Religious/Cultural Interpretation of the Background Processor:

Hindus:

• 'The element of consciousness [in Advaita-Vedanta] is known as the saksin. The word means 'witness' or a disinterested looker-on. The conception is thus relative; and the saksin as such is not therefore Brahman. [The saksin] corresponds to the purusha of the Sankhya-Yoga - the passive observer of the states of the internal organ as they unfold themselves.'
  M. Hiriyanna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy (Allen and Unwin Ltd, London, 1932) 342-343.
• '... it is wrong to speak of the saksin as knowable, for it is the pure element of awareness in all knowing; and to assume that it is knowable would be to imply another knowing element - a process that leads to the fallacy of infinite regress. But the saksin does not therefore remain unrealized, for being self-luminous by its very nature, it does not require to be known at all. Its presence is necessarily equivalent to its revelation and it is therefore never missed.'
  Hiriyanna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy, 343.
  
• 'The saksin .... is always present like an ever-luminous lamp, the enduring and changeless element in experience which does not cease to be, even in deep sleep.'
  Hiriyanna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy, 359-60.
• 'Deliverance consists in cutting off all bonds of relationship between the true self and the chitta [mind] . Henceforth it would become impossible for the movements of the cosmic prakriti [primordial nature] to be communicated to the subtle body or to trouble our individuality. When the self ceases to identify itself with the chitta, it withdraws into its own field. There, it would not be affected by passions, for, the purusha is, in its real nature, none other than the witnessing consciousness of all the activities of the mind.'
  Siddheswarananda, Meditation, 32-33.

Greeks/NeoPlatonics:

• 'The nous of the dead is not indeed alive,
  yet it has an immortal intelligence
  when it has plunged into the immortal aither.'
  Euripides, Helena, 1014ff.
• 'When the soul comes to rest on an object illuminated by truth and Being, it understands and knows and appears to have nous; but when it regards what is mixed with darkness, that is, what comes to be and perishes, it has only opinion and its sight is dimmed: its beliefs shift up and down and it is like something without nous.'
  Plato, Republic, 508D.
  (note: see W.K.C.Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy,Vol II (University Press, Cambridge, 1965) pp1-80 for a more complete discussion of Greek philosophers and their understanding of nous.)
• 'Of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error - opinion, for instance, and calculation - whereas scientific knowing and nous are always true.'
  Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 100B5
  [note: 'In Greek philosophy ..... nous is never ... clear, cold light which we are sometimes in the habit of calling reason.' James Adam, Cambridge Praelections, 33].
• 'This consciousness of the One comes not by knowledge, but by an actual Presence superior to any knowing.'
  Plotinus.

Western Philosophy:

• 'The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.'
  Spinoza, Ethics V: Pr.23
• 'This pure original unchangeable consciousness I shall name transcendental apperception.'
  Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A107

Arlen Wolpert
April 30,1998
Cambridge, MA
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr217.html

Return to stage 12 analysis.