I feel the need to set the record straight.
Statements such as these are outright, boldfaced lies. This is the statement I objected to:
And this is what I said about it:
It would be perfectly reasonable for me to condemn Surya Deva for all of the lies and slanderous remarks he has made against me over the past few days. But we need to recognize that this is the work of someone who is deeply disturbed and irrational, and try to show a little compassion.
[QUOTE=Asuri;69449]
It would be perfectly reasonable for me to condemn Surya Deva for all of the lies and slanderous remarks he has made against me over the past few days. But we need to recognize that this is the work of someone who is deeply disturbed and irrational, and try to show a little compassion.[/QUOTE]
Posts made by Asuri:
[QUOTE=Asuri;62586]Go worship a cow, you filthy piss-drinking dot-head.
User was banned for two months for this and the below posts - admin - 06/13/2011 4:18pm central[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Asuri;62587]And stay on your side of the Atlantic, or go home in a box.[/QUOTE]
hhhmm…
That remark was directed against Neitschze, who for many months went around this forum making highly offensive remarks against Christians in general. The particular remark that prompted that response was made in the context of a thread that was started by a Catholic priest, which made his highly offensive remark even more egregious. I did not mean to offend anyone else, but sometimes collateral damage cannot be avoided. I am not going to apologize, in fact I’m proud to have defended my Christian heritage, and would do it again.
Nietzsche was right though with his criticism against Christianity.
Yeah? So was I.
Showdown, slowdown, lost and found, turn around
the boys in their military shirts
I keep my eyes on the prize, on the mo-fo-in skies
and I don’t let my friends get hurt
All you back-room schemers, start-trip dreamers better find something new to say
’cause its the same old story, it’s the same old crime
and you’ve got some heavy dues to pay.
I’m a space cowboy. Bet you weren’t ready for that.
–Steve Miller, 1969
I am not going to apologize, in fact I’m proud to have defended my Christian heritage, and would do it again.
You defended your Christian heritage by making a racist comment against Neitzsche by calling him a filthy, cow piss drinking dot head? OK…
In any case I think the readers reading this thread, in front of whom you are trying to act very innocent, will come to understand you are not so innocent at all. You often make blanket statements and never back them up. In this thread I have called your bluff.
Not only do you not understand Vedanta - a philosophy which you have condemned and attacked on several occasions in in the past 2 years, not just the philosophy, but even me for being a propnent of it - you also do not understand Samkhya, a philosophy which you claim to be an expert on and even have a website on. The real reason you clash with me, is because you know I show you up. I am far more educated than you in the subject of Samkhya or Indian philosophy in general, and that really grates on you. Hence why you create threads like, “Intellectual or con artist” it betrays your insecurity and envy.
Prior to me coming to this web site you tried to make yourself look like the resident scholar. When I arrived, your comfortable bubble was shaken up and you hated it when others here praised my scholarship, this is why you positioned yourself as my enemy. In your words you saw me as "dangerous’
But the real danger was not anybody else, but the danger to your ego and your self-assumed title as the Samkhya-Yoga expert on this board.
I demonstrated a long time ago that you did not even understand the basic concepts in Samkhya: Purusha and Prakriti dualism. You mistook Samkhya to be an empirical dualism like Cartesian dualism(which you more or less said was the same as Samkhya) which is a Christian dualism - and as a self-confessed Christian you were trying to force Samkhya to fit your Christian worldview - when in fact they couldn’t be more incongruent. I demonstrated to you by directing citing from Samkhya texts that it is not an empirical dualism, but a rational dualism i.e., Purusha and prakriti are not things you can see, they are inferred to exist using logic. (This is very basic knowledge that any student of Samkhya philosophy knows, but you didn’t even know this) Your ego could not take being proven wrong, so as usual you threw a tantrum.
Then you tried to force Yoga into your Christian worldview. You decided to change the often repeated definition of Yoga, “Yoga is the cessation of the modifications of the mind, then then the witnesses essential form is revealed” to Yoga is the cessation of only negative thoughts in mind, not all of them and asserted this new definition you fabricated as if it was gospel. You could not careless for what the sutras actually really said or what 2000 years of scholarship on Yoga said.
And a real expert in Samkhya or Yoga would not be so dismissive of the criticisms of these philosophies by scholars. I recall what you said, “I hate critics, I don’t care what they think” What this showed is that you were not even making an attempt to look at the philosophical problems in Samkhya, like a true Christian, you just turned a blind eye to it and pretended they did not exist.(I have bought light to those problems in this thread)
I have a good memory indeed and I can remember many of these blanket statements you have made without ever backing your points up. Your interest in Samkhya is not for the sake of Samkhya, but to give your Christian worldview an air of rational semblence, hence why you freely distort it to fit into it. This is why you are a pseudo-Samkhyan. You’re really just another fundamentalist Christian trying to justify and rationalize your faith, by selectively borrowing from every other tradition, and leaving out what does not fit in with it.
So now we get to the real reason for this thread. It was never anything more than a thinly veiled excuse for Surya Deva to attack Asuri. I’ve already made my case, and I think its pretty much iron-clad. Surya Deva is a liar, and a very sick puppy indeed. This forum was a much better place before he arrived.
You have to ask yourself, what is going on here? I think what we are witnessing is how hindus attempt to suppress anyone or any idea that dares to oppose them. I must say this thread really is quite an education.
I need to provide some context for this post.
I will call this the [B]Nonsense Theory[/B]. And my original response:
Based on this thread I’ve realized that the Nonsense Theory isn’t just about being gullible, it’s also about [I][B]intimidation[/B][/I]. It’s like they’re saying, accept this, or be subjected to an endless barrage of lies, slander, misrepresentations, and other assorted personal attacks. So to swallow the Nonsense Theory, you would need to be [I][B] either gullible or passive[/B][/I]. So if you are gullible or passive, that’s OK with the Vedantins, because you can be easily controlled. But if you are neither gullible nor passive, that creates a problem that has to be eliminated. The bottom line is that this really isn’t about philosophy, [B]it’s about dominance and control[/B].
I will make one modification to my original response. There [I]could be[/I] a similarity between space and consciousness, but the Nonsense Theory absolutely does not demonstrate that this is so. This reinforces the notion that the Nonsense Theory is not really about philosophy.
Based on this new understanding, I have to conclude that the truth is quite a bit more sinister than what is implied by ‘Intellectual or con artist’. This is not simply a case of P.T. Barnum type hucksters trying to extract money from unwitting suckers. What we have are people out to control an entire society, to keep entire groups of people in subjugation, and to keep themselves at the top levels of society. What we see here is merely a microcosm that shows how it works.
In the case of Surya Deva, what he wants us to accept is his authority on matters of Indian philosophy. He feels that because he is educated, we should accept his word without question. He is upset because his authority has been effectively challenged.
In Intellectual or Con Artist, the absurdity of his Nonsense Theory should be obvious to the most casual observer. In The Four Quarters, a careful reading showed that Surya Deva’s interpretation was completely unsupported by the substance of the upanishad. And in Scientific or Simplistic, the inconsistency of his positions is exposed. In that thread he actually says that he prefers Samkhya to Vedanta. So it should be clear that Surya Deva cannot be regarded as a reliable source of knowledge.
As a response to these challenges to his authority, Surya Deva has engaged in a vile and despicable campaign of lies, slander, misrepresentations, and other personal attacks that began in Enlightenment, Light Body, and Kundalini, and has continued into this thread. This absurd little sham ‘debate’ is a desperate attempt at damage control. In his attempt to defend himself by smearing [I]my[/I] name, Surya Deva is creating a bad name not only for himself, but for Hindus and Vedanta in general.
I may have some differences of opinion on some points of philosophy, but I want to make it clear that my quarrel is not with Vedanta, it is with Surya Deva.
Asuri claims that his problem is with me and not Vedanta. It is clear from his replies that he has problems with me, but it is also clear he has problems with Vedanta from his replies in this thread alone
Like a true Vedantin, Surya Deva is out to destroy Samkhya as an autonomous philosophical system.
I will call this the Nonsense Theory
So if you are gullible or passive, that’s OK with the Vedantins, because you can be easily controlled. But if you are neither gullible nor passive, that creates a problem that has to be eliminated. The bottom line is that this really isn’t about philosophy, it’s about dominance and control.
So Asuri has no problem with Vedanta, yet he calls it “nonsense theory” and its proponents as slanderers, liers, oppressers out to dominate and control. If you review his post history in regards to his opinion on Vedanta, you will see he has maintained a consistent negative stance on Vedanta. It is thus clear he has a problem with Vedanta.
Note how Asuri hasn’t made any arguments(as usual) to back up anything he says. He just constantly makes accusations, throwing tantrums - but never tries to engage any point with reason. This is a huge contrast to what I have done, I spent 3 pages engaging using reasoned arguments the problems in Samkhya and how Vedanta provides satisfactory solutions. I am actually showing and backing up my points in a mature manner.
The difference between me and Asuri is very visible - I am debating the ideas and engaging with all the finer points. Asuri is debating me - adhominem - to the man, not the topic. He has not given a single reason why the Vedanta philosophy of reality as being only name and form is ‘nonsense’ As always he just makes blanket statements and never actually backs anything he says up, but hides behind endless adhominems.
In the ‘Intellecual or con artist’ thread I attempted to reason with this man and explain the Vedanta theory of reality as only name and form, and pointed him to similar philosophies in contemporary philosophy(reality as language construction) But his response is ‘This is nosense’ and that’s that. Not a single attempt to engage with any of the arguments these philosophies make.
Imagine Asuri writing an essay for a philosophy class. His question is, "Reality is a construction of language - to what extent do you agree with this’ His answer would be, “It’s nonsense” and that’s that. Imagine what grade he would be getting for his paper 
Asuri has only proven that he’s an unreasonable and uneducated person. He has shown he lacks ability to argue any of his points. So to cover up his shortcoming, he hides behind emotional tantrums and adhominems.
I think Sarva is right, why waste time debating with an ignoramus.
To illustrate with an actual example from the thread ‘Intellectual or conartist’
I attempted to explain the Vedanta theory of name and form to Asuri in a polite way(It is hard explaining complex philosophical arguments to a layman, but I have been known to be quite good at explaining complex things in simple ways to peers, so as long as the listener actually engages with me) Here is what I said:
This is what Vedanta is pointing out in its worldview. Although it maybe inspired by scriptural authority, it does demonstrate its points using formal arguments. The critique it makes about reality also comes from secular postmodernism, that reality is the act of language construction, including the realities of science. When we make an observation we isolate in our consciousness certain characteristics and then objectify it and label it, like say a table and a chair, and then we separate out all the isolated objects according to time and space - so we might say “The Earth is 91 million miles away from the sun, America is thousands of miles away India, I am a few metres away from the wall” but what if we say “How far is the sun from space” Then space disappears, because the sun is pervaded by space. Similarly, everything that occurs within the field of our consciousness is pervaded by consciousness - the sun, moon, stars, other people. Thus whatever we are isolating is in the field of consciousness. There is no such thing as something outside of consciousness. There is no such thing as a location of consciousness inside our outside. It all is consciousness. Any multiplicity we see is just an act of language.
Here is what Asuri said in response. First he said:
I congratulate you on some fine work here. I don’t quite buy everything you’re saying, but I’m not going to try to argue against you.
Then the next day he changed track completely and started 4 separate threads in separate forums in response, one of them being “Intellectual or con artist” It should be noted Asuri thinks that making arguments to support a Vedanta theory is 'con-artistry"
His response to my explanation is:
I don’t care what kind of fancy label you put on it, the statement that reality is the act of language construction has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.
I attempt to explain it even further and showing similar arguments to the Vedanta name and form theory in contemporary philosophy:
It is clear to me you find the the whole Vedanta worldview that all is consciousness incredibly abhorrent, by your strong reaction to it whenever it is articulated here! I simply do not share your opinion that the Vedanta worldview is only faith based, because I know it is based on a valid critique of reality based on language(name and form philosophy) and this critique is very popular today in philosophy of science(however ridiculous that may seem to you) That is, that whatever we know - like say a chair, a table, an elephant or a horse - is only a name we are giving to a form we can see. We assume that form to be an isolated object and a thing in itself. When really what it is is just a modication of our conscious experience.
This criticism is also given by Karl Popper, a giant of philosophy of science and whose framework is now been adopted into the scientific method. He shows that every observation we make is ‘theory laden’ in other words when we make any observation, say of even a glass, we assign to it certain behaviours and properties and call this object we have formed “glass” Then when we see the glass again we identify it as the object glass because it appears to conform to the concept we have formed. In this way we go around objectifying reality and dividing it with language - chairs, tables, oranges, apples - what have you.
Now what does a physicist find when he tries to find the constituents that make up these things we call chairs, tables, oranges, apples? He finds that they are not different substances, but aggregates of the same building blocks - or elementary particles. First, he was able to break them down to only three particles: protons, electrons and neutrons. Then he broke them down further when he realised that even these particles were made out of even more fundamental particles: quarks. But the whole atomic theory collapses when we reach something called ‘quantum docoherence’ this is when matter is no longer any kind of particle, it is a wave distributed everywhere. The chair, table, orange and apples are there these same waves of this fundamental stuff - but not specific objects yet - simply potentials or possibilities.
So far we are still working with the matter thesis, but here is where it gets tricky. Any of those possibilities or potentials of chairs, tables, oranges, apples etc have to be bought into manifestation by a conscious observer. Only then do we see a manifest reality. In other words everything that exists, is what we are conscious of. I am conscious of the chair; I am conscious of the table…orange…apple. So whatever reality you see is only what you are conscious of - chairs, tables, oranges, apples, earth, moons, sun, stars, galaxies. It is all within the field of consciousness. It is pervaded by consciousness in exactly the same way it is pervaded by space.
Of course you are never going to accept this worldview, but I am merely demonstrating the rationale behind this worldview.
…
Vedanta calls our objectified reality our ‘transactional reality’ It does not deny that it exists, it does indeed exist, but only as a part of our world of experience(in this case waking experience) It is a practical reality of names and forms. In this practical reality we can have a gold necklace, a gold ring, a gold statue, but in the essential reality only gold exists. Likewise, in our world of experience we can have a multiplicity of objects, but in the essential reality is all just one experiencing consciousness. The same conscousness that produces a multiplcity of objects in dream, is the same consciousness that producing them in the waking state.
Again why should we just isolate one band of conscious experience - the waking state - and call that real? It seem very arbitrary!
I gave him a more in depth explanation of what the language construction philosophy of reality says. Notice I have not made a single personal attack against Asuri. Here is his response to the time I spent trying to explain this to him:
his is all I’m going to respond to. I consider people like you who engage in this sort of thing to be predators looking for victims. Because if they believe this, they’ll believe anything. You can sell them swamp land in Arizona. As far as I’m concerned your credibility is less than zero and I have no more time to waste on you.
Engage in what thing? Trying to explain a philosophy to somebody who thinks it is nonsense?
The whole interaction with Asuri can be modelled like this:
Person A: Makes a proposition
Person B: That is nonsense!!!
Person A: Gives Reason 1 to support proposition
Person B: You are a con artist, I will never believe in this crap!
Person A: Gives Reason 2 to support proposition
Person B: I hate people like you, I consider people like you preadators out to hunt innocent victims
It’s like debating with a fundamentalist. The proposition could be anything, “The scientific evidence shows the earth is older than 5000 years”, “Quantum theory says there is no physical reality”, “Yoga and meditation has been proven to improve health”
This is a good example of why it’s useless to try to engage in any kind of reasonable discussion with Surya Deva. My words have been twisted beyond recognition. Surya Deva continues his campaign of misrepresentations and personal attacks.
Actually I would like to explain my thoughts on some of the points of disagreement between Samkhya and Vedanta, but I know that the misrepresentations and personal attacks would continue, and the thread would go on ad infinitum. So I’ll make a proposition. If Surya Deva will agree to end the personal attacks and agree to some rules of a fair debate, I’ll be happy to try to articulate a few points.
I congratulate you on some fine work here. I don’t quite buy everything you’re saying, but I’m not going to try to argue against you.
It was late at night and I was tired. The post was well written, but in the light of new day, there were a lot of problems with it. I did explain my objections to your assertions, which you conveniently left out. So once again you have misrepresented what I said. I’m beginning to think that you are a pathological liar. If you want me to debate with you, you have to stop this.
So I’ll make a proposition. If Surya Deva will agree to end the personal attacks and agree to some rules of a fair debate, I’ll be happy to try to articulate a few points.
I was never really the worst for personal attacks, but whatever you say. I accept the rules.
So far this is what has been agreed to:
Are there any objections?
First a little background. I am not a professional philosopher or a professional academic. My inquiry into Samkhya began as part of my personal practice, and I found that it really opened up the doors of understanding for me, in terms of yoga philosophy. I promote Samkhya because I believe it’s required knowledge for anyone who is interested in yoga philosophy.
I regard both Samkhya and Vedanta as philosophy, which I’ll define simply as speculation for this purpose. My point being that I don’t consider either one to be the last word, although I have a preference for Samkhya. The differences between them can only be rationally discussed if they are treated as philosophy. Once one or the other acquires the force of religious belief, rational discussion starts to break down. Trying to talk a man out of his religious beliefs is a recipe for conflict. I’d like to avoid that, but since Vedanta is part of Surya Deva’s religious belief, it might be difficult.
I would not say Vedanta is a part of my religious beliefs, as I am not really a religious person at all. I do not go temples or on pilgrimages and live largely a normal secular life. I only accept the philosophical conclusions of Vedanta, which does mean accepting the existence of god, but the type of god I accept is not a religious god, but a conceptual god: God as pure being or infinite reality. If Vedanta was demonstrated to me to be have an error, I would have to renounce its conclusions. A religious person would not do that, they would continue to maintain it as an article of faith. I am not a faith driven person.