/lit/ - Literature

>>17953284
>Nowhere, consciousness isn't "a thing",
Yes it is, it refers to the qualitative or experiential aspect of being conscious, i.e. being sentient as opposed to an insentient object. Conscious entities are naturally endowed with consciousness, it is their very being and essence.

>it's an English word that is occasionally used to translate a variety of concepts. The first is the idea of the mental activity caused by a sensation ("sight consciousness"). The second is as a broader web of mental activity, but each part of the web is just that: a part.
This is contradicted by how we experience things, in both of the senses you describe, you are not actually describing consciousness, you are describing things which are appear within or to consciousness, which are observed by the light of one's foundational awareness. Sights, sounds and smells do not observe themselves, they occur to a conscious presence who is different from them, they enter into and leaves its presence. Similarly, the "broader web of mental activity" like thoughts, memory, emotions and so on are all things which occur to an awareness which registers them in turn.

If there was no awareness who was separate from these things there would be no coherent way to explain how they all take place as an integrated whole as the phenomena within one's own smooth continuum of uninterrupted experience that occurs to conscious beings when time progresses. A disparate jumble of scattered thoughts and sensory perceptions cannot logically produce the unity of consciousness/awareness that experiences itself as such like we do from the self-enclosed flashes of awareness which would come and go with them.

This is one of the areas in which the correctness of Hindu schools of philosophy like Advaita Vedānta over Buddhism is demonstrated. Buddha failed to clearly enunciate the nature of consciousness, he instead lists as consciousness a list of things which occur to consciousness.

Some people try to grapple with this by believing that it was all meant to indirectly help people realize this consciousness, but regardless it gives rise to masses of people who are confused about their own consciousness, and they go around trying to fool others into thinking that living beings aren't really conscious and that there is just a bunch of random thoughts and sensations occurring to nobody, that there is no presence to whom they occur, even though to be conscious means to have something that contradicts this.

>There's no single part that "is" the consciousness anymore than there is one drop of water that "is" the ocean. There is no tiny man in your head piloting you.
Consciousness is not any of the parts, they are things which occur within consciousness, consciousness itself is formless, homogenous self-revealing or self-illuminating and it has no parts. Things which can be identified as types of mental sensation like thoughts can only be done so because they occur as objects to consciousness.

Has anyone here read the Uttara-Gītā? It comes shortly after the Bhagavad-Gītā in the Mahābhārata as a sort of sequel to or postscript to it when Arjuna asks Krishna to again instruct him in knowledge of Brahman.

I just read through it here, I thought it was very good.

https://spiritual-minds.com/easternrelgions/Gita/UttaraGita/Uttara-Gita.pdf

Krishna in the course of discussing Brahman gives a description of some aspects of the Nāḍī or channels in the body that prana and so forth flow through, this is one area that it differs from the Bhagavad-Gita. The text also largely seems to largely concern itself with the path of knowledge instead of also including discourses on bhatki-yoga and karma-yoga like the Bhagavad-Gita. Arjuna asks Krishna questions which are answered throughout the discourse, although a few of these are more cryptic or reference topics pertaining to vedāṅga that would be obscure to someone not well-versed in the topic.

The texts seemed to have a strongly non-dualist character to it, various imagery used as analogies and so on by Advaita and Vishishtadvaita are found in the text. The analogy about the space inside the pot remaining as unchanged and identical with the space outside the pot even when the pot breaks which is used by Gaudapada and Shankara is also used in the Uttara Gita in chapter 2. Ramanuja in his Gita bhasya uses the metaphor of an unbroken and continuous stream of oil to describe meditating on Brahman and this is also used in the 1st chapter of the Uttara Gita.


Arjuna spoke:

O Keshava, instruct me in the knowledge of that Brahman which is one without a
second, without upadhi (limitation), beyond the akasha (space), source of all purity, that
which is unapproachable by argument or unattainable by cognition, the Unknowable and
the unknown, that which is absolutely free from births and deaths.

2. O Keshava, impart to me the knowledge of That which is the Absolute, the sole abode
of eternal peace and purity, the instrumental cause and material cause of the universe,
though itself causeless and free from all connection.

3. Tell me, O Keshava, the knowledge of That which dwells in every heart, and which
combines the fact of knowledge and the thing knowable in Itself.

Sri Bhagavan said:

4. O thou long-armed one, who art the crest jewel of the Pandu dynasty, O Arjuna, thou
art the most intelligent, because thou hast asked Me a question at once most sublime and
magnificent – how to attain the knowledge of the boundless tattvas (principals of
existence). Hence hear attentively, O Arjuna, what I wish to say on the subject.