That’s why I like mathematical description as language of physics. You investigate relationships between observables and elements of structures (or more abstract concepts like wave function in quantum mechanics – but sooner or later arriving to more tangible quantities). And in some sense you don’t have to worry about nature of the existence of those observables and objects. You observe that atom is composed out of 3 types of particles, ok. You characterize their properties and for some time you think that wow, this is the basic element of matter. Then someone proposes a theory that there are even more elemental ones and proposes an experiment to verify it. And so on.
It serves a practical purpose no doubt but it is a formalization of natural principles which do not behave in an ideal mathematical way. Some formalizations are just wrong like “gravitaional fieds” if gravity is not a field then how can there be such a thing as a gravitational field? In any the use of mathematical formalism seems to be a cultural pecularity of Western science. Hindu science is more observational, which is a cultural pecularity of Hindu science seeing as the observer is so central in it.
like models. But, since I am just ignorant westerner, of course I’m confused with it. So could you clarify a bit? Does it mean that prana is additional “geometrical” dimension of the world? (in the same way as time is an additional dimension to 3 dimensions of space?). I always thought that prana is more of substantial nature and exists in 4 dimensions (because it has distribution in the body and temporal changes over time). So for example if I want to write down coordinates of my pen I write (x,y,z,t,p)? (p would be a number corresponding with position in prana dimension?
No, this is the problem with using dimension because it presupposes geometry. Space and time end at the 3rd and fouth dimension, after that there is no more space and time. This is why Hindu science uses the plane scheme. The prana exists in the 5th plane of reality which corresponds to the quantum world. As as soon as it enters our fourth and 3rd plane of reality it has changed phase. It is longer quantum but physical.
Do you want to say that physical objects around me are created by the language in my head? I heard this before and was interested what does it actually mean. For example, if I would send something to someone without telling what it is, what the recipient would find? An object related to his/hers language or exactly the same physical object I send?
It is simplistic to say it is all language, because obvious brains decode information in a similar way and thus at a perceptual level everybody is going to get the same sensory data. However, they are likely to interpret it in a different way, for example if you give something like a watch to an animal, the first thing they are going to do is perhaps bite or lick it to see if it edible. If you look at the clouds different people will see different imagery based on their culture.
What is really creating your view of reality is divided into 5 categories in Hindu science: valid knowledge, fallacious knowledge, memories, imagination and sleep. All of this is vritti activity(mental activity) which is connected to your identications. So for example you may see a snake, but there is actually a rope. This is when two ideas become superimposed. So your perception here is vritti activity. Similarily all your perception is just vritti activity where your consciousness which is originally undifferentiated has split and developed egoism: me and not me which allows you to reference an “external” and reflect on it. This ability is largely missing in most animals because they don’t have developed egos. It is like putting a divide in a box so that it seems like there are two spaces in the box, when it there there is only one space.
This happens in dreams as welll something causes our reality to split during dreaming where we see a whole external world made out of things and then we see ourselves referencing it, but there is no such real world, it’s taking place in the mind. There can splits within splits(dreams within dreams) Likewise, what Vedatna is saying that all of reality is taking place within consciousness and there is a split that has taken place due to the thought of “I-am arising” and this I am begins to reference itself and creates an external perspective which it identifies with and then splits and splits and split, until there is a completey fragmented view of reality of several different names and forms.
We are doing it consciously all the time as well by creating new words, for example popular people and unpopular people, hot and cold, light and dark, good and bad and we soon forget and become enmeshed in these linguistic realities. The same happens in science it becomes enmeshed in theortical constructs and models and starts to think they are real entities; such as gravitational forces.
I think the best way to illustrate what Vedanta is driving at is to imagine a television. The television has many channels and each channel is on a distinct bandwidth and does not interfere with one another. However, many people can tune the same channel and see the same thing, but they cannot see the channel other people are watching. Likewise in this vast field of consciousness there are several frequency ranges and we share can these frequency ranges and see the same reality(intersubjective reality) This does not mean any of those are real, because they are just modifications of the same consciousness field.
Rather than a neat progression, Kuhn shows there are entire shifts in perspectives which he calls a gestalt switch which happen all of a sudden and completely transform our understanding of the world.
It is clear logically that mind is in another plane of reality. It is non-local. If it was local you would be able to measure minds.