Concepts in Indian Philosophy: According to the pre-Sixties thinker, Descartes, our concepts are nothing but self-existing ideas that are part of our ordinary awareness of reality. These concepts are also a basic necessity for all of our ideas and concepts about the universe. So, it would seem that our concepts have their root in reality. This view is contrary to the common perception in the west, which believes that concepts are nothing but arbitrary ideas invented by people in order to explain their world. In fact, Descartes suggests that our concepts are nothing but an accidental extension of what we already know. He goes so far as to say that all concepts that we have about the universe are “deduced from a few facts.”
If Descartes’ theory is correct, then every human being possesses a basic and primary idea about himself as well as about the world. However, the idea of “I” and its existence in the external world may be purely accidental according to Descartes’ logic. So too, our concepts about God, heaven, hell, karma, reincarnation, eternity, time, soul, mind, body, love, mind, body, happiness, suffering, and happiness are purely accidental as well as necessary concepts.
Concepts in Indian Philosophy: According to the leading philosophers of Indian philosophy like Amorya Vedant, Dhyanarayan Ananda, and Madhubala Murthy, each and every idea in the Indian philosophy is a self-referential truth. For example, the statement “I am a mountain” is a self-referential truth because it contains a reference to itself. The sentence “I am hungry” is a truth because it contains a reference to a particular situation or individual. On the other hand, the statement “I am a house” is not a self-referential truth because the existence of the house has a reference to external circumstances, to the surrounding society, the people living in that society, the geographical location of the house, and so on.
Concepts in Indian Philosophy: The concepts in Indian philosophy regarding karma are also referred to as Vedic philosophy because they are derived from the Upanishads. According to these Upanishads, karma is nothing but the consequence of an act. The Upanishad says that by performing a particular action, we will receive in ourselves a specific result or benediction. A good example of this is that the sages who were reincarnated four thousand years ago had to perform extensive good deeds for their previous lives and consequently received the “king-karma,” or the “king- Karma” as they were termed in Sanskrit civilization.
The concepts in Indian philosophy refer to karma as both a cause and effect. They are used to explain how the good and evil consequences of an act will affect us. For example, if a person kills another human being, then the act is murder; however, the consequences are that the person will be tormented for life because his act has produced two lives; one which were good and one that being evil. Therefore, this act will have a definite impact on the person’s character and personality. A second example of the concept in Indian philosophy is the following: if a tree falls on a person, then he will get a painful lesson because the fall has caused physical harm to his body, but also because he is now responsible for avoiding another fall of trees or plants.
Concepts in Indian Philosophy: In addition to the above examples of concepts, we also find concepts in Indian philosophy that deal with time, space, matter, mind, spirit, body, consciousness, transcendental objects, and so on. Each of these concepts has something to do with the different stages of life in India, the nature of reality, and the processes of karma and self-realization. There are concepts in Indian philosophy that deal with the three stages of life: human being, sage, and paramaatras. We also have concepts in Indian philosophy that relate to the different stages of experiences: initial experience, middle experience, and last experiencing. All in all, a lot of these concepts have something to do with the different levels of spiritual development in an individual.
Some of the concepts in Indian philosophy are also related to the various phases of human activity. For example, there are concepts that relate to potency and knowledge. In Indian philosophy, knowledge is equated with time, while the potency is equated with action. Thus, the action of knowledge encompasses time, but knowledge is timeless. Similarly, the concepts in Indian philosophy that pertain to time are impermanence and changeless; whereas the concepts of change and transformation are associated with time.
On the other hand, there are concepts in Indian philosophy that relate to the different stages of human growth and maturity. The concepts in Indian philosophy that pertain to maturity are moksha and brahma. In Hinduism, these two concepts are considered to be the ultimate concepts. The moksha is the concept of self-realization through meditation; while Brahma is considered to be the concept of knowledge and salvation. Therefore, a number of these concepts are used in Indian astrology as well.