JAVANESE EPISTEMOLOGY REVISITED

Abstract

For the Javanese the whole life is a manifestation of the Absolute.
Therefore it is not possible to separate the sacred from the profane,
neither morality from religiosity, nor epistemology from ethics.
Knowledge, as the pursuit of the truth, is not viewed as in empirical
tradition in which the mind perceives objects out there through the
creation of representations of them by the nervous systems and
registered by the brain (Representationalism); neither as in
Cartesian intellectualism in which knowledge is founded on
indubitable certainties (Foundationalism). It is, instead, a matter of
doing and venturing (Laku) in which one is to go deeper: from
gross physical body, through subtle body, to the sublime soul. The
centre of gravity of this pursuit is rasa ( inner feeling, ultimate
secret, the bearer of the divine life, the vehicle of life). Rasa is the
quintessence of all the three parts of human structure : the head,
the chest and the genital ( the scrotum).