From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Aug 06 2005 - 22:21:07 BST
Hi Ham,
Hope your vacation was a good one, i.e., high quality. :-)
Thanks for quoting extensively from Kaufman's Unified Reality Theory.
Interesting stuff. Just one comment.
> Since, according to Kaufman, awareness cannot exist in the absence of a
> duality, the inference is that Consciousness -- his Absolute Existence --
> is non-sentient. (Can "just being itself" possibly imply "feeling
> itself"?) Although the author's footnotes remind us that Consciousness is
> only "what we call that which exists, which can't be named, because naming
> is defining, and in defining it, it's not that," I find his concept of an
> insentient consciousness implausible and certainly paradoxical.
According to Merriam-Webster, sentient means "conscious of sense
impressions." I have every reason to believe my cat is conscious and that
his consciousness includes sense impressions without his naming or
defining them in any way whatsoever. He lives in "Absolute Existence,"
whereas we live most of the time in a secondary world of names, symbols
and relationships between them. Furthermore, I think what Pirsig meant by
"pure experience prior to thought" is the same as Kaufman's "borderless,
undefined existence." It's the state of existence you attain during
meditation if you're good at it.
Best regards,
Platt
> Also, although the author asserts that "it's impossible for us to not
> exist," and "what we are must ultimately exist outside the context of and
> beyond any experience, including the experience of ourself as 'I'", he
> offers no theory of a transcendent self, hence, in my opinion, failing to
> deliver on the claim of the back cover squib that the URT "uses science and
> logic to demonstrate that God actually exists, as a pervasive and absolute
> consciousness which transcends the realities of space and time."
>
> To summarize, I think MoQers would find Kaufman's construction of the
> relational model of reality well worth reading vis-a-vis the Quality
> heirarchy, despite minimal discussion of Value in this thesis. Like the
> MoQ, Kaufman's reality is experiential rather than "phenomenal" and shows
> the influence of Taoist teachings. My disappointment with both authors is
> that -- whether Quality or Consciousness is the ultimate reality -- neither
> reality is sentient, and the reader is left with no hope of transcending
> finitude or participating in its absolute Oneness.
>
> For anyone interested, "Unified Reality Theory: The Evolution of Existence
> into Experience" is published by Destiny Toad Press and is available from
> order@bookmasters.com. for about $20 US dollars, plus postage.
>
> Essentially yours,
> Ham
>
>
>
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