On 8/14/09 9:39 PM, "markhsmit" wrote to Platt:
I think I would tend to agree with you that Consciousness is the Ground of being, without getting into semantics about what that means. This brings to my mind the "Nature of the Ground", a chapter in Aldous Huxley's book " The Perennial Philosophy" (always a joy to read). In this treatment of such a Ground, Huxley describes it as "eternally complete consciousness". What is interesting is that many writers which Huxley cites, compare this to God (whatever that word may mean to them). Eckhart (the real one) describes this as the "Divine Ground". If one is to strip away all the dogmatic and controlling parts of a man-made God, it could be that we are left with Consciousness. Where I get stuck is where does personal consciousness come in? At some point, it seems to me that this Consciousness gets divided up. This may be called an illusion by some, but it's one hell of an illusion!
It's where we all get stuck, Will. You've put your finger on the pivotal problem in philosophy.
Actually, Platt didn't say that Consciousness is the ground of being; I did. But I later qualified this definition by adding "...to the extent that value-sensibility is the ground of being-aware." I wasn't suggesting that Consciousness equates to God or "the Divine Ground" of Eckhart but, rather, that it's the ground of Existence. For me, "being" and "existing" are the same. Essence (or God) is that which transcends being and existence.
As to your quandary concerning the alleged "illusion" of individuated Consciousness, you may accept either Huxley's theory of an "eternally complete consciousness" (also posited by Merrill-Wolff and Donald Hoffman), or the notion that subjectivity is the only reality. My paradigm is a hybrid these two concepts. I believe that proprietary consciousness is a finite derivative of Sensibility which, in Essence, is indistinguishable from Awareness (consciousness) or Value. So that, whereas subjects and objects are the "realities" of experiential existence, such differentiated entities are not properties or attributes of the Source. Since an absolute Essence can have no "other", all otherness may be considered illusionary.
When we ask "Where does otherness come from?" we are really asking "What is the origin of Difference?" My answer to this is that difference is what separates existents from each other. Existential beingness is a relational system differentiated by nothingness. But nothingness is antithetical to Essence, which is "all that is" and "nothing that is not." This leads me to believe that the Source must be "negational" in essence, which is to say, Essence negates nothingness (eternally and constantly), and subjective awareness is the differentiated product of this negation. The subjective self has no being of its own. It subsists entirely on its sensibility of Value, from which all beingness is actualized (objectivized), including its self-identified organism.
The paradigm for this ontology is that the Self (proprietary "value-sensibility") is the free or autonomous "agent" of existence whose valuistic experience of differentiated reality is a finite perspective of the Absolute Source.
I know that's a lot of words, Will, and a clearer explanation may be possible. However, I hope my train of thought will shed some light on your enigma, even if it raises additional questions in the process.
Anyway, thanks for providing another opportunity to express my views. Essentially yours, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
