Tale of love heard from Diotima of Mantineia - A philosophical conversation with ones' self -- myself

The Greek insight was that Reason, the Logos, is nature steering all things from within...Nature is neither supernatural nor material; it is an organic whole, and man is not outside nature but within it. Huntington Cairns introduction to Plato Dialogues

Manichean: An adherent of Manicheism taught by Persian prophet (3rd - 7th century AD - Manes or Manicheus) Combines Zorastrian, Gnostic, Christian, and Pagan elements, and based on doctrine of contending principles - good/evil; light/dark; soul/body; god/satan.

Daimon (Daemon): see Demon. In Greek mythology, any of the secondary divinities ranking between the gods and men; hence a guardian spirit; inspiring or inner spirit or a demon, devil.

The Greek insight - this writer's opinion - is comparable to the Buddhist idea of world as process on which is founded their statement that nothing is permanent which in turn is reflected in Heraclitus' thought that all is flux.

In Plato's Symposium we have Socrates speaking of Diotima, a woman from Mantineia who he says taught him that love and the like are not in themselves gods but daemons that act as a go between for gods and man. They carry commerce back and forth, so to speak, and were created by the gods to this purpose. Being unable to have direct contact with man they created these daemons to act as intermediaries.

Now, my mentor, G.V. Desani (and here), said this a little differently. Love is a spirit, he said. Our participation in love, he held, acts as an agent for love's increase, growth, proliferation. This path having been established, is easier to follow at the next choosing. Moreover, it increases the attraction of love to others as a mode of being, a means of getting on in the world.

All is Flux - Heraclitus, opposed to Parmenides' "all is one". I've made a lot of this contrast in my study and finally have come to a more nuanced understanding of the apparently contrary view for these two ancient Greek thinkers. Namely, there is room in the fluxuations of manifested, relative reality, of empirical knowledge of things; there is room in the one whole of the unitary view, for the contraries. One is an extension of the many as the many is an outgrowth of the one. They are not different yet neither are they the same. And, from my study of Aristotle, If there is a one the one is both all things and nothing.%

It's said (Huntington Cairns) Aristotle claimed that Plato accepted Heraclitus' doctrine that things, as we are aware of them through our organs of touch, taste, sight, and hearing, are all in constant flux and therefore our sense organs cannot give us knowledge. "(Plato) was thus led to the view that if we are to have knowledge it must be of permanent entities distinct from those we know through the senses." These he related to as forms or ideas, as principles, the actual reality of that which changes, which, Aristotle would call the actual substance or substratum, if I understand correctly. For we do not know that to which the manifest, the relative reveal - the actual substance, substratum. Phenomena serves the purpose of revealing this 'essence' though being neither different nor separate therefrom.  The myriads of manifested reality have no being in themselves, that is, while all the same serving to reveal that from which  they come. Forms and ideas give us permanence and order discoverable by intelligence setting aside the world of perceived fluxuating things. Our senses put us in contact with the world of becoming. Our consciousness puts us in contact with being itself. So it comes to pass - for Plato - that these principles become the basis for knowledge.  Think. There are many instances of love or beauty but let us have the form or idea of same then we can truly know.

This is a kind of refutation of Heraclitus' "All is flux." The senses must give way to guiding principles, intelligence, ideas, forms. And these must in turn give way too, to the soul, psyche, the principle of life force itself, mind, reason, and finally to consciousness, the illuminative factor which - not that I know of as a Greek idea - is the overarching principle that we see in Eastern thought, systems of Yoga, Vedanta (Advaita of Sankara and Guadapada) philosophy, Buddhist thought.

There is sensory perception. There is that which presides over the senses. There is that which presides over that which presides over the senses. Thus: Consciousness, mind, sensory perception. Or: Illumination, reasoning, data input or phenomena. Consciousness and mind are not the same but neither are they different. Say consciousness is the illuminative factor of mind and will, intention, the focusing factor. An adept of the spiritual practices of the east is said to, upon quieting the mind completely, 'experience' consciousness alone, in and of itself. Put another way, witdrawing from sensory input, the mind, the sense of self identity, consciousness alone remains. This would be the Asparsa yoga of Advaita (non-duality) Vedanta.

Now Aristotle held that matter is not inert. He had the idea of energia which I take to be the potency held within matter itself. This is further expressed in his notion of entelechy, the end within. Logically this makes matter the raw form of courage, of anything at all, including love, beauty, justice, wisdom, truth, honor, duty, liberty, and the like. Diotima, via Socrates: These, then are daimons, "...envoys and interpreters that ply between heaven and earth..." Plato thought these were windows to the transcendent, and in reality were, in a sense, the transcendent. At least they were thought by Plato and Socrates, to be facets of the "Good". Plato considered beauty the outward manifestation of the world's ultimate nature. And, which, the ultimate reality being without attributes - generally the view of Eastern thought - can not therefore, being inscrutable, at least it would seem, 'actively' show its true nature. How is this different from the idea that God sleeps in matter, as it were, descends into matter as part of the process of creation, in order to reemerge, awaken, a fully self realized being? That being the lesson in the story of Christ, or any great Lord or Seer.

In this connection recall the conversation between Arjuna and Krsna in the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna beseeches the great God, Krsna, to reveal himself in his true form. Krsna says to Arjuna that were he to do so he (Arjuna) would perish for he is not capable of seeing such in his current embodied form. Krsna, beneficently grants him the ability and does reveal his true nature.

Meanwhile in the western tradition God appears to the ancients, similarly, in some form of light. The burning bush of Moses' experience on the mountain, the light that debilitated Saul, later Paul, on his way to Damascus. The effulgence permeating and surrounding Jesus  when he appears to some disciples after the resurrection.

While the ultimate reality might not have attributes in itself  surely these daemons of Love, and so forth, the herein named go-betweens, messengers, are facets of divine nature, the sacred, sharing that distinction with all manifestation. It depends on one's standpoint. Love, beauty, truth, wisdom - I call these concomitants of consciousness, are no more or less sublime than a lovely flower. We can't have or hold or own these attributes any more than we can own the "frost white felicity"* of a rose. We can, however yield to the attributes the better to actualize the rose. Some would say that the affirmation of phenomena is a necessary step, even part of its actualizaion. One might think this an example of the anthropic principle gone wild but a postulate of quantum mechanics holds ‘reality’ results from the conscious gaze. Things only happen, quantum states only resolve themselves, because we look at them. And Einstein is said to have asked about this idea, with some sarcasm, ‘would a sidelong glance by a mouse suffice?’ - Plato thought the universe a product of reason seeking to actualize. Quantum theory: "Matter and consciousness are regarded as dual aspects of one underlying reality." That being another idea from quantum theory seems somewhat in tune with the thinking of some ancients.

Impicit in the universe is the identity axiom, that is, the universe is defined by itself. Only by itself. It is a tautology and conveys no information even though it contains all information. Truth doesn't act. It just shines. So, the ultimate ontological principle is the principle of participation. And, the truth can be experienced but never written. Aristotle and Plato.%

Reason is a conveyance, then, and God is not to be seen because all that manifests is God - 'he' being immanent in nature - from the standpoint of ultimate reality. Yet, in the habit of being able to see or know who made particular things we ignorantly believe, trust it possible to know or see what (who) made the world itself. Assuming God is like man easily leads one wayward. God created man which, to many of the ancients is the same as saying man is an extension of God, Jesus being a prime Judaic example. So, the true way to know God begins with self knowledge which one might say the reason we worship God is 'he' is imponderable. Faith will quickly lead to understanding.

The soul, psyche. Plato thought the soul, the activating power of being, imperishable, closely related to consciousness. Every 'thing' is subject to change - is perishable. All not perishable, changeable, are the forms, ideas, crowned by the soul. My thought is that the perishable proves the imperishable, the one the many, the impermanent the permanent. This is language playing here. Illusion is only known because there is the non-illusionary which we elect to call the ultimate reality, God - or Om - As activating principle capable of self manifestation. Advaita Vedanta holds that from the standpoint of the ultimate reality there is no change, that in reality, nothing is born, nothing perishes. One must go beyond all means of grasping, knowledge, void all attributes and so, the only thing that makes sense; "I am that" which happens to be what God said to Moses. "(Tell the people) I Am sends you." In Vedanta this wording "I am that" or "That I am" is also used.

If you doubt then doubt is all that is. If you have faith then faith is all that is. The universe fills, informs, is that. Put differently, you confer individuality on the world and the universe confers on you eternality. I first encountered this in studying Aristotle.

The idea, the form, for instance, of a 'table' is eternal in which all tables in their myriads participate, are extensions. The activating principle of being is constant. Psyche, translated as soul might be more properly translated as reason, mind, intelligence, life, vital principle in things.  Plato thought the soul tripartite. It is one, many, and the proportion that fuses them.

Also, and I quote, "No soul which has not practiced philosophy, and is not absolutely pure when it leaves the body, may attain to the divine nature; that is only for the lover of wisdom. This is the reason...why true philosophers abstain from all bodily desires and withstand them and do not yield to them." (from the Phaedo dialogue) That might be taken as from Manichean influence.

Consciousness is likely additive and the unknowable, God, is likely increased, made real even, by participation of creature existence in his transcendence, or, if you like, our yearning for same. That is to say, when you, for instance, love your family, love itself, transcendent principle of love - a facet of the good - is made stronger.

From Mary Renault, on love,  "the Last of the Wine": "Yet sometimes in the night watch, when the Galaxy unrolled its book across a moonless sky, I knew what we were about, and where Sokrates was sending us. When Lysis had left me and gone to sleep, I would feel my soul climb love as a mountain, which at the foot has wide slopes with rocks and streams, and woods, and fields of every kind, but at the top one peak, to which if you go upward all  paths lead; and beyond it, the blue ether where the world swims like a fish in its ocean, and the winged soul flies free."

Is the ultimate reality one or is it many? It is both. The ultimate reality is one but has many within. So, what Heraclitus says might be restated as, all manifestation that is within the one of the ultimate reality is changeable and knowledge is precluded therein because knowledge can only be of something unchanging. Like the petals of a flower Plato viewed the varied ideas or forms around the center as variations on a single theme. The theme was the intelligibility of the system, its power of self manifestation, and taken as a whole with the variations, without meaning in themselves, but organically coupled with the whole, purpose and meaning develops. The singular parts constantly change but their combination into a whole and unitary process does not. It's there that one finds meaning and purpose which all sundry singulars reveal in their myriads. Multiplicity is in the all while the all subsumes multiplicity, the manifest.

And, when the Buddhists hold that nothing is permanent it might be said they are taking something akin to Heraclitus' view as developed by Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. Likewise, when the Vedantists state that an object of our thought can never actually be the changeless absolute. Reason, Logos, is eternally about relative things and cannot enter the realm of the ultimate reality, being, however, useful to take one to the borders of said realm.

A bit more from Aristotle for whom substance is quite similar to the substratum of Vedanta. Substance for Aristotle stands under and supports all other realities. It is fundamental. Real things, i.e., substances do not exist in degrees, nor do they have opposites. Man need not have an opposite to be intelligible as white is intelligible only on the face of black. Real things can put off contraries while still remaining identical with itself, that is, while it is itself it can be other things. "John Smith at 81 is the same person as John Smith at 20. His qualities are just different." The mark of a real thing for Aristotle is not an eternal and immutable thing (These characterized Plato's real being.) But it is a 'self' that is able to maintain these qualities while undergoing change. But what is, then, after all this, substance? It is the substratum that remains when all qualities are taken away. All these things - form, matter, their composites - are substance, but not alone. They are all necessary for understanding. As mentioned above regarding the identity axiom, the substratum, like any tautology, is meaningless; conveying no information it is unknowable, can't be understood, though it contains all information. However, when attributes, qualities, form, matter, their components, are expressed, knowledge and understanding come to be. Being is not universal but equivocal. Being is different for different things. All cats are cats in the same way. All things have being in different ways. The first, regarding cats, is universal, the second, regarding things, is equivocal. Being is like the word health - an equivocal term, as, I'm healthy, food is healthy. All things are one by virtue of their reducibility to substance, or primary reality.%

Those who take Heraclitus' view should incorporate the idea that empirical means must be used to gather knowledge of things. Empirical knowledge is only of relative things, things we can know by comparing them to other things, mainly ourselves, in short, measurable things, but we can somewhat understand that which is changeless, without attributes; understanding unlike knowing requires no measurement. So, understanding is beyond knowledge, is in fact where knowledge leads then ends. Restatement. Heraclitus' statement - all that is in flux is empirically knowable, but taken as a whole, as Parmenides' one, is not, which one is rather understandable. Understanding being a function of wisdom not of mind which is limited to knowledge gathered through measurement.

Go deep! The discrete seemingly unconnected moments of consciousness aren't consciousness at all. They are perceptions, empirical in nature. Consciousness illuminates them making them seem connected. Think rather - the mind serves to make them seem connected but even it arises anew with each perception - like musical notes. Memory plays an important part here. Remembering the antecedent note(s) the successive notes are intelligible, grow in meaning and purpose.  But only consciousness is continuous, a kind of light shining on all. That is, consciouness does not arise and fall away with the iota of perception, discrete parts of the 'waterfall' are united by mind, illumined by consciousness. Music might provide a more apt metaphor. Without each moment being related to the antecedent and the subsequent moments there could be no music. Music has, alludes to, illusion, uses illusion to further its purpose which is reflexive; it points back to itself as a means of illuminating that by which it is illuminated. Or, something like that. It changes constantly yet it is held together in a unity. How is that not reflective of the very nature of the ultimate reality? Only the unfathomable unity is real, the flux being somewhat mere instances of the whole intended to promote awareness of that which cannot be named.

The mind, and musical notes, are "born every moment" as discrete instances of the effulgent flux. Consciousness is the field in which their connections manifest and are made sensical.

Be mindful the universe is system and as such is organic, orderly, alive. That is - has always been recorded - as the Greek view. The real is exhausted by manifestation. That is, nothing is held back; relative things are a complete revelation of reality. But consider that though fully revealed in manifestation means not that change is absent in new, ever increasing revelation. So effulgence is ongoing. Creation should not be thought to exhaust an infinite potentiality which potential increases apace with continuing creation. Like a fractal. So it depends on one's standpoint. Put another way, we have the power to make of it what we will which is a consequence of being a part of the whole in which we have life. Our individual lives are extensions, outgrowths of the life of the whole.

Now Jesus, it's said, is love and is the word made flesh. So, with this scheme, he would be a vehicle to carry god's love back and forth between man and the ultimate reality - to the Jews, a somewhat separate being likened as a father and named god. In this I don't intend to reduce him to a mere 'go between or messenger. Look deeper. We can't know the incomprehensible god; even his real name is unpronounceable**. Instead we are given someone like us, Jesus, who though not god himself is not different from god either. Loving Jesus we love the father. We cannot own, grasp, hold the immeasurable father but we can the son, whom by grace is much like us. We can also, seeking wisdom, study the word, but we must simply accept, affirm the existence of the father as a matter of faith.

The erotic, Don Juanism, as a principle of nature is not daemonic in the Platonic sense of a spirit that acts as a messenger or go-between for the divine and man. It is an actual demon, corruption of the divine. Kierkegaard's claim that it was Christianity itself that loosed this daemonic spirit on the world by ascribing evil to material nature is, I think credible. Thus Christianity ironically served, by his measure, that which it intends to defeat.

The duality of mind and body, soul and body, good and evil, follows the scheme of the Manicheans. But these, I think, are false dichotomies as the ultimate reality is not either/or but process itself, that is, both/and. The body is a continuation of soul, man a continuation of god, and so forth, like a rose is a continuation of its soil. Meaning that evil is a continuation of good. Of course, the good is life enhancing and evil is life destroying or corrupting. We must choose which to embrace. We will see eventually, I expect, if the struggle for dominance between cosmic forces of good and evil is real?

Huntington Cairns goes on in his introduction saying that in the Phaedrus dialogue Plato argues that writing is like painting. It has the appearance of life but if you ask it a question it preserves a solemn silence. Collingwood - of whom I've also written - said the same. Art is mute, yet is foundational for ensuing modes of being. Art evolves into religion, science, history, philosophy. Collingwood - this is contrary to Plato's view - traces the modes of being from art through philosophy but thought that philosophy was where man's activity found redemption after so many false starts wherein discovering a true path. Kierkegaard thought of the aesthetic mode of being as a "stage on life's way".

Kierkegaard used Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni, to illustrate, give body to his notion of the forever disappearing, fleeting, doomed, apotheosis of the erotic on a perpetually receding horizon. Kierkegaard thought that the erotic in nature had gone wild. This madness is characterized by an urge to go beyond the self. This he named the daemonic urge which expressed as Don Juanism was fittingly suited to music as in Mozart's opera; this, in other words, could be stated as viewing reality as greater than itself, a characteristic of Romanticism. Don Juan says his need is too great to ever be satisfied. Soren Kierkegaard's daemon is not the daemon of the Greeks, of Diotima. He sees it as a real entity, not a messenger or go-between. As will, as power, the erotic in nature comes alive as a principle of nature, a force that lives through, within restlessness, yearning for the infinite satisfaction of longing, the insatiable desire to own, have, hold, continuous gratification of sensual desire. Don Juan's only care is to find them, bed them, forget them.

This longing of Don Giovanni is a corruption, I think, of the longing for self realization or actualization, for a complete understanding of the Real. Furthermore, this corruption is the basis of the urge for self annihilation. But reality is here staring us in the face requiring only our affirmation, for whatever there is, be sure, is everywhere - and eternal - and without attributes - thus being freely given by the 'primal spirit whence of old issued forth the whole cosmic activity.'***

Man's enterprises continue unabated to follow this pattern. Salvation, for those who live by faith, is available only to those who go beyond life, and is to be granted in a separate, unsearchable realm sometimes called heaven. Science translates heaven into the so called grand unified theory which if reached would explain reasonably all that is, including the origin and the final end of the entire universe. History promises a utopia at its end which is approached dialectically one system of governance replacing another getting more perfect with each iteration. These are all on an ever receding horizon the closer to which one comes the more inaccessible. You can't get there from here being the underlying principle.

Cairns also writes Plato thought, the Greeks thought, the world pervaded by reason and that its beauty is an outward manifestation of its ultimate nature. In the end one finds that their are elements in the thought of the ancient western world, in Greek philosophy and in Judaism complimentary to that of Buddha, Guadapada, Sankara, Nagarjuna, and Desani. I would only reiterate what I've written before and that is, what we seek, the ultimate truth, a full, complete understanding  with accompanying  appreciation of life's purpose and meaning, can’t be finally owned because it hides in plain sight. You can’t find it because the premise you don’t already have it, is false. This, I think is the logical, reasonable outcome of being, as individuals, an extension of the universal which gives us eternality in exchange for our giving it individuality.

I never tire at similar points to bring T. S. Eliot's apt expression of this into the picture: "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

The search for Truth and the other concomitants of consciousness - beauty, love, justice, etc.; the search for communion with the divine, or at least what is close to the divine, needs begin with love of wisdom. That love is the bottom rung, so to speak of a ladder. One needs take the first step then the following steps follow with increasing ease. Diotima: "(Love) is neither mortal nor immortal, but is a mean between the two. He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal. He interprets between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together...For God mingles not with man; but through Love all the intercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual. Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love."

I've written disparagingly of reason in this space many times saying particularly that it is disposed to address things in the relative realm - the measurable. A more nuanced view comes forth that while this is true and the implication also, that the transcendent can't be revealed by reason alone, reason, nevertheless is doubtless a device for approaching the transcendent which, when got in sight one must make a leap of faith. At least I think so. This, however, is not the faith of which Kierkegaard so disparagingly wrote. There are esoteric teachings that the popular movements have forgotten if they ever really appreciated them. Romanticism grew out of the teachings of the ancients wherein are the roots of its failures. Indeed, this should be said of all that passes for knowledge, understanding. Key. A device is necessary. Reason, the mind, consciousness, the concomitants of consciousness, Love, Beauty, Truth, Liberty, and the like are given us. What is their purpose? Why is it they seem to only emerge concurrently with sentient life? Aren't they truly the means - some of the means - by which we might become fully self realized beings? A teacher is needed and to deserve one an effort must be made with the available means. Working to reveal the transcendent allies will come. Looking back, looking around, is fruitful. One learns from others who have studied this. It would be foolish not to take advantage of their efforts. They failed here and there but also had successes. We will fail and will, likewise, have succeses. There most certainly are patterns to be discovered but, going back to Kierkegaard, we should recall gratefully perhaps the best advice one could have: "Life is a mystery to live not a mystery to solve."

In that connection the wisest of our forbears, East or West, hold - and this writer concurs - all we can do is "soar to the sublime temple of solitude" and bask there in silence. For, as Socrates was known to say,  the only thing I know with certainty is I do not know. He also said "We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know."

* Desani's words

** In Africa it's traditional that the most revered's name is forbidden to be spoken. This, as a means of reverence. (To speak "God's" name is to claim a familiarity denied. We are thus taught not to be presumptuous.)

# Huntington Cairns, introduction to Plato's Dialogues, Bollingen series, Princeton University

*** Bhagavad Gita

% Notes from Professor Louis Mackey's Ancient Philosophy class, University of Texas, Austin. These statements harmonize with those of Guadapada and Sankara (Advaita Vedanta as expressed in the Mandukya Upanishad.

Further Offerings

Reason cannot fathom what the heart knows intuitively.

We are garlands of God in so far as we personify the entire universe.

Study continues on the various spiritual approaches to understanding the Real, our place, our mistakes, disharmony.

Begin with Nagarjuna, Buddhism. In the Buddha's first sermon a "middle way" was presented between the extremes of self-indulgence and self- mortification. This tacitly embraces an idea that those following then accepted, promoted, spiritual paths often erred  when adopting what Buddha considered extreme measures. Nagarjuna followed by philosophically expanding this notion into existence and nonexistence, or, between emptiness and absence of intrinsic existence. For Nagarjuna ignorance, the source of all suffering is the belief in svabhava, a term that literally means “own being” and has been rendered as “intrinsic existence” and “self nature”.  Nagarjuna employs the doctrine of the two truths, paramartha satya (“ultimate truth”) and samvriti satya (“conventional truth”), explaining that everything that exists is ultimately empty of any intrinsic nature but does exist conventionally. This is a necessary condition following that the conventional is the necessary means for understanding the ultimate. For it is the ultimate that makes the conventional possible. As Nagarjuna wrote, “For whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible.” Compare this to Vedanta Advaita (non-duality) which does not make such a specific claim but does state that relative existence is, when properly understood, when seen from the standpoint of the ultimate reality, identical with Brahman, the absolute. I take it that relative existence corresponds to the Buddhistic notion of that which is conventional.

Vedanta, the philosophy of Advaita (non-duality) put forth by Guadapada and his student Sankara it seems to this one share some similarities with Nagarjuna. Vedanta, Advaita, holds that nothing is real except the entire universe. All phenomena are illusory, that is, empty of any "intrinsic existence" at all, that phenomenal reality, the world of relative being, which for Nagarjuna would be called conventional existence, is illusory yet dependent upon a substratum, the ground for phenomena. In Vedanta the illusory, the world of manifested being is likewise used as a means of ultimately reaching true understanding of what is in reality the non-dual nature of existence which they call Brahman or Atman and which would correspond to Nagarjuna's ultimate truth. So. For both these systems there is only one thing in existence. It admits of no intrinsic being of manifested reality yet makes use of same to arrive at a true understanding of the Ultimate Reality. It might be said of Advaita that emptiness is not the absence of existence but, rather, the absence of intrinsic existence. Isn't this the same as denying that any manifested thing is real in itself but is actually an illusion based on what is really real and that is the substratum, the one pure, undifferentiated, eternal being?

Any manifestation is impermanent. It appears for awhile - as an illusion - it passes away. The whole process is dreamlike as any given phenomenon is unreal in itself. Yet, any given phenomenon is not different from the Real either and for Vedanta is properly understood to be identical with the Real. I would submit that there is a congruence here with  Nagarjuna's idea that "the conventional is the necessary means to understanding the ultimate, and that the ultimate makes the conventional possible." Nagarjuna went on to say that it is by the manifest that we first apprehend the ultimate reality though when focused on the manifest understanding of the ultimate reality is inhibited to the extent of the clinging thereto.

Important to note that, according to Nagarjuna, "To convey through concepts what lies beyond concepts and conventional entities is the skillfulness of the wise." And in Guadapada's Mandukya Upanishad we find this: "That which is indescribable by words cannot be discriminated (as real or unreal)."  This should be kept in mind.

The Mandukya Upanishad posits consciousness as the substratum of changing attributes as the only reality. Vedanta puts forth that the Buddhists fall into nihilism when they claim nothing exists. What the Buddhists mean here is that no relative thing has intrinsic existence, with which the Vedantists should agree. But the Buddhists seem not to distinguish between the "thing" and the consciousness of same. Things do not have intrinsic existence - in Advaitic terms they are illusory - but this is not the same as saying consciousness (of things) is without intrinsic existence for consciousness persists while things come and go it being the illumination of their passing.  According to Guadapada "consciousness when not in motion (imaginary action), is free from all appearances and remains changeless." The discrete seemingly unconnected moments of consciousness aren't consciousness at all. They are the quanta of perceptions. Consciousness illuminates them making them seem connected. The mind arises anew with each quanta and only consciousness is continuous, actually a kind of light shining on all experiential data which, as noted by the Buddhists, for instance, is a string of unconnected events. Iota of perception, discrete parts of the 'waterfall' are united by consciousness, held together. Music might provide a more apt metaphor. No thing is eternal. Its very essence is to come and go and to serve as a pointer to something deeper. That something is consciousness and is in itself the substratum, the ultimate reality by which appearances occur at all. One can't define it, it is mistakenly taken as ever changing yet in actuality it is that by which there can be definition of the effulgence happening therein, illumined thereby. Sensory perception depends on it. It's subtlety is infinite and its reach, too. There might be an infinity of universes - I don't think so - yet consciousness itself is the same for all. So. The multiplicity dissolves into the One True Thing which is unknowable, pure, not subject to being owned, controlled, defined, measured.

That is correct. Consciousness is all that remains on suspension of sensory perception, of mind, as in deep sleep or the Yogic Samadhic trance. It should be the stated goal to realize this and the Yogis' "Drsta" (the seer) being established in his own right seems a more advanced expression of the self realization of the Vedantic Atman/Brahman and the Buddhist Tathagata. One must go the way of Buddhahood for the ultimate actualization of beings' purpose and meaning. For the end within, the entelechy, is ever striving to manifest in every possible effulgence of whatever it is that is this universe in which we find ourselves.

Coming from the same general time, the same general place, one expects a certain amount of harmony in the spiritual approaches to reality. It can't be avoided. So the disputation is just a minor flaw to be taken somewhat lightly. These spiritual leaders might be said to have emphasized their differences in some cases  it being necessary to make their followers feel special that they chose the only true and right path among the many offered. In other words these are, after all, men and suffer the same afflictions as anyone. Forgive them for proselytizing. To be sure one must believe in one's own message in order to convince others and the Vedanta method includes presenting only partial, carefully selected teachings as a means of waking the student to the full teaching after some period of acclimation. So. They might not truly claim to "own" the truth but only claim a "lease" on it. So. Follow me!

But the truth is out, I submit, when we continuously see the teacher finally yield to an ever deepening inclination to submit to a greater power. Is this a teleological pointer to the ultimate entelechy, the final end within? Guadapada, and countless others finally retire to the Himalayas - a cloister, a secluded place of and for devotion - to worship a deity. Some of these are Devas, some Devis - some Gods, some Goddesses. What is their claim on us? Love? Yes, I think so- in a personal way. It's there always in the background and when finally one simply yields it issues forth to assume it's proper, primordial place of grace and redemption.

Yet, love too is a kind of illusion, something to cling to along with beauty, liberty, truth and indeed all mental constructs. It's a sign we in the end submit to our natural desire to anthropomorphize the world. Here, also, we should forgive the rose for thinking it is just a form of the dirt from which it came. And apply this too. It's not unlike a fire brand, which is really just a point of light, being twirled to create the illusion of a circle, a line, and so forth. The final chapter of the Mandukya Upanishad, by the way, is titled "Quenching of the Firebrand." But. These concomitants of consciousness are modifications of mind and its accompanying illuminative factor, having no existence of their own. Nagarjuna would say no svabhava. So, what part do they play? Like the fire brand they are mere points of light. They are in some sense eternal as they are not things that come and go and it seems important in some way that they seem to emerge only when, or after, sentient life forms do. And qualities have a different claim on being than mere quantitative things, concrete things, that is. We make them ourselves, by twirling the point of light. Our effort is key. Though illusory they do serve a purpose. These depend on us to actualize them as co-creators. By God's grace they exist as potentialities, our partnership is required to actualize them. And isn't this similar to making bread from wheat? Their being is on loan from God but it is worthy for it is by these illusions and our momentary attending thereto that we perhaps get a fleeting glimpse of the divine. And in that moment is all the time needed to realize our true nature and by that our partner does the same. We come hand in hand and this nameless transfiguration is in harmony with all these old teachers. Yes, the world of relative things is illusory. Yes. Avoid clinging to these as having intrinsic existence. They are not eternal. They do point to the eternal in the same way that the oak dreams of the acorn, the acorn dreams of the oak, and the stump lives in them both.

Synopsis

Ancient wisdom: Creation indicates an unsatisfied desire on the part of the creator. If the Ultimate Reality be complete or perfect in itself and self-satiated, then the act of creation can never be predicated of it. But if there be no creation how can one explain the multiplicity of empirical experience in the universe? Because this is the very nature of the Effulgent Being

Are heat and light attributes of sunshine? Of course, but they are not in themselves sunshine. Neither are they different from sunshine. In the same way embodied beings are attriutes of the Ultimate Reality, the undivided being. They (we) are not in ourselves the undivided being, the Ultimate Reality. Neither are we different. We are, as attributes, markers, manifestations of that from which we owe our relative existence. As such we can also be said to be the means by which that Ultimate Reality, undivided being is, or can be, known, understood. So! In the same way heat and light are ways of knowing or understanding sunshine, embodied beings, you and I, are ways of knowing or understanding Ultimate Reality, undivided being.

Jesus was, is an attribute of God, the Father. He was, is not God, the Father, but neither was, is he different from him. What he was is a way of knowing or understanding God, the Father. Jesus was - is - God as man. He was, is a Man-God.

Heat and light could also be said to be, besides mere attributes, instrumentation by which sunshine exercises a creative force. Heat and light make life, grasses, trees, creatures, possible.

We sentient life forms are like that, too. We can be said to be co-creators of the Ultimate Reality, undivided being, instruments by which God has self experience and by which he grows, cultivates the manifested universe because we share his very nature as an effulgent being. Notably, the emergence of sentient life runs concurrently with the emergence of things like love, truth, wisdom, liberty, justice, and beauty. What else is waiting in the wings to be made manifest? We have only just begun!

The realization of the non dual nature of the Ultimate Reality - that it is undivided being - is the condition for understanding what is said here. From that standpoint the relative existence of the world(s) of manifested beings, the phenomenal universe, is illusory, not real in itself, neither is it different from the phenomenal universe, but exists as an aid to realizing its true nature, our true nature, God's true nature.

God appears as the world without forfeiting his essential nature.

Nagarjuna's Philosophy as presented in the Maha-Prajnaparamita Sastra by K. Venkata Ramanan

I ask you, can you put your hand in the same river twice? Raja Rao

Does a waterfall ever change? Raja Rao

It is with rash insolence that we belittle the great to our own measure, as when talking of God. Blaise Pascal

Neither doeth anyone know the Father, but the son, and he to whom it shall please the son to reveal him. Matthew 11-27

As stated previously, I am not a scholar which does not mean I won't enter into some conjecture about the religious or philosophical schools of India, the world. Here I am primarily concerned with Nagarjuna's philosophy. I've written about Yoga, the Mandukya Upanishad also. A cursory reading by anyone reveals all those involved in the development, establishment, furtherance, of these systems were well versed in the work of their coevals, predecessors. A common style, common thread is discernible. They contend with one another, vie for attention, compete, use one another's work as part of the learning process, as talking points. It has ever been so. Taken together the various formulations, structures, make a kind of dialectic. One leads to the next and is developed further and another plateau is established as ground for even more developed systems. Centuries, millennia are involved, yet these people, enlightened beings, talk to each other like you and I might, so, like contemporaries. They must have had a sense of time not common to most people. Buddha makes his mark and Jesus, a close study would reveal, counters with another. And, this writer, at least, finds it interesting that Jesus and Buddha walked the earth so near one another in time and that their teaching had in common an emphasis on compassion or love. Great teachers, Lords, appear and are followed immediately by those who would explain or amplify the insights. The author of the Mandukya Upanishad, Guadapada gives way to Sankara for amplification. In later times Desani puts it all in order for a new generation. It is like a celestial orchestration of self realization, actualization. And, to be sure, the bloom is ever on that rose. For any who have developed an appreciation, these expositions are exquisitely beautiful. The proponents were dedicated to and loved their work. One is joined in their joy of having found the precious gems and delighted in sharing them with anyone who might benefit. True, its said, some authors would sign well known names to their work in order to get attention; for instance, the Bhagavad Gita was a later work than the parent to which it is attributed - it is said.

The commonalities abound in Judeo Christian and Indian philosophies. and are centered around self realization, actualization, understanding the Truth. At University Raja Rao taught a course on Mahayana Buddhism. The text book was the one in the title of this post. An internet search reveals this work is still in print.

So, from the Vedas of the Indian sub-continent, to the contributions of Rabbinic Judaism of the Middle East, to the Upanishads, back in India, to Tibet, to China, Japan, its a long road from antiquity to modern times. Nagarjuna, who likely lived about a century after Christ, five centuries after the Gautama Buddha, takes up the task of setting to right what he considers to be the straying teachings of those who came after the Buddha. It might be said he was to the Buddha as Jesus' disciples were to him, though, of course, the disciples were contemporaries of Jesus.

Ramanan was a fellow at Harvard's Yenching Institute and this work was published with their assistance. Nagarjuna's Prajnaparamita, which means the way of the perfection of wisdom wasn't available in India at that time. Dr. Ramanan, traveling in China, found a copy translated by one Kumarajiva. It is also noted that Kumarajiva translated some texts on dhyana (meditation) and that his disciple, Tao-Sheng has been credited with founding the precursor to Ch'an (or Zen) Buddhism .

Buddha, Nagarjuna were proponents of the so called Middle Way (Madhyamika) which in turn came under the heading of Mahayana Buddhism, the highest truth of which is known, realizable in the state reached through contemplation, meditation, trance (dharna, dhyana, samadhi) as Nirvana.

Nirvana is not the Judeo-Christian heaven and, for that matter Buddha was never proclaimed as God. The family unit used in Judeo-Christianity as a metaphor to make easily understood the basic principles of the ultimate reality is not used at all in Buddhism. For that matter it isn't used in any of the systems with which this writer is familiar except the Abrahamic religions. Buddha was considered Lord and no doubt it could be claimed, as I do, that he enjoyed a hypostatic union with the divine creative spirit, the ultimately real substratum from which mundane, relative existence comes to be. Relative existence, mundane things, are said to have conditioned reality and really are nothing in themselves. Having originated in the undifferentiated, changeless, unutterable ground of reality they reflect the ultimate even while having no separate existence. As ever changing entities they owe their essence to that from which they emanate, from which they spring and return to on expiring.  The manifest has no self being and the purpose of the created is only to fulfill the potentialities of the substratum.

Buddha's core teaching was to make accessible a path out of the suffering, pain of existence in this world. To this end a great edifice of categories, causes, effects, a virtual world of sometimes very intricate formulae was built up and taught in a great variety of ways to his followers. Many other schools of thought on these matters existed before and clearly Buddhism takes these into account. After all, the Vedas date back perhaps four or five thousand years. They are the basis of Hinduism and the Upanishads are considered late or post Vedic writings.

It doesn't take a scholar to see the common threads running through these ancient texts. The Prajnaparamita lays them out in a concise, easily understood manner. As already mentioned a basic tenet is that the conditioned reality has no meaning other than that borrowed from the unconditioned, ultimately real. Things of dependent origination are sunya, empty. What is Real is the conditioned in its eternal aspect.

What is common in all philosophy, in  all religion is the thirst for the Real. All that differs is the Way to that end. Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life. No man cometh to the father except by me." Buddha said the same thing substituting the ultimate reality for father. He said he actually was the unconditioned reality apart from that conditioned form with which he was embodied, made apparent. Made apparent. What is made apparent? Well, it is obfuscated by clinging. Clinging to illusion, to passion, to false knowledge, all kinds of things. Only proper understanding cultivated over a long time, with compassion, without hatred, anger, greed, in short, with clean living, can lead to a full self-realization; but mostly, avoiding the error of misplaced absolutes leads one to the truth of the undivided nature of ultimate reality, birthlessness, unaffected by time.

Nagarjuna set himself to the exposition of the teachings of the Prajnaparamita-sutras which "...embody the central teaching that the ultimate nature of the determinate is itself the unconditioned reality - that in the ultimate truth, the undivided being, there is no division of conditioned and unconditioned.." The wise do not cling to the determinate as indeterminate. The wise do not cling at all. What is speakable is determinate. Only silence, for the wise, pertains to the highest truth. Thus it is that the tendency to seize is the root of conflict and suffering.

The indeterminate is not a separate reality from the determinate, something to be realized transcendentaly, because determinate entities are dependent on the indeterminate as their ground. The ultimate truth cannot be taught, says Nagarjuna except in the context of the mundane. The ultimate truth can, however, be comprehended and only then can Nirvana be attained. I would add that its unlikely that it would be granted by a higher being though I believe that one who sets himself to the task gains assistance in some way from beings greater than ourselves. This I was taught. It has to be an achievement of one's own efforts to have a full meaning. No specific view can be had of that. Being a specific view connotes divided being. Thus it is said that silence is the ultimate truth for the wise.

This makes me reflect again on Rabbinic Judaism. YHWH is supposed to be God's name. But it has no vowels, is unpronounceable. Seems to me that the same understanding of the ultimate reality is at play here as for the Buddhists. The ultimate reality cannot be known, named, owned, or even pronounced. Only the conditioned can and this is owning an illusion since the conditioned has no reality, essence, unique to itself as a seemingly separate entity. To name God is to bind the ultimate reality to the world of named objects. I suppose that, also, is why Soren Kierkegaard made his well known statement that God doesn't exist, he is eternal. Well. Simple people need something to carry them over life's troubles and I've no quarrel if they want to name the unnameable. It gives comfort to have a personal savior and it is good that it aids some in their efforts to surrender to God. But, really, one doesn't need a named deity for surrender. To realize the true nature of the ultimate reality in relation to mundane existence leads to a kind of evenmindedness which is the same as resignation to a God concept.

To reiterate. "Mundane existence itself becomes possible, conceivable, only on the ground of the unconditioned reality." And, "That which is of the nature of coming and going, arising and perishing, in its conditioned (mundane) nature is itself Nirvana in its unconditioned (ultimate) nature...the unconditioned reality is the ground of the conditioned, contingent entities." Therefore it can be said the world of becoming (Samsara) is Nirvana.

But those are just words to be made real, given the universal, cosmic, import they vainly attempt to embody. It is a pretty statement but living it is a different matter altogether. One has to see it with the eye of the Buddha.

There are claimed to be five eyes which this writer finds corresponds with the five Yogic levels of Samadhi. Based on that, the Dharma-Megha-Samadhi of the Yoga practice would correspond to the "eye" of the Buddha, the fifth eye. In Yoga that would be at the level of the ultimate reality characterized as Kaivalya, silence. For Buddhism that would correspond to Nirvana. It is a state in which silence prevails, in which the mind falls away and consciousness alone shines forth. The true nature of all is established in its own right. Determinate reality would no longer be seized as ultimate. The one who goes this way is entirely free from becoming.  The ground of the conditioned is understood as the unconditioned reality. The basic elements of existence are comprehended as not ultimate.

Such an achievement cannot be put into words. Words can be used to point the way, like a finger pointing at the moon, but clinging to the finger prevents actually seeing the moon as clinging to the teaching actually prevents, inhibits, seeing the Real. The best that can be hoped for is to follow the words, the teaching, till a point is reached where it is realized that beyond here is uncharted territory and a leap of faith is needed. That leap is into understanding, or comprehension. A potentiality is realized, created anew, and that latency, manifested renewal, becoming, continues in a new light. Life is continuous renewal which means, basically, that it is the freedom to create. It is taught that the mind, and consciousness, operating through various vehicles operate to satisfy the so called thirst for the Real. As one progresses on this path the vehicles become more and more subtle till only the main instrumentality of consciousness, the mind remains. When that too, by meditation, is compelled to dispel itself, then the last veil covering consciousness itself falls away and the "seer is established in his own right."

To be illuminated in or by consciousness is to borrow, take loan of a conditioned reality and it is mind that operates here. Existence is an attribute for that relative entity, the mind.

Process and simultaneity.

Fire. Each moment of a flame's death is simultaneous with the birth of the next moment of the fire in the continuing process of burning. Fire is a constant renewal involving extinction and rebirth. That is a good metaphor for life. Subsets of simultaneous processes continuously work together to produce the phenomenon. The fire as process rests on top of multitudes of supporting conditions right down through molecular action to the sub-atomic participants of neutrons, protons, electrons and below these the quarks, muons, leptons, neutrinos, the pi-mesons, the higgs boson. The complexity is astonishing and needs to be appreciated when a claim is put forth that something is known or even knowable, or, for that matter even there at all except as an essentially empty shell. Some say, particle physicists, for instance, that without the higgs boson nothing at all of the phenomenal world would have mass. Therefore it is called the God Particle.

One breath, dieing, gives birth to the next. One instance of flame, dieing, gives birth to the next. For fire it happens so quickly that the separate parts are not discernible. Breathing, while following the same principle, is so much slower that the parts are easily discernible. Where does this principle take us? One star, dieing, gives birth to the next. One Universe, dieing, gives birth to the next. How about one God, dieing, gives birth to the next? Or put a bit differently, one Reality (Dharma), dieing, gives birth to the next? Becoming is, it seems, simultaneous birth and death. The way of the ever new follows this principle. For Buddhism this principle conflates into becoming, the elements of which do not really exist as discrete entities. The process has a stronger claim on the Real. Ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, in opposition to Heraclitus, asserted something similar when stating reality is one, not many. The "many" therefore cannot be seized, held, owned, defined, bounded. In themselves they are not actual, real. They have no svabhava, self being, you see. Therefore phenomenal reality is illusory and the manifold being empty carries over to the ultimate reality which is itself likewise sunya, empty. Yet the manifested world has relative reality and finds its meaning and purpose in pointing to the substratum from which it, so to speak, borrows its reality as it ever and anon springs forth anew. Effulgence.

In this emanation we find, or try to find, or confirm, or manifest, or realize, ourselves. We have potentialities unknown but we do know the urge to actuate these, to fulfill, to make alive, to realize. If there is a meaning, purpose, to this can it be known or understood? Many have tried and failed. Many have tried and had partial success. The philosophies of the world must be appreciated in this light. Accordingly, a kind of evenmindedness is the most efficacious approach to life to be had. For those who fare the middle way, the way of the Madyamika this is known as non-clinging.

Notable, to this writer at least, one does not find in Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoga the ideas of the ultimate reality conferring on the manifest, particularly sentient life forms, universality, or conversely, embodied beings conferring on the ultimate reality individuality, enabling thereby the substratum, whatever it is in itself, if it is anything at all in itself, the gift of self awareness. Not directly at least is this taught or appreciated in the East, or for that matter in the West, either. My mentor, G.V. Desani, did teach this, saying that the person is the instrumentality of "God's" self knowing. So, we are the means by which the ultimately real has self knowledge, enjoys, experiences itself. And, yes, by the methods of the East you can realize the ultimate but does that make you co-creator? Are we in partnership with the Divine Creative Spirit? Is eternality conferred on man in what would be a hypostatic union? Does, conversely, this relationship confer on the ultimate, individuality? I think it is implied but not necessarily specified in all the spiritual practices if one goes deep enough into the esoterica. For it seems to me that, clearly, in it's ultimate nature, any and all manifestation is essentially identical with the substratum. Therefore a fully self realized individual, Jesus, Buddha, "spark of the divine" is a wholly manifest instance of the ultimate reality. The Word incarnate. Put differently, the ultimate reality, whatever it might be in itself is totally, completely exhausted in the mundane, nothing at all being held back, reserved. So, and the Mahayana of Nagarjuna agree on this point when they express that the world of becoming, Samsara, is when seen from the right perspective, Nirvana. As Edward Conze puts it in his paper The Ontology of the Prajnaparamita "Nirvana and I are absolutely different. I cannot get it, and it cannot get me. I can never find it, because I am no longer there when it is found. It cannot find me, because I am not there to be found. But Nirvana, the everlasting, is there all the time. 'Such-ness is everywhere the same, since all dharmas have already attained Nirvana.'" The ultimate reality is that all of conditioned nature, all of the mundane and/or manifest is illusory. There's no division at all in the ultimate reality. Clinging to anything at all introduces division.

Yet Professor Irwin Lieb's saying that the only true individual is the entire universe, taken all as one, is easy, though, not so much realizing it, acting on it, living it. Jesus and Buddha and others having done so show us the way but we must nevertheless walk that path for ourselves alone. The flame, dieing, gives birth to another. Setting one's self up to be that other is a lovely dream to be realized by extremely rare individuals.

And by emptiness fullness is known, understood. So Samsara, the world of becoming, is not in itself Nirvana, the ultimate reality.Yet neither is it different from that. For to cling to either is to fall into error, what Nagarjuna would name eternalism. The philosophy of Prajnaparamita, the path of the perfection of wisdom, teaches that the tendency to cling, to "reduce the great to our own measure" is a most difficult error to root out. So, from the standpoint of the ultimate reality Samsara might be Nirvana, but only if one realizes it, in a sense, owns what is impossible to own. In other words, without the direct input of a Tathagata, one who goes the way of Buddhahood, it is not actualized, remains potential. So for Samsara to be Nirvana requires input, so to speak, of a sentient life form. One who has this attainment might be said worthy of having co-creator status.

This is a stretch, but thinking outside the box, one might go so far as to say God has gone astray and it is our duty to bring him back to reality. That might be, in part, what it means to be a co-creator. A notion from Rabbinic Judaism is that God having created the world withdrew so as to make room for man. Well, another take on that is that he didn't withdraw at all. He just became so involved in his creation, shall we say, lost in his work? that he forgot his true nature. So, as embodied beings we are tasked with helping him realize same, come back to himself. From another perspective one might say God descends into matter, sleeps there in order to, on awakening, reascend a fully self realized being (Jesus, Buddha) to his own nature as a kind of renewal while at the same time benefiting the people of his creation, reviving their interest in realizing as much as possible their own true nature, this done out of love or compassion. This too gives a sense of what it is for Samsara to be Nirvana; as a means of refreshing a self realized being. What is a sentient life form other than the instrumentality of this renewal?

Involved in matter. This absorption amounts to the loss of true nature. Absorption in an endeavor frees abilities, might be a way of realizing hidden capabilities. Working from the bottom up created man makes of the sacred, individuals, whereas the sacred makes man, immortal and in hand with that it goes without saying that the variety of individuals is endless.

We would know God, the ultimate reality, as a final Thing. It would give us great comfort to have that. But ipso facto this reduces these to mundane reality. These are not like other things we own, have direct access to. Essentially they are unknowable. How can one know that which constantly changes? "Can you put your hand in the same river twice?" I know, it is said by some that God is the same today, yesterday, and forever. But that is defining "him" by man's measure, putting him in a package we can take along with us. In reality he is certainly not different than that but at the same time he is not limited by that either. Finally, one must give up trying to understand and just be resigned to that; in other words one must, in order to be on the right path, simply surrender to God. Silence. Be still. Accept without any imposition at all. If you would be full first become empty.

It is by the manifest that we first apprehend the ultimate reality though when focused on the manifest understanding of the ultimate reality is inhibited to the extent of the clinging thereto. We might be walking down a path and see a snake there but on closer examination realize it is only a rope that our mind mistook for a creature. The snake imagined, still is real in a sense, but not in itself. Only the substratum, the rope, the ultimate reality, is real and the imagined snake has borrowed its reality from that rope and must relinquish it when realized to be an illusion.

Consummation

The Ultimate Reality is the whole Universe as the ground or substratum of all  mundane manifestation, of all divided entities. It is the only true individual on which all else depends. It is the conditio sine qua non, if you will. Its easy and natural to combine, conflate, all that is into one reality completely empty whatsoever. All the divisions of the Universe as a whole are of dependent origination no different, in principle, than the snake in the rope. There is only one thing here and it is that on which all "things" depend for their borrowed existence.

Venkata Ramanan, citing Nagarjuna, writes that when the bodhisattva attains Buddhahood "light emerges from the top of his head." Interesting, I think, to compare that to the Christian Pentecost.

The disciples went into the "upper room", which I think is a metaphor for meditation where one focuses consciousness in the region of the top of the head. There "appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit..."

Ramanan also writes that the Bodhisattva "...realizes the ability to understand the different languages of different kinds of beings and gains also the ability to teach every one in one's own language."

At the Christian Pentecost when the tongues of fire came to rest on the disciples they "...began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim." And "...there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language."

I cite these items because, easily discerned, my purpose is to harmonize the various modes of self realization mankind has practiced.

The final word goes to a scholar, Edward Conze, which is congruent with the thought expressed herein of another scholar, my professor, Irwin Lieb. I am of the opinion that Nagarjuna and the Buddha himself would agree with Conze's statement that "The ontology of the Prajnaparamita is a description of the world as it appears to those whose self is extinct."

 

 

 

Potpourri

My need is too great for anyone to satisfy….Don Juan

A lyrical mystique pervades in parts that lay skillfully against the march of the beloved infinite regress of efficiency of west world which is given expression in a language that to me treats the object of language as a kind of abstract space or form. The use is correlative to the use of these elements in the visual art of America in the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s. Objects are seen to become muddled in each other. Does the arm of this nude end here? Does it matter? The object looses its boundary. Man lives more in the infinite each minute. So? Well, he does it less and less from the standpoint of the finite. One despairs of the body, the medium of existential mass. The sensual genius revels in music as the medium. One such obviously recognizes the absurd and is making in the same movement a grasp for faith. I am here in my body, a finite articulation of the infinite. This is how I find myself fundamentally, the condition without which nothing. This is home.

Concept and culture.
Compare psyche and pneuma, Greek and Latin, animus and spiritus.
In preliterate culture breath (psyche) and life (pneuma) were more or less equivalent, while in literate culture we can speak of these in two senses, one in which they are equal and one where they are not.

The exodus is the mother of the myth of creation. The Jews were brought out of Egypt. The world was brought out of the cosmos, of infinity.

What leads to self realization, the bringing of the absolute to the front of the consciousness, is vibration, frequency, whether visual, audible, or mental; the entering of the state of consciousness returning on itself is inevitably accompanied by the occurrence of a precipitating encounter of the “individual” soul with a certain harmony that, like a rose bears its fragrance, bears the “fragrance” of Ultimate Reality.

Desani, March 14, 1973
Burn the seeds (of deeds) by high Samadhi only. The weakened klesa is stronger than the klesas/passion full blown because its expression is more subtle, harder to root out because they are harder to recognize.

The daemonic urge is the erotic in nature gone wild.
The medium of architecture and sculpture is existential mass.

Jan 30, 1973
My need is too great for anyone to satisfy….Don Juan

The unadulterated spirit is will. Will is power. The urge to go beyond the self, the daemonic urge, or romanticism, is a perversion of this power. Classicism to the extent that it elevates the intellect, or dwells on the distinction that can be made between the power of the mind, rationalism, and mere corporeality, sets up a tendency toward adulteration of the will. The next logical step from classicism is toward romanticism; one is respite for the other, in our history, in my personal life.

The daemonic spirit appeared through the movement of Christianity. Physical attraction, the daemonic urge, being suppressed was instead given prominence, life, perpetuated. What was natural was made evil. What was corrupted was faith, the opportunity for self actualization.

Romanticism – The daemonic spirit, erotic in nature, the sensuous genius of Don Juan, the music of Mozart.
The attempt of the soul to go beyond itself. The urge to see reality as greater than itself. The attributing to God what is properly shared by God/man when properly joined.

Music, absolutely speaking, gives perfect expression to romanticism, the post human force. Music is the most abstract medium.

Sculpture or architecture gives perfect expression to existential mass, pre-human force. It is the most concrete medium and is, as existential mass, the medium of architecture or sculpture. The only substance concrete enough to be worked for these. Music can not be a medium for sculpture.

Language, the word, gives perfect expression to the existential spirit; it is the medium most perfectly suited to express inwardness. The spirit, the void, is the beginning and end of force.

I feel the urge of romanticism, I give it perfect expression by making it into music.

I feel the urge of existential mass, I give it perfect expression by making it into sculpture or architecture.

An expression in language, in thought, is of inwardness. The perfect expression is one that expresses inwardness. Does every expression participate to a degree in this?

By virtue of regress a certain freedom - who can deny complexity which where is now, which time is there, on your beloved papers packed in their particularity, above below, between beyond?

What can I say that will stop the world, reveal the lives? The man centered universe? You expect an answer? You tempt a man who has elephants?

I do not make fun, but play; but loosing my pen my pen my pen the seed is extinguished.

Excited ideas carry away a place where presence in you is eternally presupposed. First meetings where the simplest seeds, just a transparent gaze of eyes into mind falling on most fertile furrows of honest openness where what now grows is rapidly evolving configuration tumbling cataclysmically in and about each other spontaneously like a waterfall of thought and emotion. Like light playing on light in the abyss, ecstatic revelation of the silent blackness behind that common nothingness around which our joined eyes play like solar flares and which alone could support our perpetual falling and simultaneously reflect our faces back and forth to each other in an infinite regress of images metamorphosing into worlds of progressive subtlety till finally I am a mere benumbed butterfly in the winter wind, chasing you, a fallen leaf blown into fluttering enticement.

The path we follow is in a sense the wake of our thoughts and emotions preceding us. This note is a part of that path, a sign post on the way.

“Thinking and the object of thought are the same for you will not find thought apart from being, nor either of them away from utterance.” Parmenides

We are what we seek in an artificial other, yet out of fear, perhaps, of being alone in the universe we are blinded by the nearness of the truth. Yet the thirst for the real is so great that finally all barriers fall as one embraces this last of a thousand demons, loneliness.

Bronowski
Errors can’t be taken out of observation. Stars or atoms; we can’t fix their location, boundaries. There is no scientific certainty. There is no God’s eye view. Errors are bound up in the nature of human knowledge. Fire electrons at atoms of thorium; we see a blurred outline. The act of observation inevitably shapes the observed.

Max Bohm stated that theoretical physics is actually the new philosophy

About 4.5 billion years till the sun dies.

Bodies stopped changing one million years past. Brains stopped changing about 100,000 years ago. Man’s evolution is perhaps in a way a closed chapter. But life itself? Consider that a billion years ago the worm was the most advanced form of life: at some time in the future a form of life will evolve that is a quantum leap above humanity. Perhaps it already is here but hidden.

Heisenberg. No events can be described with certainty.

Plank. The area of uncertainty in the atom is mapped out by the quantum.

It is true that any recognition whatsoever occurs only within certain tolerances. How the mind works. What if the mind is removed?

The theory of uncertainty fixes the fact that knowledge is limited. And understanding? And consciousness?

Measurement is not the same as understanding.

Hiroshima. 6th August, 1945, 8:15 a.m.

More Bronowski. Science does not turn people into unthinking, unfeeling monsters, psychotic invalids. The search for absolutes does. Hitler’s Germany is an example of what happens when people think they have certain knowledge. The scientific art is always on the verge of error and is therefore personal in that the witness sees himself as responsible for eliminating error, or for going further into it.

We must rid ourselves, all humanity, of the itch for absolutes.

Here is what I am perhaps looking to say. I am not so much the person John Hinds as I am a being in the primitive matter of the universe finding articulation through John’s activity. I am his spirit. He lives through me and I through him. It’s a matter of intention, ascending intensities, a continuum; John and his spirit are really one in one projecting simultaneously the universe. What an awesome task. Mind comes to matter to produce consciousness.

To supercharge with possibility sometimes with ambiguity in speech is to violate expectation, to startle, stun, silence. And then you are open, don’t know what to expect so the possibilities are endless. And whatever does happen is complete in and of itself because vulnerability asks for nothing more than what just comes out of each momentary necessity. This is the secret of real manipulation, for instance in advertising, or in the springing of the eternal trap by fear and panic, its eternal components. An exquisite move, whatever the medium (architecture, dance, painting, music, prose, poetry, philosophy) is merely one that provides a moment of surprise which provides what is really the object. Silence. In that openness, vulnerability, the message is given and it goes to the person because he has been stunned into vulnerability, into non-clinging. They have his attention and therefore his intention. Polarities and spin merge to a common purpose.

Ambiguity in speech is poetic. It makes for lightness which makes for uncertainty. There is also repetition, variation, transformation. Variation follows only when expectation is violated. Repetition is what is expected.

The silence, the sweet play of figures.

The wind sometimes blows so hard and so fast here, that it takes on a new meaning. It is fierce, awesome in its power to subdue everything in its way. Yet in the evening as the sun sets and the wind subsides, branches, grasses, dust, and birds respond to subtler forces than the departed winds. The dance continues in a different tone, at a different pace. Orchestration of the infinite.

Medieval world view was world as center of universe and man as center of world. Man was the measure of all things. Faith was depended on for an understanding of God. For Aristotle forms are perceived by the passive mind and abstracted then by active mind to become ideas. Nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses.

Descartes, educated by Jesuits, worked against the medieval scholasticism. Medieval man was in a quagmire as to how he could understand God, the infinite, from his finite view. Because of this quagmire mysticism sprang up to circumvent it. Mysticism does not attempt to explain. Descartes goal was to establish a new order. He was concerned with the real world and real problems.

Cartesian epistemology intends to take man from not knowing to knowing. He struggled against Meno’s paradox that if man is truly ignorant he can not come to knowledge. Descarte's fundamental view of man in the knowing situation is that he starts with reason and many ideas, some true, some false. So it is not a moving from ignorance to knowledge but from confused knowledge to true knowledge. His philosophical task was how to think rightly in the mental journey to truth. He argues that there are some innate ideas from God, the source, and most, from experience through the senses. The method and its task are served previously by custom and habit because they work. The principle criteria was “what works”.

Descartes said, “Because we conceive of a possible state of order, there must be one.” This is why we should be concerned with searching after truth. He thought that realizing disorder is desiring order. Descartes accepts nothing as true which could not clearly be recognized to be so. (Distinct from this, but what occurs is the application of the doctrine of doubt.) He divides difficulties and proceeds from the simple to the complex. His method was mathematical in that he took the complex and divided it into simple parts, proved those, and then reconstructed. In this he has been accused of being reductionist.

Descartes was opposed by the Catholic church as he innocently advocated man’s return to himself for solution to consciousness crisis. If the people turned within for guidance, if he recognized thought over action, his thought, then the church would loose power over the realm of action.

Descartes's method is not meant to find new wealth of knowledge but it is to form the mind and its confused data. He admits that one cannot live by the method. It is only a directional teaching or learning aid. It insists on radical subjectivism. He speaks in terms of “I” and “my mind”. This problem is alleviated by relegating the method first to the realm of thought and when truths are found to the realm of action. He thinks that radical subjectivism is man’s natural state. He must be such to function in society.

Descartes felt that numbers are something more than a mere quantitative metaphor, as the Pythagoreans. To him mathematics was an abstract, fundamental truth and he is fascinated by this in that we can all, eventually, agree on mathematical truths. He adopted this function as a procedure to aid us in coming to an agreement of truth in general and also to avoid the problem of radical subjectivism. He feels that objective means object for thought as it exists in my thought. The objective thought as it exists outside my thought is the “formal reality”. A chair, for instance, is a formal reality while as a chair in my mind it is an object for thought. He sought to establish whether something is indubitable because it is certain or vice versa.

Page 23
Something greatly distant engenders a longing to be joined. Bring yourself to this and finally achieve completion, salvation. Said of Christianity and the "Western" experience in General. See Camus, the Myth of Sisyphus, and also Kierkegaard and Sartre.

5/12/02. In this truth is the derivation of the "power" of the evangelicals, the "Imam", the "guru", indeed any teacher whatsoever. They thrive on false dichotomies.

The truth IS, reality is not a process but only seems so. Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher, held to this idea. "The real is complete." The value of the "pastor's coin" derives from the opposite idea, that the real is process or, becoming. Salvation, enlightenment, are so much flim flam. Whatever knowledge or truth there is in the cosmos commingles or coexists with all that is and is immediate to any consciousness whatsoever. The task of the acolyte of true knowledge is just to put a handle on the void by the mere means of realization and with just a little twist turn emptiness to fullness. When realized one sees that it was always there - waiting. Nothing has changed yet all is new.

5/4/07. Take neither process nor completion for the absolute. The "real" is both. Completion is process! All process is additive to completion, the whole, the Real.

Yet, absolutes are only to be seized; must avoid clinging to comprehend the Ultimately Real. Buddhist philosophy.

2nd Rumination on Encounter with Mandukya Upanishad and Karika of Guadapada with Sankara's Commentary

If the sole object be the attainment of the Highest Truth (the supreme goal of existence) the single Upanishad of Mandukya  is sufficient.
— Muktlkopanishad

The Upanishad (Mandukya) with the Karika embodies in itself the Quintessence of the substance of the entire philosophy of Vedanta
—Sankara.

Reference: Here Helpful: Here

If one journeys to the East and studies the culture it becomes apparent there are many practices for spiritual development. Some have no doubt died out but along the way there were practitioners who more or less hid themselves in caves, the hermits, lone seekers. For years, their whole life, they would follow their chosen practice. Also one would find the same types, but not so secluded, in monastic surroundings, for instance. And, further, one would have been sure to encounter practitioners of the various types of Yoga from Mantra to Hatha, training themselves to concentrate. Some would concentrate on their breath or the act of walking, others on visualizing a light, repeating a sacred phrase.

Note that Yogic philosophy was put forth by Patanjali and holds that "...Iswara, Personal God, possessed of attributes, is the cause of the created Universe." (MU, III-5.11) Then there are devotees of the Deity, of Devas, or Devis. Asceticism and renunciation were common. A legend about the Buddha goes that he, at one time, ate only one grain of rice per day. One day a little girl stopped him and begged that he give up this practice because, she said, "we want you to live." He did, and ironically, it's also said that he finally died of food poisoning.

Interesting other story about Buddha; he encounters a man who walks on the water's surface across a river. The Buddha asks him about this and is told that after decades of solitary meditation he developed this craft. The Buddha instructs him, in so many words, that he has wasted his time because for a small coin he could hire a ferryman to take him across.

The technical basis for these crafts is succinctly stated in Sankara's comment on Mandukya Upanishad III-32: "The proposition is that all this duality perceived as such by the imagination of the mind is, in reality, nothing but the mind. The reason for such inference is that duality is perceived when the mind acts and it vanishes when the mind ceases to act; that is to say, when the (activity, i.e., the Vrittis of the) mind is withdrawn unto itself by the knowledge got through discrimination, repeated practice and renunciation - like the disappearance of the snake in the rope - or during deep sleep. Hence on account of the disappearance of duality it is established that duality is unreal or illusory." Vritti, modification.

It is further put forth that success in quieting the modifications of the mind does not necessarily completely destroy the seeds of former deeds. What we do creates seeds that cause the activity to continue - until, somehow, the seeds are extinguished. So, the student might realize the one true nature of the Real only to afterwards continue as before. This is a profoundly difficult undertaking, craft.

All these practices are critiqued by the Mandukya Upanishad (MU), and not always with a beneficent attitude, either. Buddhists are named nihilistic, devotional types, simple minded, and so forth. At other places, however, a more beneficent attitude surfaces. At MU III-18: "Advaita (non-duality) harmonizes all other doctrines and theories."

I expect many of these crafts grew up in the time of the Upanishads, or the Vedas, as much as thousands of years before Jesus, the Christ. I also expect that the authors of the Upanishads were kept by potentates of the time and that their disputations were held in said courts as forms of art and philosophy and even entertainment. Its likely these people were akin to performers for their public and no doubt gained their material support by their particular genius, like Michelangelo, Mozart, Beethoven, Blaise Pascal (mathematician) were in the royal courts of the West, though separated by thousands of years.

I agree with my old professor, Desani, that were their only one religion we would have a partial view. Imagine if there were only one science. Similar.

Now, I hold there are hierarchical modes of being in the world and have written in these pages frequently about said. Faith, for instance, opposite the Sensuous Genius of Don Juan. Also, some, like R.G. Collingwood in his book Speculum Mentis, have noted a progression to the various modes of being; Art leads naturally to Religion, to Science, to History, to Philosophy. Progressions like this mean something. It's how a lump of coal becomes a diamond.

The appeal to devotional activity is, for this one, based on a premise of more or less hidden beings, centers of pure consciousness, if you will - the MU refers to such, which beings are beneficent guides, or can be if properly propitiated, to those sentient life forms, embodied beings, bound, as it were, to the lower levels of incarnation, shrouded in the grosser elements of flesh where the "centers of pure consciousness" are just beginning to develop. Propitiation is not something this one does, however. I don't think it comports with yielding or surrender. Some do, though.

I'd put this out there too. Why would one not realize the purpose of duality is to aid actualization of non-duality, or the realization of same? If the substratum, the rope in the previous post, is to come to understand its true nature, that of the substratum itself, and drop all illusion whatever, this might be to that affect.

We want, naturally, to make our being in the world anthropocentric. That might or might not be illusory. It is a sublime truth that the Universe is centered everywhere, bounded nowhere (Blaise Pascal). This one does not believe that is selfish. Not if its true. There is such beauty there as to entice even the greatest "centers of pure consciousness". From William Blake: "To see a World in a grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour."

And that brings me to, what, the elephant in the room? What about beauty,  truth, love, liberty, wisdom? I've called these the concomitants of consciousness for wherever sentient life emerges, I believe, these likewise emerge. So from the same muck and mire from which life comes, comes these qualities of the noosphere. How? Why? Surely, the purpose of life, in part, is to provide for the emergence of such qualities that tend to point to, lead to, the sublime truths found on the higher planes of existence, to complete self realization and/or actualization. In short, when, in the crucible of stars the most plentiful element in the universe, hydrogen, is forged into all the heavier elements and then those into all the minerals found on all the planets in their geospheres, then understand, that is a chain of actualization of potentialities. This stelar process is named nucleosynthesis. Uranium 235 hides, is latent, in hydrogen, in other words. Mankind is latent in the muck and mire of the early Earth. Go find a handful of dirt, a rock. You hold in your hand the potentiality of Love, Truth, Liberty, Wisdom, Beauty. Wait for the proper circumstances and the music of Mozart will emerge. Love, worship of God, will come to be. What else is hidden that will eventually come into existence? The pattern, just like all patterns, doesn't just cease performing. The emergence merely sets the stage for infinitely emerging new stages or plateaus. Life has emerged on Earth and the noosphere is being grown under whose umbrella life continues to evolve. Self awareness becomes awareness of the entire cosmos meaning the entire cosmos realizes its potentiality. Its like the power in an electric grid. Nothing seems to be there until certain conditions apply which manifests the invisible latent power.

Clearly we have only just begun. Or, perhaps a more accurate assessment would be along the lines of we will always only be beginning, there being no completion, which might be thought as always just over the horizon. Ask why are we drawn to that horizon? Discovery is the action of the unknown.

This one can, he thinks, have an understanding of the non-duality of the Ultimately Real - be an Advaitin, in the language of the MU - and all the same have an appreciation of the concordance of Western and Eastern methods of approaching the systems of thought at hand. The MU repeatedly states "All is Brahman", "I am That", "That am I". Consideration of all subsumed ideas, all illusions of the substratum lend meaning thereto, enhance, add flavor, sharpen the insight, quicken, leaven, add piquance. So, the mess that admittedly is life, its processes, and so forth, serves a purpose. Without the experience of living through life's trouble, travail, ups and downs of happiness, then realization of one's true nature would be rather dull. One should, to have an enriched understanding, appreciate the nuances implied here. This fractalization only embellishes its source. A diamond's facets make for greater brilliance.

To be sure Shamanism and superstition played an important role in the daily lives of the people during the time when the MU was set down, debated. Likewise, during the early times anywhere. The gullibility of the people can not be overemphasized. Revered sages, seers, had carte blanche powers. An acolyte might be instructed to practice a given procedure the outcome of which would be the ownership, control, of a spirit, a self created being, to do whatever bidding the practitioner demanded. Yet it would be an illusion, according to the MU; and this one agrees. Christian ascetics, too, would have similar experiences, have visions, visitations of that to which they were spending their lives in devotion. These would be imagined to be real in themselves. The power of the concentrated mind is hard to underestimate, in this regard. Just remember, every illusion has its substratum.

"Brahman (Atman) is always non-dual even during the perception of duality by the ignorant. Non-duality is the Reality and duality is illusion. The truth is that the rope does not become or produce the snake. It is only through ignorance that one sees the snake in the rope. Similarly Brahman which is birthless, causeless, changeless and attributeless is imagined by the ignorant as producing or becoming the universe." MU, III-2. And, MU III-26.6 paraphrase: This is the Advaitic method of reasoning. (Brahman or Atman) God, being beyond time, space and causality, is ever incomprehensible through any empirical means. It is the eternal subject having no object through which one can comprehend it. This incomprehensibility of God (Atman) is the very reason for refuting any attribute that may be otherwise associated with it. If God (Atman) can be known by any positive attribute, it no longer remains incomprehensible. It becomes an object of our thought like any other perceived object. Such God (Atman) can never be the changeless Absolute. Further, at MU III-26.7 "...all attributes are the same as the non-dual Brahman..." Conclude the text states that God is completely without attributes but all the same all attributes are identical with God. This is akin to the western idea that the divine creative spirit is immanent in nature. Saint Augustine, for instance, held this view.

This reader is somewhat confused but is not a scholar and so doesn't dwell on the seeming contradictory nature of some passages in the text marking them up as indices of failure of language, words, to convey the absolute meaning. Taken all together one gets a better sense. The text goes on to say that, page 198 of pdf: "In truth, there is neither creation, nor existence, nor destruction." Then on page 212 its stated "Brahman which is existence, knowledge and infinity." I want to claim the idea of existence is just that, an idea, and that it therefore implies duality. Duality implies a higher reality which I want to call, with the MU, the Ultimate Reality, non dual in itself and yet containing the multiplicity - the world of duality, its myriads of things, objects. In short, is it true that existence is a product of mind, ideation?

Is hydrogen the rope? Substratum, predicate for all that is? All this is Brahman, Atman. The multiplicity is due to Maya, illusion. Only that which is without attributes is real; only that is, only the substratum has being, by which there are, can be, attributes. However, the attributes due to illusion of Brahman, Atman give pleasure, diversity, multiplicity, where there really is none, to Jivas, embodied souls; and all rejoice and make offerings for the beneficence of the Lord! A designator is an attribute. Brahman, Atman are not without attributes. Only that which is unnameable is without attributes and thus the Ultimate Reality. That I am, I am that I am.

Regarding MU III-33.1: Is it an act of mind, ideation to make the claim that only Brahman exists?

Result of meditation, spiritual practice, is falling away of consciousness of subject and object. The mind ceases to exist on becoming identical with the Ultimate Reality.

Existence is for things, objects. Relative nature is required, that is, existence only is in multiplicity, duality. Ultimate Reality does not pertain to that which can be said to exist. The Real, properly understood, can only be said to be that by which their can be existence.

MU seems consistent in its treatment- I want to be charitable - of this and seems to support Existence as not an idea or attribute but that by which these are. Brahman is said to be "Knowledge, Existence, and Infinity."

So, when one says God doesn't exist but is eternal, as did Soren Kierkegaard, it conflicts with the MU's treatment of being, but not, I think, with the essence of the teaching. The conundrum here is that to say God is eternal is to assign a designation but nothing that can be designated can be eternal as speaking from the standpoint of eternity there are no objects. To say God is eternal necessarily means an object.  Its impossible to grasp. One must simply surrender. You don't grasp water from a source, you cup your hands and simply accept the flow.

It's an amazing thing to have an infinitude of attributes yet all illusory. There's meaning there.

And, easy to assign negative beliefs to the various religions, philosophical systems. One might nourish beliefs others might see as nihilistic, yet not actually wish to own same if confronted. There's plenty of falsity to go around, I guess. Let's look on the positive side. Maybe anything, attribute, which can be said to be infinite becomes that by which there can be attributes at all, thus merging into the silent, sibilant, sea of the Divine Creative Spirit whose sussuration is a beacon. God, extra cosmic by being beyond all attributes, this one knows by your very unknowableness. This one knows you by your impossibility of being known, in the sense that that which illumines is self luminous, the Sun is a good instance of this. So, look for the self illumined and you find the source of all light.

All participate in the Real, the Truth. No escape. No exit. The sages have no greater grasp of the Real than a butterfly. And the butterfly doesn't even know its beautiful. Yet it is known on its behalf. That's benevolence.

In this regard, MU III-26.3: "...Atman is never the effect of any thought or words. It is not an object of meditation or speech. For it is your very self. Thus the Sruti advises the students to dissociate from Atman all words, or thoughts which were at first accepted as means for its realization. That which is thought by the mind is merely an idea. It is changeable and negatable. Hence it is not Reality. Therefore any idea associated with Atman is not the Atman itself." Sruti, that which is heard, particularly scripture.

MU III-36.4: "...the Jnani may be engaged in any activity, but in everything he realizes Brahman alone. The experiences of a Jnani have been thusly described in the Gita (4.240: "BRAHMAN IS THE OFFERING, BRAHMAN IS THE OBLATION POURED INTO THE FIRE OF BRAHMAN. Brahman verily shall be reached by him who always sees Brahman in action.""

A close study of the ancient teaching of Judaism and Christianity render the same sentiments.  I've written about that in these pages, too. Man is said to be, or have within, a spark of the divine. To fully realize this is to come to the same end as that told in the above quote. And, when God has put in his mouth the words, by some ancient Hebrew author, "I am That I am" it would be foolish, I think, to not conclude that has the same meaning as the Vedantic, Brahamaic, Advaitin formula "I am That" "That I am".

Of course there are seemingly profound differences between East and West. One doesn't see analysis of culture there as here; holding up myth, e.g., Tristan and Isolde as example of death wish permeating society and being a symptom of grave illness. Or Don Juanism as an example of malady condemning Western culture to doom because of evil incarnate. You do see contests of various approaches to true understanding of man's, life's, purpose and meaning. Perhaps Buddhism is a response to the Vedantic idea that one has license to do any action without violating any moral code. I don't believe Buddhists were nihilists any more than I believe Vedantins were free, unconstrained to do anything. I do believe none have true understanding because its impossible. Language prohibits it. Vedanta is best when it harmonises the various spiritual pursuits. Buddhism is best when it promotes compassion. And Yoga is best when it advances the practice of self control and concentration. Jnani (path of knowledge) yoga is highest achievement and naturally follows Bhakti Yoga. If the Jiva (embodied soul) reconciles himself to being an embodied being and lives simply in the world in which he finds himself then these issues will work themselves out. The Bhagavad Gita rates Duty as the highest calling, in this regard. I can see how Buddhism could be construed as nihilistic. I can also see how Vedanta can be construed as giving license to perform any acts whatsoever without consequences. Thus we come around again to being co-creators. Its on us, how we will live. The need for compassion is a universal principle, being in and of itself. Its Love trying to manifest - and the other concomitants, cosmic forces - like gravity. Our duty is to submit to, cultivate these.

In this study I've learned there are more types of Yoga than those taught by Patanjali. The Vedantins put forth Asparsa Yoga saying these Yogis are not like the ordinary ones. Sparsa means pertaining to contact with the sensory organs so Asparsa means without contact with same. Well, I am given to understand that all the crafts cultivated in the spiritual practices of the peoples of this part of the world, and indeed, in the West, too, when one looks closely, are based to some extent or another on the withdrawal from sensory input. And, the Patanjali Yoga Sutras certainly teach this though not under the name Asparsa. Withdrawal of the mind into itself means abandonment of the Bhutas, Indriyas, and Tanmatras (elements, sense-organs, and sensations). When these are dropped what else could remain but what is called here the substratum, the rope, that is, the basis by which there are illusions? Drop the sensory input and you drop the illusion of a separate self.  Only then is direct knowledge possible. Noesis.

We are given diamonds, they occur naturally. We cut facets into these increasing their brilliance. It's not a thankless task; its just something we do as co-creators. Also occurring naturally are wheat kernels. With these we make bread. Our unending task is to cut facets and make bread, and follow our conscience. Do this gladly for the glory of God. The more one surrenders the more one enjoys a valid partnership with the Divine Creative Spirit. Sentient life, too, occurs naturally. Beauty, Truth, Love, Liberty, Justice, Wisdom are like a diamond's facets. The more these are cultivated and increased the greater the shining forth of the spark of the divine in each person as a center of pure consciousness.

Intuitively obvious, easy to see there is only one Ultimate Reality, one Universe - in spite of multiverse theories - and that it follows it is non-dual. Its said all perceived multiplicity is illusion. Allowed. The illusion leads us to realize primacy of an underlying reality, substratum, which is supra real, above the illusion. Good. Who sees this? What is seen? What is relation of seer, seeing, seen? Patanjali - and this writer likes this notion - names the Seer Drsta and states when not established in its own right assimilates with embodied beings, Jivas. But, how should we live? Is it possible to live as a one, an embodied being, and at the same time do that from the standpoint of the Ultimate Reality - to live in the finite from the perspective of the infinite? And! Does it matter? And! If it does, how? As co-creators it is our duty to come to terms with this.

For all of the reasoning and mental gymnastics in the Mandukya Upanishad it is worth keeping in mind that the commentator, Sankara whose revered teacher was taught by Guadapada, was a devotee of the Divine Mother in the form of Tripura Sundari. This from my teacher in his paper titled Guru Parampara. Desani's name for Sankara is Shankarchariya. (Diacritical marks omitted.)

Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.

Footnote: A moment to introduce something about the Hebrews. Hebrew, I've learned, originally meant "donkey driver". In other words, caravaneer. This was before camel caravans. So, these people of old were traders whose commerce took them across the known world. They went to the East, certainly. Also, I've learned that the use of camels for this purpose was, at the time, a great innovation and even greater wealth followed on that development. So, the patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, Abraham, was a donkey driver, a Hebrew. Its said he was actually the first Hebrew. He, or his kind, were also likely to have been the first to share the religions, philosophy of the time back and forth from East to West.

So, I did do the laundry. And, that Tea, I can report, I think, there is none sweeter than that taken from the empty cup.