Astavakra Does Not Allow Science

Science does not disprove free will but does free will disprove science? One asks, but who is that one who asks. We are according to the cliché, on a rock hurtling through space and time but there is this mystery – no contemporary events are causally connected (Whitehead). There is just a general, universe-al now, the present moment. Time and personal identity are syntheses which are useful, in fact essential. Some even say essentialising or creations which we can hold in our mind because mind created but have no ultimate ontological grounding. Buddhists would hold that this annihilates the self; the advaitin counters by pointing to the uncontradictable nature of the consciousness. It never is not. Its freedom is the primordial superimposition of continuity in time on to the changeless Self which is eternal.

There is no I to do anything or the I that is purported to do things is not any thing. Astavakra, the ascended Dude says:
cf: ascended dude

Happiness belongs to that master idler to whom even the closing and opening of the eyelids is an affliction, and to none else.

Swami Nityaswarupananda adds in a note:

Master idler - The expression refers to the man of Self-realisation, who is completely inactive. He feels even the little non-volitional action of closing and opening the eyelids to be a limitation and painful.

(from Astavakra Samhita XVI.5)

Astavakra says: Take it Easy Man

Astavakra in Chap.XVI.3 entitled Special Instruction whether that is witty subversion of his own or the editor’s is not clear, writes:

All are unhappy because they exert themselves. But none know this. The blessed one attains emancipation through this instruction alone.

The striving of the Trillings through depression and the Depression, and neurosis and feuds and the keeping of meticulous accounts of invidious behaviour is wearying. Marxism and Freudianism now of course utterly exploded were to them a frail wand of support. Can one imagine them as lifestyle Buddhists and Vegans?

The Sage Abides - Upadesa Sahasri

82. The disciple said, How then am I who am changeless, the knower, as you say, of all the mental modifications, the objects of my knowledge?

83. The teacher said to him, I told you the right thing. The very fact (that you know simultaneously all the mental modifications) was adduced by me as the reason why you are eternally immutable.

This is the insight which is confirmed by the protphaenomenon of Deep Sleep or Sushupti which I have written about extensively. The disciple fascinated by the constantly changing contents of consciousness is identifying with this mutability. He takes his Self to be those contents that are somehow knowing themselves. If that were the case then the contents would be known sequentially and the problem of identity would devolve into a ‘binding problem’. How does that series of conscious states related to the various sense modes come together or know itself as a series (Hume). The teacher cuts through the starting point for complex Buddhistic theories of the self, skandhas etc., by reminding the disciple that all mental states/modifications are known simultaneously. I would add that they are attended to sequentially according to a practical hierarchy.

Not identifying with the contents of consciousness gives the sage’s personality that bright alertness and lack of fixity. There are no special states of mind for him to focus on. In the chapter on Abiding in the Self Astavakra declares:

A stage of life or no stage of life, meditation, control of mental functions - finding that these cause distraction to me, thus verily do I firmly abide.

(Astavakra Samhita Chap.XII.7)