/lit/ - Literature

>>20319039
Thank you for replying to most of my questions with detailed answers. I understand how different parts of KS doctrine relate to each other more now. Some parts of it seem unnecessarily convoluted to me, almost Byzantine, and I don't see the necessity of or basis for separating disclosure as Shakti from Shiva/transcendental Ego/prakasha/the light of consciousness, as I see it, self-disclosure *IS* this very light. Taking away the disclosure removes any connection with luminosity and vice-versa. Sometimes you seem close to agreeing with this when you say the disclosure is just the light of the Self with itself, but to me the most reasonable thing and the thing most in accordance with my experience in this situation is to just say that self-disclosure *IS* the prakasha or the self-luminous Shiva instead of saying "the self-disclosure is both identical to and different from the transcendental Self", and this move seems to additionally contradict the premise that you've articulated that shakti is the 'conscious of other' or 'intentional consciousness'.

I understand the immediate, effortless, constant and spontaneous self-disclosure of "I" to "I" to occur without any differences, without parts and without any distinction of "being conscious of" vs "what I am conscious of", it's just one completely seamless primordial unity instead, like space. To say that the disclosure of "I" to "I" involves something else that is both identical to and different from the I at the same time seems to me to proceed from a place of dogma and it doesn't seem to be something that can be substantiated either logically or from a phenomenological analysis of the experience of how consciousness actually discloses to itself as a perfectly seamless unity.

If I say that some of the things you say sound contradictory, it's not because I am trying to engage in cheap 'gotchas', but it's because I accept the LNC as valid, as does most of classical Indian philosophy. Most of the arguments in classical Indian philosophy assume it and so from reading the classical non-Tantric philosophy, I am just used to thinking about things this way. When the Shaiva tantrists argued against other schools like Buddhism or dualists or Advaitins, don't some of their arguments presume to expose errors in their opponents by ostensibly demonstrating a contradiction? If they reject the LNC to resolve paradoxes in their own system, it seems kind of hypocritical to point to what they call contradictions elsewhere, thereby implicating assuming the LNC as valid when arguing against others but then consistently adhering to it themselves.

On a semi-unrelated note, if you reject contradiction as a test of what is true and what is false, what is your standard or method for determining what is true and what is not true?