Non-Duality and the Problems of Western Idealism – Part 1: Non-Dual Spirituality

In my previous post on the “Ultimate Insight” I argued that the central aim of virtually all Eastern spirituality – namely, the Enlightenment experience of non-dual consciousness – is not just supremely practical (the liberation from suffering) but also supremely theoretical: it is the experience that ultimately grounds the worldview of Absolute Idealism. The central tenet of the latter is that reality-as-a-whole consists of a single, all-encompassing Absolute Consciousness. The Enlightenment experience, as it figures in much of Eastern spirituality – notably Advaita Vedanta, certain traditions within Mahayana Buddhism, the Classical Yoga of Patanjali, and Shaivite Tantra – is basically the experience of this all-encompassing Consciousness. It is the experience that frees one from the suffering inherent in finite human existence and at the same time grounds the insight into Consciousness as the ultimate nature of reality. In this post I want to focus on the theoretical aspect of the Enlightenment experience, in particular on the way this typically Eastern experience enables us to solve certain theoretical difficulties in Western forms of Idealism. For the idea that reality consists of a single all-encompassing Consciousness is not just of Eastern provenance, it also plays an important – if controversial – role in Western philosophy, where it came to prominence at the end of the 18th and much of the 19th century in German and Anglo-American Idealism. There is, however, an important difference between Western and Eastern forms of Idealism, and that – basically – is the difference between theory and practice. Whereas the Western forms are primarily theoretical, aimed at a purely intellectual understanding of reality as Consciousness, the point of virtually all Eastern spirituality is primarily practical, aimed at a radical existential transformation of human life through the lived experience of Enlightenment. This transformative experience of Enlightenment, i.e. the experience of the all-encompassing Consciousness as the essence of one’s being, is virtually lacking in Western Idealism. Hence the terminological distinction I draw between Western philosophy and Eastern spirituality. But, as said above, the Enlightenment experience is not just practical, it has a highly theoretical value as well, being the experience that ultimately grounds the Idealist worldview. This theoretical lesson, that is to be learned from the Enlightenment experience, is lacking in Western forms of Idealism. As I hope to show in this post, it is this lack that accounts for several unsolved problems within Western Idealism, problems that have made it vulnerable for sceptical counter-attack (hence the controversial status of Idealism in Western philosophy). It is here, therefore, that Eastern spirituality – with its practical focus on Enlightenment – can come to the aid of Idealist theory in Western philosophy. In this post, I will discuss how non-dual consciousness is viewed in Eastern spirituality (Part 1). In my next two posts, I will discuss how the Eastern view of non-dual consciousness helps us to see exactly where Western Idealist thinkers went wrong, namely in their habitual view of consciousness as individual and thus as tied to the subject-object duality of individual and world. In Part 2 I will do this for Berkeley and especially Kant, who exerted the most influence on later Western Idealists. In Part 3 I will do this for Kant’s successor Fichte, who represents the transition from Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, which still reckoned with a “thing-in-itself” outside of consciousness, to Absolute Idealism where the assumption of any reality outside of consciousness is rejected. I will show that despite Fichte’s rejection of the Kantian thing-in-itself and his consequent espousal of the unlimited nature of “Absolute Consciousness”, he kept falling back in the habitual assumption that consciousness is individual and thus tied to subject-object duality – and that this accounts for the often noted paradoxes in his thinking that prevented him from ever finishing his philosophy into a completed whole.

The non-individual nature of non-dual consciousness
So what is the theoretical lesson that Western Idealism can learn from the Enlightenment experience? Basically, it is the non-individual nature of non-dual Consciousness. Non-duality, of course, is central to Eastern spirituality, where it indicates the insight that there is no real opposition between the conscious individual (the “subject”) and the surrounding world of which he/she is conscious (the “object”). Non-duality signifies the experience of cosmic unity, the integral wholeness of reality, a whole that includes the individual subject and his object. Non-duality, then, means that there is no true opposition – no duality – between subject and object.

More properly speaking, non-duality signifies the realization that consciousness is never individual to begin with. It is the realization that the true subject of consciousness is not the individual, not the person who, in everyday experience, appears to be the one who senses the world, who thinks about and acts on the world. For that is exactly the point: this individual person, that we normally take ourselves to be, is itself an appearance within experience – that is to say: the person is really one of the many objects appearing within consciousness and, therefore, not the true subject of consciousness. Normally, in the “dualistic mode” so to speak, we think: “It is me, this person of flesh and blood, who experiences this world existing outside of me…” What we then forget, however, is that ‘we’ experience not just the world but also ourselves (our individual selves) as intrinsic parts of that world. Thus, we, as these individual persons, belong to the object of experience, i.e. we are not its true subject.

Here is an example to illustrate this point. Suppose I have to go to the dentist for a root canal treatment. Then ‘I’ experience not just the ‘objective’ situation in the dental office (the clinically white walls, the fake smile of the receptionist, the chair in which I lie down, the sound of the drill, the dentist going to work in my mouth), there is also an emphatically ‘subjective’ side to my experience, since ‘I’ also experience myself in that situation. ‘I’ feel myself lying in that chair with my mouth wide open, my body cramped, my fingers gripping the seat, my heart beating, thoughts rushing through my head (“I hope this anesthesia works”)... Of course, this is not an everyday experience (thank God!), but in its poignancy it does bring out something that is really always the case, even if we don’t notice it, namely: we ourselves are always part of the situation ‘we’ are experiencing.

Thus, we – as these individual persons – belong to the object of experience; we are not its true subject (hence the scare quotes I put around ‘I’ and ‘we’). The Enlightenment experience in Eastern spirituality is essentially this (self-)realization of the non-dual consciousness in which the duality of subject and object appears. It is the realization: I, as the conscious observer of the world, am NOT this individual person with whom I normally identify, because this individual is itself also experienced: the individual is an integral part of the world observed by me. Hence, I – as observer – am non-individual consciousness. The duality of me and world, of subject and object, is a duality perceived by me, and so I – as observer – precede this duality, in short, I am non-dual consciousness... All the non-dual traditions within Eastern spirituality (Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Classical Yoga, and Shaivite Tantra) are basically just variations on this theme. There are, of course, differences between them, but – in my estimation – these are really just superficial differences in detail, emphasis, terminology and practical approach. The fundamental underlying insight, the impersonal nature of non-dual consciousness, is shared by them all, as I hope to show in the following.

Non-dual consciousness in Dzogchen and Zen Buddhism
Coming from the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dutch teacher Jan Geurtz puts the point as follows: “Do you see that our complete reality consists not just of a subjective and an objective component, but that there is a third factor, namely, the capacity to observe this duality? This third factor is itself not an observable form or entity… [I]t is within this limitless and formless awareness that the illusion appears of an interior world and an external world separated from it.” (Geurtz 2013: 44-45) In Zen Buddhism, too, this realization of the impersonal consciousness prior to subject-object duality is the central aim of meditative practice, where this formless consciousness is indicated by such typical Zen phrases as “the original face before birth”, “the common person of no rank” and “the original person”. Influenced by the Zen experience of Enlightenment (“satori”), the Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida writes in his classic work An Inquiry into the Good: “Over time I came to realize that it is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that an individual exists because there is experience. I thus arrived at the idea that experience is more fundamental than individual differences, and in this way I was able to avoid solipsism… The individual’s experience is simply a small, distinctive sphere of limited experience within true experience.” (Nishida 1990 [1922]: xxx, 19.)

With his statement that the Zen experience of Enlightenment enabled him to “avoid solipsism”, Nisihida indicates the insight that consciousness is not ‘locked up’ inside the individual’s head or brain: “it is not that consciousness is within the body, but that the body is within consciousness”. (Idem: 43.) If consciousness resided in the brain, it would indeed be cut off from the world outside one’s skull, which would invite the solipsistic conclusion that all I can know is the phenomenal world appearing in my subjective consciousness, but not the real, objective world outside of it. The Zen realization that  consciousness is radically different, that it is rather the non-dual openness in which both individual and world appear, thus takes away the threat of solipsism. Nishida, of course, does not deny that brain activity is closely connected to individual mind activity, but for him this only means that one group of phenomena appearing in consciousness (mental processes) correlates with another such group (neural processes): “To say that phenomena of consciousness accompany stimulation to nerve centers means that one sort of phenomena of consciousness necessarily occurs together with another.” (Ibidem.) This already gives a glimpse of how Western Idealism can benefit from Eastern spirituality.

Non-dual liberation in Shaivite Tantra and Advaita Vedanta
As said above, the primary point of the Enlightenment experience in Eastern spirituality is not theoretical but rather the practical achievement of liberation from suffering. How does this work? How does the realization of the non-individual nature of consciousness lead to liberation? Here the basic point is that through this realization one ceases to be just a finite individual standing over against an outside world independent of one’s will. It is, after all, this perceived independence of the world that creates suffering, because this independence means that the individual must struggle to maintain and assert itself in a world that is a best indifferent and at worst hostile to its desires. Thus suffering ceases when one realizes one’s true nature as non-individual, non-dual consciousness. One can no longer be touched by the vicissitudes of the individual, because on the most fundamental level one no longer is that individual: one has realized one’s essence as the impersonal consciousness in which the individual and its world appear.

The medieval Kashmiri Tantra master Kshemaraja, in his classic work The Recognition Sutras, gives an inkling of this liberatory potential of realizing (“recognizing”) the non-dual nature of consciousness when he writes: “People who are constrained every moment by the bonds of identification with body, life, pleasure, pain, and so on, do not recognize what is right here – their own Divine Awareness, thick with the joy of perfect wholeness. But one who, through this teaching, sees the universe all around him as nothing more than a mass of foam on the surface of the nectarean ocean of Awareness – he alone is said to be Shiva made fully manifest.” (Kshemara in Wallis 2017: 451) The theme of seeing the entire universe as an appearance within non-dual consciousness can also be found in the modern Advaita master Nisargadatta, who adds the idea that liberation comes specifically from seeing one’s individual personality as an integral part of this phenomenal universe:

“Don’t look at the world as something outside of yourself. See the person you imagine yourself to be as part of the world – really a dream-world – which you perceive as an appearance in your consciousness, and look at the whole show from the outside… Once you realize that there is nothing in this world that you can or need call your own, you will look at it from the outside, as you look at a play on the stage or a movie on the screen, admiring and enjoying perhaps suffering, but deep down, quite unmoved.” (Nisargadatta quoted in Balsekar 1982: 8)

Phenomenal non-duality in Classical Yoga
The point stressed by Nisargadatta, that one must view one’s individual person as an integral part of the universe appearing in consciousness, is also central to Patanjali’s Classical Yoga as expounded in his Yoga Sutra. Like all of Eastern non-dual spirituality, the goal of Classical Yoga is to realize – through meditation – one’s true nature as the impersonal consciousness (the Purusha) to which both the individual person and his/her world appears. Normally, in the dualistic mode, we identify with the individual person standing over against the world. The point of Patanjali’s Yoga is to see that both individual and world belong to Prakriti, the Sanskrit term for material nature. So not just the individual’s physical body but also his/her mental states, such as feelings and thoughts, are to be seen as part of material nature.

For Classical Yoga, mental states are no less material than physical things, such as bodies, trees and stones – the only difference being that the materiality of the latter is “gross” whereas the materiality of mental states is more “subtle”. For Patanjali, the point of seeing that one’s individual nature is an integral part of material nature as a whole (the physical universe) is that one realizes one’s true nature as Purusha, the non-individual consciousness to which Prakriti appears. By seeing this integral unity of material nature as a whole – this “phenomenal nonduality” as Chip Hartranft calls it in his translation of and commentary on the Yoga Sutra (2003: 82) – one takes up a standpoint outside that whole, one observes it from the outside and thus realizes one’s Purusha nature.

The regress-of-observation argument for non-dual consciousness
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra is also important here because it gives an important theoretical argument for the existence of non-dual consciousness. Such an argument is precisely what is needed to convince the sceptical Westerner who is wary of Eastern stories of blissful and seemingly mystical Enlightenment experiences. A sceptical Westerner might object as follows to the idea of non-dual consciousness: You say that I as this individual cannot be the true subject of consciousness, because I as this individual am itself experienced, I am one of the objects appearing in consciousness. But why can’t I be both? Why can’t I be the subject of consciousness AND an object appearing within consciousness? Why can’t an experienced object, such as this person of flesh and blood that I am, be at the same the subject of that experience? Isn’t this how we normally experience ourselves?

For the practitioner of Eastern spirituality, this objection is essentially overcome by the practical realization of the Enlightenment experience, where the non-dual nature of consciousness is directly ‘seen’ or ‘felt’. It is the utterly compelling nature of the Enlightenment experience, with the serene joy (“ananda”) that goes along with the liberation from suffering, that eliminates all doubt and thus ‘refutes’ this objection through direct experience. But of course, for the sceptic this is insufficient, because it is precisely his sceptical attitude that prevents him from experiencing Enlightenment. It is important, therefore, to be able to meet the sceptical objector on his own turf, that is, to refute his theoretical objection by an equally theoretical counter-argument. This argument has emerged most clearly – though also in an extremely truncated form – in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Here is what Patanjali has to say about the possibility of the individual’s mind being its own observer: "If the mind were perceived by itself instead of by consciousness, the chain of such perceptions would regress infinitely, exploding memory." (4.21)

What Patanjali points to is the fact that an infinite regress of self-observations would ensue if the observer were itself also an observable entity (like the mind). For then the observer – in observing itself – would also observe this self-observation, and also this observation of self-observation, and also this observation of the earlier observation of self-observation, and so on without end. Hence Patanjali’s conclusion that “the chain of such perceptions would regress infinitely, exploding memory”. This, in a very truncated form (which is typical of the Yoga Sutra), is Patanjali’s theoretical counter-argument to the sceptic’s objection. It basically explains why the ultimate observer of the realm of material nature cannot itself be part of that realm. But because Patanjali’s argument is so truncated, it may need a bit more elaboration in order to be fully convincing.

Here we can turn to the aforementioned Dzogchen teacher Jan Geurtz who (quite independently of Patanjali, as Geurtz has communicated to me) has stumbled upon the same argument. With exceptional clarity, Geurtz develops the argument as follows: “As soon as an observing entity perceives itself, a loop is created. This happens, for example, when a camera is aimed at its own screen, when two mirrors are directly opposite to each other, or when a microphone comes too close to its own speaker… With such an observation loop we see the image disappear in an infinite series. If that fundamental reality in us which perceives were an entity, a “thing”, then we would have to observe an infinite series of them, a succession of “little selves” one perceiving the other. That, however, is not the case. Hence, that which perceives cannot itself be an observable entity.” (Geurtz 2013: p.244, n.23)

This, then, is the theoretical argument for the non-dual nature of consciousness: the ultimate observer of the subject-object duality (the individual person and his/her world) cannot be the individual subject, because – since this subject is part of the observed object of experience – such self-observation would produce an infinite regress of self-observations, thus “exploding memory”. The ultimate observing consciousness, then, is non-dual, a “third factor” that encompasses both individual subject and his/her object. This non-dual consciousness cannot itself be anything observable, thus it is essentially indeterminate and limitless. It bears repeating, however, that for Eastern non-dual spirituality this theoretical argument is not enough: it is only a stepping stone to a more experiential appreciation of the non-dual nature of consciousness. To remain at the level of theoretical argumentation would be to remain at the dualistic level of conceptual thought. So, to fully appreciate the non-dual nature of consciousness, we must not just think about it but experience it directly. Only in this way will the liberatory power of non-dual consciousness become fully apparent.

How Eastern spirituality can help Western Idealism
We are now in a position to see how the Enlightenment experience of non-dual consciousness in the various traditions of Eastern spirituality can help to solve certain outstanding problems in Western forms of Idealism. As I hope to show my following posts, these problems have a common root, namely, the persistent prejudice that consciousness is subjective or individual and thus necessarily limited by an “external world”. Even when Western philosophy progressed to the idea of a single, all-encompassing Universal or Absolute Consciousness – as it did in Absolute Idealism –, the old paradigm of subjective consciousness limited by external objects kept creeping in through the back door and thus kept creating problems that were deemed insoluble.

Two main problems stand out in this respect. Namely, (1) the problem of the external world: If reality is a single consciousness, then why does there nevertheless appear to be an external world outside of consciousness? And (2) the problem of the epistemological status of the idea that there is an Absolute Consciousness: If we can only know reality as it appears in consciousness, as Idealism says, how then can we postulate the existence of an Absolute Consciousness of which we as individuals have no experience? It was because of Western Idealism’s inability to answer these questions – questions which were often raised by Idealist thinkers themselves – that Idealism lost much of its appeal in Western philosophy around 1900 and gave way to philosophies such as logical positivism and existentialist phenomenology. But these theoretical problems are still premised on the merely subjective, individual nature of consciousness. Thus they are rendered moot by the theoretical argument for and (especially) the Enlightenment experience of the non-dual nature of consciousness in Eastern spirituality. 

References
-Balsekar, Ramesh (1982), Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj. Bombay, Chetana.
-Geurtz, Jan (2013), Verslaafd aan denken: De weg naar verlichting en levensgeluk. Amsterdam, Ambo/Anthos.
-Hartranft, Chip (2003), The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali: A New Translation with Commentary. Boulder, Shambhala.
-Kshemaraja, Rajanaka (2017), The Recognition Sutras. Translated and with commentary by Christopher Wallis. Boulder, Mattamayura Press.
-Nishida, Kitarō (1990 [1922]), An Inquiry into the Good. New Haven and London, Yale University Press.

The Ultimate Insight: On the Explanatory Power of Absolute Self-Awareness

A recurrent theme on this blog is the idea of Absolute Idealism 2.0, i.e. a contemporary, ‘mathematized’ version of the age-old philosophy of Absolute Idealism, which runs from the ancient Upanishads to the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus to German and Anglo-American Idealists such as Schelling, Hegel, Green and Royce. Absolute Idealism 2.0 takes over their central insights but develops them in a novel way consistent with modern science, in particular with the central role of mathematics in physics. The following post gives a broad overview of the central principles of Absolute Idealism 2.0. and how these principles enable us to make sense of reality-as-a-whole.
The self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness We can provisionally define Absolute Idealism as the philosophical theory that everything exists because it is thought and/or experienced by an Absolute Mind, which in turn exists because It thinks/experiences itself. Thus, on the Absolute-Idealist view, the Absolute Mind constitutes its own existence by thinking/experiencing itself, that is, by being self-aware. The Absolute Mind, then, should first and foremost be defined as Absolute Self-Awareness. The idea that (pre-reflective) self-awareness has a self-creating aspect is most often associated with the German Idealist Fichte and his case for the “self-positing of the I”, but roughly the same idea can be found with other Absolute Idealists as well:

• The Vedantic sages of the Upanishads: “In the beginning this world was only Brahman, and it knew only itself (Atman), thinking: ‘I am Brahman.’ As a result, it became the Whole.” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10) 

• The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus: “The One [...] made itself by an act of looking at itself. This act of looking at itself is [...] its being.” (Ennead VI, 8, 16, 19-21)

• The German Idealist Schelling: “it is through the self's own knowledge of itself that that very self first comes into being” (Schelling 1800: 27).

• The American Idealist Royce: “if whatever exists, exists only as known, then the existence of knowledge itself must be a known existence, and can finally be known only to the final knower himself, who, like Aristotle's God, is so far defined in terms of absolute self-knowledge” (Royce 1899: 400).
   

By highlighting this self-creating aspect of Absolute Self-Awareness, Absolute Idealism is very attractive in that it offers a clear-cut and intuitively plausible answer to Leibniz’ famous question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” According to Absolute Idealism, there is something rather than nothing because Absolute Self-Awareness is self-creating. I call this answer to Leibniz’s question intuitively plausible mainly because of two reasons: (1) we are all self-aware and so we know – with Cartesian self-evidence – that self-awareness exists, indeed it is the only existence we are absolutely certain of, and (2) we have a glimpse of the self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness in the (self-)awareness we have of our own free will. This last point needs some elucidation.

Kant and the “unconditioned causality of freedom
Of course, when I talk of the self-creating power of self-awareness, I am not talking of individual human self-awareness. None of us has brought him- or herself and the universe into existence. As empirical individuals we are biologically conditioned, brought into existence by others, subject to time. So how then can I say that our own self-awareness gives a glimpse into the self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness?

In a way we do experience a degree of self-causation in ourselves, namely, insofar as we exercise positive freedom, i.e. autonomy. Positive freedom requires a capacity for what Kant called “spontaneity”, the “unconditioned causality of freedom” (Critique of Pure Reason, B561/A533), i.e. a capacity to initiate an entirely new course of action and/or thought ‘out of nothing’, unmotivated and/or uncaused by prior givens. But isn’t such a capacity for radical spontaneity – for initiating something out of nothing – precisely what is needed in order to answer Leibniz’s question, i.e. to explain how reality has lifted itself into existence preceded by nothing?

Insofar as our self-awareness reveals in us this ‘unconditioned causality of freedom’, then, we have all the more reason to take our self-awareness as the key to answering Leibniz's question. It is, moreover, the self-positing nature of self-awareness that explains this unconditioned causality of freedom in the first place. Obviously we aren't self-causing in any absolute sense (since, to repeat, we have not created ourselves), but we are relatively self-causing in that we can at least intervene in the causal order of reality by spontaneously initiating a completely new causal chain of events.

This underscores the difference between empirical, individual self-awareness and Absolute Self-Awareness: what the former has relatively and finitely, the latter has absolutely and infinitely. That is to say: Absolute Self-Awareness has (or is) absolute freedom. The self-evident experience of our own self-awareness gives us empirical access to the self-causation that can answer Leibniz's question, but to make full sense of this answer we have to generalize beyond ourselves. We have to project prereflective self-awareness to something that transcends us, the Absolute, the unconditioned 'thing' that conditions all of reality.

The mathematical unfolding of Absolute Self-Awareness
What then is the precise relation between Absolute Self-Awareness and individual self-awareness as it is found in you and me? To answer this question we have to move from Leibniz’ question to the next question: why is the universe the way it is? We do not just want to know why something exists, we also want to know why this something is the way it is, i.e. why reality has developed into this infinitely complex universe in which we find ourselves. It is especially here that I take the age-old philosophy of Absolute Idealism into a new direction, making it fit for the future by drawing on ideas from modern physics and mathematics. It is here that Absolute Idealism becomes Absolute Idealism 2.0.

Making creative use of some seminal ideas from the American Idealist Josiah Royce, I argue that the recursivity inherent in Absolute Self-Awareness – in short: its awareness of itself, its awareness of that awareness, its awareness of the awareness of that awareness, and so on – establishes an intrinsic connection between self-awareness and the recursively generated natural numbers and even the recursively generated set-theoretical universe of pure sets, which in a way contains the whole of mathematics (more about this here and here). Thus, from this perspective, the Absolute Mind comes out as a deeply mathematical being, generating – through the recursivity of its self-awareness – all of mathematics, and subsequently mirroring itself in those mathematical structures that best reflect its transcendent splendor.

The universe as the mathematical self-image of the Absolute
In my view, the resulting mathematical mirror image of the Absolute Mind is our physical universe (which, as modern physics shows, is indeed thoroughly mathematical in nature). Through mirroring and recognizing itself in this mathematical universe, and particularly in those mathematical structures that emulate intelligence (such as the algorithmic structure of the human brain), the Absolute Mind increases its own self-awareness and thus teleologically realizes its essence. In this way I explain the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, i.e. the fact that surprisingly many of nature’s fundamental constants – such as the ratio of the masses of electrons and protons, the energy density of the vacuum, even the three-dimensionality of space – are “just right” for the evolution of life. This bio-friendliness of the universe follows from the fact that the universe is the mathematical mirror image of the Absolute Mind.

It is, moreover, the self-recognition of the Absolute Mind in mathematical structures (such as the algorithmic structure of the human brain) that infuses these structures with phenomenal consciousness: it explains why the mathematical structure of the brain is “accompanied by an experienced inner life” (Chalmers 1996: xii). In this way I aim to solve the notorious “Hard Problem of Consciousness”. Moreover, as it is the mathematical structure of the universe as a whole in which the Absolute Mind mirrors itself, we must see the entire universe as infused with phenomenal consciousness, thus arriving at a panpsychist view of the cosmos.

This, then, answers the question we raised above about the relation between individual human self-awareness and Absolute Self-Awareness. Individual self-awareness, as experienced by individual organisms, is nothing but the self-reflection of the Absolute in specific mathematical structures, notably in those algorithms that “simulate” intelligent volitional agency, algorithms such as the ones that underlie the functioning of our brains. In this sense, Absolute Self-Awareness is the pre-reflective core of every finite individual form of self-awareness. One could say that each empirical instance of individual self-awareness (human or otherwise) is, as it were, a navel in the physical universe, connecting the latter through a transcendental umbilical cord with the Absolute Self-Awareness that grounds reality as a whole.

Explaining mind-body dualism
This explanation of what individual consciousness is – namely, the self-reflection of Absolute Self-Awareness in the complex algorithm that simulates brain functioning – also allows us to make sense of the apparent duality of mind and matter and, notably, the apparent supervenience of the former on the latter. This is one of the major difficulties faced by any kind of Idealism: if matter is just an appearance in consciousness, why and how then can it seem that matter exists apart from consciousness and, indeed, that (individual) consciousness appears to depend on matter?

From the perspective of Absolute Idealism 2.0, this duality between mind and body comes down to the distinction between, on the one hand, the mathematical structure of the recursive self-unfolding of Absolute Self-Awareness, and the latter’s self-recognition in certain privileged parts of that structure on the other. The mathematical structure in which the Absolute reflects itself is the structure of matter, i.e. the structure discovered by physics. But it is the self-reflection of the Absolute in this structure, the fact that it recognizes itself in it, that – so to speak – infuses the structure with phenomenal awareness. It is this act of self-recognition that explains why the mathematical structure of matter is – as Chalmers put it – “accompanied by an experienced inner life”. This holds in particular for the structure of the brain (human or otherwise), which is the kind of mathematical structure in which the Absolute recognizes most of itself (intelligent and volitional agency); hence the infusion of this structure with individual consciousness.

Hence the duality of brain and consciousness, and the apparent dependence of the latter on the former. The brain as a physical object is simply the underlying mathematical structure as experienced from the outside by another conscious organism (i.e. another brain / individual consciousness), whereas individual consciousness is that very same mathematical structure as experienced ‘from within’, i.e. as an object for the Absolute’s self-recognition. We can call these, respectively, the first-person and the third-person experiences of the mathematical structure of the brain. The fact that individual consciousness appears to be causally dependent on the brain is due to the fact that individual consciousness is ontologically dependent on the mathematical structure in which the Absolute recognizes itself.

The funny thing here is that we, human beings, are in principle capable of both a first-person and a third-person perspective on the mathematical structures of our own brains; for example – to take a rather drastic example – when we open up our skull and use a mirror to look at our own brain. We then experience its underlying mathematical structure in two ways simultaneously: from the inside as the object of the Absolute’s self-recognition, which gives us our individual consciousness, and from the outside, i.e. from a third-person perspective, which gives us this strange lump of grey matter that is supposed to be us. Something similar happens, though less drastically, when we look at a CT scan of our own brain. 

Morality as self-recognition in the other
To repeat: Absolute Self-Awareness is the pre-reflective core of every finite individual consciousness, insofar as the latter is nothing but the self-recognition of the Absolute in the mathematical structure of the brain. Thus, as the Vedanta philosophy based on the Upanishads puts it, we are all in principle capable of discovering the same Self (Atman) as the innermost core of our individual self-awareness. This Universal Self, this core in each of us, is the Absolute Self-Awareness as it reflects itself empirically in the self-awareness of finite organisms in the universe. Thus, the “unconditioned causality of freedom” we detect in our self-awareness really is the unconditioned causality of the self-causing Absolute as the ground of all reality. In that sense the (self-)awareness we have of our own free will does give us a glimpse into the endlessly creative source of the universe.

Insofar as we are capable of this glimpse, i.e. of ‘seeing’ the Absolute as the prereflective core of our own self-awareness, we start to appreciate that the same holds for all living beings. We start to realize that all organisms are essentially nothing but different manifestations of one and the same creative essence, the Absolute, the Universal Self, which senses, thinks and acts through all these organisms. This gives an enormous feeling of connection and love for others. Suddenly you can empathize with others and take their perspective much more easily, because you know they are not fundamentally different from you. You start to experience other beings as different versions of yourself, i.e. of your innermost Self, the creative essence of the universe. It is this empathy with others, through the non-dual sense of cosmic unity, that is the foundation of all sincere morality.

In this way, a kind of self-recognition in others – a seeing of yourself in others – takes place, but the self that is recognized here is not primarily the individual self but rather the Self, the Universal Self, the Atman, the Absolute. One could say that in this way the universe as the mathematical self-image of the Absolute is all the more true to its archetype: just as the Absolute recognizes itself in the otherness of the physical universe, so the universe mirrors this Divine Self-Recognition by evolving organisms that recognize themselves (i.e. their Self) in each other. Through the evolution of this self-recognition among organisms, this “mutual recognition” as Hegel calls it, the universe evolves into an ever improving mirror of the Absolute, thereby contributing to the latter’s essence as self-awareness.       Relation to Enlightenment in Eastern spirituality As the above reference to the Vedanta indicates, this (self-)realization of the Absolute as the prereflective core of our own individual self-awareness has a deep connection to what in Eastern spirituality is known by such terms as "Enlightenment", "Awakening", "(Self-)Realization", and "Liberation". This marks an important difference between Western and Eastern forms of Absolute Idealism. Whereas the Western forms are mostly theoretically oriented, aimed at a purely intellectual understanding of reality, the point of virtually all Eastern spirituality is primarily practical, aimed at a radical existential transformation of human life. Hence the terminological distinction I draw between Western philosophy and Eastern spirituality. It is certainly not the case that philosophical theorizing is entirely absent in the East – quite the contrary, Eastern spirituality contains some of the deepest philosophical thinking ever done. It is just that in Eastern spirituality all theorizing is ultimately subordinated and subservient to the spiritual goal of Liberation: theory for the sake of theory is rejected, because it stands in the way of the spiritual goal. The notion of Absolute Self-Awareness, then, signifies in the Eastern context not just the ultimate nature of reality, it also signifies the individual’s realization of the Absolute as his / her own innermost Self and as such the final Liberation from the suffering inherent in finite human existence. In Eastern spirituality, then, Absolute Self-Awareness is first of all not a theoretical concept (as it is in Western Absolute Idealism) but an experience or intuition, the experience of Enlightenment, the awakening to or realization of one’s true nature, the intuition of the Absolute as the core of one’s being. This is the experience that accomplishes the longed for Liberation from suffering. Here the Vedanta of the Upanishads provided the original template for all later Eastern spiritual traditions aimed at Enlightenment (even if these traditions criticized certain aspects of the Vedanta). For the Upanishadic sages, the key insight “Brahman is Atman” is not just a theoretical insight into the ultimate ground of reality, it is also the liberatory insight into the ultimate core of one’s own self, the realization “I am Brahman”, freeing one from the suffering inherent in finite human life. This comes out clearly in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which we quoted earlier as clearly pronouncing the basic realization of the self-causing nature of Absolute Self-Awareness: “In the beginning this world was only Brahman, and it knew only itself (Atman), thinking: ‘I am Brahman.’ As a result, it became the Whole.” (1.4.9) This remarkable passage doesn’t stop here: it goes on pronouncing with equal clarity the spiritual significance of this realization: “If a man knows ‘I am Brahman’ in this way, he becomes this whole world. Not even the gods are able to prevent it, for he becomes their very Self (Atman)... He is the one who is beyond hunger and third, sorrow and delusion, old age and death.” (1.4.10, 3.4.2) Here the spiritual significance of Absolute Self-Awareness, the Liberation from the suffering inherent in finite existence, is clearly announced. The ultimate insight that explains everything? What all this makes clear is that the Enlightenment experience has both a theoretical and a practical value, indeed it is the ultimate accomplishment both philosophically and spiritually. Enlightenment is not just the insight that liberates from the confines of finite existence, it is also the insight that provides the ultimate epistemological foundation for the Absolute-Idealist worldview. This implies an extreme form of rationalism, such that in principle everything is explainable for us, finite human beings, because insofar as we are self-conscious beings we have a prereflective intuition of the nature of Absolute Self-Awareness as the self-causing cause of reality-as-a-whole. Looked at from the theoretical perspective, Enlightenment is the insight into the essential core of our own self-awareness as the absolutely free (i.e. self-causing) source of all reality, as the recursive fountainhead of all mathematics and thus of the physical universe as our own innermost mathematical self-image, and as the source of all morality qua self-recognition in others. Enlightenment, in short, is the ultimate insight that allows us to explain everything. But, so a critic might ask, does it even make sense to attempt an explanation of ‘everything’? Isn’t such an all-encompassing notion logically incoherent? I want to finish this post by taking a closer look at this objection and how Absolute Idealism can deal with it. Leibniz’s question, paradox, and self-awareness This objection has in particular been raised by analytic philosophers such as Alfred Ayer and Bertrand Russell: they argue that all-encompassing concepts like “everything” and “reality as a whole” lead to paradoxes of self-reference, akin to the paradoxes of the early ("naive") set theory developed by Cantor, Dedekind and Frege. In my view, however, this self-reference ceases to be paradoxical once we realize that Absolute Self-Awareness is the self-causing cause of reality and that self-reference belongs to the essence of self-awareness. Naive set theory is so-called because it allowed sets that are deemed "too big", such as the universal set: the set containing all sets, including itself. Thus the universal set is self-membered, and this leads – directly or indirectly – to paradoxes, such as Cantor's paradox, the Burali-Forti paradox and Russell's paradox. One could argue that Leibniz's question produces similar paradoxes because, in a way, it totalizes existence. By posing the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", Leibniz invites us to look at reality as a whole, the totality of what exists, in order to find the cause or reason explaining this totality. But in conceiving this totality, aren't we relapsing into the naiveté of early set theory? Aren't we allowing a set that is "too big"? This was indeed the main objection raised by logical positivism against Leibniz’s question: it is meaningless because it leads to paradoxes of self-inclusion. Thus Alfred Ayer: "Supposing you asked a question like 'Where do all things come from?' Now that's a perfectly meaningful question as regards any given event. Asking where it came from is asking for a description of some event prior to it. But if you generalize that question, it becomes meaningless. You're then asking what event is prior to all events. Clearly no event can be prior to all events. Because it's a member of the class of all events it must be included in it, and therefore can't be prior to it." (Ayer quoted in Holt 2013: 24) Bertrand Russell too noted the paradoxical self-referentiality of the philosophical concept of reality-as-a-whole: “The comprehensive class we are considering, which is to embrace everything, must embrace itself as one of its members. In other words, if there is such a thing as “everything,” then “everything” is something, and is a member of the class of “everything”.” (Russell 1919: 136) Thus Russell was suspicious of all-embracing philosophical concepts such as reality-as-a-whole: “The difficulty arises whenever we try to deal with the class of all entities absolutely [...]; but for the difficulty of such a view, one would be tempted to say that the conception of the totality of things, or of the whole universe of entities and existents, is in some way illegitimate and inherently contrary to logic.” (Russell 1903: 362) With the concept of reality-as-a-whole out of the window, however, Leibniz's question can no longer be posed. If the concept of reality-as-whole is logically incoherent, then the question why that whole exists must be illogical as well. In response to this criticism we only have to point out that the set-theoretical paradoxes are defused by the phenomenon of self-awareness. For what appears as paradoxical in the foundations of mathematics – namely, self-reference – actually is a living reality in the phenomenon of self-awareness. Why then should we reject self-reference as paradoxical, and banish it from the foundations of mathematics, when self-reference is a clearly a bona fide aspect of reality, an aspect of which the existence is attested – with Cartesian self-evidence – by the undeniable phenomenon of self-awareness? Thus it becomes clear how the Absolute-Idealist view of reality as essentially a form of self-awareness – namely, Absolute Self-Awareness – saves Leibniz’s question from Russell's criticism. If we take reality as such to be self-awareness, then the self-inclusion of the totality of what exists ceases to be paradoxical, because such self-inclusion is to be expected of self-awareness. This self-inclusion is the inherent recursivity of self-awareness, which necessarily involves awareness of self-awareness, and awareness of awareness of self-awareness, and so on without end. In other words, self-awareness must include itself as one of the objects of which it is aware. Thus we can compare self-awareness to a ‘magical matryoshka’, a Russian nesting doll that somehow contains itself: if one opens up the doll, one finds the same doll inside… In short, then, the Absolute Idealist conception of self-awareness does not just enable us to answer Leibniz's question, it also enables us to pose that question in a meaningful way. It shows that the self-inclusion of the totality of what exists – a totality presupposed by Leibniz's question – is not a senseless violation of logic, because it belongs to the living essence of reality qua Absolute Self-Awareness. References -Chalmers, D. J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press.   -Holt, J. (2013), Why does the world exist?, Profile Books. -Kant, I. (1781/’87 [2009]), Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press. -Plotinus, Enneads, translation by A.H. Armstrong, Loeb edition. -Royce, J. (1899 [1959]), The World and The Individual, First Series: The Four Historical Conceptions of Being, Dover Publications. -Russell, B. (1903 [1964]), The Principles of Mathematics, George Allen & Unwin. -Russell, B. (1919 [1970]), Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, George Allen and Unwin. -Schelling, F.W.J. (1800 [2001]), System of Transcendental Idealism, translated by Peter Heath, University Press of Virginia. -Upanishads, translation by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford University Press, 2008.