Lesson 1

From the time immemorial, man’s curiosity to find out the cause of the universe seems to be an ever-burning torch of knowledge. Various part of the world has come out with various schools of thoughts of philosophy and practice. Few claim that their philosophy is “pure philosophy” staying away from any religion/theology while few claim that their philosophy is “philosophy of a religion/theology”. Beliefs and prejudices have had a hand on many such out comes. History attempts to trace the political and social circumstances for these while science tries to rationalize them. India is also not an exemption from the list of countries that have given to the world their schools of thoughts. In fact India is recognized to have produced certain philosophies for which the date of origin is not traceable. India’s culture and heritage are still regarded very ancient. The Veda of India has been a strong base for numerous schools of philosophical thoughts.

A popular saying is “A research begins as science, develops and ends as philosophy”. This does not imply that philosophy is a subject that is having no culminating point of rational comprehension but only implies that philosophy covers certain concepts that cannot be analyzed and explained by science. Science does analyze physical cosmos but philosophy does extend it to metaphysical and transcendental concepts. Science is an analytical research whereas philosophy has synthesis in its approach. To explain this, a concept is examined by science by analytically “breaking” it into sub-concepts and like this it hierarchically proceeds to micro-levels. On the other hand, philosophy examines a concept by synthesis – it groups or sums up and examines. It does not “break” the concept into hierarchical levels but builds after classification. Any concept can be thought to be composed of four components. “Pramanam” is “Authority – premises – domain – using which one gets knowledge. “Premeyam” is that which is the object of knowledge, that which is known. “Pramatha” is he who uses Pramanam and gets knowledge thus know the Premeyam and “Prama” is the valid knowledge got by Pramatha regarding Premeyam by the use of Pramanam. Many schools of philosophical thoughts have flooded this world trying to enlighten mankind from time immemorial. A Philosophy when proved to be rational and in strict accordance to a flawless domain, answers all questions which are not answered by science. Amongst manifold philosophies, the philosophy of the Veda prevailing in India from very ancient time, restructured by Bhagavat Ramanuja Yatiraja, named “Visistaadvaita Shree Vaishnavam” claims to be such a proven philosophy. Let us start learning it step by step from basics.