Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
Moksha: Soteriological Riddles
And now for a dip in the Ganges. Top o’ the Stack.
2 thoughts on “Moksha: Soteriological Riddles”
This series of posts is so interesting. It’s great you are writing it. On this installment, I have a two questions.
First question.
It seems to me that ‘realize’ can mean (at least) two things. It can mean 1) coming to understand something as true, e.g., ‘I realized I left my keys in the car,’ or ‘He realized he couldn’t have it both ways.’ But it can also mean 2) making something real, e.g., ‘She realized her dream of singing at Carnegie Hall.’
When you say, “Moksha is attained when the identify of Atman and Brahman is realized,” it sounds like you are using sense 1), i.e., that one attains moksha when one comes to understand that Atman and Brahman are identical.
But when you go on say, “If I realize my identity with the Absolute, then I cease to exist as something separate from the Absolute,” it sounds (to me) like something closer to sense 2), i.e., a realization that somehow effects (or makes real) the cessation of existence “as something separate from the Absolute.”
So, my first question: Are you using ‘realize’ differently in those two sentences? I suspect you are not. I suspect those two instances are more closely related than is immediately apparent to me, but I’m not sure exactly how. Is the thought that when one recognizes the truth then that very recognition (somehow) makes it true? (That last sentence was pretty odd, but I think you know what I mean.)
Second question.
You ask, “How is moksha different from deep dreamless sleep or from utter nonexistence?” I do not believe you are using “deep dreamless sleep” and “utter nonexistence” as synonyms. But you also clearly think both amount “to personal annihilation.”
I see what you mean, and it certainly sounds right to me. But I ran across something interesting once. I heard an Advaitin say something like, “When you wake from a sound, dreamless sleep, you know you have slept. You don’t think you died last night and were reborn this morning. You know you existed throughout.” The idea being, I take it, that you were in some real sense ‘consciousness’ of (or conscious in) that dreamless sleep, in a nontrivial sense.
So, the second question: Do you find this I-know-I-slept rejoinder plausible? Do you believe it *could* be significant? It does not seem to me to be a satisfactory counter to your observation about annihilation, but it’s not a total zero either. It seems like something might be there. Or is it just my imagination? I mean, your disjuncts are *not* synonyms, right? There *is* a difference between the two?
One final note, re your here-is-another-puzzle section, down towards the end.
There you say, “Using the method of ‘Neti, Neti’ (not this, not this), we end up with the result that the subject who is seeking is no object, no thing, nothing. … The upshot seems to be that any self or subject so disengaged from every object is nothing at all.”
I think this touches on the same thing I asked about back in “Meditation – What and Why,” i.e., the issues originally raised in your post, “Why Did I Move Away from Phenomenology? Part I,” back in October 2020. I have long-enjoyed reading that October 2020 post, though I have struggled to understand the nuances and complexities. I still do. But what you have said here in your “Moksha” post seems to help.
That is to say, the “subject who is seeking [and] is no object, no thing, nothing…” is the same Husserlian/Kantian transcendental ego of the October 2020 post, right? If so, I think I may understand that original post a little better now.
BTW, at the end of your “Meditation as Reduction” post — about which I have not yet had a chance to formulate questions — you mentioned you might “get around to Kant and Husserl” soon. Is that still something you plan to do?
Tom,
Thank you for the comments.
You are certainly right that there are those two senses of ‘realize’ as your examples make clear. If I come to realize/recognize that a certain proposition is true, does that realization make it true? No.
So if I come to realize/recognize that I am the eternal Atman, the Self of all things, that realization cannot be what makes it true. For if true, then it was ‘already’ and ‘all along’ true. What I come to realize/recognize is that I had been living in illusion, having misidentified myself as something I am not, this particular animal. Nevertheless, when this realization/recognition occurs, it itself becomes real. Similarly in the mundane cases. If I come to realize that I left my keys in the car, that awareness itself becomes real or occurrent. So the two senses are connected.
As for your second question, there is the ‘or’ of identity and the ‘or’ of disjunction. But I have to do something now, so I’ll come back to this tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you have time, take a look at the creation koan thread.
This series of posts is so interesting. It’s great you are writing it. On this installment, I have a two questions.
First question.
It seems to me that ‘realize’ can mean (at least) two things. It can mean 1) coming to understand something as true, e.g., ‘I realized I left my keys in the car,’ or ‘He realized he couldn’t have it both ways.’ But it can also mean 2) making something real, e.g., ‘She realized her dream of singing at Carnegie Hall.’
When you say, “Moksha is attained when the identify of Atman and Brahman is realized,” it sounds like you are using sense 1), i.e., that one attains moksha when one comes to understand that Atman and Brahman are identical.
But when you go on say, “If I realize my identity with the Absolute, then I cease to exist as something separate from the Absolute,” it sounds (to me) like something closer to sense 2), i.e., a realization that somehow effects (or makes real) the cessation of existence “as something separate from the Absolute.”
So, my first question: Are you using ‘realize’ differently in those two sentences? I suspect you are not. I suspect those two instances are more closely related than is immediately apparent to me, but I’m not sure exactly how. Is the thought that when one recognizes the truth then that very recognition (somehow) makes it true? (That last sentence was pretty odd, but I think you know what I mean.)
Second question.
You ask, “How is moksha different from deep dreamless sleep or from utter nonexistence?” I do not believe you are using “deep dreamless sleep” and “utter nonexistence” as synonyms. But you also clearly think both amount “to personal annihilation.”
I see what you mean, and it certainly sounds right to me. But I ran across something interesting once. I heard an Advaitin say something like, “When you wake from a sound, dreamless sleep, you know you have slept. You don’t think you died last night and were reborn this morning. You know you existed throughout.” The idea being, I take it, that you were in some real sense ‘consciousness’ of (or conscious in) that dreamless sleep, in a nontrivial sense.
So, the second question: Do you find this I-know-I-slept rejoinder plausible? Do you believe it *could* be significant? It does not seem to me to be a satisfactory counter to your observation about annihilation, but it’s not a total zero either. It seems like something might be there. Or is it just my imagination? I mean, your disjuncts are *not* synonyms, right? There *is* a difference between the two?
One final note, re your here-is-another-puzzle section, down towards the end.
There you say, “Using the method of ‘Neti, Neti’ (not this, not this), we end up with the result that the subject who is seeking is no object, no thing, nothing. … The upshot seems to be that any self or subject so disengaged from every object is nothing at all.”
I think this touches on the same thing I asked about back in “Meditation – What and Why,” i.e., the issues originally raised in your post, “Why Did I Move Away from Phenomenology? Part I,” back in October 2020. I have long-enjoyed reading that October 2020 post, though I have struggled to understand the nuances and complexities. I still do. But what you have said here in your “Moksha” post seems to help.
That is to say, the “subject who is seeking [and] is no object, no thing, nothing…” is the same Husserlian/Kantian transcendental ego of the October 2020 post, right? If so, I think I may understand that original post a little better now.
BTW, at the end of your “Meditation as Reduction” post — about which I have not yet had a chance to formulate questions — you mentioned you might “get around to Kant and Husserl” soon. Is that still something you plan to do?
Tom,
Thank you for the comments.
You are certainly right that there are those two senses of ‘realize’ as your examples make clear. If I come to realize/recognize that a certain proposition is true, does that realization make it true? No.
So if I come to realize/recognize that I am the eternal Atman, the Self of all things, that realization cannot be what makes it true. For if true, then it was ‘already’ and ‘all along’ true. What I come to realize/recognize is that I had been living in illusion, having misidentified myself as something I am not, this particular animal. Nevertheless, when this realization/recognition occurs, it itself becomes real. Similarly in the mundane cases. If I come to realize that I left my keys in the car, that awareness itself becomes real or occurrent. So the two senses are connected.
As for your second question, there is the ‘or’ of identity and the ‘or’ of disjunction. But I have to do something now, so I’ll come back to this tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you have time, take a look at the creation koan thread.