Week+4

=** How not to be French:  **= On a former occasion B. V. Narasimha Swami, author of //Self-//        //Realization//, asked: **Who am I? How is it to be found?** //M.:// Ask yourself the question. The body ( //annamaya kosa//) and its     functions **are not ‘I’.**    Going deeper, the mind ( //manomaya kosa//) and its functions **are not ‘I’.** The next step takes on to the question. “Wherefrom do these thoughts arise?” The thoughts are spontaneous, superficial or      analytical. They operate in intellect. Then,  **who **   is aware of them? The existence of thoughts, their clear conceptions and their   operations become evident to the individual. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the individuality of the person is operative as the perceiver of the existence of thoughts and of their sequence. This individuality is the ego, or as people say ‘I’. //Vijnanamaya kosa //(intellect) is only the sheath of ‘I’ and not the ‘I’ itself. Enquiring further the questions arise, “Who is this ‘I’? Wherefrom does it come?” ‘I’ was not aware in sleep. Simultaneously with its rise      sleep changes to dream or wakefulness. But I am not concerned with  dream just now. Who am I now, in the wakeful state? If I originated      from sleep, then the ‘I’ was covered up with ignorance. Such an  ignorant ‘I’ cannot be what the scriptures say or the wise ones affirm. ‘I’ am beyond even ‘Sleep’; ‘I’ must be now and here and what I was all along in sleep and dreams also, without the qualities of such states. ‘I’ must therefore be the unqualified substratum underlying these three states ( //anandamaya kosa //transcended). **‘I’ is, in brief, beyond the five sheaths.** Next, the residuum left over  after discarding all that is not-self is the Self, //Sat-Chit-Ananda //.
 * Talks with [|Sri Ramana Maharshi]  **     Talk 25.

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">D.: Can the mind be fixed to that point? How?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">M.: If the mind is distracted, ask the question promptly, “To whom do these distracting thoughts arise?” That takes you back to the ‘I’ point promptly.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">...

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Talk 443.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A visitor asked: The illustration of the mirror relates to the sense of <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: -webkit-auto;">sight only. The world is perceived by the other senses also. Can the <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">unreality be established in relation to the other senses as well?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">M.: A figure on the screen in the cinema show appears to watch the <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: -webkit-auto;">whole world. What is the reality behind the subject and the object <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">in the same show? An illusory being watches an illusory world.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">D.: But I am the witness of the show.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">M.: Certainly you are. You and the world are as real as the cinema <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: -webkit-auto;">figure and the cinema world.

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: medium;">Mr. G. Duff: The Buddhists deny the world; the Hindu philosophy <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5;">admits its existence, but says that it is unreal. Am I right?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: medium;">M.: The difference of view is according to the difference in the angles <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5;">of vision.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: medium;">D.: They say that Sakti creates the world. Is the knowledge of unreality <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5;">due to the unveiling of maya?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: medium;">M.: All admit Sakti’s creation. What is the nature of the Creatrix? It <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5;"> can only be in conformity with the nature of the creation. The Creatrix is of the same nature as Her creation.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: medium;">D.: Are there degrees of illusion?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: medium;">M.: Illusion is itself illusory. Illusion must be seen by one beyond <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 1.5;">it. Can such a seer be subject to illusion? Can he then speak of degrees of illusion? There are scenes floating on the screen in a cinema show. Fire **appears** to burn buildings to ashes. Water **seems** to wreck vessels.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: large;">But the screen on which the pictures are projected remains unscorched and dry. Why? Because the pictures are unreal and the screen is real. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: large; line-height: 1.5;">Again reflections pass through a mirror; **but the mirror is not in any way affected by the quality or quantity of the reflections on it.**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: large;">So the world is a phenomenon on the single Reality, which is not affected in any manner. Reality is only one.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: large;">The discussion about illusion is due to the difference in the angle of vision. Change your angle of vision to one of jnana and then find the universe to be only Brahman. Being now in the world, you see the world as such. **Get beyond it and this will disappear: the Reality alone will shine.**

**<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: x-large; text-align: justify;">"Of Structure as the Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite ** First, let me put forth some advice about structure, which is the subject matter of our meeting. It may happen that there will be mistakes, confusion, more and more approximative uses of this notion. and I think that soon there will be some sort of fad about this word. For me it is different because I have used this term for a very long time — since the beginning of my teaching. The reason why something about my position is not better known is that I addressed myself only to a very special audience, namely one of psychoanalysts. Here there are some very peculiar difficulties, because psychoanalysts really know something: of what I was talking to them about and that this thing is a particularly difficult thing to cope with for anybody who practices psychoanalysis. The subject is not a simple thing for the psychoanalysts who have something to do with the subject proper. In this case I wish to avoid misunderstandings, // méconnaissances //, of my position. // Méconnaissance // is a French word which I am obliged to use because there is no equivalent in English. // Méconnaissance // precisely implies the subject in its meaning — and I was also advised that it is not so easy to talk about the "subject" before an English-speaking audience. // Méconnaissance // is not to // méconnaitre // my subjectivity. What exactly is in question is the status of the problem of the structure.
 * <span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: x-large; text-align: justify;"> to Any Subject Whatever" - (J. Lacan 1970) **

"When I prepared this little talk for you, it was early in the morning. I could see Baltimore through the window and it was a very interesting moment because it was not quite daylight and a neon sign indicated to me every minute the change of time, and naturally there was heavy traffic and I remarked to myself that exactly all that I could see, except for some trees in the distance, was the result of thoughts actively thinking thoughts, where the function played by the subjects was not completely obvious. In any case the so-called // Dasein // as a definition of the subject, was there in this rather intermittent or fading spectator. The best image to sum up the unconscious is Baltimore in the early morning." ...  To count, of course, is not difficult. It is only necessary to have, for instance, a certain number of sets and a one to-one correspondence. It is true for example that there are exactly as many people sitting in this room as there are seats. But it is necessary to have a collection composed of integers to constitute an integer, or what is called a natural number. **It is, of course, in part natural but only in the sense that we do not understand why it exists.**

Counting is not an empirical fact and it is impossible to deduce the act of counting from empirical data alone. Hume tried but Frege demonstrated perfectly the ineptitude of the attempt. BLOOR'S READING OF FREGE

The question of the two is for us the question of the subject. and here we reach a fact of psychoanalytical experience in as much as the two does not complete the one to make two, but must repeat the one to permit the one to exist.

The sameness is not in things but in the mark which makes it possible to add things with no consideration as to their differences. The mark has the effect of rubbing out the difference, and this is the key to what happens to the subject, the unconscious subject in the repetition;

This is well known and is the principle of Russell's paradox. If you take the set of all elements which are not members of themselves, <span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; display: block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light','Helvetica Neue UltraLight'; font-size: 18px; text-align: center;"> the set that you constitute with such elements leads you to a paradox which, as you know, leads to a contradiction. In simple terms, this only means that in a universe of discourse nothing contains everything, and **here you find again the gap that constitutes the subject.**

The subject is the introduction of a loss in reality, yet nothing can introduce that, since by status reality is as full as possible. HUSSERL AND INTENTION

When the subject takes the place of the lack, a loss is introduced in the word, and this is the definition of the subject. DERRIDA AND SPACING

But to inscribe it, it is necessary to define it in a circle, what I call the otherness, of the sphere of language. All that is language is lent from this otherness and this is why the subject is always a fading thing that runs under the chain of signifiers. For the definition of a signifier is that it represents a subject not for another subject but for another signifier. This is the only definition possible of the signifier as different from the sign. The sign is something that represents something for somebody, but the signifier is something that represents a subject for another signifier. The consequence is that the subject disappears exactly as in the case of the two unitary traits, while under the second signifier appears what is called meaning or signification; and then in sequence the other signifiers appear and other significations. HOLY FUCKING SHIT

The question of desire is that the fading subject yearns to find itself again by means of some sort of encounter with this miraculous thing defined by the fantasm. AHH

But the relation between this barred subject with this object ( // objet a // ) is the structure which is always found in the fantasm which supports desire in as much as **desire is only that which I have called the metonomy of all signification.**