Atmananda's "witness" teaching different from idealism

[Guest guest]

Greetings to Michael, Ananda, Dennis, and everyone else interested in these

topics. I'm back from Hong Kong and have the books nearby!

 

Although the witness prakriya can sound like an idealism, there are differences.

 

There *is* a stage in Atmananda's dialectic which seems like Berkeley's

philosophy. This is the part in where it is shown that supposed physical

objects cannot appear without the appearance of the sense faculties and the

mind. But the prakriya doesn't stop there. It pushes right on to show how the

supposed sense faculties and mental phenomena are witnessed and never appear

apart from knowledge.

 

For Atmananda, the witness is not the mind. Rather, the mind is witnessed.

 

In a nutshell, idealisms don't usually question the reality of ideas, minds, or

mental phenomena. They rest there, not looking into the nature of the apparatus

or container. Atmananda's teaching, on the other hand, is that ideas, minds,

and mentation are themselves are witnessed, and not by anyone. The supposed

distinctions between inner and outer, between one person's mind and another, are

themselves arisings that are witnessed. Atmananda applies a similar kind of

analysis to what are called mental phenomena that he does to what are called

physical phenomena. One of his approaches is that he treats it as part of the

world. So it is definitely something that he is treating as the witness.

 

There are some quotes below from online dictionaries about idealism and from

Atmananda to make the difference clear:

 

On Idealism

============

 

http://www.wordreference.com/english/definition.asp?en=idealism

Any of a group of philosophical doctrines that share the

monistic view that material objects and the external world

do not exist in reality independently of the human mind

but are variously creations of the mind or constructs of ideas.

 

 

www.philosophypages.com/dy/i.htm

Belief that only mental entities are real, so that physical

things exist only in the sense that they are perceived. Berkeley

defended his "immaterialism" on purely empiricist grounds,

while Kant and Fichte arrived at theirs by transcendental

arguments.

 

www.sfu.ca/philosophy/beyond_experience/glossary.htm

Idealism is the theory that the only things that exist

are minds and their contents, e.g. pains, beliefs,

desires, sensations of sounds, afterimages.

 

http://www.brainydictionary.com/words/id/idealism175679.html

The system or theory that denies the existence of material

bodies, and teaches that we have no rational grounds to

believe in the reality of anything but ideas and their relations.

 

Relevant quotes from Sri Atmananda

===============================

Excerpt from "World," published with ATMA NIRVRITTI,

"The gross and subtle worlds (physical and mental)

cannot be separated from knowledge (consciousness)

at any point of time. Therefore they are nothing

but Consciousness."

 

 

NOTES ON SPIRITUAL DISCOURSES OF SREE ATMANANDA,

Dialog from 24th December 1950, "How am I the witness?"

Every perception, thought or feeling is known by you.

You are the knower of the world through the sense

organs, or the sense organs through the generic

mind, and of the mind and its activity or passivity

by your self alone. In all these different activities

you stand out as the one Knower. Actions, perceptions,

thoughts and feelings all come and go. But knowingness

does not part with you even for a moment.

 

1st oct. 1951: 282

"The Mind and the World"

The mind is the most essential part of the world

and it goes into the make of the world itself.

 

3rd May 1958: 46

Q: What is the meaning of inside and outside?

[in the spiritual context?]

Atmananda:

Experience and knowledge are inside -

How can their objects be outside?

Q: What does 'inside' signify?

Atmananda:

'Inside' strictly means not separate from Self.

Therefore experience is the self.

 

Pranams to all,

 

--Greg