The tree in the yard

[Guest guest]

Namaste Advaitins:

 

The tree in the yard is really in the yard and not in my head. What does

this 'not in my head mean'? More importantly what does Advaita have to

say about these issues?

 

The phrase 'not in my head' can be read to mean that the physical tree

is not in my head which is on the face of it is undeniable. Information

about the tree is in my head in the form of sensory data or if that is

not claiming too much we can allow that there are cerebral events,

neuronal activity and the like which are the sensorial impact of the

tree in the yard.

 

Some authors have claimed that this is all that the tree amounts to and

that the substantive tree is an inference from the data. This may be

based on a theory about objects which construes them as the union of

substantive and attributes or matter and qualities etc. The jargon

differs but the thinking is the same. Berkeley refutes this notion

definitively by asking in effect, 'well if we never see this matter or

substantive and cannot know it directly how do we come to be talking

about it'. 'Let us therefore cease to talk about matter as it is purely

a speculation which has no foundation'. Thus his thinking has come to be

called immaterialism.

 

Advaita takes the view that the reality of the tree is present to the

perceiver or that we perceive it and not our perceptions as Shankara put

it. The tree can be present to us in its reality as an object because

the understanding of what an object is differs radically from the

substantive/attributes or matter/qualities conjecture. What makes an

object capable of being perceived is its nature as an upadhi of pure

consciousness. This is its true nature or the truth of its substratum.

It is this substratum which unifies the consciousness of the subject

with the object. Remember that the brain is also an object which has

also got pure consciousness as its truth or the reality of its

substratum. The intellectual apprehension of the tree or the judgement,

'this is a tree before me', is of course different from the actual tree.

“Therefore an object and its knowledge differ” B.S.B. II.ii.28.

 

In short we do not perceive the substratum but it is what makes

perception possible. We can distinguish between the intellectual

apprehension, the cerebral events and the tree but the substratum of all

these is one and the same. It is in this ultimate sense that the object

is before our minds.

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.