Dear Shri Madathil,

Yes indeed, I must agree that you are right to say:

"There of course is a difference between phusis [nature] and tekne
[artifice, technology]. But, as the unmitigated protagonists of
fullness, are we not bound to include all tekne under phusis? Weren't
all that we term artificial conceived in our minds and created by us?
How could then they be external or extra-phusis? In fact, this is the
opinion aired and shared by many a Western thinker in the last
century. The nuclear bomb is thus fullness as also the olive branch
and the doves of peace."

If nature is understood in its completeness, then nothing can be
'extra-phusis' or 'supernatural'. And yet, through 'individual' or
collective ego, we have an ingrained habit that keeps on thinking of
our petty artifice as somehow outside or beyond nature. Such thinking
is of course a self-contradicting confusion of puffed-up imagination.
As the Gita says (3.27 and 3.33):

Everywhere all acts are done
by nature's manifesting qualities.
Mistaking ego for the self,
a person thinks: "I am the doer."

One acts according to one's own nature.
A learned, knowledgeable person
is no exception. Beings follow nature.
What will holding back achieve?

The Gita is here asking a very delicate question. What can be achieved
by standing back from nature's manifesting acts? In a variety of ways,
the Gita tells us that all our physical and mental doings must be left
to nature -- so that we stand in true knowledge, utterly disinterested
in all personal and cultural techniques of achieving various partial
ends. In the last chapter of the Gita (18.3), Krishna tells Arjuna
that such knowledge is the inmost heart of nature, where all division
ends:

Pure knowledge is just that by which
one changeless principle
of undivided nature
is seen in all divided things.

That's what you need to know.

In order to describe that changeless principle, scholars use the word
'metaphysical'. Literally, the word means 'supernatural' -- from
meta-' meaning 'super-' or 'beyond', and 'phusis' meaning 'nature'.
Actually, the word 'metaphysics' has a curious history. It came into
prominence with the editing and arrangement of Aristotle's writings.
The writings were arranged into sections, and the section on nature
was called 'ta phusika' or 'the physics'. The following section, on
first principles, was accordingly called 'ta meta ta phusika' or 'the
(section) after the physics'. This phrase was shortened to 'ta
metaphusika' or 'the metaphysics'. And from there, the name has come
to be used in general to describe a science of first principles, which
are conceived to underlie the phenomena of nature.

Curiously, metaphysical principles are often described in the plural,
as though many things could come first all at once. But, since the
word 'first' does imply a primary unity, there is a tendency for
'metaphysics' to reduce the number of principles towards a final one.
The fewer the principles become the more they are described as
'metaphysical', as though they were further and further removed from
nature. And massively imposing structures keep on being built -- to
try explaining how so many phenomena could arise from such a few
principles, or even from a single one.

The structures must of course seem artificial; but in the end they can
only work by leading back to the heart of nature, to that which is
utterly and completely natural. It is not nature that needs
transcending, but only the trappings of constructed scholarship and
learning. Where any trappings are retained, so too is a confusion that
needs clearing, by carefully distinguishing the superficial artifice
from what's more truly natural.

And here we are of course back at the inherent paradox of advaita
enquiry. It keeps relentlessly distinguishing what's different, in
search of an impartial truth where all seeming differences are found
dissolved.

Ananda