Overview

Nataraja Guru single-handedly revolutionized philosophical thought in the mid-twentieth century. At a time when science had unwittingly followed Marxism into a materialist desert, he never relinquished his insight into what had been omitted. Now that scientists and philosophers everywhere are pausing in perplexity, having bumped up against the limits of their partial outlook, the Gurus works offer to reintroduce the wisdom that can bring the desert back to life. Stung by the horrors of the Inquisition, western science turned its back on metaphysics for hundreds of years. The extended effort to include as much as possible of the universe under the aegis of physical reality was an interesting experiment, but it has about played itself out. Ideas, memories, emotions and time, among other major categories, are metaphysical entities that have transcended every effort at being reduced to material existence. Matter itself is seen to be brimming with energy as soon as you look beneath the surface. A counterbalancing backlash has occurred recently in which religious and other metaphysical ideas, no matter how divorced from reality, are being embraced as a welcome escape from uncompromising materialism. For a sensible philosophy free of prejudice, which can open the road to further progress in human thought, a balance must be struck between physics and metaphysics. Each must support and verify the other. Nataraja Guru clearly establishes the basis for such an advance in this work, presenting an overarching scheme to integrate all aspects of reality under one roof. Any meaningful philosophy must have some version of an absolute idea or value implicit in it. After presenting his own absolute system Nataraja Guru investigates several prominent strains of philosophy, including the rationalist and the materialist, to identify the absolute element hidden within each of them. Totalitarianism and absolutism are shown to be totally antithetical, the former being highly exclusionary while the latter embraces every possibility. Dialectic thinking is at the heart of the Gurus philosophy, leading to an absolute vision that incorporates all parts within the whole. For the serious thinker unsatisfied by modern pop philosophy, Unitive Philosophy is a uniquely rewarding book that will open up vast uncharted regions for exploration.

Meet the Author

Nataraja Guru

1895-1973

Nataraja Guru is the disciple-successor of Narayana Guru (1854-1928), whose dialectical revaluation and restatement of Sankaracarya’s Advaita Vedanta conformed for the first time to the requirements of a normative or experimental science, to the extent that will probably ever be possible. Sankara himself may be said to be a continuator of Vyasa, who in his turn revised and restated the wisdom of the Upanishads as understood in his time. Nataraja Guru is thus a representative of the same pure, direct and vertical line of succession of philosophical revaluators extending back through time to the most ancient phase of the recorded history of human thought. The Guru may thus be seen to be uniquely qualified to undertake the present work, which he did at the instance of Narayana Guru himself. Sent by Narayana Guru to study in the West, Nataraja Guru was awarded the D. Lit. degree from the University of Paris. In 1923 he established the Narayana Gurukula, with headquarters at Varkala in Kerala State, a Guru-disciple foundation which welcomes all who seek the wisdom of the Absolute in open and living terms. The Guru has translated into English and commented on all of the major works of Narayana Guru, and has written on a wide variety of subjects, employing throughout a protolinguistic or structural approach which could be said to be his unique contribution to the perennial wisdom heritage of mankind.