Contemporary Indian Philosophy Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The state described is intuition.

Sri Aurobindo, in The Life Divine, distinguishes reason, which knows by dividing subject from object, from intuition, which is a power of consciousness nearer to the original knowledge by identity. In intuition the knower and the known are one through knowledge, sharing a common self-existence; this is the description the question quotes.

Reason works by separation and inference, so it is the opposite. 'Intentionality of consciousness' is Husserl's term, not Aurobindo's, and 'supraintentional consciousness' is not a stage in his scheme of knowing.

Answer: D

The saying is Swami Vivekananda's.

In his Jnana Yoga lectures Vivekananda says that this human body is the greatest body in the universe and a human being the greatest being, higher even than the gods, because only as a human being can one attain liberation. The thought is behind his whole teaching of the divinity of man and service to man as worship.

Radhakrishnan, Sri Aurobindo and Tagore all wrote of human dignity, but this particular saying, with its claim that man is greater than the angels and gods, is a well-known line from Vivekananda.

Answer: D

Radhakrishnan's philosophy is monistic idealism.

In An Idealist View of Life (1932) and his Vedanta writings, Radhakrishnan holds that reality is one, the Absolute spirit, and that the world and selves are its expressions, known finally by intuition. That is an idealism (reality is spiritual) that is also monistic (reality is one).

Subjective idealism is Berkeley's, representative realism Locke's, and qualified monism is the label of Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita.

Answer: A

The key's answer is Introspection.

K. C. Bhattacharya's Subject as Freedom (1930) treats introspective consciousness as central to self-knowledge, describing grades of self-consciousness, each a freedom from the objects of knowledge. The key takes introspection as the form of spiritual activity he finds clearest.

I could not find the exact wording 'clearest form of spiritual activity', so the match is accepted from the key. Performing yajna, selfless service and devotion are practices of religious life; I found nothing linking any of them to this phrase in his writings.

Answer: A

The key's answer is Swami Vivekananda.

The key attributes the sentence, which says that knowledge is its own highest reward and has utility only secondarily, to Swami Vivekananda. I searched for the sentence and could not trace it to any of the four thinkers, so the attribution is accepted from the key and not confirmed. Sri Aurobindo, Jiddu Krishnamurti and K. C. Bhattacharya are the other names offered.

The wording in the paper, 'knowlege', is a misspelling printed in the question.

Answer: A

The Absolute is identified with Cit-Śakti (printed with an accent over the C).

In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo describes the Absolute as Sachchidananda: Existence, Consciousness-Force and Bliss. Its consciousness is not passive but a creative force, Cit-Śakti, which manifests the world through involution and evolution.

Citta-vṛtti means the modifications of the mind (as in Yoga), citta-nivṛtti their cessation, and anāsakti non-attachment. These are terms of Yoga and ethics, not names of Aurobindo's Absolute.

Answer: D

The key's answer is Both (A) and (B): humans are divinely created and also evolved from matter.

In his lectures on the reconstruction of religious thought Iqbal accepts evolution as the way life and mind have emerged, while holding that the human ego has a divine origin and purpose. The key reads this as accepting both statements, so options A and B each say only half and option D says both. Option C, that humans are neither created nor destroyed, is the idea of an eternal soul and does not describe Iqbal's view of man.

I could not find a passage that states both claims in one sentence, so the key is accepted on this general reading, and the explanation is not a confirmation of the exact wording.

Answer: A

The answer is Absolute.

Radhakrishnan distinguishes two aspects of the one Supreme. Considered in itself, apart from the cosmos, it is the Absolute (Brahman); considered in relation to the cosmos, as its creator, sustainer and goal, it is God (Īśvara). He writes that the Absolute is the Supreme viewed apart from the cosmos, and God the Absolute from the cosmic point of view.

Self, soul and spirit are terms for the individual or for reality in general, not his name for this aspect.

Answer: C

The key gives Absolute.

In The Concept of Philosophy, K. C. Bhattacharya divides philosophy into grades of theoretic consciousness: the philosophy of the object (dealing with facts, close to science), the philosophy of the subject or spirit, and the philosophy of truth, whose subject matter is the Absolute, which can only be indicated, not known as an object.

Spirit and soul belong to the philosophy of the subject, and Brahman is the Vedāntic term rather than his name for the content of the philosophy of truth.

Answer: B

The answer is Supermind.

Sri Aurobindo traces an ascent of consciousness from ordinary mind through higher mind, illumined mind, intuition and overmind to Supermind. Supermind is the Truth-Consciousness that links the divine Sachchidananda to the world; it is the culmination of mind's development, where the limits of mental division are overcome.

Higher mind, illumined mind and overmind are intermediate stages below it, so none of them is the culmination.