Asi kati lagan pata – Sources of Knowledge
Writing in TATA sumo, traveling from Srinagar to Khanabal. Thinking about issues that bother me. I have been wondering for a while what thought I subscribe to, where do I place myself, rationalist, empiricist, idealist, or whatever. I have been called a post-modernist, conservative, both in the same breath and other things, too. I might be a skeptic, who knows! I presented my writings to an expert who categorized them as post-modern and existentialist, na chi mye huii pata kya govv, na huii. Reminds me of Alamdar’s (ra) “be kuss rishi, mye kya naav” (I have no clue who I am).
Traveling gives me ample time to think. For some, it is the toilet seat. May be the quality of thoughts is dependent upon where you are when they arrive. It’s probably why mine are fleeting because I am traveling. Sull chun empiricism maanan. Hata mye ne tahrat tagan syod karun, empericizmas kya karr. Big people and their big thoughts escape me. I like the more mundane, the more down to earth, the earthlings’ falsaff. Yeti ne batt khyonn kyuth, yi aam falasfari karni.
What is it then? How does the common man know? Ya bilya yi kyo wanan, emis maa daelmitt! We are now near bye-paas. Islambaad Islambaad Islambaad. So what is it, how do I know whatever I know? The only source of knowledge to me seems to be perception. Perception kath chus be wanan? A perception is an impression on mind, a molding of consciousness, its transformation into a form. Ya bilya! Yi kyo wanan, yi aai oas ottaam karan John Lockass criticise, wani chu wanan all knowledge is perception! Reducing all knowledge to Empiricism isn’t actually and precisely what I am doing.
Perception, which leads to an impression on mind, can be external through senses or internal through the act of mind (aql) which is inference. The act of mind is supplied the precepts by senses or memory. A thought is always of something, it is never empty. My mind when it acts on something, that something has been presented to it by my senses in real-time or by memory to which they were submitted by the senses earlier. External perception through senses is of what is immediately given to them by things external to them, or what is transmitted to one’s senses by others whose senses have acquired the contents of thought through immediate external perceptions (call these shabd, shruti, khabar, testimony, that which is reported). This is when someone presents to us a report.
We are now in Pampore.
Insaan mye baasan chu kehtaam yus ne mye vuni samjh chu yivan kehn. Be kya chus? Yeli be paanas vuchan, be kya aasan karan? Be chus aasan judgements pass karan. Judgement kya kya chi aasan? Something in us is what judges, which passes a judgement. Aes chi na wanan, yi chu czoonth, yi naa chun haaput. judgement is of the form “S is P” or “S is not P” or his judgement is of remaining “indifferent” to what “S is” or “is not”, or his judgement is “convoluted and confused” (both is and is not, or insufficient data, khabar kya, hishikatha). These judgments can be correct or incorrect, depending upon the frame of reference. We won’t know their ultimate truth, we don’t have access to the absolute scale. We know truths on a relative scale.
We are now in Awantipora, Ooointpoar.
Perception through senses is of the particular and through the internal perception is also of kulliah and the universal which sees the thing as a whole. What other judgements do we pass? Dil chum ne maanan. Waai, dilaii nyunyem. Dil chum aamut emis pyeth, kya karr. Dilas chum dakk dakk gasan. Insaanas chuna magar dil ti. Qalb is also what judges and forms the judgment of whether the thing is “pleasing” and “displeasing” (judgements of beauty) depending on the impression on it of the kulliyah – the thing as a whole.
Now we are stuck.
Based on the state of qalb, the rooh decides, it is the aspect of humans that we call “will”. “Will” emerges here and is the final culmination of the process or the beginning of the next. Will chooses an action based on the state of Qalb and its judgement. It may choose to do or to refrain or to remain indifferent. The Qalb judges all the matters including the conclusions of the aql, whether they are pleasing or not, desirable or not. The aql where perception creates impression or which works of its own creating more impressions, the qalb which makes aesthetic judgments on what has been supplied by aql or by senses to the aql, the “will” which decides the course of action, are not entirely independent but have a lot of freedom and can be considered free and independent for all practical purposes. Hence, the “will” may cause the senses to move in a direction. It controls matter and thus affects perception and its impression on aql. It seems to me that aql sends matters to qalb which sends matters to rooh.
Sangam right now. Teli kott voat yi masl. Objects are sensed by the sense organs which create impressions on aql which unifies them into an object and judges them – this is an apple. Aql can run a chain of thought and infer as well. What all is inferred or what all comes from senses in put forward to qalb by aql as “Something is the case” or “Something is not the case” or “Something is and is not the case”. Qalb judges what is presented to it as pleasing or not – beautiful, not beautiful, desirable, not desirable, ethical, unethical. The judgement by qalb is forwarded to rooh, which decided the further course of action – pursuing, not pursuing or remaining indifferent.
Mye baasan yee chus be. Yimai kaami chus be aasan karan. Humans are the sum total of all the three – aql (the thinking cognitive part), qalb (the affective, aesthetic part), rooh (the willing part). So if a man’s hand is cut, his hand is not him because it has no senses, neither qalb nor rooh, it is matter. “I” would refer to where the three are. The element that has these three together would be human or may be this is nafs, mye chann kunchi pata. Khabar kya chus wanan. In this way, we humans have a transcendental aspect and immanent, phenomenal, worldly, material aspect. Nafs is transcendental.
Mye baasan yi paan chu yemiy meczi hun, magar be chus paas khudayan ath manz tromut. My material being is from of this world and made of matter which came from this world through the processes belonging to the world. This process of the material aspect continues to be same with every birth, a child’s body comes from the matter of the planet. What makes “the sum total of all matter” i.e the body, a person is the personality that couldn’t be from the phenomenal world, because that would need nafs, which was supplied to him at some stage like it was to Adam whose material was earthly and then God breathed in him the spirit.
Khabar be kya wanan! Byekl gomut! Chun mye yivan samjh kiheen! Khabar wani kya chus be! Be kuss rishi mye kya naav? Pozz wanho, mye aaw ne paanas samjhiy mye kya chu lyookhmot. Magar mott chu ithai paeth samjhan, yi ti su samjan chu. Baaki gayi falasferi.
Vyejbyor now. Almost ghar.
