Notebooks of Paul Brunton
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Notebooks of Paul Brunton Category 20: What Is Philosophy? Chapter 1: Toward Defining Philosophy Toward Defining Philosophy 1 The old Oriental idea is to be lost in the Infinite. The new Occidental ideal is to be in tune with the Infinite. 2 Neither the psychoanalyst nor even the religionist seeks that full purification and total transformation of the human being which philosophy alone seeks and alone achieves. All other paths--including the mystical ones--seek to effect a particular purpose or a partial one: only this is informed enough and willing enough to fulfil the complete purpose for which man has been put on earth by the World-Mind and surrender absolutely to it. If the philosopher has any desire at all, it is to know, understand, and co-operate with the infinitely intelligent and perfectly efficient World-Idea. 3 It is a transcendental idea that the mind gets hold of and knows. It is a gathering of clear supra-mental perceptions. It is the higher reason, the discriminating understanding. It penetrates the whole being and remains. Thus it becomes naturalized and continues the natural consciousness of the man. 4 It is not only a right intellectual attitude towards life. It is also an exalted emotional experience of life. Nor is it only an occasional attitude and an intermittent experience. It is sustained through the day and throughout the year. 5 Philosophy is an explanation of life and a distillation of its highest knowledge. Consequently it includes metaphysics. But it is not identical with metaphysics, being far greater. 6 The complaint has been made not seldom that the Indian version of this quest is too largely a process of dehumanization. I must leave it to the public propagandists of Indian teachings to give their own defense in this matter. But the philosophic attitude seeks a balanced wisdom, a removal of negative, ignoble, sensualist, narrow-minded, unpractical, and fanatical traits from character and action. Beyond that it welcomes the fine flowering of human culture, the refinement of human living, and the enchantment of human quality. 7 There are two sets of critics who match themselves against philosophy. There are the hard materialists, on the one hand, and the imperfect mystics, on the other. The first are guided by reason but limited to sense-experience; the second are guided by intuition but limited to meditation-experience. Both are incomplete. Both are opposed to each other as well as to philosophy, which understands, appreciates, and accepts both as expressing necessary but partial views which should be included in a fuller and more integral view. 8 Philosophy overcomes the mystic's fear of worldly life and the worldling's fear of mystical life by bringing them together and reconciling their demands under the transforming light of a new synthesis. 9
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