Sunday 18th of April 2003.
Dear Gary
I shall be responding in parts as the questions are quite demanding. So it will take a few days. I hope you can put up with it.
Loga
Meykandar, Hume and Heidegger
Loga-1
it has been concluded positively - there is a substantial entity
(GCM: This would mean it is a thing like a rock, that is, it is perceivable, it has specific measurements AND PLACE [it has to be WITHIN the dimensions of your body IN SOME MANNER] which means then it can be divided into parts. This is one of the many criticisms of Hume )
Loga-2:
I don’t understand this view of Hume. Yes to be real it has to be perceived. But does this apply to that which does the perceiving itself? Every act of perception PRESUPPOSES that which perceives, sees etc without itself being as one of those which are seen objectively like the rocks, trees, rivers etc. The seeing self is NOT one of these but that because of which these things become the SEEN. In every act of seeing, the one who sees, sees himself as the seer. So acts of perception have double signification - there is something that is objectively seen (and which can be measured) and also something reflectively seen - that it is self that sees. When I see the rock there, it is MY seeing and NOT that of another and this I know in the act of seeing itself.
That which is seen as the seer in every act of seeing cannot be objectified like the trees and rocks and hence measured, placed in time and location etc.
I can stand as the body but I am NOT the body and hence I cannot be located within the body only. Destruction of the body will not count as destruction of self.
GCM2: “Perception exists.” There can be no disagreement on that. It is precisely “presupposition” as “reality” that self-contradicts itself. If a “presupposition” is real, then any whimsy can be real. That one needs it or has great use for it or that it makes thinking as one has grown use to it extremely inconvenient does not make it true. Hume states he needs presuppositions by which to act and speak with others in ordinary life. But this is useful thinking, “common sense”, what one inherits in language through “tradition” or “understanding.” It has no logical basis in itself. It is PURELY inductive, and not at all deductive EXCEPT for INTERNAL consistency. In other words, you cannot stand outside your “tradition’, your purely pragmatic “presuppositions”, and ‘objectively, detached, judge it because the “world” you live in and which gives you the stance by which to judge is primordially created by that tradition. It is inclusive of you and you are always included so that any real “objective” view of it is purely from WITHIN, USING ONLY ITS TERMS AND CONCEPTS TO JUDGE ITSELF, so that if a judgment is made, it is only a judgment as to self-consistency and never objective validity.
The only stance of “objective validity” is logic. Logic has no means of judging experience, of discerning whether it is separate from you or somehow created by you. If this doubt is taken seriously as an ACT of judgment, it is solipsism. But you can already see that stance is self-contradictory because if all that is real is only you, why are you making a judgment in language that is solely grounded on the existence of other people that that all that is real is only you? I would be telling you, “You don’t exist!” which necessarily presupposes you exist.
Now, if there is no self there can be no perceiver. They are synonymous. How can you prove a perceiver exists? That would mean, once again, standing outside ‘your self’, that is, your situation which is itself perception. There is no need to even speak of a perceiver. “Perception” as literally experienced includes all objectivity and all subjectivity. All of that is ‘perceived’ in some way. But just as literal perception as perceived HAS NO BOUNDARY, that is, “I see this but I do not see that” becomes a logical contradiction because in the context of perception you only perceive and you cannot NOT PERCEIVE. There can be no place you can designate except in mere words that you do not perceive, because if you designate it you must see it. This is how I understand, for instance, Shankara’s identity of ‘self’ and Atman, that there never was a real distinction in the first place, that you “always already” were Atman or Brahman, that is you never did have self or identity except as illusion, and that all that is perceived is literally ‘yours’ in that you are it and it is you. We make distinctions of perceiver and perceived for purely practical reasons, common sense reasons, business reasons, useful reasons, but those distinctions are not strictly logical.
Loga-1
that is called 'self' and is different form BEING (God Brahman) etc,
(GCM: Then Brahman cannot be all-inclusive and infinite and omniscient and omnipotent, etc.)
Loga-2
The Brahman of Advaita should not be confused with BEING (Siva) of the Saivites where the Brahman is just one of the showings of BEING. That the anmas are ontologically independent of BEING does not mean BEING is not omniscient, omnipotent etc. For the primordial state of all anmas (and the world) is one of being in the DARK, covered-up by the Malam, the Darkness, also unconfigured and indestructible. The anmas and the world along with it enjoy PRESENCE, being-there-as-such only because of the GRACE of BEING (Siva). He is Omnipotent for only He can destroy being-there of all by SaGkaaram, of destroying the presence, of letting Malam pervade again. And because of this He is also the POWER that can regenerate everything - re-issue the whole world (punar uRpatti).
GCM2: If Siva can act, then he HAS TO BE finite because any action whatsoever is from one thing to another, and only “things”, finite identities, can act. For Siva to “destroy being-there” or “of letting Malam pervade again”, he has to be a finite being, and if finite, mortal.
LOGA2: BEING-as-Siva is the Most Powerful among all gods because only He can self-destroy and self-recreate and thus something like the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle.
GCM2: The “unmoved mover” of Aristotle is a matter of physics, as mentioned in the PHYSICS (Bk VIII), and the description in the METAPHYSICS, Bk XII, 7 refers the unmoved mover in Empedoclean language (“Thus it produces motion by being loved . . .” 1072b4) to a purely cosmological, i. e., physics again, context.
LOGA2: There is NO POWER that stands as different and above that can destroy and regenerate BEING-as-Siva
He stands as all (astamurti) including the selves (avaiyee taanaay) and hence all-inclusive, in the sense of being present everywhere with Power over them. But He can stand as distinct and ABOVE all as well (BEING as Cutta Cattan) for only then He can pull all creatures unto Himself, set the dynamics of spiritual evolution ongoing as a feature of the world, show Himself as the DANCER.
GCM2: If Siva stands “distinct” and “above”, he is again finite because distinctness gives him boundaries and “above” gives him position. If you are speaking metaphorically about something you cannot speak about, then you are saying nothing factually at all.
But, as art, I have always loved “Siva the Destroyer Dancing on the Deamon of Time (?)”.
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