Thursday 23 June 2022

The Disappearance of the World in Advaita Vedanta

 

It’s important to read the Upanishads carefully and distinguish between literal and metaphorical utterances.  They were not written in the manner of philosophical documents which carefully make these distinctions.  Certainly we are at the very edge of language, the apophatic, that is a given; yet if we hold that on realisation the world disappears because the organs of perception are trumped then we stray into nonsense.  Swami Satchidanandendra observes:

“For once the true nature of the Self is known, there can no longer be any more experience of the true nature of the Self is known, there can no longer be any more experience of the means and objects of empirical cognition.  For the final means of knowledge put an end to the condition of the Self as a knower whose knowledge comes through the empirical means of knowledge. And in putting an end to this condition, the final means of knowledge itself ceases any longer to be a means of knowledge, just as the means of knowledge, present in a dream cease to be such on waking. (B.G. Bhasya II.69)

Realisation of the Absolute is not anywhere found either to destroy or create any reality.  What it is invariably found to do is to put an end to Ignorance.  So here also, the sense of not being the Absolute and the sense of not being the totality of all that exists, which are induced by Ignorance alone, should be put to an end by realisation of the Absolute.  (Brhad.Up. Bhasya: I.iv.10)

(from ‘The Method of the Vedanta’ pgs. 62/3)

The imputation here is not that all ordinary means of knowledge are transformed into clairvoyance or clairaudience.  The organs remain intact but now there is no identification of the Self as the agent.  ' Only the Gunas are acting’ (B.G. 14.19)

Thursday 16 June 2022

'The Dead' by James Joyce (on account of the day that's in it)

 

The Dead by James Joyce (repost from 2012)

You will be told that the short story depends on the pivotal event; ‘something happens as a result of which everything changes’ is the expression that has lodged in my memory and is therefore probably false but it’s near enough to the intent and to its contrary which is that the Irish short story is one in which nothing happens as a result of which nothing is changed. .  That’s true enough to be significantly false.  Just being written of in that close allusive familial world of the Irish who live in a small country that is constantly being written about draws  into the light familiar mysteries.
Now you’ve said it’.
'Amn’t I tellin’ ya’.

Have you noticed how many doors there are in the Morkan residence on Usher’s Quay?  I count 24. They are both portals and vistas.   We are invited to look from one room into the other.  Gabriel Conroy is both aloof and locked out and in the end when he crosses the river to his hotel there is an acceptance of the ultimate limen, that bourne from which no traveller returns.
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
There are subtle changes in the authorial voice which drop like filters over a spotlight.  It is at first clichéd and familiar.  Individuality is smoothed out till what is left is a tone of voice, an intonation and an emphasis that is of the family and the class.
LILY, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. ...... It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also......That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day.
This is your old comfortable aunt speaking.  The Morkan sisters Kate and Julia are firm women like herself.
They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers.
But Julia is failing a little:
Though she was stout in build and stood erect, her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where she was or where she was going. 
You can see that we are invited to complete the cliche - where she was or where she was going is just near enough to - she didn’t know whether she was coming or going; a usage that is often accompanied by a tug with both hands on the lapels of a cardigan. Psychic self-assembly how are you!

I was amused to read in the latest L.R.B. about cool Lady Chat who crept out of the abode of her husband in her sneakers that were soled with latex in its natural unvulcanised state. cf. Lady Chatterly’s Sneakers by David Trotter. Gabriel Conroy has got for his wife
galoshes which as may be expected have little downstram erotic benefit:
"And what are goloshes, Gabriel?"
"Goloshes, Julia!" exclaimed her sister "Goodness me, don't you know what goloshes are? You wear them over your... over your boots, Gretta, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Conroy. "Guttapercha things. We both have a pair now. Gabriel says everyone wears them on the Continent."
"O, on the Continent," murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.
There is more flourish in the introduction to Gabriel Conroy:

The high colour of his cheeks pushed upwards even to his forehead, where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes.

He waits outside the door of the drawing room and also culturally outside:

He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl's bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers.
He is also locked out from the cult of Gaelic culture represented by Miss Ivors looking as he does towards London and the continent for his culture and his absurd footware. He turns down Miss Ivors invitation to join her in a trip to the Aran Isles. Gretta his wife would like to go and later when he learns the reason she is crying he suspects that she wants to see the boy that loved her once again. But he is dead and it was just a song that he used to sing, The Lass of Aughrim
Lass

The precise and exact modulation of the diction from the clichéd familiar to the elevated is accomplished by 'that queer thing, genius’. Like a conductor Joyce evokes the grand themes not with the irruption of bad art but with an absorption into the music itself.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, rooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the deadsilver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly  drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

 

Monday 13 June 2022

Mattias Desmet ('The Psychology of Totalitarianism') talks to John Waters

 

Mattias Desmet has been popping up on youtube speaking about the phenomenon of mass formation or the coalescenceof a significant percentage of the population around a perceived situation  that must be dealt with even at the cost of abandoning normal ethical principles.  The covid 19 ‘emergency’ which I have been calling covidology is an example of this zombification.  A lot of people got bitten.

In his conversation with John Waters he covers much of the same ground as he did previously linking the panicked response to the emergence of totalitarianism.  He’s written a book on this ‘The Psychology of Totalitarianism’ which is to be published later this month.  The difference between the usual delineation of the mechanisms facilitating the emergence of a mob mind and this conversation with John Waters is the sympathetic vibration of their strings which brought out what Otto called the non-rational sources of knowledge and awe normally called wisdom.  Aristotle and the Thomists, that band, call it connaturality.  The not-mentioned Jacques Maritain frequently writes about it in ‘The Degrees of Knowledge’- on my book stand at the moment.

Have a look: you’re worth it.

totalitarianism

Sunday 12 June 2022

Illusionism and Acosmism in Advaita Vedanta

 

The descent into acosmism and illusionism that Advaita Vedanta is often accused of may be due to the simple failure to distinguish between the metaphysical and the physical.  A metaphysical realisation of an intense reality so powerful that it eliminates the salience of the everyday conventional reality does not thereby cause it to disappear.  Maybe this is why the Sage of Kanchi (Shankaracarya Jagath Guru) wore such powerful spectacles.  No, the physical reality does not go away.  The sages die, sometimes in pain even if they, as the poster declared, ‘Remain Calm and Carry On’.

Would it not have been better to hold to the deepening of reality in the progress of the adhiropa/apavada dialectic?  This metaphysical realisation comes as the result of the transcendental hypothesis that proposes how things must fundamentally be for things to appear as they do.  The appearance in question is the object of perception.  Our simple belief, not a naive one, that the object is as it appears presents a puzzle.  Why should we think this when on analysis we must admit that all we are aware of is a presentation to the mind.  Here the specter of idealism looms which gibbering in the shade of Kant asserts that we do not know the ‘thing in itself’.  Advaita Vedanta instead holds to the simple ‘it appears as it is’ by virtue of non-material, non-numerical identity.  There is no need here to rehearse the mechanism of vritti and upadhi /mental modification and limiting adjunct which is masterfully dealt with in the classic ‘Vedanta Paribhasa ' of Dharmaraja Adhvarindra.

Besides why would the cognitions i.e. the awareness of the objects of perceptions, disappear when:

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. (my italics) Kena Up.II.4

How then can the cognitions disappear?  Yes we realise them for what they are but they remain as the door.

Thursday 9 June 2022

The MacPhee in 'That Hideous Strength' by C.S. Lewis

 

McPhee in the midst of wonders still holds to the ineluctable power of empirical evidence.  Is there any other kind?  He is the Vienna Circle and the square peg at St Anne’s-in-Logres.  Lewis must have known lots of MacPhees in Oxford:

“I am very glad to see you, Mrs. Studdock,” he said in what Jane took to be a Scotch accent, though it was really that of an Ulsterman.

“Don’t believe a word he says, Jane,” said Mother Dimble. “He’s your prime enemy in this house. He doesn’t believe in your dreams.”

“Mrs. Dimble,” said MacPhee, “I have repeatedly explained to you the distinction between a personal feeling of confidence and a logical satisfaction of the claims of evidence. The one is a psychological event——”

“And the other a perpetual nuisance,” said Mrs. Dimble.

“Never heed her, Mrs. Studdock,” said MacPhee. “I am, as I was saying, very glad to welcome you among us. The fact that I have found it my duty on several occasions to point out that no experimentum crucis has yet confirmed the hypothesis that your dreams are veridical, has no connection in the world with my personal attitude.”

Wednesday 8 June 2022

Professor Morton's Optimism Gap

 

More recently, a survey from January 2022 in the United States showed the gap between personal and collective outlook at a record high, with 85 per cent of American adults reporting feeling satisfied with their own lives, and only 17 per cent satisfied with the direction in which the US is going. This gap between how optimistic we are about our personal lives and how pessimistic we are about our collective future is known as the ‘optimism gap’. There has been much debate among psychologists and economists about what fuels the gap but, whatever the reasons, pessimism about our collective futures has potentially dire consequences.

(From an essay in Psyche by Professor  Jennifer M. Morton

optimism gap 
This is an odd observation from a professor of Philosophy.  Have philosophers had nothing to say on the matter or do they await the ‘hard data’ before they can ply the trade of analyzing its concepts and road testing them by the use of thought experiments.  Is this a problem or harmless intellectual fun?  In the past philosophers had much to say on the matter of gloom, doom or bloom; now indeed we must follow the science and accept whatever is offered us however baffling to common sense.  The covidology appears to have been swallowed holus bolus by the Professor which is not remarkable if you live in a technocracy and breathe that air. (con spirare again: conspire )

A Theory of Conspiracy

 

Yes I thought so.  It’s there in the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology - con spirare (breathe).  

 

They breathe the same air in the same room and closeted therein they breathe it back again.  After they have done that for some time, a humble  representative of enlightened opinion hands out a sheet.  The words are not their own but the tune is familiar.  Then they start to sing.

Wednesday 1 June 2022

Jack Chambers Evolves

 

As we know politicians don’t have beliefs they have positions which they sincerely held at the time.  When they change their position they express this move as going on a journey.   In 2018 Jack Chambers at the time of the referendum to change the constitution to allow abortion which was passed, he was pro-life.  Now he supports abortion in all cases up to 12 weeks.  That position may evolve too.  In any case he likes his job as government chief whip  and Minister for Sport and the Gaeltacht.

I read about him in the Sunday Independent, a profile by Hugh O’Connell which in its own subtle way was a mild hatchet job.  Being a dull stick, diligent and humourless does not endear you to the Irish public.  There’s a dislike of tergiversates even when they end up on the side this journalist is on.  The group photo of the pro-life members of parliament O’Connell calls ‘infamous’.  Jack may yet have to pay for his historical wrong think.  I recall that a chief whip for the Fine Gael party lost his seat in the last general election.