speech, a friend is known to be a friend; what is sacrificed, what is poured out, what is to be eaten and drunk, this world and the other world, all creatures [are known]. By speech alone, your majesty, Brahman is known; speech indeed, O king, is the highest Brahman.""I shall give you a thousand cows with a bull as big as an elephant".

Pity the poor cows that have to suffer the amorous affections of such a monster ! And elsewhere :

The eye is truth, for the person dwelling in the eye proceeds to all things.

So we know things by sensing the world around us, even if our limited senses and internal perceptions don't give us the full picture of reality. The problem is that not only are our senses incomplete, but that they are also inaccurate :

Even in a mind which loves the truth, and has gone to rest in itself there arise, when it is deluded by the objects of sense, wrongful thoughts resulting from former acts.

How, then, can we say we truly know anything at all if we cannot entirely trust our senses ? The philosopher might answer that we cannot. The scientist might say that repeat testing is good enough to overcome any deficiencies. The Upanishads answer, if they have one at all, deflects the problem rather than addressing it. Unlike Plato, who tended towards the view that all human traits are just different types of knowledge, the Upanishads have a very different, sometimes very silly message :

Do not ask too much lest thy head should fall off.

Knowledge, they say, isn't everything. Not everything can be known or analysed. There is some much greater aspect of reality. In many ways the whole of the Upanishads feels like an attempt to express the literally inexpressible.

The devas love what is mysterious, and dislike what is evident. 

He, the Self, can only be described as "Not this, not this !". He is incomprehensible, for he cannot be comprehended; her is imperishable, for he cannot perish; he is unattached, for he does not attach himself; he does not suffer or feel, because he is unfettered. 

What is without thought, though placed in the centre of thought, what cannot be thought, the hidden, the highest - let a man merge his thought there : then will this living being be without attachment.

I love the notion of a thought you cannot think, of things you simply cannot comprehend. It flies in the face of the scientific effort to understand reality, yet, paradoxically, the idea that our brain tissue ought to be able to understand the Universe is clearly absolutely bloody bonkers. How can we possibly account for things we can't understand ? Why should there not be an aspect of reality that we are fundamentally incapable of understanding - not just through rational analysis, but even through the more mystical, emotional methods of religions and philosophies ?

I dunno. But I'll close this section with my favourite quote from the whole work :

All those who are devoted to what is not real knowledge enter into darkness: those who delight only in knowledge enter, as it were, into greater darkness.

Psychology

Despite such explicit acknowledgement that we can't know everything, the Upanishads don't shy away from making blunt conclusions. There are some curiously modern aspects to many of these, for example a section in the Chandogya Upanishad has something similar to the hierarchy of needs (albeit blending physical and spiritual requirements). It runs thus :

Name  <  Speech  <  Mind  <  Will < Awareness  < Contemplation  <  Understanding  < Power  < Food  <  Water  <  Fire  <  Space  <  Memory  <  Hope  <  Spirit.

Which is clearly pretty extensive so I'll skip over the details. Other statements are far clearer. They even reference the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect (which Plato also understood very well) on more than one occasion :

Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind. The deluded living in ignorance in many diverse ways, consider themselves as having obtained everything.

Knowledge might not be everything, but the Upanishads don't dismiss it either. In particular, again in similarity to Greek thinking, self-knowledge is essential. They repeatedly use the metaphor of a chariot to describe how man experiences the world :

These perceptive organs are his reins; the active organs his horses, the body his chariot, the mind the charioteer, the whip the temperament... A wise man... turns he senses with the mind inward to enter the heart. Let the wise man successfully restrain his mind, that chariot yoked with vicious senses. 

He who controls both knowledge and ignorance rules over every cause, over all forms, and over all sources.

It might not have been intended, but I can't help feeling that last quote has some pretty direct political implications. Anyone trying to manipulate a society doesn't limit themselves to controlling what people know - they also try and control what people don't know. Which has, of course, both good and bad implications.

On an individual level, the Upanishads advocate self-knowledge as a means of self-control. As various Western philosophers would later suggest, man is free not when he is able to indulge his passions, but when he's able to control them :

Freedom from desires is, as it were, the highest prize to be taken from the choicest treasure. For a man full of desires, being possessed of will, deliberation, and I-consciousness, is a slave, but he who is the opposite, is free. Let a man stand free from will, deliberation and I-consciousness - this is the sign of liberty, this is the path that leads to Brahman, this is the opening of the door, and through it he will go to the other shore of darkness. 

The world of Brahman belongs to those who find it by means of discipline and self-control; for them there is freedom in all the worlds.

But self-knowledge, like any form of knowledge, is limited. The main topic of the Upanishads is the Brahman, the infinite One, the Ultimate Reality, God. Call it what you will. Comprehension of such a thing is impossible. Knowledge is, at most, only a tool to reaching enlightenment - and not the most important one at that.

Where the fire is rubbed, where the wind is checked, where the soma flows over, there the mind is born.The self cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the self chooses, by him the self can be gained. To him the self reveals its own nature.

Consciousness

Again, despite reality being fundamentally indescribable and unknowable, the Upanishads do offer some suggestions as to its nature. Understanding consciousness and the soul is an important component of becoming something greater than oneself. For a start, at a very basic level, it's clear that consciousness is not a binary proposition. The Upanishads suggest there are four different levels :

The first is the state of waking. This knows only external objects. The second state is the state of dream. This knows only internal objects which are there in the mind.

So far, so rational. We know about external reality when we're awake, but only our internal reality in our dreams. We aren't dreaming about some other reality when we sleep, we're only exploring our own mind. But the third state is much more mystical :

When one if fast asleep, bereft of dreams and desires, the self is in the third state. As the darkness of night drives away the visible world, so does the dreamless sleep push aside the word of objects, external or internal. Experiences now collapse into one undifferentiated point of consciousness, restful and blissful. This is the knower and source of all, the inner controller. His is the beginning and the end of becoming.

Socrates famously declared that a a dreamless sleep is an experience to be welcomed, but neither he nor Plato made any claims that such deep sleep accessed some other realm. The "Self" of the Upanishads is, I suppose, the Platonic form of mind. Plato went to great lengths in the Republic to describe how our senses serve to confuse us (though elsewhere he contradicted this), but the Upanishad conclusion on the importance of pure thought is altogether more mysterious.

Now about the self in the fourth state. He is not directed at all, and so he knows not, and is himself unknowable. He is unseen, unusable, ungraspable. He is without signs, without indications, unthinkable and indescribable. His only proof is his presence : peaceful, benign, pure oneness. This is the supreme self.

Throughout the work there is a constant reminder of Brahman, a concept "inconceivably subtler than subtle", the infinite oneness, as the ultimate goal. How can one know the unknowable, even to the extent of knowing it even exists ? To the devotee, such a question makes no sense. You cannot think unthinkable thoughts. This fourth state of consciousness (of perhaps lack thereof) should also be set alongside some distinctly panpsychic tendencies* :

* Look, if you don't get anything else from this post, you've got to admit that "panpsychic tendencies" is a cool band name.

And what comes from the heart and the mind, namely, perception, sentience, understanding, knowledge, wisdom, inspiration, thinking, resolution, readiness to suffer, memory, conceiving, willing, breathing, loving, desiring ? All these are various names only of consciousness... whatsoever breathes and moves, and whatsoever is unmoving - all that is led by consciousness.... the world is led by consciousness. Consciousness is its cause.

Understanding (for want of a better word !) all this and achieving enlightenment carries profound consequences. As Plato would have approved, such a journey of self-discovery is vital for the sake of the immortal soul :

From meditating on him [the supreme self], from joining him, from becoming one with him there is cessation of all illusion in the end. When that one is known, all fetters fall off, sufferings are destroyed, and birth and death cease. 

This body indeed withers and dies when the living self has left it; the living self dies not.  

That which is beyond this world is without form and without suffering. They who know it, become immortal, but others suffer pain indeed.

Hail to you, that you may cross beyond the sea of darkness !

God

Or rather, Brahman. Or perhaps not, because the concept of Brahman is a tricky one. It hasn't gone unnoticed by scholars that Spinoza's (more on him in a future post) idea of the Ultimate Reality is almost plargarisingly close to that of the Upanishads :

He is beyond all the forms of the world and of time, he is the other, from whom the world moves around. There is no effect and no cause known of him... his power is revealed as manifold, as inherent, acting as force and knowledge.

While Spinoza takes this considerable further, rendering God into useless omnipotence, the Upanishad view of Brahman as the infinite, the union of all things, is distinctly similar. And just as Spinoza's view of God was that he was far beyond such petty human notions as good and evil, so too do the Upanishads have a note of caution in their teachings. Paradoxically, achieving enlightenment requires a desire to do good, but ultimately results in moving far beyond it.

Being freed from good and freed from bad, he, the knower of Brahman, moves towards Brahman.

This has disturbing consequences :

By no need of his is his life harmed, not by the killing of his mother, not by the killing of his father, not by theft, not by destroying a foetus. If he even commits sin, brilliance does not desert his face.

Yet Spinoza doesn't seem to have murdered babies and the Upanishads clearly don't endorse the prospect. They define a triad of instruction of self-control, giving, and mercy - hardly the behaviour of a reckless brute. Somehow, this concept of infinite oneness, of an inviolable perfection that cannot be stained by human sin, seems to have brought solace both to Spinoza and the ancient Vedics. Certainly neither of them seem to have used their various ideas of the infinite nature of the Universe and mind as an excuse for hedonistic parties or murderous rampages.

This person, when embraced by the intelligent self, knows nothing that is without, nothing that is within. This is indeed his true form, in which his wishes are fulfilled, in which the self only is his wish, in which no wish is left - free from any sorrow.

The Upanishads concept of Brahman is similar but not quite the same as Spinoza's God. While the Upanishads embrace the nature of infinity, they don't wholly reject the idea of an interfering God as Spinoza does, nor are they so ambiguous as to the immortal nature of the soul. Like Plato, they fully embrace the notion of an afterlife and the need (later adopted with gusto by Christianity) to do good works on Earth in order to enjoy immortality :

Now if a man departs from this life without having seen his true self, then that self, not being known, does not receive and bless him, as if the Veda had not been read, or as if a good work had not been done. Indeed, if one who does not know that self, should he still perform here on Earth some great holy work, it will perish for him in the end. Let a man worship the self only as his true state.

According to the Upanishads, for all that self-knowledge is limited, it is still possible to know the Self. While dreams access internal knowledge, sleep is, perhaps, a route to another realm after all :

When the sun has set, and the moon is not there, and the fire is gone out, and the sound is stilled, what then is the light of man ? The self indeed is his light.Who is that self ? He who is within the heart, surrounded by the senses, the person of light consisting of knowledge. He, remaining the same, wanders along the two worlds, as if thinking, as if moving. During sleep he transcends this world and the forms of death.

The Upanishads are fraught with more outright examples of mystical practises, of rituals and incantations and the power of words. I doubt you could really call them a work of philosophical inquiry, but they undeniably present a work of philosophical exploration. Replete with mysticism, they also contain clearly rational and sophisticated ideas. If nothing else, they are a powerful reminder that religious thinking is not always synonymous with primitive superstition, nor faith an act of pure irrationality. And of course, they're also a reminder to get something to eat.