Dear Ankur,

Dr. Chubb was my beloved teacher when I was living in Chapel Hill in the 1980's. I found this interview online and this is the essence of the courses that Dr. Chubb taught at the University during that time.

I have kept all my notes from his classes!!!

Favorites from the Archives July 1981 | issue 68

The Silent Mind
An Interview With Jehangir Chubb by Sy Safransky

TABLE OF CONTENTS


SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

When I noticed courses on Eastern religion being offered around town by Jehangir Chubb, a retired professor of philosophy from the University of Bombay in India, I was intrigued. Was he another dry intellectual or a genuine teacher, with something to say to us all?

The Sun

We met and talked, and I was even more intrigued. He is an intellectual — he earned his doctorate at Oxford in 1937, headed the department of philosophy at Elpehinstone College at the University of Bombay from 1948 to 1965, wrote Assertion and Fact — The Categories of Self-Conscious Thinking and many papers on philosophical subjects — but in addition to being a philosopher’s philosopher he is steeped in the spiritual wisdom of ancient and modern India. His manner is formal, his words precise, his presence calm and spacious. Even when turning away a question (“What is the mantra?” “One doesn’t tell the mantra.”) he is gentle, respectful.

The collected works of Sri Aurobindo, one of India’s great mystics and philosophers (“the greatest,” Dr. Chubb says), line one wall of his modest apartment in Chapel Hill. He has been here since 1975, teaching courses through the extension division of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and more recently through the Community Wholistic Health Center. He has also been a visiting professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. He left India in 1969 to “continue my research work in a more vigorous intellectual climate.” He is 71 years old.



Safransky: There are many people who are not ostensibly interested in philosophy, but who are interested in whatever philosophy has to say about how to live a happy, full life. What has your study of philosophy taught you about that?

Chubb: The role of philosophy has been understood differently in India and the West. It basically stands for a theoretical understanding of, among other things, the nature of reality. That is how it has been understood in the Western tradition. But in India metaphysical philosophy has always been regarded as a transitional stage leading to spiritual realization. In that respect philosophy in India is practical. But the term practical again is a little ambiguous because one can be practical in two dimensions. One is the horizontal dimension, where you use philosophy to organize social institutions. Now there, the West hasn’t much, if anything, to learn from the East. The West is much more practical in that respect. But practical could also mean a movement in a vertical direction where philosophical theories are regarded merely as maps or guides, provisional formulations of the truth to be realized. So I distinguish two senses of the word practical: one in which the movement is horizontal — philosophy flowing out into the world and organizing human life — and the other in which it is vertical — philosophy transcending the intellect and its concepts and culminating in a direct realization of the truth.

Safransky: Is fulfillment possible on the horizontal level?

Chubb: This is usually denied in the religious outlook, though, following Sri Aurobindo, I would say that there has to be an integral fulfillment, first in the vertical dimension and then spreading out into the world of space and time. In traditional spirituality what I have called the horizontal dimension has been overlooked. The gaze is fixed on Heaven, Eternity or Nirvana and the world is regarded at best as a training ground or an antechamber to our eternal home. The idea that this collective, embodied existence may have its own mode of self-fulfillment is rarely given serious consideration. There are two major figures in the contemporary world who have had this wider vision and have spoken of and sought to bring about this collective realization. One is Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest, who spoke of the Christification of the universe, and the other is Sri Aurobindo who believed that the goal of evolution is the establishment of a divine life in a divine body here on earth.

Safransky: For someone who looks to spiritual teachings for clues as to how to live a more satisfying life, are there truths that can be shared in so many words?

Chubb: I think the emphasis should not be on truths which are there to be accepted as creeds or dogmas but mainly on the change in one’s personal life and existence. If one is disturbed about the world in which one lives one is not going to change it by preaching another philosophy but by changing oneself. It is, undoubtedly, a very long process, but it’s the only way. To change the world one has to begin with oneself. And then from that center influences emanate and radiate outwards.

In the Buddhistic approach — I mean in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha — creeds are not important. What you believe is unimportant, because our beliefs are conditioned by past experiences, our environment, heredity, upbringing. So they have only a very limited value. What is important is a process of knowledge of oneself, without reliance on any beliefs or theories. And this process is described by the Buddha in his teachings concerning Mindfulness, where one is mindful of the entire process of the psycho-physical personality without any theorizing about it. And through this mindfulness there comes into being a radical change in consciousness, self-knowledge and the transformation of human personality. And this is not in accordance with a preconceived theory.

Safransky: What is the relevance of the teachings of the Buddha in the world today?

Chubb: In the world today there is a strong tendency towards agnosticism. Belief in God doesn’t have a very strong hold, except among the orthodox followers of a religion. But generally speaking, belief in God, theism and the religious way of life have lost their appeal. In such a world the Buddhist teachings would sound refreshing because the Buddha doesn’t ask you to believe in anything. For him there are no belief systems at all. He says: look at yourself, be mindful, be aware of everything that you do and say and think, and through this awareness there comes about knowledge of the self, and also, ultimately, the realization of Nirvana. Mindfulness is the only way, he said, for the purification of being, for the overcoming of torment and sorrow and for the attainment of Nirvana.

Safransky: What does the concept that we create our reality with our beliefs mean to you?

Chubb: I would say that we organize our belief systems, and therefore take things as real, in accordance with our past conditioning, so in that sense beliefs create “realities.” But when there is direct self-knowledge, once again quoting the Buddha, we see things as they are, and we see ourselves as we are.

Safransky: That suggests that there is an absolute reality behind the phenomenal world.

Chubb: The process of mindfulness does not start with that or any other assumption. That would be just another metaphysical theory. One may discover such an absolute reality through the process of mindfulness, but it will not be set up as an ideal which one has to realize. Buddhism bypasses all theories.

Safransky: The notion that we create our reality or realities — that we choose, because of past conditioning, those phenomena we are going to call more real than others — seems to be a potent tool for change.

Chubb: One does not choose. To understand what the Buddha said and to practice mindfulness does not imply that we must make a list of things that we have to hold on to or discard in order that we may begin the process of understanding. One doesn’t start by discriminating between things which one regards as good and those which one regards as evil, and eliminating the latter. One starts with what one is. And if we find that there is any relationship which is helpful, which brings about peace and harmony and satisfaction, that’s all to the good. Through the process of mindfulness one discovers that one’s life and thought processes and actions are frequently caught up in obscurity, confusion and internal contradiction. And then one can, if one becomes aware of that clearly and directly, straighten that out. It’s not a question of giving up anything, but straightening oneself out. And in that process there are certain goods which are permissible, we hold onto them, but after a while we may realize that these goods are not really worthwhile and we outgrow them.

For example, a person may find some satisfaction in going to the club every day to gossip or play cards. But after a time he may come to realize it’s not really worth it, that he can find a better use for his time. But it should come spontaneously, he doesn’t set out to eliminate something by using the surgeon’s knife. There is a constant self-fulfillment, where you become more and more integrated, and there is an inner guidance which you follow, in accordance with which you reorganize your life.

Safransky: Within yourself how does that inner guidance manifest?

Chubb: Inner guidance is really inner; you cannot ask for any external signs of it. If it manifests one knows that there is inner guidance. But if you look for an external sign then it’s no longer inner guidance.

Safransky: Are you saying that it ceases to be inner guidance if it’s described?

Chubb: It can be described in the most general way, but not in a way which would be helpful to anybody, which would make it possible for him to acquire this inner guidance. We can say that discrimination, the discriminative faculty, has developed. And so one discriminates between things without having recourse to rules and regulations. And without having the need to go to somebody else for guidance. That is the most general way in which one can describe this inner guidance.

Safransky: Without having someone else to go to. Does that suggest that those who go to gurus for guidance are not hearing their own inner messages?

CONTINUED HERE:

The Sun

Location: New Bern

JAI MA!

Location: New Bern