Shri Atmananda's teachings -- 5. All objects point to consciousness

[Guest guest]

Hello Ananda,

>From your post of Sunday 16th.Nov (#19876) on the

Witness of thoughts I see that the deconstruction of

'external' reality into consciousness is proferred as

a step on the way towards the resolution of that now

internal content into something which the witness

holds within itself.

 

This is a progressive elimination as you put it, the

outside world devolves into an inner world and this

inner world is noted by the everpresent witness.

 

You write 19/11/03: First, as in the witness prakriya,

all gross experiences of outside objects are reduced

to the more subtle experiences of our conceiving

minds. We think of objects in a world that's outside

consciousness, but

this is just imagination in our minds. In actual fact,

no one ever can experience any object outside

consciousness.

 

My Comment: This is straightforward Idealism. As such

it has been explicity countered by Sankara. He

distinguishes clearly between an object and knowledge

of that object. B.S.B. II.ii.29 pass.

 

You write 19/11/03: But then, what else does an object

show, as it appears? When an object is perceived, it

shows perception. When it is thought about, what it

shows is thought. When it is felt, what's shown is

feeling. Our minds imagine that their perceptions,

thoughts and feelings somehow go outside of

consciousness, to an external world. But this never

happens, actually.

 

My Comment: You make no distinction between creative

Pure Consciousness in which we live move and have our

being, and the individual consciousness/awareness

which passes between introspection and sensation and a

host of other activities which have both an inner and

an outer aspect.

 

You write 19/11/03: So what is shown is always

consciousness, and only that. Nothing else is ever

shown, in anyone's experience. Consciousness has no

outside.

 

My Comment: Idealism is being offered as a way to

immediate absorption in Consciousness. If it is an

incoherent view as Sankara holds then it may not be a

sound approach. My caveat is that the truth is so

large that practically any position that is consistent

with Dharma is equidistant from it.

 

You wrote 23/11/03 (reply to Dennis)

Yes, guilty as charged. The attempt is to say only what

the words mean, and to come back to where we started.

The drift of the argument is simply this. Though we

imagine that a world outside is perceived and thought

about and felt, this never actually happens. All

perceptions, thoughts and feelings always stay in

consciousness, and so they cannot

really show anything outside. As you say, from the very

meaning of the words we use, it is quite clear that

"Nothing else [but consciousness]

is ever shown..."

 

My Comment: Again a straightforward expression of

Idealism in which consciousness is a bag into which a

multitude of states and activities are thrown and

identified with the Absolute.

 

You wrote 25/11/03 (to myself)

To the extent that any mental association is left in

that subjectivity, it tends to trivialize the reality

of objects and the world. That of course is not true

advaita, for it evades and ignores the object side of

the non-dual equation.

 

This seems to be a contradiction of what you expressed

in your previous posts in which the outside world is

reduced to nothing but perceptions and feelings in

your own head.

 

What Sankara starts with is the structure which is like

an armature on which this creation is modelled namely

subject and object. (Preamble to B.S.B.) He thereby

avoids the misdirection which occurs when the

contentious subject of fundamental data is considered.

Is it sense-data (mediate/scientific realism) or is it

pure presentations to consciousness (idealism)? He

avoids this as an expert giver of directions to the

hapless tourist will not say 'you see the post office

over there and the big building opposite it, well you

don't go there'.

 

Structure is not something that is directly sensed but

it is that which makes sensation possible. Yet there

is a paradox contained within it in that the subject

is conscious and the object is inert. Given this as

fundamental how does it come about that the object is

known by me. "It being an established fact that the

object and the subject that are fit to be the contents

of the concepts 'you' and 'we' (respectively), and are

by nature as contradictory as light and darkness,

cannot logically have any identity, it follows that

their attributes can have it still less."

>From this point of the structure and the paradox within

it can come the offering of a theory of error which is

seen as operative within data. So you have structure

and paradox, data and error. There is an order of

business!

 

In your post of the 25th. you queried certain other

positions of mine on the witness and

consciousness/Consciousness. I'll take them separately

later.

 

Best Wishes, Michael.