The Rationale of Thinking

( Sri T N V Rajan )
WISDOM LIGHT - Vol IV Number 10 - October 1952

The thought force of man is first brought into play by two stimuli, an intense love of life and an intense
fear of danger and death. Had not man's love of life overcome his fear of death *, there would have been
no attempt at all on his part at serious thinking. We shall be avoiding much erroneous thinking if, for the
purposes of philosophical thinking, we postulate that man's first thoughts were stimulated mainly by an
intense love of life. The notion that man's belief in a superior power sprang from, and that his gods are the
airy creations of a fear-ridden mind is one of the examples of such erroneous thinking.

HOW THINKING AROSE

Thinking was necessary because man wanted to find out ways and means for the perpetuation of a life of
bliss. There would be no need for thinking at all - and thinking will automatically cease - when life in its
blissful normality of perpetual existence is attained. When that is done thought will dissolve in the
Supreme, mind will dissolve in the Absolute. This is the Vedantic idea of MANONASA. The acme of
living philosophy and religion is attained when the mind ceases to function, thought ceases to vex, and
when the need for thinking entirely disappears because there is nothing more to worry about. This,
however, is the final stage, attained only at the zenith of evolution. Before that all our adventures in the
realms of thought lie between its beginning with our intense love for life, and its end when that life has
been won in its certainty of perpetual beatitude.
Purity is an indispensable condition for the successful operation of any force. Anything extraneous
vitiates purity. Thought force can operate successfully only if it is absolutely pure and free from all
admixtures of extraneous forces of the type of passions, prejudices etc. Mental purity of the highest order
is necessary for clear and correct thinking.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THOUGHT IMPULSE

The very first impulse to philosophical thinking was inter-connected with man's psychology. It would be
foolish to overlook that psychology in philosophical thought. To analyse matter, to fail to find 'spirit' as a
result of analysis, and to argue that as scientific analysis does not produce the spirit, the soul, or a spiritual
power does not exist can be hardly described as thinking and reasoning. It is a ridiculous and petty parody
of philosophical thinking. If scientific analysis could yield the spirit - the power of the Godhead - then
God would become a patentable, marketable commodity and not the Infinite Power that He is. Can we get
the human mind inside a test tube by analysis? Can we get reason inside a test tube by analysis? The
scientific experiment described above ignores entirely man's psychology and his inner make up.

Philosophy admits nothing narrow, nothing petty. Hair-splitting is the very death of philosophy. The spirit
lamp, the crucible and the test tube can never hope to hold a cross section of life in its vastness, variety,
multiplicity of manifestation not only in species and genera but also on different planes such as the mental
plane and the moral plane, in its different states of consciousness such as sleeping, dreaming, waking, in
its pageantry of historical, social and religious evolution and in the immensity of its fulness.

In rational thinking we want the long clear view that sees far into the past and the future of the manifest
activities of the life principle on earth, and peers fearlessly into the superabundance spheres of existence.
Philosophy should have a psychological basis. Building up a philosophy that ignores the psychology of
man is like building a catacomb.

FUNCTIONING OF THOUGHT - FORCE

The subject matter of thought should not be the spring and source of thought. The thought force, brought
into action by the will to think and functioning properly under the dominance of high principles, should
work on the subjects like X rays.

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The primal impulse to thought - the intense love for life - left thought force to function of its own accord
without any control by principles. That was allright in man's assumed state of absolute ignorance and
primitive simplicity of needs and desires. In his struggle for existence he won knowledge, developed
desires, multiplied needs, became sophisticated; and unless high principles govern his thinking his
thoughts are liable to run riot.

The apparent multiplicity and seeming chaos that we observe in this world should be subjects of thinking
and not the basis of thinking. The mistake that we make in trying to solve the riddle of the universe and
the riddle of life is that we entangle the details of the subject matter with the very springs of thought. For
example, we see multiplicity, take multiplicity as an absolute truth, and then begin to think. Our thought
becomes prejudiced from the very beginning. We assume too, seeing the apparent chaos in the universe,
and watching the evolution of order out of chaotic conditions, that chaos precedes order. In these
instances what has been observed has been assimilated into the thought force and hence the result of our
thinking is unsatisfactory.

QUEST FOR ULTIMATE REALITY

The thought force of man, first brought into play his intense love for life (and longing for blissful
existence in perpetuity) started him on a quest that led him to the truth that one alone exists and nothing
else. This Noumenon has to be the basis of thinking because in that Noumenon alone can be found unity,
the oneness, the happiness of all living things. The fulness of happiness can be found only in an expansion
of consciousness that embraces all the universe, that is, in identification with the One that is Infinite

The real question is how to rise above the defect in perception that makes us see multiplicity instead of
the one. The real problem that confronts every human being is how best he may get this multiplicity
negated in perception and not why this multiplicity arose.

When we try to grasp anything new we are liable to be misled by preconceived notions, and this danger to
correct thinking and understanding should be avoided.

May it never be forgotten that the test of the truthfulness and validity of any idea lies in its application to
the life principle. An idea is correct and acceptable if it is conducive to the happiness of all human beings
and all living things. Otherwise it is untrue and incorrect and should be rejected
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* Please refer to the article entitled " On Philosophical Thinking " published in the august 1952 issue of The Divine Life