10 Minute Reynolds Reveal Interview with Dr. Judy Wood

Starting with version 4 MCell is equipped in a large number of WireWorld patterns. Heading the long five page glossary of Sanskrit terms that he added to the first edition, was calculatedly condescending to the increasing number of South Asianists - even of the ‘spiritual’ kind - who are self-righteously ignorant of Sanskrit. For at least a century after its publication, IaT will remain an ‘amazing book’ - not because it has a dizzyingly complex maze of dialectical moves, but because it invites many layers of understanding and empathy each of which, successively, it withstands the rejection of as ‘neti, neti’: this is not what Ramu meant, no, not even that, What are billiard balls made of let’s try some other meaning… To describe IaT as just a modern chatty reconstruction of the Advaita philosophy of Ramana Maharshi, punched with the ahimsa of Gandhi would be an atrociously crude over-simplification. Many books will be written on its individual chapters which bear such intriguing titles as: ‘Kali with a broom’, ‘Mâtâ theoria’, ‘Towards Abrahamic Advaita in India’, ‘Gold does not litter’, ‘Four ragas of realization’, ‘A Bania’s deal with the anguish of inequity?

Unlike many other professional philosophers who thought that RCG’s three earlier books - on Whitehead (IIAS 1973), on Presuppositions of Human Communication (Oxford1974), and The Availability of Religious Ideas (McMillan1976), were his best philosophy work, and that this one was the beginning of the end of his rigorous philosophy, I have always believed that this is his most carefully argued, most authentic, substantial, densely sustained and by far the most staggeringly original work. All three premises are argued for separately and step by step in the book, so if they appear to be dogmatic in this formulation that is because I am trying to create an appetite for getting down to the business of grappling with RCG’s logico-phenomenological argument directly, first hand. Thus, ‘communicative invocation unfurls three dimensions of Advaita (non-duality, un-other-ness) in human life’: First, the gesture of abandonment of causal power which says that you are none other than me upon whom I can or need act. He acts directly on the Universe, as we act directly on our brains, guiding them to move our limbs (but the Universe is not his body-for he could at any moment destroy it, and act on another universe, or do without a universe).

Many things in the physical world can be explained and predicted using classical mechanics: how far a bullet will travel or how planets move around the sun in an elliptical orbit. It’s very unlikely that neoclassical economics will ever be able to make a real contribution to alleviating poverty, tackling ecological despoliation and moving us towards a more just and sustainable world. But essentially, I see no reason to believe that such (hypothetical) phenomenally bound consciousness in future inorganic quantum computers will support a pleasure-pain axis any more than, say, the taste of garlic. The only thing that was recorded, essentially, was the surface waves, which you would get if you removed that loading on the ground. We don’t know what happened to them, but we know they’re toast, they’re history, you know, you can’t fix it, gotta go get another one. I am able to laugh at my past confidence, with which I once went up to the author and told him once, ‘You know Ramu-da, I understand your position quite well and largely even agree with it but, honestly, I could now explain it more clearly than you have done; you should leave the philosophical analysis of your position (in IaT) to us.’ With ethically healthy shame, I now recall the self-control which stiffened his face, evincing his moral struggle to convert his outrage into forgiveness with which he had said, ‘Achha bhai Arindam, if indeed you have the time to do that, I shall be honoured.

It is an acknowledgement of the freedom of the interlocutor, and a drawing near to let the other know that one is taking all causal pressure off that person, that one is expecting the other person to freely think that she is being respected as a self and not pushed around as an object. In so far as by addressing a friend or a stranger, we draw attention of that person without forcing them to respond, linguistic invocation is the opposite of causal compulsion. With these two moves, from philosophy of language (the performative phenomenology of Addressing) to metaphysics (Advaita) and then, from metaphysics to Ethics (Ahimsa), RCG expects to build a foundation for meditating on the Truth of India, through fearlessly unfashionable and politically daring but not faddishly ‘P.C.’ positions on the caste, untouchability, dalit issue (See ‘Why didn’t Dr. Ambedkar visit Tiruvannamalai ?(4)), the future of Sikhism, the possibility of an Abrahamic Advaits, and controversial takes on Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Indian Islam, Parsi identity and eventually to a Ramakrishna Paramhansa inspired syncretism. Hence the Ethics of empathic suffering at the suffering of the None-Other-than-myself Other, and the obligatoriness of non-coercive letting-be towards the disagreeing neighbour or enemy.