Prologue
To write something very interesting and informative about such vast themes like life, love and death is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible. Before undertaking this difficult task, I reflected deeply, to the best of my ability, asking myself the question: ‘Do I have anything really new and informative to write on these issues?’ The answer that I received from within was very unclear. It made me think, time and again, whether my views were worth writing about at all. Have not many, almost innumerable people before me and during my own lifetime, earnestly addressed these questions?
I cannot honestly claim that I have something completely new in terms of information or value to write on these subjects. At the same time, the idea that insistently appears in my mind is this: ‘Do all people write, hoping always, that they will be able to write something radically new? Or, do they write primarily to express themselves to others, those living presently or yet to be born?’
I often wonder whether one of the main purposes of self-expression is not to share one’s ideas with others. One may raise the question: What can we possibly gain by sharing our experiences, expectations, bits of information, views and values with others? One of the many answers returned to these questions has been that by sharing our information, views and values with others, we can, in some cases, perhaps, help them and in others, harm them, influence them to our benefit, to that of society and maybe, to the benefit of the human race itself.
If we decide after deep and careful reflection that we should enlarge, or at least try to enlarge, a positive state of peace and happiness for others, and ourselves; the dissemination of our views and values then, may be welcome. On the other hand, if we think that we are veritably placed in a situation of conflict or struggle and should try to weaken opposing views and values, we will perhaps find ourselves called upon to fight our opponents, weaken their cause and intention.
At times, I am vexed with, or rather tormented by, the question whether my approach to the topic I am trying to formulate is fruitful, promising or a mere howler. One can easily think of raising fundamental questions without intending to help or harm others. There may well be other motivations for engaging with the basic questions of life, love and death. Some people think, and have been thinking, for a long time and in different ways, that the forms of raising these questions have been natural or spontaneous. To put the same issue in a slightly different way, to live a human life and not to raise questions, positive or negative, barren or fruitful, seems to be impossible. Serious thinkers have observed that an unexamined life is not worth living. To live life and yet not to be interrogative about it seems to be impossible because it has been understood to be a native impulse of human existence.
This very question, claimed to be fundamental, is perhaps not beyond the realm of interrogation. Some thinkers, both religious and secular, have tried to delve deep into the question of the very existence of the nature of existence itself. While some thinkers after long and sustained self-interrogation have concluded that existence, or what is ordinarily believed to be existence, is ever elusive, several others have concluded that existence is an illusion and for reasons unknown we are led to believe in it. If these varieties of views are taken seriously, both existence (sat/bhāva) and non-existence (asat/abhāva) turn out to be equally elusive.
At times, I feel strongly inclined to believe that, influenced by the traditional modes of thinking and/or reading, that is, academic exposure, we are thrown into these old and fixed moulds of thought. Alternatively, at times, it seems to me that the language or the terms in which we are obliged to think as a matter of habit, leads us to two ways of the so-called fundamental questions. The question of fundamentality, in that case, turns out to be language-relative. With some variations, the same question may, perhaps be put in another way: the issue of fundamentally is culture-specific. Neither language nor culture provides a route to what is unquestionably fundamental. This is because of the availability and use of multiple languages in different cultural contexts.
The claim to fundamentality of anything like culture and language or any co-shared or co-produced social product is questionable and arguable. Their questionability and arguability are not figments of empty speculation. Histories of thought—religious, philosophical and scientific, provide enough evidence in support of these views.
Among other claimants to fundamentality are matter, life and consciousness. Scientists tell us of different forms and states of matter—solid, liquid and gaseous. Within each of these states, there are other conceivable and in some cases, even nameable states. Similarly, life also, is not a single, homogenous reality. Some of its well-known forms are human life, sub-human life and super-human life. In this case, too, each of these forms have been conceived of in more specific ways—perhaps in endlessly specific ways. It has been said by many great thinkers in different fields of knowledge that there is no limit of specifiability of reality. All these considerations lead us to no definite conclusion about what is fundamental, what is existence, or similar other so-called fundamental questions.
If this indefiniteness of our views is brought to bear upon the main three themes of this work—life, love and death, I do not know whether we can reach any definite views or arrive at a definite conclusion. But it is an undeniable fact, undeniable for all, that we (human beings) do live, we do love and we do die. About the said modes of identification and specification of human beings we may differ, in fact we do differ, but we can hardly deny that living, loving, and dying are veritable and persistent ‘truths’.
Every level of reality and every sub-level and segment within it, seems to be interactive, internally or externally, perhaps in both ways. Some thinkers have gone to the extent of affirming that reality as a whole is organic in its nature. In another way, this truth has been sought to be captured by the dictum that all parts of reality are mutually mirroring one another. In brief, all the parts of reality are isomorphic. The radical expressions of this view, among others, are (i) every particle of materiality has in it a promise of vitality, mentality or consciousness, (ii) every cell of the body has its own mind and (iii) everything spiritual, rightly understood, is embodied. Similar expressions may be found in the writings of materialists and pan-physicists.
This integral view of reality does recognize the presence of human reality, in some form or another, within its scope. Since human reality itself is of immense variety, depending on that character of it, different human beings, philosophers, scientists and poets highlight one or the other of these various aspects. By keeping itself absent from the integrality of reality, none can give an absolutely Archimedean, that is, a neutral picture, one that is strictly universal and absolutely acceptable to everyone. This trace of relativism is underpinned by an ineliminable humanism. Whether we study science, philosophy, or art, this humanistic element is always present or irremovable. It should, however, not be a point of criticism. It does not compromise the claim of objectivity of the concerned view or value.
In all our fundamental activities and evaluations, the presence of our consciousness, rather self-consciousness, makes itself insistently expressive, articulately or inarticulately.
The knowledge of the past, present, and future is continuous in a very important sense. This continuity presupposes existence and memory, however interrupted it may be in some knowing minds. The concerned minds, theoretically equipped, span meaningfully over both individual human beings and their societal aggregates. The denial of this assumption and what follows from it makes the study of all sorts of human affairs—historical, anthropological, archaeological, and so on, impossible or meaningless. The concepts of meaning, in the cognitive context is embedded in both unity and continuity of what has happened or has been happening in different parts of the world, notwithstanding their spatial and/or temporal gaps. The so-called gaps are located, or are at least in principle locatable, within the stream of human consciousness, individual or collective.
The continuity of human life is sought to be understood, preserved, and communicated in terms of some entities like life, lineage, dynasty, memorials, racial traits, genetic endowments and several other related concepts. On analysis, one finds that most of these concepts are theoretical—not observational. Without using theoretical concepts, diverse objects of knowledge, particularly those of a macro character and scope, cannot be colligated or structured in a meaningful way.
To speak of entities like the ‘history of the world’ makes no sense unless it is a specific history conceived and written, or recorded in some other ways by one or many generations of human beings. The informant of the human mind in making history possible is too obvious to be mentioned. This is because the ‘history of the world’, ‘universal history’, and the ‘history of mankind’ are undeniably theoretical constructs. To assert this does not imply that these constructions have no empirical bases or human factors underlying the same. But those factors being too numerous and spread over space and time, it is not practically possible to enumerate them individually or separately. This constraint requires man to fall back upon, or resort to the construction of theory.
In terms of theories, we try to bring together widely different segments of reality—from the atomic to the galactic. To come relatively close to our own life, we may refer to different times and types of human history, from the geological past to contemporary affairs, and even futuristic projections. In and through reflection, we get to the contents of such diverse disciplines as geology, geography—natural and human—archaeology, ethnography, sociology, linguistics and literature. Under every subject, we come across so many themes. But they have a generic unity, viz., relevance to and relation with human bodies, minds and activities.
The environmental factors, in which we, human beings, are obliged to live, have a big say in shaping our past, present, and future. This does not mean that humans are not free. It only means that environmental factors, mediated by body and mind, nature and nurture, set limits, both uppermost and lowermost, to what we can possibly do or cannot do. Related to this point is the climatic conditions which determine, with of course some margin of variation, our food habits. Those habits, in turn are, to a certain extent, formed because of the types of foods and drinks made available by natural conditions. It is true that natural conditions are subject to modification or transformation due to changing forms of technology, practical forms of knowledge, and skill.
The changing and changeable characteristics of nature form the sub-soil of our culture, both concrete and abstract, from art forms to chemical compounds and mathematical calculations. These cultural attainments are communicable, transferable and transformable. Language in its extended sense, comprising both alphabetic and pictographic types, enables us to symbolize what we create and consume, in and through experience and ideas. All forms of human art and artifact, science and technology, are transmittable or communicable through signs, symbols, pictures, numbers and other mutually intelligible devices. This explains how we have succeeded, at least partially, in bringing out the human past to the present and preserving the same for the future. That largely explains the unity of mankind in time-scale, both backward and forward. The futuristic projection of the past through the present helps mankind to be of one kind in spite of innumerable differences within it. That explains why expressions like cultural universals are so integral to the understanding of human unity, its perpetual open-endedness, and its historical projectivity.