How to arrive at an Eastern place from a Western Direction: Convergences and divergences among Samkya Yoga, Advaita Vedanta, the Body-Mind-Consciousness (Trident) Model and Reflexive Monism.

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Velmans, Max. 2013. How to arrive at an Eastern place from a Western Direction: Convergences and divergences among Samkya Yoga, Advaita Vedanta, the Body-Mind-Consciousness (Trident) Model and Reflexive Monism. In: B. Sambasiva Prasad, ed. Consciousness Gandhi and Yoga: Interdisciplinary, East-West Odyssey of K.Ramakrishna Rao. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, pp. 107-139. ISBN 9788124607152 [Book Section]

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Over the millennia, there have been irresolvable tensions between monist and dualist thought in both Eastern and Western analyses of the relations among body, mind and consciousness. This paper compares two approaches to resolving such tensions, Reflexive Monism (RM), a model of the self-observing universe that resolves many of the oppositions in Western thought, and K. Ramakrisna Rao’s Eastern, Body-Mind-Consciousness (BMC) “Trident” model, which focuses on the convergences between dualist Samkya Yoga and monist Advaita Vedanta. According to Reflexive Monism, many opposing analyses of body-mind-consciousness relationships in Western thought can be treated as different (often complementary) views of the one global system by parts of itself, from within itself. According to the BMC Trident model, many of the tensions between dualist Samkya and monist Advaita can be resolved by noting the similarity in their analyses of the human condition and the developmental processes required to provide a release from the limitations of that condition. In spite of the very different (Western and Eastern) traditions that inform them, there are many convergences between RM and BMC although there are also some major differences, for example in their grounding ontology and their respective analyses of body-mind-consciousness causal relationships. In this paper I examine both the convergences and divergences in detail.

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