advaitin Quick note on idealism

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On 12/22/03 08:15 pm Benjamin (orion777ben) wrote:

Assume that I do not feel your pleasure and pain, nor you mine. Let

us take this as given. How can we then say that we are 'both the

same Consciousness'. It seems to me that the both of our BMIs would

be present to both of us, whether at the vyavaharika or paramarthika

levels.

 

===============Another way to look at this is this. You aren't even feeling

your own pain! That is, "Ben's stream of consciousness" is not feeling "Ben's

pain." "Ben's stream of consciousness" and "Ben's pain" are both constructions

arising as objects to consciousness, which is never personal, but beyond the

distinction of personal/impersonal. No object can ever truly stand as subject.

Any claim that subjecthood is individuated (as in "my consciousness") results

from the mistaken attribution of seership to that which is an object only. A

cup cannot see another cup. Something you have called a stream of consciousness

is also a an object, unable to see another. Unable to see anything at all, even

"its own contents." Clairvoyant flashes, where one person seems to see into the

lives of others, are not exceptions to this, but are merely objects themselves.

The "otherness" of other lives and the subjecthood attributed to them are

constructions only, arising as objects on!

ly.

 

This is why advaita vedanta says that the apparatus (BMI) is inert, not having

seership. The stream of consciousness and its supposed contents are just BMI.

 

Pranams,

 

--Greg