word

[Guest guest]

Namaste Felipeji,

I'm just going to go over

the general points of your post #30281 without

extended discussion of any one of them which would

require a book to do them justice. I will be in

agreement with you so in essence I am just checking

off your points and adding a note or two of my own.

 

1: The science that the Vedanta takes itself to be

in opposition to is not science but scientism.

Scientism: "the belief that the methods of the natural sciences are

applicable in all inquiry, especially in the human and social sciences,

scientistic adj."

Worst still are the Logical Positivists who hold

that 'the meaning of a statement is the method of

its verification'.

 

2: Both Scientism and its opposite number in Vedanta

which could be called Vedism but because it is

found in all religions I will call Religism are

wrong and due to inadequate acquaintance with

the higher thought in each. Metaphysics deals

with the world at its most general or 'being as

such'(Aristotle)

 

3: There is no Western Science just Science.

What they object to is Scientism to which they

oppose their own Vedism

 

4: Kant and his Logic. 'It looks complicated but

when you break it down it's really very simple'

(words of toymaker on T.V. diy programme)

His antinomies in which from the same propositions

opposite conclusions are drawn e.g. that the world

has a beginning in space and time/that the world

has no beginning in space and time; demonstrate

the instability of logic in the metaphysical

realms.

 

5: Causality in Science and Metaphysical Causality.

The one deals with material causes and discussions

on the basis of scientific evidence and the other

with cause as such e.g. non-difference of cause and

effect, Material/Final/Efficent/Formal Cause,

Emptiness theories etc.

 

6: These theories are on different logical levels

eg. Damasio's theories about the somatic sources

of the self via feeling and the Self in Shankara.

They do not contradict each other in reality, they

never meet except in the alembics of Vedism and

Scientism.

 

7: The realised man does not become perfect in

scientific knowledge. In B.S.B. you will find

that Shankara thought that Cranes conceived by

hearing the sounds of clouds and that Lotuses

travelled from lake to lake mysteriously.

Certain aspects of gnosis may become operative

due to the demands of compassion but not in

his own mind for himself to put it crudely.

 

 

8: The early Ionian cosmologist/philosphers

gave Western thought a certain orientation.

They had the idea that if you became aware

of the first principles of things by investigation

and experiment you had found the source and

thereby wisdom. That was corrected by Plato

and Aristotle but it keeps coming back.

 

Best Wishes,

Michael

[Guest guest]

Dear Shri Michaelji,

 

In ancient China, Taoist sages were known to engage in 'pure light

conversations' - they would meet, sit in silence for a few hours, and

after having a 'pure light conversation', they would part to go their

ways. It seems to me that we would need to have a 'pure light

conversation' to discuss the things that you mention, but

unfortunately I am neither a Taoist sage nor a Vedic sage, and I

don't think I can explain or even expiate on the mysteries that you

ask about. So, it is safest for me to say: "I don't know."

Nevertheless, like between friends, there is no harm in engaging in a

bit of light-hearted conversation, and this post is written in that

vein.

 

advaitin, ombhurbhuva <ombhurbhuva wrote:

> Namaste C.Nji (and whoever wishes to comment)

>

> So it seems that you are going back even

> further into the theory of word. Sound is the

> basis of the word. If one were to put it in

> terms of a Venn diagram, the outer circle would

> contain sound, inside that you would have

> word, inside that you would have nameform

> (I run them together like spacetime). This

> corresponds to the order of business of creation

> and allies itself to the trope of emanation.

 

 

I would say that sound is the basis of not only the word, but also of

the world. It is also the basis of the attitude that the Creator

assumes in creating. The shastra of sound is called maktrikachakra.

The 52 letters of the Sanskrit alphabet is the entire universe. The

vowels are the attitudes of Consciousness, and the consonants are the

tattvas of the objective universe which Consciousness invokes and

combines with in forming the universe. The word 'combines'

indicates 'union', and union is Yoga. The grammar of Panini is

intimately connected to Yoga in the sense that the relationships

Consciousness assumes in uniting with sound are the basis of the

grammatical forms of language. Sanskrit means the perfected language

because it is complete in itself and it contains within it the

structure of the entire universe.

 

A portion of the matrikachakra is also reflected in the Kabbalah of

the Jews. But, if I remember rightly, they speak of only 26 letters.

 

> There is a conflict between the Isvara and Brahman

> with respect to the nature of creation which surfaces

> in the perennial discussions about ajativada. We are

> told repeatedly that Brahman is all this, that there

> is nothing but the Self and that unity is the answer.

> In that vision of things can anything be inert? There

> is only one Being, the Being of Brahman and that is

> Sat cit anandam (or anantam cf. discussion on Satyam

> jnanam anantam Brahma in Tai.Up.) By straight logic

> which you hold to be the only logic there is, that must

> be the case.

 

I would say that the one logic appears curved in vyavahara, and

straight when the intellect is purified.

 

How does the inert come to be in Sat-chit-ananda? It comes to be in

Consciousness through spanda, the vibration of Consciousness that has

no motion, but presents the illusion of motion. The illusion of

movement of Consciousness is the nature of the inert. The capacities

that Consciousness has within Itself to present forms are the

tattvas, and Consciousness presents them through the mystery of

spanda.

 

Pure logic is apriori. Its truth is recognised from within one's

self. It comes from the reflexive self-awareness of Consciousness

called vimarsha. Pure Consciousness is the masculine principle, and

vimarsha, self-awareness, is the feminine principle. Out of this

self-awareness arises the awareness of the tattvas that lie in

Consciousness itself. When logic is straightened (or purified) it

beholds not only the truth, but also the truth of logic itself as the

reflexive self-awareness from which the truth arises apriori within

one's self. (Shri Anandaji had explained this somewhat in his post).

In the cave of the intellect, reason is merged in iccha, the deep

seat of desire. Logic, until it is purified, excludes the world of

desire from the realm of its operations, and when purified sees the

basis of so-called esoteric truths because it now embraces the

totality of the universe of Consciousness; it embraces the paradox,

so to speak, which was generated by the schism of Ratio and Eros,

wherein the reason of our intellect was unable to comprehend the ways

of the heart. But the origin of the universe lies in the Heart, in

the heat of Its ecstasy, as it were, and until Ratio merges with Eros

in the Great Heart, which is the Cave of the Intellect, logic will

always find itself confronted with a paradox that it cannot grasp or

comprehend. The conflict between Ishvara and Brahman gets resolved in

the merging of Ratio and Eros, in grasping the nature of spanda,

which is the same as grasping the nature of vivarta.

 

> The higher teaching of Brahman, if it takes

> precedence, must mean that the notion of anything that

> *is* being inert is false. That assumes that the logic of

> shruti is the same as ordinary logic which operates

> by the two poles of P.N.C. and P.E.M. This is

> Maitreyi's sticking point cf.Brh.Up. Not so much the

> puzzle about how the self is without consciousness

> after realisation but the status of the manifest world.

> Following the logic of Creation or the path of Isvara,

> creation will be taken to be other than the creator

> and thus inert. This is the path that is immediately

> accessible to the plain reader of scripture. This is the

> path that is ordinarily traced to get to the point of

> liberation viz. the progressive dissolution of upadhis.

 

I agree with all this in as much as it is like this until the paradox

is embraced by the purified logic.

 

> By the other path of Brahman nothing is inert

> and therefore its (creation's) dissolution requires

> that in some manner it never really was. As ever

> there is tension between the immanent and

> transcendent aspects of religion.

 

The words transcendent and immanent have been ravished by the impure

intellect. What is transcendent has to be necessarily immanent.

Transcendent and immanent are logical separations, not physical or

temporal separations. The logic of the siddha, the one who beholds

the esoteric truth, moves about not in space and time, but in

chidakasha, the ether of pure Consciousness.

 

> This surpasses

> normal logic which I maintain happens in ordinary

> life also. Take something very straightforward -

> pre-cognition. If you experience something before

> it happens then it is clear that in some way you

> were in two places, spacetimewise, at the same time.

> By ordinary logic no can do! I personally have no

> trouble believing in these sorts of experience for

> the excellect reason that I have experienced them.

> The envelope of intelligibility sometimes herniates.

 

Michaelji, what you call normal logic is not logic that has been

sufficiently clarified. Once it is clarified, it would have no

problem with things that are normally called extra-ordinary. One

can't take Vedanta to the normal level of logic. Vedanta comes when

one rises above the normal level of logic.

 

> Now to the matter of Darwinian Evolution. I

> remarked above that the notion of creation as

> inert has the conter thesis that if anything is

> then it is conscious or rather is consciousness.

> Yet at the same time because it (creation) is not

> Brahman its being must be qualified. In some

> readings that qualification turns into anihilation,

> in others inscrutable but existent. My own

> predeliction is for the position that everything

> is consciousness, and reflects that consciousness

> up to the level of its complexity. Natural selection,

> mutation and adaption keeps driving that level

> of complexity until human consciousness is reached.

> Then it, because of its capacity to hold a thought,

> can begin to retrace its footsteps. That no doubt

> is unorthodox but is my way of dealing with the

> giant fact of D.E.

 

Why should one have to deal with Darwinian evolution? You assume that

Darwinian evolution is logical. It is not. First of all, Darwinian

theory is not properly scientific. The notion of the 'survival of the

fittest' invites the question as to what 'fittest' means. The only

place in science where valuation of this nature makes an appearance

is in thermodynamics wherein we speak of 'unusable energy'. 'Use'

and 'un-use' depend on the valuations of sentient beings in so far as

they are the only kinds of entities that may have use for things. The

laws of science are not directed so that they may be useful to

anybody; they simply exist. Therefore, when you try to match the

outcome of material dispersions that result from scientific laws with

the usefulness that these outcomes would have for sentient beings,

then the law of entropy surfaces. How indeed can the dispersions of

matter that result from existing chaotic boundary conditions result

into re-arranging themselves to conform to Mr Darwin's notion of the

fittest merely from physical laws? Why indeed should the laws of

science be concerned with whether the 'fittest' survives or not? What

indeed does 'survive' mean in the absence of valuation? Please note

that I am not taking my position here on the side of the design-

proponents against science. I do not hold design and science as being

opposed to one another, but consider that both these are intimately

connected in so far as God is not only the original cause but also

the proximate cause and also that it His very nature that are the

laws as well. I hold the laws of science to be analogues of the pure

laws of nature that abide in Brahman as Ritam.

 

I had once discussed this topic briefly with Jeremy Stangroom, Editor

of the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and Editor of The

Philosophers Magazine, and I reproduce this conversation (which I had

saved to my hard disk) here below to indicate the direction in which

my thoughts go.

 

 

CONVERSATIONS WITH JEREMY

 

By Chittaranjan on Tuesday, May 16, 2000 - 01:17 pm:

 

Jeremy,

 

Physical laws are statements about the manners in which the

determinations of physical things take place. That is, laws are

abstractions of the space-time-invariant natures of things. Physical

laws provide us with the tools to determine states of affairs from

contingent states of affairs, but the manner in which states of

affairs evolve within the determinative framework of these laws (in

the forward arrow of time) find expression in the 'law of entropy' -

as an increasing state of disorder. The law of entropy is coherent

with the probabilistic conception of the way that matter gets to be

dispersed in nature through these laws - a conception that you make

use of when you say that 'this universe' might just have happened the

way it has amongst a multitude of universes.

 

If the components of a clock were shaken in a box, it is highly

unlikely that they would fall into place to give us a working clock.

That is just as the law of entropy would have it, notwithstanding the

operations of the physical laws. Yet... I am amazed that clocks get

made in this universe. That beehives are built again and again. That

particles of sand become microchips. That airplanes fly and reach

their destination. And all this within the boundaries of a small

planet called earth, and within insignificant intervals of time among

these vast epochs of time. I am amazed too that we don't seem to see

this wonder... that the law of entropy is defied with such

regularity, with such impunity!

 

I am amazed too that it escapes our notice that what governs the

presentations that life beholds may be interpenetrated by a

governance that life itself dictates - from a mysterious value-filled

world in which 'design' and 'efficient cause' finds their home.

 

Chittaranjan

 

PS. I have never been able to understand what a multitude of

universes may mean. Isn't this a reification of the symbolism

of 'universe'?

 

 

 

By Jeremy Stangroom (Admin) on Tuesday, May 16, 2000 - 04:24 pm:

 

Chittarnjan

 

Again I'm not physicist - perhaps Rupert can help out here - but my

understanding is that the law of entropy only applies to a closed

system, and the earth is definitively not a closed system.

 

Am I missing your point here?

 

J.

 

 

By Chittaranjan Naik on Tuesday, May 16, 2000 - 06:52 pm:

 

Jeremy,

 

The choice of boundary around the earth was quite arbitrary - one

might as easily have drawn the boundary around a clock factory.

 

My point is only this... conscious life disrupts a closed system on

account of the factor of 'intelligence' and 'design'. Therefore mere

physical laws seem to be inadequate for explaining this world.

 

Chittaranjan

 

 

By Jeremy Stangroom (Admin) on Tuesday, May 16, 2000 - 07:57 pm:

 

Chittaranjan

 

"The choice of boundary around the earth was quite arbitrary"

 

I don't understand this. How is the boundary arbitrary? To the

extent, that the 2nd law of thermodynamics describes something real

about the universe, I don't understand how arbitrariness can enter

into it?

 

J.

 

 

By Chittaranjan Naik on Thursday, May 18, 2000 - 01:50 pm:

 

Jeremy,

 

I think it is important to make a critical distinction between two

aspects of causality - physical law and design - and assign to each

its respective role in explaining the world around us. It has

hitherto been characteristic to place these two aspects in opposition

to each other, such that it had to be either this or that. There is

perhaps, in all such 'battles', a remnant of the historical

opposition between the Church and Science. Unfortunately, science too

seems to have been a victim of this affection, in that it seeks to

minimize, if not altogether ignore, the element of design in the

universe. The result is an attempt to reduce all valuations (and

conscious activity) to physical phenomena. This is surely against the

parsimony of Ockam's razor – to seek explanations for the most

familiar things - valuations - in terms of remote, unfamiliar, and as

yet unknown physical phenomena?

 

My contention is that the laws of physics and the government of

design are not contrary, but complementary. Not an either this or

that, but both in their interpenetration. Design is not caused by

physical law any more than physical law is the outcome of design.

They are both primitives.

 

Let me begin with the 2nd law of thermodynamics which states that the

amount of unusable energy in a closed system always tends to

increase. Within the scientific framework this is also interpreted as

a universal tendency towards disorder or chaos. Now, the symbolic

framework of the physical sciences (and thermodynamics in this

specific case) reduces the symbolism of 'order' to the measure of

usable energy in contradistinction to the richness connoted by that

word in normal language. Thus, wouldn't any explanation provided

within this framework be too restricted to comprehensively answer the

questions we ask in real life? The scientific framework simply

doesn't answer those questions that we ask, but answers only those

questions that it is reduced to ask. I believe this is one reason why

science cannot, and must not attempt to, usurp the domain of

philosophy.

 

To plunge a little deeper into the 2nd law, let us imagine a closed

system (idealized in thought as all closed systems must be) in which

a clock is being assembled. The energy that is put into the assembly

of the clock is in part used for generating unintended motions (or

heat), as it must be in all physical processes. In the context of the

2nd law, entropy (or 'disorder) has increased. Now the simple

question that arises here is, what of the order that is generated in

the assembly of the clock itself from the chaotic dispersions of its

components? What differentiates the end product of the clock,

fulfilling the conditions of a formal schema, from a garbled

assembly, in both of which we may have equal inputs of energy and

equal wastage of energy? Doesn't it make sense to say that there is

generation of an order in the assembly of a clock, in spite of a

thermodynamic increase in entropic disorder? And is this order not

produced against the laws of probability? Is this order not achieved

through the influence of design?

 

We may make two observations from this example. First, that the

structure, or schemata, required to qualify something as 'ordered' is

not constituted within scientific laws or in the scientific

framework; and second, that the element of design, which is necessary

for the ordering of physical entities into structured schemata, is a

parameter that is not considered within the scientific framework.

 

Thus I say, that the choice of boundary (of a closed or open system,

as the case may be) is irrelevant, in so far as the scientific

concept of 'order' is ineffectual in explaining the order that we

find in the world around us, and in so far as design is independent

of such boundaries.

 

Interestingly, scientists also use entropy in a more generic sense to

indicate the level of uncertainty (in information theory, for

example), and a variant of this theme in probability theory. The

example of the clock being shaken in a box (in my first post) was

taken from the book Stephen Hawking's Universe by John Boslough,

wherein the author, while explaining the emergence of this universe

(in an entropy governed nature), says that in an infinite number of

universes this world must have happened this way by a probabilistic

chance. I would say that this is a characteristic avoidance to

recognise the design element that lies in defining the initial (in

this case) boundary conditions of the world, ignoring the

interpenetration of design all around us, every moment.

 

Physical laws explain 'natures', not particular states of affairs.

Boundary conditions define states of affairs at particular points in

time that are then propagated by the 'influence' of the physical

laws. But this can never explain nature as we find it - the clocks,

and beehives, microchips, and all those millions and billions of such

occurrences everywhere.

All this only indicates the interpenetration of design - design that

does not violate physical laws, but is continuously engaged in

setting (or adjusting) boundary conditions - to suit its design. This

is what consciousness activity - and its associate 'free will' - is

about. (And in the fact that there is continuous adjustment of the

boundary conditions, I say that design is continuously disrupting

closed systems.) As I sit now striking the keyboard, my hands obey

physical laws, its bones and muscles move within the framework of

forces, and tensions, and motions of matter as governed by physical

laws; but the hands themselves spring to activity from a mere wish of

my mind - an intangible thing called design.

 

We may debate this things, but it seems to me that the way in which

design has been outrightly rejected is not justifiable. The argument

from design surely has more merits than it has been granted within

the communities of modern science. An openness to design would open

up greater horizons for a greater understanding of the world we live

in than do the closed scientific paradigms of today. The debate

between design and (mere) physical laws is an old one, and is by no

means over. I will take leave now with these words of Socrates:

 

"It seemed to me that he (Anaxagoras) was just about as inconsistent

as if someone were to say 'The cause of everything that Socrates does

is Mind' and then, in trying to account for my several actions, said

first that the reason why I am lying here now is that my body is

composed of bones and sinews, and that the bones are rigid and

separated at the joints, but the sinews are capable of contraction

and relaxation, and form an envelope for the bones with the help of

the flesh and skin, the latter holding all together; and since the

bones move freely in their joints the sinews by relaxing and

contracting enable me somehow to bend my limbs; and that is the cause

of my sitting here in a bent position. Or again, if he tried to

account in the same way for my conversing with you, adducing causes

such as sound and air and hearing and a thousand others, and never

troubled to mention the real reasons; which are that since Athens has

thought it better to condemn me, therefore I for my part have thought

it better to sit here, and more right to stay and submit to whatever

penalty she orders - because, by Dog! I fancy that these sinews and

bones would have been in the neighbourhood of Megara or Boeitia long

ago if I did not think it was more right and honourable to submit to

whatever penalty my country orders rather than take to my heels and

run away. But to call things like that causes is too absurd. If it

were said that without such bones and sinews and all the rest of them

I should not be able to do what I think is right, it would be true;

but to say that it is because of them that I do what I am doing, and

not through choice of what is best would be a very lax and inaccurate

form of expression. Fancy being unable to distinguish between the

cause of a thing, and the condition without which it could not be a

cause!"

 

Chittaranjan

 

END OF CONVERSATION WITH JEREMY

 

> How do you deal with it? Don't apologise or

> explain, expatiate a little. What's the leading

> Vedic thinking on it, why has the progress of

> creation taken the form it has - is this a contingent

> fact; does the doctrine of transmigration suggest

> anything.

 

We would need to dive deep into the Vedas and obtain the blue-print

of Creation on order to re-construct the Vedic theory of evolution.

We shall save that for another day. Here now I shall 'expiate' rather

loosely as follows:

 

God is both the original and the proximate cause. He is also Ritam,

the Unified Law of Nature. He is the cause of transformations of

material things through His Law and He is also the cause of the

continuous disruptions to the boundary conditions of matter through

His Will. His Will is inclusive of the free-wills of the jivas (each

to the limited extent of their limited clearings of Consciousness).

And the karma accumulated by the actions of the free-will of the

jivas fructify in accordance with the following law:

 

"Good and bad deeds are not the direct causes in transformations, but

they act as breakers of obstacles to nature, as a farmer breaks the

obstacles to the course of water, which then runs down by its own

nature." (Patanjali Yoga Sutra,IV,3).

 

Nature is Ritam, the Eternal Law. The breaking of obstacles in Nature

is His efficient causality. The actions that jivas undertake (and

accumulate karma) are also His efficient causality. The changes that

are wrought by Him happen in His own Maya – His (magical) material

nature. The free-will of the jiva is both the jiva's own free-will as

well as God's Will, but He does not act; only the jiva acts and

accumulates karma.

 

Dharma is the Oneness of Brahman. Karma together with its fruit is

Oneness seen through the Prism of Time. The Scale of Justice is

Balance because it is seated in Oneness.

 

In the final analysis, karma has no origin from without God.

Therefore, it is all God's Leela. The self that is divorced from God

cannot understand it. And when the self has attained to God, it knows

that It is He Himself that sported in this way.

 

 

Now Michaelji, I would beg of you to spare me from discussing further

on this topic (at present) as I have many things to attend to which I

have been neglecting for a long time.

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

[Guest guest]

Dear Michaelji,

 

advaitin, ombhurbhuva <ombhurbhuva wrote:

> Worst still are the Logical Positivists who hold

> that 'the meaning of a statement is the method of

> its verification'.

 

This is not correct. What they said was that a proposition should

indicate the criterion for its own verification. (This position is due

to Wittgenstein.) The actual verfication is an external truth-judgment.

For example, the propositon that 'this chair is brown' indicates that

it may be verified by judging its correspondence to the colour of the

chair. The criterion here is the meaning indicated by 'colour of the

chair'. Without this meaning coferred by the statement, one might as

well check up on the height of an elephant. Now the statement (due to

Heidegger) that 'an object is nothing' does not convey any meaning that

can form a criterion for its verification.

 

> In B.S.B. you will find that Shankara thought

> that Cranes conceived by hearing the sounds

> of clouds and that Lotuses

> travelled from lake to lake mysteriously.

 

I remember having reading this vaguely. Can you give me the reference

sutra no?

 

warm regards,

Chittaranjan