Parmarthik Satya are eternal truths. Something immutable. Let’s say the universality of 2+2=4 or red rose is red. This is true now and was true in past and will be true in the future too. Vyaharik satya is something that we experience in our everyday life. We consider the world and it’s entities around us to be true and real and this is vyaharik satya. This truth has spacio-temporal existence and are not eternal or non-mutable. For example our pot. If I had the earthen pot in front of me now, it would have been a reality for the time being. Its existence is justified by the sense of perception, touch and also by the sense of purpose it achieves that is it holds liquid in it. But the pot will not be a pot forever. If I break it right now it will no more be a pot but just pieces of baked clay. The existence of the pot as an entity has ceased to be and so is the credibility of the phrase “This is a pot”. But the phrase was true at a certain point in time and hence it is a vyaharik satya. Moreover, since vyaharik satya is mutable and contingent, forms the object of our knowledge and helps us understand the world. The things that are not changeable do not inspire purpose and add no new addition to our knowledge. The western philosophers have termed such unchangeable and non-contingent truth to be tautologies and nonsensical (nonsensical but not non sense in the way that they do no good in terms of understanding the dynamics of the world but they are essential nevertheless)

Now what is pratibhasik satya? Well, this third kind of reality talks about our perception of the vyaharik satya. Let’s take a popular example of orientalist philosophies. You walk into a dimly lit room and find a piece of rope coiled in a corner. In a haste, you assumed it to be a snake and are startled. Now let me just clip those few seconds from your life and look at it as if it was an independent truth dissociating it from what we knew before and what we realize later. For those few seconds you believed that piece of rope to be a snake but your belief of it did not change the essential nature of the rope or did not turn it into a snake. It essentially is a rope but you think it is a snake and for whatever small period of time, it became your truth or reality. This is the pratibhasik satya. The assumed satya.

On a large scale of time our vyaharik satya aslo becomes the pratibhasik satya in reference to parmarthik satya. How do I know that what I am perceiving is actually the truth about the world and that it is the unchangeable truth in itself? Those 30-40 seconds of assumption of the rope to be snake if put against an average life of 70 years is a tiny time period but it still had an impact, for we startled and were afraid. Imagine putting our 70years against the billion years of existence. How do I know that it cant be a pratibhasik satya? But we should not venture here as our time period here is limited and walking in this direction will lead to skepticism which is not conducive for world harmony and human progress. But this understanding of relativity can be an essential tool in the post-modern subjectivity and tolerance towards the same. It is a constant tussle between your truth and my truth and the real truth.

We are all limited by our undertstanding and the capability of our logics to give us a holistic idea of the world around us. Prejudices, judgments, past experiences, all contribute to our limitations and we can never approach anything entirely free of our previous understanding. What we can do is have faith in what other is trying to believe because eternal truths are not entirely in capacity of understanding but can be a subject of category of faith. How nonchalantly we employ faith is understood by the fact that we inch every moment in our lives clinging to the faith that we will make into the future and hence we need to act accordingly. I, writing this post has the faith of posting it online later engrained in it. Life would become so difficult if we did not put faith in what we understood or perceived in the vyaharik satya. But to deny any other truth against yours is not a justification for faith.

Change is a sign of existence and purpose. Change is the only constant is a thought that has walked centuries from the Greek Philosopher Heraclitus to Gautam Buddha to the present time. Our truths are our truths (an example of tautology as it added no new understanding about the subject matter “truth” but the statement in itself is true) but should it be considered as immutable or Parmarthik? No and yes!

No, because we know that our truths are temporal and they are true in the present context of time and space leaving a considerable room for doubt. But we should also consider them immutable to avoid the trap of skepticism which inspires apathy and indifference.

This temporal truth that we wish to consider permanent are at liberty to do so must be tested on the grounds of logic. We must at our best try to reach to the vyaharik satya through logic or experience. I do agree that we are not all similar in the way we employ the faculty of logic or have our own limitations and hence it begets even more tolerance towards the people who cannot employ such strong logics and understanding as others can who have been bestowed upon with the same through either education or culture. But logic should not be the end of our pursuit but only a means to appreciate the subjectivity endowed with faith.

Faith, logic, beliefs are all tools to comprehend the type of reality that we are capable of and the stretch of one form of reality over the other form gives a purpose to intellect and life. We have around us people who are perpetually delusional (Pratibhasik satya) about the world and the ones that are practical (Vyaharik Satya) and finally the ones who have transcended these two realms into Paramarthik satya. We can accommodate them all with tolerance and understanding and sensitivity towards their limitations as they would against ours but to force one’s truth on others as the only truth is to negate years of cultural knowledge of tolerance that has been so humbly bequeathed upon us by our ancestry and their repertoire of wisdom. Tolerance must be the order of the day for harmony.  

PIC SOUCRE: GOOGLE.

ARTICLE COPYRIGHT IS WITH DABBLER SCRIBBLES (ABHISHEK KUMAR)

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are personal and the writer does not claim any academic authority on the subject.