Abrahamism and the Self

[Anonymous No.18261291]

I've asked this on /his/ and no one seems interested in effort posting there and this is supposedly a smarter version of that board so I'll post it here

Why does it seem like Abrahamic religion talks so little on the idea of what the self is and the nature of reality?

I've been trying to learn about the Dharmic religions, particularly Hinduism and find it fascinating to read and hear about the different arguments and interpretations different sects and religions came up with on the nature of the self, consciousness, reality and existence.

The idea of Hindu Dualism vs Non-Dualism, in particular, I found fascinating and the teachings of Shankara and the idea of "Advaita Vedanta," that there is nothing but existence "Brahman" and conscious experience "Atman" and they are one.

Such ideas in the west seem to be utterly absent in philosophy until the enlightenment and secular philosophers like the classic Desecrate argument, "I think therefore I am."

My question is why did Abrahamic religion never particularly go in-depth on these ideas? All it seems to argue, no matter the denomination or religion, is you have a soul and everything is god's creation and when you die the soul lives on and goes to the afterlife. Do I just not understand the deeper philosophy behind it or is it really that simple and if so why?

Video for anyone interested on Shankara:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMEsszfBYMo&ab_channel=Let%27sTalkReligion

And vids I watched previously that helped give context
(would recommend watching these first to understand better):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEqATHUJQHc&ab_channel=Let%27sTalkReligion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UkDEGBtHSQ&ab_channel=Let%27sTalkReligion

[Anonymous No.18261310]

>>18261291
>Why does it seem like Abrahamic religion talks so little on the idea of what the self is and the nature of reality?
Because they focus on duty to God. All of reality is God's domain, or his personal property, and we only understand ourselves in our relation to this. The same goes for reality itself – it exists only for God's greater glory, and so is fruitless to study for its own sake except insofar as it reveals Him.

As for us, we are literally clay golems of a sort, formed out of the dirt. We hold a kind of spirit inside of us that animates us, but if we displease God, we can be broken / thrown away.

[Anonymous No.18261389]

>>18261310
So what they said on /his/ yesterday was legit? It's literally just slave morality? I refuse to believe it's that simple. There's something else going on

[Anonymous No.18261501]

>>18261291
Also, is it just a coincidence that Desecarte's "I think therefore I am" and the enlightenment happened to start around the time France and the UK started taking over vast territories in India?

I know Sufiism and the Unity of being was formed as a result of Arab scholars studying the teachings of Shankara and Linguistic Relativism came about studying Sanskrit and forming the Indo-European hypothesis.

Is there any evidence to support that the enlightenment ideals were correlated with this at all?

[Anonymous No.18261593]

>>18261291
Cartesian dualism is pretty different from Advaita Vedanta. For one, Descartes doesn't believe that all conscious experience is just one thing, but rather that there's the world of Mind and that of Matter, but there can be separate things within those two worlds; in comparison, while Advaita Vedanta postulates a similar constitutional dualism (Atman=Brahman vs Nothing/Illusion), it rejects the idea of the realm of Brahman actually having any real meaningful separate objects in it (hence why Atman=Brahman). You might have just been using Descartes as a thinker who is concerned with Selfs, however.

Anyways, in the post-Christianized West, there isn't really room for that sort of thing. You have a soul, and it has to have certain properties to fit in with the Bible, and there is Yahweh, and he has to have certain properties to fit in with the Bible. You don't get the freeform nature of philosophy that you do in India and China where you can propose super whacky shit that is aesthetically orthodox but in truth radically divergent (Ramanuja's Qualified Non-Dualism vs Dvaita Vedanta for example, which are both Hinduism but have literally diametrically opposed views on Atman and Brahman). It isn't until the Enlightenment when people could even attempt this sort of thing (Aquinas was almost burnt at the stake like three times). So, yes, you could just summarize it as "slave morality", but then I also think at a certain level Indians were just concerned about other things. When Pyrrho took Buddhism west, he stripped the soteriology out when he brought it to Greece. That's very telling.

The West has always seemed to focus more on what things are "made of". When Westerners propose Monism, it's stuff like Heraclitus or Thales where things are "made of" fire; in India, it's that Brahman and Atman (or whatever else) are actually the same thing, what it's made up of is really irrelevant; in China, Monism takes the form of everything "coming from" the same source, but not necessarily being made of the same thing(s).

[Anonymous No.18261598]

>>18261389
>it’s literally just slave morality?
You have to go back

[Anonymous No.18261607]

>>18261291
>Such ideas in the west seem to be utterly absent in philosophy until the enlightenment and secular philosophers like the classic Desecrate argument, "I think therefore I am."
It was not. Read the church fathers of the east, pretty platonic and metaphysical. Cappadocian fathers, alexandrians, saint John Damascinos. And even in the West the nature of God is explained extensively with Meister Eckhart or the scolastic theology in general, continuing to a certain extent the philosophical and christian mysticism (saint denys the areopagite being very important).

Then of course God will not be presented as the self, because it's not how the christian metaphysics work. It is as metaphysics to say "I am not God" than "I am God", since denying the ego (humility) means acknowledging the Self. By denying what is not God you find God, by finding God you deny what is not God. The rhetoric is thus different. The christian puts the accent toward the transcendancy of God's essence, the fact it's above everything and the ego.
Then of course I tend to think christians have more bhaktic (devotional) tendancies, in accord with the nature of the people that have been christians.
But something aggravated it : the filioque heresy. Basically the division of christianity and their lost of metaphysics (the christian metaphysics being done through the dogma of the Trinity). After this, the christian west began being more sentimental and when they did metaphysics it was not the christian one.

[Anonymous No.18261631]

>>18261389
Not sure if slave morality is the right word, but there is something to what that anon said. Keep in mind that abrahamic religions don't really have a concept of reincarnation, so no need to think about what the soul is, how can it move from body to body and so on.

A lot of these question are fairly easily sidestepped there based on dogma. The reality we experience is the thing that God created and isn't haven or hell. The soul is the thing that's taken to heaven or hell after you die, it's whatever the body isn't. I'm way oversimplifying, but you get the point. Christian philosophers were also far more occupied with the nature of god and the interpretation of god's word than the nature of things like the self or reality.

Look at the Greeks, they were very much interested in these questions. Some early christian writers were too because of their influence but christian thought simply moved in a different direction in the middle ages.

[Anonymous No.18261669]

>>18261291
>this is supposedly a smarter version of that board
That is a very low threshold

[Anonymous No.18261684]

>>18261291
Abrahamic religion is political, that’s the difference. The story that the old testament tells is in short the story of the successive phases of a nation, starting with a man and a woman, progressing to a family which becomes a tribe, then a people. It acquires laws (religious and secular), land and establishes a state. The spiritual dimension has to do with the relation of the self to himself as a social/political being, who relates to himself through others and through their common cause (God). God’s demands express their needs and what is needed of them to surmount their challenges.

The standpoint of Abrahamic religion as regards the nature of reality, it holds that God is the invisible (unrepresentable) cause of reality, its ultimate condition, which is infinitely creative and unbounded. It posits the existing order, but by simultaneously surpassing it, that order is also posited as contingent and ultimately as void of substance. This invisible power (God) cannot be grasped, yet we stand directly in some relation to it, being creatures in his creation. Also God speaks directly to certain chosen individuals (prophets) by whose words we are given fragments of the divine, in the form of laws.

Abrahamic religion is fundamentally mysterious, as the full significance of God’s words are not known, and rather than implying slavery to the obscure, the invisible serves to inspire creative acts, such as for instance interpretation of the text, which because of the unsurpassable nature of God, does not arrive at any interpretation as the final one, but is pricked on to continue the work.

In short, it’s entire framework os different, and the appropriate way to appreciate Abrahamic religion is not through hinduism (as of course it would come up short) but to understand how it chooses to represent/conceptualise the divine.

[Anonymous No.18261741]

>>18261501
>I know Sufiism and the Unity of being was formed as a result of Arab scholars studying the teachings of Shankara
The shit this board comes up with alhamdullilah

[Anonymous No.18261861]

>>11142529
Then what is free will? If cleansing impurities from the soul is what is necessary to achieve oneness with god then what is that which decides to remove these impurities?

The idea of the Atman is it is perception and experience itself. To look at oneself and see one's impurities something is perceiving them, but if the soul is the conscious then it cannot perceive itself. and know its own impurities.

The emphasis then is on actions to be one with god and refraining from the ones that make us more one with the material world like sin, but how are we able to know at all what those acts which are one with god or one with the world are what they are when our own perception is warped through our own impurities? Just like how there is a million different ways to interpret anything god said.

[Anonymous No.18261889]

>>18261741
That's what an anon said yesterday in the earlier thread I made on /his/.

>>18261861
Meant for >>18261631 since I you also asked on the thread currently on /his/

[Anonymous No.18261981]

>>18261889
I was the one who mentioned Sufism and posted the quote about al-Ghazali in that thread on /his/ yesterday, I didnt mean to imply that Muslims had gotten those ideas from Advaitins though, even though the ideas are similar. Some scholars have speculated that Indian teaching influenced early Sufism but other scholars disagree and say that it’s entirely or largely derived from the Quran, Hadiths and from the first generation of Muslims.

[Anonymous No.18262017]

>>18261981
ah, my mistake

[Anonymous No.18262026]

>>18261981
Muslim could have taken their doctrine from both neo-platonism and christianism, with hesychasm as direct influence for the dhikr

[Anonymous No.18262038]

>>18261291
You should look into Sufism

[Anonymous No.18262045]

>>18262026
this is false, islamic sufism come straight from the Prophet

[Anonymous No.18262048]

>>18262045
Yeah, I know your point of view

[Anonymous No.18262049]

>>18261861
>but if the soul is the conscious then it cannot perceive itself. and know its own impurities.
The Atman is already pure, the task at hand for Advaitins is not purifying the Atman but is acquiring knowledge of the Atman and of ending misidentification with the not-Atman. Only the non-Atman (body and mind) can be purified.

[Anonymous No.18262115]

>>18262026
There is not a lot of historical evidence for that. The early Muslims did not interact with Neoplatonists, and the Hesychasm movement was later formalized in Eastern Orthodoxy but there was not a big Hesychasm movement in the Levant or Egypt at the time the Muslims took over those areas.

[Anonymous No.18262154]

>>18262049
ik, I was arguing in terms of comparison with Christianity in that case. That if the soul is consciousness and consciousness is perception (like Atman) then you cannot perceive one's own perception.

[Anonymous No.18262210]

>>18262115
They had access to neoplatonism, in itself and through the christians they conquered.
And hesychasm is just a name for the prayer of the heart and christian monasticism, that we know existed at least from the beginning (desert fathers and fathers of the Church being proof of that).
While their isn't much proof of sufism in the first centuries of Islam; the centuries when they conquered all the christian countries.

[Anonymous No.18262229]

>>18262154
Christians typically have a different conception of the soul where they would group together what in Vedanta would be separated into the Atman and the antaḥkaraṇa (inner organ), so for a Christian it may not be a contradiction to say that the soul observes itself because they can say that the soul’s awareness pays attention to its own thoughts, memories, urges etc. Vedantins may of course disagree with considering these things as also soul, but so long as you hold that the soul is composed of distinct and interacting parts then you can also say that one part observes the other.

[Anonymous No.18262240]

>>18262210
>>18262049
While I don't personnaly know the proofs (they require to go into historical details), this theory is quite plausible.
Even in his exoterism, Islam is a patchwork of doctrines and present itself as such as a continuation and correction of christianity and judaism.

[Anonymous No.18262269]

Abrahamic religion is an incredibly intellectually impoverished style of software to have running on your brain. It is a totalitarian slave system with no interesting insight into the human experience. Look to the East, as you have. You will find much more wisdom there, at least regarding the subjective experience

[Anonymous No.18262303]

>>18262269
>incredibly intellectually impoverished style of software to have running on your brain
Even the western traditions will do the same : fight against thoughts and everything from the brain in order to go above it. The objective is always to "impoverish" the brain or the ego. To sublimate it, of course, but by denying it.

[Anonymous No.18262386]

>>18262303
That's right. It's really a shame about the Western canon regarding insight of this sort.

[Anonymous No.18262972]

>>18261593
"Heidegger's Critique of Cartesianism"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONSlRyWezt8
For anyone interested.

[Anonymous No.18263040]

>>18261291
>Why does it seem like Abrahamic religion talks so little on the idea of what the self is and the nature of reality?
Idont think this assumption is really correct. Theres a lot of ideas implicit in christianity regarding the self and reality. The reason you won't find any detailed treatises on it written in the bible is because the bible is foremost a book to guide you toward salvation rather than a book of philosophical discourse. You'll have too look into Christian philosophers like Augustine and Aquinas and others to find what you're looking for regarding that.

[Anonymous No.18263082]

>>18261291
in the Quran all of this is hidden in metaphors. I read in a sufi book that when the Quran is speaking about mountains, one intended meaning is the false sense of self rooted in psychological phenomena (because mountains are said to be what give stability to the earth, and the earth is the flesh ie the world of the senses). So if you want to learn about the self in Islam you can look for mountains in the Quran. And God knows best.

[Anonymous No.18263083]

>>18261389
What exactly is it that you think slave morality means and how it relates to this?

[Anonymous No.18263095]

>>18261291
>Abrahamic religion
No such thing. Rephrase your question and try again.

[Anonymous No.18263105]

Christ very clearly has something to do with the self. Christ is clearly some kind of metaphysical spiritual thing, and baptism is supposed to lead to rebirth *in christ*. I think this means that the aim of christianity is realization of the self through contemplating Christ. I think this is somewhat clear in Pauls writings, that christianity is a LOT more than what it seems like on the surface. I have heard an ortho subdeacon say that in orthodoxy the deep teachings are not always written down, because they aren't supposed to be subject to open debate in society, they are supposed to be kept secret. I believe that subdeacon had experienced nirvana through his christianity.

[Anonymous No.18263634]

May Allah (SWT) forgive me if I misspeak and misunderstand His words of the Quran, but from what I understood of verses where Allah 'breathes' life into Adam and Mankind is that of the soul and its highest element: the Ruh. 'Breathing' into a body implies a continuity of breath from Allah, an essence. Practise of tasawwuf is the shedding of the world's illusion and re-immersion in the Edenic state, until one comes upon Al-Hallaj or Ibn Arabi's realization. May Allah (SWT) forgive me if I am misinterpreting. Any brother who is established in knowledge refute me if I am wrong.

[Anonymous No.18263742]

>>18263105
>the deep teachings are not always written down, because they aren't supposed to be subject to open debate in society, they are supposed to be kept secret. I believe that subdeacon had experienced nirvana through his christianity
There is no such thing as Christian esotericism. It is an anti-esoteric religion and has historically met mystics and philosophers with hostility. Your angloid church shopping does not make "orthodoxy" esoteric.

[Anonymous No.18264192]

>>18263742
>There is no such thing as Christian esotericism.
Depends what you by this. Given your counter-initiatic pic I would say not what you think esoterism mean.
In orthodoxy esoterism is hesychasm, it has everything an esoterism needs to progress toward the knowledge of God : prayer given by spiritual father with a special link and with benediction, technics, deepening of the general way. So much it was recognized as such by the perenialist. Now if you mean by esoterism syncretism and magic, christianity certainly doesn't have that. Esoterism doesn't need neither to be a hidden doctrine, just a natural deepening of the general one.
>It is an anti-esoteric religion and has historically met mystics and philosophers with hostility
philosophers were faggots, greeks too, the state of the roman empire was so shit it were similar to us now and needed christianity to rectify all that (polytheism, homosexuality, modern sophistic philosophies,...)
Mystics are sometimes deluded. Christianity produced a lot of true saints and, like every religion, doesn't have to recognize "saints" from outside of it.

[Anonymous No.18264932]

>>18264192
Given your dedication to mistaking an effect for its cause I highly doubt you have any esoteric unrevealed knowledge. In any case, the mere notion of secret doctrines or intimate knowledge of god being a component Christian runs afoul of Christ as the redeemer of all humanity, who are merely asked to worship and acknowledge. So if you are claiming there are deep unwritten Christian doctrines kept from the public, that would not be very Christian. What it would be is esoteric, closer to the mystery religions of antiquity or to certain strains of Hinduism or Buddhism, all of which the Christian professes to hate, that the burning of their adherents in hell is music to the ears of the saints in heaven.

[Anonymous No.18265324]

[Anonymous No.18265661]

>>18264932
ur so enlightened brooo ur have the knowledge

[Anonymous No.18265773]

>>18261291
All religions deny the ego, so they are all worthless to me.

[Anonymous No.18265786]

I just recall Christianity being very pessimistic about mankind, from dust man comes and dust they will return too. Its a strangely nihilistic view of life all things considered. Obviously not actual nihilism, because God gives meaning to our lives.

[Anonymous No.18265804]

>>18261501
Bruh Unity of Being was a Sufi concept long before ibn Arabi. It's in a way almost the endpoint of Asharism, inspired by Aristotle, neo-platonism, and finally be due to Hadith as well as Quranic verses relating to God's omnipotence.

[Anonymous No.18266321]

>>18261593
good post

[Anonymous No.18266364]

>>18261684
Another very good post. When did /lit/ become so good?