Soul ? What soul ?
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cmlover
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I am surprised there is such a flippant discussion of this 'weighty' topic. There can be two modes of discussion: one totally scientic; two totally philosophical. Both do not agree since science (vig~nAna) as is practised is totally materialistic. Medical science starting from the days of Galen has been trying to find where the soul is hiding inside the body and has come to the conclusion about its non-existence. On the otherhand the concept of 'soul' is inherent only in the Eastern religions and elaborated in extenso only in Hinduism. There are three main approaches: advaita, vishiShTAdavita, dvaita in addition to others (Sanhkya, cArvaka, shAkta etc.,). GaruDa purANam discusses the ritualistic approach as also the dharma shastras (there are many) explain the prescriptive procedures. The purely esoteric approach is expatiated in the Brahmasutra (of bAdarAyaNa) as well as the Upanishads which have various interpretations depending on the 'philosophy' pursued. It may take pages to explain and discuss the different issues. None of it will have any import on CM (much to the chagrin of our webmaster) unless you want to discuss whether Valmiki was reincarnated as Thyagaraja etc., At any rate the discussion and the efforts will be shashash^Ri^NgAnvEShaNam (hunting for the hare's horn)!
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Nick H
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vasanthakokilam
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Rajumds: You got me! Good question!! Back to the drawing board!! We can provisionally get by with a restriction that this kind of transmigration does not apply to living things that do not have conscious free will, but that is unsatisfactory since we do hear that being born as a different species is applicable to Hinduism.rajumds wrote:VKvasanthakokilam wrote: Some unresolved questions...
On initial entry into this system, the carrier of NVJ has to be initialzed with some value. Is it Zero, some positive value or some negative value?
( are you born a sinner, born neutral or born virtuous, is one way of looking at this fundemental issue ).
It is easy to postulate that the objective is be released from this birth cycle. What is the exit criteria? NVJ to be greater than zero?
Do non human life forms have the concept of karma ?. They don't rationalise and there may be no concept of good or bad. Does a tiger get more bad karma by killing a cow than by killing a goat.
Then what is the NVJ for you take a human form ??
nandagopal: I now vaguely recall that dialog between Nachiketa and Yama. I did not think of it then, now I wonder if there is an answer there to Rajumds throwing a monkey wrench into my model
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Shivadasan
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Thanks to Coolji for considering my posts as useful. As CM lover says the matter is a serious one and not meant for a flippant discussion. I will try to give a balanced view of the subject based on my studies. Here I would deal only with the small ‘soul’ which we feel as ‘ourselves’ and not the Paramathma or Universal Soul.
‘Soul’ is a difficult concept to understand because, lacking any account of personal experiences of any one, we depend on explanations from persons who might not have had any ‘death’ experience. There cannot be any definite knowledge on this subject but only an intelligent assumption. It is a different matter that such knowledge might neither help in spirituality nor in CM. But what is given below might be of use to persons who do not want to be confused and seek a clear view. It might as well help them in spiritual pursuits.
After an analysis we can safely arrive at this conclusion.
The ‘soul’ is that force within us that makes us feel as an individual with an identity. This force activates the body in various ways some of the actions benefiting the personality or the body, and some of them detrimental to either or both. Every action is recorded in its internal memory as well as in a special atmosphere in the universe, call it by any name,( a sort of double entry book keeping !). It happens in every birth it takes, and therefore contains the full ‘history’ of its actions, birth by birth. In every birth the ‘soul’ the Universe sends back its reactions to each and every one of the actions so recorded. It works like a computer generated random numbers so that no one can predict which reaction a person will get at what time. When the ‘soul’ ‘leaves’ the body its internal memory will include all the actions that had been done in this birth and all those entries that have been ‘cancelled’. Some people name this recording factor as ‘karma’.
Whatever we experience from the external world is based on our previous karma. Each one is the reaction sent by the Universe. The Universe wants to give us an opportunity to cancel it by accepting what it has sent without any reaction. When we do not react to it the entry gets cancelled. ( A sort of Double Entry Book keeping ?) If we react, it goes back like an unclaimed baggage on the luggage belt in an airport and will come back again. When ? We do not know. Once we clear all these entries we are cleared of all karmas and we do not take birth again. When we not only reject what the Universe has sent us but take additional activities to prevent it coming again we have created more entries !
The above statement has been after a deep study of the teaching of many saints and I hope that it presents a fairly acceptable view of the nature of Karma.
Shivadasan
‘Soul’ is a difficult concept to understand because, lacking any account of personal experiences of any one, we depend on explanations from persons who might not have had any ‘death’ experience. There cannot be any definite knowledge on this subject but only an intelligent assumption. It is a different matter that such knowledge might neither help in spirituality nor in CM. But what is given below might be of use to persons who do not want to be confused and seek a clear view. It might as well help them in spiritual pursuits.
After an analysis we can safely arrive at this conclusion.
The ‘soul’ is that force within us that makes us feel as an individual with an identity. This force activates the body in various ways some of the actions benefiting the personality or the body, and some of them detrimental to either or both. Every action is recorded in its internal memory as well as in a special atmosphere in the universe, call it by any name,( a sort of double entry book keeping !). It happens in every birth it takes, and therefore contains the full ‘history’ of its actions, birth by birth. In every birth the ‘soul’ the Universe sends back its reactions to each and every one of the actions so recorded. It works like a computer generated random numbers so that no one can predict which reaction a person will get at what time. When the ‘soul’ ‘leaves’ the body its internal memory will include all the actions that had been done in this birth and all those entries that have been ‘cancelled’. Some people name this recording factor as ‘karma’.
Whatever we experience from the external world is based on our previous karma. Each one is the reaction sent by the Universe. The Universe wants to give us an opportunity to cancel it by accepting what it has sent without any reaction. When we do not react to it the entry gets cancelled. ( A sort of Double Entry Book keeping ?) If we react, it goes back like an unclaimed baggage on the luggage belt in an airport and will come back again. When ? We do not know. Once we clear all these entries we are cleared of all karmas and we do not take birth again. When we not only reject what the Universe has sent us but take additional activities to prevent it coming again we have created more entries !
The above statement has been after a deep study of the teaching of many saints and I hope that it presents a fairly acceptable view of the nature of Karma.
Shivadasan
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knandago2001
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The third charana of Tyagaraja’s karmamE balavantamAyA in saveri is worth quoting:
kAsAsa lEni nAmadiki ni karuNayE dhanamani balki nindAsatO
vacci sannidhiki nijadAsuDaina shrI tyAgarAjuniki
Having convinced my mind - which has no desire for money - that Your grace alone is wealth, and (therefore) even after having come to your presence with fond hope, are the results of past actions so powerful to this Thyagaraja - who is your true devotee
http://sahityam.net/wiki/Karmame_Balavanta
kAsAsa lEni nAmadiki ni karuNayE dhanamani balki nindAsatO
vacci sannidhiki nijadAsuDaina shrI tyAgarAjuniki
Having convinced my mind - which has no desire for money - that Your grace alone is wealth, and (therefore) even after having come to your presence with fond hope, are the results of past actions so powerful to this Thyagaraja - who is your true devotee
http://sahityam.net/wiki/Karmame_Balavanta
Last edited by knandago2001 on 25 Jun 2009, 16:35, edited 1 time in total.
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srkris
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That would fit in a dwaitic (dualist/relative) point of view. In the case of Adwaita (nondualism/absolute), there is no such thing as existence or non-existence. So to talk of the soul as being existing or not-existing would be misconceived.cmlover wrote:Medical science starting from the days of Galen has been trying to find where the soul is hiding inside the body and has come to the conclusion about its non-existence.
That apart, it is not possible to "search" for a soul.
The question of the nature of the soul is still inconclusive even to science, as life cannot yet be introduced scientifically into a non-living system.
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vganesh
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I have a weird explanation for Atma linked to population. As advita says Atma can not be destroyed. Only the body is destroyed. Hence Atma keeps on multiplying indefintely 
as each one of us in born. The born atma eithre a new Atma or the floating soul going into some human form. Hence population is growing. 
as each one of us in born. The born atma eithre a new Atma or the floating soul going into some human form. Hence population is growing. -
ragam-talam
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Hmm, not sure why this soul talk should be a serious one! As one astute 'spiritual' teacher has observed, this whole existence could be a 'cosmic joke'. Taking a serious approach to the subject need not necessarily provide any big insights after all.
And this aim (or is it obsession?) of not wanting to be born again itself is a bit strange. What exactly is the problem with this world? Or are these people merely escapists? And what is the big deal with getting moksha and being absorbed for ever with god or whatever is out there? Surely that must be pretty boring?
All these are questions worth pondering over, especially by the 'serious' people.
And please - these are not flippant questions. Besides, as Mulla Nasruddin, Tenali Raman and other Zen masters have indicated to us over time, great wisdom can often be found in humour.
And this aim (or is it obsession?) of not wanting to be born again itself is a bit strange. What exactly is the problem with this world? Or are these people merely escapists? And what is the big deal with getting moksha and being absorbed for ever with god or whatever is out there? Surely that must be pretty boring?
All these are questions worth pondering over, especially by the 'serious' people.
And please - these are not flippant questions. Besides, as Mulla Nasruddin, Tenali Raman and other Zen masters have indicated to us over time, great wisdom can often be found in humour.
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ragam-talam
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And on the comment that it is the 'mind stuff' that reincarnates - all that I can say is, it sounds like mumbo-jumbo. Mind you, mumbo-jumbo can be a good thing. But it still is mumbo-jumbo.
What is interesting is that some people here talk about these subjects as if they are the final authority.
C'mon, grow up - and know less.
What is interesting is that some people here talk about these subjects as if they are the final authority.
C'mon, grow up - and know less.
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girish_a
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Since matters of death, soul etc are being discussed here, this incident from Sri Ramana Maharshi's life might interest you. Ramana helped his mother to get enlightenment at the time of her physical death.
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Mother’s health started deteriorating from 1920. On the 19th of May 1922, her condition became critical. After his morning walk Ramana want to her room at about 8 a.m., and sat beside her. Throughout the day, he had his right hand on her spiritual heart, on the right side of the chest and his left hand on her head. Ramana took on the sacred assignment of liberating his mother from the travails of births. He had the power to bestow liberation. But he let her battle for it while at the same time he extended his gracious and invaluable support for it to fructify. What happened has been described by Ramana himself.
"The vasanas of the previous births and latent tendencies which are seeds of future births came out. She was observing one after another the scenes of experiences arising from remaining vasanas. As a result of a series of such experiences she was working them out."
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Mother’s health started deteriorating from 1920. On the 19th of May 1922, her condition became critical. After his morning walk Ramana want to her room at about 8 a.m., and sat beside her. Throughout the day, he had his right hand on her spiritual heart, on the right side of the chest and his left hand on her head. Ramana took on the sacred assignment of liberating his mother from the travails of births. He had the power to bestow liberation. But he let her battle for it while at the same time he extended his gracious and invaluable support for it to fructify. What happened has been described by Ramana himself.
"The vasanas of the previous births and latent tendencies which are seeds of future births came out. She was observing one after another the scenes of experiences arising from remaining vasanas. As a result of a series of such experiences she was working them out."
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knandago2001
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I first heard these stanzas sung at one of Smt. R. Vedavalli's concerts - much later I came to know that they were taken from the Bhavani ashtakam composed by Adi Sankara
na jAnAmi dAnam na ca dhyAna yOgam
na jAnAmi tantram na ca stOtra mantram
na jAnAmi pUjAm na ca nyAsa yOgam
gatistvam gatistvam tvam ekA bhavAni
na jAnAmi puNyam na jAnAmi tIrtham
na jAnAmi muktim layam vA kadAcit
na jAnAmi bhaktim vratam vApi mAta
gatistvam gatistvam tvam ekA bhavAni
http://www.stutimandal.com/gif_adi/bhavani_ashtakam.htm
na jAnAmi dAnam na ca dhyAna yOgam
na jAnAmi tantram na ca stOtra mantram
na jAnAmi pUjAm na ca nyAsa yOgam
gatistvam gatistvam tvam ekA bhavAni
na jAnAmi puNyam na jAnAmi tIrtham
na jAnAmi muktim layam vA kadAcit
na jAnAmi bhaktim vratam vApi mAta
gatistvam gatistvam tvam ekA bhavAni
http://www.stutimandal.com/gif_adi/bhavani_ashtakam.htm
Last edited by knandago2001 on 26 Jun 2009, 12:00, edited 1 time in total.
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cmlover
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Shivadasan
That is a brilliant book-keeping! You must be an Accountant to parse those (not so flippant) concepts in a logical Format. Maybe the Deity (if there is one external (dvaita?)) is a giant Computer keeping tabs on the errant jiVatmas and settling the accounts appropriately! Such a mechanistic view will fit in with Sankhya! Perhaps we are all Robots infected with a virus (called 'soul') which controls our errant behaviour! Perhaps the 'Devil' is the hacker! Let us wait for the System Shut-down for us to regain our normal functions!
That is a brilliant book-keeping! You must be an Accountant to parse those (not so flippant) concepts in a logical Format. Maybe the Deity (if there is one external (dvaita?)) is a giant Computer keeping tabs on the errant jiVatmas and settling the accounts appropriately! Such a mechanistic view will fit in with Sankhya! Perhaps we are all Robots infected with a virus (called 'soul') which controls our errant behaviour! Perhaps the 'Devil' is the hacker! Let us wait for the System Shut-down for us to regain our normal functions!
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cmlover
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coolkarni
By the by I have responded to your challenge @
http://rasikas.org/forums/post125369.html#p125369
By the by I have responded to your challenge @
http://rasikas.org/forums/post125369.html#p125369
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cmlover
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If the present pursuit of life being a Qunatum phenomenon proves fruitful then the distinction between living and non-living will fade! Perhaps the next biggest scientific breakthrough will be the equation of life . Perhaps the answers are already there in a cryptic form in our Upanishads!srkris wrote:The question of the nature of the soul is still inconclusive even to science, as life cannot yet be introduced scientifically into a non-living system.cmlover wrote:Medical science starting from the days of Galen has been trying to find where the soul is hiding inside the body and has come to the conclusion about its non-existence.
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srikant1987
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knandago2001
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allide nammane illi bande summane
kada bagilirisida kalla mane idu
mudadinda loladO sullu mane
idiragi vaikuntha vAsa mAduvantha
padumanabhana divya baduku mane (allide)
mAligemaneyendu nechchi kedali beda
kElayya harikathe Shravanangala
nAle yamadootaru bandeledoyvaga
mAlige maneyu sngada baradayya (allide)
madadi makkalemba hambala ninagEko
kadugobbuthanadali mereyadiru
odeya sri purandharavitthlarayana
drudha bhaktiyali nee bhajiselo manuja (allide)
Though I have never heard this composition of Purandara dasa on the concert circuit, I understand that Swami Purushottamanandaji Maharaj has rendered it and the cassete / CD is available from the Ramakrishna Maths of Karnataka.
kada bagilirisida kalla mane idu
mudadinda loladO sullu mane
idiragi vaikuntha vAsa mAduvantha
padumanabhana divya baduku mane (allide)
mAligemaneyendu nechchi kedali beda
kElayya harikathe Shravanangala
nAle yamadootaru bandeledoyvaga
mAlige maneyu sngada baradayya (allide)
madadi makkalemba hambala ninagEko
kadugobbuthanadali mereyadiru
odeya sri purandharavitthlarayana
drudha bhaktiyali nee bhajiselo manuja (allide)
Though I have never heard this composition of Purandara dasa on the concert circuit, I understand that Swami Purushottamanandaji Maharaj has rendered it and the cassete / CD is available from the Ramakrishna Maths of Karnataka.
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Shivadasan
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Thanks to cmlover for understanding what I wanted to express and describing it in the computer terminology in a beautiful manner. My language would have been a little too abstract for many participants. Unless one gets a clear idea about life and death such things cannot be understood. It would look like mumbo-jumbo.
Some people feel that death is not a serious issue for discussion. But death has been considered as one of the most important subjects in this world. All religions exist only because of this factor. In a world where there is no death what is the use of religion and spiritual practices ? They would not exist. There is none who is not afraid of death. Those who are not afraid like Shivaji, Shahid Bhagat singh, Chandrashekar Azad are heralded as ‘Dhira’s. All the realized sages and saints had conquered the fear of death. Some, particularly siddhas, had even conquered death.
In one of the dialogues, I do not remember whether it is Yaksha Prasna or the dialogue between Yama and Savitri, a question is asked, "What is the greatest wonder in this world ?"
Some people feel that death is not a serious issue for discussion. But death has been considered as one of the most important subjects in this world. All religions exist only because of this factor. In a world where there is no death what is the use of religion and spiritual practices ? They would not exist. There is none who is not afraid of death. Those who are not afraid like Shivaji, Shahid Bhagat singh, Chandrashekar Azad are heralded as ‘Dhira’s. All the realized sages and saints had conquered the fear of death. Some, particularly siddhas, had even conquered death.
In one of the dialogues, I do not remember whether it is Yaksha Prasna or the dialogue between Yama and Savitri, a question is asked, "What is the greatest wonder in this world ?"
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ragam-talam
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naarayanan
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ragam-talam
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Cool-ji, one should take Bertrand Russell's comments with a pinch of salt.
By that I mean that his condemnation of theologians etc is mostly in the context of Science vs Christian religion. The story is quite different when it comes to a religion such as Hinduism. The fusion of the material and spiritual is much more advanced in Hinduism, in my opinion.
To take an example, yoga is now recognized by several people as having a solid scientific basis while at the same time with a strong spiritual element in it.
By that I mean that his condemnation of theologians etc is mostly in the context of Science vs Christian religion. The story is quite different when it comes to a religion such as Hinduism. The fusion of the material and spiritual is much more advanced in Hinduism, in my opinion.
To take an example, yoga is now recognized by several people as having a solid scientific basis while at the same time with a strong spiritual element in it.
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Shivadasan
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Thanks to Coolji for the wonderful post on Bertrand Russel
I had always been fascinated by Bertrand Russell and his razor sharp analysis of issues. He had extraordinary perception of things and his logic was precise. In this article we could see the deep perception he had of things and concepts. Many of his ideas might find parallels in Advaitha concepts of Hinduism.
The following words of his show how near he was to the concept of body in Hinduism.
"But the philosopher was apt to analyse it away after one fashion or another, reducing it usually to ideas in the mind of the man who had the body and anybody else who happened to notice him."
I had always been fascinated by Bertrand Russell and his razor sharp analysis of issues. He had extraordinary perception of things and his logic was precise. In this article we could see the deep perception he had of things and concepts. Many of his ideas might find parallels in Advaitha concepts of Hinduism.
The following words of his show how near he was to the concept of body in Hinduism.
"But the philosopher was apt to analyse it away after one fashion or another, reducing it usually to ideas in the mind of the man who had the body and anybody else who happened to notice him."
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Shivadasan
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vasanthakokilam
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I have been meaning to write on this Science vs Philosophy point with respect to the main topic of this thread that Uday started. I am using CML's statement above as a reference point. This long post is not to provide a concrete and direct answer to the main question of this thread but to put in some perspective the two concepts we use in common parlance. 'Science' and "Reality". That will set the stage to speculate on how one can answer the Soul question in a completely scientific manner even if it is not a satisfactory answer to many people.cmlover wrote:I am surprised there is such a flippant discussion of this 'weighty' topic. There can be two modes of discussion: one totally scientic; two totally philosophical. Both do not agree since science (vig~nAna) as is practised is totally materialistic.
I tried to keep it fairly descriptive and not mathematical, so it should be accessible to everyone. Sorry for the length of the post. Please try to read it till the end.
We all have our notions of reality that are easily describable. We touch something and we say it is hard or soft. Let us call that Physical Intuition, an intuition gathered through our sense organs.
This applies to other physical intuitions like hot/cold, good smell/bad smell, quiet/loud etc. Physics over the last few centuries has made progress in piercing through that veil of sensory reality
and say they are derived from more fundamental forms. For example, hard/soft ( tenacity ) is really due to the specific values of molecular bonds, hot/cold is a sensory characterization of the velocity of particles, color is really electromagnetic waves of various frequencies.
Our senses are ficticious in another sense. We have never really touched another object. Our electrons only feel the repulsive forces of the electrons of another object. We have never really seen any object. We have merely interpreted the waves the other object reflects, the waves are not even its own. In science terms, our sensory organs provide a mapping of the external reality to our physical intuition about it ( technically this is called Isomorphism ).
So far so good, it is all elementary, but just a re-characterization of physical intuition.
But a closer examination of that isomorphism ( mapping of external to internal reality ) reveals something very interesting. At least before Einstein and Quantum Physics, that isomorphism can be understood with our naive notions of reality. But with Einstein and much more so with Quantum Physics, the more successful science has become in providing a sharper and clearer isomorphism, the more mathematical it has become. Over the past 80 years, science has left the physical intuition and followed the mathematics. There are complicated equations that describe "reality". Now that isomorphism is basically a mathematical model. It predicts that if you do these experiments with these initial conditions, here are the results. And magically that proves to be true. It is impossibe to provide a physical intuition based explanation to those mathematical equations. At best, we can provide metaphors. For example, some of you may have heard of "Matter Waves" ( like the favorite member id with that name here ). Matter is in "reality" not a wave as our physical intuition will make us think. It is just that the equations that describe the location of matter resemble the equations that describe a wave that we normally relate to. That is all and there is no other "physical interpretation" allowed. ( it is a probability wave.. just in case that raises your curiosity level to read up further on this ).
BTW, those equations resemble a Harmonic Oscillator which is also used to describe the vibrations of a string of a Veena, just to stoke your curiosity. Again, do not get too excited, matter is not music, it is just a metaphor. ( that basic form of the equation is ubiquitous in science which in itself is interesting. Is everything music? Well, not really, but it is a special case of a deeper issue, covered below).
So where are we? The most successful scientific descriptions of reality is just a bunch of mathematical equations. Here is the kicker. If those equations predict "para normal" activity, you have to accept it as normal without trying to think with "physical intuition" as to how that can be. I am not making this up, it is all part of main-stream core science. Here is an example of such a "para-normal" prediction. It is called "non-local reality". Two particles that are together in a specific configuration fly off in opposite directions to distant places in the universe. If one changes its property one way, the other will change its property in an equivalent way instantly no matter how far apart they are. That is what the equations tell you. Believe it or not, this has been experimentally verified, albeit in shorter distances. So already, the "reality" as describes by science is not what it seems to our physical intuition.
And this "connected-whole" in the midst of apparent "separateness" is part and parcel of modern science. It has been known for quite a few decades that you can not really separate the "observer" and the "observed" ( this is still a metaphorical statement regarding this connected-whole )
( of course there is a tendency to describe any para-normal activity using this non-local reality equations but that is not part of science however enticing it is. QP is great fodder for pseudo-mystics ).
OK, that tells us what science is today... Now let us transition to the philosophical side since it is meta-science. It ponders what Science itself is and tries to pass judgment on Science.
If the above is all there is to it, one can stroll along nicely. But a closer examination of what these mathamatical equations are can be quite stirring. This is something even Einstein loudly wondered about.
Here is what he is quoted to have wondered about.
Code: Select all
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is
independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is
human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the
properties of real things?Now we are back to where we started. The internal reality. Why? Because mathamatics is a product of internal reality brought upon by a brain which evolved for survial reasons. It made mathematics up.
( to be fair there are those so called Platonists as opposed to the formalists who believe Mathematics exists in the real world and we humans just discover them and not invent them ).
So how come mathematics, a conceptual formal systems invented by a brain that evolved to sustain a configuration of fundamental particles is so powerful in describing the reality it perceives through its not so powerful sensory organs?
Is it all then a self fulfilling prophecy? Meaning, is it so successful because it is intended to be so for its very own survival. Remember, at some level, these mathematical equations, a product of the brain is providing a mapping of external reality back to the brain. Its only interface to the external world are the sensory organs. Did the sensory organs and the conceptual reasoning powers co-evolve to solve a common survival problem with absolutely no concern for the "real" truth even if assuming such a real truth exists? That will be a scientifically consistent point of view if that is the claim. Science does not really have to claim it is describing the real reality. It just has to be consistent and powerful to explain things, events and phenomena.
Let us rapidly switch back to science/math from philosophical meanderings.
That kind of 'self reflexive' analysis can not get us anywhere. (Remember this whole laborious post is written by my pea-sized brain. So it is all the brain wondering about itself and about the validity of its own existence.)
My hero Godel comes to the rescue.
Godel proved in his incompleteness theorem that you can never solve this 'self reflexivity' problem. It is a great proof, set up using just mathematics.
OK, let us rapidly switch to philosophy.
But Godel is again using mathematics which is what we have analyzed above. If the whole darn thing is a deception, then no wonder Godel's proof is so consistent and believable even though it is a proof of a theorem about mathematics itself. Because it has to, by definition. Godel would nod his head and ask 'So? What is your point?'
So here, mathematics the greatest tool ever invented by humans to describe reality in the most accurate terms destroys its own credibility and says that it can be a lie too. But Godel would still say you can not trust even that conclusion because it is talking about itself. The Meta-Mathematical-Reflexivity problem is also unsolvable.
What is the solution then?
Acknowlege Godel is right and accept that self-reflective reality is an undecidable. The following is the simple reason for that. All of the above discussion is to get to this simple derivation.
Reality IS Science,
Science IS Math,
Self-Reflective Reality is Self-Reflective Science,
Self-Reflective Science is Self-Reflective Math
Self-Reflective Math is Undecidable according to Godel's incompleteness theorem and hence
Self-Reflective Science is Undecidable and hence
Self-Reflective Reality IS Undecidable.
So, what this means is the questions like Self, Soul, Atman etc can not be fully decided from inside our own world/'system'/'reality'.
But there is a way out.
Since we can not solve this problem while inside our system, let us postulate that there is something outside of the system which knows about our reality. (Btw it does not know its own reality, since Godel's theorem prohibits that. To know its reality, we have to invoke yet another outer system. We have to acknowledge that such an infinite regression of ever so powerful and knowledgeable systems exist )
This outside entity need not be para-normal or omnipotent or omniscient etc. It is just more powerful and more knowledgeable than us in very specific ways.
In what way, it has to be more powerful and knowledgeable than us?
One attractive possibility is that it has to have more dimensions than our system. For example, an ant in strictly two dimensions will attribute para-normal reasons if you pick a grain of rice and move it to another spot. It will think the rice magically disappeared and reappeared in another spot. So, the word "system" is only defined with respect to certain dimensionality. This is already true in our world.
Our non-scientific "physical intuition" system has 3 spatial dimensions and a time dimension. In the Einstein General relativity system it has 3 Spatial Dimensions + a time dimension + a curvature of those space and time dimensions.
The one who knows about our true reality just needs to have additional space and time dimensions. Then, for example, if we observe teleportation and time travel as para normal in our reality,
a child in their system will simply describe it for what it is, rather than requiring complex mathematics, just like how a child can explain to the ant why the rice moved to another place: 'I just picked it up and put it there'. In the ant system the child may be considered omni-potent where as in our system the child is just playing.
So the concept of Soul, however intriguing and undefinable it may be in our world, can be a simple concept in that outer system.
Scientifically we can build an extra-dimensional system where the Soul is described in the simplest of terms. In other words, we can model Soul scientifically in their system. We just need concret evidence of para-normal activities that first of all require a concept called Soul. We may have to invoke concepts like Entropy, Second law of thermodynamics and non-linear cause and effect relationships in those dimensions since there is growth, stability, decay and 'rebirth with memory' but that is all within our scientific reach. If we do this, we are not violating Godel's theorem since we explicitly state this all happens in the other system and not our own.
But is that reality? Who knows? It is a matter of scientific faith. We can just rejoice that our scientific model of that other system is mathematically consistent and precise ( just like the various string theorists do today without regard to whether they describe reality or not ) and explain all the para normal activities we see. I think we humans, especially the scientific types, will accept that as reality since by the criteria we have established for ourselves, that is the definition of reality. We accept such models as reality in our system, don't we?
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vs_manjunath
- Posts: 1466
- Joined: 29 Sep 2006, 19:37
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cmlover
- Posts: 11498
- Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:36
VK
First let us not attach too much importance to Godel's theorem. It is just the Fixed Point theorem recast. Again his theorem also is unteneable within the logic system unless you invoke help from outside and hence is incomplete!
Can the issue of Soul/God be resolved scientifically? The answer is NO! God is outside the system and hence cannot be solved Mathematically without invoking His existence which is a logical fallacy! That is exactly done by our Upanishads. Not knowng God is called 'avidya' and knowledge of him is 'vidya'. These two are totally independent. Through avidya (called science) one understands the material world including 'consciousness' which is part of the electromagnetic actvity of the brain (call it perhaps at the Qunatum level). But Vidya is postulated and there is nothing to prove. While science uses the language of mathematics (with its axioms and definitions), vidya uses sutras (derived from the vedas which is postulated to be the divine truth). You may accept it or reject. Bhakti is acceptance without questioning. G~naanam is accepting it with the help of the upanishads (shruti). Science (avidya) cannot help here. Identify God with 'zero' or infinity in maths then you are in the realm of undecidables. Remember the attempts of physicists to reconcile the Quantum theory equations which reached infinity!
It all depends on Faith
... and Faith is postulated!
First let us not attach too much importance to Godel's theorem. It is just the Fixed Point theorem recast. Again his theorem also is unteneable within the logic system unless you invoke help from outside and hence is incomplete!
Can the issue of Soul/God be resolved scientifically? The answer is NO! God is outside the system and hence cannot be solved Mathematically without invoking His existence which is a logical fallacy! That is exactly done by our Upanishads. Not knowng God is called 'avidya' and knowledge of him is 'vidya'. These two are totally independent. Through avidya (called science) one understands the material world including 'consciousness' which is part of the electromagnetic actvity of the brain (call it perhaps at the Qunatum level). But Vidya is postulated and there is nothing to prove. While science uses the language of mathematics (with its axioms and definitions), vidya uses sutras (derived from the vedas which is postulated to be the divine truth). You may accept it or reject. Bhakti is acceptance without questioning. G~naanam is accepting it with the help of the upanishads (shruti). Science (avidya) cannot help here. Identify God with 'zero' or infinity in maths then you are in the realm of undecidables. Remember the attempts of physicists to reconcile the Quantum theory equations which reached infinity!
It all depends on Faith
... and Faith is postulated!
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Shivadasan
- Posts: 251
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 07:52
VK has spent a lot of time and energy and drawn from his vast knowledge of mathematics and philosophy in preparing this extraordinary note. This has been a great intellectual effort.
These arguments regarding the quality of reality are quite valid in the scientific circles and philosophical forums where the basic principles of Hinduism are not known or entertained. In intellectual seminars, and discussions reality is always implied as the existence of those things with which the senses of the body can interact. When we turn to Hinduism for some answers or clarifications, the first step would be that of defining the word ‘reality’ itself.
In Hinduism the concept of reality of the senses and the body experiences are themselves questioned. The concept of reality is vastly different from that of the western philosophers. Reality in Hinduism looks for that thing which is the basic substratum of all things that we experience through our senses. That from which all experiences arise and in which all of them cease to exist.
Your words, "For example, hard/soft ( tenacity ) is really due to the specific values of molecular bonds, hot/cold is a sensory characterization of the velocity of particles, color is really electromagnetic waves of various frequencies."
These arguments regarding the quality of reality are quite valid in the scientific circles and philosophical forums where the basic principles of Hinduism are not known or entertained. In intellectual seminars, and discussions reality is always implied as the existence of those things with which the senses of the body can interact. When we turn to Hinduism for some answers or clarifications, the first step would be that of defining the word ‘reality’ itself.
In Hinduism the concept of reality of the senses and the body experiences are themselves questioned. The concept of reality is vastly different from that of the western philosophers. Reality in Hinduism looks for that thing which is the basic substratum of all things that we experience through our senses. That from which all experiences arise and in which all of them cease to exist.
Your words, "For example, hard/soft ( tenacity ) is really due to the specific values of molecular bonds, hot/cold is a sensory characterization of the velocity of particles, color is really electromagnetic waves of various frequencies."
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arasi
- Posts: 16877
- Joined: 22 Jun 2006, 09:30
VK,
That really was a very carefully written post with so much scientific thought in it that when I read it, I could not understand much of it. This you would have guessed!
Will read it again and see if it helps me a bit more.
Shivadasan,
Your posts are illuminating. Not that I understand all of what you say at all times. However, unlike science, quite a few things make sense in what you say. It is perhaps because one is more familiar with Atma vicAram!
That really was a very carefully written post with so much scientific thought in it that when I read it, I could not understand much of it. This you would have guessed!
Will read it again and see if it helps me a bit more.
Shivadasan,
Your posts are illuminating. Not that I understand all of what you say at all times. However, unlike science, quite a few things make sense in what you say. It is perhaps because one is more familiar with Atma vicAram!
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vasanthakokilam
- Posts: 10958
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01
manjunath, cml, shivadasan, arasi: Thanks for taking the time to read what I wrote in spite of the length of it and possible rambling nature of it.
Before I say a few more things, a couple of preludes. Uday started the thread about how we use word Soul and how such concepts are different in different religions. Sorry to hijack that main topic into the topic about science, spiritual philosophy and other such general abstractions.
Second, it is easy to grant that para-normal and spiritual stuff is beyond rational thought and conclude Science is Science, religious philosophy is religious philosophy and those two shall not meet. That is possibly true but the interesting thing is, in common parlance when we talk about those two things, we are using the same 'techniques' contrary to what you may believe. What we call as 'rational science' using the naive cause and effect thinking in common usage is strictly NOT science. We only use metaphors and what we call as 'spiritual philosophy' also uses metaphors. The latter may not come as a surprise but the former may come as a surprise to some of you. That was one of the objectives of my long post. Let me focus on that narrow topic briefly. It is THE most important aspect to keep in mind as far as I am concerned. Physical intuition when applied to understand Science should NOT be confused with Science.
When Shivadasan talks about the 'kallai kandAl nAyai kaNOm', we all see that it is a metaphor for a deeper concept. So are other explanations to explain Advaitha, mAyA etc and also other related concepts like Soul, Atman, Brahman etc..
What about science? Let us consider Newton first and then build upon it.
Newton said 'Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.'. That is an easily relatable concept for us. That is what I call 'Physical Intuition'. The fact is most people do not understand that first law clearly. But it does not matter since it seems such an obvious statement. It is simple cause and effect, we say.
What if while you observe that motion, you move in the same direction as the object. You measure a different speed which is less than the original. That also makes sense with our physical intuition. No external force is applied to that object but its speed has changed. Is that a violation of the first law. Obviously not. What is missing from the above statement is a commonly left out addendum '....in a given frame of reference'. So in this sense, Newton's theory is a relativity theory, it is relative to only a given frame of reference. Lack of this understanding makes understanding Einstein a lot more difficult. Newton's first law applies equally to light. When you measure the speed of light the same rule needs to be applied. Let us see how Einstein changed it in a simple fashion which caused a monumental difference. This is the first step towards removing science from our naively held physical intuition. Our brain's simple cause and effect model of reality is under attack.
Why is Einstein so radically different? Because he said something very different at a fundamental level which dramatically changed science. He said 'No matter what the frame of reference is, the speed of light is the same'. Hope you caught on to the main difference between Newton and Einstein here. Newton said 'Only in a given frame of reference, the speed of light is the same'. So in that sense we should call Newton's theory 'Relativity theory' and Einstein's theory 'Non relativity theory'. That is, 'Non relativity with respect to frame of reference', 'speed of light is the same no matter what the frame of reference is'. What Einstein postulated as an Axiom is 'Even if you move and measure the speed of light, the value for the speed of light will not change'. You are not allowed to verify it by measurement though you can do that to satisfy your own curiosity but that is a 'Given'. Everything else has to 'adjust' to that Axiom. Two things that have to adjust are Time and Length because speed is Length/Time. So it is a trivial observation that if speed can not change in different frames of reference, then either Time or Length has to change. Hence the two outcomes of Einstein's theory: 'time flows in different rates in different frame of reference' and 'length of an object is different in different frames of reference'.
Well, constancy of those two quantities are 'Cherished' concepts in our Physical Intuition. With Einstein, those two have to go. You can question if it is reality or not. You can have your own personal faith that your physical intuition is reality, Einstein's theory is 'just a theory or model' to explain things and nothing more. Here you have to conclude 'My Physical Intuition based reality is THE reality' and Strict Science is just Science and those two shall not meet'. The opposite view point is possible. Einstein's model is not 'just a theory or a model' but it IS reality even if it does not agree with our physical intuition. 'Physical Intuition is Physical Intuition and Science IS reality and these two shall not meet'. In the second view point, Physical Intuition is just relegated to Metaphors. That is a sea change. Einstein's theory can be explained using metaphors using terms that we are comfortable with in our 'Physical Intuition' space but that distinction has to be kept in mind. So our simple cause and effect model that our brain is capable of is already reduced to metaphorical descriptions.
This is even more so when you consider Einstein's General theory of relativity where you have to 'imagine' curvature of space and time. A clock kept near a big rock runs at a different rate. It is not because the rock somehow makes the gears of the clock run differently. It is because TIME runs at a different rate due to the curvature of the space-time near the rock. Well, Physical Intuition is now completely out the window. Cause and effect as we naively reason about things, forget it!
This is even more so when you consider quantum physics and its non-local reality concepts. Physical Intuition? What physical intuition? It is now relegated to strictly metaphors and nothing more. Our naively held notions of cause and effect is completely destroyed and buried/burnt.
Of course this all do not matter to explain the things we encounter in day to day life and we can live with the physical intuition but we are interested in understanding Science at a 'deeper' level in just the same way we attempt to understand 'Advaitha' and 'Maya' at a deeper level using our Physical Intuition based metaphors.
We all implicitly understand and agree that rational science is not enough to understand Religious Philosophy. We say it is beyond such reasoning. We say it is meta physical, it is beyond what our silly brain can fathom. But I bet most of us are not referring to 20th century Science. We really mean Physical Intuition and the simple cause and effect logic we are all comfortable with. In the past 100+ years Science has completely left that physical intuition space as well.
So in summary, when we say 'Science and Religious Philosophy shall not meet', it should be understood in the following manner. "Physical Intuition based understanding of Science and Physical Intuition based explanations of Religious Philosophy shall not meet'. It does not say anything about the nature of Reality as described by 20th century Science. That Science and Reality as explained by religious philosophy may or may not meet.
I think that is a tremendously significant difference to keep in mind.
Before I say a few more things, a couple of preludes. Uday started the thread about how we use word Soul and how such concepts are different in different religions. Sorry to hijack that main topic into the topic about science, spiritual philosophy and other such general abstractions.
Second, it is easy to grant that para-normal and spiritual stuff is beyond rational thought and conclude Science is Science, religious philosophy is religious philosophy and those two shall not meet. That is possibly true but the interesting thing is, in common parlance when we talk about those two things, we are using the same 'techniques' contrary to what you may believe. What we call as 'rational science' using the naive cause and effect thinking in common usage is strictly NOT science. We only use metaphors and what we call as 'spiritual philosophy' also uses metaphors. The latter may not come as a surprise but the former may come as a surprise to some of you. That was one of the objectives of my long post. Let me focus on that narrow topic briefly. It is THE most important aspect to keep in mind as far as I am concerned. Physical intuition when applied to understand Science should NOT be confused with Science.
When Shivadasan talks about the 'kallai kandAl nAyai kaNOm', we all see that it is a metaphor for a deeper concept. So are other explanations to explain Advaitha, mAyA etc and also other related concepts like Soul, Atman, Brahman etc..
What about science? Let us consider Newton first and then build upon it.
Newton said 'Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.'. That is an easily relatable concept for us. That is what I call 'Physical Intuition'. The fact is most people do not understand that first law clearly. But it does not matter since it seems such an obvious statement. It is simple cause and effect, we say.
What if while you observe that motion, you move in the same direction as the object. You measure a different speed which is less than the original. That also makes sense with our physical intuition. No external force is applied to that object but its speed has changed. Is that a violation of the first law. Obviously not. What is missing from the above statement is a commonly left out addendum '....in a given frame of reference'. So in this sense, Newton's theory is a relativity theory, it is relative to only a given frame of reference. Lack of this understanding makes understanding Einstein a lot more difficult. Newton's first law applies equally to light. When you measure the speed of light the same rule needs to be applied. Let us see how Einstein changed it in a simple fashion which caused a monumental difference. This is the first step towards removing science from our naively held physical intuition. Our brain's simple cause and effect model of reality is under attack.
Why is Einstein so radically different? Because he said something very different at a fundamental level which dramatically changed science. He said 'No matter what the frame of reference is, the speed of light is the same'. Hope you caught on to the main difference between Newton and Einstein here. Newton said 'Only in a given frame of reference, the speed of light is the same'. So in that sense we should call Newton's theory 'Relativity theory' and Einstein's theory 'Non relativity theory'. That is, 'Non relativity with respect to frame of reference', 'speed of light is the same no matter what the frame of reference is'. What Einstein postulated as an Axiom is 'Even if you move and measure the speed of light, the value for the speed of light will not change'. You are not allowed to verify it by measurement though you can do that to satisfy your own curiosity but that is a 'Given'. Everything else has to 'adjust' to that Axiom. Two things that have to adjust are Time and Length because speed is Length/Time. So it is a trivial observation that if speed can not change in different frames of reference, then either Time or Length has to change. Hence the two outcomes of Einstein's theory: 'time flows in different rates in different frame of reference' and 'length of an object is different in different frames of reference'.
Well, constancy of those two quantities are 'Cherished' concepts in our Physical Intuition. With Einstein, those two have to go. You can question if it is reality or not. You can have your own personal faith that your physical intuition is reality, Einstein's theory is 'just a theory or model' to explain things and nothing more. Here you have to conclude 'My Physical Intuition based reality is THE reality' and Strict Science is just Science and those two shall not meet'. The opposite view point is possible. Einstein's model is not 'just a theory or a model' but it IS reality even if it does not agree with our physical intuition. 'Physical Intuition is Physical Intuition and Science IS reality and these two shall not meet'. In the second view point, Physical Intuition is just relegated to Metaphors. That is a sea change. Einstein's theory can be explained using metaphors using terms that we are comfortable with in our 'Physical Intuition' space but that distinction has to be kept in mind. So our simple cause and effect model that our brain is capable of is already reduced to metaphorical descriptions.
This is even more so when you consider Einstein's General theory of relativity where you have to 'imagine' curvature of space and time. A clock kept near a big rock runs at a different rate. It is not because the rock somehow makes the gears of the clock run differently. It is because TIME runs at a different rate due to the curvature of the space-time near the rock. Well, Physical Intuition is now completely out the window. Cause and effect as we naively reason about things, forget it!
This is even more so when you consider quantum physics and its non-local reality concepts. Physical Intuition? What physical intuition? It is now relegated to strictly metaphors and nothing more. Our naively held notions of cause and effect is completely destroyed and buried/burnt.
Of course this all do not matter to explain the things we encounter in day to day life and we can live with the physical intuition but we are interested in understanding Science at a 'deeper' level in just the same way we attempt to understand 'Advaitha' and 'Maya' at a deeper level using our Physical Intuition based metaphors.
We all implicitly understand and agree that rational science is not enough to understand Religious Philosophy. We say it is beyond such reasoning. We say it is meta physical, it is beyond what our silly brain can fathom. But I bet most of us are not referring to 20th century Science. We really mean Physical Intuition and the simple cause and effect logic we are all comfortable with. In the past 100+ years Science has completely left that physical intuition space as well.
So in summary, when we say 'Science and Religious Philosophy shall not meet', it should be understood in the following manner. "Physical Intuition based understanding of Science and Physical Intuition based explanations of Religious Philosophy shall not meet'. It does not say anything about the nature of Reality as described by 20th century Science. That Science and Reality as explained by religious philosophy may or may not meet.
I think that is a tremendously significant difference to keep in mind.
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cmlover
- Posts: 11498
- Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:36
VK
We have to admit that scientists often revise their opinions on the basis of material experimental evidence. Einsten ruefully admitted that he had made a fatal mistake for assuming a static universe after the objective evidence on the expanding universe became available. On the otherhand he never was reconciled to 'action at a distance', though you are right, he grudgingly admitted since it is contrary to intuition. God does not Play Dice with the Universe!
Let me digress to the realm of philosophy. Why can't we have a similar 'action at a distance'? I mean why not my sins be visited on others rather than on me! There is the rider that parent's sins visit on their children which is but a 'lOkOkti' not sanctified by the shrutis. Ultimately if 'aham brahmAsmi' is true then we all have commonly shared sins(pApa) and merits (puNya). Accordingly all our good and bad doings will be commonly shared by humanity (which is closer to the Christian philosophy of shared sins for which Jesus atoned on our behalf Hinduism does not go that far!
Again we can look for a 'theory of relativity' in the arena of different philosophies. Considering them as closed independent systems what is common to most is 'God' (like the speed of light!). Each one considers his system to be the Truth and identifies it wih his God who appears to have a common property in all the systems. (I am unable to reconcile the Nihilists in this fold).
Do you think we will ever be able to arrive at a 'Unified Theory' of Science and Philosophy? The answer will be the 'pot of gold' at the end of the Rainbow
We have to admit that scientists often revise their opinions on the basis of material experimental evidence. Einsten ruefully admitted that he had made a fatal mistake for assuming a static universe after the objective evidence on the expanding universe became available. On the otherhand he never was reconciled to 'action at a distance', though you are right, he grudgingly admitted since it is contrary to intuition. God does not Play Dice with the Universe!
Let me digress to the realm of philosophy. Why can't we have a similar 'action at a distance'? I mean why not my sins be visited on others rather than on me! There is the rider that parent's sins visit on their children which is but a 'lOkOkti' not sanctified by the shrutis. Ultimately if 'aham brahmAsmi' is true then we all have commonly shared sins(pApa) and merits (puNya). Accordingly all our good and bad doings will be commonly shared by humanity (which is closer to the Christian philosophy of shared sins for which Jesus atoned on our behalf
Hinduism does not go that far! Again we can look for a 'theory of relativity' in the arena of different philosophies. Considering them as closed independent systems what is common to most is 'God' (like the speed of light!). Each one considers his system to be the Truth and identifies it wih his God who appears to have a common property in all the systems. (I am unable to reconcile the Nihilists in this fold).
Do you think we will ever be able to arrive at a 'Unified Theory' of Science and Philosophy? The answer will be the 'pot of gold' at the end of the Rainbow
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uday_shankar
- Posts: 1475
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:37
cmloverji,
I actually sent the following passage as an email to vk a couple days ago because I didn't want to get embroiled in further questions and interactions...in fact I had asked vk to post it anonymously. Your post as well as shivadasan's post triggered the idea that maybe I should post it directly. So here goes...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vk,
Good ramble...incidentally did you know Goedel (I'm using "oe" as a substitute for the umlaut o) provided one of the many solutions to Einstein's field equations of GR.
That has set off some ramblings of my own...
The question of dimensions is indeed very interesting and perhaps it could be argued by some that the Hindu notion of the Atman or "Self" is dimensionally infinite and therefore the "mother of all dimensions"....
In general I'm very wary of "science vs religion" types of "debates" because the question and premise are themselves usually false.
All "spiritual" (assuming we have at least a vague notion of what that means) questions are personal and ONLY personal while science is impersonal and objective. If a person does not have any "personal" psychological need for a God or Spirit or whatever, then all talk pertaining to that is meaningless and irrelevant intellectual prattle. For if there's an "objective God" in another dimension who gave us the beauty of Goedel's theorem, it is probably irrelevant to one's happiness beyond the informational or for amusement. Personal spiritual quests may (but not necessarily) be triggered by deep existential questions regarding life, death, love, art, etc...All of these questions are deeply psychological and stem from an intangible notion of "selfhood" which forms the backdrop of all physical experience. That is, the questions take place within an individual person's mind. Science is concerned with the cosmological, i.e., events taking place in the dimensions available to our sensory perceptions - space and time. Even the psychologcal sciences are concerned with finding biological/chemical "causes" to all human experiences. But the notion of "selfhood" or ego or whatever you call it from which all human experiences stem is a psychological starting point without any physical analog. It would be foolish to try to identify the "brain center" or any other part of the body for the "self".
After all scientific quests, the individuality of the "scientist" may remain and he/she may still feel guided by a notion of an intangible "selfhood" which propels him/her a certain way. The notion of a Spock-like purely scientific human may be a fallacy. For example can happiness be restored instantly after the sense of loss generated by the death of a beloved one by giving the pure "scientist" a clear mathematic explanation of brain chemicals that cause certain emotions ? Is the pure "scientist's" sense of love or art nothing more than a bunch of neurons firing in a certain way ? Is the scientist's rage at his child's murderer quelled by a simple explanation that his child was nothing more than a pile of molecules ? Perhaps so for some, but others may still feel a stronger sense of lingering selfhood beyond the mechanistic. For people with such a notion of selfhood and harboring seemingly unanswerable questions and anxieties, the wisdom of the (s)ages has handed down theories of Gods, souls, reincarnation, dualism, non-dualism, good, evil, etc. with varying degress of sophistication. Hindu mythology, puranas and the vedas address these questions at so many levels. The cosmological and scientific theories presented therein, which can often be refuted by more modern and sophisticated sciences, are just placeholders whose relevance is discarded once the psychological, i.e., "spiritual" portions are addressed. There they stand unvanquished (at least in my reckoning).
I would like to draw your attention to the best analysis of the highly individual psychological side of experience...the mandookya upanishad and the Gaudapada (guru of Adi Shankara) karika (commentary) to it. Here, an individual seeker's experience is analyzed purely in terms of the three states of awareness, jaagrati (waking), swapna(dreaming) and sushupti(deep sleep) and then adds that all these three take place against the backdrop of the fourth and complementary state, turiya. The profoundness of this approach lies in that from the deeply ingrained and almost irrevocable human habit of approaching everything cosmologically, i.e., as events and experiences taking place in space and time, we have moved on to interpreting space and time as taking place in awareness. Thus all theories of Gods, incarnations, space, time, earth, heavens, incarnation, etc...i.e., everything, are now painted on the canvas of awareness. The first theory put forward is the drishti-shrishti vada - as a person wakes, the entire universe is recreated everytime. This finds a vague parallel in the kind of philosophies advanced by english philosopher Bishop Berkeley (at least if the relativist A P French is right or if I understood him right). But gaudapada proceeds to an even more subtle and sophisticated analysis, the very essence of advaita, the ajaata vada, or the theory of non-creation. "Nothing ever happened" said some philosopher and this sums up ajaatha-vaada. This does not mean nothing happened in the domain of wakefulness. But it is no more significant to the "self" than what happened in the domain of swapna or dreaming. In the dream domain, the dream experience is entirely real. Each experience is true and relevant in its domain but has no reality in the ultimate sense of the turiya atheetha (or that which transcends the turiya). In that ultimate domain there's neither space nor time nor creation nor destruction, only infinite awareness and bliss or satchidaananda swaroopa. Saints speaks of that state where there's no space and where time stands still in terms of sahaja samadhi (Ramana), nirvikalpa samadhi (Ramakrishna), nirvana (buddha), infinite love of the Lord or bhakti (Jesus, Chaitanya), etc...Dry scholars, theologians and fanatics may split hairs that all these represent different things, but that's what they were born for - splitting hairs !
Back to science. Science succeeds if its domain is well understood. To address srkris' example, even if "life" were to be somehow introduced into an organic soup of amino acids, the resulting creation if it turned out to harbor self-awareness may start asking questions about its origin, say. You could reply that you created him/her/it in your lab but that would not be any more true than the parents of a child claiming that they "created" him/her. In the latter case, the chemical and biological processes were not scientifically understood, that's the only difference. In neither case can any claims be laid to creating the notion of self-awareness in the "person" created. Science investigates events in space and time, perhaps even the origin of space and time in physical terms. Now the current cosmological model of the universe postulates the big bang as the origin of space and time itself. Very well. But it still does not solve an individual's psychological problem of selfhood. Specifically, a perfect understanding of the mathematics of the big bang may not be able to solve any personal dharmic or ethical problem or get over our anxiety about poverty or get answers to his/her love, if any. Perhaps one needs a spiritual/psychological effort that tries to address the origin of selfhood or by the simple act of a sincere belief in a God.
Everything from all non-advaitic theologies (semitic religions, dvaita, even buddhism) to all scientific theories and all human endeavors including this online transaction are based on what we may call the drishti-shrishti vaada or the theory of gradual creation. In this model, there's a God (or no God, whichever) and then the universe manifests itself, i.e., space and time either through the story of genesis or the pralaya or the big bang or whatever. And then all other things happened and is continuing to happen. Advaitic theology alone breaks this model and tries to address it from an individual perception of selfhood and awareness. This gives rise to the dhristhi-shrishti vaada (literally, recreation of the universe everytime the person wakes up) and finally to ajaathi vaada or non-creation. It is sort of like the transition from procedural programming to object oriented programming ! Or like latching on to a parallel reality/dimension which is there all the "time" outside of the sensory dimensions of space and time. It is a clean break from the Cartesian model of life which says, "I think therefore I am". In advaita we say "I am, therefore everything else, including thinking". Attainment of this awareness does not prevent the normal processes of death, decay, etc... in the dimension of waking but once its relevance is understood it does not trouble the "person" who manifests in the dimension anymore.
Some strange, raw inexplicable fear, insecurty and dullness (mandham), whatever, seems to propel a majority humans to recoil from these questions and seek mental distractions all the time. But analysis of individual awareness and selfhood is everywhere...modern spiritualists like Eckhart Tolle more or less come to the same place. Among the great theoretical physicists of the past, Erwin Schroedinger wrote a delightful little book "My view of Life" which sums up an Upanishadic/advaitic view of life. Poets, mystics, artists and others understand the ideas in an intuitive way without expressing it in crude logical terms.
Needless to say, I can claim no scholarship, knowledge or authority and all of the above is nothing more than personal speculation based on a very haphazard exposure to vedanta. For anybody interested in a systematic understanding of advaita vedanta I would recommend the phenomenal series of lectures by Swami Paramarthanadaji. For anybody interested in pursuing self-realization, I would recommend the silence of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi.
BTW, all this started with an attempt to discourage the use of the phrase "may his soul rest in peace" in Hindu contexts. I've verified with bonafide authorites that this phrase and its many variants in Indian languages such as "avarudaiya atma shanti adayanum" in Tamil and "avarinda atma mokshattuku prarthiku" (malayalam may be inaccurate) in Malayalam are all inapplicable to Hindu theologies. The Atman, which is supposed to be the essence of shanti and moksha, is to attain shanti or moksha all over again ? Utter nonsense !
Lastly, most sincere apologies for the long winded post. Not my style but hard to encapsulate these ideas.
I actually sent the following passage as an email to vk a couple days ago because I didn't want to get embroiled in further questions and interactions...in fact I had asked vk to post it anonymously. Your post as well as shivadasan's post triggered the idea that maybe I should post it directly. So here goes...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vk,
Good ramble...incidentally did you know Goedel (I'm using "oe" as a substitute for the umlaut o) provided one of the many solutions to Einstein's field equations of GR.
That has set off some ramblings of my own...
The question of dimensions is indeed very interesting and perhaps it could be argued by some that the Hindu notion of the Atman or "Self" is dimensionally infinite and therefore the "mother of all dimensions"....
In general I'm very wary of "science vs religion" types of "debates" because the question and premise are themselves usually false.
All "spiritual" (assuming we have at least a vague notion of what that means) questions are personal and ONLY personal while science is impersonal and objective. If a person does not have any "personal" psychological need for a God or Spirit or whatever, then all talk pertaining to that is meaningless and irrelevant intellectual prattle. For if there's an "objective God" in another dimension who gave us the beauty of Goedel's theorem, it is probably irrelevant to one's happiness beyond the informational or for amusement. Personal spiritual quests may (but not necessarily) be triggered by deep existential questions regarding life, death, love, art, etc...All of these questions are deeply psychological and stem from an intangible notion of "selfhood" which forms the backdrop of all physical experience. That is, the questions take place within an individual person's mind. Science is concerned with the cosmological, i.e., events taking place in the dimensions available to our sensory perceptions - space and time. Even the psychologcal sciences are concerned with finding biological/chemical "causes" to all human experiences. But the notion of "selfhood" or ego or whatever you call it from which all human experiences stem is a psychological starting point without any physical analog. It would be foolish to try to identify the "brain center" or any other part of the body for the "self".
After all scientific quests, the individuality of the "scientist" may remain and he/she may still feel guided by a notion of an intangible "selfhood" which propels him/her a certain way. The notion of a Spock-like purely scientific human may be a fallacy. For example can happiness be restored instantly after the sense of loss generated by the death of a beloved one by giving the pure "scientist" a clear mathematic explanation of brain chemicals that cause certain emotions ? Is the pure "scientist's" sense of love or art nothing more than a bunch of neurons firing in a certain way ? Is the scientist's rage at his child's murderer quelled by a simple explanation that his child was nothing more than a pile of molecules ? Perhaps so for some, but others may still feel a stronger sense of lingering selfhood beyond the mechanistic. For people with such a notion of selfhood and harboring seemingly unanswerable questions and anxieties, the wisdom of the (s)ages has handed down theories of Gods, souls, reincarnation, dualism, non-dualism, good, evil, etc. with varying degress of sophistication. Hindu mythology, puranas and the vedas address these questions at so many levels. The cosmological and scientific theories presented therein, which can often be refuted by more modern and sophisticated sciences, are just placeholders whose relevance is discarded once the psychological, i.e., "spiritual" portions are addressed. There they stand unvanquished (at least in my reckoning).
I would like to draw your attention to the best analysis of the highly individual psychological side of experience...the mandookya upanishad and the Gaudapada (guru of Adi Shankara) karika (commentary) to it. Here, an individual seeker's experience is analyzed purely in terms of the three states of awareness, jaagrati (waking), swapna(dreaming) and sushupti(deep sleep) and then adds that all these three take place against the backdrop of the fourth and complementary state, turiya. The profoundness of this approach lies in that from the deeply ingrained and almost irrevocable human habit of approaching everything cosmologically, i.e., as events and experiences taking place in space and time, we have moved on to interpreting space and time as taking place in awareness. Thus all theories of Gods, incarnations, space, time, earth, heavens, incarnation, etc...i.e., everything, are now painted on the canvas of awareness. The first theory put forward is the drishti-shrishti vada - as a person wakes, the entire universe is recreated everytime. This finds a vague parallel in the kind of philosophies advanced by english philosopher Bishop Berkeley (at least if the relativist A P French is right or if I understood him right). But gaudapada proceeds to an even more subtle and sophisticated analysis, the very essence of advaita, the ajaata vada, or the theory of non-creation. "Nothing ever happened" said some philosopher and this sums up ajaatha-vaada. This does not mean nothing happened in the domain of wakefulness. But it is no more significant to the "self" than what happened in the domain of swapna or dreaming. In the dream domain, the dream experience is entirely real. Each experience is true and relevant in its domain but has no reality in the ultimate sense of the turiya atheetha (or that which transcends the turiya). In that ultimate domain there's neither space nor time nor creation nor destruction, only infinite awareness and bliss or satchidaananda swaroopa. Saints speaks of that state where there's no space and where time stands still in terms of sahaja samadhi (Ramana), nirvikalpa samadhi (Ramakrishna), nirvana (buddha), infinite love of the Lord or bhakti (Jesus, Chaitanya), etc...Dry scholars, theologians and fanatics may split hairs that all these represent different things, but that's what they were born for - splitting hairs !
Back to science. Science succeeds if its domain is well understood. To address srkris' example, even if "life" were to be somehow introduced into an organic soup of amino acids, the resulting creation if it turned out to harbor self-awareness may start asking questions about its origin, say. You could reply that you created him/her/it in your lab but that would not be any more true than the parents of a child claiming that they "created" him/her. In the latter case, the chemical and biological processes were not scientifically understood, that's the only difference. In neither case can any claims be laid to creating the notion of self-awareness in the "person" created. Science investigates events in space and time, perhaps even the origin of space and time in physical terms. Now the current cosmological model of the universe postulates the big bang as the origin of space and time itself. Very well. But it still does not solve an individual's psychological problem of selfhood. Specifically, a perfect understanding of the mathematics of the big bang may not be able to solve any personal dharmic or ethical problem or get over our anxiety about poverty or get answers to his/her love, if any. Perhaps one needs a spiritual/psychological effort that tries to address the origin of selfhood or by the simple act of a sincere belief in a God.
Everything from all non-advaitic theologies (semitic religions, dvaita, even buddhism) to all scientific theories and all human endeavors including this online transaction are based on what we may call the drishti-shrishti vaada or the theory of gradual creation. In this model, there's a God (or no God, whichever) and then the universe manifests itself, i.e., space and time either through the story of genesis or the pralaya or the big bang or whatever. And then all other things happened and is continuing to happen. Advaitic theology alone breaks this model and tries to address it from an individual perception of selfhood and awareness. This gives rise to the dhristhi-shrishti vaada (literally, recreation of the universe everytime the person wakes up) and finally to ajaathi vaada or non-creation. It is sort of like the transition from procedural programming to object oriented programming ! Or like latching on to a parallel reality/dimension which is there all the "time" outside of the sensory dimensions of space and time. It is a clean break from the Cartesian model of life which says, "I think therefore I am". In advaita we say "I am, therefore everything else, including thinking". Attainment of this awareness does not prevent the normal processes of death, decay, etc... in the dimension of waking but once its relevance is understood it does not trouble the "person" who manifests in the dimension anymore.
Some strange, raw inexplicable fear, insecurty and dullness (mandham), whatever, seems to propel a majority humans to recoil from these questions and seek mental distractions all the time. But analysis of individual awareness and selfhood is everywhere...modern spiritualists like Eckhart Tolle more or less come to the same place. Among the great theoretical physicists of the past, Erwin Schroedinger wrote a delightful little book "My view of Life" which sums up an Upanishadic/advaitic view of life. Poets, mystics, artists and others understand the ideas in an intuitive way without expressing it in crude logical terms.
Needless to say, I can claim no scholarship, knowledge or authority and all of the above is nothing more than personal speculation based on a very haphazard exposure to vedanta. For anybody interested in a systematic understanding of advaita vedanta I would recommend the phenomenal series of lectures by Swami Paramarthanadaji. For anybody interested in pursuing self-realization, I would recommend the silence of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi
.BTW, all this started with an attempt to discourage the use of the phrase "may his soul rest in peace" in Hindu contexts. I've verified with bonafide authorites that this phrase and its many variants in Indian languages such as "avarudaiya atma shanti adayanum" in Tamil and "avarinda atma mokshattuku prarthiku" (malayalam may be inaccurate) in Malayalam are all inapplicable to Hindu theologies. The Atman, which is supposed to be the essence of shanti and moksha, is to attain shanti or moksha all over again ? Utter nonsense !
Lastly, most sincere apologies for the long winded post. Not my style but hard to encapsulate these ideas.
Last edited by Guest on 03 Jul 2009, 07:49, edited 1 time in total.
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ragam-talam
- Posts: 1896
- Joined: 28 Sep 2006, 02:15
In this discussion, I feel the role of language has been ignored to a large extent. The world as we conceptualize it, even see it, is a product of our linguistic faculty. The American linguist Benjamin Whorf has argued that language affects thought, and the structure of the language itself affects cognition.
Is language an innate faculty that human beings possess? Linguists such as Noam Chomsky have made the argument that humans are 'hard-wired' for language, i.e. it's in our genes.
It seems there is a direct correlation between language and soul/god etc. In the absence of language, we could not conceptualize these entities. Also, associative memory, which is mostly set up through symbols that are linguistic, has been linked to our ability to provide the context in which to make sense of the world. (Hence our reaction to the picture of a dog carved on a stone.) And it is this memory that helps us to conceptualize entities that we cannot directly 'see' through our five senses.
Gödel's Incompleteness theorem essentially implies that there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement in any system (he was talking in the context of mathematical systems). Extending this to god/soul etc., one could argue that these are not provable but could be true.
Again, notice that Gödel's theorem can be written and understood only in the context of language. Herein lies the hypothesis that perhaps language forms the 'missing link' between humans and gods!
Is this the case?
Well, let's hear what Wittgenstein has to say (in the preface to his Tractatus): "What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."
Kind of like what Ramana Maharshi might say, perhaps?
Is language an innate faculty that human beings possess? Linguists such as Noam Chomsky have made the argument that humans are 'hard-wired' for language, i.e. it's in our genes.
It seems there is a direct correlation between language and soul/god etc. In the absence of language, we could not conceptualize these entities. Also, associative memory, which is mostly set up through symbols that are linguistic, has been linked to our ability to provide the context in which to make sense of the world. (Hence our reaction to the picture of a dog carved on a stone.) And it is this memory that helps us to conceptualize entities that we cannot directly 'see' through our five senses.
Gödel's Incompleteness theorem essentially implies that there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement in any system (he was talking in the context of mathematical systems). Extending this to god/soul etc., one could argue that these are not provable but could be true.
Again, notice that Gödel's theorem can be written and understood only in the context of language. Herein lies the hypothesis that perhaps language forms the 'missing link' between humans and gods!
Is this the case?
Well, let's hear what Wittgenstein has to say (in the preface to his Tractatus): "What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."
Kind of like what Ramana Maharshi might say, perhaps?
Last edited by ragam-talam on 03 Jul 2009, 15:02, edited 1 time in total.
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uday_shankar
- Posts: 1475
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:37
r-t, that's a good quote from Wittgenstein.
I must point out that one of the misconceptions floating about the teachings of Ramana Maharshi is that he somehow proposed that there was a physical center to the "Self" or "Ullam" on the right side of the chest! This has clearly been refuted by Ramana himself in many other places, where he assures us that it is nonsense to talk about a physical center for the "Self". Early writers like Arthur Osborne somehow got fixated with focusing on this "physical" center. One of the best modern interpreters of Ramana is the englishman David Godman...I highly recommend his books. Apart from that, "Maharshi's Gospel" is one of the most incisive works.
I vaguely remember Swami Vivekananda too talks somewhere about the Atman being the size of the thumb and centered somewhere in the chest ! Even the greatest fall victim to the nonsensical delusions of shrishti-dhrishti vAda at times ! I think I'm imagining this.
BTW, GaudapAda was the guru of Adi Shankara's guru gOvindapAda.
I must point out that one of the misconceptions floating about the teachings of Ramana Maharshi is that he somehow proposed that there was a physical center to the "Self" or "Ullam" on the right side of the chest! This has clearly been refuted by Ramana himself in many other places, where he assures us that it is nonsense to talk about a physical center for the "Self". Early writers like Arthur Osborne somehow got fixated with focusing on this "physical" center. One of the best modern interpreters of Ramana is the englishman David Godman...I highly recommend his books. Apart from that, "Maharshi's Gospel" is one of the most incisive works.
I vaguely remember Swami Vivekananda too talks somewhere about the Atman being the size of the thumb and centered somewhere in the chest ! Even the greatest fall victim to the nonsensical delusions of shrishti-dhrishti vAda at times ! I think I'm imagining this.
BTW, GaudapAda was the guru of Adi Shankara's guru gOvindapAda.
Last edited by Guest on 03 Jul 2009, 16:42, edited 1 time in total.
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cmlover
- Posts: 11498
- Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:36
Thanks keerthi
Not trusting my failing memory I took it from
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/mirrors/vv/li ... shina.html
and noticed the chandas was not correct. Fixed it!
Not trusting my failing memory I took it from
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/mirrors/vv/li ... shina.html
and noticed the chandas was not correct. Fixed it!
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cmlover
- Posts: 11498
- Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:36
That is based on the literal interpretation of Narayana sUktamUday_Shankar wrote: .....
I vaguely remember Swami Vivekananda too talks somewhere about the Atman being the size of the thumb and centered somewhere in the chest ! Even the greatest fall victim to the nonsensical delusions of shrishti-dhrishti vAda at times !
santata shilAbhistu lambatyAkOsha sannibhaM|
tasyAntE suShira sukShmam tasmin sarvaM pratiShTitaM||
Can't blame Vivekananda for that