"Consciousness in One"

[Guest guest]

Sri Ram Chandran has kindly suggested the following axioms in simple

english:

Brahman alone exists, is eternal, is changeless, is omnipresent ---[A]

So, non-duality is implied by the very first axiom.

Furthermore he stated that

I know that I exist (no proof is necessary, he said)---------------

If I may, I would like to think of assertion as an axiom, since I

am

infereing it without using [A] (by appealing to some "personal

experience").

So, any consistent logic should not be able to derive contradictory

statements such as "X is Brahman" and "Y is Brahman" and "X is

distinct from Y".

Perhaps this is what Sri Benjamin had in mind, when he stated that "I

agree

that logically I cannot conclude that my consciousness is different

from his

consciousness".

 

Suppose that one does not take axiom-set [A] but uses axiom alone

and

examines to see if (the first axiom in) [A] can be derived from it.

That is,

X knows itself as Brahman, Y knows itself as Brahman, but X does

not know Y.

Hence one cannot conclude X and Y must be the same. This is what Sri

Benjamin

seems to be implying when he says, "My consciousness has no clue

about his

consciousness - so how do I know these two are the same".

 

It appears to me that either one accepts axioms [A], with which all

subsequent

discussions are consistent - or one does not accept [A] and cannot

compare two

"consciousness" entities, leading to inconsistencies in the

discussions.