Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta

Gasparri, Luca

doi:10.1353/pew.2019.0002

Cited by 17 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The commentaries of Adi Śaṅkara, which give a monistic reading to the Vedic canon, have a soteriological goal (mokṣa, spiritual liberation) and identify personal (saguṇa) Brahma as God (Ῑśvara), whose manifestations are the objects of worship and daily devotion. A number of contemporary authors have sought to explore the connection between analytic panpsychism and Advaita Vedanta, and investigated whether this ancient Indian philosophical tradition can aid contemporary panpsychists in resolving the combination problem (Albahari, 2019(Albahari, , 2020(Albahari, , 2022Ganeri, 2022;Gasparri, 2019;Leidenhag, 2021b;Vaidya, 2020).…”

Section: When Mind Is God: Pantheism and Polytheismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Panpsychism and God

Leidenhag

2022

Philosophy Compass

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Panpsychism is the view, found in ancient and modern, Eastern and Western philosophies, that mind is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe. This article explores the use of panpsychism to support different views of God. It is seen that as a family of views, panpsychism is a theologically flexible position that has been used to support atheism, pantheism, panentheism, and traditional monotheism. However, the relationship between panpsychism and philosophy of religion is not infinitely flexible. Different versions of panpsychism constrain these models of God, and vice versa. The different motivations for linking panpsychism to (dis)belief in God reveals the range of ways of interpreting the spiritual import of positing mentality in nature.

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Section: When Mind Is God: Pantheism and Polytheismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Panpsychism and God

Leidenhag

2022

Philosophy Compass

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“…The philosopher Miri (Albahari 2019a(Albahari , 2019b draws upon Advaita Vedānta to argue that a nondual theory of Pure Consciousness is best equipped to address the hard problem of consciousness. Very recently, however, a number of philosophers have argued that the illusionist metaphysics of Advaita Vedānta renders it incapable of explaining the conscious experiences of empirical individuals, the very existence of which is denied from the ultimate standpoint (Gasparri 2019;Vaidya 2020). Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that the world-affirming Advaita philosophies of Vivekananda and Aurobindo offer a more compelling cosmopsychist theory of consciousness, according to which the Infinite Divine Reality actually manifests as individual consciousnesses through a process of self-involution (Medhananda Forthcoming a,Medhananda Forthcoming b).…”

Section: Conclusion: Aurobindo's Significance For the Current Ecological Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Cutting the Knot of the World Problem: Sri Aurobindo’s Experiential and Philosophical Critique of Advaita Vedānta

Medhananda

2021

Religions

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This article proposes to examine in detail Aurobindo’s searching—and often quite original—criticisms of Advaita Vedānta, which have not yet received the sustained scholarly attention they deserve. After discussing his early spiritual experiences and the formative influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on his thought, I outline Aurobindo’s philosophy of “realistic Adwaita”. According to Aurobindo, the sole reality is the Divine Saccidānanda, which is not only the static impersonal Brahman but also the personal, dynamic Cit-Śakti (Consciousness-Force), which manifests as everything in this universe. At various points in his corpus, Aurobindo criticizes Advaita Vedānta on three fronts. From the standpoint of spiritual experience, Aurobindo argues that Śaṅkara’s philosophy is based on a genuine, but partial, experience of the Infinite Divine Reality: namely, the experience of the impersonal nondual Absolute and the corresponding conviction of the unreality of everything else. Aurobindo claims, on the basis of his own spiritual experiences, that there is a further stage of spiritual experience, when one realizes that the impersonal-personal Divine Reality manifests as everything in the universe. From a philosophical standpoint, Aurobindo questions the logical tenability of key Advaitic doctrines, including māyā, the exclusively impersonal nature of Brahman, and the metaphysics of an illusory bondage and liberation. Finally, from a scriptural standpoint, Aurobindo argues that the ancient Vedic hymns, the Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavad-Gītā, propound an all-encompassing Advaita philosophy rather than the world-denying Advaita philosophy Śaṅkara claims to find in them. This article focuses on Aurobindo’s experiential and philosophical critiques of Advaita Vedānta, as I have already discussed his new interpretations of the Vedāntic scriptures in detail elsewhere. The article’s final section explores the implications of Aurobindo’s life-affirming Advaitic philosophy for our current ecological crisis.

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“…It is worth mentioning that variants views of the theory of cosmopsychism were put forth in succession by Mathews (2011); Jaskolla and Buck (2012); Keppler (2013); Shani (2015); Nagasawa and Wager (2017);and Goff (2017). Some papers linking Indian and world philosophy with the theory were also published by a host of scholars (Ganeri 2020(Ganeri , 2022Gasparri 2019Gasparri , 20222022;and Velmans 2021). The present work is a humble attempt to interface the primary sources of the indian knowledge system (Ṛigveda, Upaniṣads, Yogasūtra, and Srīmadbhagavadgītā) with the theory of Cosmopsychism without entertaining any philosophical wrangling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding cosmopsychism based on stochastic electrodynamics from the perspective of the Indian knowledge system

Mukherjee,

Dixit

2023

The Scientific Temper

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Cosmopsychism is a novel paradigm that has the potential to respond to the hard problem of consciousness. It is based on the theoretical framework of stochastic electrodynamics. Considering both consciousness and matter as the primary reality, cosmopsychism describes the dynamic interaction of the brain with the ubiquitous field of consciousness (UFC), resulting in a number of information states. The UFC is conceived to exhibit twofold properties— extrinsic and intrinsic. The extrinsic property has the characteristics of the field of physics, whereas the intrinsic property is hard to decipher but is interpreted in terms of the characteristics of a color palate representing different shades of consciousness. Scientific analysis reveals that the concept of UFC, as theorized in cosmopsychism, resonates with the philosophical ideas of the Indian knowledge system (IKS). This article attempts to integrate the paradigm of cosmopsychism with the philosophical insights of the IKS in order to develop a holistic framework that contributes substantially to the science of consciousness

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Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta

Cited by 17 publications

References 17 publications

Panpsychism and God

Panpsychism and God

Cutting the Knot of the World Problem: Sri Aurobindo’s Experiential and Philosophical Critique of Advaita Vedānta

Understanding cosmopsychism based on stochastic electrodynamics from the perspective of the Indian knowledge system

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