NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DONT

COMMONSENSE VERSUS THE TRUTH

Do objects exist when I am not perceiving them? The question is sometimes asked
to challenge Vedantas claim that objects are perceptions and, therefore, have no
existence independent of awareness. But the question, which appeals to
commonsense prejudices, contains two crucial presuppositions: that objects exist
when I am perceiving them, and that the I who perceives them is an individual
body/mind. These presuppositions must be examined before the question can be
properly understood and rightly answered.
So lets consider the first presupposition: do objects exist when I am perceiving
them? By an object I mean that collection of sensory perceptions that seem to
inhere in a discrete experience; and by exist I mean remain in space and time
when I as a body/mind am no longer present and perceiving the object. And by I
I mean knowledge that appears to arise in an individual body/mind.
Now, if an object is a collection of sensory perceptions conflated into what is
accepted as a discrete experience, that is, a perceived event occupying its unique
position in space and time, then an object cannot exist independently of the
perceivers sensory data. That data is collected by the five senses and synthesized
into a unified impression by the mind. So an object is a mental event, rather than
a physical one, even if one wishes to posit a causal connection between the
sensory stimuli and the mental event. To ask whether the object exists outside
the mental event is to ask whether an object can be that which it is not? A thing
cannot be and not be in the same sense and at the same time. This is called the
principal of non-contradiction and it applies to all logical thoughts about objects.
Dr. Samuel Johnson was irritated by the philosopher George Berkeleys assertion
that physical objects are actually mental phenomena. When asked how he could
refute the claim, the good doctor kicked a stone and proclaimed triumphantly :I
refute it thus! But Johnsons refutation was a piece of logical bootstrapping: he
assumed his body (the foot that kicked the stone) was a physical object somehow

exempted from Berkeleys proofs. But the body also falls under the category of
mental phenomena, notwithstanding our strong emotional identification with it.
The body is perceived, like other objects.
Still, the prejudice that an object is a physical event, existing independently of our
perception of it, is a fundamental one that requires more analysis. Part of the
problem is in the language. If a physical event is the same as a mental event, i.e. if
a perception is a perception despite its shape and presumed origin, then the
distinction between a physical and a mental object becomes meaningless.
Now, the assumption that perception is an event in an individual body/mind also
lends credence to the notion that an object exists independently of its being
perceived. But the notion of awareness being divisible and personal cannot
withstand analysis. For awareness to be divisible would require that it be
material, that it possess extension and mass and depth. It would also require
some borderland between my awareness and your awareness to separate the
two distinct realms. Of what could that consist?
Matter is insentient: it is incapable of awareness and incapable of projecting
awareness; nor is matter, strictly speaking, separable into distinct units, but
rather a continuum, as is space. Despite the assertions of materialists, awareness
cannot be proven to be an intrinsic property of matter. One can argue that the
electrical impulses passing through the brain produce consciousness, but such
speculation rests on a host of assumptions, some of which again can be traced to
a confusion of language and others to a failure to analyze clearly what is being
asserted.
What are electrical impulses? How and from where do they originate? In what
way can thoughts and feelings be shown to inhere in these impulses? How does
the tissue of the brain figure into this operation? The brain is, after all, just a
mixture of the elements, like all matter. What could lend it a special property not
found in other clumps of matter? And what happens to the brain in deep sleep,
when the awareness of objects is suspended? Does its material composition
change? Does whatever is generating the electrical impulses cease to function for
some reason?

It can be shown that the brain is an instrument of awareness in that its condition
can influence the quality of sensory perceptions, but it cannot be demonstrated
that awareness originates in and is dependent upon the matter of the brain. A
brain-dead person no longer perceives objects just as a radio that is turned off no
longer receives radio waves. But the waves are not dependent upon the individual
transmitter, nor can it be proved that consciousness is dependent upon the
individual brain matter.
And the brain is an object of perception as much as any other perception. Again,
the meaningless distinction between a physical and mental event must be
invoked in any discussion about the role of brain matter. We are dealing with
thoughts. Awareness is trying to discern its point of origin, which would seem to
require awareness to rise above awareness and examine itself from another
vantage, much like taking out your eyeballs to get a better look at them.
But if I am not in the room, I know the objects in the room dont disappear.
When I re-enter the room, they are all there, just as I remember them. Does this
not prove that objects exist independently of my perceiving them? From the
commonsense point of view, the proof appears convincing. But the question
contains the previous supposition that awareness only inheres in an individual
body/mind; therefore, to say in this context that objects depend upon awareness,
is to say they are dependent upon an individual body-mind. To return to the
analogy of the radio: when the knob is turned on, the radio waves are received
and transmitted; when the knob is turned off, the radio is silent. This does not
mean that radio waves have ceased to be transmitted; only that an individual
instrument is not functioning at a given time. Similarly, objects depend on
awareness, but not on individual awareness, as no such thing exists. Awareness
never ceases to exist no matter how many individual body/minds come and go.
There is also this consideration: any thought about a pre-existing object, or one
that continues in the absence of your body/mind, occurs in the present: it is
produced by the imagination now, not in the past. So the past is just a thought in
the present. Likewise, the future is also a thought in the present. Neither past nor
future have any existence outside of present imagination. And what is the present

if not that interval between the past and the future? The entire concept of time is
really that a concept, a thought. So the continuity of objects in the absence of a
particular body/mind is a thought that exists in imagination, not as a physical
object in space/time. (Space is also dependent upon the imagination of time, as
should be evident with a little reflection: space can be measured as the distance
between objects, and that distance can be measured in time, e.g. If I travel at 50
miles per hour, I can reach a place 100 miles distant in two hours.)
So there is no proof or reasoning that supports the notion that our supposedly
distinctive ideas are derived from the individual perception of external objects.
This conclusion radically undercuts the deep-rooted prejudice that you have your
ideas and I have mine. It requires careful consideration and a commitment to the
truth to be understood and accepted. But an honest examination of the facts
does not support the popular notion that is second-nature to us: that we each
possess an individual awareness of independently existing objects, and that this
awareness is a function of our brain matter.
The question may also arise: If awareness is not individual, then why dont I know
your thoughts and you know mine? Lets examine the presuppositions contained
in the question. Again, it presupposes independently existing objects in this
case, body/minds who experience independently existing objects in diverse
ways. The question assumes duality is real, then uses that assumption in an
attempt to disprove non-duality. At this point , it may be good to consider again
the nature of objects.
If there is no distinction between mental and physical events, then there is no
distinction between what we call matter and what we call awareness. There is no
second thing Advaita. John Levy, a disciple of Atmananda Krishna Menon, in his
wonderful book, The Nature of Man according to the Vedanta, provides us with
the following incomparable description of how we perceive objects:
When something is cognized, a something does certainly exist, but not as it
appears, for the appearance is determined wholly by the percipient and not by
the thing in itself. The senses are like so many languages, which express in their

own idiom the unobjectified being that is beyond the domain of expression.
(Ch. 5, p. 35, bolding and italics are mine)
Every apparent object is the same awareness, expressed yet inexpressible, and
words are but one more idiom attempting to give form to the formless. What
more can be said?