Viveka talks – exercise 17.
Remember: this article/chapter is tokenized, and you may buy it as “writer’s NFT!”
Points to consider
Exercising does not hurt as preparation for the real job of piercing through the more substantial ideas. You don’t have to explain „a car“ to yourself or your neighbor. But, when it comes to the fundamental constituents of reality, the confusion is much more palpable. Those fundamentals are buried deep in our consciousness. Between them and our everyday thinking, there is a universe of constructions and possible mistakes.
To emphasize the importance of exercising the discerning ability, I’d like to remind you about the fundamentals of viveka.
- There is no proof – nor will ever be – about the independent existence of the outside, material world. Consciousness is all we know.
- We are dealing with ideas we perceive as „things“, not with „things“ themselves.
- The laws governing those „things“ are other ideas perceived as abstract rules behind the processes between „things“.
- Science investigates things and operations between them under perceptual consensus. The results science offers are valid, practical, and independent from the paradigm behind them. Your computer will work the same way, no matter the explanation of what is the reality behind it.
- However, the fundamental paradigm behind the explanation of our reality can have a crucial impact on the direction technology is heading.
- Science will probably hit the wall if it continues to insist on the explanation of consciousness as a side effect of the complex structure of biological matter.
- Technology, partial as it is today, will continue to destroy the parts of reality instead of preserving them and using them for achieving further wonders.
- On the other hand, the only true scientific paradigm – consciousness as the field of reality – does not create such problems. There are no walls and no partial solutions. Everything created with the understanding of fundamental ideas inside the consciousness will be holistic.
- There is hope in viveka that our science can change without giving up what has been achieved until today.
- By practicing viveka, you are investigating a new scientific approach, calling it spiritual or whatever you want. The viveka paradigm opens a field of new possibilities. All knowledge –ALL KNOWLEDGE – is inside you. You don’t need anything else besides your mind.
Don’t lose the above points from sight as you practice the first baby steps of viveka. It is the beginning of something unimaginable, and the amount of work ahead can not be foreseen. However, the promise is so exciting that it is certainly worth the effort.
***
In this chapter, you’ll find four rather simple purification exercises. The first one (deconstruction diagram of an idea of “a car”), we already did in the previous Viveka talks exercise.
The second purification exercise is about understanding the idea of “freedom” as possible lakshana for consciousness. The question is: “Is freedom a construction? And more specifically, is freedom a conceptual or categorical construction, or maybe both?” You’ll find the answer in the chapter, but please, think about the question before you read it.
The third and fourth exercises can look like mind games or some kind of meticulous logic for beginners, but do not underestimate their value. The insights you will gain from them can save you from generalizations and relativizations of the truth. Also, they can show you that, while learned ideas require learning, you don’t have to ask or learn from anyone to find an answer to the questions about the basic structure of reality. The answers are in the structure of your mind, in you, and that’s where you have to look to find them.
We can discuss the answers in a “questions for thinking” section.
Questions for thinking
Think about the two statements:
Everything is an illusion.
Everything is the truth.
First, establish that you understand why both statements are false (write the argumentation for yourself, without looking in the book).
Second, establish the fact that this reveals the basic structure of reality and that you actually don’t need a perception of “things” outside the mind to find it.
And, third, if you still have doubts…
It is your turn now. Write your thoughts, comments, or questions.
2 Comments
Zorka
Dear Adrian, in Chapter 17 you write: „First, notice that you can draw a similar deconstruction graph for any „material thing“, and you’ll end up with almost identical derivate ideas (maybe one or two would be different) and the same original ideas.“
I understood (btw very logical) fact from my experiments with deconstruction graphs. However, I am puzzled. Is the task to find lakshana (discerning quality of the object) for a car or a universally valid fundament of existence (a certain original idea)?
In answers for comments to Chapter 15 you write that the graph serves the deconstruction of the concept.
Questions „What is a car?“ and „How do we know that a car is a car?“ only take me back to constructs I need to understand the idea of a car. But how do I find the lakshana of an idea of a car? Thank you very much.
Adrian
The deconstruction graph is not the same as finding the lakshana (that was not the task). In the case of a car, lakshana would be a rather complex set of descriptive words, but would not require ideas like energy, or space. On the other hand, in order to understand the idea of a car (and possible lakshana of that idea), you need to understand space, movement, etc. That gives you an insight into the mechanics of how the mind works. Lakshana is another story.
Of course, viveka is not interested in lakshana of a car. 🙂 Lakshanas of basic ideas, like time, truth or reality are much more interesting.