Understanding "I" - Vedanta
Quote:
If you are really keen to understand your own misunderstanding on Vedanta, I suggest you to think of all possible combinations or worldviews under which "I" could be experienced, and then ask yourself a question, is that experience part of your perception, within your body or not? Is there any way that you can experience "I" without your body or not?
Critical analysis of "in the present"
Critical analysis of "in the present"
The past, present and the future are the concepts that are unarguably attached to time T.
If one ever tries to critically analyse the thought of being "in the present", one would soon realise that there is no such thing as "in the present". Everything that one knew in the past, knows now and will ever know in the future with any certainty was, is and will be about the past. Nothing whatsoever can be known about the literal present or the literal future.
The reason is quite simple, only if analysed and grasped critically.
There is always a time delay between the occurrence of an event or an event of experience and the event being observed externally and/or experienced internally. There are further time delays in the subsequent sequence that follows the event or the event of experience, which involve a time to acknowledge, a time to register, a time to relate and/or correlate, a time to process the bulk of information, a time to reach a judgement followed by a time to form a valid conclusion about the event or the event of experience that occurred a while or long ago.
Nothing whatsoever of this sequence can happen strictly concurrently or simultaneously. Thus, an event/experience, in all its finest detail and resolution, can truly be known only after it has already happened and has become the past. So, the situation being "in the present" never existed, it does not exist and it will never exist. The only fact that one can ever truly know, is about the past; no matter how short or long time ago it happened. The time dely "dT" involved may vary from a tiny fraction of a second to billions of years, but it can never be "0".
Conclusion:
The thought of being "in the present" is nothing but a delusion as, the very situation being "in the present" never existed, it does not exist and it can/will never exist. An acute, transcendental paradox that can be resolved neither by a series of mere wishful and heedless thoughts nor by the extremes of absurd desires.
This ends the critical analysis of the thought of being "in the present" with a confirming conclusion that "We can never be in the present", only nothing can be in the present. :)