DESCARTES AND RAMANA

DESCARTES AND RAMANA
[A COMPARATIVE STUDY]
BY
S. MAHESHKUMAR

I
René Descartes (1596-1650)

THE very word Philosophy has got for its definition a cornucopia of suggestions both individually as well as collectively. It is very hard to comprehend Truth so long as it stands as a generalised entity. As a result it becomes easier to speculate on the ground of every man’s personal experience. But we call a person by the word Philosopher only when his ideas are influential in the sense that they help us to understand things better than earlier. Starting with René Descartes, the most influential founder of Modern Philosophy of Western Thought, we pave our way to Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, the final solution to the intersecting crux of all kinds of divergences.

René Descartes (1596-1650) was France’s contribution to the Mathematical Trinity who were chiefly responsible for what the Science of Mathematics appears as it is now. The others were Sir Isaac Newton from England and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz from Germany.

Descartes inherited his father’s wealth and his mother’s delicate constitution. His mother breathed her last when Descartes breathed for his life first. At the age of eight he was admitted to the Jesuit school at La Fleche, founded by Henry IV for the sons of gentlemen, where he undertook in addition to studies, discipline, manners, and social polish. He enjoyed certain exceptions and favours due to his poor health. Out of these the permission to lie abed in the mornings, which he maintained as a life long habit.

After eight years of schooling and a dull year in the country, he was left alone in Paris by his father with huge sums of money and a valet to look after him. There he found life boring and had developed detachment towards mundane things, increased love of solitude and retirement. In 1617, he enlisted in the Dutch Army. As Holland was enjoying independence from Spain then, it allowed Descartes to spend time in undisturbed meditation for a couple of years. During this period, he composed a treatise on Music, invented the Analytical Geometry by applying Algebra to Geometry and wrote his Pensées. At the broke of the thirty years war, Descartes led himself to enlist in the Bavarian Army in 1619. It was here in Bavaria during the winter of 1619-1620, that he had the experience of Constant Trance for a day at end of which he perceived half of his entire Philosophy.

After some more enlisting in various armies, at last, Descartes settled in Holland (1629-1649) for twenty years except for few brief visits to France and one to England, all on business purposes. During this period, he produced works such as ‘Rules for the direction of the mind’, ‘Discourse on Method’, ‘Meditations’ and a work on the ‘World’, which he withdrew on hearing the condemnation of Galileo. At this juncture he had a private love affair through which he had a daughter. But he never married. His daughter died at the tender age of five, which caused him the most unbearable sorrow in his entire life.

Descartes had a wide range of admirers. Two of them deserve special mention. One among them was Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. Later he dedicated his ‘Principles’ to her. The other was the very intelligent Queen Christina of Sweden who decided to learn Descartes’ Philosophy from him directly for fun! She ordered him to take lessons for her daily at 5 O’clock in the mornings which made Descartes to brake his life long habit of getting late from bed in the mornings suddenly! The winter was very severe. He developed Pneumonia and died after ten days of illness on 11th February 1650. This was one of the greatest loses to the academic world and Queen Christina was chiefly responsible for Adam-teasing Descartes to Death.

II
Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) preached through silence. He was born on 30th December 1879, on the sacred day for the Hindus, the Arudhra Darshanam, at Thiruchuzhi (meaning ‘revered zero’ in Tamil), in Tamilnadu, South India. Ever since he was a boy, he was enquiring about the concept of death. This enquiry was increased to larger proportions when his father Sundaram Iyer, a practising advocate, died after illness. Young ‘Venkataraman’, as Ramana’s parents christened him, asked the nearby mourners at his father’s mortal remains, “Why were they weeping for?” They provided him with a diluted reply by saying that his father had passed away. “If your father is living, he would have certainly found you amidst this huge crowd and would have talked to you!”—somebody in the gathering tried to clarify young Ramana.

From that day onwards, young Ramana was always preoccupied with serious enquiry of death and its consequences. During the July of 1896, while he was alone in a room at Madurai, he encountered the live experience of his own death: “After I was dead, well this body will be carried away to the burial ground and then it will be put down to flames. By the death, followed subsequently by its (the body’s) cremation, am I really wiped out? No! So, I am That I am!!” This was the gist of what Sri Ramana Maharshi had commented upon his boyhood death experience afterwards. Later he came to Thiruvannamalai, ever to stay there, to lead a life of detachment, completely absorbed in the Holy Beacon, Arunachala—the abode of Lord Siva!

III
The Study in Comparison

The Philosophy, which Descartes had left us, was nicely termed as Cartesianism. It grounds itself chiefly upon two: Scholastic Logic and Metaphysics constitute together in one side and Mathematics at the other. Descartes believed in the principle of Inner Certitude. He reinforced Scholasticism with the precision of Mathematical Science. He confined his thinking to certainty possible of attainment. His maxim was to endeavour always to conquer himself rather than fortune, and change his desires rather than the order of the world. Sri Ramana also advocated this. The Cartesian doubt on which Descartes rests his entire Philosophy can be achieved as follows: Begin by doubting everything that can be doubted. All our experiences of the external world, of our own body, of our life, etc., may be dream and illusion. But in anyway, the dream is beyond all possibility of doubt. We are dreaming, we are experiencing and we are thinking. That is, I am thinking when considered in terms of the personal pronoun. Therefore, at least, I exist. Cogito, Ergo Sum:- “I think, therefore I am.” This method of Descartes validates the possible existence of “I” whereas Sri Ramana Maharshi teaches us to ask “Who this I is?” i.e. the famous “Who am I?”

While Descartes’ method assures us the existence of “I”, Sri Bhagavan Ramana asks us to concentrate upon this “I” and by thus enquiring in introspection, the enquirer will lose himself in the “SELF” and remain ever radiating as the “PURE ATMAN.”

—S. Maheshkumar.

{Original Draft Written on 26th July 1999 at 2 PM, Indian Standard Time.}

Books referred:

1. “Men of Mathematics” By E. T. Bell.
2. “A History of Western Philosophy” By Bertrand Russell.
3. “History of Philosophy” By B. A. G. Fuller.
4. “Descartes” By Margaret Dauler Wilson.
5. “The Cambridge Companion to Descartes” By John Cottingham.
6. “A Search in Secret India” By Paul Brunton.
7. “Who am I?” By Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
8. “Day by Day with Sri Bhagavan” By Devaraja Mudaliar.
9. “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi” By M. S. Venkataramaiah.
10. “Ramana Maharshi” By Prof. K. Swaminathan.
11. “Self Realisation” By B. V. Narasimha Swamy.
12. “The Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi.”