what would recommend as a good list of books re Advaita? I did find this list
Thanks http://www.amazon.com/Top-20-books-on-Advaita/lm/RYMWQB12Z8DTI --- In [email protected], Duveyoung <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Xeno, > > I was expecting to be blown away by "discovered complexity I knew not of," > but strangely, the talk was "lite," and I, well, sue me, but I kinda felt > smugly sorry for Searle. As wonderful as his "sermon" was, it seemed > strangely hollow -- not shallow -- but hollow. It seemed absent the > "heartwood" core axioms of spirituality that can be found across cultures > throughout time. I wanted to grab him by the shirt collar and say, "You need > to read some Advaita books." And if he'd done so, THEN READ THEM AGAIN until > he grew the nervous system that could grok it. > > The talk's heft was that it was "positively impacting on almost any > audience," but it lacked hard science examples that I thought would be coming > at me like Gatling bullets. But nope. > > The one thing he tried to ram home was that consciousness was purely a > physical phenomenon without any unexplainable or scientifically > non-approachable ugga-bugga. And that definition of "consciousness" I AGREE > WITH FULLY. > > The biggest failure of the talk was that the concept of "the Witness" of > consciousness was not mentioned -- although perhaps alluded to briefly as he > batted aside the traditional POVs on consciousness. > > Advaita would definitely give him the intellectual tools with which to see if > "the Witness" could also be delineated such that it, too, might be sought in > experiments. I think it could. > > But, of course, I'd want to WARN Searle that understanding Advaita was merely > and only a secondary goal -- like knowing a map -- and that "realization" > would come to him only if and when his ADDICTION to conceptual experiences > were ended -- and THEN the territory of that map would be revealed as the > only actuality beyond BOTH existence and non-existence. > > And that requires building a nervous system that knows how to dwell in "a > close to silence" state of biology - a state that is so non-stimulating of > consciousness' "thought production clockworks" that identity could slip off > of it and be realized as, IDENTITY, the source of every form of > identification seen in the actions of consciousness. > > And, yeah, I'd like to chide him a bit about being a scientist and prideful > that all of "THIS" can be grasped. I guess he needs to read some Godel, too, > if only to show the limitations of logic. > > To me, "the Witness" is to be but halfly measured when it's targeted as part > of the grand illusion, but in order to talk about it, one finds that > language, as if, forces the word to seem to refer to a full manifestation > instead of the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't hyperbolic entity that is but > "half" observed -- not unlike as today's science now looks an electron with > its two states -- wave/particle. > > I call the observable part of "the Witness," ego. The unmanifest "part" I > call awareness, absolute, sentience, identity -- recognizing that all those > words are qualities and therefore, hee hee, an especial kind of ersatz > non-thing-a-ma-jigger > > Science needs to humble itself and admit that the embodiment of "the Witness" > in materiality is one in which "the Witness" pokes its head above the "ritam > line" as much as "it" dwells below that line and "is" then beyond any of > science's instrumentality's metrics. Good luck on that happening. > > And, by the way, thanks for all your posts. I always scan to see what you're > writing about, and have read your posts enough to know that if I do enter a > thread, your stuff is the get-to-the-heart-of-it stuff, so good on ya. > > Edg > > > > --- In [email protected], "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@> > wrote: > > > > John Searle at CERN (TEDxTalks) > > > > http://youtu.be/j_OPQgPIdKg > > > > > > [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j_OPQgPIdKg ] > > >
