Maybe Rene Descartes Was an Advaitin?
Yesterday’s blog prompted quite a bit of discussion as well as a word I’d heard, but never thought enough about to find the meaning of – Solipsism. Ignorant as I am, I Googled it and read enough to figure out what it meant. If I may paraphrase, I think it means that the only existence and experience I can be sure of is my own. Something was said about Descartes and Solipsism when he said, “Je ponce, donc je suis” – “I think, therefore I am.” That’s where the differences emerge. “I think.” I guess Descartes deduced his existence because he had thoughts. Maybe if he was and Advaitin, Descartes would’ve said, “Je suis” – “I am.” Obviously, he was just a smidge off.
If someone was to ask me, “Do you think?”, I believe I would be able to answer that with an immediate, “Yes.” I think, therefore I agree with Descartes. I can’t separate the thinker from the “I am”. Who else thinks if not me (I)? I hear, “thoughts arise” from Advaitins. Where do they come from? To prove that they aren’t from me, it’s been suggested that I try to control my next thought, or to just watch them. I see that as trying to control hearing. Can you control what is heard? No. Can I control what I think about what is heard? I think so, but where’s my proof?
When I question deeply my understanding of reality, I guess Solipsism may be the ultimate reductionist approach. You can’t prove, or disprove Solipsism because it all has to be proved, or disproved in your own mind, which is alleged to be all that exists; or at least all you can prove that exists by it’s very operation. I can’t ultimately prove that any of these people that comment on my blogs exist. I can’t ultimately prove that these are my fingers typing these words on this keyboard. To whom would I prove it? Isn’t it enough that I can prove my own existence, and enjoy the existence I’ve created for myself without getting bogged down in trying to figure out the ultimate reality behind it all? Why can’t I just BE, and leave all this mess alone? Why can’t I just push the “I believe” button, and get on with living and dying? Why must I torture myself with these incessant questions? And, for Christ’s sake, WHO WANTS TO KNOW?
Each thought a gift, apparent reality a game, apparently an uncomfortable one from time to time! As my 11-year-old son says, chillax, Dude.
I’m chillax’n. I don’t spend an enormous amount of time in contemplation, so it’s not all-encompasing with me. But when I do think about it, I go deep.
Please delete my previous comment- the link is broken.
These are the two relevant articles:
The universe in your head”, and Biocentrism: how life creates the universe”
Regards,
Baskar
OK, I deleted your previous post. I’ll have a read. Thanks again, Baskar. You are an unending wealth of information and suppot. Thanks!
Please check this:
“As I then desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought … I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained [anything at all] in my belief that was wholly indubitable. Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us … [T]he very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search … I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that ‘I’, that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter …”
There are two more paras at New Learning. For some reason, I can’t pinpoint it, I find these passages moving.
Regards,
Baskar
PS: We see a blind man move, making sense of what he perceives- it might look cold logic, the way he goes about- but if you think about what it means to have sight, and the emptiness of what is missed, and the ‘unavailedness’ of what is filled in- I cannot express what I feel when I think about it….
Sandra Dalene VanAlstine – Wanted to introduce myself
Thanks
Sandra Dalene VanAlstine
Very nice to meet you Sandra! Thanks for dropping by.
Mike