The Sense of 'I am' as answered by Nisargadatta

 

As  I was saying in my previous post a mistake is a take  by which I mean that the ontological depth out of which perception rises is preserved even when there is error.  The deep structure is maintained.

Nisargadatta’s teaching is an illustration of how Advaita  blurs the distinction between religion and metaphysics.  He uses the standard dialectic of adhiropa / apavada or affirmation followed by qualification and correction.  You move towards the implications of a position and find a resolution to its internal difficulties.

The first dialogue in the book centres on the spiritual practice of keeping the central fact of experience constantly before the mind namely ‘I AM’.

Reading this dialogue it almost seems like a set-up allowing Maharaj to develop his characteristic teaching.

“Questioner: It is a matter of daily experience that on waking up the world suddenly appears.  Where does it come from?”

 May I interject here to ask from the perspective of Western philosophy:

Is this a suggestion that the world exists in consciousness only, a not unknown position in philosophical circles that takes the form of subjective idealism or representationalism?

M. rejects this saying that this ‘sudden appearance’ must have a background for it to appear on.  The experience of change must have a changeless background, one which is not an experience as such because of course experience implies changeability.

The Q. who is caught in the grip of the model of awareness as being simply that of mental subjects and mental objects replies that - “Before waking  up I was unconscious”

M. in an  acute observation brings up the commonplace experience of a loss of memory?  You have no consciousness of that yet  you  do not believe that you did  not exist during that time.  Your existence then is not reliant on being conscious of it.  Similarly on waking from a dreamless sleep ‘I  am’ is an immediate awareness.  I am - a body- in the world can be intellectually broken up but in fact it is a simultaneous awareness.  “A single idea of having a body in a world”.

All states of awareness including memory lapses and deep dreamless sleep are unified by the changeless  background of pure consciousness.  Nisargadatta Maharaj uses the same argument as Shankaracarya in  relation to waking up from Deep Dreamless Sleep.  You know that you have been asleep and that there is a continuity between the individual that is woken up when called and the one prior to falling asleep.

Then he says and this is an intriguing light on the disputed claim made by Jacques Maritain that there is an intuition of being.

 

“On waking up the experience runs: ‘I am - the body- in the world.’   It may appear to arise in succession but in fact it is all simultaneous, a single idea of having a body in a world. Can there be the sense of ‘I am’ without being somebody or other?”

To be continued:

I am, it is: Mystical Conjugation

 

What is this thing called Being mentioned so frequently in philosophy?  Philosophers ascribe to it a power that is there but somehow cannot be separated out, but we are at the same time immersed in it.  How?  So powerful is it that Nisargadatta Maharaj achieved enlightenment but continually keeping before his mind ‘I am’.  Etienne Gilson reflects on the power of the self-definition of God,” I am that I am”.

“There is then a resemblance between Being and beings.  It is written inGenesis 1:26 Let us make man in our image and likeness.There is at least one sense in which this is true, and this first sense is presupposed by all the others:to beimplies necessarily a certain likeness to HE WHO IS.”  (The Elements of Christian Philosophy)

When I first heard that response to Moses in Exodus 3:13-14: I AM WHO AM at the age of 15 it gave me a most uncanny feeling , a premonitory saltation to the age of 27 when at the instantaneous recognition of the reality of God, that name came into my head.

What is the deep reality for the  philosopher who espouses a realist ontology behind the apparently simple recognition in experience of something - it is and it is this.  How is that propaedeutic to the mystical immersion in pure being.  Let me affirm that being mistaken is founded on the default nature of the unity of being.  A mistake is a take.

The very first chapter of Nisargadatta’s teaching (‘I AM THAT) is called ‘The Sense of ‘I am’.  I’ll have a look at that next and then at that exceptionally lucid book of Etienne Gilson’s ‘Methodical Realism’.

Anon.

Burbling Along

 

When you are young you burble along with your own special properties of amiability or being a nuisance or that unique special blend that is all your own. Character is in the process of being formed and it is likely unless you come into abrupt contact with the legal system that it will be forgiven for its shapelessness.  You  may even be told ‘life will knock the corners of you boy’.  What a thing to say, am I not great as I am?  No you are probably not but stay busy adapting the world to yourself.  Then at a certain stage you get into a relationship often marriage back in the day, in  your early 20s, imagine.  Rows or radical adaptation would commence or resignation.  There it is, it is what it is.  We were still malleable.  Children raised their pudgy little paws, endearing as bear cubs.  They demanded care and you gave it.  You adapted to what was in essence a life of obedience and you got on with it.

Nowadays, that dread word, you will be in your 30‘s not so behaviorally supple.  Is your relationship committed or not, you don’t know.  What does that mean anyhow?  The having of children has been put off, now never seemed to be the right time.  Both of you are set in your ways with individual and couple routines and there’s the barrier of inertia that keeps both of you burbling along.

Camus and the Absurd

 

Yes of course he was a young man when he wrote “The Myth of Sisyphus’ with its deep pondering on the Absurd.  Olivier Todd in his biography is kind about this and offers a few quotations from letters and his journals about the whole topic without deconstruction. “The human cry and the world’s unreasoning silence”, ‘feeling inside yourself happiness and reason’.

However truth is a thing. It is what it is.  Our nature wants to conform or have the world conform to what is right and just.  There are human needs.  Camus was sick and therefore could not serve in the army but there was something he could do.  The absurd was an affectation when there was a situation that you had to fight.  Evil is privative, an emptiness that must be opposed by a presence: a truth against a lie.  That the truth cannot be expressed does not make it absurd.  His editorship of ‘Combat’ the resistance paper was an important part of the fight against the Boche.  He took a stand.  Something does matter after all.

'The Mayor of Casterbridge' by Thomas Hardy.

 

Its a web of secrets that enfold each other based on a single great crime.  Henchard  has sold his wife in a fit of drunken irony that she grew tired of as a repeat performance.  The sailor Newson bought her and off he took her never to be seen for another twenty years.  I don’t need to go into it, you will know the story or have read a synopsis.  In any case the many twists and turns  viewed on that level make it decidedly soapy but that is only the narrative carapace that covers some deep questions about fate, character as destiny, the possibility of moral renewal, forgiveness and of course corn futures.

Henchard has renewed himself with a vow to quit the drink for 21 years and having attempted to find his wife and child and reclaim them from the sailorman he goes on his way as a hay trusser with his wimble, his spike and his hay knife all in a woven basket.  The wimble is a good metaphor for the narrative for it is a brace like device for twisting the binding of the truss using strands of hay as though they were a yarn. The secret shame he has been able to tell no one is like the grit in the oyster that a malign pearl has grown over.  It haunts him as a cathexis that draws energy making him gloomy, impatient and hard.  Good qualities in a man of business for when we see him again after twenty years he is a man of substance, wealth and high position as a mayor of a prosperous town in a district of fertile land.  Yet there is in him that reserve which accompanies the possession of a dark secret.  Nobody knows and nobody must know because the loss of respectability would lead to his material downfall.  Who would trust such a man?

This brings on the other strand twisted in by the wimble - ownership of my wife, my daughter, my business my tangible property, chattels at my disposal.  When his wife turns uptogether with a daughter Elizabeth Janeafter she has supposed Newson has perished at sea.  Henchard accepts them but a secret plan is adopted to fool the town.  Eventually after a period of bogus courtship they get married and settle in.  Susan the double married does not know that there is another woman in Henchard’s life who nursed him when he fell ill while doing business on the island of Jersey.  That was in the recent past and through being overmuch with him and indiscreet she was compromised and somewhat declasse among the respectable.  Susan has her own secret about the birth of Elizabeth Jane who is Newson’s child, that Henchard thinks to be his own.   When he discovers that she is not that piece of property is alienated and they part.  The other element of ownership is when  he discovers that Farfrae the Scots foreman already outshining him in business is interested in Elizabeth Jane.  He must go.

Secrets that he cannot own to and attempting to own that which cannot be possessed are the twin poles which bring Henchard to ruin.  It is this unravelling by a reverse wimbling that is interesting rather than the excessive coincidences and correspondences.  There is also the business of the rustic chorus the skimmington ride and the bautifully realized natural descriptions.

Cleon on Gaza

 Thucydides in his ‘History of the Peleponnesian Wars’ lays out the formula for the movement towards genocide caused by collective punishment and general slaughter which does not distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.  (Bk.III:36-50)

The Mytelenians  had joined in a revolt against Athens opportunistically which so greatly embittered the Athenians that they decreed that their defeated foes should all be put to death and their women and children enslaved.  This seemed meet in the heat of the moment and a trireme was despatched to relay that order.  However on the following day they bethought themselves and considered the injustice of punishing both the innocent and the guilty in a hetacomb.  In the assembly  to debate the issue Cleon a man of influence noted for his stern and violent character spoke in favour of the judgment.  To reverse our judgment at this point is to project weakness and lability, he urged, and to be moved by rhetoric and paradox.  Reprisal should be swift, immediate and final and let the defeated know the folly of resistance against our power.

“To feel pity, to be carried away by the pleasure of hearing a clever argument, to listen to the claims of decency are three things that are entirely against the interests of an imperial power.”

He adds in the conclusion of his argument that:

“For he who has suffered for no good reason is a more dangerous enemy, if he escapes, than the one who has both done and suffered injury.”

Diodotus speaking against Cleon makes the usual points about the promotion of good governance, alliance with the moderate parties and supporting democracy.  Good, fine, splendid.  Of course all true and worthy and contrary to conventional political realism.  However he then appeals to common sense:

“But if you destroy the democratic party at Mytilene who never took any hand in the revolt and who, as soon as they got arms, voluntarily gave up the city to you, you will first of all be guilty of killing those who have helped you, and, secondly, you will be doing exactly what the reactionary classes want most.  For now, when they start a revolt, they will have the people on their side from the beginning, because you have already made it clear that the same punishment is laid down both for the guilty and the innocent.”

The Cleon party have their supporters  as they watch the results of collective punishment in Gaza.Lets kill them all and put an end to the ‘mowing of the lawn’.  Let us be hard and cold, cold as ice, our descendants will thank us for it.

Hamas it is noted has increased its support as you have nothing to lose by joining in the uprising. Die a martyr or as an unfortunate collateral victim.

(Trans: by Rex Warner in Penguin Classics)

'The Lost World' by Arthur Conan Doyle (pub. 1912)

 

We are introduced to Professor Challenger:

He sat in a rotating chair behind a broad table, which was covered with books, maps, and diagrams. As I entered, his seat spun round to face me. His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size which took one's breath away—his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top-hat, had I ever ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-gray under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.

You have read the various adventures of Sherlock of course and if you have rested there you have committed a grave mistake.  There is much much more that is readable and entertaining in the oeuvre of A.C. Doyle.  Humour, wit, invention, description of flora and fauna abound, nay ebulliate.  Adventure across the world to known, unknown and lost worlds beckon.  There is always too a hint of the possible not entirely fanciful in his fantasy.  Could there be an isolated closed territory in which evolution has paused and dinosaurs roam the earth?  In other words the title of the movie ought to be ‘Lost World: Jurassic Park’.

All the tropes of adventure are there, the fragmentary map, the barely credible gasp of the expiring traveller, unexplored regions, trusty bearers trudging through vile mosquito infested swamps and the trappings of imperial power, a giant negro by the name of Zemba faithful and as intelligent as a horse. Yes Massa the map of the world was pink and if that upsets you, stay at home you lily livered shirker.

In this volume you get not one but two mad scientists, Challenger and Summerlee; a blue blooded knight of the realm,explorer and sportsman Roxton and finally the narrator Malone the naive but intrepid reporter. Where are you bound for?

 What is the result? Why, the ordinary laws of Nature are suspended. The various checks which influence the struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or altered. Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear. You will observe that both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus are Jurassic, and therefore of a great age in the order of life. They have been artificially conserved by those strange accidental conditions."

Bring sun block.