Gurmat (Sikhi) and Socrates
Takeaways
- We should follow our inner voice
- Questioning can lead us to reality
- Reincarnation happens
Socrates asked a lot of questions. He compared himself to a gadfly that motivates a lazy animal by its bite. In his case, asking questions from self-proclaimed experts forced them to reconsider how much they truly know. He believed that this was possible because the truth was already inside of them. When people discover the truth they are not learning it new but remembering it from a past life.
He explains his argument in relation to mathematical knowledge. In the house of a gentleman called Meno is a boy who is a slave, who has no knowledge of geometry. However, simply by asking him questions Socrates is able to ‘teach’ him geometry. Since he has not taught him anything but only asked him to recall understanding that he already possessed, learning is recollection from within. Further, as this recollection cannot be from events in this life it must have come from a previous life.
A crucial feature of this inner guidance is the ‘daimon’ that prevents him from following evil. Our intuitive understanding of what is right should not be undermined by fashionable views from external agents about how to live.
Guru Nanak adopted a similar strategy of questioning. He deliberately set out to Hardwar where Hindus were throwing water to their ancestors who lived on the Sun. He began throwing water in the opposite direction. When questioned about this, he claimed to be watering his fields. When challenged about how this was possible he compared its relative close distance to that of the Sun. He also set out to Makkah and fell asleep with his feet pointed to the Kaaba. When challenged about the rudeness of pointing his feet at the House of God, he asked the challengers to move his feet to the direction in which God was not present.
He also promoted dialogue as a means of finding reality. He collected the hymns of saints from Islam, Hinduism and those of no fixed religion as well as his own. Saints whose writings he approved of include Farid (Islam), Jaidev (Hinduism) and no fixed religion (Kabir). In addition, he collected his dialogue with Siddhas (Buddhist saints) in the Siddha Gosht (dialogue with the Siddhas), the first interfaith dialogue collected in a scripture that I am aware of.
There is also a form of dialogue in which he comments on the writings of others. It is possible to read the entire Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, as a dialogue between the Guru and Sikh, between the Inner Tutor (SatGuru) and the mind (mun). He repeatedly asks the mind to perform “Simran”; literally, to remember. Many Sikhs today will not be happy with the claim that there are many lives and that reincarnation is real. For them, the verses referring to the wheel of reincarnation, heavens and hells, is just the tossing and turning of the mind with its various happy and sad states. In other words, the lines should be interpreted as metaphor. We can compare these distinctive approaches to the differences between Mahayana Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. While metaphoric Zen like interpretations of verses Mahayana Buddhists interpreted literally is, of course, acceptable, in religious discussion from personal experience it is not true. Many people, including this writer, claim to remember past lives.
Socrates asserts the importance of living and dying by personal truths. He wants to uncover the meaning of the Delphic Oracle asserting him to be the wisest man in Greece. At the beginning of the Sikh scripture Guru Nanak asks a question, “kiv sachiara hoye”, “How do we become real, fulfil ourselves?” Both provide a similar response. Follow intuition and question everyday answers. Guru Nanak’s answer is “hukam rajae chalna, Nanak likhia naal”, “walk along the royal road of the Will, the map of which is written into your being.” This Will cannot be spoken and therefore codified. It is not a proposition.
It is therefore important to consider the limit of questioning. There is a foundation, a certainty within which questioning works as a technique, as a strategy. However, questioning these foundations is pointless as we cannot help but operate with the certainty that I exist, other persons exist, that the world exists and that ‘God’ exists. The reality of an extra-sensory world is not one that people who claim to have experienced it can truthfully deny. Questioning ideas is crucial; questioning existential boundaries merely pointless as we cannot sustain or act on it.
Take, for example, the existence of the world. Intellectually, I can argue that it may be a dream, a feed from virtual reality or a delusion set up by a demon. Intellectually, I cannot escape the circular reasoning that it could be a delusion — after all, all the counter-evidence is simply part of the delusion. Philosophers have never been able to prove that the external world is real. However, ‘common sense’ philosophers have noted that existentially it has zero impact on my life. It requires great intellectual effort to sustain this exercise when, for example, climbing off the bed. Could it be a sheer rock face? Yet even when sustained the impact will be nil. I will still climb off the bed as if the bedroom floor is where I think it is. In other words, the value of questioning has dropped; there is a distinction between questioning and hyperbolic doubt — something excessive, pointless, more pose than purposeful.
By pushing against the edge of the road of Will and Being we are forced to ask: what do we truly want? Do we surrender to the imperative of common sense right action when faced with reality in relation to another person or the divine Person? Or do we deny this call and try to silence our intuition to follow a secret desire of the heart, a secret held in shame from others and often denied even to ourself?
In such a moment of choice, what we actually worship, the goal of our desire, is who we are and become. There is a cauldron from which we choose out of the chorus of voices and cast of actors from our past. We are not judged by what is cooking but what we serve up. Both Socrates and Guru Nanak suggest using our discriminating intellect (questioning) to stir through it and choose the most befitting item to nourish Life, our lives and the lives around us.
I’d like to thank Harbhajan Singh of ‘Asia Samachar’ for comments on a previous version.