August 14, 2017

Nobody knows what is reality; fear of the fundamental question, life and death

From: VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL
Sunday, August 13, 2017 
Dear Kashyapji,

From a conventional physicist's point of view, I can appreciate your arguments and perspective. However, you have addressed none of the key issues as raised by me viz

I) Signs as assigned to gravitational and mass energies to represent their opposing effects Vs ontological existences of energies.

ii) Cosmological models for the creation of the universe based upon quantum vacuum/BB/cosmic inflation taking into account only 4% of the energy of the universe.

iii) Mechanical motions, light, heat representing the effects of energy which are detectable/sensible by instruments but per se these effects not being energy. The cause behind these effects being the ontological existence of energy is neither positive nor negative. In view of this, corresponding to vast infinite energy of the observable universe, there should be vast infinite energy  at the primordial stage also. There is also the possibility that this vast infinite energy st the primordial stage might  not be in the form, as is known to the current science. It is on account of this that current cosmology starts  with zero known physical energy. But start  of universe with the zero energy has a lot of logical inconsistencies  and explanatory gaps, many of which mentioned by me but no solution forthcoming.

I, further, recognize your point of view that conventional physics is either incapable or not interested in addressing the above issues. However, will this very aspect of Physics make the issues as raised as invalid? Could you please point out in a specific manner where is the flaw in my arguments while raising these issues?

As I had indicated in my previous messages also that the Astral, Causal realms of nature and cosmic consciousness  can't be studied and developed as some objective scientific hypothesis  or theories simply due to the reasons that ontology  of these realms is not detectable by the objective scientific methodology as used by the contemporary. Science.

Regards

Vinod Sehgal 
To view this discussion on the web visit

Dear Vinod,

Rest assured, I am not ignoring the questions raised by you. But about ontological issues, I have to repeat as before, physicists cannot revise their models, based on someone’s ontological ideas. As it is clear from the discussions on this blog,  nobody knows what is reality and hence physicists have to leave that issue to philosophers. Only thing physicists can demand is mathematical consistency and agreement with experimental data. For most physicists the matter ends there.

Starting from elementary mechanics (Newton’s laws) energy is defined in a unique way. I understand you took some physics courses a number of years back. You may want to review them or you may want to talk to  a physics professor in a nearby college. If we were close by I would be glad to explain it by writing on a chalkboard. On e-mail it is not possible. In mechanics you start with definition of force (Newton’s laws) then define work and then energy as a body’s capacity to do work. This is then extended consistently to heat, light, electricity-magnetism and finally to atoms and sub nuclear matter. Then Newton’s laws are consistently revised to special and general relativity.  As we discussed before, signs of energy come out naturally in a consistent way. Gravity is attractive. So negative potential energy is natural and no problem. If energy due to motion, kinetic energy 0.5 mv^2 or mass energy mc^2 come out negative, that will be big disaster!!

“Mechanical motions, light, heat representing the effects of energy which are detectable/sensible by instruments but per se these effects not being energy.”  

Energy is associated with each object and it is exchanged between bodies like exchanging money between two persons. One person loses money in his bank (negative effect), the other person gains money (positive effect, increase in bank balance). There is no distinction between effect and energy. Thus starting with zero total energy is not a problem, once you agree that energy can be positive and negative. You have to get rid of this idea in your mind that energy is something you hold in your hand! This may be the flaw in the argument.

Although there is no direct experimental evidence for dark matter and dark energy, there are plenty of indirect evidences. I cannot go through all of that in an e-mail. If you have time and interest you may want to read Wikipedia Articles. 

Thus the situation is not as bad as you think. It is not that people are ignoring 96% of energy of the universe. After all subject like physics attracts plenty of intelligent people, although not much money is available!! They are constantly looking for a consistent model of universe.

As I said last time, from your daily life you have to admit success of some 400 years of physics (science in general).This is not to say that other things like religion, philosophy etc. are not important!

Best Regards.

Kashyap
Vasavada, Kashyap V 
Aug 14, 2017

Dear Vinod ji,

Thanks.

Perhaps, your queries related to science have similar answers as those of my queries related to OOO-God theory. I asked few questions: what color OOO God will experience when He looks at a ripe-tomato. How do you derive 18 elementary particles from 5 Tanmātras? Or where from God gets infinite amount of energy? Or who created God?

Your answer was that we are not at the level of OOO God, so we cannot answer or God does not tell us. Similar answer can be given from science that we need further research on dark matter/energy, etc, and on the answers of “why” and “where from”.

Why are there spontaneous random fluctuations? Why Nature behaves stochastically? Where from do the virtual particles get energies and how? In my view, further research is needed as science is in infancy. OOO-God theory has been over 6000 years at the least, but do you have answers of my queries? No! So why do you expect science will have all the answers in just few hundred year?

The eDAM framework is based on whatever is available in science currently. At present time, BB from “nothing”/vacuum (no material entities and zero total energy) is the best available model although it has many problems. If, in future, there is a better model then the eDAM will be updated accordingly. The eDAM is not rigid like OOO God theory; it evolves as science evolves.

I guess, there are two groups in this forum: (1) OOO God theory group and (2) science/eDAM group; we should further research as we like.

Kind regards,
Rām
Rām Lakhan Pāndey Vimal, Ph.D.
Amarāvati-Hīrāmaṇi Professor (Research)
Vision Research Institute, Physics, Neuroscience, & Consciousness Research Dept.
25 Rita Street, Lowell, MA 01854 USA
August 13, 2017 

Dear Avtar,

Thanks.

Q: Where does the “positive expansive energy” come from? If you have any article please email me. 

I am currently in the process of reading your articles.

Thanks for the articles and links. I need to understand your framework first so please help me. The following quotes are from (Singh, 2017). So far, I have the following queries:

[1]. “What changes occur in the physical states of the brain a moment before and a moment after death that lead to the cessation of the biological consciousness? […] the brain malfunctions or breaks down, such as during a coma or death, the mind stops working ceasing the conscious experiences.”

Does this imply a brain is necessary for a conscious experience and if there is no brain, there is no conscious experience?

[2]. “The fact that every location in space and every moment of time in the universe is aware of the universal laws points to the existence of awareness of a universal mind or consciousness.”

Does this contradicts the above [1] in the sense brain is not necessary if “universal consciousness” also mean experiences and experiencer (such as the “self” in human being)? It seems that we need to define the terms before using them; otherwise, confusion will occur. What is “consciousness’ and what is the difference between “universal consciousness” and “biological consciousness”?

[3] “Furthermore, the presence of conscious beings and the prevailing cosmic order are not possible in a universe that is not conscious.”

Do you mean all living and non-living systems are conscious (as in panpsychism)?

You seem to reject materialism, so what is your metaphysics, idealism/Advaita, ‘interactive substance dualism’/‘dualistic Sānkhya’, or dual-aspect monism?

Kind regards,
Rām
Rām Lakhan Pāndey Vimal, Ph.D.

On Sunday, 13 August 2017 11:43 AM, Asingh2384 wrote:
Dear Kashyap/Vinod/Ram:

The root cause of the missing 96% (dark energy/dark matter) from the current standard model Big Bang cosmology is complete ignorance of the positive expansive anti-gravitational energy of the universe. Because of this fundamental deficiency, Einstein proposed a fudge factor Cosmological Constant to fix the issue, and even today it remains as the only viable explanation of dark energy causing the observed accelerated expansion of the universe.

What I have tried to show that adding to relativity the missing physics of spontaneous mass/energy conversion observed in wave/particle complimentarity and mass/energy equivalence principle, solves this problem and provides a physical basis for Dark Energy or cosmological constant eliminating the artificial fudge factor as well as paradoxes/inconsistencies of physics and cosmology (GR, QM, standard model etc). Such an integrated approach predicts the observed expansion of the universe without the paradoxes of the Big Bang standard model and QM.  

Expansive energy cannot be artificially created from the mis-conceived negative gravitational energy. Gravitational energy could only cause an inward contracting collapse or crunch such as in a black hole but could not lead to the observed expansion of the universe. Positive expansion energy is required to create or store a gravitational potential energy (termed negative). Negative GPE has no existence of its own without the positive expansive energy. This fundamental misconception has led to various weird concepts such as inflation, multiple universes, fine tuning, dark energy, dark matter, big bang, and unexplained weirdness of QM including the collapse of the wave function, etc.  

Best Regards
Avtar Singh, Sc.D.
Alumni, MIT
Author of "The Hidden Factor - An Approach for Resolving Paradoxes of Science, Cosmology, and Universal Reality"
To view this discussion on the web visit

Dear Ram and All:

The following statement in your e-mail is fundamentally incorrect:
“The positive exactly balances the negative, so, ultimately, there is no energy in the universe at all.”

The above is incorrect because if it were true then the gravitational pull would cause an instantaneous collapse/crunch of the universe mass in galaxies and stars. Further, the observed universe is observed to be expanding (Hubble Expansion) at an accelerating rate due to the anti-gravity or dark energy. The faraway galaxies are observed to be moving away at almost the speed of light exhibiting tremendous positive kinetic energy showing no sign of negative energy or pull of gravity. 

Just as a net positive energy is needed to launch a rocket into space against gravity, a net positive expansive energy is needed to cause the observed accelerated expansion of the universe to overcome gravitational pull of the masses in the universe.

Another evidence of the incorrectness of the Zero total energy of the universe is that the standard Big Bang model fails to predict 96% of the universe consisting of dark energy and dark matter. This 96% error in the Big Bang model is the direct result of the ignorance of the positive anti-gravity or dark energy.

In summary, the observed continued net accelerating Hubble expansion of the massive universe is evidence of its net positive energy. A universe consisting only of matter and negative gravitational energy would crunch and collapse into a black hole in no time.

Best Regards
Avtar Singh, Sc.D.
Alumni, MIT
Author of "The Hidden Factor - An Approach for Resolving Paradoxes of Science, Cosmology, and Universal Reality"
August 11, 2017

Dear Ram:

Standard Big Bang model (BBM) assumption of the net zero energy of the universe is fundamentally wrong as evidenced by the missing 96% (dark energy and dark matter) universe that the standard model fails to predict. Further, the following unresolvable inconsistencies and paradoxes of the BBM (including GR and QM) destroy its credibility as a universal theory:

1.      Quantum gravity?

2.      Parallel universes (undermines the unique set of universal laws that is the foundation of physics)?

3.      The so-called quantum ZPF (Zero-point Field) is 120 orders of magnitude off (higher) than the observed energy in the empty space (cosmological constant). (Quantum ZPF is not the real zero point of the universe as claimed)?

4.      Observer or measurement paradox (undermines credibility of all quantum observations)?

5.      Black hole singularity (undermines GR predictions at the beginning of the universe)?

6.      Superluminous (V>C) inflation (violates relativity?

7.      Photon Zero mass in standard model but positive finite energy/momentum violate relativity and equivalence of mass-energy and momentum laws?

8.      Well-established relativity of space-time negates an absolute instant of time zero? Clock either ticks continuously or stops; in either case it never reads time = 0. Zero time or beginning has no physical basis?

9.      BBM’s 4% success rate of universe prediction kills the credibility of the standard model as a universal theory?

Hence, all the arguments using standard BBM model to explain consciousness, Prakriti, Brahma, nothingness, creation, or any physical/spiritual concepts etc have no more than 4% credibility on a universal basis. If you or I score 4% on our physics exam, it would be regarded as a serious failure.

Unfortunately this the sorry state of the BBM standard model. However, these deficiencies can be fixed via integrating the missing physics of spontaneous mass-energy conversion or equivalence into relativity theory that also explains inner workings of QM as well as resolve many of the current paradoxes of physics and cosmology.

Best Regards
Avtar Singh, Sc.D.
Alumni, MIT
Author of "The Hidden Factor - An Approach for Resolving Paradoxes of Science, Cosmology, and Universal Reality"
August 10, 2017
...

Dear Vinod,

Now as I said, I am talking about physical models of origin of universe for which there is majority consensus; surely not 100 percent! Nothing in science is 100 percent nor should it be. Scientists should be willing to drop their favorite model at the drop of a hat, when evidence is pointing against it. [...]

If you believe in quantum physics, you have to believe in uncertainty principle. There is no choice! You cannot pick and choose in science. The whole science comes as a package! In a way this question is similar to the debate about evolution and creationism. Creationists would argue that if the complete blueprint of how to design life is known to God for example, it should not take 4 Billion years of trial and error to produce human beings. Scientists, even believers, would say that is how the laws of nature operate.

The universe in the beginning had minimum entropy. It has been increasing ever since then. If there is a big crunch and start over, there will have to be some mechanism to reduce the entropy.

Again, all of this is consistent with the laws of physics as of today. They may look weird from our everyday experience. But we should not expect that universe should be consistent with what a little human being can rationalize from his/her everyday experience!!

Best Regards.

Kashyap
August 11, 2017
...

Dear Paul,

I assume mechanism, and the knowledge that all machine dreams/computations are emulated in the arithmetical reality... I interpret the contradiction as typo error, joke, or attempt to remind never taking anything sacred literally. 

I do not believe in the "paranormal", given that when a psychologist succeeds in verifying a parapsychological experience, like it happened for the luicid dream, then "para" is thrown away. 

I am a skeptical. I am a Platonist, I do not believe in what I see. I trust the normal in principle, but beware of the domain involved. "Para" is a sociological term. It is an artificial wall.

I don't believe in the normal physical things already. It is easier to explain the illusion of the moon to a person, than to explain the illusion of person to the moon... 

My real interest has always been the mind-body problem, and the partial solution I saw in molecular genetics was already in elementary arithmetic. It is Gödel theorem which decides me to do mathematics.

To be sure, as a professional I am agnostic, here I assume and behave like if I was a mechanist believer (to avoid conditional jargon). [...]

For me the problem begun when theology was kept away from science. That has helped only bad faith. Both in the Eastern and Western world, you see the honest inquirers, and those with hidden agenda (fame, money, notoriety, ...). When liars get the power, as they often do, honesty is an handicap, even if it is the only real power in the long run.

There is also a natural fear with respect to the fundamental question, life and death. And who we are.

When I asked my father what is truth, he told me that it was what the human fears the most. [...]

Many salvia reports describe en encounter with a divine entity definitely felt as feminine. 

And I like to joke on the macho greeks for which odd numbers are male and even numbers are female, and for who 1 is, of course, the Big One, ... I like to joke when pointing that today we know that the big 1 is in between the two most terrible female of Platonia: the number 0 (death, annihilation) and the number 2 (life, couple, duplication, creation, the indefinite dyad of the Pythagoreans).

But take this with a grain of salt, if that was needed to be made precise.

Best wishes,

Bruno
...

Dear Siegfried,

The hallmark of subjective experience is that as far as we can tell it arises from entirely proximal dynamic relations. That is to say we have no subjective experience of the dynamic relations that instantiate hydrogen fusion in the sun that send photons to earth. We have no subjective experience relating to the life of the photon. In fact we have no subjective experience that we can attribute directly to events in the retina. Our experiences are composed of elements that have to be inferred later - like colour, which only arises after the cortex has compared inputs over time from allover the retina. 

So no subject can ever have any evidence of the experience of some other type of subject - because it relates to distal events. That is really the root of our problems. Whether anything other than each of the subjects in my brain (however many) that reports seeing a screen experiences anything other than the screen the ‘mes’ are seeing is an unanswerable question. I personally think it is fair to reject solipsism of any sort and take the parsimonious position that all individual dynamic units are subjects. So I am a sort of panexperientialist. This position is parsimonious because otherwise you have to propose some distinguishing rule.

But all we can really usefully study is the nature of the dynamic individual unit that has the sort of experience that we discuss as belonging to a ‘me’. It would be unparsimonious and lead to over determinism if we posited such an experience both very locally in a brain and smeared out in a whole person. So we ought to choose between the two.

We have absolutely nonscientific motivation for smearing out experience in a whole human body. Most of the human body has nothing to do with the experiences we talk about. My bone marrow making red cells is irrelevant. My heart contracting is irrelevant. They are no more relevant than the cushion I sit on or my spectacles or the blind man’s stick or Otto’s notebook or the whole world. The extended mind people have blown the cover of the embodied cognition people by pointing out that the body is irrelevant.

I do not think third and first person aspects are isomorphic. I have argued with people like Nick Shea about this in some detail. There are redundancies in both directions. However, in loose terms, which I think is what you mean, I see no reason to doubt some sort of systematic matching relation - how would experience be useful if not? I think talk of larger dimensionality risks wandering off into fairyland a bit. And this is where I think locality comes in. If subjective experience is a first person take on dynamics that actually do something useful in our lives, like survival, then in order to make sense of physics the dynamics need to obey locality in a broad sense but a sufficiently precise sense to rule out arbitrary smearing across a few extra dimensions. 

If subjective experience does not obey locality the whole of physics crashes because every test of physics includes a final experiential step. if you throw away the rules for that step you throw them away for everything. Again it is like the rule that for any syllogism with conflicting premises all conclusions are valid. Logic crashes.

Neuroscientists are quite good at stimulating individual points in the brain and getting rich experiences. They cannot do it very often because the only ethical time is when someone is having epilepsy surgery. There have been instances when repeated stimulate of the same spot has given rise to repeated similar experiences - so yes it has been done.

I agree that there are problems with questions about whether an experience in one brain is ‘the same’ as that in another. That goes back to the earlier issue about never accessing other experiences. Wittgenstein was right (for the wrong reasons) to say there is no valid answer. And if there are 1000000 experiences at the same time in a brain we cannot know if they are ‘the same’. Moreover, we would not particularly expect them to be if each is dealing with s lightly different level of abstraction or field of attention. Philosophers can say they all have the same ‘content’ but that is because they define ‘content’ as being what the experience is ‘about’. If I look at a tomato all the experiences in my head are of looking at a tomato. But they may be wildly different in terms of the local dynamics involved. And despite Wittgenstein we could reasonably say that it is very unlikely that there could even hypothetically ‘seem’ the same. one might have ten times as many bits of information as another.

I cannot see any need to postulate orthogonal worlds. All we need is perfectly ordinary physics - because ordinary physics always includes an experience of our type and an otherwise very reliable way of linking up dynamic relations.

Parsimony gets to look more and more important as you get older. Life is short.

Best wishes

Jo
Edwards, Jonathan 
August 14, 2017
...
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August 09, 2017

The Infinite was reduced to square and cube

Dear All,

I have been reading the debates about “scientific“ explanation of consciousness with lot of interest. Since I do not have my own model, I can be impartial about them! First, I do like the eastern philosophical idea of universal consciousness, pansychism if you want to call it. The primitive semblance of consciousness may be present in atoms or even fundamental particles, although that may be very difficult to establish. In a way, I like Penrose-Hemeroff model (Hemeroff posted his article here recently on this website), but there are problems with it and it is also far from being established. Similarly Morrison’s model has also some interesting points.

About Jim Kowall’s holographic model, I can say much more. Although it is quite interesting from the point of view of universal consciousness, I should say; it is dangerous to build your model of consciousness on uncertain physics. I read number of physics blogs also. I find that Tom Banks’ holographic model does not have any appreciable following. Even his former student Lubos Motls does not believe in it. Holography was established by Maldacena from string theory for model of Anti-de Sitter universe where the cosmological constant (cc) is negative. Our present day universe seems to have small positive cc, thus it is de Sitter. There are attempts to extend the holographic model to positive cc and Tom Banks’ model is one of them. But Tom Banks’ model turns out to be anti-inflationary. While it is true that inflationary scenario is not experimentally established, majority consensus is still in favor of it. You might know about recent controversy in Scientific American magazine where 17 prominent physicists signed in favor of the inflation scenario. The whole field is quite controversial.

Another problem I see with Jim Kowall’ s model is that it relates consciousness to holographic screen which may be some 13.8 B light years away from us. We live for some 70 to 100 years and the consciousness we know ourselves ends with our deaths. Now it may be true that according to eastern philosophy, consciousness jumps from a dead body to a new body on rebirth, but still it is hard to relate is to some screen 13.8 B light years away. Also each of us having our own screen is troubling, since after all there is no difference in consciousness from one person to another and possibly animals who do not understand all this also may have some consciousness. I would rather relate consciousness to something in our neighborhood. It is fine for our neighborhood to be related to what happened 13.8 B years ago but that is a different matter!

Best Regards.

Kashyap
August 8, 2017

Dear Vinod and Vimal,

If you forgive me for jumping into  your debate, in this case I agree with Vinod that,

“The existence of large swathes of space devoid of matter and energy/radiations”.

GR just says that matter curves (distorts) space time. It does not say that there can be no space without matter or radiation. In fact de Sitter universe keeps on expanding with no matter, just a positive cosmological constant. Forget about models of inflation, even now, there is huge amount of interstellar space where there is practically no or extremely little matter or energy. Interstellar space is practically vacuum e.g. you may run into a molecule every few miles! It is possible that I may have  misunderstood your disagreement!

Best Regards.

Kashyap
August 9, 2017
...

Dear Jim,
Logical consistency generates valid deductions. But valid deductions are not sound deductions. If the premises are false the deduction may be valid but will be false. We all use logic as best we can, but it is no good if applied to false dynamics.

You seem to be making the very old error of assuming that the relation of a point of view to what it perceives is optical. This is the true homunculus fallacy - trying to explain how the optical relation of the eye to the world leads to rich inner experience by positing another optical relation. It achieves nothing.

Leibniz uses the analogy of the point  with light coming from all directions as a way of explaining how experience might be rich but he knows enough to see that it is not how things actually work. And now at the fundamental quantum level we have abandoned the trajectories of Newtonian optics. A human point of view must involve some dynamic relation deep within a brain (we can show that empirically) and information does not travel usefully along optical paths in brains. So forget screens and all that. We are almost certainly looking for some sort of distributed relation of field values. I cannot see what event horizons have to do with it either, or organisms, or thermodynamics. This to my mind is just all bad physics. It is just the same old ‘conventional scientific sense’ but with false premises based on applying bits of physics in the wrong way. In my long experience of searching for solutions to tricky problems I have usually found that the answer is something mundane hidden within what you already know, not some new conception based on broad abstract ideas.

Best wishes

Jo
August 8, 2017

Dear Whit,

I think you may be confusing the real homunculus fallacy - that you can explain the nature of experience by replacing one relation with another of the same kind (Dan Dennett’s rather Shakespearian ‘duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain’) - with the spurious homunculus fallacy that denies the need for an inner receiving unit.

The relation of eye to world is optical but it is not intentional because there is no image in the eye and no interpreting of information as ‘about’ anything. That comes later inside the brain. The mistake people make is to think an inner receiving self is redundant when you already have an outer one. As Descartes pointed out there is no outer self, just a machine-like body providing in focussing access route to the inner receiving unit. Organisms or people do not have experiences. Something inside them does. The signals reaching the outside of a body are not in a form that provides any knowledge about anything. Knowledge can only be achieved by differentials computed within. So the signals are not in themselves information. They are the substrate or medium through which information operates.

I do not think the human subject is an illusion. It seems to me it is the most certain thing around. But it is not a person or organism. That would be illusory.

Jo
August 8, 2017

From: "Edwards, Jonathan"
Tuesday, August 8, 2017 8:17 PM
Subject: [Sadhu Sanga] Which came first, consciousness or the brain?

Dear Whit,

I think you may be confusing the real homunculus fallacy - that you can explain the nature of experience by replacing one relation with another of the same kind (Dan Dennett’s rather Shakespearian ‘duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain’) - with the spurious homunculus fallacy that denies the need for an inner receiving unit. 

The relation of eye to world is optical but it is not intentional because there is no image in the eye and no interpreting of information as ‘about’ anything. That comes later inside the brain. The mistake people make is to think an inner receiving self is redundant when you already have an outer one. As Descartes pointed out there is no outer self, just a machine-like body providing in focussing access route to the inner receiving unit. Organisms or people do not have experiences. Something inside them does. The signals reaching the outside of a body are not in a form that provides any knowledge about anything. Knowledge can only be achieved by differentials computed within. So the signals are not in themselves information. They are the substrate or medium through which information operates.

I do not think the human subject is an illusion. It seems to me it is the most certain thing around. But it is not a person or organism. That would be illusory.

Jo
August 8, 2017
...

Dear RLPV,

As regards your tomato quiz, my impression is that there can't be any situation where the God is looking at a tomato. Thus the question is absurd and a mere word play. The following excerpt can help to make things clear.

"we may regard, describe, and realise it as Lila, the play, the child's joy, the poet's joy, the actor's joy,...of the Soul of things eternally young, perpetually inexhaustible, creating and re-creating Himself in Himself for the sheer bliss of that self-creation...Himself the play, Himself the player, Himself the playground"

[Sri Aurobindo,  The Life Divine, p.103],


I haven't noticed you having referred to Sri Aurobindo ever. And I feel that is the reason you haven't been able to convince anyone of the soundness of your eDAM thesis.

Thanks for your patience for responding to all sorts of doubts and disagreements in this forum.

Tusar (b.1955)
August 7, 2017

...

On Tuesday, 8 August 2017, VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL wrote:
Respected Dr. Ram,

Since with our  current state of consciousness, we are  unable to about the cosmic consciousness of OOO-God,  therefore, it is difficult for us to find exactly how a tomato is experienceable by OOO God. In view of this, your question is also ill framed  the way as rightly pointed by BMP that a child trying to get hold of the moon in the lap of his/her mother.

What I replied was based on my logical understanding and not experience. Therefore, you should have also responded based upon some logical understanding.

Vinod Sehgal

Dear Vinod ji,

You may like to investigate if Swami YogeshwaraNanda ji has written something on this topic. Alternatively, you try to find some yogi who is on the highest level and able to answer my simple query. My personal guess is that there is no group experience as concluded in (Theiner & O’Connor, 2010), Therefore, God, as a group of all entities (if He is equivalent to our infinite universe), does not experience anything (I know you will disagree!). However, we (our Ātmans = God because of the Mahāvākya aham brahmāsmi) are the ones who can experience because we have necessary NNs in our mind-brain systems.

Kind regards,
Rām
August 8, 2017
...

Ram: In your OOO-God theory framework, what kind of consciousness research you expect us to do other than prayer and meditation?

BMP: First of all, it is not my theory. What do I know about God? I can only present what I have learned and understood from the literature and those before me who have some realization concerning these topics.

I am not contributing to this forum using prayer and mediation, am I? The vast literature on the subjects which I am offering are in the form of a rational scientific, systematic, philosophical and religious nature. From what i have read of your ideas, although you have obviously worked very hard to accumulate whatever knowledge you do have, I do not see the quality of insight gained from the many authors I have read and know about.  So I am presenting some of those arguments for you to consider for your own benefit and development. I don't expect you or anyone else to know everything. That is one purpose for which this forum exists - to learn from one another, not only for each person's propaganda about themselves. This is the spirit of sadhu-sanga which, as others have commented, is the unique quality of this forum. We don't reject prayer and meditation, or atoms and molecules, or supernatural phenomena, or anything else within the human and divine spirit. All are subjects for consideration if there is an actual rational element being offered for common discussion in defense of such ideas. No one here is interested in dogmatic fundamentalism.

The study and knowledge of consciousness was already accomplished long before you or modern science ever came on the scene. If you are not willing to accept that and think you have the only valid means of understanding the concept of consciousness, for me that would disqualify anyone that I would consider a scientist. [...]

We may not want to hear that there are other conceptions of reality that differ from our own. But we are here together to work out what consciousness may actually mean, and all are trying to contribute their insights as well as critiques as to what may or may not be a valid way to proceed.  Humility, tolerance and respect are requisite in such a process. That's all we can expect  from honest men/women with good will, along with some prayer and mediation that a proper conception may arise from our sincere endeavors in that spirit.

Thank you for your scholarly and gentlemanly attitude here. 

Sincerely,
B Madhava Puri, Ph.D.
Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute
BHAKTI VEDANTA INSTITUTE – of Spiritual Culture & Science
August 6, 2017
...

inUth.com-9 hours ago
Sister Nivedita was not only a great nationalist but also a great human being. She made India her home after meeting Swami Vivekananda and dedicated her ...

The Shillong Times-18 hours ago
We must remember what the Mother (spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo) said about fear, ~ “Fear is always a very bad adviser.” We can only manage a crisis ...

NYOOOZ-07-Aug-2017
Using Upanishads and more contemporary poetry by Tagore, Rumi and Sri Aurobindo, she draws parallels between the story of Savitri and how we look at ...

[HTML] Milojevic's Educational Futures
I Milojevic
... spiritual has been leached from the curriculum. The discrepancy arises because Milojevic draws heavily upon Indian thinkers such as Krishnamurti, Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Gandhi and Sarkar. These men taught and wrote much ...

Vernacular architecture as an idiom for promoting cultural continuity in South Asia with a special reference to Buddhist monasteries
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... for the something intangible it has to express; the spirit needs all the possible help of the material 'body to interpret itself to itself through the eye, yet asks of it that it shall be as transparent a veil as possible of its own greater significance” said Sri Aurobindo, India's renowned ...

[PDF] Lexical, Stylistic and Cultural Issues in the select poem of Bharathidasan: A Translation Study
TXB Arockiaraj
... Sir Aurobindo says that there are two ways of translating poetry; 'one to keep it strictly to the manner and turn of the original and the other is to take its spirit, sense and imagery and produce them freely so as to suit the new language (432)'. To Aurobindo, the second method of ...

[PDF] Importance of Mahabharata–A Brief Overview
R Jairam - Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 2017
... The earliest commentary that has come down is that of the great philosopher Sankaracharya. Outstanding modern commentaries are those of BGTilak, Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. Influence of Mahabharatha - ...

[PDF] Anuradha Publications
PDRBAL KAMBLE
... The Ideology of Indian Foreign Policy: The Indian foreign policy is influenced by the non-violence principle of Mahatma Gandhi and spiritual principle of Aurobindo Ghosh and Rabindranath Tagore. The same thought process resulted into India's attitude towards world politics. ...

[HTML] Pironneau-femInFluids. pdf
O Pironneau
... 13 7 ... The Unseen grew visible to student eyes, 
Explained was the immense Inconscient's scheme, 
Audacious lines were traced upon the void; 
The Infinite was reduced to square and cube. 
Sri Aurobindo Savitri. Book 2, Canto XI FOREWORD. ...

savitri.in › blogs › light-of-supreme › sq...
Oct 15, 2013 - the square always indicates to me [Sri Aurobindo] the Supermind: it is a perfect shape... It might have been already ... The Infinite was reduced to square and cube. ||71.29||. Arranging symbol and ...

savitri.in › blogs › light-of-supreme › 31...
Jul 14, 2017 - (Note: The personal and "who" pronouns within Savitri lines are marked in bold and the possessive pronouns are marked in bold and italics. ... The Infinite was reduced to square and cube ...

And in Rohit Mehta's The Dialogue with Death we read: "In the epic of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo deals exhaustively with the Yoga of Aswapati, which indeed is the Yoga of ..... The Infinite was reduced to square and ...

Talavane Krishna - 2001 - ‎Art
Audacious lines were traced upon the Void; The Infinite was reduced to square and cube. ... Sri Aurobindo, SavitriYANTRA IS A TOOL OR A SYMBOL conceived as a form pattern used to represent a deity or a cosmic  ...

August 05, 2017

Sri Aurobindo is most relevant and useful to our times

www.thehindu.com › article19432269
Sri Aurobindo Study Forum: Discourse on Sri Aurobindo's 'Life Divine' by Subramany, Nithyatha ...

Daily News & Analysis-Makarand R Paranjpe | Sat, 5 Aug 2017
Of all the savants who tried to understand the threats to Hinduism, whether external or internal, perhaps the most relevant and useful to our times, is Sri Aurobindo. He teaches us how best to integrate the past with the present, the modern West with our own intrinsic civilisational genius, the imperatives of realpolitik with the higher calling of Dharma. Without fetishising non-violence or being excessively shy of wielding power, Hindus must not also turn themselves into ferocious or intolerant bullies just because they have a brute majority. The author is a poet and Professor at JNU. 

https://www.youtube.com › watch
Duration: 58:22
Posted: 2 hours ago
Reuniting India - Uniting the World: The Mother's & Sri ...

cosmicpiper.blogspot.com
17 hours ago - Sri Aurobindo said that the political solutions for the human race were neither along the lines of raw capitalism nor freedom-destroying socialism, but something else, namely, the rule of the Suprermind which might be ...

Ultimately, an exercise in svarajist academics, in fact, has less to do with others than with ourselves. If we strengthen ourselves, we will automatically ... 2 See Sri Aurobindo's The Foundations of Indian Culture, which is a good example of such a trans-civilizational approach. Throughout the essays collected in this book, Sri ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
Looking at the literature, svarajist writing from Lokmanya Tilak or Sri Aurobindo through to strategies of decolonizing the mind, up to Ashis Nandy and S.N. Balagangadhara and even Arvind Kejriwal, what you find is that a thick conception of svaraj tends to link it with at least two, and usually more, of the following traits: ...

JNU: course readings: philosophical explorations of indian modernity - (tuesday august 08) the first chapter of aurobindo's renaissance in india ("renaissance in india" book pages 3-40).

1 In The Visva-Bharati Quarterly, where the talk was first published, the title was 'Swaraj in Ideas'; however, when it is reprinted in the Indian Philosophical ... For more on this, see the chapter 'Sri Aurobindo and Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya: Relation between Science and Spiritualism' in Raghuramaraju (2006) for the  ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
Gabriel R. Ricci - 2017 - ‎Preview
perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your abstinence as others by resort to violence.2 It is Sri Aurobindo's understanding, and not Gandhi's, that has been predominant among the various ... Broadly speaking, what differentiates Hindu nationalism from Hindu religiosity is the ideology of Hindutva or “ Hinduness.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
The four proponents of Hindutva, which Sharma expounds are Dayananda Saraswati (1824–1883) (founder of the Arya Samaj),40 Aurobindo Ghose ... of the main protagonists for the reintroduction of the pure Vedic type religion.45 The writings and thought of Sri Aurobindo Ghose went through a considerable development.

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Sujit Choudhry, ‎Madhav Khosla, ‎Pratap Bhanu Mehta - 2016 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
Similarly, the followers of Sri Aurobindo were told that they were not members of a religious group. ... In the mid-1990s the Court in the controversial 'Hindutva' ruling69 conflated the inclusivist discourse on Hinduism, outlined in Yagnapurushdasji, with the exclusivist version of Hinduism propounded by Hindu nationalists.70  ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
D. Anand - 2016 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
In contemporary times, Hindutva argues that Hindus are a distinct politico-cultural nation, a nation whose numerical majority has not translated into a political majority ... including Bhimrao Ambedkar, Sri Aurobindo, or Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi are selectively scavenged upon to make a case against Muslims and Christians, ...

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17 Origin of Hindutva Dear Ziauddin It is true that the expression cultural nationalism is regarded to have been first used by Rajnarain Bose, the grandfather of Sri Aurobindo, way back in the 19th century. This, however, should not lead anyone to believe that Hindutva is as recent as that. Nor was it a reaction against either ...

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Hindutva, Security and Militarism in India P. M. Joshy, K. M. Seethi. of Vivekananda's ... Following Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo also vigorously attacked the very notion of modern state. ... For Aurobindo, nationalism was a religion, “the passionate aspiration of the religion of the divine unity in the nation” ( Aurobindo 1965: 15).

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Two others, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, envisioned freedom and glory for India in the spiritual richness and heritage of Hinduism. Swami ... was given a new political twist in the 1920s when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1923/1989), an activist and author, introduced the term Hindutva as distinct from Hinduism.

... of A. K. Ramanujan's essay 'Three Hundred Ramayanas and Some Thoughts on Translation' from Delhi University syllabus after Hindutva students vandalized ... where he has been living for 40 years, because of the biography he wrote on Sri Aurobindo, which was accused of hurting the feelings of Aurobindo's devotees.

Hindutva has become a term that describes a specific ideology of cultural nationalism that seeks to reorganise Indian society. ... Sri Aurobindo has detailed the importance of 'Bande Mataram' for the Indian freedom struggle in a lecture in Amraoti, a summary of which appeared in the newspaper Bande Mataram on 29 ...

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CHAPTER FOUR CULTURAL NATIONALISM, MASCULINE HINDUISM, AND CONTEMPORARY HINDUTVA1. It is the goal ... Gautier, a follower of Sri Aurobindo, sees himself (one assumes) as a Hindu, and the VHP's frequent use of his ideas and words seem to indicate its acceptance of such self-identification. The words ...