Regarding others

[Guest guest]

I am still trying to read last months posts, and wanted to at least

post this comment on that discussion before it was forgotten.

 

>>>REPLY TO S. VENKATRAMAM

 

The perception of Venkat's body in my consciousness is an illusion

only in that it does not refer to a material body 'outside' of my

consciousness, as is customary believed by the vast majority of

humanity. There is only the perception of Venkat's body in my

consciousness and not another 'real, material' body 'out there'

somewhere. So in this context, the 'unreality' of Venkat's body only

means the non-existence of the material counterpart to the perception.

 

Sentence 2: As I have argued, I cannot distinguish between subject

and object when I consult my immediate awareness - both words seem to

refer to the same thing, namely the immediate awareness itself.

Hence the 'you' [or rather 'I'] that is seeing, the act of seeing,

and the contents of my consciousness all collapse into the same

reality, namely, this immediate awareness. So by what logic is this

not 'my consciousness'? The words 'my consciousness' refers to this

immediate awareness as I sit here quietly introspecting. Ben Root<<<

 

If only your immediate awareness is real, and anything external to it

isnt, or is, as you say, unverifiable, who and what are these others

you assert whose consciousness is real, but whose body is not? On what

basis do you determine their consciousness is real, and "out there"

("their", and not "my", consciousness) if you cannot do so for

anything else? Their consciousness is not part of your immediate

awareness in any mode of apprehension differing from your peception of

their bodies. And if you infer their consciousness from images and

perceptions in you own consciousness, what is the difference between

this image of their consciousness, and some corrollary image of their

body? Can you not infer their bodies are real by the same argument?

Both are still simply your immediate awareness... no object presumably

has been determined. How, in other words, do you establish that their

consciousness is different than yours? On the basis of what

perceptions that you deem real is this difference established? And if

subject and object are not, how do you distinguish between yourself

and them? Whether speaking of bodies, or consciousnesses. What

separates, or distinguishes them from you?

>>>Sentences 5 & 6: Why should it follow that there is no Benjamin's

or

Venkat's consciousness as distinct entities? Benjamin's

consciousness is a unity within itself, and Venkat's within itself.

But these respective unities do not necessarily collapse into one

overall unity.>>>

 

What distinguishes them? Why do you believe in such "unverifiable"

unities? With what have you perceived them?

 

REPLY TO SRI MADATHIL RAJENDRAN NAIR

>I don't quite understand how you can say in one breath "I cannot

>distinguish between 'subject' and 'object'" and in the very next

>breath say something quite contradictory like "your consciousness and

>mine seem quite distinct as experiences". Who has the awareness of

>my consciousness here? For all practical purposes, he is the subject

>to whom 'my consciousness' naturally becomes the object.

 

When I introspect upon my OWN consciousness, the words 'subject' and

'object' seem to refer to the same immediate awareness. They are two

different words pointing to the same reality. However, I am not

aware of any of the contents of YOUR consciousness within my own

consciousness, namely your thoughts, feelings and perceptions. I see

only mine not yours. And you see only yours and not mine.

Evidently, there are two separate streams of consciousness that

cannot be bridged, at least not until telepathy becomes an actual

experience and not a hypothesis. So the unification of subject and

object, as they refer to MY consciousness, cannot be legitimately

extended into a unification of your consciousness and mine.<<<<

 

 

Define "my".

 

"Your" awareness specifies your concrete experience as it is qualified

by your vestures. So you perceive separateness, and from separateness,

and not the full extent of all that is conscious, nor as it. Your

awareness is limited by your attachments and identifications to your

physical, psychic, mental and noetic vestures. These suppress the

vision of the Real for you, your attached thoughts and desires,

embedding your identification in and from these vestures. If that were

not true you would be fully conscious of all that your vestures are,

and can show you, if not that of others. ("For in this state a higher

Self becomes luminous, having a vesture of the substance of

meditation; it is an independant witness, nor is it stained by the

separate acts of [its vestures]."-The Crest Jewel) But it is more

likely you, like the rest of us, have trouble examining the actual

motives and premises underlying your thinking, effort and beliefs,

much less their nature untrammelled by attachments. Consciousness is

what illumines all of these.

 

Why would you think you were examining Consciousness when you examined

your immediate awareness? Your conscious mind functions in limitation

(you can prove that by denying, this moment, even one of your

desires). According to someone like Jung conscious awareness is led

around by the nose by the subconscious, and its projections. Its

patterns are archetypal, unconscious and common to all humanity. And

that only relates to the sambhogakaya level. What the Formless realm

is to your immediate awareness is closer to the flow of conscious

light experienced in what used to be called Pure Reason, or a state of

focussed meditation/realization, and has little to do with what you

term your immediate awareness, except as its ground. Your immediate

awareness is capapable of becoming cognizant and clear, but it is not

so presently, only inherently (rigpa).

 

In my view no conceptual attempt to overcome the duality of subject

and object can accomplish this, as the removal of the moral and mental

cataracts on the minds eye are what result in an ability to see, not

any particular idea you can come up with to trick awareness into

seeing properly. We do not see clearly because we do not want to see.

We are strongly attached to many things. These attachments do not want

light because then the game becomes real, and as desires they can no

longer just feed. You must want very much to know or see, to overcome

the energy imprisoned in those desires. But it is just the energy of

your own desire you are overcoming, with the energy of desire aligned

to, or desirous of, the Real. Like the desire for Self-knowledge, for

real knowing (rigpa). So it can be done. When you want to see what is

true, like a drowning man wants air, you will then see whatever you

want to, because you already know how to now, you just dont pursue it

like you mean it. We have little need for such knowing generally as we

rarely act on what we know, or change in habit or heart, simply

because something is true or good. Of what use is superconscious

awareness to your present activity, your actual life? Do you intend to

aid others with it? Are you sure that is your motive, the only motive

that will obtain such a result, or fundamentally, is it more a

curiousity? Only real need, a strong desire to know and be true

("Realization, not subtle reasoning." -Shankara), and a heart cracked

open, will allow it to develop. Then understanding will develop. At

least in my view.

 

Being conscious is the same in all, not different. What you are

conscious of, or as, may be quite different. And the degree in which

you are conscious, human, superhuman, subhuman, may be different, but

being conscious is the same in all. ("That soul is the Self of all

that is, this is the Real, this the Self. That thou art, O

Shvetaketu." -Chandhogy Upanishad, 6, 8-16). The question regarding

all knowledge, and especially omniscience, which is the goal of our

efforts, is this: what extends the capacity to know to the knowing of

others, and enables us to understand them? What is sharing? The Ground

for sharing is the Ground of Being, what mystics speak of

experientially as literal oneness. Without an actual connection in

Substance we could not understand each other. One should look closely

at what really happens in awareness when you "aha" over someone else's

communication. Communion, as Krishnamurti speaks of it, is actual

connectedness with others. But