A challenge to the modern scientific view of the self.

[Dalek Prime]

Personally, I think cognitive therapy works as well, if not better, in 'righting' one's mind. Consider it distilled meditation ie. purposeful meditation on poor automatic thinking.

[Belinda]

I understand and hope to remember all of them except for this : while I do understand tranquility to be good and I once felt that disinterested tranquility as a spontaneous and very brief event , I nevertheless do wonder if that tranquility is available only to an elite who have the time and opportunity to do exercises of some sort in order to attain it. I cannot see how it's possible to experience a mood simply because one believes the blessed mood of tranquility to be a good thing.

There is a difference between disinterested and detached when the word is used in Sanskrit. Detached is something like separated, not disinterested. I believe it is possible to achieve that state more through introspection than by exercises. Observing our own anger, fear, frustrations, how our bodies feel when we are actually in that state, observing how we come to certain conclusions, things like that help in understanding ourselves and therefore understanding others. At least that is the line I am adopting, since I don't believe in any higher consciousness or soul or any such thing. Let us see how it goes. I don't know if it will work, but there is no harm in trying and I do see certain encouraging changes in myself and my emotional state since the last few years.

Sthitapragya, thanks again for your helpful comment. Your advice is similar to that of Spinoza's theory of existence which is a form of substance monism. Substance monism underlies the Indian philosophy which we are discussing despite souls. Spinoza's metaphysics can accommodate the idea of Atman - Brahman by way of what he calls the view from eternity.

In particular Spinoza recommends the use of reason for providing insight into and control over "the passions" .

You say that you don't believe in "any higher consciousness or soul or any such thing" . I take this to mean that you don;t believe in any supernatural substance. However, I guess that you would agree that Atman and Brahman are not supernatural but are an alternative view of the natural world which can be viewed either from then perspective of eternity or the perspective of time and relativity.

I do hope that you are right about its being possible to attain that state by introspection, as this would disarm my suspicion that the Indian philosophy is elitist; anybody can, in theory anyway, use reasoning insight into their unrefined emotions.

[sthitapragya]

You say that you don't believe in "any higher consciousness or soul or any such thing" . I take this to mean that you don;t believe in any supernatural substance. However, I guess that you would agree that Atman and Brahman are not supernatural but are an alternative view of the natural world which can be viewed either from then perspective of eternity or the perspective of time and relativity.

I do hope that you are right about its being possible to attain that state by introspection, as this would disarm my suspicion that the Indian philosophy is elitist; anybody can, in theory anyway, use reasoning insight into their unrefined emotions.

The point about the atman and brahman is that whether you believe in them or not, the way Hinduism describes them suggests that even if they exist and even if one might get in touch with them, it can be of little use in real life. In fact,the more I read the more I find that every Hindu scripture is ultimately shouting from the roof tops that the search for peace essentially begins with introspection. The only thing is no one is listening.

When they say focus on the self, they literally mean focus on the self not the 'S'elf (which takes on a whole new meaning unfortunately). So instead of focusing on how to understand the self, people seem to have interpreted it to mean how to understand the soul. The Gita, which is one of the main texts of Hinduism today makes it clear that the soul is eternal, indesctructible and immutable and that should settle the issue once and for all for everyone. It directly implies that all the disquiet we feel is in the mind and therefore our focus should be on the mind body instead of the soul which is in the state of eternal bliss or nirvana or whatever one chooses to call it.

You can try it out yourself. The next time you feel some extreme emotion (fear, anger, frustration), just remind yourself to study all the various feelings that course through your body at that time. Try and feel which muscles tense up, what kind of unpleasant feelings you get in which part of your body. The act of observation will immediately make you a spectator and you will actually feel the tense muscles relax and the unpleasant feelings disappear. The very act of observation reveals things about yourself which you never knew. The more you observe your own self, I promise you, the more you will be amazed at know little we know ourselves.

[Belinda]

Sthitapragya, I do agree about your description of how to introspect in order to accomplish tranquility; it's the basis of so-called mindfulness meditation, (which may be a misleading title). However, I also want to fit my idea of Atman-Brahman to my idea of what is true in the sphere of religion and ethics.

I quote from my contribution ( quoting someone else) on another current conversation on this forum:

I'd like to say that "continuously recreated(a becoming, not a being)" is a practical and beneficial description of god for people today.

The Christian-Muslim-Judaic God has two aspects, the temporal immanent aspect, and the eternal transcendent aspect.
The eternal transcendent aspect of this God includes how what 'he' wants is for us to carry out in fine detail i.e. 'his' preferred moral system.

Atman-Brahman by contrast is I gather not personal as is God. Brahman is not supernatural substance but is an alternative view of the natural a view in which the natural is viewed from eternity not time-change. Therefore I do fear that Atman-Brahman is unduly fatalistic, and as fatalistic is conservative. Conservative even in the political sense leading to the well known social problem of the Indian caste system.

Do you think that there is a problem with Krishna's advice to Arjuna, on the grounds that Arjuna was more than the warrior that tradition had made of him , and that Arjuna could possibly buck the trend?

[prothero]

The Christian-Muslim-Judaic God has two aspects, the temporal immanent aspect, and the eternal transcendent aspect.
The eternal transcendent aspect of this God includes how what 'he' wants is for us to carry out in fine detail i.e. 'his' preferred moral system.

Atman-Brahman by contrast is I gather not personal as is God. Brahman is not supernatural substance but is an alternative view of the natural a view in which the natural is viewed from eternity not time-change. Therefore I do fear that Atman-Brahman is unduly fatalistic, and as fatalistic is conservative. Conservative even in the political sense leading to the well known social problem of the Indian caste system.

There are many tensions in religious conceptions.
The degree of transcendence versus the degree of immanence is one.
The eternal versus the temporal aspect of the divine is another.
The personal versus the non personal aspect of the divine makes a third major area.
I regard religion as a personal matter and everyone (with interest) needs to address these conflicts in forming their own religious worldview. Of course the non religious need not consider these matters at all.

[Belinda]

Actually, I'm hoping that Sthitapragya will reassure me as to my doubts about how Atman-Brahman, the eternal soul, may be a fatalistic faith.

In any case, atman cannot be self as there is a multitude of selfs each different from all the others. If atman is eternal Brahman then it cannot also possess personal attributes.

[OuterLimits]

What Sagan or another physicalist can say is that his neighbor is composed of physical matter and laws and nothing else. What is often overlooked is that far from describing that person's "self" as material, physicalism does away with the fantasy that the other person has a self, or consciousness, or that it is indeed "like" anything to be that person. Everything in that dear category of other minds is relegated to fiction - something in the mind of the beholder - by the reductionist physical approach. Humanist atheists physicalists would like to elevate human consciousness and human dignity, to apply ethics to human behavior, but the physicalism honestly works against that.

[prothero]

Actually, I'm hoping that Sthitapragya will reassure me as to my doubts about how Atman-Brahman, the eternal soul, may be a fatalistic faith.

In any case, atman cannot be self as there is a multitude of selfs each different from all the others. If atman is eternal Brahman then it cannot also possess personal attributes.

There seem to be many different schools of thought in Hinduism, some quite fatalistic, others much less so. True the notion of karma entails some degree of fate, but one can through ones actions alter their karma and eventually escape the endless cycle of rebirth and achieve nirvana or moshka.

My impression is what we usually think of as our "self", "I", "ego" is not the "atman" (the true self, the divine which dwells within). The "ego" (notion of an individual self and the restless mind) is distracted by the temporal world of flux, change, impermanence, the senses all of which are a form of "illusion" or maya and distracts us from the true self (identical with the Brahman which is immortal and eternal). Thus I understand meditation and yoga to be methods which remove the distractions and desires of the world of "maya" and help one to focus and get in touch with the true self "atman" which dwells within. Is that your understanding?

[sthitapragya]

Atman-Brahman by contrast is I gather not personal as is God. Brahman is not supernatural substance but is an alternative view of the natural a view in which the natural is viewed from eternity not time-change. Therefore I do fear that Atman-Brahman is unduly fatalistic, and as fatalistic is conservative. Conservative even in the political sense leading to the well known social problem of the Indian caste system.

Do you think that there is a problem with Krishna's advice to Arjuna, on the grounds that Arjuna was more than the warrior that tradition had made of him , and that Arjuna could possibly buck the trend?

The Hindu story behind creation is something like this. First there was nothing just an all pervading Consciousness. The Consciousness thought, "I am one. Let me be many." And that is how the universe came into being. The brahman is impersonal and literally everywhere and is definitely supernatural.

The problem with HInduism is the wide variety of beliefs and cultures that are connected with it. You will find that no one worships the Brahman. They worship the deities who are essentially in contradiction with the concept of Brahman. It is this worship of the lesser deities and the rules created by the brahmins ( not be be confused with Brahman) that led to the caste system. The caste system is a purely political animal created by the brahmins to control the system. It has nothing to do with the Atman Brahman unity which is something most Hindus don't even study.

I don't understand what you mean by the atman brahman unity being fatalistic. You might need to elaborate on that and also on which advice to Arjuna you are talking about.

[sthitapragya]

Actually, I'm hoping that Sthitapragya will reassure me as to my doubts about how Atman-Brahman, the eternal soul, may be a fatalistic faith.

In any case, atman cannot be self as there is a multitude of selfs each different from all the others. If atman is eternal Brahman then it cannot also possess personal attributes.

I see what you mean by fatalistic. I can assure you the study of the vedantas is not fatalistic at all. In fact, it is completely liberating as the Brahman comes across as completely impersonal and has not determined the future, since it has never interfered in creation. However, these messages are lost in the larger politically motivated side of deity worshiping Hinduism.

So yes, the atman is eternal Brahman and therefore does not possess any personal attributes, which is in direct contradiction of the concept of karma which again is a creation of the deity worshiping part of Hinduism.

[Belinda]

Actually, I'm hoping that Sthitapragya will reassure me as to my doubts about how Atman-Brahman, the eternal soul, may be a fatalistic faith.

In any case, atman cannot be self as there is a multitude of selfs each different from all the others. If atman is eternal Brahman then it cannot also possess personal attributes.

I see what you mean by fatalistic. I can assure you the study of the vedantas is not fatalistic at all. In fact, it is completely liberating as the Brahman comes across as completely impersonal and has not determined the future, since it has never interfered in creation. However, these messages are lost in the larger politically motivated side of deity worshiping Hinduism.

So yes, the atman is eternal Brahman and therefore does not possess any personal attributes, which is in direct contradiction of the concept of karma which again is a creation of the deity worshiping part of Hinduism.

If I remember right Krishna, before the battle, advised Arjuna that he was soldier first and foremost and that his immediate duty was to fight on the side of right, despite that his loved ones were on the other side.

After further thought this advice now seems to me to be exactly the same as that of Jesus when he tells people to follow him even if that means casting off parents.

When I compare Krishna's and Jesus' advice now I can see that Krishna's advice to Arjuna before the battle was not to support traditions at all it was quite the opposite, to follow the good even although that good was not traditional. Therefore my doubt was baseless, and Krishna, same as Jesus, was no Tory stick in the mud.
By the way I am not preaching a cult of either Krishna or Jesus, just saying how they were alike in their attitude towards the process of the good and how it is related to risk taking, personal pain, and hard work.

Prothero wrote:

My impression is what we usually think of as our "self", "I", "ego" is not the "atman" (the true self, the divine which dwells within). The "ego" (notion of an individual self and the restless mind) is distracted by the temporal world of flux, change, impermanence, the senses all of which are a form of "illusion" or maya and distracts us from the true self (identical with the Brahman which is immortal and eternal). Thus I understand meditation and yoga to be methods which remove the distractions and desires of the world of "maya" and help one to focus and get in touch with the true self "atman" which dwells within. Is that your understanding?

Yes, Prothero, that's my understanding. It seems to me therefore, that Atman-Brahman is nothing to do with the supposed avatar Krishna, whose advice like that of Jesus is utterly of this world and how to make it a better place. So are there two very different gods', the immanent and the transcendent? Atman-Brahman makes sense to me both metaphysically and psychologically, but is divorced from Krishna's this-world practical morality. The theist God is both transcendent and immanent and bridges the ontic gap by means of supposedly transcendent laws like Plato's.

[sthitapragya]

If I remember right Krishna, before the battle, advised Arjuna that he was soldier first and foremost and that his immediate duty was to fight on the side of right, despite that his loved ones were on the other side.

After further thought this advice now seems to me to be exactly the same as that of Jesus when he tells people to follow him even if that means casting off parents.

When I compare Krishna's and Jesus' advice now I can see that Krishna's advice to Arjuna before the battle was not to support traditions at all it was quite the opposite, to follow the good even although that good was not traditional. Therefore my doubt was baseless, and Krishna, same as Jesus, was no Tory stick in the mud.
By the way I am not preaching a cult of either Krishna or Jesus, just saying how they were alike in their attitude towards the process of the good and how it is related to risk taking, personal pain, and hard work.

Actually it is a little more layered than that. Krishna told Arjuna to follow his dharma and dharma has nothing to do with right and wrong as such. Arjuna was a warrior and therefore his dharma was to do battle. The fact that his opponents were family was of no consequence because Arjuna would be killing only their bodies since the soul is immortal. The issue of who is right or wrong was of no consequence once Arjuna had committed himself by coming to the battle field. It would have been against his dharma to quit then. Questioning what he was doing on the battlefield was wrong. He should have questioned himself before committing himself to fight. Even then he would have to choose a side. As a Kshatriya (warrior) his dharma was to battle. Added to this was the fact that he wasn't really killing anyone. Actually there is no comparison between Jesus and Krishna. Krishna is too layered to label in anyway at all. His is the single most fascinating character in mythology. He is actually sort of Jesus, Buddha, Eros and Shiva all rolled into one with a bit of Mars thrown in for good measure.

[Belinda]

Sthitapragya wrote:

Actually it is a little more layered than that. Krishna told Arjuna to follow his dharma and dharma has nothing to do with right and wrong as such. Arjuna was a warrior and therefore his dharma was to do battle. The fact that his opponents were family was of no consequence because Arjuna would be killing only their bodies since the soul is immortal. The issue of who is right or wrong was of no consequence once Arjuna had committed himself by coming to the battle field. It would have been against his dharma to quit then. Questioning what he was doing on the battlefield was wrong. He should have questioned himself before committing himself to fight. Even then he would have to choose a side. As a Kshatriya (warrior) his dharma was to battle. Added to this was the fact that he wasn't really killing anyone. Actually there is no comparison between Jesus and Krishna. Krishna is too layered to label in anyway at all. His is the single most fascinating character in mythology. He is actually sort of Jesus, Buddha, Eros and Shiva all rolled into one with a bit of Mars thrown in for good measure.

I'll have to tear up my previous draft and go back to basic planning, and this is going to take me a long time especially since I have set myself the task also of trying to understand Heidegger, and if possible sythesise somehting that makes sense. I am wondering if dharma is the same as facticity or 'thrownness'. Or if dharma is more like Zeus who raped Leda ;one picture of how the gods control us. Is dharma like fate manipulating the strings of puppets?

[prothero]

I would have thought of dharma more as doing your duty or being true to your nature, playing your role in the drama that is creation. Not as predestination or determination so much as freely accepting the task you have been assigned?

[Terrapin Station]

since I have set myself the task also of trying to understand Heidegger . . .

Just curious what the impetus is for that.

That time could be much better spent in my opinion, haha.