advaitin Consciousness and Realism

[Guest guest]

Hello Benjaminni,

 

B:

Briefly, duality or 'discriminating conceptual consciousness' is when

one has the illusory sense of a distinction between seer and seen,

whether this 'seen' be the gross object of matter or the subtle one

of a perception that appears as distinct from the seer.

 

On the other hand, 'intuitive nondual awareness' is the flash of

insight whereby one is aware of one's consciousness as a whole, and

one immediately realizes that 'seer' and 'seen' are mere words

labelling the same consciousness. Hume had an experience something

like this when he realized that the 'self' was not distinct from the

contents of his consciousness, but he did not develop it into

spiritual realization.

 

===OK, I see what you mean. I hope you can make good use of these two concepts,

and get lots of instances of "intuitive nondual awareness."

 

>If you explain all phenomena as PFT, then the phenomena

>themselves are inert arisings, and the elements of PFT

>cannot act upon each other.

 

B:

I reject this view of the PFT model. In no way are the PFT 'inert'.

What do you mean by 'inert'?

 

===By inert I mean that the PFT phenomena cannot truly act on each other. That

they are seen and not seers. Do you ever see a thought see another thought? Do

you see a thought cause another thought?

 

>You know, nothing in consciousness is bona

>fide evidence that consciousness is "yours".

 

===I have also already explained what is misleading about such a

statement. I am not claiming that there is a 'Ben' over and above

the stream of consciousness which could 'own' it. 'Ben' is simply a

label to designate this stream and not another. A mere label does

not 'own' anything. Nothing is 'owning' anything.

 

===Aha! What do you mean by "this"? That is an indexical word, and depends

upon some kind of contextual cue. This is also opposed to "that." But apart

from the contents of PFT, where is the "that"?

 

B:

Regarding 'realism', you cannot use Berkeleian arguments to deny

other consciousnesses.

 

===I would *never* do such a thing! I would use something much better -

Atmanandan agruments!

 

B:

So to deny other consciousnesses, you must come up with totally novel

arguments, which you have not.

 

===I respect this call for novel arguments. Sorry I can't give you an argument

that deflates the appeal of the notion of other consciousnesses! I've tried

many things, some more than once :-) and by now, they certainly aren't novel!

I very much respect that multiple s-o-c's seem to be the case to you, and I

respect your honesty in keeping with your experience and in not running ahead.

 

 

B:

You first tried to argue that another consciousness is an 'object' in a sense

similar to matter, which is absurd.

 

===Not *similar* to matter. But *entailing* matter. I suspect but am not sure,

that whatever it is that you use to distinguish one s-o-c from another might

rely on some spatiotemporal criterion. How else would you distingish more than

one s-o-c?

 

===Here's an interesting point, interesting to me: let's say Ben *does* become

aware of the contents another s-o-c. How would you know it? How do you know

it's not already happening now? If Ben becomes aware of another set of

contents, then by definition it *is* in Ben's s-o-c, or else Ben could not see

it.

 

B:

Then you tried to claim that my intuitive nondual awareness,

in which the apparent distinction between seer and seen (within my

own consciousness) evaporates.

 

 

===Let me ask you: does this intuitive nondual awareness happen more than once?

What about between times?

 

B:

still retains some kind of super-subtle objectivity, without making yourself at

all clear.

 

===I'm not talking about how you speak of the intuitive nondual awareness

episodes. I like that. What I'm talking about is how you speak of the s-o-c's

as though s-o-c's were some kind of state of affairs. If there's more than one

of them, then it's duality. And sometimes you speak of PFTs as though there's a

container and contained relationship.

 

 

B:

There is then no issue of something in awareness being taken as other than

awareness, of the seen being taken as other than the seer. Such is

the case with other streams of consciousness.

 

===Then may you intuit fewer and fewer of them!!

 

Hari Om!

 

--Greg

[Guest guest]

Hey Benjamin,

 

B:

Thanks Greg. I think that's enough for now ... at least for me. I

don't regret these exercises, because they sharpen wits and language

skills and provide a philosophical workout.

 

 

===This is true; this kind of talking and thinking is a skill, like learning

Sanskrit or playing tennis. And I can see you are getting better at it! We can

tune you up for the WAVES conference! I'll be your philosophy coach, stand in

your corner holding a towel like Burgess Meredith to your Rockey. Woo, woo,

woo, you can do it!

 

B:

Mostly I was hoping to be entertained by some mind-boggling

revelation showing how other SOCs could not possible exist.

 

===Where there's one of them, there'll be two!

 

Here's wishing you well with your Himalayan view!

 

--Greg