/lit/ - Literature

how do thomists respond to the process ontologies of buddhism and whitehead?

>Knowledge is absolute when there is no gap between consciousness and its object, or consciousness is its own object, hence subject and object at once.

>The ouroboros attempting to eat its own tail and complete the circle, but never attaining it.
The absolute closure of gap is of course impossible because there will always be a differential lag in the rates of becoming between our consciousness and our consciousness of our consciousness and our consciousness of our consciousness of our consciousness... and so forth.

>""Knowledge" is a referring back: in its essence a regressus in infinitum. That which comes to a standstill (at a supposed causa prima, at something unconditioned, etc.) is laziness, weariness--"

>Buddhist/Vedantic meditation and other practices only just help enhance that regress... that urge Not To Stop somewhere... they are an intensification of this process for finer and finer self-self-self-self-consciousness... and so you have the phrase mind-Fullness. One tries to achieve the Fullest or maximal consciousness of self.

>The notion "I am Brahman Become", or "That Thou Art", etc. indicate the path of intense regressus where the mind is able to rest on itself De-identifying itself further and further at every stage with passive derivation of its identity from the flux / samsara.

>Meditation is a building of layers. When you have achieved a certain degree of self-consciousness, with further regressus, there is new self-consciousness and so on. So the mind comes increasingly to rest on itself...
self-self-self-self-self-self-consciousness...