Part conscious of its separation from the Whole

Part is conscious of its separation from the Whole. Youtube video

Sensory Experience and Reality

Perception through senses is illusion. For example it is illusion when a person thinks a rope to be a snake experiences snake and not the rope. This experience of the rope as a snake is reality. The rope is the absolute reality. Here distinction is to be made between reality and absolute reality. In vedic terms, nature of the world is looked into through the individual perspective and his subjective experience.


Everything that a human experience is reality and truth. This in Sanskrit is referred to as “vyavaharika Satya”. It is to be remembered that Vedas do not label human experiences to be “false”. The correct interpretation of this term in English could be “illusion”. Moving on the Vedas also recognize the truths which are not experienced through senses but are known to the individual. There are things which the individual will not deny whether or not the same is experienced through senses. These are things which he simply knows. These are not known through experience through senses. In English this could also be termed “apriori knowledge”. These are from the individual perspective undeniable irrespective of how it is perceived by others. These could also be called “truth for truth sake”. These are also called “Parmardika satya” or “absolute reality” in Vedas and Upanishads. In terms of Vedas this reality or truth is the objective reality since its awareness is known to the individual not through senses and the experience obtained through them but it is known.


The above example of rope and snake should not be interpreted out of the context. In the example, rope is assumed to be reality and snake to be illusion. But in vedic terms, both the perception of rope to be snake and the perception of rope itself are illusions. In the example, if the rope does not exist then the individual would not perceive the snake. Here since rope is absolute reality it is the basis for another reality although not absolute which is “illusion of snake”. The point being made is absolute reality is always the basis for “reality” or truth is the basis for “illusion”. When there is no absolute reality there is no reality.


Similar to Descartes assertion that whatever is not 100% reliable all the time is not reliable at all and needs to be rejected in toto, Vedas reject all the ‘perception of the world as human experience through senses’ as illusion. But the point of difference here between Vedas and Descartes is that while Vedas recognize human experience as” illusion” or “maya” Des cartes almost labels human experience to be false. Vedas accept illusion as accepted truth i.e the truth which is experienced but which is not actually the truth. Whereas Des cartes does not assert what is truth Vedas assert that all that which human being is ‘aware’ (which the individual can never deny but also cannot prove through senses) without relying on experiences generated through humans senses is the absolute reality.


All of the above concludes that the modern perception of reality is diametrically opposite to the vedic perception. Objective reality in Vedic sense is that reality which is not perceived by senses and experience generated by them. Whereas in the modern scientific sense it is what is perceived through senses and additionally verified by other means of proof (instead relying entirely on senses). The absolute reality in vedic sense becomes “false hood” or “illusion” in the modern sense of reality.


The “objectiveness” in the modern sense is entirely based on senses which both Descartes and Vedas discard. Scientific experiments claim not to be based entirely on senses in so far as the experiments provide data and conclusions are drawn based on data. However, it is the human mind which perceives the data, analyzes it and draws conclusions. Therefore scientific experiments also fall within “perception of senses”. Objectivity in the vedic sense is non dependence on human experience generated by human senses. That which is independent of human senses and the experience generated by them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Reality

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it
happen.

—- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in succession, in
division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole;
the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and
whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect
in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the
spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece,
as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are
shining parts, is the soul.

— The Over-Soul from Essays: First Series
(1841), Ralph Waldo Emerson

I and Not I

Two pre conditions to experience are the experiencer and the thing experienced. Thus experience verifies the existence of duality in the world we live in. ‘I’ have been continuously experiencing the world around me through my senses. I am strolling in a garden and when I see a ‘snake’ I experience the ‘snake’ through my eyes, may be smell etc.. Similarly, when I am sitting on seashore I experience cold breeze across my face. My skin lets me experience the cold breeze. This is a proof of my ‘separation’ or ‘distinctiveness’ from cold breeze and the snake. For when I am a thing I cease to experience the thing. When i am outside the ‘whole’ I can experience the whole but when I become part of the whole (‘dissolve’) I am the whole and so I cease to experience the whole. I was born with inbuilt tuners which always let me experience the world around me. Even if I had not grown up in a civilized society I can still experience the things around me and may call them by different names.

The key point being I was not naturally born with an ability to cease experience which I am experiencing continuously since my mind began perception of things. Will I ever be able to cease my ‘experience ‘?

I had posed this question because advaita teaches me to dissolve in Brahman (whole of the universe). If at all I do loose my experience it means ‘I’ becomes ‘everything’ . I am the soil, rock, pebble,air,space, vaccum, shit or piss or flesh or other human or animal or gold or machine and anything and everything. It could also mean ‘I’ cease to be a distinct entity. The fundamental principle of identity or ego or Jeevatman is – ‘ he is what he is and not anything else.’ As long as I experience the world around me I am a distinct entity which is not the thing being experienced by me. But the moment I become everything I violate the principle enunciated in the preceding sentence. I become what I become and everything else. Experience is a function of experience and the thing experienced. In otherwords, it is a process applicable to duality of the world (I and not i).

I experiences not I through process of experience facilitated by senses. When there is only I and no not I then there is no thing to be experienced. Moving away from the individual perspective, if the whole universe is a sub set of other smaller things can each of these subsets be individual things and also the world at the same time? Can a monitor of a laptop be a monitor (part) and also a laptop (whole) at the same time? If a laptop is a union of monitor, keyboard, harddrive and ram and other constitutent parts then can a laptop be a laptop without the monitor or key board or any of its parts? Can a drop of water added to the ocean be still a drop of water or does it becomes the ocean? Can there be an ocean (not referring to existence) if ocean is nothing but a pool of individual drops of water? Can an elephant be its trunk and at the same time the elephant? This question goes to root of what we think a thing is.


If I see a new being with two legs and 10 heads and two tails and with changing face and I name it ‘x’ is it right to call the same being ‘x’ when I separated one of the tails of this being? If I do think it is right to call it ‘x’ even after the removal of its tail then am I not self contradicting my own definition or description of what a thing is? Anyway, the question which remains is can a thing be a thing and also some other thing at the same time? If it can will it be able to experience the other thing?

Experience of I

I exist and therefore I experience the outside physical world. If I do not exist the world does not exist. But before anyone can jump in to interrupt my sentence as being “subjective” I ‘ll put them the following questions:

1. How do you know a physical thing is separate from you or another thing?
2. What makes you believe that you are not the rock or pebble, dog or tree, or mud or sand or whatever which you think you are not?
3. Does a dead man experience the things which are not him?

To feel that you exist automatically means the following characteristics of “I”

1. ·You are not so many other things.
2. You know what you are not.
3. You have the capacity to “experience” these “so many other things” which for some reason you know you are not. Let me make these statements more clear with some analogies. If there is only one single entity and no other thing, can this single thing experience the world? The answer is very obvious it can’t.

Some may ask why can’t this single entity experience the world. Answer to this lies in the question which implies that there is no world other than the single entity. The single entity is all that exists and all that encompasses and all that is. Imagine a situation where there is nothing but you alone..to the extreme point. To the point where there is no space, no vacuum, no object other than you. In this case, you will not “experience” anything as you are the only thing that exist and you are everything .(like in a bus with capacity of 20 seats if you are the only passenger, then you are not only the only passenger but also everyone who is a passenger in the bus at the time).

The theory of non duality is exactly the non existence of second entity other than you. Here people who read science cannot imagine a situation where there exists nothing. Because to them there is always something like a vacuum or space if there is no “thing”. Advaita says that to feel and experience the world is consciousness or the feeling of “I” (other names include “ego”, identity of self etc). For no reason humans know what they are not. To identify and differentiate all things which you are not with what you are is first characteristic of a living thing.Now, I do not know if animals can experience and see things differently. And it does not matter here since I know at least one thing…I know what I am and what I am not.

What am i? I do not know exactly. But it is easy for me to know what I am not. I simply know (apriori knowledge) that I am not a phone, glass or shoe or shirt or cat or crow or whatever. So my nature (or the nature of I or consciousness or feeling of existence) tells me what I am not but it does not tell me what I am. But for some reason I am interested in experiencing the world that is not me (as told to me by my conscious or to put in better way I told myself ). Or in knowing what other things are (in the domain of modern science).

Then there is another dimension to this theory. If you know what you are not does your body is included among the list of “things which you are not”? Yes I am not the body. People may ask how do you know you are not your body? My answer is “the same way I know that I am not a crow.” But don’t I feel there is some thing different from your body and other things which you are not? Yes, certainly there is a huge difference between my body and other things which I am not. I can feel and experience immediately which touch or affect my body. You pinch me I ‘ll feel the pain of it immediately. But if you pinch my cat I can only think that my cat will feel pain. I can utmost empathize with the feeling another living being when it is pinched or hurt. 

But this is based on my own experience and not based on what other being or thing experiences. This makes me feel that my body is unique to me and my self. It lets me experience the world. Do I exist if the body is destroyed or has become incapacitated in some of its senses? I am not hundred percent certain of the statement I am going to make because I have not experienced death till date. But I feel on death of the body I cease to exist because I no more “experience” the world with my body (senses of the body). 

But does feeling of “I” let you experience the world through body or is it body that lets you experience “I” by feeding you with images and experiences of the world? This question also raises the point if the body is essential for experiencing “I” are you not the body?

Quotable Quotes of Aristotle

Experience

Now from memory experience is produced in men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the individual that is to be cured.

But yet we think that knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience
(which implies that Wisdom depends in all cases rather on knowledge); and this because the former know the cause, but the latter do not. For men of experience know that the thing is so,but do not know why, while the others know the ‘why’ and the cause.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Senses And Experience

Again, we do not regard any of the senses as Wisdom; yet surely these give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. But they do not tell us the ‘why’ of anything.Eg. why fire is hot; they only say that it is hot.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Superiority of Art over Science

that he who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is wise (sense-perception is common to all, and therefore easy and no mark of Wisdom). Also, that which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of Wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results, and the superior science is more of the nature of Knowledge

--Metaphysics, Aristotle.

Knowing the Objective from the Subjective

For learning proceeds for all in this way-through that which is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from what is good for each and make what is without qualification good good for each, so it is our task to start from what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself. Now what is knowable and primary for particular sets of people is often knowable to a very small extent, and has little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which is barely knowable but knowable to oneself, and try to know what is knowable without qualification, passing, as has been said, by way of those very things which one does know.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Ways of knowing a thing (so and so and not so not so)

But if there are several sciences of the causes, and a different science for each different principle, which of these sciences should be said to be that which we seek, or which of the people who possess them has the most scientific knowledge of the object in question?

For since men may know the same thing in many ways, we say that former class itself one knows more fully than another, and he knows most fully who knows what a thing is, not he who knows its quantity or quality or what it can by nature do or have done to it. And further in all cases also we think that the knowledge of each even of the things of which demonstration is possible is present only when we know what the thing is, e.g. what squaring a rectangle is, viz. that it is the finding of a mean; and similarly in all other cases. And we know about becomings and actions and about every change when we know the source of the movement; and this is other than and opposed to the end.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Science and Axioms

If there is a demonstrative science which deals with them, there will have to be an underlying kind, and some of them must be demonstrable attributes and others must be axioms (for it is impossible that there should be demonstration about all of them); for the demonstration must start from certain premisses and be about a certain subject and prove certain attributes. Therefore it follows that all attributes that are proved must belong to a single class; for all demonstrative sciences use the axioms.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Job of philosopher

But if the science of substance and the science which deals with the axioms are different, which of them is by nature more authoritative and prior? The axioms are most universal and are principles of all things. And if it is not the business of the philosopher, to whom else will it belong to inquire what is true and what is untrue about them

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Axiom
Eg: One is the maxim of Thucydides

that the strong do as they wish while the weak suffer as they must.

Is matter the truth of a thing?

The word 'substance' is applied, if not in more senses, still at least to four main objects; for both the essence and the universal and the genus, are thought to be the substance of each thing, and fourthly the substratum. Now the substratum is that of which everything else is predicated, while it is itself not predicated of anything else. And so we must first determine the nature of this; for that which underlies a thing primarily is thought to be in the truest sense its substance. And in one sense matter is said to be of the nature of substratum, in another, shape, and in a third, the compound of these.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Can matter be perceived?

For if this is not substance, it baffles us to say what else is. When all else is stripped off evidently nothing but matter remains. For while the rest are affections, products, and potencies of bodies, length, breadth, and depth are quantities and not substances (for a quantity is not a substance), but the substance is rather that to which these belong primarily. But when length and breadth and depth are taken away we see nothing left unless there is something that is bounded by these; so that to those who consider the question thus matter alone must seem to be substance. By matter I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined.

--Metaphysics, Aristotle

Do words describe things in whole?

We must no doubt inquire how we should express ourselves on each point, but certainly not more than how the facts actually stand. the truth being that we use the word neither ambiguously nor in the same sense, but just as we apply the word 'medical' by virtue of a reference to one and the same thing, not meaning one and the same thing, nor yet speaking ambiguously; for a patient and an operation and an instrument are called medical neither by an ambiguity nor with a single meaning, but with reference to a common end.

-Metaphysics, Aristotle

Infinity of Physical World

Is there any place where there is no physical world? To understand my question let me tell you what i think the physical world is made up of.It includes everything the five human senses can perceive. It includes vaccum orspace etc also. Physical world in terms of this defintion exists at the smallest sub atomic particle known to humans to the biggest cosmic being or thing.(strictly physical and not virtual or imaginary)

If we consider two directions to view the physical world, One being the bigger and biggest and the other the smaller and the smallest;can there be a stage or point where the physical world stops or comes to end? Or is it Infinity in both directions? One finds smaller and smaller particles or other physical things by whatever name they are called as one goes looking deeper and deeper into the physical structure of a being. If we take humans, we are made up of skin, bones blood etc; the things which are apparent to normal eye and within the immediate grasp of humans. But then if we take blood and what it is made up of..there is no end how far you can go deeper. Blood is made up of x,y,z components. These X,Y.Z components are made of xy,yz,xy componets. And these are made up of further components etc. I believe the list can go to infinity. Similarly, if we examine the bigger bodies..like say human beings are part of Earth's environment. Earth's environment in turn is part of Earth. Earth is part of cosmic bodies....to infinity.

If this is the case what makes humans discriminate between things? To be more specific how can humans discriminate between one thing and another? Or how can human know if x is human and y is tree and x and y are not the same or if x is not part of y? or y is not part of x?