Tag Archives: mind

Science and the nature of absolute reality (Part 2)

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Although science is good at investigating objects, even there it is doomed to fail – because the essence of objects, too, is ultimately the same non-dual reality. As Atmananda Krishna Menon puts it, in his ‘Notes on Spiritual Discourses’: “As long as the least trace of subjectivity remains, objectivity cannot disappear. And until objectivity disappears completely, the real nature of the object can never be visualized. This is the fundamental error committed by science as well as philosophy, both in India and outside, in trying to approach the Truth through the medium of the mind.” (Vol 3 Notes, 1386)

Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda: Volumes 1, 2 and 3, Shri Atmananda and Nitya Tripta, Non-Duality Press 2009, ISBN 978-0956309129 (Vol 1) Buy from Amazon US or Amazon UK. Continue reading →

Mind Reifies Or Deifies

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Mind occupies a significant place in the teaching of Vedanta philosophy.

All the talk of liberation pertains to the mind only.  Maîtri Upanishad (VI-34-11) holds mind to be central for the liberation or bondage of human beings.  amRitabindu Upanishad (mantra 2) makes it further clear stating that “the mind engrossed in objects of senses leads to bondage but the same mind free from attachment to objects leads to liberation.”

But what is this mind?

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Where the mind cannot reach (Q. 307)

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Q: I am allowing life to teach me as I go through it, but I’m not finding it easy.  Most of the time I feel I don’t want to even speak because I feel nothing I say is ‘correct’.  At the same time, however, I feel that even if I do speak, whatever I say would not be ‘wrong’ because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ do not exist.  Words and concepts are a massive hindrance to my understanding, yet I cannot overcome them.

 I want to say that I know that everything is Brahman, but then something says, ‘you can’t ‘know’ that everything is Brahman because that cannot be known with the mind’, so I’m always hitting a wall. Continue reading →

Dennis: Free Will (Part 4)

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“The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one’s thoughts as the cause of the act.” Daniel Wegner, quoted in the excellent book: Consciousness: an Introduction, Susan Blackmore, Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-19-515343-X. Buy from Amazon US or UK.

The scientific views that are often cited in respect of these discussions stem from experiments conducted by Benjamin Libet in the late 1970’s and by Daniel Wegner in the 1990’s. I described these in my books ‘How to Meet Yourself’ and ‘Back to the Truth’. Since very few people have actually read the former, I will quote at length from that: Continue reading →