Clearing the Ground for Theory: Sankara

 

Why do we accept that the world is directly knowable?  Because it is the natural thing to do.  It is the default position that obviates all the deeper mysteries that Idealism brings in its train.  Does the object that is not known blink out of existence, like the book in the cupboard, or the six penny bit dropped on the top of Mount Everest.  That red barn, is it a facade or does it have depth?

Yes real enough for government work, in this case the navigator in  the world.  What about that fellow, this pilgrim, this apparently continuous entity that plots and plans, feels remorse and hunger, and doubt?  On what do we base that sense of self-identity?  Hume’s question was a good one - How does a series of conscious states become conscious of itself as a series?  Is ‘it just does’ a good answer or can memory be applied as a binding, bundling force that integrates?  Seems unsatisfactory to hold that memory can create its own subject.

What then are we left with -  deeper mysteries, conundrums or the beginning of a necessary clearing of the ground?  Shankaracarya thought so.  He begins in his commentary on the Brahma Sutras with the aporia of perception.  How does that out there come to be in some sense in here and at the same time we are certain that the ‘inner’ account is a true one  within the technical boundaries of the capacity for error?

In the XVIII chapter of ‘Upadesa Sahasri’Sankara reviews the various theories of self-identity and agency.  Who is conscious, what is conscious?  Take the use of ‘I’ in sentences as a base line of reality.  Avoid the fata morgana of the Buddhist scholiasts of the void, the Sunyavadins.  Work with what you are given not as an apparently given.  Move from sensation to reason and get to the bottom of things.

Theory has as its etymology ‘theoros’ Gk. spectator.  Wittgenstein said if I remember correctly - ‘don’t think look and see’.  Start there with the ground cleared of engaging mysteries.

The Problem of Religious Diversity and God's Hiddenness

 

Salience which I have written a note on recently:

salience

has a very interesting etymology.

salient

In other words, what is it that leaps out at you, that impresses by its, to you, obvious prominence.  If you are of a logico-empirical cast of mind then the difficulties presented by those associated problems of the diversity of religions and God's hiddenness will be salient.  This is where the light is and here is the locus of your search though what you seek is in the dark elsewhere.

What do the Marshs miss, what are they not seeing:

diversity paper

Specsavers:

not seeing

They are like the Mulla Nusruddin who was searching under the street lamp for his keys even though he had lost them in the house.  His house was not electrified at the time.

There are several luminaries who are not in the least baffled by diversity, of any kind.  God isn’t hidden, merely that the logico-empirical method can’t find Him.  Shankaracarya does not hesitate in his declaration that the Vedas are part of the superimposition on the Absolute and not the truth.  They are an interim position or a metaphorical projection of the Unknowable, Unnameable. The great modern sage Sri Swami Sadchidanandendra writes:

Thus the means of knowledge called the Veda is ultimateley seen to be an illusion.  And its power to effect release through destroying Ignorance is also an illusion.  And on this basis one might wonder whether direct knowledge of the supreme Self was itself also an illusion, or whether it was real.  If it were an illusion, then the liberation it effected would also be  illusory, and in that case what would be the point in the upanishadic discipline?  If, on the other hand, we say that direct knowledge of the Self is real, then how could real direct knowledge arise from illusory upanishadic texts?

Further down Sri S.S.S. answers this doubt:

Know that the supreme reality is self-evident and self-established.  For superimposed fancies could not sustain themselves for an instant without the supreme reality as their substratum.

So by extension all scriptures are of their nature ways of focusing the mind.  Each has its own internal coherence but the final truth is apophatic and lies under ‘the cloud of unknowing’.

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.

Dharmakirti, an Idealist?

Professor Birgit Kellner in her discussion of the idealism of Dharmakirti, and if indeed he was one offers this citation from his Pramanavarttika in which, at least to my mind, he appears to be one and virtually ready to be snagged by the crozier of Bishop Berkeley.

If cognition has the form of the object, what evidence is there for the external object?39 If cognition is without the form of the object, how could
it be an experience of that object?
If cognition’s having the nature of awareness is not conditioned by resemblance, then that nature of awareness is established of the cognition
just from cognition itself (svata eva). What is then contributed by an external object?

(from: dharmakirti idealism

This does not seem so far away from the position that Shankaracarya impugns in Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya II.ii.28.

Karma, Janma and Apurva in the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Shankaracarya

If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which will grow and which will not
Speak them to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours, nor your fate.

(Banquo addressing the Weird Sisters Macbeth Act 1 Scene III)

The concept of karma/janma, of desserts and birth is well established in the religious systems of India. In Vedanta in particular the metaphysical underpinning of the doctrine is given close study. The satkaryavada theory of the non-difference between cause and effect is an important theory first introduced by the Sankhya. If interested there is no reason to repeat myself. Like the detectorist said - check it out! enter ‘satkaryavada in the search box.
satkaryavada
I
Naturally the attraction of puzzle cases that appear to explode this theory are examined by Shankaracarya in his Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya. We can accept the flow of the universe and the causal process which is timely or immediate -

But it does not stand to reason that fruits can come at some future time from actions which get destroyed the next moment; because something cannot come out of nothing.

(Bhb. III.ii.38)

What is in question here is the efficacy of ritual. Nothing seems to come of it. Is it a waste of good ghee?

Vedantin:That too does not remove the difficulty; for there can be no such thing as a result till the agent of the act comes to possess it, inasmuch as any happiness or sorrow experienced by any soul at any time is recognised in the world to be such a result relatively to that very time. ..........Again if it be maintained that though the result may not issue just after the action, it can issue (in the future) out of the unseen potency emerging out of the act, that too is unjustifiable, for potency, which is inert like stocks and stones, cannot act unless stimulated by some conscious agent. Besides, such an unseen potency lacks any valid proof.

Shankara means here by potency and act material causation. Unseen potency cannot work like milk being turned into curds. No causal path can be discerned for it. Therefore its efficacy can only be accepted on the basis of faith in divine energy.

In Bhb. III.ii.40 Shankara in his account of the Mimansaka maintains that they accept the ‘unseen potency’ idea. This is referred to as apurva or the unprecedented in the special sense of an occurence that has no immediately preceding cause.

Mimamsaka: If the Vedic authority is accepted, one has to think in the way that would justify the kind of relation between action and the result of action that is mentioned in the Vedas. Unless the action, while undergoing destruction, produces some unseen potency, it cannot produce its result after an interval. Hence the inference to be drawn is that there is such a thing called unseen potency which may be either some subtle state of the action itself or some previous (seed) state of the result. In this way the position stated earlier becomes logical. But the theory that God ordains the results is illogical. For one uniform cause cannot produce variegated results; that will lead to partiality and cruelty on God’s part and the performance of action will be useless. Hence the conclusion is that results are produced by virtuous deeds alone.

Is this conflict an aporia generated by the accepted efficacy of ritual. Shankara does not admit this impasse:

And God’s bestowing of results consists precisely in His creating the creatures according to individual merits. The defects of the impossibility of the emergence of variegated results from the very same cause, and so on, do not arise since God acts by taking into account the efforts made by his creatures (Bhb. III.ii.41)




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Know Thyself

Socrates was the wisest man because he knew that he knew nothing. The Hindu sage knows and makes no bones about it. He views dialectical slicing and dicing to be ignorance because the truth cannot be attained by these routines. γνῶθι σεαυτόν (know thyself) is the injunction of the oracle at Delphi and this is what the sage claims he has achieved. The response to that claim might be ‘ Look in the mirror and say ‘that’s definitely me, no question about it, there’s the scar on my forehead where I fell as a kid’.

the teacher said. “Listen. It is true that the Self and the body are well-known, but they are not well-known to all people to be objects of different knowledges, like a human being and a trunk of a tree. (Question). How are they known then? (Reply)(They are always known) to be the objects of an undifferentiated knowledge. For no one knows them to be the objects of different knowledges It is for this reason that people are deluded about the nature of the Self and of the non-Self, and say, ‘The Self is of this nature’’ and ‘It is not of this nature’. I

(from Upadesa Sahasri by Shankaracarya)

What I take from this is the idea that the Self cannot be separated out from any particular state of awareness. It permeates each state. You realise the Self but you cannot know it as an object of special knowledge. The knowledge that a jnani (knower of the self) knows is that the passing states of awareness are merely transient manifestations of the Self.

Some suss!

Advaita Vedanta: An Introduction by Arvind Sharma

Advaita Vedanta and its chief interpretor Adi Shankaracarya (9th. Century) are in the curious position of being studiously ignored by Western philosophers probably because of the avowed soteriological intent which is contrary to the general agnostic sentiment of professional philosophy. Academic teachers of Eastern philosophy are content to paddle in the shallow waters of logic and epistemology. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It’s no surprise then that it falls to Arvind Sharma a professor of Comparitive Religion to publish a short introduction to Advaita Vedanta - Advaita Vedanta: An Introduction pub.2004 by the Indian publisher Motilal Banarsidas and from the Wikipedia bibliography it appears to be the only book of his published by an Indian company. In the full bibliographyof 860 titles, there may be more. Is the imprint an indication of the target audience? Possibly. The book is predicated on an assumption of total ignorance of the subject so in a short 78 page booklet we may barely get into second gear nevertheless his breakdown into four sections of Introduction followed by the Scriptural, Rational and Experiential aspects of Advaita Vedanta with an extensive bibliography, is a good introduction. Within the book he makes extensive use of M. Hiriyanna’s Outlines of Indian Philosophy, a useful book published in 1932 which goes into the interplay between the different schools. Archive.org have many copies of his lucid expostion.

Worth a look I think.

Advaita Vedanta's theory of the Mind going out to the Object

Many odd philosophical theories are more instructive about the core issues than those which align with our common sense beliefs. Berkeley’s immaterialism is an example. Understand that and the rationality of empiricism will seem specious. An analogue within the classical canon of Indian Philosophy is Advaita Vedanta’s theory of perception generally discussed within the context of the six valid means of knowledge or pramanas.

It’s quite complicated because in the Indian way each element in the theory is itself a subject of discussion and subdivision. Therein lies the danger of distraction that lures the fine forensic mind of the advaitin away from the central insights. It is significant that Shankaracarya does not indulge himself in the fine slicing and dicing that is so attractive to a certain kind of thinker. What then is his central observation, his protophaenomenon? It is the aporiai of realism. How can we know the object out there as it is?

In Shankara’s preamble to the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya he uses this aporiai as a departure point for the superimposition theory of avidya (ignorance/maya)but it also might be held that it is foundational for a theory of perception as such with the ‘out there as it is’ status of the object as the knot which has to be unpicked. If the object is ‘in here’ or ‘in’ my mind then the alienation of the representational presents itself. The advaitin move is to assert that the mind goes out to the object and takes its form. This sounds like sheer voodoo unless we bear in mind that in Advaita the mind is regarded as inert or as material that only becomes conscious when it is pervaded by pure consciousness. The human mind is the complex of brain/body being conscious. Mind is matter, a monism which avoids the causal problem of the interaction of mind and matter in Western thought. In perception we have a physical interaction which is pervaded by consciousness and becomes knowledge. It, as I understand it, then becomes perceptual knowledge through the power of superimposition on the consciousness of the subject. It becomes ‘owned’ by the individual subject.

The organs that go out and take the form of the object are not to be confused with the actual physical organs of sight, touch etc. They are in Shankara’s words in his commentary on the Brh.Up. II.iv.11- but modes of the objects in order to perceive them. They are, so to speak, empty modalities that become informed by the object.

That in broad outline is the advaitin theory of perception. To investigate the full complexity of Manas, Buddhi, Citta, Antahkarana, and Indriyas refer to the The Six Ways of Knowing by D. M. Datta:
The Six Ways

Animal Faith

Shankaracarya declares the natural and spontaneous faith of animals in objective reality.

Moreover, there is no difference (of the learned) from the animals (in regard to empirical behaviour). Just as animals and others turn away from sound etc. when these appear unfavourable after their ears etc. come into contact with them, and they move towards these when they are favourable; and just by noticing a man approaching them with a raised stick, they begin to run away thinking, “This one wants to hurt me”, and they approach another carrying green grass in his hands, similarly even the wise are repelled by the presence of strong, uproarious people with evil looks and upraised swords, and are attracted by men of opposite nature. Therefore the behaviour of men with regard to the means and objects of knowledge is similar to that of animals.

(from the Preamble to Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya)

As soon as I would put out my hand with an apple in it the pony in the field would come running over. Must I put Descartes before that horse?

The Mind of the Sage

What is it to be real in advaita? It is to be uncontradicted in all three moments of time; past, present,future. The ordinary changeful mental activity which we identify with is therefore unreal in that ultimate reckoning. However for everyday purposes we can distinguish between reality and illusion, delusion and confusion. Normal confirmation or disconformation applies.

‘Unreal nescience’ is therefore a technical term for the ontological foundations of the subject/object divide. The ‘opponent’ impugning the advaitic understanding fails to realise this:

Opponent: How, again, can the means of valid knowledge, such as direct perception as well as the scriptures, have as their basis a cognizer who is subject to nescience?

Vedantin: Since a man without self-identification with the body, mind, senses etc., cannot become a cognizer and as such the means of knowledge cannot function for him since perception and other activities (of a man) are not possible without accepting the senses etc. (as his own) ; since the senses cannot function without (the body as) a basis since nobody engages in any activity with a body that has not the idea of the Self superimposed on it; .....

(from the preamble to B.S.B.)

The knowledge that this superimposition is always taking place does not annihilate the mind of the realised sage. Nisargadatta Maharaj explains:

I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat. I also feel thirst and hunger and expect my food to be served on time. When starved or sick , my body and mind go weak. All this I perceive quite clearly but somehow I am not in it, I feel myself floating over it, aloof and detached.

(from section 57 of I am That /Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Note on the Preamble to the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Shankaracarya

A Note from 2008 on the preamble to Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Shankaracarya translated by Swami Gambhirananda published by Advaita Ashrama.


With primary texts that are encrusted with commentaries I think it is vital to read the text first before our minds are clouded by a view which gets between us and the initial experience. It thus can speak directly to us. That may in fact be difficult when the matter is very abstruse. Certain errors which one is liable to fall into can be avoided by a general grasp of the problem fields and the characteristic approaches. It can happen that one is not reading what is on the page because of the interference of received views. How does one get over that? You need to get the sense of strangeness of the text to have it grow into you unimpeded by a veil.
So having read it, now read on: (original text bolded)

It being an established fact.

Now that’s interesting; Shankara believes that there are established facts. He is at least not a sceptic because he accepts that there are some things we just know or that are given. I may even take it that when a fact is established the implication is that there is general agreement. It is not dependent on my personal validation.

that the object and the subject

This seems to come under the notion of what is given as an established fact, stuff that we don’t have to think about, that is just there. Take it or leave it, you can’t deny it. This is important. Objects exist, subjects exist. Odd though it may seem there are some philosophies that hold that only the existence of a subject is immediately given and that the object is the result of an inference that ‘explains’ sense-data.

that are fit to be the contents of the concepts "you" and "we" (respectively)

This again marks the direct intuition. I mean intuition in the sense of the sort of things we know about without having to think about them i.e. the world has stuff that is not us. The pencil on the desk is not an event in my brain.

and that are by nature as contradictory as light and darkness

One seems to cancel the other out as the light does the dark. The consciousness of the subject is being compared to the inertness of the object as object.

cannot logically have any identity

They are utterly different from each other. I am here and the object is out there.

it follows that their attributes can have it still less.

Observation on Shankara’s ideas on the attributes of the subject and those of the object:

In this first sentence Shankara has set out the field so that we are clear about the basics which are the stuff of everyday intuition. Having done that he now springs the paradox that lies at the heart of perception on us.
Let's talk about the attributes for a moment. The attributes of the subject as subject and those of the attributes of the object as object. The chief attribute of the subject viewed as subject is consciousness otherwise there would not be an object; the two being linked together conceptually. There is more to be said on this but as we are strictly adhering to the development of the argument in the text we will restrict our remarks to that alone. An object has location, weight, dimension etc. What is the weight of a thought? Does it have extent? Their attributes are incommensurable. Some philosophers have been led by this consideration to psycho-physical dualism. This is "the view that human beings are made up of two radically distinct constituents (body, constituted by matter like other natural objects, and an immaterial mind or soul)" (Penguin Dict. Of Phil.)

Accordingly, the superimposition of the object

Here the concept of superimposition is introduced. There would have to be an assumption that most students that have come to read the B.S.B. have a notion of what 'superimposition' is in the technical sense of a transfer of attributes.

referable through the concept "you", and its attributes on the subject that is conscious by nature and is referable through the concept "we" (should be impossible), and contrariwise the superimposition of the subject and its attributes on the object should be impossible.

The idea here is that the thing that is inert and of material dimensions somehow comes to be in the consciousness of the subject which is immaterial in nature. Inert in the advaitic philosophy carries the connotation that even though it is of the nature of pure consciousness the witness element is missing in it and therefore it is not conscious unto itself. Consciousness has to be applied to it for it to reveal itself as an upAdhi/limiting adjunct.
Perception is such a common thing that it is difficult to enter into a sense of its fundamental oddness. At the level of the psychology of perception there is much that can be learned about it but this learning does not dissipate the paradox at the ontological level. We cannot say that the activity in the brain is consciousness and claim that we understand what this might mean. The physical and consciousness are incommensurable. Therefore it is the case that subject/object awareness ought to be impossible.
Clearly this is not so. This brings Shankara on to his next point:

Nevertheless, owing to an absence of discrimination between these attributes, as also between substances, which are absolutely disparate,

'Absence of discrimination' has the tone of blame about it because we generally think of discrimination as a good thing. Here I think it is a neutral description of the ontological/epistemological basis of perception. For it to take place there must be an ignoring of the patent difference between the conscious and the inert. That ignoring applies also to the substances or the free standing entities at issue viz. the subject and the object. The object somehow comes to be in the subject.

there continues a natural human behaviour based on self-identification in the form of "I am this" or "this is mine".

Before the individual has begun to reflect on the nature of perception and the puzzle at the heart of it, he will be stuck at the level of the everyday acceptance of the disjunction between the subject and the object. Without philosophical analysis this may seem a fixed and final condition. Even with philosophical analysis one may end up with a view of self-luminous cognition that approximates to the Buddhist shunya vAda .

This behaviour has for its material cause an unreal nescience and man resorts to it by mixing up reality with unreality as a result of superimposing the things themselves or their attributes on each other.
Here we have large blocks of ideas being introduced such as 'material cause' and 'unreal nescience'. First we must get the general purport of the sentence and then how the blocks of meaning move within it. Essentially what Shankara is saying is that we have a limited understanding of reality and suppose that it is complete. We accept perception as a fact and go no further to enquire as to how it is possible. Perception has already been presented as superimposition of the inert on the conscious and the conscious on the inert. Simply sticking at that we are left at the stage where we take the gulf between subject and object to be fixed and final. It is our ignorance of the reality of the unity of being and consciousness, an ignorance exacerbated by the material conditions of perception such as location, ambient conditions, presence etc that make us accept a narrow view of the self. I take material conditions to be what Shankara means by 'material cause'. It is an extension of the base concept of being made out of something or arising out of something.

If it be asked; "what is it that is called superimposition?" - the answer is: It is an awareness, similar in nature to memory, that arises on a different (foreign) basis as a result of some past experience.
He now finds it necessary to give his account of the place superimposition has to play in Advaita. Here I must say that I have found the extensive discussion of the various sorts of confusion, illusion and delusion to be excessive and contrary to the purport of Shankara's basic use of it. He uses superimposition as an analogy for the way in which the object comes to be in the consciousness of the subject and also the way that the consciousness of the subject 'covers' the inert object. He later makes it clear that confusion is not a parallel for superimposition i.e. that all sorts of superimposition must conform to the example of confusion. In fact it is taking an analogy as an example that is the problem. An analogy is like that which it seeks to clarify in one fixed facet only and not in a global way. The facet that is focused on is the coming to be in the mind of an object. That the object in the case of confusion is not really there is not a relevant consideration. It is not the purport of the analogy. Many generations of over-interpretation have befogged this.
Shankara goes on to make it clear, to me at least, that this is his intent.

But others assert that wherever a superimposition on anything occurs, there is in evidence only a confusion arising from the absence of discrimination between them. Others say that the superimposition of anything on any other substratum consists in fancying some opposite attributes on that very basis. From every point of view, however, there is no difference as regards the appearance of one thing as something else. And in accord with this, we find in common experience that the nacre appears as silver and a single moon appears as two.

What we have there is a swift review of all the theories of confusion which were an important topic for the philosophers of the day in their discussion of error. The paradigm or central case of error is taking something to be that which it is not. That is a very interesting discussion in its own right, but what Shankara is using the phenomenon of error for, is to bring out is the notion of the mutual transference of attributes i.e. superimposition. He is not interested in the minutiae of the mechanics of confusion.




there continues a natural human behaviour based on self-identification in the form of "I am this" or "this is mine".

Before the individual has begun to reflect on the nature of perception and the puzzle at the heart of it, he will be stuck at the level of the everyday acceptance of the disjunction between the subject and the object. Without philosophical analysis this may seem a fixed and final condition. Even with philosophical analysis one may end up with a view of self-luminous cognition that approximates to the Buddhist shunya vAda .

This behaviour has for its material cause an unreal nescience and man resorts to it by mixing up reality with unreality as a result of superimposing the things themselves or their attributes on each other.

Thomas Reid on Remembrance

Self-Identity

Similarly, in the case of remembrance, he who remembers being also the one who saw, the two are identical. Thus only can a person, after shutting his eyes, remember the forms he has seen before, just as he saw them. Therefore that is is shut is not the seer; but that which, when the eyes are shut, sees forms in remembrance, must have been the seer when the eyes were open. This is further proved by the fact that when the body is dead, no vision takes place although the body is intact. If the body itself were the seer, even a dead body would continue to see and do similar functions. Therefore it is clear that the real agent of seeing etc. is not the body, but that whose absence deprives the body of the power of vision, and whose presence gives it that power.

Objection: Suppose the eyes and other organs themselves were the agents of vision and so forth

Reply: No: the remembrance that one is touching the very thing that one has seen, would be impossible is there were different agents for these two acts

Objection: Then let us say, it is the mind.

Reply: No, the mind also, being an object like colour etc cannot be the agent of vision and so forth. Therefore we conclude that the light in question is inside the body, and yet different from it like the sun etc.

Brh.Up. IV.iii.6

That Similarly in the case of remembrance, he who remembers being also the one who saw, the two are identical. is the answer to ‘how do you know’ you are the same. No empiricist thinks that ‘I just know’ is an answer because it is a fundamental stance that a demand for a reason must be met with evidence of some sort. I know I was the one who found the wallet because I remember the wallet being found and oh yes i remember it was me that found it. Such an account is not convincing in the least. In fact no one offers a reason because they don’t need one. They may feel that they could but when they try they fail.

The remark about a dead body not being aware is based on the assumption that the life force which is identified with consciousness and the self is not present. A body on its own is not sufficient for awareness. This may seem obvious and hardly an argument but the point is that like in the case of remembrance being a remembrance no argument is required. We just know that a dead body is a dead body.

Is this armchair philosophy or fatuous maundering compared to neuroscience? I think of it as ‘asana’ philosophy after the meditation sitting position. There is no grasping of the self because there is no need. Neuroscience tries to offer evidence for our self-identity but none is required. Any mental state whatever is saturated in self-identity.

What use is meditation?

What is meditation for? What use is it? Shankaracarya has stated that no particular state of mind is liberation. Samadhi therefore is not liberation. Only knowledge brings an end to ignorance, avidya changes to vidya and you cannot unknow what you now know. There is a paradox buried in there because though you are now enlightened your true state has never changed. You were and are always that. Tat tvam asi – That thou art.

Still meditation is enjoined as a beneficial practice. Its vendors would agree with that, relaxation is good business. To the spiritual seeker with aching ankles and lost communication with their posterior the opening question of how this discomfort relates to moksha is relevant. My sketch of how it might be, and I speak as one having no authority, follows along the lines suggested by the acarya's commentary on Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.iii.6, 7.

'When the sun and the moon have both set, the fire has gone out, and speech has stopped, Yajnavalkya, what exactly serves as the light for a man?' 'The self serves as his light. It is through the light of the self that he sits, goes out, works and returns.' 'It is just so, Yajnavalkya.'

This sutra completes the series of questions that eliminate the various sensory aids to awareness external and internal i.e. sun, moon, fire, speech. These adjuncts are useless without the awareness of the individual. When these are absent as in dream awareness persists. An important point is that awareness persists even when sleep is dreamless as we are conscious in a dark contentless way of having been in that state. There is no necessity for a contents of consciousness to be present for awareness to persist because we do know that we slept deeply and did not dream. If being contentless eliminated awareness there should only be a sudden waking without any knowledge of an intervening period in other words a move from consciousness to consciousness without a sense of an intervening period. In fact there would be no sense of having slept at all. Western students of philosophical psychology will wonder how this reductio was missed, the elephant and his mahout in the room so to say, yet it is central to the metaphysics of consciousness and identity for Shankara.

The light in question must then be different from that of the body. Now the class counter to this from the materialist is reminiscent of the causal closure thesis of Aristotle in De Anima.

Objection (by the materialist): No, for we see that only thing of the same class help each other. You are wrong to state as a proved fact that there is an inner light different from the sun etc. Why? Because we observe that the body and organs, which are material, are helped by such lights as the sun, which also are material and of the same class as the things helped.

The reply to that I give in full because it seems to hint at the notion of intentionality.

Reply: If this aggregate be the self that does the function of seeing etc., how is it that, remaining as it is it sometimes performs those functions and sometimes does not?

I take this to mean that you are only aware of something when your consciousness is directed towards it. Attention is selective and intermittent and not automatic because you are physically present. Shankaracarya also makes the point that in dream and remembrance we only have before our our minds elements experienced before. The body and the organs are there but only those events are salient that we have directed our consciousness towards while capable of doing so. This is an interesting observation.

Many of the practices of meditation become intelligible with this metaphysical background. To be continued:

Poetry and Philosophy

Siris has an interesting quote from the philosopher John Watson (from The Interpretation of Religious Experience):
watson


The poetic intuitions of Wordsworth and Browning, of Goethe and Schiller, contain larger and deeper truth than is to be found in the systems of contemporary theologians or philosophers; but the reason is, not that imagination comes closer to reality than reflection, but that it naturally outruns its slower-paced sister. Poetry never contains deeper truth than philosophy, except when it embodies intuitions that are afterwards expressed, or may afterwards be expressed, in systematic form. In poetry we have the concrete presentation of ideas in definite pictorial form, but it is only as it exhibits the whole through the parts, the ideal in the sensible, that it can ever be regarded as reaching a higher stage than a philosophy which has lost itself in the parts.

John Watson, The Interpretation of Religious Experience, Part 2,

(It’s available in various eformats on Internet Archive.)

It is a fact that early philosophy was often written in verse then considered to be the most suitable vehicle for wisdom combining compression and memorability in a way which would enter deep into the mind. The etymology of ‘poetry’ as given by C.T. Onions is from the Greek ‘poein’ to make, to create and is related to the Sanskrit ‘cinoti, edyate - to heap up, construct. One thinks of the ajativada (unmade) theory of the cosmos espoused by the grandguru of Sankaracarya, Gaudapada. Sankaracarya’s Upadesa Sahasri (Thousand Teachings) is mostly written in verse. So with poetry we make a world or what amounts to the same thing make our souls. Socarates in the few days grace given to him before his execution on account of a festival took to writing poetry.

Philosophy in prose form too makes a world, offers a vision. We give it a temporary licence.

Metaphor: The Kingdom of the Undead.

Douglas Hofstadter knows what an oxymoron is, “genuine artificial intelligence,” as Hofstadter now calls it, with apologies for the oxymoron. (from James Somers's article in The Atlantic)
Atlantic
I doubt that Hofstadter, ‘he’, apologised for it because the bringing to computation of the human power of making analogies is the limen as he understands it. I first wrote ‘crucial limen’ there, and that would be a mixed metaphor which tends to take away what it never gave in the first place.

All these figure of speech can be considered as falling under the heading of Analogy (upper case). Different spheres of meaning are brought into association. In the Oxymoron they are contrary, in the metaphor there is the moving of one sphere totally into the domain of another. Thus language is full of dead metaphors that we no longer see as such because they have displaced their abstract analogues so effectively. We grasp, comprehend, apprehend and understand but what is it to do that, what is being shunted? Maybe to do philosophy is to try to find the basis of metaphor. What is that kingdom planted by the undead?

When I offer the distinction between the Analogy and the analogy(lower case) I mean that the latter can appear under various guises; attribution, proportionality and illustration. It early struck me that the confusion of metaphor with analogy/illustration is a major element in the misinterpretation of Advaita. I have recently been reading the Essays on Indian Philosophy by Professor J. Mohanty and find traces of that heresy. It is the hazard of offering analogies that they tend to be taken in a way that was not intended. Shankaracarya regularly finds the purvapaksha (opponent) guilty of this solecism. I have been collating his observations.

De Raeymaeker and Shankaracarya on Possibility

Louis De Raeymaeker in his book The Philosophy of Being (pub. 1946) refers to Shankaracarya in a footnote on page 147 in the chapter on the static order of being.

The Indian school of Avaita (Shankaracarya, circ. 788 - 820) which allies itself to Brahmanism, maintains likewise that the world is real only because it is identified with the absolute, Brahma. Limitation and multiplicity derive from a potency, Maya, the great sorceress, who dwells in the heart of reality. They are only an illusion, an effect of ignorance, of imperfect knowledge, Avidya. Whoever places himself at the true point of view of the absolute, Brahma, enters into possession of the full wisdom, Vidya, which makes Maya and Avidya disappear and this man enjoys the beatific vision of all things in the perfect simplicity of Brahma.

The Brahmanism referred to here is related to the ancient Vedic religion and its practices such as the Fire Ceremony (Agnihotra) and its philosophic foundations in ancient Upanishads such as the Brhadaranayka and Chandogya, both of which have commentaries written by Shankaracarya. Avaita (commonly written Advaita) in its modern form stresses the philosophical rather than the ritual. Vidya and Avidya are simply knowledge and ignorance. The world is unreal only when it is taken to be a free-standing, self sufficient entity. It is real as manifestation. This is the usual formula given to allow a bearing to be established on the problem of creation, it is not a closely argued final position. The Real in Advaita is that which is changeless and necessary, the unreal is changeful and contingent. The well known argument from illusion as operative in Western philosophy is not an issue in this connection.

De Raeymaeker is accurate on this point though he succumbs to the fanciful allegoricisation that poetic Hindu texts go in for. In any case it is just a remark in passing, his chief focus is on Spinoza who offers an analogous account of ultimate absorption into unity of being.

The modes (of finite being) are founded on, and every distinction is effaced in, infinite Nature; the opposition between possibility and reality , between essence and existence, disappears in the fundamental unity of pure Being.

Interestingly De Raeymaeker in his discussion of The Possible, The Problem of the Foundation of Intrinsic Possibility and The Problem of the Relation of Extrinsic and Intrinsic Possibility covers in his closely argued methodical way the grounds for the more compressed insights of Shankaracarya on the issue of the Buddhist Idealist claim that a thing’s existence is based on whether it can be known or not. If it cannot be known as per the standard idealist view we are only acquainted with the contents of a mental experience, then the existence of a thing as possible or impossible cannot be determined. Shankaracarya’s counter is that it is the application of valid means of knowledge (pramanas) that determines whether a thing is impossible or not.

What is known through any one of the means of knowledge, such as direct perception etc., is possible, and what cannot be known through any one of these means of knowledge is impossible. In the case under discussion, the external things are known individually by the respective means of knowledge;...

(B.S.B. II.ii.28)

Denying the possibility of your empirical acquaintance with something says nothing about whether it is possible or not and in fact makes it impossible to say whether or not it is an existent.

De Raeymaeker (pg.91):

It is not the abstract, as such, which can exist, but the concrete individual; it is not the abstract essence “man” which is possible, it is this or that man, Socrates or Plato.