There are only two pathways to looking at the world: the causal way or the unpredictable; or to use my metaphor, I repeat, the horizontal or the vertical. Again from the physicist’s point of view, the theory of general relativity or that of the quantum. ‘Quantum theory and relativity,’ writes John Wheeler, ‘never will be reconciled, except in a framework of concepts that does away with both, does away with law . . .’ In the context of Indian philosophy, we could say, either there is duality or non-duality. For, that’s man’s utlimate question: Do I exist (as being) or does the world exist by itself? The two could coexist, affirms the horizontal, the logical process. I see, therefore the object exists. But who is he that sees, what is he? Does one realize what knowing means? Jacque Monod wrote in ‘Le hasard et le necessité’ that the animistic view, which is the anthropocentric, says that there is the knowledge of ethics for man. But may it not be proper to ask, and this, we may call, the abhuman, what then is the ethics of knowledge? Who is it or what is it that knows?—is the main question. What is it that knows there is law or no law in the universe? ‘Chance alone,’ writes the great French biologist, ‘is the only source of all newness, of all creation in the biosphere.’ And he says elsewhere: Real Knowledge is ignorant of Values. This then is the ‘terrifying solitude of modern man’. ‘The postulate of objectivity to establish the norm of knowledge defines a value which is objectivity itself. The ethics of creative knowledge of the modern world is the only one compatible with it, the only capable, once understood and accepted, to guide its evolution.’

This, the ethic of knowledge leads with rigour to its own destiny, this is perhaps what the Buddhists accept as Prajna paramita, and the Vedantins call Jnana. Objectivity leads to its own death. The ‘I’ alone is the unassailable reality. Valéry again says:

I have never referred (here) except to my pure ‘I’, by which I mean the absolute of consciousness, which is the unique and uniform operation to distinguish itself automatically of all, and in this all, figures, the person himself, his singularity, his diverse powers, and his own complaisances. I willingly compare the pure ‘I’ to the precious zero of the mathematical writings, which is equal to all algebraic expressions . . . This manner of seeing is to me in a manner, con-substantial . . .’6

And elsewhere says Valéry, ‘The best image of the Self is zero (itself).’

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