'I Am' - The Elephant in the Room.

 All those theories, schemas, transcendental hypothesoi and their basis is the single certain datum ‘I am’.  This is what Nisargadatta Maharaj was told to meditate continuously on by his guruji.  Ramana Maharshi became enveloped by the question ‘Who am I’.  Others with strong faith in Vedic revelation skipped that question and dwelt in the imponderable mahavakya ‘Thou art that’.

The seeker veers into theory when he notices the connection between dreaming and the waking state.

“Just as the same jewel assumes different colours owing to its proximity to different (coloured) things, so also the Pure Consciousness assumes different forms on account of various adjuncts which are superimposed on It (in dream).

As in dream, so in the waking state different forms are superimposed on this Consciousness.  It manifests the objects of the intellect when it performs actions produced by desires due to delusion.” (Upadesa Sahasri of Sankara, Chap 17 #16, 17)

Neither Ramana nor Nisargadatta would have spun out these theoretical webs in their initial stage of Atma Vichara ( Inquiry).  That solid nut of data would have to be cracked first and the kernel of realisation enjoyed.

“Just as a magician comes and goes on an elephant (created by his own magic), the Self, though devoid of all motions, appears to be undergoing conditions such as the undifferentiated, dream, etc.” (#29 ibid)

Vedanta and Cybernetics

 It’s not surprising that some scholars of Vedanta forget that the mind is inert (jada) or unconscious by nature and only ‘thinks as it were’ (Brh.Up.) due to its pervasion or transfusion by pure consciousness.  The mind then is material interacting with other material entities and objects.  Epiphenomenalism and the causal problem are not a topic in advaita per se and they arise only as controversion.  Why those scholiasts forget the jada nature is probably due to their entrancement by problems spawned by Western epistemology.

That is a very large discussion which I will get to in time.  In this note I consider the materiality of the Body/Mind/Spirit complex and its tendency to therefore fall under the sway of multiple cybernetic factors, feedback loops, the bogus homeostasis of gratified desires and if we want to stay within the purlieus of Vedanta, the good old time gunas.  To get those loops to move in an upward and not a downward spiral requires an admission that struggling at the level of vasanas (tendencies, dispositions) leaves us in the toils of cybernetic control.  Strictly; upwards, downwards and sideways are paths in the maze of maya.   Ironically by using feedback loops we can revert to the source of consciousness which frees.  Pranayama, mantra, prayer and ritual are enabling practices that we are told advance the dawn of knowledge (vidya) but however perfectly performed are not liberating of themselves.   The jnani (enlightened one) can say:

“I am the Self of all, as the intellects of all beings are illumined by Me who am of the nature of the Light of Consciousness only.” (Upadesa Sahasri Chap. XIV on Dream and Memory: #7)

Maya, remarks on

 Sankara’s use of the analogy of perceptual illusion was ontological/epistemological rather than psychological.  In his preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya he considers the puzzle of how the inert unconscious object comes to somehow be ‘in’ the consciousness of the subject.  This is the launch pad for the rest of his transcendental postulate.  The initial question then is - How must things fundamentally be for things to appear as they do?  His  assumption is that what is out there is real and is within us as it actually is and is grasped by perception.  The snake/rope is a focused analogy for the transference/superimposition of the object on the consciousness of the subject.  In a later Advaitic work ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’ this capacity of the object is called its perceptuality.  A single unity of being unites the object and the subject.  They share the same substratum of pure Consciousness.  The limiting adjunct of the object and limiting adjunct of the subject can flow together.  This is the source of the ‘cit jada granthi’ i.e. the knot of the inert and the conscious.

Where does avidya or personal Maya come into this?  It is the natural tendency of the sensing subject to place its identity where it feels it is.

Corne van Nijhus writes maya

“The existence of an object can only be proven when it is perceived. But suppose there is an object that has never been seen. No one would recognize that object as valid!  ! There must first be some consciousness to observe this object, to prove its existence. So every object depends on Consciousness to be validated. So the object is Mithya“

In Advaita the ‘ajnatta satta’, the unknown object, is recognised as a reality.  Perception is regarded as a disclosure or the removal of the darkness veiling an object.  That unknown object is out there awaiting disclosure and is distinguished from the object that is real only during the time that it is being known/experienced.  Fleeting emotions are examples of this.

Maya as a condition

 Maya, what does it mean?  Sometimes it is treated as though it were a force which acts.  I see it as a state that arises as the result of the mechanism of awareness.  It is not there waiting in the long grass to spring on us.  It is the description of a condition which only the persuasion of an expert guru will convince you that you are in.  Faith hovers over your ironic acceptance.

Original Maya?

What else besides the cool shawl with om all over it and some Benares brasswork for his mum did Augustine bring back from India? Some would say that the doctrine of Original Sin and the doctrine of Maya have analogical features. I disagree with that: original sin is the result of an act by Adam and Maya is a condition which is fortified by the fact of perception. (These strokes are made by a distemper brush) Yes, well, but isn’t the human condition the result of original sin and not due to any particular act of any descendant of Adam and Eve. Add that this condition is inescapable and another salient difference emerges. Maya is also a condition but it can be surpassed - knowledge casts out ignorance.

The delivery of the doctrine of original sin through the form of a myth (non-pejorative sense) is in contrast to the highly metaphysical casting of Maya. It is in the dealing with both those conditions by the Christian and Hindu that the common ‘anti-Pelagianism’ emerges.

The Maya of Captain Ahab

“Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond.

Ganeri on Advaita Vedanta

I’ve been listening to some of the podcasts on Indian Philosophy put out by Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri on history of philosophy It’s good that it is being done but I have to say I found the talk on Advaita Vedanta
advaita vedanta
to be coarse grained for the undergraduate level at which they aim. What Shankara said was that what we take to be reality is like an illusion not that it was an illusion through and through. In fact the import of what he said is that conventional reality is like a mistake or a confusion. The rope/snake is an analogy with a strictly focussed point namely that an attribute of a real entity i.e. the coiledness of a rope becomes a snake in the mind of a perceiver in poor visual conditions. It is this transfer of attribute that connects to the philosophical concept of superimposition. Adhyasa (superimposition) is linked to Upadhi (limiting adjunct) and to Vritti (mental modification).

This is much more philosophically interesting than to say ‘conventional reality is an illusion’ and it could serve as an introduction to Shankara’s theory of analogy and his ideas on the continuous development of insight in the student. That of course is getting a little deep and far from the shore.