[MD] Direct Experience

[Dwaipayan Lahiri]

On Aug 14, 2008, at 3:49 PM, Ham Priday wrote:

>  also think a distinction should be made between experience and  
> sensibility for epistemological clarity.  I usually reserve  
> "experience" for the awareness of external phenomena -- other  
> persons, things, events, knowledge, and universal ideas.  Although  
> there's nothing wrong with saying "I'm experiencing a pain", since  
> it's assumed that I'm not experiencing someone else's pain,  
> technically pain is a proprioceptive sensation.  So is Pirsig's  
> "pre-intellectual experience."  Properly speaking, qualitative  
> values like joy, sadness, beauty, grossness, magnificence,  
> triteness, goodness, and evil are "sensibilities" rather than  
> experiences.

Consciousness has been varying defined/qualified in various ways. One  
being that there is a supra-consciousness vs the mundane  
consciousness of our everyday lives. Supra-consciousness will give  
you the ability to experience everyone's pain, everyone's sorrow,  
everyone's joy. That Consciousness taps into the Tao/Brahman (is Tao/ 
Brahman).

>
> Incidentally, I don't know how you distinguish "direct" experience  
> from "indirect", but the essence of self-awareness is value- 
> sensibility. Therefore, I would call the former "sensibility" if it  
> falls in the category of Pirsig's "hot stove" analogy.  As a  
> general rule, concepts, sentiments, preferences, desires, fears,  
> and resentments are all sensibilities. Quantitaive knowledge, such  
> as factual information, physical relations, and numerical  
> calculations, pertains to experience.

Samkhya Darsana (The Philosophy of Yoga) deals with this topic. In  
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras he deals with the nature of Knowledge as  
follows --

True Knowledge can be attained via Direct Perception, Inference based  
on intuition and by the testimony of reliable sources (YS 1:7)

This Direct Experience in my opinion is the acquisition of knowledge  
via Direct Perception. This is typically the atemporal, aphysical  
knowledge. To understand this you have to shift your attention from  
the layer of the flesh (Annamaya Kosha or the First Sheath of  
Existence) to the subtler layers (Pranamaya, Vijnanamaya, Manomaya  
and finally Anandamaya Koshas).

I refrain from trying to translate these into English because  
translations/transliterations are futile -- English is incapable of  
expressing these concepts.