Agony of the soul (?) etc

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, Swami Vishvarupananda wrote:

> So you do take their word for it that the Vedas are nitya and apaurusheya.
> That was exactly the point I was trying to make. Ultimately you do have to
> take someone's word for something.

Ultimately any system of logic depends on certain postulates which cannot
be proven but even those can be known and understood.  It is only in that
extremely restricted area that you have to take anything on faith alone.
The mystics would have us declare vast areas off-limits to thinking when
in fact rational thought is valid there.

>
> What I meant to say is, logic is relative. In physics e.g. the logic
> applied to cosmological phenomena does not proof valid in particle physics
> and vice versa. So, our logic is always based on a set of concepts
> and an angle of view. It is nothing absolute. It is as I said relative. And
> therefore the basis of the direction logic has taken in a certain course
> can fall.

What you are saying is that a certain system of logic can have a
restricted domain.  That is not the same as saying it is relative.
cosmological laws do not become invalid when you start looking at particle
physics, they become less practically useful but if you wanted to you
could describe particle physics in terms of them. Similiarly logic might
not be capable of mapping Brahman to the full extant but it can still
describe it to you.

> Moreover, talking on the Vedas you cannot claim that they are
> presented with a view to appeal to logic. They are very symbolic.

The Vedas describe actions in the Karma kanda and Brahman in the Jnana
kanda.  These are all concrete things not symbolic at all.

> Even apart from this I don't believe logic is a means for determining truth
> in the absolute sense.

It is nevertheless the best method we have.

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