[MD] Objectivism and the MOQ

[Ham Priday]

Laramie --


You said: "Existence is the undifferentiated Absolute Source.
Existence is multi-dimensional.

I said: "You've just admitted that Existence is multi-dimensional!"

> What is the implication of your concluding sentence?

It's a non-sequitor.  What is absolute cannot be multi-dimensional.

> This might help:
>
> "'The world is illusory.  Brahmin alone is real.
> Brahmin is the world' and the world is evolving."
>
> Ken Wilber commenting upon Ramana Maharshi.

Wilber is a practicing Buddhist who has researched psychology and has some
interesting things to say on self-development.  But Buddhism is not a
metaphysics, and Wilber has no cosmology to support his theories.  (But, as
you've pointed out, smart people like Ayn Rand "reject" cosmology).

I would agree, for purposes of argument, that Existence is "illusory", and
that Essence alone is "real".  However, Essence is not, like Brahmin, the
(actualized) world of experience.  Essence does not evolve, because what is
absolute is static and doesn't change.  (It doesn't NEED to.)  What changes
is man's perception of reality, which is "being in transition" as viewed
from the temporal perspective of nothingness.

Man's frame of reference is "the present"; yesterday's values are today's
memories, and he is innocent of future knowledge.  Such is the incremental
passage of the individual through the dimensions of time and space -- the
mode of human experience.  By abstracting the undifferented value of Essence
in this serialized fashion, we intellectually "construct" beings and events
occuring in a dynamic space/time framework.  THAT is the illusion we call
physical reality.

It's as if we were on the shore watching the ocean waves roll in, oblivious
of the great body of water underneath.  Our experiential focus is
infinitesimal and constantly changing.  Our brains try to integrate these
perceptions into a concrete whole by linking them together and separating
them from the nothingness that we don't experience.  But because nothingness
is the ground of physical experience we are never able to perceive the whole
of Essence; we can only sense it as a variety of values relative to its
intellectualized pieces.

Of course, you can take everything at face value and conclude, as Rand does,
this is it: there is no ultimate reality.  This leaves you without an
explanation of how things got here and what is the purpose of it all.
That's what a cosmology is for.  Buddhism, like most mystical practices, can
only give you koans and meditative exercises to calm your mind and soothe
your "spirit".  But if you are a die-hard Realist, like most of Western
Society, you will seek a more rational and logical answer to the mystery of
existence than the mantras of the East or the doctrines of traditional
religion.

Cheers and sincere best wishes,
Ham