What Can We Claim to Know?

By Dawn Raffel

I am nearsighted. I wouldn't dare get behind the wheel of a car without my glasses, but sometimes I take them off indoors. Last week, while in a room full of people, I took off my glasses and my gaze fell on some embroidered fabric, maybe a hundred feet away. In that fabric, I saw the image of a man's face--a scowling one at that. Taken aback, I put my glasses back on to get a better look. With my vision corrected, I saw that there was no face, only a pattern of shapes. My mind, memory, and emotions had put together shapes (already a construct) in a way that was false. So startling was this misperception that I took my glasses off and put them on again to be sure. The result was the same. Glasses off: face. Glasses on: no face.

Immediately, I was reminded of the Vedantic parable of the snake and the rope. In the darkness of ignorance, a coiled rope is seen as a snake, causing fear. In the light of truth, it is revealed that there was never a snake; it (and the threat it posed) never existed. The mistake was the result of superimposing the fears and ego of maya onto reality.

The snake and the rope are symbolic, intended to help us understand the difference between ignorance and truth. But what of my mundane "face" and "shapes"? Were the shapes real because I had on my glasses? Were they real because other people in the room would have reported seeing the same thing?

We live in a culture that tells us seeing is believing. At the same time, we know that our sense organs are limited; in fact, optical illusions are popular forms of entertainment. We are also taught that our minds are fallible and our perceptions clouded. We might agree with this in theory. We might feel confident that other people's perceptions are clouded. But we're reluctant to accept this assessment of our own perceptions and beliefs.

A few days earlier, I had listened to a lecture by Tushar Puranik about the history of the Brahmo Samaj and its foundational rejection of image worship, followed by the more inclusive approach of Keshab Chandra Sen. This superb talk concluded with some questions for each of us to think about. One question that stayed with me was: Does any person have enough knowledge and insight to negate any aspect of God? All I can say is, this person resoundingly doesn't. How could I possibly presume to make a claim about any aspect, or lack thereof, of God when I can't reliably describe a piece of fabric? I can only humbly offer devotion, with the hope and goal of attaining my own experience, and with acceptance and hope for everyone else on earth.