The radical autonomy of Consciousness and how it relates to "free will"
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- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
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Thank you for reminding us the true source of freedom is abiding in Consciousness.
🙏
This clarifies the subject of free will for me, thank you
I just realized that I am not my body. Wow, I knew it but something just flipped when as I was watching this video and was forced by divine will to pause and be chewed on by my dog Rosie. Deep stuff man! Seriously though, thank you.
Christopher, we love you!
🕉
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It is a pleasure and a gift to hear and see everything you offer us.
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Thank you
Great talk. Brought some more layers together for me
great topic, i've been contemplating it for some time, thanks a lot for sharing your view.
@@gaiatrys well I'm trying to share the traditional view on this, not just "my view"...
There is no seperate self, but will itself is free.
@@Snowypeak-e3n of course.
❤❤❤
Thank you for your wisdom
This clarifies your past videos on the topic a lot. It seems to basically come down to: the more one abides in Awake Awareness the more "free will" one experiences, while the more one is identified with the egoic self, one may "think" they have free will but are actually just experiencing bondage to their conditioning.
But then, at the same time, free will in reality doesn’t really exist?
@Born-u7h If u ask me I'd say it doesn't exist to the egoic self-images. The more one abides in Awake Awareness though, the more Spontaneous their actions become. So free will exists and doesn't exist at the same time, it just depends from which angle one is seeing it.
@@Born-u7h The will is, in reality, free. But the separate self doesn't possess free will for the simple reason that the separate self is a fiction.
Thank you for clarifying yet again the concept of free will. OM 🙏
thanks very much for your videos on tantra.
Chaitanyamatma
As a Trika Saiva I’ve been studying the other schools of Vedanta and the most advanced among them I believe is achintya bheda abheda. Setting aside them being Vaishnava, on a philosophical level they seem most similar to the Trika philosophy, I’m curious what are their primary differences.
I guess the biggest difference is that they always keep some level of difference between God and the Jiva, but in the Trika system you can actually realize yourself as Shiva in this very body. Also unlike the Trika they don’t believe the world is a manifestation of Conciousness, but that Prakriti has always existed eternally.
In fact, I was debating one of them a while back just for fun and they found it illogically that awareness would manifest anything at all, but that it’s more logical to just say Prakriti has always existed.
@@shattered_lightsb8381 they were wrong to invoke logic. Neither position can be said to be logical in any strict sense.
I remember when I came across your video called "what is non-duality". Thanks to this, I understood, saw and felt what it was all about. The absence of a subject, center is the absence of the owner and doer. The will is free :)
However, I do not understand why concept of consciousness appears in this context. What do you mean by consciousness? Isn't this the core of separation, ..source, space, substance, autonomy, cause, perciever, seer etc. conscious of, some kind of relationship, knowledge, self-awareness? ..self in disguise?
I also don't understand the idea of true nature, „my real nature”, losing it and the search for it. If there is no separate entity, so quest and path of self-realization isn't a illusory manifestation? This is already done so what's the point? How could you lose it, know it if you are absent and if there is no differece from what is?
@@easylee3612 these are good questions. Here the meaning of the word consciousness is different from how the word is used in the West and even in Buddhism. Consciousness or awareness (the words are used interchangeably in this tradition) here simply means the capacity for experience -- the capacity for *any* experience whatsoever, and the context in which all experience arises. Nothing to do with separation or substance or cause or relationship or even 'seer' per se -- all of those come and go but awareness remains, as it is the prerequisite for experience of any kind. As for your real nature (which we could call aware beingness), you can't possibly lose it but you can fail to recognize it, as nearly everybody does. The quest and path of self-realization is not an illusion, it is the quest to fully realize what you are, to fully recognize your true nature. Sometimes we use the metaphor of someone looking through a window in the evening: their own image is reflected in the glass but they don't notice it, since they're looking through it and observing all the things beyond the window. Then if their eyes focus on the window itself, they recognize their own image in the glass -- it was there all the time but they were overlooking it and attending instead to objects of awareness. This is just a metaphor of course but it can be an effective pointer to what we're talking about here. Once the recognition has really happened ('really' referring to the non-conceptual direct recognition rather than its conceptual correlate), then there is a whole process of unravelling the tension and/or falsehood that has built up through not recognizing one's true nature for so long. That is very much *not* "already done". (Not sure I get the drift of your final question, but hopefully this is enough for you to chew on.)
@@christopherwallis751 I understand, thank you. If the nature of consciousness, of everything, is freedom, I wonder if this whole journey towards freedom makes sense. Something here is really making an effort, evolving, discovering something, or what happens happens, what we call self-sense, this tension appears or not and that's it?
@@easylee3612 in a way both are true. There is a journey towards realizing and experiencing the unbounded freedom that already exists everywhere as everything. We call it a journey metaphorically, though it's possible this realization could happen in an instant. If it does, the unraveling of falsehood and delusion follows the realization. But it's important not to confuse belief and realization here. The former is mental, the latter is visceral.
About the traditional view, I'm not clear how the limited power of action/agency (one of the five veils/coverings, tattva #7) of the individual fit with this teaching. If it's a limited form of the divine power, doesn't the tradition grant that there is at least some power of action/agency even at this level?
@@jeandimitriadis2050 Yes but it's not actually independent or separate in any way. It's an _apparent_ limitation of the autonomous agency of consciousness that is creating the illusion of individuality.
@@christopherwallis751 Thank you for clearing this up. Much appreciated. May this sink in on a deep level!
Dear Dr Hareesh, I was writing some blog posts about Tantras. I was viewing ur videos on VBT. Can I have your permission to add ur books and videos as reference to my blog posts. I am also happy to share about ur book also.
@@roshenrejiidiculla9577 of course
So, you are saying, free will is an illusion to the false self. To the person trapped in the vicious cycle of self-imposed NPD abuse, they are a performing marionette, putting on a show only for themselves in a mirrored prison room, with no choice without karmic repercussions. Whereas, when you are aware that you are a portion of the Self - (the One in All), then you have radical freedom, thereby _regaining_ your freewill - as you will _choose_ to be harmless and respectful?
@@treysmythstunes well, it's not quite that simple. Please see the other four videos in this series to understand better... there's a playlist.
@@christopherwallis751 ok, thank you.
@@treysmythstunes The performing marionette analogy is not so far off, as long as we understand that there's no one pulling the strings apart from the person's own biology and psychology (with all the influences encoded there). Are you asking whether someone with NPD would become free of it if they have a spiritual awakening that stabilizes?
I don't think this is correct btw. Shiva can mean trans-individual consciousness but what it means is just the self. KS is not saying we are expressions or manifestation of freedom, we are freedom. U are unnecessarily bringing notions of contingence and independence from Classical logic.
@@Snowypeak-e3n this is a simple misunderstanding. when I spoke of being an expression or manifestation of freedom, I was specifically referring to the human organism, not its essence-nature (sva-svabhāva), which indeed is not an expression of anything else.
I think the next best work of Abhinavagupta that should be translated after Tantraloka is his Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛti-vimarśini. It’s arguably his most philosophically intense work, it also includes direct refutations of key doctrines of Advaita Vedanta.
On a side note, thank you very much for your translations of Tantrasara, Spanda Karikas and other texts. I find them much more clear than any other translation I’ve come across.
@@shattered_lightsb8381 it's very difficult to translate, but there are a number of great scholarly articles written on it.
@@christopherwallis751 thank you, could you point me to some of those articles?
@@shattered_lightsb8381 Isabelle Ratié and Rafaelle Torella are the main two authors to check out, on academia.edu
Thank you