Tuesday 27 July 2021

Shankara and The Witness (Saksin)

 

The ego which is pervaded by the reflection of Consciousness is called the knower or the agent of the action of knowing.  One who knows oneself, the Witness, to be distinct from all these three is a (real) knower of the Self.

The modifications of the intellect, called ‘right knowledge’, ‘doubtful knowledge’, and ‘false knowledge’, deviate from their existence.  There is one and the same Consciousness in all of them.  The differences are due to the modifications. (paras 118- 120 Upadesa Sahasri)

The Witness?  Who let him in?  The three that it is distinct from are/is the agent, the object and the means of valid knowledge (pramana) ie. perception, inference etc.  How is the Witness distinct from them if it is non-different as Consciousness from Subject and Object?  Can this be an example of the adiropa apavada move or an interim realisation that what remains unchanged is Consciousness as such.  Its self-luminous nature does not change.  Taking that stance towards the deliverances of ‘the three’ i.e. ‘right knowledge’ etc. brings the seeker into the sphere of the Witness.

“Being the witness of all cognitions, and by nature nothing but the power of consciousness, the Self is indicated by the cognitions themselves, in the midst of cognitions, as non-different from them.  There is no other door to its awareness......

As for the explanation, “The expression, pratibodha videtam (known with every state of awareness) means that the Self is known to oneself”, it is possible in a context where the Self appears as a conditioned thing through identification with the limiting adjunct, intellect, so as to have such apparent activities as knowing the Self by the self (jiva).  This is referred to by the texts. “Sees the Self in his own self” Brh.Up. IV.iv.23 - “ O Purushottama, (lit Supreme Purusha, i.e. Being) you yourself know your Self through the self”. B.G. X.15. (from Kena Up. commentary II.4)

 

 

Sunday 25 July 2021

Time and Strange Attractors

 

You have had an odd experience of some sort, a dream that is extraordinarily clear and unconnected to the current mental content of your day.  And then it turns out later to have been a prevision because it, as is said, ‘comes out’.  Is this a time reversal event in which we back into the future or is it that the prevision is a strange attractor which creates the mood of its occurrence.   Prayer yet to be offered might also tweak a present reality; a vertiginous speculation but as prayer is an attempt to attain the eternal the usual sequence of time might be overcome.

Thursday 22 July 2021

Ontic Epistemology in Shankara's Advaita

 #118/119 (Chap. 18/Upadesa Sahasri by Shankara):

Pervaded by Consciousness, mental modification in the forms of objects come into existence.  External objects are what impart their forms to these modifications.  The most desirable of all things ( on the part of the agent ), these external objects are called objects of his action.  One having such a desire is enjoined to perform actions.  The mental modifications in which the forms of external objects are present are called the instruments of his knowledge of objects.

This seems very much like representationalism or mediate realism and might be said to fall to the same objections.  If all you really know is the mental side of things doesn’t the external object drop away as an inference or an unknowable noumenon?  Here is where the advaitic form of realism is like the Platonic.  The mental modification (vritti) / is of the same stuff as the object and thereby can reflect it, on a lower defective level in the Platonic of course.  In advaita the same stuff is Consciousness, the object being a form of limitation of Consciousness and the vritti (mental modification) also being a form of limitation.  The internal/external bridge is thereby obviated.  This is the blend of Ontic epistemology that is central to Advaita.

Tuesday 20 July 2021

Enhancing the Efficacy of Mantra

 There are well known ways to enhance the efficacy of the mantra.  Instead of using a japamala (rosary) of 108 beads to do a round use your hands. Count 9 with your thumb on the right hand using just the joints of the fourth to the index finger.  Count 12 on the left hand with your thumb using the joints and the tips of the fourth to the index finger.  Pause on each joint and finger tip while you move through the joints on the right hand.   That’s 108 repetitions.  In finger symbolism the index is the jiva (individual) and the thumb is Brahman.  When the round is finished jiva and Brahman are joined in the jnana mudra.

Breath in on OM and out on the rest of the mantra while focusing on a chakra.

Wednesday 7 July 2021

The Efficacy of Mantra

 In the one short string we can cover the whole of the seeker’s aim to bring together the immanent and the transcendent.  The components will have OM and the chosen form of divinity brought together as in Om namah Shivaya or Om Sri Ram or Om Namo Narayayana.  The efficacy of mantras is due to the shrinking of the mind down to that restricted compass: apparently restricted compass.   The reality of consciousness shines more in the minute than the extended.  An expatiating mind quickly loses its aim, drifting into reveries and ego enhancing internal dialogue.  In fact though, the nature of consciousness does not change whatever the contents of consciousness may be.

“Everything shines according as He (Brahman) does so; by His light all this shines diversely”

(Mundaka Upanisad II.ii.10)

The reflection of the Self in the intellect becomes regarded as the Self but just as the reflection in the mirror is not the person and yet would not exist without the person in front of it we can claim an intimate connection between them.

“Just as the reflection of a face, which makes a mirror appear like it, is the face itself, so the  reflection of the Self in the mirror of the ego making it appear like the Self (is the Self).  So (the meaning of the sentence,) ‘I am Brahman’ is reasonable.” (para. 109: Chap.  XVIII. Upadesa Sahasri by Shankaracarya)

To emphasise the point: it is the Self that makes the intellect seem to be the Self.  You know the Self in the intellect and in each state of awareness.  Note the contrast between this non-difference and illusionism that is sometimes presented which would say that the Jiva is utterly unreal.

Mantra shelters in this knowledge.

Friday 2 July 2021

'Yesterday'

 I have long practice at suspending disbelief - to any height required.

A gnostic pulse eliminates all memory and existence of the Beatles.  A struggling musician is the only one that remembers their songs and he is tempted to pass them off as his own.    This was in the film ‘Yesterday’ now out on Netflix with Himesh Patel as the singer.  As a device it lured me into the mind of hearing them for the first time and that’s a good trick for feeling the poignancy of the title song.  Why do the cliches affect us? ‘Half the man I used to be’, ‘shadow hanging  over me’ are true reports of a drowning man clinging to useless debris.  For the present we believe in yesterday but that too has gone down with all hands.