Indefatigably optimistic, performing mudras with his fingers to emphasise a point, philosopher Roy Bhaskar explained his new thesis, the transcental nature of Meta Reality. In Kolkata and Mumbai to launch the new Bhaskar series published by Sage, the philosopher delighted his audiences by his stubborn rejection of the negative, the dark, dismal and gloomy.

Announcing the launch of the Meta Reality Foundation, which is a companion body to the Critical Reality Foundation, Roy Bhaskar said that the first chapter of the new foundation had been set up in India. Two other chapters would be set up in Britain and the US. The foundation would have an activist agenda. Roy Bhaskar is planning for a World Meta Reality Week sometime in December-January, which would be a consciousness raising exercise, since he firmly believes that a change in the way people think is essential, that the change has to start now and that the change will allow human beings to transcend the narrow frames of reference within which they have been taught to experience reality.

Q. For an Indian, the idea of non-duality, seems familiar, because by talking about the unity of all things, including absence, your thesis comes close to the concept of Advyaita. Is that a valid inference?

A. The absolute truth is universal and the same truth has to be said in different ways. Krishna in the Bhagvad Gita said that I will come again and again, when confusion and conflict overwhelms the world. Meta-Reality is an emancipatory project. The possibility of human emancipation depends upon expanding the zone of non-duality within our lives; and in the first instance upon the shedding of our own heteronomy, so that we become in a way non-dual beings in a world of duality.

Non-duality is basic not only to action and consciousness, but to being itself. To talk of the dependency of the non-dual upon the dual brings us close to traditional critical realist concerns with emergence and stratification. Therefore, it is not surprising if we can make out an argument, in terms of the stratified nature of reality for a foundation level, a basic level of being, which I describe as a ground-state. It is its most essential level, that is the level upon which all other levels depend. Any human situation must be one in which each agent in that situation is capable of doing something, that is performing some action spontaneously and correctly.

These ground-state qualities, differentiated in the human world, and for each human being in that world are connected up to the ground-state qualities of other human beings and indeed being generally through what I call the cosmic envelope. This principle of connectivity of the cosmic envelope is a distinguishing feature of Meta-Reality.

It is an understanding of co-presence which allows us to make sense of the enfolding and unfolding possibilities within being. The phenomenon of co-presence explains what happens when we have unfulfilled intentionality, we carry the desire, in the form of an attachment, within us. In the case of karman, we carry the consequences of wrong action – that is action inconsistent with our ground-state – for example the pain or hurt we have done to another, within us and we cannot be free until we have released or freed it. The real basis is that the hurt you have done is co-present within you, a part of you, and remains so until it is consciously experienced or you let go of it.

When we no longer contain things inconsistent with our ground-states, when we have eliminated incompleteness, we may be said to be enlightened or realised. Because our freedom and happiness is indivisible from that of others and the pain and suffering of all other beings is a part of us, we have to strive unceasingly for the awakenbing and fulfillment of all other beings in creation.

To quote Marx’s vision, “The free development of each is the condition of the free development of all.” Or like the Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism. There is a universalising system of ethicvs and it is this which is a tacit presupposition of the emancipatory project.

Q. How does non-duality work?

A. Non-duality is the fact that you are listening to me. If we were not on the same level, that is, if our ground-states were not meeting in non-duality then you would not listen to me. We can understand each other only in a state of non-duality. Non-duality is also whatever action you perform. You cannot perform any action if you think about how you are going to do it. Non-duality is love.

Q. How can this love be understood when neighbours kill each other, as in Godhra in Gujarat?

A. Love is not pacifism. I would jump on any person who tried to harm or injure a friend. That is love, that is non-duality. Love is concretised in a war situation. War is a terrible thing, but it is sustained by the selfless solidarity of the soldiers at the front, by their willingness to sacrifice themselves for each other and their cause, by the support of their sisters, wives, daughters at home. It is love which sustains all the negative emotions and all the forms of oppression and violence. Similarly it is creativity which keeps exploitation going.

If we dig into these truths then we begin to have a view of human beings as potentially autonomous and free and that actual potential autonomy and freedom as sustaining the very structures of exploitation and oppression.

Q. In your book, you have addressed the issue of Who Am I ?

A. Each person is conceretly singularised. Each person is naturally and socio-historically relativised. Freedom is realised in some particular and not in the abstract. There is a multiple ambiguity in our sense of ourself. Each of these selves are separate yet inextricably connected. This I is an extraordinary thing. Everything else in our society actually hinges on it. So it is not just a philosophical teaser. We all assume that everyone knows what the self if, who I am, who is responsible for what. But if you cannot give a coherent account of it, then you cannot give a coherent account of anything you do, and ultimately a coherent account of anything at all.

Take September 11 for instance. It is a way of demonstrating that everyone and everything is connected. Or Global Warming. It is Nature saying I am connected. I am not separate. When the free development of each does not happen and there is no free development of all, then there is a backlash.

The protocol of history is towards synthesis. The emancipatory tradition is anticipated by all secular traditions, ideologies and philosophies. It is essential that we do something now, otherwise we will no longer exist. We lack nothing on this planet. There is enough food, too many cars and boundless energy and boundless creativity. It is the distribution of it that creates scarcity and boundaries that obstruct. More energy is required to keep an addiction like smoking tobacco for instance going than in giving it up.

Q. There is something utopian in what you are saying. Lenin said that the moment of revolution is the realization of utopia.

A. Lenin said revolution was the festival of the oppressed. I believe that we are all on the shop floor and that Marx was right when he said that production should pass into the hands of the immediate producer, that each should get according to his or her need. What happened in 1989-91 was that dogmas and practices opposed to the original intention overtook the socialist state. The former Soviet Union was not producing at a higher level. It was living a lie. It was not socialism. Revolution is unpredictable and the Soviet Union collapsed from within.

Q. Is the world becoming more emancipated?

A. The world is becoming more American-ish, which is Disneyfied and MacDonalised. It is catering to the lowest common denominator and attempting to force a consensus. In the US there is no choice. There are only so many brands of clothes, the clothes are made for standardized bodies. There is no choice. I can walk into an Indian textile shop and choose from any number of materials, colours, textures, have the clothes made to measure. Even shoes are standardised. People don’t have two identical feet. The size and the shape differs. What is happening is that there is a vast amount of creative activity and it is all being directed to create standardisation.

All emancipatory thought has to presuppose in some way the actuality, the inherent existence in an unfulfilled state now, of what could be. What the structure of emancipatory thought says is that we are free, creative loving; we are essentially good, noble, dignified, productive beings. But we are not only that . We contain or sustain a lot else besides. The task of emancipation is to shed: to shed what we are not and to fully embody everything that we essentially are.