/lit/ - Literature

>>16357140
Yes it is pretty interesting. Pic related is a brief summary of Shankara's explanation of the nature of consciousness, which was copied and pasted in a thread from a book on Indian philosophy. Out of all eastern philosophy, much of which I also enjoy, Shankara does a particularly good job of describing consciousness, and it can be very interesting to read his prose commentaries where he explores this subject at length.

>>15814539
The different Hindu schools all teaching different conceptions of what the self or Self is. I find the explanation of the Advaita Vedanta school to be the most coherent and the closet that I have found to a correct phenomenological explanation of how I personally experience consciousness. Some of the other non-dual Hindu schools like Trika Shaivism have a similar view of consciousness. The best way to understand it is just to read Shankara's works which have all been translated although a quick summary would be that the Self is the unchanging witness-consciousness in which everything else like thoughts and objects appear. The Self is not identical with waking consciousness though, because It transcends waking, dream and deep-sleep which all appear in It as superimposed states that It witnesses.

Pic related is another summary of the Advaita perspective on consciousness/Self which is taken from a page of this longer textbook here

https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/a-history-of-indian-philosophy-volume-2/d/doc209866.html

another text you check out for a quick TLDR of the Advaita position on the Self would be the Ashtavakra Gita

https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita.html