Online Study Group: Idols of the Mind vs. True Reality (2020)
Krishna Keshava Dasa
Krishna Keshava Dasa
Hegel's development of the insights of Aristotle and Kant is crucial to learn about when considering the origin and nature of consciousness and life, especially the difference between life and nonlife. In this regard, the first chapter of Idols of the Mind vs. True Reality (2020) by Bhakti Madhava Puri, Ph. D., presents Aristotle's development of dunamis, energia, and entelechy, and Hegel's further insight about inner teleology and his explanation of mechanical, chemical, and biological (teleological) systems. It seems valuable to consider the role that the rigid understanding (German: Verstandt) plays in modern science's commitment to the logical law of identity and the inappropriate wholesale application of mechanical logic to cells and organisms, and how progressing to dialectic reason (German: Vernunft) can serve to more honestly and comprehensively describe the holistic logic of identity-in-difference that characterizes living entities.
Topics throughout the rest of the book include (1) a historical account of scientists acknowledging the essential role of thought or intelligence governing macroscopic and microscopic material systems and the necessity for humility in recognizing this, (2) an explanation of how an a priori commitment to the logical law of identity led to the mathematization of nature and further mechanization of living entities and the issues thereof, and (3) a presentation of Hegel's explanation of consciousness being the subject-object relation where an account of all three moments of the knower (subject), known (object), and knowing (consciousness/subject-object relation) — and their higher development — is necessary for comprehensive and complete knowledge of nature and its truth as Spirit. Depending on the expressed level of interest, we will also discuss the implications for modern science regarding the idea that Spirit is the identity-in-difference of Absolute Thought and Being, as well as the relationship and distinction between Infinite Spirit and finite spirit.
UPDATED The following slides will guide the first part of our study: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1O2Q0Hg1nGn6tMgWKZ7mJSdhew7_BiylFTPmzxdo5L04/edit?usp=sharing
jim kowall
This is all very nice at a philosophical level, but recently, a very rigorous scientific and mathematical implementation of these ideas has become possible thanks to the holographic principle of quantum gravity, which for reasons I do not understand, has been ignored and continues to be ignored while all efforts are directed in a nebulous, amorphous, and poorly defined philosophical direction. Isn't it time to get more exact?
The only requirement for this kind of exact understanding is to give the holographic principle a valid interpretation. The fundamental assumption for this valid interpretation of the holographic principle is to assume the primordial existence of consciousness. In its primordial, timeless state, consciousness is undifferentiated, unchanging, unlimited and undivided, which we call the void. In its differentiated state, consciousness is called the observer. The observer is a focal point of differentiated consciousness that is always present at the central point of view of its own holographic world. The observer is a focal point of illuminating and perceiving consciousness that not only perceives objects in its own holographic world but also illuminates objects. The observer is the subject in the subject-object relation of perception. An object of perception is a form of information that appears in the observer's holographic world. That holographic world only appears to come into existence because the observer is undergoing accelerated motion relative to the motionless void. That accelerated motion gives rise to the observer's event horizon that surrounds the observer's central point of view and limits its observations of events in space. The observer's event horizon becomes its holographic screen when its horizon encodes qubits of information. In effect, the observer creates its own quantum computer that gives rise to the appearance of its own computer-generated virtual reality world.
In a computer-generated virtual reality, the form of everything perceivable is reducible to numbers, which are bits of information encoded on a computer screen. The situation in a holographic world is a bit more complicated than a classical computer since the bits of information are qubits or quantized bits of information encoded on a holographic screen that arises as an observer's event horizon due to its own accelerated motion. The qubits are entangled due to quantum entanglement. A computer network is created due to information sharing among overlapping holographic screens, each of which arises from an observer's accelerated motion and encodes information. Each observer is at the central point of view of its own holographic world, but shares in a consensual reality due to information sharing among overlapping screens. The observer's computer-generated virtual reality, which is its holographic world, is governed by a quantum computer, which allows for the expression of potentiality, not just classical determinism. What we call the laws of physics in a holographic world are only the computational rules that govern the operation of the quantum computer. The whole thing only begins with the observer's own accelerated motion that gives rise to its event horizon that becomes its holographic screen when qubits of information are encoded on its horizon.
The bottom line is that every object of perception is a form of information that can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on an observer's holographic screen, which arises as its event horizon due to its own accelerated motion. Everything perceivable is like a computer-generated image that is projected from the observer's screen to its central point of view and is animated in the flow of energy. The flow of energy can always be understood as arising from the observer's own accelerated motion.
The form of a person, which is an object of perception, can be reduced to numbers in terms of qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen. What I Am cannot be reduced to numbers. What I Am is what perceives the form of a person that is reducible to numbers and is being displayed on a holographic screen. The form of a person is computational in nature because it's like an image that's being displayed on a computer screen in a computer-generated holographic virtual reality. The form of a person is only a computer-generated construction that's reducible to numbers.
What I Am as the observer of that holographic world is not computational in nature and cannot be reduced to numbers because it is what perceives the projected and animated images of the form of a person that's being displayed on the screen from its own point of view outside the screen. That's why the expression I Am a person is a contradiction in terms. In reality, there is no person, only the projected and animated images of a holographic virtual reality world that's being displayed on a holographic screen. In reality, only the true nature of what I Am really exists and moves.
Ultimately, I am not even a focal point of illuminating and perceiving consciousness that arises at the central point of view of its own holographic world. The observer only appears to have its own individual existence as it arises at its own individual point of view at the center of its own holographic world. The observer only creates that holographic world due to its own accelerated motion relative to the motionless void. The source of that point of consciousness is the undifferentiated consciousness of the void.
When the accelerated motion of that point of consciousness relative to the motionless void comes to an end, which can be called an ultimate state of free-fall, the observer's holographic world disappears from existence from its own point of view since it no longer creates its own holographic screen in terms of information encoded on its own event horizon. In an ultimate state of free-fall, that focal point of consciousness dissolves back into the undifferentiated consciousness of the void like a drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean. The ocean of consciousness is the undifferentiated consciousness of the void, which is the source of the individual consciousness of the observer. The individual consciousness of the observer has to separate itself from the void and begin to move relative to the motionless void before its own holographic world can appear to come into existence from its own point of view.
All of these ideas can be formalized in terms of modern theoretical physics, which means they have the exactness of mathematical equations. See for example the work of Tom Banks in his article with Willy Fischler on Why the Cosmological Constant is a Boundary Condition: arXiv:1811.00130. Also see the pioneering article by Ted Jacobson on the Thermodynamics of Space-time: arXiv:gr-qc/9504004. Similar ideas are found in Amanda Gefter's recent book: Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. These ideas can be brought into perfect harmony with the concept of nonduality as most elegantly expressed by Nisargadatta Maharaj in his spiritual classic I Am That. There is absolutely nothing inconsistent between the concept of nonduality and the idea of the holographic principle. They fit together like a glove on a hand. Also take a look at my website: https://scienceandnonduality.wordpress.com/ where these ideas are further explored.
Isn't it time we stop talking about these things at a poorly defined philosophical level and start talking in terms of the hard mathematical science of theoretical physics?
Krishna Keshava Dasa
Dear respected Jim Kowall,
Namaste. Philosophy is rational thinking.
The sun appears to move from east to west by our senses. Reason tells us that the Earth is rotating about its own axis. Reason plays a more fundamental role in science than sense experience, and that is philosophy.
The dogmatism of non-dualism is irrational thought, for how does the indeterminate give rise to the determinate? It is mere dogmatism that has been argued about for centuries if not longer. It is incorrect, incomplete.
Your house remains there after you leave it. It is not a matter of sense perception but of rational thought.
To criticize philosophy without articulating which rational thought you have an issue with is merely whining, empty rhetoric with no content. We are prepared to discuss reason and evidence for whatever we are presenting. Mere dogmatic assertions can be easily refuted by further counter-dogmatic assertions, but that is not how the progress of knowledge is achieved.
We have already explained that if everything is different from everything else then they are all the same in that each is "different from all else." This is the identity of identity and difference, i.e. the principle of identity-in-difference. Monistic/nondual or dualistic approaches are incomplete and cannot handle this; dialectic epistemology and metaphysics is required. Dialectic rational thinking is not foreign to us. Hegel taught about the I that is We and the We that is I. Whenever we say "we," the "I" is never lost. The individual "I" is preserved and included within the collective "we." The "I" comes or is born from the "we." Just because the "we" is united does not mean that individuality does not persist. The universe (uni-verse) is unity-in-diversity. Unity implies that there are simultaneously many being joined or related under a singular.
Why are you still sleeping on the pillow of dogmatic oneness?
Humbly in service,
Krishna Keshava Das
Serving Assistant to Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph. D.
Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute
www.bviscs.org // linktr.ee/bviscs
Krishna Keshava Dasa
This is a reply to Jim Kowall’s message, attached to the bottom of this response.
Dear Jim Kowall
Namaste. Due to your approach totally lacking a thoughtful philosophical foundation, grounded in the necessary development of reason, your so-called science is nothing more than a castle in the sky plagued by blindly accepted, dogmatically asserted, self-refuting, beliefs.
You write: "My stand I take where nothing is."
Here you establish your being (I) as "taking" nothing as being something ["nothing is"]. You have contradicted yourself many times in one sentence.
Here you have an "I" in addition to nothing, and a consciousness that can somehow "take" its object. And you call this scientific? Can you prove this by experiment? Can you even call this rational thinking?
You write: "To know that nothing is, is true knowledge."
You seem to be oblivious to what you are actually saying [delusional]. By "nothing" a rational person understands "no thing" or otherwise "non-being." To assert that immediately "no thing is [a thing]" or "non being is being" - is not a product of understanding or knowledge.
As abstract or pure thought being and non-being are similarly indeterminate, but you take your stand [dogmatically] as an "I" opposed to [and consciously experience] nothing as an empirical object. Then you claim this "nothing" is "the source of consciousness." Do you think others will accept such decrees as truths simply because you said so?
This aggregate of poor assertions is not only dogmatic but irrational. If this is the basis of your science then we can understand why you are having serious trouble convincing any rational scientists.
Then you write: "If all you're relying on is your own thoughts, you can convince yourself of anything, no matter how logically inconsistent your thoughts become."
Thank you for stating your own problem so succinctly.
Your test of scientific merit is: "predictability...[is] the litmus test for any conceptual framework..."
Quantum gravity is the epitome of theoretical thinking. We know that predictions about events at the quantum level of 10-35 cannot be made given the limits of present accelerators. Furthermore, quantum systems possess inherent uncertainty and entanglements regarding future evolution so that they can only predict chaos. Good luck with your litmus test.
In the Bhagavad-gita, Song of God, Krishna tells us "I am the source of everything. Everything comes from Me."
God [or Krishna] is the Infinite, sum total of all realities. The finite created [manifested] beings can only glimpse a finite portion of the Infinite in a dazzling sunset, the immensity of the universe, the limitlessness of the infinitesimal.
God is the reservoir of all pleasure — everything — not nothing. Nothing is the Buddhist attempt to annihilate God by annihilating self and everything else, and claiming that nothing is the source of everything. But darkness cannot be the source of light, only light covered by an obstacle can be a source of light by removing the cover.
Our finite nature prevents us from perceiving the Infinite Godhead, just as the Sun appears to be covered by clouds from our finite point of view. It is not covered, our vision is covered. So too, the Buddhist monk with his no-God, no-self perspective is merely a finite spark of the wonderful variety of God's infinite manifestations. The greatest philosophers, the deepest devotees, and the greatest fools are all within the infinite potencies of God.
The unreal delusion of nothing as the potency of everything has no being. The reality of God as the infinite reservoir of all manifestations never ceases to be real.
Humbly in service,
Krishna Keshava Das
Serving Assistant to Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph. D.
Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute
www.bviscs.org // linktr.ee/bviscs
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Jim Kowall —
Dear Krishna Keshava Das
i am not sleeping on the pillow of dogmatic oneness. I simply make the distinction between the nature of a holographic world that appears to come into existence within consciousness from the source of consciousness.
Like Nisargadatta Maharaj, my stand I take where nothing is:
For the path of return naughting oneself is necessary. My stand I take where nothing is. To the mind it is all darkness and silence. It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery. It is, while all else merely happens. It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it disappears.
To know that nothing is, is true knowledge.
Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness.
In pure being consciousness arises. In consciousness the world appears and disappears. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. The center is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing. But the void is full to the brim. It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.
To be born means to create a world around yourself as the center. You are that point of consciousness. By your movement the world is ever created. Stop moving and there will be no world.
The I Am in movement creates the world; the I Am at peace becomes the Absolute.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Like Osho, I call Buddha the awakened one:
We call Buddha the awakened one. This awakening is really the cessation of inner dreaming. When there is no dreaming you become pure space. This non-dreaming consciousness is what is known as enlightenment.
You fall into an abyss, and the abyss is bottomless: you go on falling. That is why Buddha has called this nothingness emptiness. There is no end to it. Once you know it, you also have become endless. At this point Being is revealed: then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your authentic existence.
The inner emptiness itself is the mystery. When the inner space is there, you are not. When you dissolve, the inner emptiness is there. When you are not, the mystery will be revealed. You will not be a witness to the mystery, you will be the mystery.
-Osho
My basic problem with your whole approach is that it's philosophical and not scientific in nature. If all you're relying on is your own thoughts, you can convince yourself of anything, no matter how logically inconsistent your thoughts become. The value of science is that it forces us to confront our thoughts with what we actually observe in the world, which is called reality testing.
Here's some more writing from my website on the value of understanding things in terms of the holographic principle:
It sounds harsh to say that all philosophical conceptual frameworks are poorly defined, but that's only another way of saying that no philosophical system of thought has any real predictive power. Predictability is the litmus test that tells us that the conceptual framework is defining things in a way that mimics the way things are actually defined in nature. Predictability is a result of defining things in terms of quantifiable information, like the bits of information encoded on the pixels of a computer screen. Predictability is synonymous with computation. The laws of physics have predictive power because they allow for computation. The more complicated the phenomenon, the more difficult the computation, and there's often a computational impasse. Computational science, which reaches its apex in theoretical physics, is often limited in its ability to make predictions for only very simple phenomena, like the behavior of an isolated elementary particle.
The holographic principle is the ultimate level of predictability in that it tells us that the behavior of all observable things, including the nature of a holographic world, can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen. That holographic screen arises as an event horizon due to an observer's own accelerated motion, which becomes its holographic screen when qubits of information are encoded on its horizon. The observer is the perceiving consciousness present at the central point of view of its own holographic world. This conceptual framework has predictive power since it mimics the way that all observable things are actually defined in nature. All observable things are forms of information that can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on an observer's own holographic screen. Predictability is synonymous with computation.
In terms of predictability, the litmus test for any conceptual framework is whether the laws of physics can be deduced from the conceptual framework, which no philosophical system of thought is able to do. On the other hand, the laws of physics are deducible from the holographic principle in a straightforward way, as is demonstrated in the work of Ted Jacobson and Tom Banks. Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric, which is the nature of the gravitational field, along with Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field, Dirac's equation for the electron field, and the Yang-Mills equations for the nuclear fields are all deducible from the holographic principle. The big qualifier is that the laws of physics are limited in validity and only apply at the level of an observer's holographic world. The laws of physics do not apply at the ultimate level of reality, which is the level of the primordial, timeless existence of consciousness. At the ultimate level of reality, which is timeless and unchanging, there is no predictability. At the ultimate level of reality, nothing ever happens and there is nothing to predict.
Predictability based on computation is only a characteristic of a holographic world since the very nature of time only appears to exist in a holographic world. The course of time, like the expression of all energy, can only arise from the accelerated motion of an observer relative to the motionless void. The course of time is just another observable aspect of things that the observer perceives in its own holographic world. The course of time only arises as the observer perceives events in its own holographic world. Those events arise from the observer's own accelerated motion relative to the motionless void. At the ultimate level of reality, there are no events. At the ultimate level of reality, only the timeless being of consciousness remains and timelessly exists.
The ultimate litmus test is whether the conceptual framework can predict the nature of spiritual enlightenment, which again, no philosophical system of thought is able to do. Only the holographic principle is able to predict the nature of spiritual enlightenment as an ultimate state of free-fall. In an ultimate state of free-fall, the observer no longer has an event horizon that limits its observation of events in space, and therefore no longer has a holographic screen that encodes information for everything observable in its own holographic world. In an ultimate state of free-fall, everything in the observer's own holographic world disappears from existence from its own point of view, and nothing remains. In an ultimate state of free-fall, the observer's accelerated motion relative to the motionless void comes to an end, the expression of all energy comes to an end, and the course of time comes to an end. Only the timeless being of consciousness remains. In an ultimate state of free-fall, the individual consciousness of the observer, present at its own point of view at the center of its own holographic world, dissolves back into the undifferentiated consciousness of the void as its world disappears from existence.
That's how I understand the concept of non-duality.
Just because you haven't experienced something (absolute nothingness) doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In reality, absolute nothingness is the only thing that really exists. Everything else is a holographic illusion that only appears to come into existence from the point of view of an observer in a computer-generated holographic virtual reality world.
In the immortal words of the Bhagavad Gita: The unreal has no being; the real never ceases to be.
Alex OGorman
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Idols of the Mind vs. True Reality
https://www.amazon.com/Idols-Mind-vs-True-Reality/dp/1734908955
https://www.amazon.in/Idols-Mind-vs-True-Reality/dp/1734908955
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