This is the ninth chapter of the book „Viveka – the Voice of Inner Guru. “

The whole book will be tokenized as NFTs on Mirror and, as such, published in 20 articles (20 chapters of the book: The Illusion; India, oh India!; The Accurate description of the Reality; The Crown Jewel; Dead Guru; Living student; Who you?; Leaving the room; The Weakness of the Mind; The Archimedean Point; Three Powers of Maya; Viveka - the Sword of Truth; The Cave of the Mind; Language Can Save Us; Searching for Lakshana; Nine Golden Rules of Viveka; Purification Exercises; What to do with all this?; Dealing with Fear; Ekam Evadvityam: Living without a Center).

Chapter Nine: The Weakness of the Mind

brahmānandarasāsvādāsaktacittatayā yateḥ |
antarbahiravijñānaṃ jīvanmuktasya lakṣaṇam ||

When the mind sees the Oneness, a sign of liberation appears:
a clear understanding of an absence of any differentiation
between inner and outer.

Vivekachudamani 435

The attempts to break through the veils of illusion in the West are, at best, circumstantial. Looking at the academic environment today and a couple of hundred years back in the past, you will find that true epistemological questions are quite rare. Please, don't hate me if you are an academic philosopher or specialized epistemologist. I am aware that epistemology exists and represents a wide field of exploration. But, with due respect, what's the use of exploring how we acquire knowledge if we skip the answer to the fundamental question?

Perhaps, an average reader didn't hear about the epistemology at all, not to mention the understanding of its peculiarities. It is a science about how we know things. Without knowing, of course, we don't know. So, the question of how we know is essential. We should not only devote due time to finding an answer, but probably we should put it in the center of our study of reality, or better to say, at the very beginning of it.

If you take a closer look at the old India's academic environment, you'll find that it is mostly devoted to finding the answers to epistemological questions. The knowledge itself -vidya – is always true. What is not true is ignorance – avidya. The problem is in finding the difference. How do you recognize knowledge and differentiate it from ignorance?

Undoubtedly, some of the rishis and scholars of ancient India did find an answer to that question. They wanted to convey the answer to the future generations and preserve it so everyone interested could find it more easily. With that intention, they established a tradition. Countless generation of brahmans and pundits devoted their entire life to protecting what they believed to be the expression of true knowledge – the Vedas. They kept the tradition going for thousands of years. Except for the original Vedic hymns gathered in four main „books“ (writing is not compatible with Vedic hymns; singing or reciting is), they included into tradition a secondary „literature“, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads, Vedangas, etc. There is one interesting distinction you should note: knowledge is divided into two categories: what is heard - śruti, and what is remembered - smṛti. Something to think about, isn’t it?

In addition, almost every prominent guru left behind a long line of students, thus creating another branch of the enormous tree of tradition—all in the name of preserving knowledge. For eager followers, the rule is simple: have faith in the tradition. If something is confirmed by it, it is knowledge. If there is no confirmation from the tradition, that is ignorance. Of course, people are people, not always wise and not always with pure intentions—even those in the position of representing the tradition. Perhaps, especially not them.

The true knowers continuously coming onto this world are usually renegades, people who took a different approach. Shankara was one of them, a different kind of teacher. But India demonstrated her adaptive cultural quality and embraced him wholeheartedly. He became not only a part of the tradition but a founder, a person to look at when it comes to trusting spiritual authority.

However, trust, belief, conviction, or faith was never Shankara's advice regarding discriminative abilities. Quite the contrary, in his commentaries of Brahmasutrabhasya (92), Shankara defined ignorance - avidya – as "...the mutual superimposition of subject and object, the mutual transposing of Self and nonself, the unacceptable combining of true and false."

Well, there is always something true about the tradition, but there is always something false, as well. In a way, the last part of his definition of ignorance is an accurate picture of any tradition – an unacceptable combination of true and false.

Shankara was a scientist.

What a strange thing to say! But, indeed, he was a bigger scientist than many of history's most celebrated minds. He didn't compromise with the truth. And he didn't compromise on how we can know the truth about our reality. Our scientists do compromise with that. They make a huge assumption, which is impossible to verify, and then continue further as if nothing has happened. What assumption is that?

The assumption about the independent existence of the outer, material world.

You might be confused now because what is more evident than the existence of the Universe around us? Yes, the presence of the Universe is evident, but the assumption is not about the Universe. It is about the idea that the Universe is something outside us and that it is made from matter.

There is no proof for such an assumption, and it never will be. Without proof, a real scientist could not and should not accept anything, especially the primary ground, the starting point of his worldview. Shankara didn't do such a thing, but most western scientists did. There are a few exceptions like Plato, for example, and his „Allegory of the Cave.“ Or Descartes and his „Meditation on First Philosophy, “ from which I took one of the motos for this book:

„I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he* has devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things.“

*„He“ in Descartes's sentence is „an evil demon“ – an entity that causes an illusion, entirely compatible with Shankara's idea of Maya.

What? People have no hands or eyes, no flesh or bodies? Nonsense – I see them (hands), I see through them (eyes); I feel them, they are here – they are parts of me. How can anyone claim that they do not exist?

That is a natural and intuitive question. However, from the viveka standpoint, it is not valid. Namely, Descartes didn't say that the hands and eyes do not exist. He said that they are part of the „delusion of dreams. “ And dreams do exist. Delusions exist. Everything in them exists, too.

If you continue to study and develop viveka, you'll quickly learn to pay attention to the meaning of words. We are inclined to make mistakes in how we understand what we read or hear. It is easy to mix the idea of delusion and non-existence. If something is a delusion, that means it doesn't exist, right?

No. Not right. It exists. Fully exists. But, it exists in a delusional reality. It does not exist in reality as it is but in a specific, subjective, and most probably false reality of a delusion. That is what Descartes wrote, proclaiming the notion of „having a flesh“ together with senses and the whole perceived Universe, an illusion.

Now, if you truly understand that, you should ask the fundamental question of philosophy: what does the „reality as it is“ looks like? You would like to know, wouldn't you? Nice. But how?

How do you know what you know? Or, better, how do you know what you think you know? And here we are - the fundamental question of epistemology!

For an ordinary person in the human condition, the answer is in the „physical“ experience. „Physical“ is in quotes because it is an interpretation. There is nothing in the experience that suggests its physicality.

For the western scientist, the answer is in perceptual consensus. The knowledge is confirmed if we perceive the same thing repeatedly and if that perception does not change from one observer to the other.

For a viveka student, both ideas are unacceptable. The first one, the idea of something being physical just because it seems so, is unacceptable because any interpretation without direct knowledge can not be the basis for further investigation. To be clear, the idea of reality defined as a „spiritual“ is equally unacceptable for the same reason – it is an interpretation. Viveka student is therefore left with – an experience. Without adjective.

The adjective „physical“ usually serves as a reinforcement for previously accepted belief in the independent existence of a material universe. Please note that the same could be said for the adjective „spiritual“. To think all that we perceive is spiritual and non-material and that we are, in essence, spiritual beings having a material... well, you know how the saying goes – is the same mistake in a different form.

For a viveka student, there is just - an experience. What it is and how it came about, we do not know, at least for now. So, any interpretation is not acceptable at this early stage. In the words of Shankara, such interpretations are the „unacceptable combining of true and false“ or, in other words, ignorance.

As for a perceptual consensus... well, until recently, that was a hard one to crack. The old advaita masters (and others alike, for example, Zhuangzi and his question about butterfly and who's dreaming who) struggled with an analogy of a dream. That is subjectively acceptable because, in dreams, we have very vivid experiences. Those experiences feel „real“, like the ones we have when we are awake. So, how do we know that the reality of the awakened state of consciousness is not just another kind of a dream?

However plausible that analogy looks for spiritual people, sometimes leading them into a solipsistic worldview, for a scientist, it is weak. Dreams are highly subjective and changeable from one observer to another. No two people have the same dream, and if they have it by some chance, the third person certainly doesn't. In dreams, there is no perceptual consensus. In scientific reality, there is a perceptual consensus: if a million observers look at any part of the so-called „physical“ reality, they will see the same thing. And that should be proof that what they see is truly real.

Alas! Virtual reality, the result of science and technology, disproves that. You can put a million observers in virtual reality, and they will have the same experience. There will be a perceptual consensus, but simultaneously, the dream-like nature of such a reality will be preserved. It is a delusion. Compelling one, but yet only a delusion.

Plato tried to explain what was going on with the cave wall and the shadows cast by the Sun outside the cave; Shankara summoned Maya, a Lady of the Illusion, and Descartes complained about an evil demon. But none of them make the idea of „true“ reality so questionable as computers and VR.

What do you think? Is it possible that what we call our reality is just a construction of the mind? You should be aware that with the acceptance of that possibility, you didn't negate the existence of any experience. You just raised a question about its nature.

To be truthful, the idea of reality as a construction of the mind is present among western philosophers. „The brain in a vat“ (or in a jar) is a picture of the brain taken out of the skull and placed in an artificial environment. If such a brain receives precisely the same impulses as it supposedly receives in the skull, from the perspective of a brain, it would not be possible to tell if it is in a skull or a vat. The movie „Matrix“ made this idea very popular.

If we extend the analogy further, how do we know that the mind, which is, according to prevalent science, the product of brain activity, is actually in the brain? If it were somewhere else, for example, in an electronic environment or a pure spiritual environment (like in someone else's super-mind), and the impulses it receives would be the same, there would be no way for the mind to tell where it actually is.

Either way, the mind has to decide about reality. It does that by interpreting experiences and making assumptions about their nature. So, if a mistake is made, it is made by the mind. That's why the manomayakosha or the body of the mind, is usually found guilty of the sin of creating the illusion. And rightfully so.

Let's look at how western philosophy and science skipped the fundamental question of knowledge. I deliberately avoided the expression „solved“ because the problem is not solved. It is literally skipped.

Since we apparently can not know how we know about the reality, and our mind is in an awkward position of interpreting the experiences without sure knowledge about almost anything, western philosophers endorsed the idea of a „true belief, “ or as Gilbert Harman put it - the „inference to the best explanation“. You may also hear expressions like „true propositions“, „justified true sentences“, or most commonly, „justified true belief“.

Plainly and simply, for western philosophers and scientists who care about science (some don't care but accept the premises without thinking, thus creating an oxymoronic situation known as „scientific dogma“), it is justified to believe in an independent existence of the outside, material world. They know it is a belief, but using epistemological tricks, they accept that belief as knowledge.

One of the „tricks“ of the „justified true belief“ theory goes like this: To know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition but also have a good reason for doing so. But, what is a „good reason“to justify a belief? Obviously, we are entering a misty place science should not enter. And then, we found so-called Gettier problems (1963), cases where individuals can have a justified, true belief regarding a claim but still fail to know it because the reasons for the belief, while justified, turn out to be false.

Really? What a surprise! Even without Edmund Gettier, it should be a no-brainer that the idea of justification of the belief will result in a difference in measurements and opinions and many mistakes, as well. Still, according to other philosophers like Paul Boghossian, the justified true belief account is the standard, widely accepted definition of knowledge.

Let me summarise it without going into the jungle of philosophical particularities. Scientists think that their belief in an outside material world is justified. That's it. Nothing else. They don't know; they believe. The justification for that belief is based on perceptual consensus, and that is, as we have explained with the VR analogy, a questionable justification. After that, everything that follows, the whole worldview, is built upon that belief.

The whole mess science made with the fundamental question of knowledge smells a lot like the „unacceptable combining of true and false“, or simply – ignorance. To avoid endangering the basic premise of the existence of an independent outside material world (which came first as a belief, with an afterward elaborate justification), western philosophers (except for a few) made a lot of hard-to-follow, confusing mind constructions. In contrast, Shankara contends that vidya (knowledge, real knowledge) is construction-free and not construction-filled.

So, knowledge should be simple. Or at least simple enough so that the student of viveka, with no exceptional intelligence or abilities, just with highly intensive mumukshuta (a desire for liberation), can follow it from the start to the end.

***

Next Chapter: The Archimedean Point