Tuesday, July 21, 2015



Perception analyzed with Qualified Non-Duality QND could be framed in terms of one interpretation of the Buddhist Skandhas which are traditionally discussed variously in other ways than what follows. The same holds for Dependent Origination which here is simplistically taken to mean: if A requires B for its existence, & B requires A, then by “dependent origination” neither independently or truly exists.
Letting Vision stand in for all the other Senses, with the understanding that the following can be applied to all of them, consider an Object of Visual Perception. That sense mechanism can never contact or verify the Object directly, being initially mediated by the Visual Form of the Object. Furthermore, what would be such a Form without an Object to which it applies, & what could be a Visual Object without the Form. Object & Form here are mutually-defining in the manner of Dependent Origination & thus neither is real in itself.

The Form in turn is detailed by the Perception signals, here light waves, Within Signal we include the entire chain of Neurophysiology to the mysterious point where constitutes primitive Thought & call it all the Perception. Perception & Form also exhibit Dependent Origination with neither independently real.
Interior to perceptual Neurophysiology, at early mental lever, Conceptual category is superimposed as in “this is a chair” a radical editorial interpretation specific to the Perceiver. Like a biological Genus this generalization identifies the Perception as that of an Object generically identified as “chair” for instance. Concept & Perception exhibit Dependent Origination with neither independently real.
Like a biological species perceptual Discrimination mentally specifies “a red easy chair” for instance. This specification pinpoints somewhat within the Conceptual category, another subjective editorial interpretation. Discrimination & Concept exhibit Dependent Origination with neither independently real.
Finally Sense Thought Cognition registers, associates, & process the specified generalization but Cognition & Discrimination exhibit Dependent Origination with neither independently real. These 5 “skandhas”: Form, Perception, Concept, Discrimination, & Cognition have mediated Visual Perception of the Visual Object with Dependent Origination at the front end as well, between Form & Object. So too at the inner Subject, Dependent Origination applies to the Subject & the Cognition.
Thus 5 “skandhas” or steps in Visual Perception serially link Object & Subject by Dependent Origination with neither independently real. Consciousness illumines all that as an ephemeral reflection without establishing reality to any of it (UQND), or from another view (QND), without separation from any of it. In accord with UQND, Un-Qualified Non-Duality, pure, nondual Consciousness alone exists.



Virtual Reality VR:
A couple of very smart characters, among many, suggest we consider the lesson of VR Virtual Reality.  Cognitive Science Philosopher David Chalmers chimed in early on the past bandwagon of pointing to The Matrix movie as a profound parable, one far more popular than the earlier version that the cinema had emulated, Descartes malin genie the evil genie (or genius) entrapping the Brain in a Vat. Harder to label is the other genie, I mean genius, Nick Bostrom, nominally a philosopher, who offers Bayesian "proof" for the following proposition.

If we do not destroy our technological civilization by prompting further Climate disaster, or by war or political collapse, over-population, & so on; & if no Armageddonlike meteoric disaster, etc. does the deed, if none of these occur then Ray Kurzweil's elitist techno-utopia will surely come to pass. However many starve & rot with disease & violence, if some insular elite defend islands of exponentially advancing Computer technology, while escaping their own Nano-technology, Bio-technology, etc. then they will eventually program innumerable The Matrix level VR's Virtual Realities. Among those will likely be some "period pieces" as depicted in the movie, capturing a past version of Earth's civilization, such as the one we now find ourselves in. The most advanced VR's could pass for our own world & no one could tell the difference. So much for the likelike comparison between our world & all these many particular VR's among a far greater number of other kinds of VR. Bostrom calls those particular ones "ancestor" VR's because they emulate the experience of the relatively few people (~ half dozen Billions) in our world. We are those relatively "few" "ancestors". Here comes the kicker.
 

selection from Sri Ramana Maharshi

Those inexpensive (by futuristic technology standards) Virtual Reality programs will be so very numerous that for each of us now, that there might be, who knows, a Trillion more VR individuals will take the place of each of us, distributed over the man VR programs. Here Bayesian "logic" kicks in & flatly declares, that by those "odds" (lets say a Trillion to 1) we most certainly live in one of those Future VR's right now, each of us as most likely being VR characters, or avatars if you will.

Now given Bostrom's claim that we probably live in & as VR right now, unless we soon destroy our civilization or experience other disastrous collapse that will have prevented that technology (we rarely get to use the future perfect tense "will have"), we turn back to David Chalmers. Putting aside the destruction scenarios, Chalmers, like many other Cognitive Science Philosophers assure us that we could never tell the difference in VR.

Our point here is that we are as good as being VR anyway, because how could we ever know? In fact our individual Waking State lives (Dream State ones are otherwise) actually are as good as VR in absolute Consciousness, no more real than that. Awakening to Identity with pure Consciousness, we are Liberated from the succession of Waking State dream-lives (& Dream State lives as well). Sound like fun? But actually all the real fun, Happiness & Love are already firmly planted in that Consciousness Reality, as is our Being & Identity already.

 selection from Sri Ramana Maharshi
Dimension Games:
Brian Greene's garden hose analogy for "campactified" String Theory dimensions represents one of the recent versions of the contemplation below; Edwin Abbott's Flatland included an older one. However ancient, the exercise remains worthwhile.

If our "robust" reality were compared to a 1-D world, infinitely dense with points, all that would appear as nothing to 2-D viewer in a 2-D realm that contained our 1-D linear world. Viewing our 1-D Line broadside, the 2-D viewer cannot make out the infinitesimally thin Line with zero thickness in his 2-D world. Should he take the Time-dimension out of our 1-D Space-Time continuum, the 2-D view would try to examine a cross-section, a completely invisible 0-D Point bereft of both thickness or 2-D Area, & also bereft of even any 1-D Length.

That 2-D viewer, proud of the Area of his world might be shocked to hear from a 3-D viewer examining his world on edge & finding it to be a simple 1-D Line of no Area & certainly no Volume. The 2-D Space-Time continuum at any moment is a 1-D cross-section of the same sort, with no Area or Volume.

To capture some sense of a 4-D viewer's experience, we might imagine that the 3-D World he views is some kind of Cube, like the planet Bizarro Superman came from. We can finish it at these dimensions, even though extending the speculation into higher compactified or other higher dimensions would be obvious enough. In passing we could note how we have analogized the way an M-brane "views" a String, or how higher-D p-branes "view" those. 

But anyway, the 4-D viewer addressing the Bizarro World Cube might redirect the cubistic 3-D viewer from his Solid Volume to the volume-less Area of a single Surface. Appreciating that Surface, the 4-D viewer further humiliates his listener with consideration of the infinitesimally thin & sharp zero-Area of a single 1-D cubic Edge. Alas, diminished further is the focus down to a 0-D corner. Negligible are these Forms revealed to be, from a perspective of 3-D Space, never mind 4-D Space-Time. Every Moment of Time in 4-D Space-Time captures a 3-D World cross-section of no 4-D Volume, no "substance", no reality so-to-speak.

Likewise, our own physical Forms & Mental Images are like surfaces & edges of no extent in the infinite-D Space of absolute Consciousness. So much less significant are the "corners", the 0-D individual Ego's crying out for recognition in empty space. Consciousness embraces all & yet all things & individuals are as nothing in the infinite dimensions of Consciousness. Fortunately, we are not things, nor are we individuals. "Each" of can know irrefutably that he/she is actually Consciousness itself.
 

 selection from Sri Ramana Maharshi





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