Nondualism superficially resembles solipsism

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  • #2774
    Melj
    Moderator

    ” Nondualism superficially resembles solipsism, but from a nondual perspective solipsism mistakenly fails to consider subjectivity itself. Upon careful examination of the referent of “I,” i.e. one’s status as a separate observer of the perceptual field, one finds that one must be in as much doubt about it, too, as solipsists are about the existence of other minds and the rest of “the external world.” (One way to see this is to consider that, due to the conundrum posed by one’s own subjectivity becoming a perceptual object to itself, there is no way to validate one’s “self-existence” except through the eyes of others—the independent existence of which is already solipsistically suspect!) Nondualism ultimately suggests that the referent of “I” is in fact an artificial construct (merely the border separating “inner” from “outer,” in a sense), the transcendence of which constitutes enlightenment.”

    #2775
    Melj
    Moderator

    The philosophy of Vedanta, “Aham Brahmasmi” (roughly translated as “I am the Absolute Truth”), could be interpreted as solipsism in one of its primitive senses, as the world is but an illusion in the mind of the observer. However, Advaita Vedanta can be understood to be non-solipsistic when it is recognised that it does not actually deny the existence of a world ‘external’ to the Self or Atman. Rather, it is asserting that the consciousness and awareness of the individual pervades all of that person’s experience, to such an extent that absolute notions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are arbitrary. The universe is the same as the self, as the universe can only be experienced through the self and the self is submerged within the universe as an integrated part.

    #2777
    Melj
    Moderator

    Advaita is strongly divergent from solipsism in that the former is a system of exploration of one’s mind in order to finally understand the nature of the self and attain complete knowledge. The unity of existence is said to be directly experienced and understood at the end as a part of complete knowledge. On the other hand solipsism posits the non-existence of the external void right at the beginning, and says that no further inquiry is possible.

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