This blog contains the insights, questions, and reflections of college students from various institutions in Atlanta: currently, the members of the Spring 2014 Introduction to Sacred Texts at Spelman College and, previously, the members of the Fall 2012 Introduction to Sacred Texts class at Emory University.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
pratyabhijna- our consciousness
I love the philosophical backbones of pratyabhijna, the very idea of nondual saiva tanta, nondual consciousness. Our consciousness is capable to know and ability to store this knowledge and from our subjective and objective minds, we manifest the world around us. The only concrete, absolute reality is our consciousness; our consciousness serves as the bases and minimum requirement for our capacity to perceive the world. Thus, similar to Descartes's concept of "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am), pratyabhijna focuses on the idea of self origination/self existence. However, it goes little more narrow; while Descartes focus on the duality of mind and body, pratyabhijna declares that self-awareness is the sole value to measure against what we know. Because our consciousness, our luminosity, our capability to perceive is unique to each individuals, different realities emerges with different perceptions. (one reality can have multiple interpretations). Thus, if pratyabhijna is telling us that our perception/consciousness is the sole real thing in this world, how do we not know that our understanding of pratyabhijna isn't just our false perception and this is just a giant paradox?
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The capacity to perceive isn't unique to each of us; in fact, that capacity (the luminosity of consciousness) is precisely the thing that's shared with everything. Particular perceptions arise based on the restriction of this universal capacities into a certain type of body/mind complex. This restriction depends on karma. So, beings with sufficiently similar karma will experience the same intersubjective world. All humans perceive a similar world because we have a lot of shared karma. An animal, however, would perceive reality differently. Within a given intersubjective world, there will always still be differences between perceivers, and this is why noone ever experiences exactly the same thing as someone else.
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