Y – I can not parse your meaning, i.e. I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Still have no idea what you are trying to say.
X – What I’m trying to say is to point at core insights within Eastern philosophy (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism), particularly in advaita Vedanta – but also in Christianity and Islam in their highest metaphysical conceptions. If you are not interested in any of this, that’s alright.
Actually, whatever science – and its highfaluting ‘scientific method’ – is is shot through with difficulties and controversies, including the sacrosanct falsifiability principle (or dogma). Just read the Wickipedia article on this (and on rationality, etc.) and the respective positions of Khun, I. Lakatos, and P. Feyerabend among others. You must know something about all this already if you are scientifically inclined.
Y – What “core insights”? There is nothing insightful about making up unevidenced tosh, anyone can do it and each piece of tosh has exactly equal validity, none.
And with regard to your ludicrous and unfounded “criticism” of the scientific method, I have one response, yea shall know them by their fruits.
X – Tesla understood the Sanskrit terminology and philosophy and found that it was a good means to describe the physical mechanisms of the universe as seen through his eyes. It would behoove those who would attempt to understand the science behind the inventions of Nikola Tesla to study Sanskrit and Vedic philosophy.” ~Toby Grotz, President, Wireless Engineering – See more at:http://www.scienceandnonduality….
(Apparently) ‘Tesla was unable to show the identity of energy and matter, this did not come until Albert Einstein published his paper on relativity, which was known in the East for the last 5000 years.
Tesla’s vision of the wireless transmission of electricity and free energy has been postponed for almost one hundred years now.
Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger regularly read Vedic texts.
Heisenberg stated: “Quantum theory will not look ridiculous to people who have read Vedanta. Vedanta is the conclusion of Vedic thought.”
The famous Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Laureate Niels Bohr (1885-1962) was a follower of the Vedas. He said, “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.” Both Bohr and Schrödinger, the founders of quantum physics, were avid readers of the Vedic texts and observed that their experiments in quantum physics were consistent with what they had read in the Vedas.
Niels Bohr got the ball rolling around 1900 by explaining why atoms emit and absorb electromagnetic radiation only at certain frequencies.
Then, in the 1920′s Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961), an Austrian-Irish physicist, who won the Nobel prize, came up with his famous wave equation that predicts how the Quantum Mechanical wave function changes with time. Wave functions are used in Quantum Mechanics to determine how particles move and interact with time. –
Schrödinger wrote in his book Meine Weltansicht:
“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins [wise men or priests in the Vedic tradition] express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.”’
I call those: ‘insights’ (you were asking me): the ancient Vedic seers’ and contemporary physicists’ (and sages – a word you won’t like). ‘Choleric’: related etymologically to black bile (one of the four humors of Greek and ancient philosophy). From your frequent spouting of words such as ‘tosh’ (never heard it before), I am wondering whether you are of that temperament. Nothing wrong, and no harm meant. But I am thinking that I should finally be done with you, that is, with this issueless dialogue. Do you reciprocate (so you have the last word)? I have enjoyed our exchange, thank you. Regards,
Y- Comment: “I got as far as “relativity”, which was known in the East for the last 5000 years.”
Go away you utter loony. [End of dialogue]
Congratulations, Martin, on not ‘losing your cool’! What sprang to mind as I read this was the saying ‘there are none so blind as those who will not see’. I thought scientists were supposed to be open minded! But it also reminds me that the scriptures advise us not to try to teach those who do not want to learn!
Best wishes,
Dennis
I’d be interested in learning about the full extent of Advaita Vedanta’s relationship with skepticism, specifically classical Greco-Roman skepticism as exemplified by the philosopher-physician Sextus Empiricus. Part of my interest comes from a few things that Nisargadatta Maharaj (and, undoubtedly, countless predecessors) said, namely that the only thing that one can honestly say about anything (except one’s own existence, perhaps) is “I don’t know,” and that all knowledge is ultimately ignorance.
Here is a passage from Sextus Empiricus’s influential Outlines of Pyrrhonism, in which he presents 5 tropes for skepticism (Dissent, Progress ad infinitum, Relation, Assumption, and Circularity):
As regards science proper, ramesam wrote, late last month:
Not to sound like an enemy of science, but one might ask, what makes science important or valuable at all, at least as regards metaphysical questions?
As our implacably snarky and acerbic friend “Y” pointed out:
This ties in very well with the following excerpts from Julius Evola’s Ride the Tiger:
…
None of modern science has the slightest value as knowledge; rather, it bases itself on a formal renunciation of knowledge in the true sense. The driving and organizing force behind modern science derives nothing at all from the ideal of knowledge, but exclusively from practical necessity, and, I might add, from the will to power turned on things and on nature. I do not mean its technical and industrial applications, even though the masses attribute the prestige of modern science above all to them, because there they see irrefutable proof of its validity. It is a matter of the very nature of scientific methods even before their technical applications, in the phase known as ‘pure research.’ In fact, the concept of ‘truth’ in the traditional sense is already alien to modern science, which concerns itself solely with hypotheses and formulae that can predict with the best approximation the course of phenomena and relate them to a certain unity. And as it is not a question of ‘truth,’ but a matter less of seeing than of touching, the concept of certainty in modern science is reduced to the ‘maximum probability.’ That all scientific certainties have an essentially statistical character is openly recognized by every scientist, and more categorically than ever in recent subatomic physics. The system of science resembles a net that draws ever tighter around a something that, in itself, remains incomprehensible, with the sole intention of subduing it for practical ends.
These practical ends only secondarily concern the technical applications; they constitute the criterion in the very domain that belongs to pure knowledge, in the sense that here, too, the basic impulse is schematizing, an ordering of phenomena in a simpler and more manageable way. As was rightly noted, ever since that formula simplex sigillum veri (simplicity is the seal of the true), there has appeared a method that exchanges for truth (and knowledge) that which satisfies a practical, purely human need of the intellect. In the final analysis, the impulse to know is transformed into an impulse to dominate; and we owe to a scientist, Bertrand Russell, the recognition that science, from being a means to know the world, has become a means to change the world.
The tremendous material/technological advances (e.g., modern medicine, thermonuclear bombs) brought about by science can hardly be denied, but for one who is chiefly concerned with what lies beyond mithyA, why would anything other than shruti and smRRiti be needful?
I made a mistake with the formatting; the Evola excerpt ends at “has become a means to change the world.”
Because how can you know whether what shruti and smrriti say is true?
That’s a good point. That’s precisely what a rationalist would say. As I am not a confirmed Vedantin, at least as of yet, I have no answer for you and will leave it to someone else to venture a response.
However, I will point out that if the veracity of shruti and smRRiti hinge on the results of relevant scientific research, then it would follow that Gaudapada, Govinda, Shankara, Madhusudana, Ramana, and everyone else who didn’t have the benefit of such research were NOT justified in their adherence to Vedanta.
In short, Vedanta would be a mere hypothesis, still awaiting, after several millennia, the evidence needed to be promoted to theory status (that is, if it hasn’t already been refuted).
Furthermore, the 5 tropes of classical Skepticism – while perhaps in themselves tautological and at best intuitive – to my mind raise doubts as to whether science is the ultimate arbiter of what is fact and fiction.
Peregrinus: ‘… for one who is chiefly concerned with what lies beyond
mithyA, why would anything other than shruti and smRRiti be needful?’
I thoroughly agree.
Concerning certainty, you (P) appropriately quote Julius Evola: “the concept of certainty in modern science is reduced to the ‘maximum probability.’
Here is what Francis Lucille (a trained physicist, but primarily a non-dualist philosopher) has written: ‘We have to see clearly that the mind by itself has no access to Truth, and, for that reason, cannot reach certainty. Certainty cannot exist as a concept, only as an experience of Truth, which resides beyond the mind”.
The above 2 excerpts are in line with the following one, contrasting science and metaphysics: ‘[re Field and the Knower of the Field] The sages arrived, each one individually, at Reality in Creation, in terms far exceeding external perception; in terms of inner personal experience. It could all be communicated and others could repeat the process and progress in themselves and thus validate the truth of the statements. When thus realized, Reality was always the same’. ‘The Dicey Problem of New Age Science’, Preamble, Dwaraknath Reddy, 2002 – India.
Concerning truth and knowledge:
1) ‘that which is not comprehended by the mind, but by which the mind comprehends… ‘(Kena Upanishad)
2) ‘… the concept of certainty in modern science is reduced to the “maximum probability”… I see now that physics is of no importance, that the world is illusion.’ (Heisenberg, quoted recently by Dennis W.)
3) ‘A scientifically based inquiry into reality is a contradiction in terms.’- Dennis.
4) “The evidence for what I am saying is ‘internal’, introspective, but not irrational by any means. Ontology and phenomenology (the latter a particular methodology within philosophy) deal with this. And in principle there are not, cannot be, many realities, only one – one that includes all other ‘realities’. You can call this ‘monism’ or ‘non-duality’, and, of course, it is not science as this term is ordinarily understood, but philosophy or metaphysics”. (‘Philosophy vs. Science’ – part 3, forthcoming)
I think we are of a similar view. I agree Peregrinus that science cannot answer this question. Equally, I am sceptical that a belief in shruti or in Ramana et al can provide the answer. After all, they are just an appearance in our consciousness. How do we really know what it is they experienced.
That is why I think the emphasis you point to on knowing that we don’t know.
And hence why Ramana, JK and Nisargatta emphasised (scientific) investigation into yourself, being aware of how you think / feel, and looking into who it is that thinks and feels. And through that process, as Francis Lucille and JK would point out, you see that mind is limited and cannot possibly give you the answer; and then you wait (without waiting) in silence. JK was taken by the idea that Vedanta means the end of knowledge. Nisargadatta, echoing Zen, says effectively the same thing, by saying go beyond concepts.
Indeed. I think one of the writers here said something similar when discussing Ramana and Nisargadatta. If I recall correctly, the gist or implication of it was that we can’t know for certain what these men actually said, and so we can’t exactly take their purported words as scripture, and that, in any case, nothing can be an adequate substitute for a living Guru/disciple relationship, because the teaching must be personally tailored for the individual seeker. (As the controversial spiritual teacher Adi Da Samraj so often said, “Satsang is everything!”)
Ranjit Maharaj once said:
James Swartz once said something in an interview that struck me:
This dovetails with what I think is one of your main points, that theory is no substitute for practice, that believing is no substitute for seeing.
Here is the Nisargadatta quote (which I think effectively summarizes the points that have made in our exchange) that I probably had in mind when I wrote my first comment:
Nice quote. Though, I’m not sure it is really that much a matter of practice either. It seems to be an extreme passion / earnestness to understand what it is we are.
Nisargadatta outlined our fundamental problem that prevents us from being who we are, despite all our knowledge – the intrinsic reluctance to give up the ego and the world:
“Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see, because you want the dream to continue, a day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and will be willing to pay any price; the price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream itself.”
JK points out that whatever we think or do is a function of our conditioning, our genes our environment, etc. Therefore we must free ourselves of the image we have of ourselves (the ego), die to the past – and then live without influence.
“Our problem is not how to seek the unknowable, but to understand the accumulative processes of the mind that is ever the known – to see what is in us that is creating confusion, wars, class differences, snobbishness, the pursuit of the famous, the accumulation of knowledge, the escape through music, art, so many ways. When the mind is silent, when it is no longer projecting itself into the future, wishing for something, when the mind is really quiet, profoundly peaceful, the unknown comes into being.”
So it is not a matter of seeking, because that must always be in the context of the known, the past, the conditioning. It is a matter of seeing this conditioning, and the very seeing / realisation of it, de-conditions the mind. If I observe carefully the mind is always chattering about the past and the future, but rarely stays in the present; because the ego is always projecting backwards and forwards, for its own continuity.
“Our problem is not how to seek the unknowable, but to understand the accumulative processes of the mind that is ever the known – to see what is in us that is creating confusion, wars, class differences, snobbishness, the pursuit of the famous, the accumulation of knowledge, the escape through music, art, so many ways. When the mind is silent, when it is no longer projecting itself into the future, wishing for something, when the mind is really quiet, profoundly peaceful, the unknown comes into being.”
“The dispelling of ignorance is all-important, not the acquisition of knowledge, because the dispelling of ignorance is negative while knowledge is positive. And, a man who is capable of thinking negatively has the highest capacity for thinking. The mind which can dispel ignorance and not accumulate knowledge such a mind is an innocent mind, and only the innocent mind can discover that which is beyond measure.”
Best,
venkat
Venkat: ‘I am sceptical that a belief in shruti or in Ramana et al can provide the answer.’
I would subtitute (initial) faith for belief, as I am sure you realize. Belief doesn’t count at all (we covered this topic previously). On the other hand, without faith (trust, confidence) one does not even take the first step. Secondly, it is not the scriptures themselves (shruti and smriti) that do the work – there can never be a guaranty – but going into them with an open mind plus alacrity (if I may say so… ‘mumuksutva’). There are lots of pointers in them, as well as those given repeatedly by the sages you mention. May I remind you of the three parts of sadana: shravana, manana, and nididhyasana. I think these are necessary.
Shaktipata is problematic, from all I know, but, quoting again D. Reddy (see above), “inner personal experience… could .. be communicated and others could repeat the process and progress in themselves and thus validate the truth of the statements”. In my opinion, this is important.
You then said: ‘we can’t know for certain what these men actually said… ‘ I cannot see how this is a problem. Even if you had been present during one of their sat-sangs, is there a guaranty that the translator transmitted acurately the words spoken by them? The issue of the need for a guru or guide is something else, but even here there is no full consensus among those who venture to give an opinion.
Dear Martin,
I did not write “we can’t know what these men actually said”; I wrote that we can’t know what they experienced.
More broadly though, I wonder if we humans have a predilection to complicate things, since simplicity is . . . well . . . too simple.
After all what is it that all scriptures and sages say?
1. ‘I’, the ego is transient; it came out of nowhere and it will disappear. Everything that happens, all that we think is important, is of no consequence.
2. Suffering (my own and the world’s) is a result of the ego, the image I carry of myself, and its attempt to seek security from this transiency.
3. The ego is not real – because it is transient and critically, because it is simply a function of the programming / conditioning we have gone through
4. In reality ‘I’ am not separate from all there is (common sense, basic science and quantum physics all also scream out this point). I am the world and the world is me.
5. So if I can eliminate the false assumption of a ‘me’, then life happens day by day, in freedom. Easier said than done, but that is the goal of viveka and vairagya.
Does the above miss anything essential from the jnana that we pursue? Isn’t this the only quest – giving up the ego. All the rest – relative vs absolute truth, rebirth, eka jiva vada and aneka jiva vada, reflections of consciousness, etc are all just models to appease the ego-mind that keeps objecting to this simplicity.
The only point that may be missing in the above is that ‘I’ am pure consciousness. But is this extra piece of knowledge – over and above the falsity of, and the need to dissolve, the ego – critical to being jivanmukta?
But the conundrum is this giving up of the ego can only be done by itself. No one else can do it, but being in the presence of one who has no ego, may well be salutary. But as Nisargadatta said, our ego just does not want to go quietly into the night. His words bear repeating:
“Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see, because you want the dream to continue, a day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and will be willing to pay any price; the price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream itself.”
Best wishes,
venkat
Venkat, you say that the quest is giving up the ego, not an easy task. I think there is a moment when one gets tired of that fight – which is, was or became a kind of obssession – everything having been repeatedly explained to one and the lesson understood and assimilated: ‘it is just a wrong identification due to avidya’… then not fearing any longer that it is the ego which is deceiving one (which what it does is nothing else than feeding the obssession, the illusion). It is said that the ego – that phantom – does not want to die (as if it had a will of its own!). Can one fight the ego with the ego? This at least is what appears to be the import of what you write: ‘this giving up of the ego can only be done by itself’.
I know you like to quote Sri Atmananda (me too). He goes about it – getting rid of the ego – in a subtle way, at times even calling it an allay or friend; or saying that it is not a problem. In Note #957 he says that the best way of “killing the ego” is basically ignoring it, and I think we all have heard this salutary advice more than once. Similar quotatons are #126,152, 945,1004.
Martin
Dropping ego can be as simple as what Baba told Butch:
Butch: Baba, I have done everything – Scriptures Shravana, Manana etc. I know damn well that I have to drop my ego but I do not know how to!
Baba: You recently quit your old job?
Butch: Yes, I did.
Baba: Were you thinking about quitting?
Butch: Yes for a while
Baba: Did you show up to your old place of work while you were thinking about it?
Butch: Yes!
Baba: Now do you go back to your old place of work everyday?
Butch: No, I don’t
Baba: You don’t go back to your old place of work anymore?
Butch: Yes!
Baba: So, you completely stopped going back to your old place of work!
Butch: Yes!
Baba: What process, system or algorithm did you use to stop going back to your old place of work?
Butch: None, I simply don’t go there any more!
Vijay
Some Good Reads with reference to the main topic of Science and Consciousness:
1. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy by Evan Thompson, Columbia University Press, 2015, pp: 496 ISBN-13: 978-0231137096
A great book, just published.
Prof. E. Thompson, though discusses Neuroscientific developments mainly from an angle of Buddhist philosophy, he devotes considerable pages to Advaitic viewpoint, upanishadic teachings etc. I found the Chapter on Deep sleep particularly enlightening. He suggests that what we understand by deep sleep in Neuroscientific terms may not exactly be the same as what the Vedantins convey by ‘sushupti.’ Prof. Evans, quoting Gaudapada and Shankara, points out that the ‘seed sleep’ (sushupti) which is contemplatively arrived at to be different from the phenomenological deep sleep.
I unhesitatingly recommend the book, if you are inclined to chew into it.
2. Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? (21 Jan 2015) – A long article in Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness
3. Can science ever explain consciousness? ( 26 Feb 2012) – Audio of about 37 min.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2012/feb/27/science-weekly-podcast-consciousness
4. Keeping an open mind about consciousness research – 27 Jan 2015 New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26862-keeping-an-open-mind-about-consciousness-research.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|brain#.VMmAfsstHIV
regards,