consciousness and creation

[Guest guest]

Jayanarayananji wrote:

 

When a person ("patient") is shown a red rose in front of him, he

perceives it as a red rose. The redness of the rose is not perceived by

the eye, as the eye can be perfectly fine yet the patient will not see the

red rose if his optic nerve (the nerve from the eye to the brain) is cut.

Therefore, the redness of

the rose is perceived not by the eye, but by the brain (or so it is

believed by neuroscientists). Somewhere in the brain, there arises the

idea that a red rose is being perceived.

 

The neuroscientist observes the brain of the patient and records his

observations. But most unfortunately for the neuroscientist, no

observation of the brain will reveal a red rose inside the brain.

 

Third-Person (Neuroscientist's) Viewpoint: "There is a material entity

(brain) with billions of grey neurons that are excited by electrical

impulses, and affected by chemical substances such as drugs and proteins."

 

First-Person (Patient's) Viewpoint: "I see a RED ROSE."

 

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Namaste Jayanarayananji,

Very clear exposition of the

current impasse in the field

of consciousness studies. Inevitably

the sense data theory derealises the object

reducing it to events in the brain which may

or may not have

an object to which they refer. Thus

in the extreme case the world drops away

and becomes a fond illusion. In short the

sense data theory cannot be the basis of

any valid means of

knowledge because there could be no way

of telling the difference between error

and true perception. So we may ask: what is it that has been

'transmitted' from rose as object that

makes a rose as percept a valid representation.

Various philosophers of the realist persuasion

have offered solutions which have a family

resemblance and which are based on an intuition

in the sense of immediate perception of a

truth e.g. the whole is greater than a part,

and also an

intuition in the sense of a species

of divination. The immediate intuition

is that the object is a given pre-theoretic

reality that we have to deal with. The other

form of intuition is the experience of the

object shining in us, in its reality as it

is. This can only happen when the immaterial

form of the object which is the basis of its

reality i.e. its upadhi, can also shine

within our consciousness. Because it

shines in our consciousness we assume the

commonality of the substratum that allows

this to happen. This substratum must be

consciousness itself. In effect what

this means is that the brain is not

conscious but that the brain is consciousness

or is nondual with consciousness.

Another way this is sometimes put is

that consciousnesspervades material

reality seamlessly.

 

The section on Perception in Vedanta Paribhasa (pub Advaita Ashrama) is a

difficult but rewarding study,

Best Wishes,

Michael