elementary

[Guest guest]

Greetings Advaitins All,

Madathil there was a bug in the frontal lobe keyboard interface in relation

to the subject - All that has happened. Excuse me.

 

"Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of

science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or

poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this silence is that you have to know how to

read the music. For instance the scientific article may say, "the

radio-active phosphorus content of the cerebrum of the rat decreases to

one-half in a period of two weeks." Now, what does that mean?

It means that the phosphorus that is in the brain of the rat- and also in

mine, and yours - is not the same phosphorus as it was two weeks ago. It

means that atoms that are in the brain are being replaced: the ones that

were there before have gone away.

So what is this mind of ours: what are these atoms with consciousness?

Last week's potatoes! They can now remember what was going on in my mind a

year ago - a mind that has long been replaced.

To note that the thing which I call my individuality is only a pattern or

dance that is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the

atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms. The atoms come into my

brain, dance a dance, and then go out - there are always new atoms, but

always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday."

from 'What do YOU care what the neighbours think.' 1988 by

Richard Feynmann. pg.244 as taken from Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel

Dennett pg.360.

 

 

What are we to make of this? What does Advaita have to say to it? Does

this view differ significantly, other than a scientific overlay, from the

Annica (Momentariness) of the Buddhist school of Vijnanavada?

 

Certainly the findings of Advaita are counter intuitive. "Nothing seems

plainer than that there are a multiplicity of things in the world around us

and that these, and our experience of them, are constantly changing. To

deny the reality of change, variety and multiplicity seems to be the most

bizarre of all religious or metaphysical procedures, and it is

understandable that it should try the patience of tough empiracally minded

philosophers and earn their contempt." Those are the words of the

philosopher H.D. Lewis writing in a book called 'The Elusive Mind' from a

chapter on Mysticism and Monism. It would be this apparently flagrent

abrogation of the principle of non-contradiction that keeps Advaita beached

on the eclectic shores of the Departments of Religious Studies in the West

for the most part. In India itself, according to Rajiv Malhotra, it is not

taken seriously at Phd. level. I think he put that down to secular

irreligion which would perhaps view it as an antique curiousity moreover

religious and therefore divisive. Championing it might seem to be like a

physicist promoting phlogiston and given the present empiricist bias of the

Philosophy of Mind it would be regarded as a waste of the Departments time.

Two great rules of life apply here also (a)birds of a feather flock together

(b)don't foul the nest!

 

H.D. Lewis has a strong religious orientation and would be anti-empiricist

and as an open minded man would be perfectly capable of entertaining any

position. If he doesn't get it it must be the way it's being told. A

difficulty is that normally philosophy is delivered in one grade, industrial

full-strength. You don't get the one author offering a (1)bluffer's

introduction (2)intermediate (3) advanced (4) initiates (5) silence.

 

But there's hope up the line, there are good translations coming from the

Advaita Ashrama which get you straight into the undiluted thought of

Sankara. How do I know that they are good if I don't know Sanskrit? Well

I'm reading 'Methods of Knowledge' by Swami Satprakashananda at the moment

and I find a similar understanding of certain points and a recourse to the

same parts of B.S.B.(The Metaphysical Background of the Sensible Universe).

Swami Gambhirananda's translation is clearer to this reader however. My

main point is that philosophy is language permeable, poetry is what is lost

in translation.

 

How do you counter the charge of deep nonsense that might be made against

Advaita? Apply the Sherlock Holmes principle - Eliminate the impossible

and whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. ..... The

game's afoot.

 

Ciao and Blessing and a Happy New Year, Michael.

 

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Hi Michael.

 

Great! You have given me hell of a lot of reading in your last two

posts which call for a very detailed response.

 

With the metabolism gone haywire with X-Mas and impending New Year

and unrelenting office work, I don't think I can do that right away.

That is an advaitin's confession! So, give me some time to ruminate

the cud. Sure, I will be right back.

 

Pranams.

 

Madathil Nair

_____

 

In advaitin, "michael Reidy" <ombhurbhuva@h...> wrote:

..> Madathil there was a bug in the frontal lobe keyboard interface in

relation

> to the subject - All that has happened. Excuse me.