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Vaddera Chandidas
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
KALIDAS BHATTACHARYYA
This, my “desire and liberation – The Fundamentals of
Cosmicontology”, perhaps, needs further clarification – as
any ‘Fundamentals’ would. I plan to write a more elaborate
Notes – (which, I tentatively call “desire and liberation – The
Nuances of Cosmicontology”). However, I sincerely believe,
that this ‘Fundamentals’ as such, gives one an occasion to
tune oneself to the possible details.
2
to cosmic music
3
INTRODUCTION
4
only to make him just intelligible to common philosophical
readers.
* * *
5
monograph). The truly real must, therefore, be more basic
than either the ‘senses’ or whatever is interpretable in their
terms.
6
also real) is onticontological. The change said to be effected
by intellect is no event in time, so far. The structure and the
function are the two metaphysical forms of the real.] if the
existent as such is here spoken of as a conceptual prius (of
the empirical individual), this does not mean that it is an
intellectual construction. Constructive intellect is itself as
much real as any other thing and, therefore, its constructions
too are reality-process. Intellect, basically a reality-process,
can, however, move a wrong way around too, because of its
additional capability of abstraction and construction which,
made that way, is not real but only superimposed.
Otherwise, however, (i.e. metaphysically) intellect is a reality-
process. In the present monograph he has developed a whole
theory of intellect vis-à-vis reality.
7
The status of the real as such is ontic, and that of intellect
and all that is derived through it is onticontological, meaning
that is as much analytical constructional (in his language
ontological) as also ontic. The ontic, therefore, subsists
autonomously in a way, though not for that reason apart
from the ontological, and, therefore, from existence,
empiricality, space, time and causal relation. What it all
comes to is that the real, though of autonomous status, has
to be understood in a way completely different from how
others in the whole history of philosophy have understood.
Let us elaborate.
***
8
Secondly, if by itself it does not exist, it is not also a mere
transcendental presupposition as Kant and the
phenomenologists would take it to be. For Kant and these
phenomenologists, every transcendental presupposition is
bound to be subject, an act of pure consciousness which
cannot by any consideration be said to exist, all existents
being natural entities – object outside or mental states (not
pure consciousness) or even things – in-themselves as the
prius of both. With Chandidas, on the other hand, the real as
such is neither consciousness nor the ‘other’ of
consciousness; these latter are, as he has labored hard to
show, only functional derivatives of the real, and that too at
a grade lower down than that of existence. Every ‘existent’
he holds, has some sort of ‘immortality’ ‘personate
immortality’ where existents are non-conscious. ( I cannot
claim I have understood these two concepts clearly.
Sometimes he has admitted personate immortality even of
existents that are non-conscious and often, too, described
impersonate immortality in terms of immediate relevance of
any individual existent to the ‘real’ of which it is a ‘fusional’
derivative’.
9
wherever there is life there is, he holds, some ‘sense’,
however inchoate and fused and (iv) that a socalled
individual is often a wrong, merely surface, abstraction by
intellect). Further, according to him, the socalled ‘other’ of
consciousness is just because of the ‘senses’ inevitably
operating, the ‘senses’ alone, as undistinguished from
consciousness, being capable of positing their ‘others’.
10
Some, in rent days, have understood the logical as merely
linguistic structure or process. Philosophy as dealing with the
non-material (‘material’ meaning what is other than formal)
aspect of the world is, according to them, sheer linguistic
analysis, and they have advocated various citeria for
admissible linguistic behavior. Strangely enough, nowhere in
his monograph Chandidas has discussed the status and role
of language. Perhaps, to good extent he would reduce it to
logic and, for the rest, to the ‘othering’ process of the
‘senses’ (this othering being inevitably transformed on to the
conscious existent – the person with which the senses
remain associated). As, therefore, he would never equate his
‘real’ with either logic or othering (another name of which is
‘reference’), he a fortiori will not also equate it with
linguistic structure or process.
11
is never an accomplished stage but ever only approximated
to a mere telos or ideal, though superabundantly forceful].
Chandidas will not desert space either, nor also causal
relations. The individuality of an existent – in his language,
individuation of reality as an existent has at all been possible
because of the mechanism of space. Space, he holds, is the
onticontological principle of solidification, with, of course,
fusional ramification on all sides. His ‘space ‘ performs the
dual function of ‘intensification’ and extensification’ – as
distinct from Kant’s which only extensifies, intensification
(which is onticontologically non-separate from rarefaction)
being left to time. Space he calls the ‘shade’ and time the
‘sound’ (rhythm) of reality process. Chandidas, equally also
accommodates all sensuous features as a sort of
reduplication of reality-process through sense-channels,
which channels too are as much functional features of reality
as anything else, excluding, of course, those which are only
superimpositions through superficial fusion.
12
Fifthyly, his reality, for example, like that of Hegel is, in a
way, both being and non-being. Like Hegel too, he has almost
equated them. Yet his difference with Hegel is abundantly
clear. His being (staticity) and non being (dynamism=process)
are both contradictory and non-contradictory. They
contradict each other at onticontological level where,
because of some unusual precisification by intellect, A tends
of itself to annihilate not-A. But at the mere ontic level there
is no question of annihilation, no clash whatsoever, no
dialectic. Ontic reality is an absolutely peaceful unity of the
two; it is even doubtful if there are two things here. At least
there is no question of one not being the other – the
atmosphere is so cool and poised and yet pregnant with so
much of possible explosion. (An apparently nearest – though,
truly, far distant – analogue is fire with its burning power.)
Yet, however, at the onticontological level there is
tremendous clash and conquest. Dialectic operates only at
this onticontological level where intellect (which is itself also
a feature of reality) has supervened. The onticontological is
thus necessarily a process, as much ontic as ontological, it is
dynamic reality, reality as process, one may call it becoming.
Yet, this becoming, in spite of its all-through dynamism, is
also being, because the whole thing is, after all, basically
ontic. Even non-being which is involved in becoming is
fundamentally being too: in the ontic the two-being and non
being are in perfect poise. (Chandidas, I am sure, will not like
the two terms being and non-being which, in his own
philosophy, he would use in some different senses. But I have
used them freely just in order to show where precisely he
would agree and differ with Hegel).
13
that of logic, a field of dialectical interplay of bare forms as it
were, though these forms are richer than those of the
traditional formal logic. With Chandidas on the other hand,
the first grand stratum is that of the onticontological, with
the ontic as its autonomous prius and intellect (as a
functional feature) supervening on it and splitting it, as it
were, into a state of contradiction, in such a manner,
however, that either of the two clashing parts necessarily
also gets fused with the other because each belongs equally
to the same ontic reality. For him, there is no stratum of logic
as such – neither of abstract traditional formal logic nor of
any richer one, logic in either case being but remote
relevances spoken of distantly, not experienced.
14
do the ‘senses’, by that process, alienate themselves too
from themselves? I am not sure what Chandidas would say)
Chandidas adds the ‘senses’ of an existent operate in unision
and also that there are innumerable grades of their
excellence, they, when tending downward, sliding
imperceptibily into the most inchoate condition conceivable.
(Does he hint at pan-animism?
Again I am not sure). There is nothing like this kind of stratum
in Hegel except that with all its characteristics it is included in
his stratum of Nature, though now with a subject –object
distinction added. We have already seen what Chandidas
means by this distinction.
15
derives from it. Fundamentally, he is for experiencing the
whole scheme, and this ‘experience’, whether as feeling or
desire, is what the ‘psychological’ awareness would
conceivably be when it melts into and realizes thereby its
own authenticity as the awareness that the ontic, the
onticontological, etc. have of themselves. Desire,
fundamentally is but the entire reality-process experiencing
itself; and feeling, fundamentally, includes probably the self-
awareness of the ontic too.
16
which case we abide by the later and scrape the earlier]. It is
by thus characterizing the self-awareness of the ontic and the
ontological that he seeks to demarcate his philosophy from
that of any other transcendentalist – Indian or Western – for
which this self-awareness is some form (may be, the purest
form) of consciousness. He never forgets to add that it is no
form of impersonal consciousness too. The so-called
impersonal consciousness (i.e. consciousness which is not in
any way psychological) though strongly advocated in
different ways by Bergson, Alexander, Whitehead and Indian
transcendentalists (and even in a way by Hegel) is either
what he would call ‘self awareness of the ontic and
onticontological’ or just a jargon.
17
remarkable, though I have conclusive proofs that he had
never had any acquaintance with it. His philosophy is all his
own. I have advised him to study even now, with what
knowledge of Sanskrit he has, some Sakta and Saiva
literature. He will find there scores of cognate suggestions
which may help him in developing the present monograph
into a volume of three hundred pages as he has promised to
do.
18
though this time freely, to one’s own buddhi (distantly also
to one’s own psycho-physical make-up); and then from this
stage to the Suddha stge where even this free reference (i.e.
the last individuality) lapses. A serious drawback in
Chandidas’s philosophy is that he has not shown any passage
from the gross psychological to the self evidence of his ontic
and onticontological. His ontic and the onticontological and,
therefore, the entire forward fusion-process appear to all
have been shot out of a pistol. Until he has shown that there
is another passage of metaphysically purifying the given
sensuous spatio-temporal empirical world – a passage, in
other words, which is not (retrogressive) the purification of
gross psychological consciousness – he has no ground to
distinguish his ‘self-evidence’ from the others’ pure (or mere)
consciousness. I never mean that there is no other passage.
But what I further mean is that any passage of retrogressive
purification would inescapably describe his ontic and
ontological somehow in terms of what he last transcends to
leap at his ontic and onticontological.
19
whatever that may be. Let us accept further that when that
last stage is transcended one has no right to understand the
transcendent in terms of that last stage – or, for the matter
of that, in terms of any earlier stage. But, then, what would
be its exact status? It would be neither this nor that
definitely, though to do fuller justice to Chandidas, it would
also be the potentiality of everything that has been
systematically transcended. For, unlike the Advaitin, he has
not brushed aside everything else as sheer nought, not even
as illusion. So far, then, as the status of his ‘onticontological’
is concerned one will have to say that it is wholly indefinite,
something undeniable and yet neither empirical nor spatial,
nor temporal nor even existent; and so far as the content too
is concerned, his ontic would be still more indefinite, though
equally the potentiality of everything that is derivable, so
much so that it would hold peacefully in its indefinite poise
all that would emerge (metaphysically, of course) as largely
contradicting one another. Still, however, there would be a
difficulty left. Does not the indefinite, once admitted – to be
more precise, once undenied – at least demand to be
experienced as definite, both in status and content? In a way,
Chandidas too has admitted this. He has admitted it so far as
the telos (ideal) of the historical cosmos is concerned. The
demand for realizing the indefinite telos as definite he has
delineated as the never-ending approach to it, and the
approach in this case is always in terms of whatever has, at
each stage, been proximately attained. May it not, on the
same ground, be argued that in the never-ending process of
retrogression too the ever-receding transcendent has to be
understood (experienced, though as half eluding) in terms of
what has last been attained? To be fair, of course, to
Chandids, one will have to add, in opposition to the thesis of
Advaita Vedanta, that the ever-expanding and ever-
20
withdrawing processes are, in effect, one and the same, the
self-same process – the two sides of the same shield. And,
this is exactly the Tantra thesis.
******
Santiniketan,
December, 1974
KALIDAS BHATTACHARYYA
21
Alternative Forms’, Studies in Philosophy). Sri Arobindo has, it is
true, understood it as still consciousness, but definitely as beyond
all that is normally understood by that term. With Sri Arobindo, as
with Hegel and Tantrism, he agrees also in rounding off the
withdrawal into the reality-core by multi-directional and ever
expanding prehensive act and vice versa though he differs sharply
with them in not having recognized any end-point either way.]
22
desire and liberation
vaddera chandidas
23
It very often happens to make attempts to show
something as contradictory and finally to learn
that such a thing cannot at all be.
24
established through the positionality of multi-
directional stills.
25
inclusiveness of contradictoriness structural
identification is intensified into differentiation.
Contradictoriness is one of the reasons for the
diasporical dynamisms of reality.
26
Contradictoriness is the reason of personality
formation; that by virtue of which individuating
takes place. Individuating, by its very continual
act of individuating, individuates the
individuating of the other trajectories of the
process of reality. It is a clue to the explication of
relative distinctness and isolation. It is an act of
the differentiation of transversal absorption.
27
Contradictoriness is also the ontic translucency of
reality. By virtue of translucency, onticontological
fusion is intelligible. Translucency is the shade of
the unity of reality. The ontological
preponderance translates translucency into
opacity; which, in turn, renders the intelligibility
of distinct and discrete existentia.
28
Space and non-space are the names given to
certain aspects of the route of onticontological
fusion in all its processes. Space and non-space
are, therefore, fundamental characteristics of
reality.
29
Yet, non-space exists, in so far as feeling
ontically isolates itself. Non-space may be called
sound. Shade and sound together form one of
the most fundamental tinges of reality. Space
and non-space are infinitely divisible in so far as
they are finitely indivisible.
II
30
unity of existences in as much as existences are
the differentiating freeze-points of duration.
31
Immortality, in so far as it is impersonate, is not
discernible in terms of the contributory datum of
a particular existence or existences. Existence, in
so far as it is objectificational, ceases to be an
identity with itself.
32
Process as such signifies the perpetual making of
reality, in that it is not a given. Process is not a
quality, or property that reality acquires or is
given with. Reality is sustained through process.
Process is reality’s functional breath of its
structural realisedness.
33
Potentiality is not a given latent fund that gets
actualized. Potentiality perpetually makes itself.
Potentiality is possibilised impossible. It is not an
undifferentiated mass with ontic priority. It is
not the ground of actualization. It is posterior;
posterior to itself; in that it is potentialising
potentiality. It is estimated in terms of the
preponderance of ontic fusion. The realisedness
of ontic fusion potentialises itself.
34
foundational bedrock of reality is perpetually
being made by reality itself.
35
Afusion and defusion are predominantly ontic; as
such they are posterior ground for the intensified
freezing of existences.
36
virtue of contradictoriness, does not fit into such
positions.
37
staticness of reality. Its grounding is
contradictoriness. Contradictoriness is the
structural reason for the functional meaning of
desire. Yet, desire as the functional grounding of
reality, constitutes the structural complexity of
reality; in that, it is reality.
38
Desire is the explication of the continual passage
of process. Desire as the breath of fusion,
perpetually makes itself by way of differentiating
identification and identifying differentiation
through the routes of the passage of process.
39
Fusion is the process of desire. The revelations of
desire are fusion. Fusion is functional modes of
the structure-functional content of desire. To say
fusioning is to say desiring.
40
a mere derivative of ontological opacity. The
functional reality is process. That is why, process
is not a given. The given is a resultant of
intellection’s abstractioning. But, fusion, in so far
as it is intellection, is a relational given.
41
Feeling is the main tinge of ontic fusion. Feeling
is not fundamentally a psychological factor.
Feeling is the experiential endurance of an
existence. It is the cognitive unity of reality. As
such, at the ontic level, it is not cognitive
discreteness. Experiential endurance can be
estimated in terms of the seeping of existence.
Seeping is multidirectional inter-relational
penetrating contact.
42
freeze-points. Intellection, through feeling, forms
the structures of the so called psychological.
Fusion is awareness.
43
It is an existence’s awareness of itself and, as
well as the not itself. This is way it cannot be
called impersonal consciousness. It is a
personal expedition, through transversal
transitional stages, on to its alienated itself. It is
the unrealized realisedness of unity of itself
through compatible variables of analytic
discreteness.
44
Consciousness is personal. Its analytic
discreteness renders any impersonality in it
impossible except in so far as it is a grasp of the
transversal transitional stages of immortality.
45
Onsciousness is predominantly translucent.
Consciousness is predominantly opaque. Opacity
is analytic discreteness. Opacity operates
through translucency and vice versa. They may
be termed as translucent operations and opaque
operations.
46
joys and sorrows are the sportive ways of this
rapturous strain. An interplay of joys and
sorrows, light and darkness, beauty and ugliness
and an innumerable variety of mixed modes is
explicable in terms of rapturous strain. It is the
umbilical cord of cosmic drama. This lure is co-
extensive with fusion and is termed as creativity
– creativity of fusion or fusion as creativity.
47
Creativity is not an apparition of an altogether
novelty. Repeatedness is the structural base of
novelty; as novelty is the functional base of
repeatedness. Thus, creativity, in its essentiality,
is inclusive of novelty and repeatedness which
are not totally isolated from each other.
Apparition of an altogether novel one leads to
the reality of reality et cetera. Hence absolute
novelty is not a fact.
48
the structural realisedness of necessity. And,
what is drawn into, in the process, is
realisedness. Realisedness is freedom. It is the
functional unrealisedness of freedom.
III
49
perpetually makes itself. That is, the
ultimateness of reality is perpetuated by reality
itself. Ultimateness of reality, therefore, cannot
be ‘exterior’ causual basis of the perpetual
making of reality.
50
Reality is perpetually made. Realities, through
realisedness, are their reality. Realities, in as
much as they are contributory datum to
impersonate immortality are reality. The
personate immortality aspect of realities is
relevant only to the extent that it could establish
remote relevance.
51
As reality of reality is not a fact, phenomenon
and nomenon are not fundamental tinges of
reality. (Any structurally and functionally
grounded perpetual achievement of reality is
called tinge). They are only the derivations of
intellection’s abstractioning with reference to
immediate and remote relevances. A
fundamental distinction between reality and
reality is untenable as the reality of reality, that
is, an accomplished casual fact as the basis of
reality. Then, is reality without a casual basis?
No it is its own casual basis in as much as it does
not cause anything in terms of exteriority and
interiority.
52
fusions and vice versa. The notion of primal
cause that precedes reality to cause reality is an
ideal extreme limit of intellection’s
abstractioning.
53
explicable in terms of its characteristic fusion.
But such explication would only be a resultant
analysis of the nature of perpetual making; in
that it is, of course, without any exterior reason.
But the word exterior is meaningless apart from
it (reality).
54
Past and future do not exist; only the present is.
Past and future are formed by the present. The
past is not dead in as much as the future is not.
Present is a multi-directional stretching. Some
‘ends’ future. But all the ‘ends’ are in the entire
stretching of the present.
55
A mode is a view-point based on the structural
and functional intensity of a phase.
56
coextensive with the realisedness of the
perpetual making of reality.
57
The functional operativeness of temporality is the
sound of the perpetual making of reality.
58
reason for the structure of individuum.
Individuum is the textural tone of reality. The
pattern and the variability of textural tone are
determinately delineated by sound.
59
Shade is the shade of sound and sound is the
sound of shade. Their mutual generic
inclusiveness renders any fundamental
separability, impossible. Only at the intellectual
extremities, they are taken for distinct.
60
that determinately delineate the textures of
individuum. Shades, through personate and
impersonate immortality, achieves the shade of
the textures that determinately compose the
tone of constitution.
61
through its infinitely finite trajectory, draws
everything into itself. An existence as such
becomes, through its ‘personal’ prehending act a
type of microfiled totality. But this involves
personate and impersonate immortalities. It is an
eternally single and simple act that subsumes all
complexity. All this is achieved through in-
composing intensification.
62
to impersonate immortality it is also capable of
evolution and involution.
63
The relisedness of convolutionary transversal
transitional fusion forms into evolution. And what
could not seep into the cosmic historicity
discharges as involution. But involution is also
making as the yet possibilised ‘part’ of reality.
64
involutes and involution evolutes – that is, it
renders convolution, possible.
65
are the positive and the negative charges that
determine gradational differentiality. The greater
effectiveness of either qualitativeness or
quantitativeness is relative to the positionality of
that existence.
66
Reality is never entirely either this or that; for,
what is called an evolutionary cosmic epoch is
not a single unidirectional passage.
67
Phases form into family units and family units
form into society units and society units into
national units and national units into world units
and world units into cosmic units. And cosmic
units form into the dimensionless core of the
macro-cosm.
68
they are not anything in themselves. They are
the explication of the dynamism of reality. They
are the breathing wave-points of
contradictionariness.
69
Similarly the waves, in course of some
(countless) generations might reach the
gradation of – the gradation of what?
70
An existence is a prehending point of centre. A
prehending act involves feeling and intellection.
Prehension is in terms of infusion and exfusion.
It is transversal transfusion. As such prehension
is a structural and functional tinge of reality.
1. Translucent prehensions.
2. Opaque prehensions
3. Translopaque prehensions.
71
opacity and opaque translucency – which in an
existence strains in its perpetual approximation
to ideality.
72
intensity with structural complexity or the
structural complexity with functional intensity is
the demarcating range.
73
An existence is a point or centre of senses. An
existence ‘microscopically’ is a unit of senses.
Senses are the ‘microscopic’ pulses of existence.
Senses, therefore, have no priority over
existences. In fact they ‘are not’ as themselves.
They are endearing infusional ‘microscopic’ inner-
dependencies. As existence which is not a point
of senses is not an existence at all. But it would
be wrong to state that an existence is ‘formed’
by senses. Senses as endering infusional
‘microscopic’ inner-dependencies’, cannot at all
have any priority. They are subsisting
simultaneity of existences. Existences are the
individual points of reality.
74
in positionality and significance is rendered
possible. This grouping and regrouping is in
accordance with the relatively stable routes of
prehension.
75
convolutionary contexts of that existence. The
convolutionary contexts of an existence are
mostly in terms of the convolutionary contexts of
its stretch or phase. The contexts of a phase or
stretch are mostly in terms of the contexts of
other phases- amounting to the perpetually
fleeting cosmic contexts.
76
A layer is a gradational range of awareness. The
number of layers in an existence is coexitensive
with the number of modes of the prehensions of
that existence.
77
The doors are open from within and without. The
transparency of otherness paves the way for the
doors of another existence. The way paved thus
is such that the very way wraps the otherness;
for, the other than the otherness is precisely the
otherness. Here the otherness is wrapped with
illumination.
78
relevance, by virtue of impersonate immortality
renders relatedness possible between an
existence in a particular stretch and an existence
in another particular stretch. This is way, at any
moment, an existence can hardly be stated to
have reached the absolute finale.
79
Greater and greater intensification of beastiliness
leads to saintliness. Saintliness is opacity which
is paradoxically full of translucency. Saintliness
transcends all limitational formalities and
prehends the opacity of translucency and the
translucency of opacity. It is superfecting
emotional tranquility; the stillness of the crazy
flight.
80
beastiliness and the beastliness of saintliness are
the two (negative and positive) union-points of
cosmic realisedness-belt.
81
Transposing of beastliness and saintliness
through in-fusional intensificational qualms
renders ecstatic contexts possible. Ecstatic
contexts are the initiation belt to liberation
passage.
82
get over indulgence and assume depth
dimension of the route of liberation.
83
Each unit involves three observances. Each
observance involves three performances. Each
performance achieves one treble sense-door
fulfillment.
84
Liberation, therefore, is not a static statehood
settled once forever. Temporality makes
liberation dynamic. The bells toll for those who
do not crawl on the surface or ‘lost’ drowned in.
***
Orgamic
85
Qualms: a sudden feeling of sickness or nausea, a sudden
sensation of misgiving,
Ecstatic: a state of exalted delight; joy, etc; rapture, intense
emotion of any kind
Explication: to formulate or develop a theory, to make clear
86