The Basis of Ultimate Reality: Monadic Cosmoconsciousness vs Neutral Monism
The Basis of Ultimate Reality: Monadic Cosmoconsciousness vs Neutral Monism
Is Ultimate Reality Awareness or a Neutral Substrate? | Three Debates between Praxius & an Advaita Vedantin Convert
Latest revision: October 15th, 2024.
Premise
The contents of this paper consist of three transcribed debates surrounding the nature of the Absolute, Monad, or Ultimate Reality. Praxius is a self-described perennialist and Metaphysical Traditionalist. His opponent here is referenced as my “anonymous teacher” in my other works. He is a white convert to the non-dualist Hindu school known as Advaita Vedanta, but has great affinity for Diamond Vehicle Buddhism (or Tantrayana), and may technically be characterized as a perennialist himself, though this is not a label that he has explicitly identified with. In these three debates, Praxius takes on the position of “neutral monism”, which holds that the ultimate substrate of Reality is neither Mind nor Matter but an ineffable third essence, and that any attempt to relegate it to an accessible container metaphor such as “Awareness” is to condition it and exclusive it to a single property. By contrast, the anonymous teacher holds that Awareness is an emptiness, a pure potential for relegation, and that it is beyond even unconditionedness or formlessness—wholly unqualified. He would assert that Awareness is the default axiom of existence and that all of Reality is condensed consciousness, hence he belongs to the position of “monadic cosmoconsciousness” or “idealist monism”. Meanwhile, the role I play in these debates is that of an inquirer and a moderator and devil’s advocate: I question the premises of each debater, request clarifications, supply supporting arguments to both parties, initiate conversations, and derail for inspection into relevant side-topics. My personal position is that of monadic cosmoconsciousness, though I prefer to mingle together the Western approach of Praxius, which treats metaphysics analytically like a science with hierarchical ontological frameworks; with the Eastern approach of the anonymous teacher which emphasizes mindfulness and direct insight. (Both participants consented to me posting their debate transcripts. Grammar has been edited, but not unfaithfully. Grammatical changes include only punctuation and capitalization corrections, the insertion of conjunctions or prepositions such as “and” or “of” where missing, the pluralization of words, parenthetical clarifiers (italicized), and the italicization of words which should be emphasized.)
Table of Contents
THE FIRST DEBATE
THE SECOND DEBATE
THE THIRD DEBATE
The First Debate
“On the topic of Awareness, I would say that the disconnect between Praxius and the anonymous teacher has to do with the way the Western philosophers approach metaphysics compared to the Eastern philosophers. Easterners are more epistemological; [they] deconstruct the world into components of our experience. Meanwhile, Westerners are more analytic and ontological (maybe even “ontic” as Heidegger would sort of critically call it), deconstructing the world into shared parts of things we can identify. The Dharmic philosopher refers to the Ultimate Reality as “Awareness” because it is the first principle of our perception, our ability to derive information. Meanwhile, the Aristotelian or Platonist calls it “Being” because all things participate in being.” –
(To begin, Praxius is critiquing analogies in the third chapter of my Finding God in the Void essay, wherein I, in an appeal to eliminative materialists, use quantum physics to substantiate the role that Consciousness plays in acting as the source of/context for ontological motion. Those unfamiliar with the presented concepts and terminology should read said essay and the works of Praxius which are referenced therein.)
Praxius:
While I like the—what I would call—analogical illustration, I would like to make a clarification: Personally, when theology deals less with abstractions and logical connections and more so with mystical or sensational experiences such as consciousness or emotions (God as “Love”, for example), I find that to be an attempt at formalizing an understanding of Reality, God, Existence, and so forth at a degree that is subordinated to the transpository degree through which these principles go before they become manifest. I may be misunderstanding your point here, but if we are attempting to understand Reality as Consciousness, I would say it is an analogical understanding at best similar to God as the Divine Watchmaker or Reality as the Divine Computer.
However, if I am misunderstanding and your assessment has only to do with motion, I would like to also offer another similar clarification: Consciousness is a mode of experience. Even in your essay, you note that it is itself a sort of transpository degree for information to proceed through in order to be received by whatever possesses that consciousness. Therefore, at best, only that transpository degree of Reality, which is to say the degree through which information is sent between Essence and Substance, or from the principial domain to the manifestory domain, can be truly defined as a “consciousness”—but even then it is a supra-consciousness through which what is Lesser receives information from that which is Greater, and through which that information returns to that which is Greater. However, the return of that information does not affect that which is Greater whatsoever, which is to say that the principle remains unaffected by whatever the manifestation does in the temporal degree. It's a one-way street, so to speak, in terms of what’s effective, but I digress.
It would be more apt, I think, to equate Consciousness not to the source of ontological motion, because to claim an ultimate source of any kind of movement whatsoever, whether it be derivative, transpository, or physical, is anything other than God, is to associate an Absolute principle with something inhabiting a relative degree. But, if Consciousness is connotative with that transpository degree, to equate Consciousness with the facilitator of ontological movement, particularly the movement of the information of Essential Truth downward to the Substantial Domain, which is to say from principle to manifestation, and the confirmation of that receipt by the connection made from that which is higher to that which is lower through that degree. In these terms, we might say that God is the heart that makes the blood, and pumps the blood, causing the blood to move throughout the body, meaning that the heart is the source of blood movement, but the veins direct the flow of blood to the necessary areas, and therefore they are the facilitators of blood movement, which would be to say that they are auxiliary, secondary, supplementary, but not unnecessary.
We might say a supra-consciousness facilitates all such information flow, which would confirm every verity possible, but to say it is the Source would be incorrect, in my opinion.
I have always been fascinated by the light wave experiment, however, and as an aside I question whether or not our eyes kind of “eat” light rays or act as some kind of magnetic force upon light itself and that’s why it becomes more stabilized under observation.
Me:
I actually disagree here on account of personal experience. This gets very personal, actually, but: I once attempted suicide by suffocation. After I blacked out and before my friend found me and brought me back, I was in a state of oblivion, of deep emptiness without any sort of content. There were no thoughts, no memories, no desires, no suffering. I was conscious and immersed in infinite bliss, but there was nothing to actually bear witness to or be rejoiced at. A year later, having learned what the Dharmic faiths say of consciousness, I can only conclude that raw consciousness without content is beyond any causes or conditions of the mind, beyond existence.
This paragraph (referring to the paragraph from my Substack article) was before I elaborated on the distinction between consciousness (that which is aware of something) and awareness (the potential for perception). I kept things simple for, well, simplicity’s sake. Keep in mind the target audience of this paper is atheists. The idea is to not overwhelm them with terms, distinctions, and specifics too rapidly.
My position is that God is Awareness itself. Awareness is the Ultimate Reality.
Praxius:
First of all, I would like to extend my sympathies to your situation in that regard, and I am glad you are still with us. I also understand the observance you were able to make in relation to that experience in empirical terms, a posteriori. But the fact of the matter is that your perception of that Absolute Reality as pure Consciousness or pure Awareness is just that: a perception. Perhaps it was such that your consciousness was for a time absorbed into the meta-awareness of the transpositive degree, and now that you’re back on Earth you have a certain cognitive recollection of the quality of participating in that unitive Awareness, even if the more Divine principle within you ascended to a higher degree than your awareness as “I”.
To make such a claim that the Absolute Reality is anything other than the abstractions by which it is definable—anything besides Absolute, Quintessential, Universal, Eternal, etc., while even such words themselves are only descriptive of a given aspect of this Reality itself—however, is to lower the Absolute to the plane of whatever it is on which basis you’re defining it. It is incorrect to say, exclusively so, that the Absolute Reality is raw or pure Awareness, because it is more Absolute than even pure Awareness. This is not to say that the Absolute Reality is not incorporative of pure Awareness, but to exclusivize the Absolute Reality on any basis besides its own is to lower it to a more contingent level. The Absolute Reality possesses pure Consciousness or pure Awareness, in a transpository degree, but it itself is greater than absolute Awareness. It is in fact impossible to say that the Absolute Reality is anything, other than the Absolute Reality, because to say that something is something is to exclusivize it to the term to which you’re connecting it by way of the word “is”.
Even more so is it wrong to say that God, in his highest definition, is simply pure Awareness. Certainly, God possesses pure Awareness, even pure meta-awareness, but it is not His substance; God does not consist purely in absolute Awareness. Again, this Awareness is only one aspect of God.
This is not to disagree with you and say that consciousness without content is not beyond existence. It certainly is, insofar as existence is defined on the basis of post-transpositive actualization. To become actualized, a principle becomes transposed into the mode of actualization itself, which would be subordinated to the transpositive degree of pure Consciousness. Perhaps even meta-consciousness is logically prior to principality, but it is still a degree lower than God or pure Absolutity.
Me:
Could you elaborate a bit more on this sentence? What do you mean by “actualized” and “subordinated” here? “To become actualized, a principle becomes transposed into the mode of actualization itself, which would be subordinated to the transpositive degree of pure consciousness.”
Praxius:
Subordinated, as in more contingent, more relative; it logically succeeds it.
Actualized, as in the manner in which we discussed it elsewhere comparing principles and the actualization thereof to a computer program.
Me:
Ah I see.
I think you present a very robust and intelligent argument, but I have two contentions:
1.) If we agree that Awareness is beyond existence & nonexistence, how can Awareness merely be a quality of the Absolute? Existence & Nonexistence, from what I understand, represent the storehouse of all qualities or principles, as it these domains which contains all manifestations or actualizations—whether realized, possible, or impossible.
2.) Quantum mechanics reveals that it is the act of observation which collapses unrealized potencies into definitive acts. At least at the empirical level of reality, it would seem that Awareness is the only “thing” (for lack of a better term) capable of actualization. If God is not synonymous with Awareness, then this would seem to trap us in a causality problem: If Awareness actualizes things, what actualizes awareness? I’d be inclined of course to follow the Thomistic approach and say that Awareness is a self-subsistent actualization—the actualization itself. (This is a reference to Thomas Aquinas’ assertion that God is self-subsistent Being.)
Praxius:
1 - Because of the rule according to which every dichotomy is logically preceded by a unitary singularity, it follows that Principial Existence, or the existence of the “All” following the “One”, precedes the dichotomic domains of “Existential Existence” and “Non-Existence”. The former domain is the one in which principles find their realization through being transposed from “Essence” into “Substance”, and the latter is the domain of “unrealization”, and both are accessed through the “Transpositive Degree” through which principles undergo their interchanging into the reflections of themselves in either degree. For every realization of a principle, there are an indefinite number of similar unrealized potentials that ultimately go into our “world’s” domain of “Non-Being”. It could be argued that these unrealized potentials actually spring off and create other “worlds” of Compossibles according to the definition of the term Guenon employs in his Multiple States, but either way, from our point of view, and for our purposes here, they go into Non-Being and further Impossibility.
Again, here, though, we see a transpositive degree of Reality that is prior to the degree of Subordinated or “Existential” Existence, through which principles “travel” to find their realization in the domain of Existence. This, again, is how Awareness (the transpositive degree) precedes Existence (the domain of realization).
If, however, you were referring to the meta-conscious awareness that God seemingly has about All Things, both the Principial Domain, and Existence & Non-Existence, then the argument could be similarly employed, but to an ontologically exponential degree. At this point, Awareness would not be applied to God or the One as its entire being, but again as a contingent part. Or, we may think of God’s Awareness being the Principial Domain itself, meaning All Things of the First Derivation from God exist within His meta-awareness. In this regard, Awareness doesn’t logically precede Existence, but it does logically contain it, both emanating from God at the same time, part of the same Derivation, but to a different effect, where we are now understanding a tripartite of Being: The Creator, the Created, and the relationship between the two (Father, Son, Holy Spirit, by the way).
If we can say that God knows All, and therefore God’s Knowledge extends to All Things that are contained within the First Degree of Reality itself, then we may very well equate God’s awareness to that First Degree itself, suggesting that it contains within it All Things. At this point, it would be appropriate to analogically relate the notion of Awareness to the highest domain of Existence, but this is still not the Absolute Reality, and this certainly isn’t experiential awareness, either, but is, again, an analogical suggestion.
God’s meta-awareness can therefore be equated to a domain of Reality itself, but again, this domain still has a source, and that source is the Absolute: God Himself, who is also the Absolute Reality. To suggest that this Awareness is the only thing of which God consists, would be incorrect. To also say that this Awareness is the only thing which consists of the domain of Principial Existence would also be false. It might be the highest aspect of it, it might contain the rest of the things within it, but the things it contains are not subordinated to it in the same way in which they are to God, because, if this Awareness were to not exist, the other things of its domain would still exist, just as though when you close your eyes and can’t see there still exists things to be seen.
2 - I think by saying the above we are now saying the same thing in two different ways. It is Awareness which causes actualization; the Transpositive Degree of Reality actualizes principles, and the First Derivation transposes All Things from God to their own domain. Awareness might very well be a perpetually actualized byproduct of the Subsistent Act, but to specify the Subsistent Act as anything more conditioned by human understanding than simply the Subsistent Act, is to apply a lesser term to a broader conception. Certainly, again, we can argue that Awareness is an element of the Subsistent Act, but to say that the Subsistent Act is Awareness is to limit it from all other things which it is, unless by this term you are applying the word “is” incorporatively and not exclusively.
Me:
I think you make a good case overall, and I certainly find your argument convincing that other principles besides existence and nonexistence are not contained by those two but reside beside them in a so-called “Principial Domain”. This makes a lot more sense to me and I will most definitely be updating my essay to reflect this. Nonetheless, I still disagree on the Awareness aspect of the debate. I think it is fair to say that a special degree of awareness or a meta-consciousness may be equated with this Principial Domain, as you seem to imply, and that this is transposed onto existing things such that they may be actualized. But it is this point precisely that characterizes my contention. You say that when one closes their eyes that things around them still exist. Certainly true, but consciousness is not confined to sight, nor is it constrained solely to humans and animals. I believe more so that Awareness is self-subsistent in that it transposes itself onto its own emanations, actualizing them as their source. Quantum mechanics seems to imply to us that observation is what actualizes, so I find it hard to believe that anything could exist in an actualized way if there was no Awareness. Reality would just be an infinite unrealized potential for something to be.
AT:
I feel as if contentions surrounding the words “consciousness” and “awareness” are being had here. Consciousness or Awareness is “reified” in the sense that we treat it as an abstract object, but the literality of these words are experiential. In referring to consciousness we typically consider a conditioned reality, that which consciousness is conscious of, such as consciousness of a body, or consciousness of mental states—any and all phenomena is the conditioning factors. However, if we split hairs and introduce a notion of Awareness, which is the raw potential to perceive, and propose this to be Ultimate Reality, it becomes a lot less confusing. Saying “consciousness is exhaustive of Reality” usually translates into the notion that the world itself is “my” consciousness, such as solipsism, or otherwise that a particular or conditioned consciousness is Ultimate Reality. Even by qualifying it as “cosmic” consciousness, it still gives us problems because it’s implying Reality is the aggregate or accumulation of particular consciousnesses or mentalities, and this would also be missing the mark. Awareness as seen as the potential for consciousness, that is, the preceding context for mentality or mind of any kind, is clarifying, such that we may call this reality “emptiness” or otherwise an indeterminate proclivity for creative or imaginative processes. This Awareness couldn’t be qualified in that it has existence or is otherwise “real”, because it is unconditioned completely. “Awareness”, like all other names, are convenient labels we use to “capture” or otherwise relegate what is, into schematics of thinking and thus ontologies. What is real is the Ontic, or “Arche”. I would think it would be skillful to define it as the “Potential of the unconditioned mind”, or as “Pure Awareness, Meta-Awareness”, and so on, but this doesn’t really do it justice either. Awareness or meta-awareness in this sense would be the default axiom of all existence because it’s necessarily assumed before there is thought, speech, volition. By speaking we are invoking inquiry or investigation into its contents. The problems arise when we begin to reify its content as that Reality itself, such as saying an idea itself is Ultimate Reality, or that Truth is namable or explanatory in the fashion of which metaphysicians and philosophers desire it to be. For a reality to be external to the potential to perceive would require an entirely new or novel epistemic medium, as any actual world, potential worlds, or localities of any kind all find their contextualization in Awareness, such that we may consider that dreams and waking mundane consciousness share a unitive feature of not having a locality that is exact, only approximate—as its reference point is Awareness or awarenesses of which define or speak about such world. Concepts are container metaphors, such that we may “Think in and outside of a box”, and thus what is (ultimately) real is not conceptual or an “idea”. Reality is not notional; it is visceral and boundless. Intellect fails wherein intuition and direct integration can illuminate or resolve confusion regarding Reality. Awareness isn’t a conclusion; it’s a bedrock or cornerstone in which the final attainment or realization is signified by, such that by abiding in awareness and mindfulness, we are propelled beyond the limits of phenomena both physically and abstractly.
Praxius:
“The problems arise when we begin to reify its content as that reality itself, such as saying an idea itself is Ultimate Reality, or that Truth is namable or explanatory in the fashion of which metaphysicians and philosophers desire it to be.”
This is at the heart of my point: To say that the Ultimate Reality is Awareness is to attribute a particularized conclusion to that which is totally ineffable—that to which no conclusive statement can be attributed. This is not to say that the Ultimate Reality does not possess the rawest form of Awareness, but to reduce the Infinite to a single principle is, again, a reduction. The argument can even be made that this Awareness requires “that which is aware”, which would be a logically superior principle to this Awareness, meaning that Awareness is not the Ultimate Reality.
AT:
Infinity or boundlessness is still a property of which is extrapolated or superimposed onto the unconditioned. Infinite or “Infinity” is qualitative and quantitative, such that it’s the highest or ultimate value which contains all the rest. While the suspicion I have is that Reality is infinite or otherwise without boundary, and this suggestion is intuitively on the ball, we have to ask ourselves what it is that is “infinite”. The unconditioned could be called the “deathless”, or otherwise simply as the “shore on yonder”. But even still, when we think of Awareness as a general abject emptiness, not as a condition of beings or a condition of particulars, it’s not that there are things or realities that are aware, as awareness isn’t really a property. Awareness isn’t contextual because it’s the potential for relegation; beings aren’t aware, they are awareness, funda(mentally). It’s that “Awareness is aware of itself”, hence “Only Brahman is real”. Awareness wouldn’t necessarily be a principle because it’s not a content of thought. Even though I have said it’s the “default axiom of all existence”, Awareness would be indeterminate proclivity, potential. What is actual is what is conditioned, however, potential is what is unconditioned and thus contains all actualities, both impossible and possible realities. When we talk about something like “meta-awareness”, we are speaking about the furthest epistemic limit we can reach, which is self-knowledge or Atma-Bodha. There can be no further knowledge or knowing outside of knowledge and knowing itself. Anything beyond pure potential is seemingly far more conjectural than positing that what is real is unconditioned Mind or pure Spirit.
Praxius:
I’m not necessarily in disagreement. We might even suggest a variation of degrees of “infinity”, beginning at the mere quantitative and extending to the qualitative, but again you are correct it is a conclusive statement. But even to say it is unconditioned is to condition it to unconditionedness. It’s as the joke goes, where one says, “Objective truth doesn’t exist,” and they receive the response, “Are you saying that as an objective truth?”. This is why I believe it was either Plotinus or Meister Eckhart (I forget which one at present—actually come to think of, it might have even been Aquinas), said something along the lines of establishing an ontological framework at a beginner level gets completely negated at the expert level by all the paradoxes of the Absolute Reality.
More to the point, however, I would disagree with the suggestion that “infiniteness” is a conditioning principle but “Awareness” is not a conditioning principle. If it is at all conceivable it is conditioning and therefore cannot be attributed to the totality of the highest Reality.
AT:
I mean it literally is “infinite pure Consciousness” as per the Vedic assessment. But we might find that infinity or the infinite as that which is witnessed. Infinity is typically understood as a value or indefinite duration, such as time dilation wherein we experience or feel that moment as eternal; realms or beings are typically described as “eternal” or otherwise infinite. Infinity is the highest value of a scale, wherein Awareness itself is the context of scales or otherwise the context of even something like nothingness or nihility, “zeroness”. What is real is absolutely infinite but it’s not “an” infinite thing; it would be the essence of that.
If I told you it would be possible to have a perception of non-perception, or a non-perception of perception, would this phraseology make any sense to you or relate to your experiences in any way thus far?
Praxius:
Are you asking personally or in principle?
AT:
Actually or hypothetically.
Praxius:
I would be able to conceive of it, yes
AT:
In what way would you qualify each? This is integral and important in understanding this sort of take.
Praxius:
It would depend on whether or not your definition of “non-perception” is logically prior or logically subsequent to the position of perception.
Assuming the former, a perception of non-perception would be the posterior understanding of an experience which brought one, in Neoplatonic terms, in union with the One, such as Plotinus claimed to have. Assuming the latter, it would be the a priori understanding of a sub-physical stratum or the perception of an impulse that originates from a place out of consciousness, perhaps akin to a trial of air.
Assuming the former understanding, a non-perception of perception would be an understanding of the limited framework of perception in contrast with the infinitude of non-perception, and assuming the latter understanding, a non-perception of perception would be that impulse itself which is to be later perceived.
AT:
A perception of non-perception can be understood as the cognition or consciousness that what is perceived is not what is, such that we may invoke Hume’s bundle theory, or otherwise any kind of idealistic theory of truth which posits reality at two levels: Things as they are perceived and then things as they are. A non-perception of perception is the absence of perception entirely and implies a lack of experience or apprehension therein. The former is an idea of Enlightenment or non-duality, a “unitive” or perplexing experience, but is still not what we are really looking for. The latter is the abiding reality of content-lacking potential, yet this non-perception or “Jhana”, is not lasting. Thus, even it is not the Ultimate Reality. However, if we were to continue to try and whittle away at it like a wood statue or memorial, we could liken Ultimate Reality to the phenomenological state, the “suchness” of that non-perception, just without condition or proclivity to actualize into further conditionality or obfuscation. Hence the accomplished spiritual being has gone “such”. Not as such, or to such, but “such” without condition.
Me:
(replying to AT’s “A perception of non-perception…” comment) I’m a bit confused by what parts “former” and “latter” are referring to in this paragraph. Could you clarify please?
Praxius:
(replying to me) Perception of non-perception is former, non-perception of perception is latter.
AT:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra's_net
Consciousness of even elevated types is still conditioned by causality, even the highest meditative states. What I am more or less getting at is that Ultimate Reality is perhaps completely indeterminate or otherwise an indeterminate zone. However, if we are to speak of it, “self-reflexive” Consciousness or Awareness is as far as we can get.
“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each ‘eye’ of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering ‘like’ stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.”
Ultimate Reality is beyond the dependent matrix or nexus of causal properties and features. Thus, what is real could not be said to be infinite or even consciousness, but neither a secret third thing. What would be real is a type of acataleptic emptiness, as reality is not a reflection or refraction of conditionality.
I would think that we can be arbitrarily certain that the Absolute is unconditioned Mind or Awareness, but that we shouldn’t “shut the door” so to say. Otherwise, we will get into dogma, clinging, and further reification.
The Second Debate
Me:
It occurred to me that eliminativism is a rather ironic philosophy. If consciousness is particular of some feature of matter (perhaps ions and electrons), wouldn’t this imply that all matter possesses a proto-consciousness by default?
Disregarding the inversion, wherein the eliminativist holds that consciousness is particular of matter as opposed to vice versa, this would be bordering on the Dharmic view, in that it concedes to an omnipresent awareness as the content and function of all matter.
Yet any time an eliminativist comes to this conclusion, it produces a mundane philosophy akin to panpsychism.
AT:
Daniel Dennet is really just a retard to be frank. I’ve heard he’s not such a bad feller in his life, but eliminative materialism is obtuse and grotesque. Eliminativism doesn’t properly explain how consciousness is ultimately illusionary or unreal, because it’s still present in matter in a potential or contingent sense. They just believe that without matter there isn’t any consciousness to be spoken of. To me this admits that as you said, matter has the preconditions for consciousness in an innate or intrinsic sense, otherwise consciousness would then be inexplicable and mystical in that way.
The Dharmic perspective sees matter as a product or condition of consciousness, such that consciousness may be conditioned by matter or really by Karma, but this is because these two labels are synonymous for denser mental states.
When investigating matter or physicality, each level or realm of perception in regards to its mereology becomes less and less condensed until it reaches the indeterminate zone or substance.
There is nothing substantial found in the contents of consciousness, that substantiality that is apparent or known is really just emptiness. Concreteness of physicality only appears out of an ethereal and unestablished reality.
Functionalism, behaviorism, and eliminativism belong in the dumpster of philosophy of mind.
Me:
It occurred to me in a dream that Praxius might be considered a neutral monist, based on the debate we three had in the literature channel after you first joined the server.
Praxius:
Quite possibly, seeing as that’s the phrase I found myself agreeing with in the chart.
Me:
I have no idea though why it was ranked below panpsychism. Panpsychism is still a Substance>Essence philosophy and is thus rubbish. Neutral monism is Essence>Substance and thus is right view.
AT:
Because neutral monism suggests that reality is a third indeterminate abstraction rather than being a subtle kind of mind that is merely difficult to interact with conventionally speaking.
“Similarly, what is at stake within the philosophy of mind is whether Reality has mental properties (such as conscious experience) as fundamental properties. Physicalists would deny this, and insist that consciousness and all mental properties are derivable from some lower-level physical properties (similar to how the properties of water are derivable from H2O). Idealists, in contrast, believe reality is fundamentally mental, and that physical things are nothing more than mind-dependent perceptions. Dualists play both sides of the aisle as they believe that reality consists of both fundamentally mental and fundamentally physical elements, each irreducible to the other. Then there are panpsychists, who believe that everything is both mental and physical (consciousness is what reality looks like ‘from the inside’ and the physical world is what reality looks like ‘from the outside’). Neutral monists break this mold by denying that the fundamental elements of reality are either physical or mental.”
Reality is mental. Mentality is all that can be said to be exhaustively real.
Praxius:
I always found the debate over mind and body to be a debate of a limited scope and of unclear semantics. To say that it must be one or the other is exclusivistic and limits the possibility of the fusion of a Supra-Consciousness with a kind of non-physical Quintessence which is supposed to be the nature of the Godhead.
AT:
But notice you mention consciousness and non-physicality as the starkest qualifiers?
Reality wouldn’t be a fusion of properties; it would be one essence of which produces relegation in itself. There is nothing beyond Mind that we can discern nor access.
Me:
(replying to AT’s “Reality wouldn’t be a fusion of properties…” comment) While I agree with you, I will play devil’s advocate here and ask: How can we “shut the door” in saying that what is ultimate is discernible or accessible? Can we truly rule out that there is an even greater and more fundamental axiom upon which even Awareness derives its status, such that we might say that the quintessence of the Ultimate is utterly inaccessible to the mind?
Praxius:
(also replying to AT’s “Reality wouldn’t be a fusion of properties…” comment) Correct in that first part; it wouldn’t be a fusion of two conditions but a unity from which conditionality derives, but who is to say that what is ultimately discernible is “mind” as opposed to “Design” or “Truth”? And furthermore, that one Essence would be the superior third thing from which the essence of mind and body depart, legitimizing either Neutral Monism or simply just Monism. Again we go back to that earlier debate, I think to say that Reality is “Awareness” as we perceive awareness, leaves room for error. There must be first something, then Awareness, then its contingent modes. Awareness being the “container” of Total Universality, but deriving its efficacy and legitimacy from that which is aware.
AT:
A design is a formality; designs are contingent by nature. A design of “what”? A structure inhering in what? Truth and Reality are synonymous, and this reality would be Awareness without condition. Consciousness does not need to be conscious of “another”, unless we are splitting hairs on the distinction between awareness and consciousness, such that consciousness would be the activity of perception and awareness would be the potential or proclivity for that perception to occur or have meaning. When we say “Awareness”, we are not talking about what we are aware of in proximal consciousness, but the potential for there to be anything: dichotomies, dualities, etc. What would be ultimately real wouldn’t be a third thing because there aren’t a multitude of truths in the world, such that there is both matter and mind as lesser truths. Only Mind is present; everything else would be nominal for Mind in terms of a denser mental state. If reality is a third substance that is neither Mind nor Matter and not present in any of them, then Ultimate Reality is completely unknowable. In a discursive sense, we come to understand knowledge in terms of mental contents, and then through peeling through the varieties of conditionality, find that what is “out there” is actually “in here”. To the degree that there really isn’t a distinction between them except for names.
An essence is that which makes something what it is. The reason that Reality is exhausted by the term “Awareness” is that what makes consciousness possible.
Where would Absolute Reality or first “something” orient itself? What’s its locality or context? It must be intimately related to Mind.
Hence I say that Ultimate Reality is a kind of subtle or unconditioned mind.
(replying to my “While I agree with you…” comment) There could be an indefinite amount of possibilities beyond Awareness, but if not related to it, it is similar to asking questions about metaphysically round squares. What you can know with certainty is the empty self or awareness; everything else is a content of it or otherwise a notion within it.
Me:
Fair point.
Praxius:
I just do not agree that Awareness is exhaustive of Reality. If we say that Reality is aware, we are saying that Reality>Awareness: there is something which contains it and possesses it; it is not the First Principle; it might be the First Nature, or the nature of Being, but this is derivative. To make the claim that the One is Pure Awareness is to make the claim that Pure Awareness is the first principle from which every other principle derives. It might be so that Pure Awareness is the Awareness from which all contingent awareness derives, thus limiting it to a genus, or to a kind of Quintessential Awareness, but it cannot be the thing from which qualitatively distinct principles derive. There is, to me, no conceivable way that Awareness is anything but a faculty of the Ultimate Reality—perhaps the most prominent one, but a faculty among others nonetheless.
AT:
Awareness isn’t a property. That seems to be your problem: You are trying to consider Awareness as a principle or as something which is substantially present in the world. There is no world. There is no “reality” as we consider it conventionally.
It’s not that Reality is aware as per a panpsychist understanding of it inhering in Reality; it is that Reality in denser consideration.
The only reality which contains Awareness is Itself. There is no “other” in the picture.
Praxius:
Could you explain in better detail your last sentence?
AT:
Existence is self-referential. Awareness is self-referential. Hence it is beyond dichotomous depiction or containment. Awareness doesn’t need to be vindicated or sourced in something else, as we are likely thinking of Awareness as conditioned, such as the variety and kinds of awarenesses: deluded awareness, animal awareness, heightened awareness, super-mundane insight and all kinds of expansive realms or areas of awareness. But when we remove or deduct these conditions and qualities, what is left is an unconditioned mind or an unconditioned consciousness, hence it is described as “infinite formless consciousness” or “pure” consciousness, such that it is not defiled by conditions, which ultimately are themselves in denser manifestation. Reality as we understand it is merely the conditioned or obfuscated Awareness, not the Ultimate Mind or pure potential of mind which is “omnipresent” or otherwise always present despite these conditions or qualities.
(“The ‘IT’ Thing” by Meta Sage)
By referencing this other reality, we are referencing a mental artifact that is conditioned by Awareness. It would be an idea, not the ideality or ethereality in itself.
Hence it is “Awareness” or Consciousness alone, “not two”, or non-secondary.
The One does not exist in respect to other realities; it alone is all that is real.
“Consciousness”, “Mind”, “Awareness” are all made synonymous in an idealistic dialogue or context, but really the Ultimate Reality is Awareness without condition. Consciousness in this way is an activity, and Mind is where events and causality—where conditioning occurs.
Hence it is Mind without condition or Mind without any details or contents.
A universality outside of Mind is then really just an artifact of it. You couldn’t really reach “beyond” the mind because there is no beyond to that which is final or unestablished.
I was thinking last night about the term “Awareness” when I was talking to [redacted], and really it is integral to know that it is probably our best label in regards to discussion or mapping out Reality in an explanatory sense. Knowledge of the original spirit is almost entirely intuitive and even the retarded can be Enlightened, such that I think back to the dullard in the Pali Canon, of whom the scholarly monks believed he was hopeless in reaching perfected wisdom. He was given a mundane task in regards to his intelligence and aptitude and received full Enlightenment and psychic powers as a Samasabuddha, not merely a dry arahant. Dry arahantship can result of polemic or contemplative means, and they might abide in Nibanna but not reap the full consequences of a “wet arahant” or someone who has come to understand Ultimate Reality in this way. It is the thinking discriminating mind, or the discerning feature which determines terms such as “Awareness” or even an idea of unconditioned reality, but an even better term is the “original” or “primordial” Spirit, such that [redacted] notes that Jhana or meditative absorption predates the Buddha, and it’s likely that meditation or insight predates the Dhamma by millennia. I have said before that it is unwise to shut the door on other philosophies or ideas, especially because they keep the provisional mind healthy, but more or less when I refer to Awareness I am speaking about abiding in Nibanna rather than seeing Awareness as a metaphysical object in a hierarchy or systematized referent. Hence we see in the Suttas that the arahant “abides in full Awareness”, or otherwise refers to a medium in which insight into the true nature of Reality is possible. Because Consciousness or Awareness has “expansive” features, if there is a reality beyond it, I would still think that this reality would be a maximal expansion or otherwise related to the full exploration and focus of cultivated Awareness, such that from our vantage point, Awareness is seen to be all that is real, but perhaps a reality beyond it is possible. I just don’t think that it’s wise to fall off the path for abstraction or otherwise some kind of detour before fully exhausting our power or extent within the mind/mind-space.
When we talk about Awareness, we can invoke a familiar referent in empirical, metaphysical and superstitious contexts, I suppose is the simplest way of explaining it.
In that way it serves as a formative metaphysical essence, a present phenomenological essence, and as a psychological element of which can be understood elementally in regards to other features of dependent mental constructs, such as a comparison between inanimate or unaware instances of life, sentience and non-sentience, etc.
AT:
I also had a subtle revelation in that meditation is so difficult because it’s akin to patience or deference of gratification much like ancient hunting practices were disposed to, such that in meditation, we are still seeking out something by initiating a non-fragmented focus. Ancient hunter gatherers likely sat in thickets and densely covered places wherein they did not move at all until their prey was “in” sight, such that we might think the same thing of fishing phenomenologically: that we are waiting and abiding in focus until we feel the tug of the lure and line. This is likely the archaic origins of meditation in an anthropological sense, and it translating into sedentary contexts resulted in esoteric traditions, such that Dhamma is only one instance of it, merely systematized. The Buddha and ancient ascetics ran into woodland dwelling ascetics all throughout their lives, and this could only have been inherited as a kind of ancient practice or wisdom. Notably, pagan religions like Dharma have a clearer line or connection to ancient shamanic religion such that we even see the Bon tradition having these elements in tandem with Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. Methinks that meditation is more like hunting or fishing than it is a kind of dull laziness or slothfulness. As many people struggle to do it properly. Think of times in your own experience wherein you are in the “zone”, even in mundane life, such as a video game or having someone in your clutches in an argument or discussion wherein your focus or attention is nowhere else. This is a subtle meditative state and it’s also detailed in the Suttas in regards to walking meditation and mindfulness just in general. This is what I mean by “Awareness”: essentially pure focus that is not fragmented, conditioned or otherwise defiled in that way.
It’s just that rather than bagging meats or fish, you’d be attaining higher degrees of wisdom and cultivation. Merit is still present in meditative states but not at the level of Ultimate Reality.
Hence why I think this is so hard to understand.
St John basically says that the more you lean into it, the less you understand and the less that you learn. He is actively describing the phenomenology of ascending into more and more refined states of consciousness such that it is purely processual or blissful, non-fragmented and having no degree of rigidity. Just a smooth dissolution of defilements or distractions.
“This knowledge in unknowing
is so overwhelming
that wise men disputing
can never overthrow it,
for their knowledge does not reach
to the understanding of not understanding,
transcending all knowledge.
And this supreme knowledge is so exalted
that no power of man or learning
can grasp it;
he who masters himself
will, with knowledge in unknowing,
always be transcending.”
AT:
Panno speaks about this in a book he covered in a QNA: “On the Ancient Origins of Meditation.”
Imagine having to slow your heart rate and respiration down in a cold climate where breath and somatic sounds would have cost you your dinner. It would have also lowered RMR (resting metabolic rate), and thus preserved caloric expenses.
Hence 9th Jhana or Nirodha-Sampatti would have involved stopping the heart almost entirely.
Imagine being that still for such a long period of time and then running or jogging like five miles or more. This is more or less how I think ancient HGs (hunter-gatherers) hunted, and we can see this anatomically in our ability to walk extremely long distances. It was a matter of waiting and trailing animals that could go much faster, but not farther than we could.
Thus, thousands of years later they ended up calling these shamanic states “Atman”, or “Brahman”, Purusha, etc., and gave it mythological and mythopoetic aspects.
We can also see that some of the first times we encounter these words in the Vedas they are related to boons or rewards from the gods. In an animistic and archaic way, we see veneration towards animals or animal skin pelts and costumes—fire being essential for survival and thus fire rituals. The more I think of it, the more the puzzle comes together.
Praxius:
I think this is where you and I simply disagree. I do not disagree with the notion of the existence of an unconditioned Awareness that becomes instantiated and conditioned in various individuations and incarnations; I just disagree with the notion that this Awareness is the Absolute (the Ultimate Reality). Awareness/Consciousness is a condition, even in its formless state; it is a property, because when discussing we are saying that the “nature”, here meaning the “chief property”, of the Ultimate Reality is Awareness, which, again, may be true, considering it the “container” of Total Universality. If, however, we do not consider it to be the “nature” of the Ultimate Reality and consider Awareness to be the Ultimate Reality itself, then what we are saying is that Awareness = Total Unicity / Monad, which is saying that Total Universality is “this but not that”, and exclusivizing it to the nature of Awareness, which is a logical impossibility. It is a logical impossibility for the sequence of principles to begin with “infinite formless Consciousness”, because we are suggesting that the First Principle has an identifiable nature and/or is identifiable itself. Infinite formless Consciousness is more conditioned than infinite formlessness, therefore there must be something logically superior to this Consciousness or Awareness, which I believe we are colloquially using interchangeably at this point. And I would like to be clear, I don’t disagree with you on most of the things you’ve said about the nature of Awareness, or about pure formless Awareness being a thing in the highest degrees of Reality; my only disagreement is that it is not the Source or the Godhead or the Ultimate Reality or however you would like to put it.
(replying to AT’s “Awareness isn’t a property.…” comment) In response to this.
AT:
Awareness is not conditioned by anything but potential if we are being honest with ourselves. “Infinite pure Consciousness” is a triple redundancy. It’s not a metaphysical object.
Nature is the content of an identity—how something is. Awareness is the “what” or the Ontic. Consciousness or creative process is its “nature” because this is an activity. “Howness” in that way is potently related to content. What we are speaking of is transcendent beyond content.
The potential for suchness or how-it-isness really isn’t a condition. Part of Enlightenment is realizing there are no conditions. Part of what makes this unique is that this understanding is phenomenological to an ultimate degree, that it can’t be placed in a system of ontology because any ontology pays its due to it. It is “indeterminate”, but when we speak about it, it becomes determinate or “identifiable”. It’s more like the inspiration for the hypothetical reality of identification. To consider a reality beyond it requires it (Awareness) and thus this speculated reality is understood in a meta-category to that originating reality. Logic, reason, and symbols all come after it or are embedded in it; these things do not have independent existence from it. Thus, surmising an independent principle or reality also begs the question of its accessibility or subtle immanence such that it’s akin to talking about metaphysically square circles. With Awareness as I have said, we have a philosophical, phenomenological, and psychological term which is almost entirely exhaustive.
That which is infinite, if it is considered purely, wouldn’t be a unity of anything because that which is infinite has no proper parts. It would be part-less or whole, thus Ultimate Reality is not an aggregate of actuality or a totality of things, and is not a “thing” remotely at all.
In that way Awareness or unestablished Consciousness doesn’t need to be illuminated by reason, because it is already present and the inspiration of that—it would be the essence of that. That which is essential is inescapable, and this essentiality is not one that is essential to conditions or to the world; it’s an unestablished essentiality.
For example, with philosophy we are always trying to “one up” the Absolute, even though we already have an ambiguous concept of Ultimate or Absolute in the sense of exhaustiveness. Giving it another name or another dimension, formally speaking, isn’t something that qualifies as true knowledge or even in relation to knowing because there is no beyondness to unestablished essentiality. In Platonic terms, there’s no beyondness to the Being.
Me:
(replying to Praxius’ “I think this is where you and I simply disagree.…” comment) “…which is saying that Total Universality is ‘this but not that’, and exclusivizing it to the nature of Awareness…” I am confused by what you mean in this clause. Can you break it down please?
(replying to AT’s “The potential for suchness or hot-it-isness really isn’t a condition…” comment) “It’s more like the inspiration or hypothetical reality of identification.” Well said.
(replying to the same comment) “…and thus this speculated reality is understood in a meta-category to that originating reality.” “Thus, surmising an independent principle or reality also begs the question of its accessibility or subtle immanence such that its akin to talking about metaphysically square circles.” I’m only 90% sure what you mean in these two clauses. Could you dumb it down just a notch for me please?
Praxius:
(replying to my question about his quote) Total Universality, or its source in Total Unicity, are two completely ineffable and inexclusive; they cannot be defined by a single trait nor condition nor property, so to say that it is Awareness, which itself is identifiable and exclusive, as all things with a definition are, then that is to say that it is not everything else, rendering it non-universal and typifiable. The nature of the Ultimate Reality is non-typifiable; it is impossible to define it nor suggest its ultimate nature because its ultimate nature is Universality, not Awareness. And Universality is ineffable, whereas Awareness is not.
(replying to AT’s “That which is infinite if it is considered purely…” comment) This I agree with; it is a Unicity as opposed to a Universality.
Me:
Awareness isn’t seen as exclusivizing in the philosophy that Major argues from, though. All of Reality is seen as “condensed consciousness”.
Praxius:
I simply lack the capacity to see how the term Awareness is exhaustive. I do agree with what you’re saying, and the nature of this Ultimate Reality is indeterminate, as you have said. But what it seems that you are essentially trying to say is that Awareness is the Source, that there is nothing logically prior to it.
(replying to me) Except it is, because if the question can be asked, “What if Reality is not simply ‘condensed consciousness’”, it’s not a true statement. When discussing the Universal, there can be no deniability as to its nature whatsoever; its ineffability, abstractness, and ambiguity are its defining traits. You cannot question that the Ultimate Reality is Universal; you can question whether or not the Ultimate Reality is Awareness, however, and there are alternative suggestions that may be made for the nature of the Ultimate Reality, which means that the entirety of Reality cannot be part of the strand of Awareness; there must be something prior and more abstract.
Me:
Why would Awareness need anything to be logically prior to it? It is paradoxical to us in that it does not even need to account for itself. It simply is; it is the default, such that every aspect of Reality has features of consciousness, such as directed will or probabilistic behavior.
Praxius:
Except that probabilistic behavior is not indicative of Awareness. We can write an unaware piece of software with probabilistic behavior (not AI; simply a strand of “if/then” sequences). Awareness and perception go hand in hand; it is the experiential faculty. It requires to be possessed. The Divine Mind possesses Awareness itself, but then the Divine Mind must exist to possess it.
(he links to the Debate channel) though, this channel is mainly for science
Me:
I feel Major has already provided a good response for this though. “It’s more like the inspiration for the hypothetical reality of identification. To consider a reality beyond it requires it and thus this speculated reality is understood in a meta-category to that originating reality. Logic, reason, and symbols all come after it or are embedded in it; these things do not have independent existence from it.” Awareness is already presumed before we even speak or debate, before we even think—it is presumed just by us even being aware. Anything else we can say is an inspiration or condensation of this awareness. Anything outside the bounds of this Awareness is a true epistemic poverty of the likes of which materialists and nihilists must contend with—dislocated, inaccessible, and void.
Probability is only possible if there is a Mind which can monitor events and outcomes to ensure they conform to a rate.
AT:
(replying to Praxius’ “I simply lack the capacity…” comment)
Because you won’t find a more appropriate term.
Me:
(replying to Praxius’ “though, this channel is mainly for science” comment) Let’s spare an exception for now. It gets confusing parsing a debate between two channels.
AT:
It isn’t even linear because it’s not a preceding factor in a dependent line of unfolding. Spirit, Awareness—these are synonyms. You could call it the “original Spirit” and that would be fine but Awareness has immanent recognition in it, such that we may use it with skill rather than bewildering others with an idea of a beyondness that is not in any way familiar.
Think of it like this…
Me:
“…and thus this speculated reality is understood in a meta-category to that originating reality.” “Thus, surmising an independent principle or reality also begs the question of its accessibility or subtle immanence such that its akin to talking about metaphysically square circles.” @AT I feel like what you’re saying here is that if there is a neutrally monadic principle prior to Awareness, then we must ask how we can detect its presence in our world in the same way that we can detect Awareness. Am I interpreting you correctly?
(replying to AT’s “It isn’t even linear because it’s not a preceding factor…” comment) How would Awareness not be all-preceding? Isn’t it the Source out of which all things come?
AT:
Immanence and transcendence are of a dichotomous nature of which a middle ground of distance is made in metaphor. We could say that Ultimate Reality is entirely transcendental, but it is also found immanently. We could say it’s both transcendent and immanent, but then we have a contradiction or otherwise violate the idea of wholeness or completeness, as that which is whole cannot have two manifestations that are the same in quality and quantity. We could say it’s neither transcendent nor immanent, but this still is not exhaustive because this too is a middle ground between “beyond” and “near”. It’s not one, another, both, and it’s also not neither. Awareness is a perfect understanding because it is near but also has the ability to be far; it has expansive features in itself and thus because of this we have logical dichotomy or duality just to begin with in an existential or manifest sense.
(replying to my latter question) Because there’s no beginning.
The source isn’t a beginning but the context of beginnings and their dependencies such as duration and endings.
Hence it is timeless, infinite, and eternal.
Me:
Ah I see.
@AT Did I interpret your other remark correctly though?
AT:
Yes. We can talk about Awareness and have a shared vocabulary that is rooted in intuitive knowledge about it. Abstraction with no phenomenology is impotent in that way.
Me:
I agree then.
AT:
It’s essentially a trigger pin. If we demarcate the world and body from Awareness and say to ourselves, “it’s Mind”, we then reach a level above gross consideration. Then, this Awareness or Mind becomes aware of itself and mindful of itself; it then realizes that it is not the “mind” in terms of dull classification (i.e. “my mind”), such that the solipsist or Cartesian would suggest, but would be a kind of transcendental mind. This process of meta-awareness, literally “awareness of awareness”, then goes on indefinitely until the realization is made that this itself is the Ontic—not that which is illuminated, but the Illuminator.
Me:
@AT I’ll play devil’s advocate here: If the Absolute can be interpreted as Sunyata/Shunya, then we know It to be “cessation” or “extinction”. Couldn’t a neutral monist then argue that this cessation/extinction—taken in its most vacuous sense—is what is ultimately present/detectable in our world before all else, since all things must arise from and return to this cessation? Is there any need for this cessation to be synonymous with Awareness?
AT:
It wouldn’t even necessarily be emptiness in the way that it’s conveyed metaphysically speaking. Cessation necessarily has causality in it; the Absolute isn’t ceasing of anything; phenomena ceases into the Absolute. You could make the case that Ajahan Panuduammo makes, that Nirvana or emptiness is like a field of indeterminacy in quantum physics, but that’s more or less a superimposition of Buddhism onto more rigorous sciences. You can call it the Source or the Fountainhead, but this still comes with the idea that Ultimate Reality is the first of a series of dependent properties. Source is still a kind of metaphysical locality.
It’s deathless and thus it’s never ceased nor originated. Ultimate Reality is free of merit.
For the last part of that question, do you notice what the context of arisings and fallings occur in? Is there any other “area” that this would take place?
Here’s a more skillful explanation.
Things and conditions arise all at once and fall all at once within “Mind” or empty vacuity. It’s not as if there is a linear migration from potential to actual; it all happens all at once. We cannot parse the beginning of things and it’s likely because there is no first beginning of things, hence why it (the origin of Samsara) is an imponderable or unanswerable question.
Nirvana or the unconditioned is the only independent reality which is not swept up in causality or depends upon another phenomenon for its existence. Think back to the Indra’s net. Nibanna or emptiness is “outside” of the net of infinitely reflecting jewels, not just its composition or withheld nature.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratītyasamutpāda
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra's_net
(replying to Praxius’ “Excpet that probabilistic behavior is not indicative of Awareness…” comment) What would you understand to be “neither perception nor non-perception”? Even more abstractly, beyond neither perception nor non-perception? How can you know that Awareness necessitates perception or even non-perception? You suggest that Awareness is fathomable, but is it really? Can you imagine Awareness or is it that Reality itself which is imagining? This is the feature I think you’re missing, because a Divine Mind still has an “eye” in it; content arises in the “Divine Mind”, but this Divine Mind is not a reified reality outside of a fundamental Awareness. Where is this Divine Mind located and in reference to what exactly? Moreover, have you ever reached a super-sensible state where perception or its negation was not present? Neither the perception of darkness Nor nothingness nor the perception of contents? Consciousness is perception and activity; it is Awareness which is the context for it, hence, “Awareness precedes Consciousness” as per Shankaracharya’s commentaries on the Upanishads. Consciousness is what is “experiencing” anything; Awareness is that reality which is permitting the perception of that experience, not that perception itself.
Missed this as Birrin had interjected into it.
Me:
You invoked perception and non-perception in the first debate. But this also reminded me of a quote of yours from our DMs: “Consciousness can be made synonymous but really, Consciousness is the reference of what Awareness is aware of, such as world, body, and provisional mind. Awareness is the potential to perceive; Consciousness is that perception. Hence, ‘pure consciousness’, ‘pure perception’ which is undefiled by content, is Ultimate Reality.”
AT:
Erring in the desire to one-up the Absolute, or at least to give it levels and hierarchal structure—abstraction or abstract objects could not be in any order above something like unconditioned Awareness. That’s really what I am trying to wrap my head around: how an idea or content, imagined phenomena can be an adjudicating or containing Reality.
It’s the kind of externalism I would try and avoid but really can’t because we’re in the realm of thought and abstraction which is ruled by logical laws.
Me:
@Praxius I have a question for you: If Awareness is the “container” of Total Universality, as you have claimed is a possibility, wouldn’t this claim break your ontological model? Your model supports the perennial notion of “two Ones”, which you refer to as Total Unicity & Total Universality. If Awareness was intersected between the two, wouldn’t this create a “three Ones” scenario?
Unless you’re saying that Awareness is morphologically equated with Total Universality in the way that the domain of All Things is.
Praxius:
This is the answer; I would say that Awareness and Total Universality inhabit the same ontological degree, as I have said before in this model Awareness is effectively the “container” of Total Universality, solving my issue of having at least one degree of Reality which is the Ground—a prior, more abstract degree—that is aware, and also keeping it in the highest degree, post-differentiation, establishing it as universal.
Me:
“Thus, surmising an independent principle or reality also begs the question of its accessibility or subtle immanence…”
Major made the case here that the most essential reality (the Monad) should always be presently detectable to us as the Essence of Reality—immanent and omnipresent, since it is the Source or Context of all things. If Awareness is the Monad, then this logic is satisfied, since the most brutish, fundamentally detectable, universally present, and immediately immanent reality to us is our own Awareness.
Therefore, if there is a neutrally monadic hypostasis which is prior to Awareness, then we must ask how we can detect its presence in our world in the same way that we can detect Awareness. This question I thus ask you: How can we substantiate the immanence of the Neutral Hypostasis in our reality?
Praxius:
I would invoke a technicality in that assertion. You’re right; the most essential reality should always be presently detectable, but because it is an a priori reality, and is the context in which other realities exist, it does not necessarily always require to be detected. Every mathematical reality is “detectable”, but not necessarily “detected” until a certain equation is invoked, but this mathematical reality is a verity regardless of whether or not it is being detected, and it is always detectable should one wish to find it.
Awareness necessarily implies temporality. This is why it is likely Buddhists who will insist the most that Awareness is the Ultimate Reality, because a lot of Buddhist metaphysics don’t necessarily “deny” time as do other schools of metaphysics. Mathematical assertions don’t carry “awareness”; they are either validated or invalidated. Awareness arrives at a point in which there is enough complexity to require a sensational faculty which can detect nuance. You might say that Awareness is the kind of metaphysical “essence”, and that our states of awareness are just condensed “Essential Awareness”, but from a different viewpoint this “essence” is just Essence, and our corporeal state—including our states of awareness—are just condensed Essence.
The problem with this entire framework is its main assertion, that the Ultimate Reality must always be detectable. But the way it’s used makes it actually suggest that the Ultimate Reality must always be detected, which is obviously untrue or else everyone would just intuitively know metaphysics.
Me:
I think it is more so that Awareness would neither be “detected”, nor that which is necessarily “detectable” as if it is an external object, but rather that it is the “detecting”. To quote Major, “The Atman is not that which is seen, including ideas in the mind’s eye; it is the seeing itself. It is not the heard; it is the hearing.”
This is consistent with the idea that the Ultimate Reality is taken to be the “adjudicating” or “appropriating” factor.
Praxius:
What do you mean?
Me:
In the same way that Awareness is “behind the eyes” and adjudicates the consciousness and perception of a witness, we know that the Monad must be that which adjudicates the whole of Reality. My argument is that because all of provisional reality consists of essences (which are conscious stratifications), that the Ultimate Reality would have to be that which adjudicates Consciousness itself. In this way, Awareness is the best metaphor for that Reality.
Praxius:
I also don’t think that quote makes sense in an atemporal context either. This would suggest that the Atman is the third thing in the sequence of Three: One, One and Two, One and Two and Relationship (Three)
Me:
Could you elaborate on this point?
Praxius:
The Atman could not be the seeing or the hearing were there nothing to see or hear, nor anything for that thing to be seen or heard by. It seems that that was used in place of an analogy of Being, where the Atman is Being, but again, Being isn’t Awareness; Awareness has Being.
The Three is the principle I described earlier: There is the One, there is the Creator and Creation (Two), and then there is Creator & Creation & Relationship between them (Three). For the Atman to be the act of seeing, it would need to be the third thing. But if this act of seeing is just an analogy for acting as “Action” itself, then to say that the Atman is the Act is actually true, but the Act is not Awareness; it’s just the Act, and everything else derives from there, including Awareness. There is just no reality, to me at least, where mathematics is less fundamental than Awareness, and where Awareness = God.
The Third Debate
Me:
(post a screen recording of a light-hearted casual conversation from another server, shown as follows)
Warpzone:
I’m becoming increasingly troubled by my dreams.
Not because they’re conventionally troubling but because they’re inherently creative and I forget every detail upon waking up.
I see the most vivid, beautiful, swirling colors, breathtaking landscapes, beautiful foreign architecture beyond description.
I hear music, sometimes haunting, sometimes inspiring, always beautiful beyond anything I’ve ever heard.
And then it's gone when I’m awake.
Like my brain never thought them up at all.
Me:
You think that’s bad? Isaiah achieved ultimate knowledge and Enlightenment in a dream, started to dissolve into the Absolute, then woke up because he was having a heart attack.
Warpzone:
It’s bad because I have such a desire to create and lose my most profoundly inspired moments.
If I could remember more than bits and pieces and get them on paper.
I might have something.
Throughout the day, if I sit idle and close my eyes, I get bits and pieces of a melody, flashes of color and light.
Me:
Have you considered the possibility that you cannot remember these dreams because you’re only experiencing the quintessence of what you describe? The landscapes, architecture, etc. you describe may be formless/unmanifested, such that all that can be remembered is the experience of their quintessence.
Dreams tend to be rather “unresolved” after all.
If I ask you to imagine an apple, you may not put much mental effort into visualizing one, but you know what a “perfect” apple should look, taste, and feel like. The same could be true of your dreams.
Warpzone:
I feel like…
If I had the ability to grasp more than the quintessence, the full memory, the whole idea
I could make something.
I refuse to believe it’s not possible.
Hell, some of Paul McCartney's greatest works came to him in a dream.
The difference is he remembered them.
FRANK:
The issue you are talking about is a well-known phenomenon. The way you can retain this information is not letting the dream state end. When you wake up, you tend to move your thoughts to what you need to do to get out of bed. Don’t do this. You can wakeup in a dream and then try to remember it. Done it myself a lot.
That’s why my other dreams are in so much detail because I can keep myself in this partially awake state.
Ask Birrin about my dream space. It’s kind of strange. It’s a wild land of delusion and winding reality. The best way to describe it is as a carnival with no one in it but the noise of people. Once you leave that place you find yourself in a morphing expanse of possibility.
Grasslands to steel walls, all the way to a biome of bright light.
Going there in my dream can be annoying and it’s partially why sometimes I don’t sleep.
Warpzone:
Maybe I should learn sheet music and how to identify notes by ear.
Because they’re in my head.
FRANK:
Thanks for continuing in this powerful conversation. Enjoy your shit music.
SHEET music.
Warpzone:
Sorry I was just putting my thoughts down so I don’t forget
But you’re trying to say as I wake up I should try to avoid leaving the dream state?
FRANK:
Ya, like when you wake up try to just lay there and let the dream continue.
Warpzone:
Gotcha.
FRANK:
It might not come back fully but you will have more to piece together.
The more you do this, the better you will get at it, to the point where you can knowingly be in the dream.
Me:
(replying to FRANK) This is what I typically do.
(replying to Warpzone’s “If I had the ability to grasp more than the quintessence,…” comment) The point I make is that there was likely no transposition to these unresolved essences in the first place. You can’t recall the form of that which never took form to begin with.
If you forced yourself to awake in a state of “partial arousal”, you may be able to condition them into forms, but this would be a conscience resolution as opposed to an authentic participation in their unresolved states.
I find that unresolved dreams are more inspiring, since I am able to participate in the quintessence of things under whose domains it is possible for me to derive an unlimited multiplicity of conditioned inspirations.
This is such that, I could imagine after awaking perhaps 10 different forms that a dreamed castle could take.
Creativity thrives best when it is boundless and unrestricted by substantiation. The entire universe in all its beauty was born out of a dream of the Godhead, after all.
Warpzone:
Why is it I can remember bits of the melodies I know are from my dreams if they’re formless?
Like in my waking life I remember bits and pieces.
And I KNOW I dreamt them because they’re unrecognizable compared to anything I could find that sounds even remotely similar.
Me:
That parts of the melody can be recalled does not disqualify the melody from being formless. All which is learned is “recognized”. The unresolved, unqualified, and formless Godhead contains all possibilities and knowledges. You have merely derived one actualization from the boundless omnipotency. You always “knew” it, in essence.
Warpzone:
So, let’s say I take the bits I recall and expand upon them, would it then have form?
Me:
Yes. That is you actively transposing the quintessence into a conditioned manifestation.
Warpzone:
Realistically I don’t even know how my unconscious mind came up with the bits I recall
I have no conscious knowledge of baroque music or composition.
Me:
Reality is fundamentally mental. All that there is, is Awareness, which is the “unconditioned potency of pure mind”, or the “potential to perceive”; and “qualia” or “consciousness”, which is the reference for what Awareness is made aware of. Divine Consciousness always knew it; you merely recognized it. Ponder this.
Warpzone:
So, on a fundamental spiritual level, I have the knowledge within me and it must be realized?
Me:
Yes.
Think of it like this: There is only one Supreme Mind, which we might call the Logos in the vocabulary of Plato, or Paramatma in the vocabulary of the Dharmics. Your “self”, the “I” or “me” that you identify with, is just a particularization of this Supreme Mind, a logos within the greater Logos or an atman within the greater Paramatma. It has always been in the Mind; you merely recalled it from the Source.
Deja Vu is a great example of this. It is a recognition of events which have already transpired. Not in the temporal sense that they have “happened before”, but in that the Supreme Mind is undefiled by the principle of time such that all events of the past, present, and future are immediately present to It. It abides in non-distinction.
You will find that approaching Reality from the assumptions of Awareness as the Ultimate Reality, and Essence as the basis for Substance, can elucidate the answers to any questions or troubles you can encounter. They are the only “complete” philosophies, so to speak.
(end of screen recording)
Me:
@Praxius @AT Using what I’ve learned from y’all to help a friend resolve a question.
I feel like being at the intersection of a Western and an Eastern perspective has produced a very interesting result in me. I blend together the analytical metaphysics of the West with the mindful approach of Eastern idealism.
Even Sectionalism said something about this to me.
AT:
Formlessness can be recollected because formlessness is dichotomous and there are entire realms of “formless” reality as per the Buddha dhamma. “Form is formlessness, formlessness is form” and so on. Formlessness is a type of existence that is inspirational in that it is further along in the development of dependence. Ideas that are forming or formless are present in inspiration or spirit yet haven’t “materialized” or been given ground to become intelligible, such as the predicament of having things “on the tip of one’s tongue”—a perfect example. Formlessness is a kind of abstractness that is “there” but is ambiguous. Ultimate Reality in that way can be properly considered to be “formless” but not in the sense that its identity is an ambiguous presence, but that phenomenologically we can’t consider the Absolute to be conditioned by phenomena. In true reality, the unconditioned goes beyond formlessness as well. The Buddha had said that the adept do not interpret dreams nor practice magic, but there is an element of liberation in dreaming in that they can induce immense expansions of consciousness.
Me:
What do you mean by it’s “dichotomous”? What are these “formless realities” you speak of? And what do you mean by forming/formless ideas being “further along in the development of dependence”?
AT:
Scroll to “Ārūpyadhātu”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cosmology
Form and formlessness, each of these are on condition of another, they dependently arise together.
Me:
I wouldn’t say “together” but in sequence. Formless essence precedes formed substance.
AT:
But notice that it’s still ceded?
We are getting closer to the Ontic when we are moving backwards from this development of formlessness to form, but what precedes that is not established.
That is ultimately real.
Me:
I would agree that the Ultimate is beyond the dichotomy here in a very literal sense, yes.
AT:
This is a tough thing to consider because it was the foundation for [redacted]’s disagreement and longwinded discussion that followed for well over two months. He conceded there were elements that he was missing but I was bewildered that there is a beyondness to formless consciousness.
Me:
But do keep in mind I often describe the Ontic as “formless” for simplicity’s sake. With my friend in the video, I did not wish to be too overwhelming.
AT:
Experientially you cannot really get beyond it because Dhyana is really just intensified varieties of this. 9th Jhana is the furthest we can go and is completely enveloping.
It is as close as we can get to the Original Spirit in terms of meditation or direct experience.
That was my argument, that you couldn’t really get beyond unestablished potential or Awareness.
Me:
Unless we take Praxius’ position of neutral monism, in which case there is an even more ineffable substrate so acataleptic that to even begin with the brutish axiom of Awareness is to already defile it.
Praxius:
I like the way you put this
AT:
That neutral substance is still made intelligible in that it is “neither” reality (neither Mind nor Matter)—which conforms to a disjunct logical category of mutual negation.
Ultimate Reality wouldn’t even be that.
Me:
Playing devil’s advocate here: Couldn’t we say that our own intelligence and sense of reasoning defiles pure Awareness, and therefore is even less equipped to interface with a neutral substrate?
AT:
The former understanding of the natural conditioning of thought or discrimination is important to the Dhamma, but it goes without saying that, “Mind is the forerunner of all things”. You cannot really get beyond something like Spirit or immaterial considerations; faculties or processes in mind condition that Spirit and this is where dependency and causality arise from.
This third substance would have aspects of agency or Will if it’s not indeterminate Spirit, and I would hardly consider that to be ultimate or exhaustive.
Me:
(replying to AT’s “The former understanding…” comment) Still playing devil’s advocate: But if (hypothetically) Ultimate Reality precedes even the potency of pure mind, then how far we are able to get is short of accessing the Ultimate, is it not?
(replying to AT’s “This third substance would have aspects of agency…” comment) If we’re speaking of “aspects”, isn’t that transposition? Wouldn’t the Ultimate necessarily have to be unqualified regardless of which monadic philosophy we take?
Praxius:
(speaking to me) I have not yet watched the conversation video, but there are a few things to be said about your introductory remarks. Firstly, there is little to no metaphysical distinction between Traditional Western and Eastern doctrines. Whether or not you consider Christian Theology as Platonic/Aristotelian (the metaphysical distinction between which is also nearly nonexistent) or as uniquely its own thing, it began as a religion that henotheistically participated in the praxiological “meta-tradition” of the Bronze Age, and developed, again, along Platonic and Aristotelian lines—which themselves as independent strains participated in that same meta-tradition in which Eastern doctrines are also included. The real dichotomy between East and West, we can say, begins at the total adoption of Christianity as dogma, but even that is a disservice because the metaphysical/ontological suggestions of Christianity, are, again, Traditional. The true beginning for the dichotomy between East and West begins at the Enlightenment and the centralization of the Human Being as the key reference point of philosophical discussion, and the reason for this is not because this is a West vs. East development, but because it is a Traditional vs. Anti-Traditional development. The East just happened to preserve Tradition better than the West.
AT:
(replying to my “If we’re speaking of ‘aspects’,…” comment) I would think that it would be even more difficult epistemologically to know that Reality, if it’s a neutral substance completely. With something like Dhamma, they say that words and conceptualizations will only take you so far before direct insight is required. Such issues are the same ones I’ve asked Panno, about the criteria of arahantship and how we can know we are Enlightened.
Me:
But that’s precisely the question I raise: What if direct insight is still not enough?
Praxius:
(continuing from his own remarks) Secondly, “Idealism” is not, in my opinion, an appropriate term for Traditional (what you have referenced as Eastern) thought, but that is because I do not necessarily agree with that notion of philosophy in general and I also believe that the term “idealism” has been profaned by many post-Enlightenment Western writers.
Me:
I was not accusing the West & East of being different in their doctrinal essences. Rather, I was stating that their approaches/methodologies contrast in that the West approaches philosophy analytically like a science, while the East is more concerned with faculties of the mind and perception.
AT:
(replying to my “But that’s precisely the question I raise:…” comment) The consciousness of a Saint is one of repeated negation, such that it never rests or otherwise affirms any particular or condition whatsoever. If this is not satisfactory, with the best efforts in consideration, then it would seem that a kind of epistemological nihilism is unavoidable.
Really, faith is a major aspect of the Dharma. The four stages of Enlightenment and many of the features of Buddhism were written and dogmatized long after his (Buddha’s) death. It is extremely difficult to discern which aspects or teachings better describe Reality.
I can know for sure that dependent origination, Karma, and the four noble truths are authentic because I can literally see them. But some aspects of these teachings are much harder to put a phenomenological referent for. But that’s the whole idea of practicing rather than scholarly work.
Me:
(continuing my reply to Praxius) Perhaps I should’ve selected a better term. By “idealism”, I was referencing idealist monism or monadic cosmoconsciousness—that Reality is born of the Divine Mind.
Praxius:
Ah yes I see.
AT:
(continuing his own remarks) The idea is that eventually you will be able to apply experience to texts and make them explanatory in a deeper way.
Praxius:
(replying to my ‘Perhaps I should’ve selected a better term.…” comment) This is also a Western doctrine, however, and we can see this just as much in Christianity as any Western Esoteric tradition as well.
Me:
True. I suppose more so I was just trying to emphasize the difference in approaches. I was also tired when I wrote my original comments so maybe I wasn’t thinking too thoroughly.
(replying to AT’s “The consciousness of a Saint…” comment) That’s an interesting point.
@Praxius How would you respond to this argument that neutral monism leads to epistemological nihilism?
AT:
Idealism is a crass term for “immaterialism”, but I would see various forms of idealism as closer to the truth than other forms of “philosophy” like materialism or realism.
European idealism, Vedanta, Buddhism, Mystical traditions, Spinozism, Orphism, Platonism—are all “immaterialist” or spirit-oriented, at least in genus.
Praxius:
(replying to my last question) I am unsure if this is the point trying to be made with this comment, but if it is then I do not see the logic.
AT:
I would also say that Dharma has scientific features, just that of consciousness rather than the material work or condition, hence why Vedic material sciences are truly archaic.
Praxius:
I would say all of Reality is a science to a certain degree, taking “science” here by its broadest definition. Rituals are certainly a type of metaphysical science for sure.
AT:
I would say that my position isn’t that neutral monism leads to nihilism but that under the condition that direct insight is not enough, then we’re in real trouble.
Nihilists as we’ve discussed, thrive in intellectual and abstract conditions because they are conscious of contradiction and the inheritance of vocabulary/ideation. If we can’t get beyond this and have a kind of supra-empirical or experiential knowledge, it’s over.
Praxius:
@Birrin The difference you’re trying to ascertain is that between :”The Ground” and “God”. It is the Undifferentiated-Undifferentiated, the “First One”, etc.
Formlessness-Formful is preceded by Formlessness is preceded by a kind of ineffable “Unitary Formlessness” which is impossible to ascertain; the most we can know of it is to know of it.
“Pure Abstraction”, I suppose.
Praxius:
And in this regard, I can see why this could lead to a kind of metaphysical nihilism if we take nihilism as the conclusion that abstraction is valueless.
I do not think this is the case, however, because it is absence that nihilists thrive on, not abstraction.
Me:
Excellent point.
Even if Ultimate Reality occupies a complete indeterminate zone shrouded in epistemological poverty, it is not valueless, but is abundantly overflowing as it is the Source of All Things.
Praxius:
Precisely.
AT:
Metaphysical nihilism is the notion that there were no objects at all, not just abstract Platonic objects of thought. The issue with abstraction is that it involves natural hinderances, as language never makes contact with Reality in an authentic way.
The best way of thinking about this predicament is that there is a super-sensible intuitive knowledge that you have about it, and typically we come to understand it further by allowing its intrusiveness to shape our current consciousness.
Me:
How does true metaphysical nihilism argue for this? This seems absurd.
AT:
Very similar to illusion and Enlightenment arguments but that they don’t assent to the self being ultimately real. To them, nothingness is ultimately real and is reified.
Me:
Sounds to me like the margin between monism and nihilism is razor-thin, and hinges on (as Praxius pointed out) whether one ascribes value to the Ultimate, and whether one is relishing in valued abstraction or valueless absence.
AT:
(“Metaphysical Nihilism” by Meta Sage)
Nihilism is kinda like a purifying tool or process, in a relational way.
Yeah.
Me:
What do you mean?
AT:
Nietzsche describes it in two forms: active and passive. The passive form is spiritually delirious and delusional, leading to lethargy. The active is like a “hammer” of which is used to smash abstractions and to create new values and ideas.
Nihilism is an inferior vehicle; in true reality as an actual position, it’s just extreme skepticism.
Me:
I still don’t understand what you mean by “purifying tool”. What is it purifying?
AT:
It’s removing or subtracting narratives, meanings, values, associations, beliefs and fixed routines.
Me:
Ah I see.
AT:
It’s how you get to a philosophical or spiritual blank state.
The central problem is that it essentially results in wallowing.
Me:
It’s trying to approach the Ultimate, but does so with an improper motivation.
AT:
Absolutely.
Me:
Inverted monism, essentially.
AT:
Much of Vedanta and Buddhism is seen to be nihilistic because it does something similar.
Yeah, it’s reified nothingness as Ultimate Reality. Not Consciousness or Awareness, not voidness, just nothing.
Me:
Methinks we should crush nihilists’ skulls with hammers.
AT:
In that way it is dull because it has no mystical features and allows no aspects of repentance or absorption into fullness.
Me:
@AT This is only tangentially related, but how would you rebuke solipsism? If I only have access to my own point of awareness, how can I demonstrate epistemic access to an Awareness superior to my personhood?
AT:
Solipsism fails to remove the condition of possessiveness and thus is false view. Solipsism in epistemological and metaphysical considerations results in: “The content of my mind is the content of the world, or rather, the contents of the world are the contents of my consciousness.” If we remove the quality of “my” or the conceit in that, then it would be far closer to the truth.
Awareness has access to this “I”, not the inverse, as Awareness isn’t an appropriating factor.
Me:
Ah, so the limitation is the self. Omit the self and the entire philosophy shatters like glass.
What do you mean by appropriating?
AT:
It’s not that “we” or “I” has access to Awareness; Awareness is the “accessor” or that which is reaching. Remember when we talked about the phenomenological impossibility of considering someone else’s awareness such that, “being in another’s shoes” was said to be a metaphysical impossibility? Think of it like this: The Absolute does have access to all of the shoes; the conditioned awareness does not.
>Ultimate Reality in that way can be properly considered to be “formless” but not in the sense that its identity is an ambiguous presence, but that phenomenologically we can’t consider the Absolute to be conditioned by phenomena. In true reality, the unconditioned goes beyond formlessness as well.
>Form and formlessness, each of these are on condition of another, they dependently arise together.
Yes, I think the correct term for this would be "supra-essential" or "pre-essential". To consider the ultimate reality "formal" or "formless" would be like trying to order a set of only 1. It only has one order and it is 1, which is both the most ordered it could possibly be and the most disordered it could possibly be.
https://hellenicfaith.wordpress.com/aion/