Objects, entities, things, matter, materia, reality, substance, stuff . . .

[Jack]

In the West notably we have Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus and a few others who treat the external world as a manifestation of Maya--both its projecting and veiling powers.  After the arrival of Christianity philosophers begin to treat the world as an independent existent.  Matter seems to be important to Christians.  The resurrection of the body.  The body and blood of Christ.  Still God created the universe out of nothing.  And the natural philosopher Paul Davies some years ago remarked: It would appear the universe is structured nothingness.  A French poet remarked once, God created the world out of nothing, and the nothing is showing through.  In any case matter is IN.  To be in the Flow now means being a materialist.  The mind is in the brain.  The brain is in a body that the brain in that body represents to the mind in a body the brain portrays to it.  This is the modern labyrinth that is not easy to get out of.  Just where is the mind located if it is located in a body which that mind shows itself?  Is it in that body or the body hidden behind the appearances?  Is one of the bodies only an imagining?   In any case one can chase one's tail for a long time and not get anywhere.

FMW distinguishes between object and thing.  Shankara calls the world unreal when it is veiwed as independent of Brahman,  Moving the awareness to the subject involves detaching it from the object.  This can be difficult.  Psychologically the more one is attached to and identified with their body the more they resist the subject --  because it means going into the subconscious which is scary and not entirely accepted in the West yet.  Kind of like a neglected basement full of old toys, bicycles, cardboard boxes, cob webs and spiders and maybe even a few snakes . . . the windows are dirty and there is very little light.  A sign says: Stay out. 

Let's start with an orange.  According to Locke the real orange is neither orange nor sweet.  And yet that is what we mean by orange.  However, he allows us to keep its feeling of weight and its solidity.  It is not too difficult to get rid of those as well.  Given our human instinctive needs and our bodies we will perceive the world in a certain basic way.  Add to that language and concepts and we will see it rather differently.  Now add in talents and interests and again the perception will transform.  Practice Zen and again a change.  The temptation to become an immaterialist can be great.  Kant solved the problem by postulating the noumenal.  And then he cheated a little by saying that it was the support of the phenomenal.  Well, there must be something out there.  Part of the problem is that out there is also in the mind according to Kant.  As Dr. Wolff points on in CONSCIOUSNESS-WITHOUT-AN-OBJECT we can not put anything outside of consciousness--meaningfully.  Hence, object instead of thing.  So what is going on when the clock runs down?  I forget the clock entirely, and it does not get wound.  What mysterious events are going on with what mysterious stuff?  Maya projects a clock.  Maya veils the activity of the clock and the mind that is questioning its behavior.  The clock stops ticking. To be continued.

[Jack]

Kosmos, universe, Mind, world, these are terms often to used to suggest the sum total of everything, every object, the all.  These point to the vast realm of differentiated consciousness, or all the forms that might become objects of consciousness. 

Pure undifferentiated Consciousness is not normally considered to exist.  Not so long ago a professor of philosophy scoffed at the idea of consciousness without an object.  All consciousness has an object.  This is not the same as all triangles have three sides.  But it is a kind of axiom.  But like the parallel axiom. 

Now awareness is always busy in the waking state traveling from one form to another.  From the taste of an orange to the sound of a dog barking to a thought of tomorrow or a memory of yesterday to feelings and sensations.  With luck to some higher experience of deep feeling or a superconscious realization.  In sleep it travels into dream worlds,

When awareness over time probes the question of 'who am I' and seriously pursues the answer it eventually becomes aware only of itself and then dissolves into its Source of Pure Undifferentiated Consciousness!!  Though this is brief from an outer point of view this timeless event so effects awareness that it is transformed, and as it travels back to normal consciousness it knows something very special.  Namely, that the Mind is not the whole show.  In fact that the Mind or Universe can be transcended. 

We can say Great Space and objects, or Brahman and Maya; or Siva and Sakti.  One experience of nirvikalpa samadhi is however not usually enough to wean the awareness completely from its old haunts.  It may take years for the vasanas or dynamic impulses to quiet down and allow for total Realization to occur.