Vinaire's Blog
.
Reference: Postulate Mechanics (PM)
The first action of the mind is to look and recognize what is there. Looking does not involve thinking. In other words, to know something, you do not have to label it, or use words to describe it. It is important to understand the difference between looking and thinking.
.
Look and simply observe what is there without expecting anything, or attempting to get an answer.
Any expectation will add extraneous thoughts to what one is looking at. Attempts to get an answer will also add extraneous interpretation to what is there. Therefore, when looking, do not expect any particular phenomenon, result, answer or cognition.
Thinking is natural. It is a common experience to have thoughts arise in the mind as one looks. Carefully notice the thoughts for what they are and move on. Do not suppress the thoughts because that will color and modify your looking.
Often, one is taught to suppress one’s thoughts. For example, in many meditation techniques the primary goal is to make one’s mind blank. In some other meditation techniques one is required to concentrate on a thought at the exclusion of all others. Such actions suppress the ability to LOOK and realize what is there.
Looking does not require suppression of thoughts arising in the mind. You look at these thoughts the way you look at anything else.
When one is not suppressing any thoughts or feelings, and is simply looking without being judgmental, then, in that moment, one is able to see things as they are. This applies to all sensory input.
.
The purpose of the following exercise is to practice the key idea above. The exercise introduces the concept of looking by letting the student experience it. This may be accomplished quite quickly in most cases.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
Exercise 4
.
The understanding of Postulate Mechanics starts with looking.
.
Reference: Postulate Mechanics (PM)
Dualism is the philosophical view that reality consists of two fundamentally distinct kinds of things or properties. In philosophy of mind—the most prominent context for dualism—it holds that mental phenomena and physical phenomena are fundamentally different and irreducible to one another.
Monism rejects this division, asserting there is fundamentally only one kind of substance underlying all reality. The mind and body are not separate entities but different aspects or manifestations of the same underlying reality. If mind and body are fundamentally different kinds of things, they won’t be able to interact causally.
Postulate Mechanics postulates oneness of the universe. It, therefore, sees dualism to be an anomaly of discontinuity. There must be missing data, which is generating this anomaly. There appears to be a missing gradient between the non-material (mental phenomena), and the material (physical phenomena).
.
The non-material and material can influence each other. That means that there is a gradient of substance between them, just like there is a gradient of temperature between hot and cold.
In philosophy, a clear understanding of “substance” seems to be missing. Western metaphysics looks at substance as a fundamental entity that can “stand on its own,” but this definition presents an anomaly. How can there be such a fundamental entity if it is not manifested and there can be no awareness of it?
Therefore, substance does not “stand on its own.” Substance depends upon being sensed, else there is no substance to speak of.
The fundamental entity that can stand on its own is the universe. We are aware of the universe only because we can sense it, and for no other reason. Substance must be that which is substantial enough to be sensed. The fundamental aspects of the universe that can be sensed are matter, energy and thought. These constitute the substance of the universe.
Matter, energy and thought have certain characteristics in common, which characterize them as substance; and they have other characteristics which make them different. Matter to energy to thought there is a gradient of substance. This is the gradient between the non-material (mental phenomena), and the material (physical phenomena). This book covers it in detail in Chapters 3 and 4.
.
The concept of substance is a cornerstone of metaphysics and ontology (the philosophical study of being), and it helps philosophers classify what is “real” versus what is merely an offshoot or by-product.
One meaning of reality is “what is ultimately there beyond appearances.” Another meaning of reality is, “the totality of what is there.”
The ultimate reality would be a postulate. There is no knowledge prior to a postulate. This book explains in Chapter 1, that a postulate is a basic assumption, taken as true, which is then used to derive the rest of considerations.”
The totality of what there is would be the sum total of the considerations proceeding from the postulate. Because of this fact, these considerations must be united in their oneness to be real. In other words, the postulate and considerations must be harmonious, consistent and continuous.
The reality is not there to the degree there are violations of oneness (anomalies). For substance to be real, there must not be any anomalies in its conception.
.
The mind, or mental phenomena, is made of thought substance. The body, or physical phenomena is made of energy and matter. Both mind and body can be sensed.
It is not true that mental phenomena and physical phenomena are fundamentally different and irreducible to one another. Both are reducible to substance that can be sensed. That is the reason that they influence each other.
The consciousness of mind, and the agility of the body, is the result of extreme complexity of motion inherent to substance, as this book explains in Chapters 6 to 8.
It is an anomaly to think that mind and body have nothing in common. That is the result of ignorance.
.
Mind and Body are distinct phenomena but the strict theory of dualism does not apply.
Mind can never exist independently of the body.
.
Reference: Postulate Mechanics (PM)
Divinity has always been looked upon as infinite because the universe has infinite dimensions, and space is where infinity is most immediately apparent and perplexing to human understanding. Divinity is viewed as having the property of Oneness because the whole universe operates in a dynamic equilibrium. This is the starting point for any notion of God.
.
The earliest Vedic notion of “God” is not a single, systematized monotheistic deity, but a fluid vision of many devas manifesting one underlying cosmic order and truth. The tradition often highlights the famous statement “Ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti” (“The Truth/Reality is one; the sages call it by many names”), as expressing this intuition: the manifold gods are many names and forms of a single sat (truth/being). This sat is connected with ṛta—cosmic order as the “active realization of truth.”
The Vedic notion of God is best seen as poetic intuition of one truth shining through many devas, ordered by ṛta, rather than a finished “doctrine of God” in the systematic theological sense.
This notion of God is further refined through other Eastern religions, such as, Hinduism; but it essentially remains the same.
.
Buddhism also derives its ideas of devas from the Vedas, but it takes a more practical approach with its focus on addressing suffering in life as a result of ignorance. Buddha’s ideas of God and Self may be summarized as follows:
“Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.”
In early and mainstream Buddhist doctrine, the idea of an omnipotent, eternal, personal creator is explicitly rejected as incompatible with core teachings such as dependent origination and non-self.
.
Monotheistic belief in a single, universal God is a relatively late development in religious history, emerging gradually out of polytheistic traditions in the ancient Near East between roughly the late 2nd and mid‑1st millennium BCE, and reaching a clear, exclusive form only in the late stages of ancient Israelite religion and the early common era.
Ancient Yahwism in the 9th–8th centuries BCE was devotion to one god as supreme, without denying others. Later, much of early Israelite religion worshipped one god while acknowledging that others exist but must not be worshipped. Thus, monotheism has been a progressive privileging of one deity over others, then the denial of those others.
Many scholars locate the crystallization of strict, metaphysical monotheism—“there are no other gods at all”—in the exilic and post‑exilic periods (6th–5th centuries BCE). After the Babylonian exile, returning Judean elites in the Persian period develop a rigorously monotheistic Judaism centered on the Jerusalem temple and a codified corpus of scripture (the Tanakh), emphasizing a single creator God of all nations, not merely a national deity.
This is the point at which the “God of Israel” is explicitly identified as the only God of all that exists, not one god among many—what later Christian and Islamic traditions inherit as a monotheistic template.
.
Postulate Mechanics starts with the postulate of SUBSTANTIALITY-AWARENESS-ONENESS based on Vedic “Sat-chit-ananda.” The theory (scientific religion) that follows makes up the chapters of this book.
Postulate Mechanics sees the monotheistic God as the simplistic reification of the dynamic equilibrium of this wonderfully complex universe. But there could also be social engineering aspects involved in the development of a rigorously monotheistic God after the Babylonian exile by the returning Judean elites.
A single transcendent God, often linked to a single revealed law or scripture, can provide a unified moral and doctrinal framework across large populations. It divides reality into true vs. false gods, true vs. false worship, which encourages a strong sense of shared identity among those who follow the “one true God.”
Postulate Mechanics sees “one true God” as an arbitrary postulate that distracts one from understanding the Oneness of the wonderfully complex universal reality.
.
Reference: Postulate Mechanics (PM)
The concepts of soul, thetan and atman imply that there is an aspect of “I” that does not change because it is permanent and eternal. There is an assumption that the “I”, which existed in some past life incident is the same “I” that exists now.
It is quite possible that the impression of some incident experienced by an ancestor has been passed down to us through DNA. When that impression is activated by us, and we re-experience it, we confuse the “I” in that incident to be the current “I” re-experiencing that incident.
The Doctrine of No-Soul: Anatta points out the falsity of this assumption that there is an aspect of “I” that is permanent and outlasts the death of a person.
.
The “I” is sensed as the thinker of thoughts, feeler of sensations, and receiver of rewards and punishments for all its actions good and bad. This sense seems to be generated with the body. It implies individuality.
There is no doubt that this sense of “I” is there. It produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. But, there is no evidence that this sense of individuality continues after the death of the body.
A newly born baby has its own sense of “I”. Of course, this sense may get built to some degree through DNA inheritance. It may also get conditioned by its home and social environment. But it also retains its own individual characteristics. There is definitely a contagion of aberration, so the evil in the world continues from one generation to the next. But there is no evidence of a permanent “I” that continues from one life to the next.
.
A parent’s life experiences can influence gene expression in the next generation by altering epigenetic marks in germ cells and the developmental environment, which then changes how the offspring’s genes are read—without changing the underlying DNA sequence. This affects stress hormone signaling, metabolic pathways, brain circuits for fear, anxiety, and reward, and immune system regulation. Such effects can persist for multiple generations. A large part of “inherited trauma” or family patterns comes from behavioral, cultural, and environmental transmission, not just epigenetics.
Addressing traumas is the area of Dianetics, which claims that the earliest trauma can occur during the gestation period in the womb or in the process of birth. Traumatic impressions passed through epigenetics have also been discovered in Dianetics. All such impressions influence the sense of “I”.
This is consistent with the notion of karmic influences that are said to dissipate automatically after several generations. But none of that provides the proof for the individual “I” being eternal.
.
According to Buddha, the idea of self-preservation is psychologically deep-rooted in a person. So, the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally, is very attractive to him. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, he needs this belief to console himself.
As one engages with the process of “neti, neti” it becomes quite obvious that the notion of soul, thetan or Atman being eternal is just a postulate.
.
According to Buddha’s teaching, the individual is composed of the Five Aggregates: matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. There is nothing behind them which can be taken as “I”, Atman, or Self, or any unchanging abiding substance. Furthermore, everything is conditioned, relative, and interdependent, and nothing in the world is absolute. Accordingly, the idea of self or being, is useful by convention only; but not in reality or substance.
No doubt, we are aware of substantiality (sat of sat-chit-ananda). The substantiality constitutes of matter, energy and thought. Awareness (chit of sat-chit-ananda) does not lie in the dimension of substantiality, because awareness is looking at substantiality. Awareness is its own dimension. In that dimension there is no substantiality of individuality. There is no introversion.
For example, when one is looking at something, there is a subject and an object. The dimension of object is substantiality. The dimension of subject is awareness. These two dimensions are independent of each other. The sense of individuality and introversion arises only when there is an identification of awareness with something in the dimension of substantiality.
Enlightenment occurs when one becomes aware of the specific identification. One then realizes how one has been mocking up, or postulating, the “I”.
This is the beginning of Nirvana.
As one continues to realize other identifications by clearing up misconceptions about the universe, Nirvana expands.
.
Reference: Postulate Mechanics (PM)
“Life inherently contains unsatisfactoriness, pain, and instability.” That is from a limited human viewpoint. At the scale of the universe, any unsatisfactoriness, pain, and instability is a departure from the state of harmony. Therefore, it is an anomaly to be resolved.
Life is the effort of universe to resolve anomalies. Life is the problem solver. Life is not the problem. So, anomalies like unsatisfactoriness, pain, and instability are not inherent to life.
Life has always consisted of individual life organisms. But the self-awareness has not been there until the humans have emerged. This use of ‘I’ is primarily a convention. But many religions have promoted the ‘I’ to be something permanent.
.
The Abrahamic Religions consider that every person has a soul that lives forever. After the person dies, the soul goes to heaven or hell for resurrection and judgment.
Thus, soul is an entity that exists separate from the body. There is a sense of permanency about the soul as it survives death.
.
In Scientology, a person views himself as an eternal thetan. The notion of thetan is very similar to the notion of soul, except that the person does not have a thetan; he is the thetan. He is the individual who who handles and lives in the body.
Thus, thetan is also an entity that exists separate from the body. The thetan is explicitly stated to be eternal, and Scientologist believe and feel that way.
.
“Atman” translates as self. In Eastern religions, Atman is the universal divine essence, or pure consciousness, that acquires individuality by identifying with the physical universe. This identification continues from one body to the next, and so there is reincarnation. Over time, the person becomes aware of the identification and becomes free from it. It returns to pure consciousness.
There is a tendency for a person to think that he is an eternal Atman because consciousness it eternal. But consciousness is always changing. It is not permanent. But there is a widespread misconception of having a permanent consciousness.
.
This “I” is the individuality. This individuality is identifying itself with the universe, and thinking that, ultimately, there is something permanent at the core of that identification, which is the ‘I’. That sense of permanence is a misconception.
There is a contemplative process in the East to handle identification. It is called “Neti, neti” meaning “Not this, not that.” By eliminating what I am not, I, ultimately, come to realize what I am.
It is easy to theorize that I must be pure awareness because I am not what I think I am; but, it actually requires going through the process of “neti, neti” to realize that.
As part of this process, I look at something carefully, whether a physical object, or a mental idea, and ask myself,
“Am I this _____?
What is this _____ anyway?
Do I fully understand the nature of this _____?”
Only after understanding fully that, which I am looking at, can I say with certainty that I am not it. I peel off the layers of matter, energy and thought to finally arrive at the underlying postulate, and see if I am that or not.
.
That which is being looked at, and this which is looking, are not completely separate. Nor are they identical. There is a harmony between them. Realization of that harmony is the key.
.
