Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Free Will

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Sri Aurobindo:

The world exists as symbol of Brahman; but the mind creates or accepts false values of things and takes symbol for essential reality. This is ignorance or cosmic illusion, the mistake of the mind & senses, from which the Magician Himself, Master of the Illusion, is calling on us to escape.

...the whole of universal existence is in this sense an illusion of Maya that it is not an unchanging transcendent and final reality of things but only a symbolical reality; it is a valuation of the reality of Brahman in the terms of cosmic consciousness. All these objects we see or are mentally aware of as objectively existing, are only forms of consciousness. They are the thing in-itself turned first into terms & ideas born of a movement or rhythmic process of consciousness and then objectivised, in consciousness itself and not really external to it. They have therefore a fixed conventional reality, but not an eternally durable essential reality; they are symbols, not altogether the thing symbolised, means of knowledge, not altogether the thing known.

Existence or Brahman has two fundamental states of consciousness, cosmic consciousness and transcendental consciousness. To cosmic consciousness the world is real as a direct first term expressing the inexpressible; to transcendental consciousness the world is only a secondary & indirect term expressing the inexpressible. When I have the cosmic consciousness, I see the world as my Self manifested; in transcendental consciousness I see the world not as the manifestation of my Self but as a manifestation of something I choose to be to my Self-consciousness. It is a conventional term expressing me which does not bind me; I could dissolve it and express myself otherwise.

 

[Borachio]

It is a conventional term expressing me which does not bind me; I could dissolve it and express myself otherwise.

Yes. Very nice, I think.

At least, in theory.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Yes. Very nice, I think.

At least, in theory.

I think its much nicer in practise. But yeah, who can do that? Not many...

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

In theory it might mean the demise of an ego. But in practice it usually gives people hope that "I" will continue to exist as a glorious eternal "Higher Self", i.e. a much bigger, more powerful, more knowledgeable and more awesome version of my current "ego" self. From an evolutionary point of view, it offers the believer the promise of an infinite sense of belonging, safety, and the prospect of the whole universe as one's own territory. If it really did mean losing all sense of your own self and your own consciousness then it would be an utterly terrifying prospect, as it would be functionally the same (from the believer's perspective) as the utter demise of consciousness that materialists say happens when the brain dies anyway.

Just two things: Ego is based in separation while any enlargement of consciousness brings sense of oneness with it. Also since ego isnt the same as individuality one can still drop off the ego and retain a hope of ones existence in larger, more vital and potent form.

What does it mean that matter is an illusion? How is it an illusion? Not to say I don't agree with you here, but I'm curious about how you'll answer these questions. If matter is an illusion, that doesn't mean that consciousness isn't a meta-illusion produced by (the illusion of) matter. As I said, it's about the successive emergence of different nested orders of information.

I think the quotes posted above give some potential explanations.

We don't possess consciousness fully hey? Yeah, a likely story. I've never met or come across verifiable reports of anyone who 'fully possesses' consciousness as you describe, and I challenge you to produce evidence of such a person who is 1) currently alive and 2) demonstrates abilities to manipulate matter which cannot be explained as (a) illusionist trickery and/or (b) unconventional but ultimately mundane (i.e. physically explainable) processes.

I will prove it to you in personam if 1)I will be given couple thousand of years (reincarnation is obviously required) and if 2)I do not come to conclusion by then that by making such a revelation I am going to do rather great disservise to you.

 

[Gatsby]

MS will have his own take on this, but I think I can point you in the direction he would go. In an Eastern view of things existence is defined by two very fundamental truths. The first is that there is one Reality and it transcends everything; it is alone and all encompassing; it is timeless. The second is that the physical universe (that of matter and energy as we see it) is nothing more than a dream of our limited consciousness. When you are asleep and have a vivid dream, you mind sees it as very real. You feel emotions and do things. Then once you wake up, you realizer that the dream, no matter how real it seemed, was just a dream and was an illusion created in your sleeping mind. The physical universe is such a dream. Our "waking up" happens when we experience the one reality that encompasses all. The pain and suffering and joy and happiness we experience are all part of this world, but are not real within the context of permanent, unchanging infinite nature of god.

This capital R “Reality” is a figment of human imagination; it is exactly the sort of concept you would expect from a sapient but nonetheless naïve mind which is excessively enamoured with its own capacity for conscious experience and abstract thought. All experiences of this “Reality” are entirely subjective and allegedly attained only after years or decades of having teachings about said “Reality” drummed into one’s head. We can tell that this pre-conditioning shapes the practitioner’s experience of “Reality” because different schools of Eastern thought each claim to have Enlightened ones who realize their respective faith’s version of Reality even though those different schools propose contradictory versions of Reality, e.g. the Emptiness of Buddhism versus the Brahman of Hinduism.

Saying that matter and energy is a dream of our limited consciousness immediately brings up two questions: 1) what is a dream; and 2) how can such a claim possibly be tested? Notice that our night-time dreams, no matter how vivid or strange they are, always draw upon ideas or sensory data we originally encounter in waking life. This strongly suggests that the dreams we have at night are emergent and derivative from material reality, i.e. presumably a product of our brains processing (de-fragging?) stored information. Hence the claim that waking life must also be a dream within a larger Reality is an extrapolation in the wrong direction. Even if we admit the possibility that waking life is a dream within a larger Reality, then what’s to say that this larger Reality itself isn’t a dream within an even larger Reality, and so on in an infinite Inception- or Russian Doll-style series of realities? This sounds like an excellent way to lead oneself down a never-ending Rabbit Hole of delusion.

I would like to make a proposal and a prediction:

I propose that these religious ideas about “Reality” – contradictory though they can be – are in fact an integral part of an elaborate psychological coping mechanism which has evolved in various religions. This coping mechanism offers followers the possibility of psychologically anaesthetizing themselves against suffering and existential angst by taking refuge in the ‘knowledge’ that all such existential angst and suffering is just a fleeting illusion which never touches the follower’s True Self. In other words, this coping mechanism is a self-fulfilling prophecy (or to put in less charitably, a self-reinforcing delusion) in which the follower ‘fakes it until they make it’: by convincing themselves long and hard enough that there is a Reality beyond the one they suffer in, the follower cultivates a sense of peace borne of dissociation which feels very much like the Reality they’ve read, heard and fantasised about for so many years.

I predict that science will validate the above proposal by showing that parts of the brain involved in the production of feel-good neurochemicals, self-deception and the inhibition of critical thought are especially active in the brains of ‘enlightened’ people and in the brains of people undergoing mystical and/or meditative experiences.

 

[Kyriakos]

That reality is a concept is a pretty ancient idea (one never enters the same river twice etc).

However not all human examinations are subjective. You can try as many times you want, the circumferance of any circle will always equal twice its radius multiplied by pi. Same goes for the Pythagorean theorem.
As a more basic example: all humans see geometrical shapes as the same shape, you won't have anyone think a circle is a square, provided he knows what a circle and what a square is. So it is not like we have nothing 'real' in the context of our own being in this world. It just does not mean the actual world is something in our own theories of reality.

 

[Gatsby]

Just two things: Ego is based in separation while any enlargement of consciousness brings sense of oneness with it. Also since ego isnt the same as individuality one can still drop off the ego and retain a hope of ones existence in larger, more vital and potent form.

Yes separation is essential to ego, in fact that’s what an ego is – a defining of ‘my’ boundaries, of what is and isn’t part of ‘me’. Naturally though, what isn’t part of ‘me’ is potentially a threat to ‘me’, and this unfortunate reality is at the core of the human condition. The mystic’s solution is to this problem is to expand the boundaries of ‘me’ to encompass everything. The problem with this solution though is that the greater the proportion of reality ‘you’ identify with, the less substantial and consequential ‘you’ become; if you identify infinitely (i.e. with all of reality), then by definition you have no definition and thus ‘you’ become nothing. I don’t see how you can say that individuality and ego are different, because they are both about self-definition.

I think the quotes posted above give some potential explanations.

Not really, but I’ll get to that in another post.

I will prove it to you in personam if 1)I will be given couple thousand of years (reincarnation is obviously required) and if 2)I do not come to conclusion by then that by making such a revelation I am going to do rather great disservise to you.

Ah, another likely story. So in other words you can’t prove it at all.

 

[Gatsby]

That reality is a concept is a pretty ancient idea (one never enters the same river twice etc).

However not all human examinations are subjective. You can try as many times you want, the circumferance of any circle will always equal twice its radius multiplied by pi. Same goes for the Pythagorean theorem.
As a more basic example: all humans see geometrical shapes as the same shape, you won't have anyone think a circle is a square, provided he knows what a circle and what a square is. So it is not like we have nothing 'real' in the context of our own being in this world. It just does not mean the actual world is something in our own theories of reality.

Things like the radius of a circle, the Pythagorean theorem, and the characteristics of different shapes all differ from mystical ideas of Reality in two key ways: 1) you can actually demonstrate the former to another person regardless of that person's level of spiritual cultivation / indoctrination, and 2) each person's experience of those things will share exactly the same characteristics (e.g. pi, a radius) regardless of what any given person wants to believe or has been conditioned to believe. Or as Phillip K. Dick put it: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

 

[Gatsby]

The world exists as symbol of Brahman; but the mind creates or accepts false values of things and takes symbol for essential reality. This is ignorance or cosmic illusion, the mistake of the mind & senses, from which the Magician Himself, Master of the Illusion, is calling on us to escape.

For someone who’s been dead for over 60 years, Sri Aurobindo sure is an active contributor to this thread! You might just get me to believe in life after death yet

Again none of this is any more substantial or persuasive than a Papal Edict. What does it even mean to say that the world exists as a symbol of Brahman?? While it’s true that people can get caught up in their concepts and symbols of reality, this is more likely like to happen to a person who spends a lot of time with their “head in the clouds” contemplating and speculating about abstract ideas and spiritual doctrines. It is ironic that people like Sri Aurobindo talk about this, because ideas like Brahman and a “cosmic illusion” are about as abstract and symbolic as you can get. I would even describe people like Sri Aurobindo as hypocritical in this regard.

...
the whole of universal existence is in this sense an illusion of Maya that it is not an unchanging transcendent and final reality of things but only a symbolical reality; it is a valuation of the reality of Brahman in the terms of cosmic consciousness. All these objects we see or are mentally aware of as objectively existing, are only forms of consciousness. They are the thing in-itself turned first into terms & ideas born of a movement or rhythmic process of consciousness and then objectivised, in consciousness itself and not really external to it. They have therefore a fixed conventional reality, but not an eternally durable essential reality; they are symbols, not altogether the thing symbolised, means of knowledge, not altogether the thing known.

More Edict talk. Who says reality has to be unchanging? Even if it were, how can an unchanging ultimate reality give rise to a secondary / illusory reality characterised by change, when that ultimate reality never changes?

The things we are aware of as objectively existing are said to be objective because their objectivity has functional implications which do not depend on any person’s perceptions or beliefs. You can still sit on a chair regardless of whether or not you believe it is a ‘real’ chair. Be careful with this “forms of consciousness” talk because it can be a double-edge sword: if objective things are illusions then why wouldn’t subjective things, including the most sublime mystical concepts, also only be forms of consciousness? We use concepts as a mental shorthand to make sense of the world around us, because these concepts emerge and evolve from our experience of reality. Of course we can deconstruct those concepts by looking closer, but this is not the same as destroying or invalidating those concepts; if anything, such an endeavour fleshes out our concepts. Again I think that Sri Aurobindo might be projecting here, because the sort of person most likely to get caught up in concepts is someone who spends all or most of their time with their head in the clouds of philosophical and spiritual contemplation.

Existence or Brahman has two fundamental states of consciousness, cosmic consciousness and transcendental consciousness. To cosmic consciousness the world is real as a direct first term expressing the inexpressible; to transcendental consciousness the world is only a secondary & indirect term expressing the inexpressible. When I have the cosmic consciousness, I see the world as my Self manifested; in transcendental consciousness I see the world not as the manifestation of my Self but as a manifestation of something I choose to be to my Self-consciousness. It is a conventional term expressing me which does not bind me; I could dissolve it and express myself otherwise.

It almost seems like Sri Aurobindo thought that he could form a compelling and profound worldview just by using impressive sounding metaphysical words like “consciousness”, “cosmic”, “manifestation”, “inexpressible” and “transcendental” often enough. All he’s really doing here is playing abstract word games with his audience and presumably with himself as well. Saying words like “Brahman”, “Self” and “consciousness” hits a neurological g-spot in his follower, triggering a rush of feel-good neurochemicals because they are such nice, cosy and reassuring-sounding words. What he says here about ‘choosing to be my Self-consciousness’ also makes it quite clear that his conception of an ultimate Reality does actually have a very egotistical quality to it.

 

[Borachio]

You argue very coherently.

Nevertheless, I think you may be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

All that these various mystical traditions seem to be saying, to me, is that, if one wants to see the world as it truly is, one should look it at without preconceptions.

Now, this is undoubtedly simply my trite and simple-minded take on it, but I think, in essence, that's all they're really saying when they talk about the Unmanifested, or the Unborn Mind, or even (at a stretch) Universal Consciousness.

Science, when it talks about the Big Bang, is talking about the entire Universe that we know of coming out of a single (and hence undifferentiated) point of zero dimension, without mass, or energy or anything (afaik).

So here we have something (the Universe) coming out of nothing (the singularity). How bizarre is that?

And how is that in anyway different from mystics talking about the Void being the ground of our being?

It's a mystery how something could possibly come from nothing, but that seems to be the reality, or The Reality, if you like.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Gatsby, you seem to be saying that science is the sole source of all knowledge. How do you know that to be true?

 

[Borachio]

Isn't it true, by definition? After all the etymology of science is from scientia, knowledge.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Gatsby, you seem to be saying that science is the sole source of all knowledge. How do you know that to be true?

A strange position for one to take, given the strongly rationalist origins of the scientific method itself.

Isn't it true, by definition? After all the etymology of science is from scientia, knowledge.

That makes it nothing more than a tautology, it doesn't make the overall point correct.

 

[Borachio]

I don't see how it doesn't.

If I say that all knowledge derives from science, and that all science leads to knowledge, I may not have said anything particularly useful, but it's certainly true.

 

[timtofly]

I don't see why science has to take the blame for all knowledge. It seems to just be a method to make people feel good about what they believe. There has been quite a lot of knowledge handed down over the years despite science trying so hard to understand it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Gatsby, you seem to be saying that science is the sole source of all knowledge. How do you know that to be true?

A strange position for one to take, given the strongly rationalist origins of the scientific method itself.

I do not understand your post.

 

[Kyriakos]

Depends on what we define as knowledge, as you all are aware. Science (in its current meaning) is heavily based on the ability to (largely, or practically) communicate with relative ease the knowledge which is systemised in its dominion. It seems to consist of either mathematically-backed proof, theory which is supported by empirical evidence and experiment, or over-arching sense developed by previous scientific breakthrough.

On the contrary, general knowledge is most of the time not just empirical, but non-communicable as to its absolute form which is largely sensory. For example we all can sense the warmth when it is summer and the sun is strong. This is a sensory-gained knowledge, which seems unchangeable, despite being a personal experience, one possibly felt in differing manners and degrees, and furthermore not a part of the actual cosmos as much as a specific experience of a being which has these organs and faculties in a material body that can create the sense the local Star has a clear effect (and the degree to which that effect is pleasant). If we could not sense the warmth then we probably would not attribute much importance to the Sun, or not the one we now do- and more importantly neither would our early ancestors, who even viewed the Sun as a god, and later on based their society on the needs rising and being met by the climate and the health of the human body.

I think that science, which was born from logic/philosophy, is indeed a system of knowledge, worthy to have and expand. However i still am of the view that it is entirely antropocentric, cause that is all we can have anyway. "Man is the meter of all things", as Protagoras claimed.

 

[Borachio]

I don't see why science has to take the blame for all knowledge. It seems to just be a method to make people feel good about what they believe. There has been quite a lot of knowledge handed down over the years despite science trying so hard to understand it.

I think we need to distinguish between Science (the stuff produced by application of the scientific method since Francis Bacon) and science, which is just the pursuit of knowledge itself.

So, when mankind early on discovered which plants were good to eat by trial and error, they were, strictly speaking, using science to do so.

(I realize my interpretation of the word might be unfamiliar.)

 

[Kyriakos]

^Well, episteme (science) by itself means "observing something from above"-- literally to stand above something (from the verb istamai, to stand, here meaning standing over something and thus being able to have a good view of what it supposedly is). So it signifies a practice formalising a workable viewpoint, and then expanding the knowledge on account of that.

 

[timtofly]

I think we need to distinguish between Science (the stuff produced by application of the scientific method since Francis Bacon) and science, which is just the pursuit of knowledge itself.

So, when mankind early on discovered which plants were good to eat by trial and error, they were, strictly speaking, using science to do so.

(I realize my interpretation of the word might be unfamiliar.)

The current topic was that science was the alleged source of knowledge, not the pursuit of knowledge. I would agree that not very many people seem to understand the difference.