Definition of a principal term in the Entry:

"Whoness" is a quality which, to be sure, exists in the universe. I oppose it to the quality of "whatness." Of the two, however, whatness exists - by far - in much greater quantities. So far as we know, the only place in the universe where whoness occurs is on our planet, in the arena of human society. To further refine the distinction between them, we need but consider their composition. Whatness, in whatever form, is made of atoms and molecules. Whoness, on the other hand, is constructed of nothing more than words. Now words themselves are without doubt a physical reality; they could not have developed outside an ocean of air. Essentially, words are sounds, disturbed air. They have been developed over time, and given the ability to be graphically represented in other physical media, from stone and papyrus, to paper and computer screens. What we call "whoness" is little more than an illusion created by the more or less constant exchange of sounds which we call "words" between ourselves.

Entry:

"The proposition, "we cannot know who we are and be who we are at the same time" can be overcome by simply paying closer attention to it. by the numbers:

1. it is an assemblage of words.

2. words only appear in the presence of human beings; so as far as we know, they exist nowhere else in the universe, but solely in the biosphere of our planet.

3. ideas are literally made of words.

4. whatever meaning we may feel is inherent in any particular group of words results from words themselves, both the words in the particular group that we are studying, and all the other words we use to talk about the group. In short, meaning has no existence outside of words. The word "who" in the proposition given has no meaning outside of human society. In other words, the raw universe contains no "whoness." it contains an awful lot of "whatness," from stars and planets to interstellar dust and gas, but no whoness, (except for its appearance in the speech of the human beings who are living on this planet).

3a. ideas are made of words, including the idea that there is even such a thing as a "who." Overcoming the proposition simply depends on defining the "who" referred to in such a way that it conforms to "what it is." (i.e. what it's defined as being). example: if I define my "whoness" in terms of my speech about myself, then, by talking about myself, I am both knowing about my whoness and being it at one and the same moment."

Wayne Holland January 8 2001

Response:

We agree that conscious meaning, including words, apparently has no meaning outside of our minds or "human society". Though conscious meaning and our words are apparently interconnected with everything outside of us, including the universe outside of the planet’s biosphere, so that us ourselves and what we know are a product of the universe we inhabit. (i.e. the universe has been around a lot longer us ourselves, which means that our existence and what we know appears to have come from the universe.)

Also, we agree that the universe apparently contains no "whoness" as in label with conscious meaning. However, we contend that it is possible that the universe may contain "whoness" as in non-label, non-meaning entity. For instance, it is possible that "whoness" as non-label entity is behind the "stars", "planets", "interstellar dust", and "gas" which make up the universe, and that the universe may have begun with a "whoness" non-label entity. (Note that "who we are" as defined in the competition refers to whoever or whatever we are. Please see Entry 23 for a discussion on the difference between who and what.)

Yes, we agree that overcoming the proposition can be done by redefining "who" in a more reasonable way that reflects "what it is". Yet, your definition of "whoness" as your "speech about yourself" does not correspond to our notion of "who" as in "fundamental level of being". What we are interested in is the "whatness" behind our being. (i.e. how can we know our fundamental level of being or "whatness" and be our fundamental level of being or "whatness" at the same time?)

Entry 149:

Reply to the Response to Entry 147

I wrote:
"With the inquiry it is possible to know who we are. In India many yogies and saints spend their lifetime for this knowledge."

The response from Entry 147:
1) "What is it about "inquiry", including the length of inquiry (i.e. "lifetimes") that allows us to know who we are? "

My reply:
"Inquiry": The dictionary meaning of "inquiry" is asking./question/investigation.

Here, inquiry means asking the question: "who am I" to our own self .

As per sage Raman Maharshee one can directly go into the inquiry with the question "who am I", or as given in Upanishad through different steps viz. Starting with the investigations of external world and physical things, ultimately reach the inner self.

What we ultimately receive as an answer is the self- knowledge.

There are four ways or paths available:

1) path of karma i.e. performing prescribed duties (this is required for the discipline)
2) path of yoga (this keeps the body fit for serious spiritual practice and help for concentration and get control of the mind)
3) path of knowledge (this will give verbal knowledge)
4) path of devotion ( gradually the external and the physical awareness is lost to the awareness of pure soul which is no different than the universal soul.)

path of karma:
Performing the duties prescribed in the book of "Vedas" with selfless attitude. This purifies the mind and the body which ultimately ready for learning and experience the self which leads to self knowledge. Each rituals prescribed are like scientific experiments demonstrating the path to self-knowledge.

path of yoga:
Ancient book available is written by sage Patanjali known as "Patanjali's aphorisms on yoga". Comprises of eight fold steps. First few are for controlling our sense organs and for the discipline of body to keep it fit for the spiritual practice, followed by concentration and meditation to control the mind. Then real spiritual practice which ultimately leads us to discover the self- knowledge starts only after that.

path of knowledge:
Example of one of such inquiries is found in "Brhadaranyaka Upanishad" (Chapter IV Section iii verse 2-6):

It is given as a dialogue between king Janaka and the sage Yajnavalkya:

'Yajnavalkya, what serves as the light for a man?' asks Janaka.
'The light of sun, O Emperor' the sage said.

'When the sun sets, Yajnavalkya, what exactly serves as the light for a man?'
'The moon serves as the light'

'When the sun and the moon have both set, Yajnavalkya, what exactly serves as the light for a man?' 'The fire serves as his light'

'When the sun and the moon have both set, and the fire has gone out, Yajnavalkya, what exactly serves as the light for a man?'
'Speech (sound) serves as his light'

'When the sun and the moon have both set, the fire has gone out, and speech has stopped, Yajnavalkya, what exactly serves as the light a man?'
'The self serves as his light'

This is where the real inquiry into self starts.

path of devotion: On this path one starts with the faith in possessor of the universal power(God) and thus starts with dual idea of self and the God being separate and long to be united with Him. The inquiry of "where is He and how can I see Him, leads to the God within which is his own self.

2)Do you know who we are from the "knowledge" of any Indian yogies or saints?

My reply: Nowadays, to find true yogies and recognize them is very difficult. Paul Brunton's book "In search of secret India" will give you the glimpse of these yogies. Fortunately, lots of books are available written by them. Besides works of Sri Raman Maharshee, I can quote the name of Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramhans, Sri Aurobindo, Yogananda being the saints and yogies of this century. Lot of literature is also available in Indian languages for example: "Shrimat Dasbodh" written by saint of Maharashtra State in India, Samarth Ramdas Swami, preceptor of king Shivaji.

One should start seriously and the ways and means will unfold by itself.

Other issues:

Response from Entry 147:
1) Just because your thoughts may distract you from the situation at hand, as your example about you and your friend shows, does not necessarily mean that your thoughts are separate from your body. Your thoughts may be part of your body even though they can distract you from what is occurring around you. Or as you say in Statement 2, "the mind is a subtle part related to brain which itself is a part of physical body", which means that the mind is part of the brain, and thereby physical body, in some way. (i.e. there is no mind or thoughts without brain.).

My reply:
To give an example, just as in the case of water, the ice is solid, water is liquid and both have limited space movements but the water vapors emerging from the liquid water do not have constrain of space and mixes with air freely. Process of sublimation of solids is another example of separation from main gross quantity of the substance. Similarly, though the thoughts are emerging from the brain being subtle does not have space constrains. It only gets directions from your mind and as soul resides in the body, when thoughts, the subtle parts leave the body, soul travels with the same. If man is not living, there is no soul in the body obviously, brain does not function and thoughts do not arise. Another way to stop thoughts is to concentrate on your self within by observing your breath and you will find that one can not think and observe the breath at the same time.

Response from Entry 147:
2)Regarding Statement 9, it is uncertain that "life-force" originates in "sperm" and "ovum", because the origin of sperm and ovum is uncertain.

My reply:
"Life-force" do not originate with the sperm or ovum. Life force is already present in them, as both are living cells from the respective parent. For further information one can refer to the site on "cell". The abstract is given below with the site address:

(Cells are the basic units of structure and function in living things. They are the smallest units of living that show the characteristics of life. There are two basic types of cells, Those with nuclei (eukaryotic) and those without (prokaryiotic). All of the cells in a human are eukaryotic.( More on eukaryotic )

Response from Entry 147:
3)We agree that if we stop the life-force or our body becomes unable to receive, the body dies. Yet we do not know how you can defend the position that the "current" or "life-force" does not stop when the body ceases, when you apparently can only know whoever we are from conscious labels like "life-force" and "current"? For this reason, we think your correlation of the findings from observation of electrical equipment to who we are, by equating electrical current to life-force, does not necessarily stand. You cited objects like fans, tube lights, and radios which work when a electrical currents runs through them, but do you know a living being that exists from a electrical current running through it?!

My reply:
The example of an electric current is not to equate electric current with the life force but only to show that our body is an equipment and can function only if the life force is present. When a person dies first we check is the current of breath. If breathing is slow and slowly stops, we wonder and wait for the medical doctor to come and declare the person dead. After the breath we check the pulse. The heart stops functioning the moment breathing stops. The body if not disposed off, slowly deteriorates if not preserved with chemicals.

That is why it is important to concentrate on breath if one wants to know the nature of self. Breath has very close relation with self. The real inquiry starts here."

Mrs. Bharathi Shanker January 10 2001

Response:

Note in our response we are equating "inner self" to "who I am" or fundamental level of being.

How can one reach the inner self and know that one has, while at the same time being the inner self?
In other words, how can one know the inner self, while at the same time know through the inner self?

How does purification of the mind and body allow an individual to know his inner self?

What is "real spiritual practice", and how does it allow an individual to know his inner self?

How can an individual know a "God" if the individual’s inner self is in God?

The passage you quoted from the "Brhadaranyaka Upanishad" (e.g. "The self serves as the light") supports our assertion of fundamental level of being.

We disagree that evaporating water has no constrain of space. There is a constrain of space on a micro level. (i.e. the water vapour exists.) Similarly, our thoughts themselves as form are not empty or non-existent, so they have constrain of space as well.

Just because our thoughts themselves have limited contrain of space, how do you know that they do not reside in the body? Also, for the same reason (i.e. limited constrain of space), how do you know that the "soul" resides in our thoughts? How do you know that limited constrain of space is a characteristic of "soul"? How do you know anything directly about "soul", while at the same time being your "soul"? How can you know about something (i.e. soul as non-label) that you cannot even imagine, because you have no basis to imagine something you do not know? If we create our thoughts, how can we create "soul" through our "soul"?

We disagree that an individual cannot think and observe the breath at the same time. Observation, a conscious phenomenon, is a form of thinking, so by observing your breath, you are thinking at some level.

150. Entry:

Reply to Entry 146 and its response.

Explanation of the concept, "2 are parts of One" from the Entry:

One and Two

Within the set of positive integers there exists a member (1) whose value is considered indivisible, that is it has no real factors. As such, 1 represents the fundamental integer(ness) of all members of the set. In this way 1 stands as a concept in the same way that an apple’s appleness, represents a general class composed of sensory data and associative functions. Though these generalizations, when examined through their components (in the case of "apple", shape, color, texture etc.) would necessitate further divisions into subclasses (macintosh, sparta, granny smith....) and further, our rule of thumb is to limit the definition to the context and extend properties to similar things. In this way we create a oneness to which we can apply logical operators.

I wish to point out the disconnect, between the reality of the apple (or any other single thing) to our senses, and the operators by which we manipulate the unitary models.

A simple example may clarify.

Suppose, walking through the autumn forest you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a grove of beech trees. You see a few large trees surrounded by a number of younger trees. You may notice that this particular grove is denser than the surrounding forest and seems composed of only beech trees. Looking down you also notice a number of small scruffy looking shrubs devoid of any leaves. Taking the time to investigate you may notice a pattern in the densities of larger and smaller trees. You will also see that if you dig under the leaf litter and into the soil, an extensive network of large roots connects all of the trees. In fact what seemed like a grove of trees and shrubs is in fact, a single organism. Now, you could count all of the trees, but that number would be restricted to your previous assumption and you would have to relabel trees as trunks. This definition will hold only as long as you don't investigate the nature of "trunks".

Within the single parameter space of integers, 1+1=2 only when viewed as an alienated construct, as a logical reality that exists independently. If however, we include our own perceptions of oneness, we find a fundamental bifurcation of the unitary "integer" into components that satisfy integer(ness). Viewed as a whole the equation 1+1=2 can be redefined as a system whose elements are unitary.

Entry:

"What do we really know?

After all information is just a word we use to describe the change of state of a system from A to B. Certainly this conforms to our definition of entropy. Can knowledge, or more precisely the "state of knowing", be restricted to our information/entropy consensus? Within the Aristotelian world 1+1=2 is always true. However it can also be concluded that 2 are parts of One if we include our own perception in the equation.

The idea of "who we are" is nothing more that a unitary concept and therefore falls within the limits of perception. By this definition, one could say that we are as we perceive ourselves to be. Since our perception exists only as a superposition of our present internal state and the state of our sensory environment (self/not self), self awareness can only exist in flux. The monolithic "Who We Are" can only be replaced by a more subtle and dynamic present awareness. We are the universe in action. There can be no other.

Models we create can add greatly to our understanding of the workings of the universe, but they cannot provide us with that which we desperately seek. They are tools, creations, and have no knowledge of themselves. We provide the basis of implementation and it is Us ourselves that provide the reason behind their creation. It is also Us ourselves that provide meaning to that which we discover.

Is it reasonable to posit a goal within the unknown?

It seems to me that knowledge of ourselves would more aptly be described as a process. In this sense self knowledge is inherently irrational. Further, since we have demonstrated the non locality of mind (as a function of context domains ; see Reply 29-30) that, which "we perceive ourselves to be" can only exist as a member of some set of larger contexts. I suggest that the term "being" in the context of our discussion represents a metonymy of something inexpressible yet comprehensible.

To reverse the question I ask :

"Can we know anything other than ourselves? Can we be anything other than ourselves?".

Ken Bell January 11 2001

Response:

Just as it can be reasoned that the equation, (1+1=2) is an interconnected whole made up of "logical operators", it can be reasoned that (1+1) does not equal 2, because in terms of time and space, there is no such thing as identical things (e.g. 1 and 1), so (1+1) must be either less or more than 2, with never the same result.

More interesting is that Aristotle justifies the equation (1+1=2) as always true, on the grounds that reason equates in part to "soul" or who we are, and yet in your example and in our own, we are using reason, which means that if we accept Aristotle’s concept of reason as part of "soul", we face the task of determining which of the three assertions about (1+1=2) is more reasonable, instead of just accepting Aristotle’s claim (1+1=2) is always true.

Further, and more important, the notion of reason as part of "soul" is antagonistic to the challenge proposition, which says that reason is not part of "soul" or who we are, and in fact is empty of "soul". (Aristotle’s claim that reason equates in part to "soul" stems from his belief that the "soul" is made up of irrational or unconscious side and a rational or conscious side, so that being and knowing are in oneness. ("Ethics", I, xiii, 8) Several problems with his perspective of "soul" will be addressed in the conclusion of this response.)

Yes, the notion of "who we are" falls within the limits of our perception, and yet the notion as used in the competition refers to a reasoned entity beyond our perception.

Can "who we are" as non-label entity be replaced by "we are the universe in action" as you contend? What is behind the universe and its action? What is the origin of the universe? We contend that "who we are" could be the basis behind the "universe in action".

We agree that "being" represents a "metonymy of something inexpressible yet comprehensible", just as the notion of who we are does. (Note, we equate "metonymy of something inexpressible yet comprehensible" to our limited perspective of things we reason to be beyond or outside of our minds.) Hence, in terms of the competition, we are not positing a goal within the unknown, but the positing a goal within the known by trying to determine a more reasonable perspective than the apparent intrinsic separation between being and knowing.
(However, we contend that even if we posited competition’s goal within the unknown, it would still be reasonable due to the self-referent nature of knowledge, and yet less reasonable than positing the goal within the known as we have done.)

We disagree that self-knowledge, or any knowledge, is "inherently irrational", because of the self-referent nature of knowledge, whereby we cannot be fully certain of anything we know or believe. For instance, you cannot be absolutely certain that your premise, "knowledge of ourselves is a process", and your conclusion, "self-knowledge is inherently irrational", no matter how reasonable they may appear to you. So the assertion itself, "self-knowledge is inherently rational", is reasonable. (i.e. the assertion itself is reasonably possible.)

Can we know anything other than ourselves?

We contend that it is possible that we could know something other than ourselves. Though the more reasonable response is that we cannot, because we cannot get outside of our minds and know that we are, so everything we know is our individual perspective, and yet the content of our perspective derives partly from sensory of whatever is outside of us and may also be from the minds of other people (past and present), which takes us to the notion that self-knowledge appears limited.

Can we be anything other than ourselves?

To rephrase your question, can we be anything other than the knowledge of ourselves? We contend that the question’s premise that we are the knowledge of ourselves (Aristotle’s position of the oneness of being and knowing) is incorrect for the following reasons:

1. In order to know, we need intrinsic separation from what we know and ourselves, otherwise we would be in oneness with what we know.

2. We are apparently the creators of our knowledge. So it does not follow how we can create who we are through who we are.

3. If our thoughts are who we are, it does not follow how we can still be who we are, when we are not thinking, and yet some how when we do think, our thoughts are who we are? (i.e. since we are who we are when we are not thinking, how can our thoughts be who we are when we are thinking? What is the connection between our being and our thoughts, when they are apparently not the same? For instance, an individual acts without thinking, and yet when he thinks, he is using thoughts he already knows, so where is the connection between his being and his thoughts? The answer to this question is that no perspective or thought is identical. It is not that thoughts as form are not the same, but our perspective of thoughts change. Though the form or basis of thoughts could change with our being. How? We create thoughts, and yet they as form some how change on their own??)

4. If thoughts as form are who we are, there is no separation between thoughts and who we are, and yet there is when we are not thinking and we are thinking.

151. Entry:

"IF WE ARE SEEKERS, AND KNOW WE ARE SEEKERS, WE BOTH KNOW WHAT WE ARE, AND DO WHAT WE ARE WHEN WE SEEK.

This is a basic formula. You could replace the word "seekers" with others of your choosing, like, "askers," in which case it would appear:

IF WE ARE ASKERS, AND KNOW THAT WE ARE ASKERS, THEN, BY ASKING, WE BOTH KNOW WHAT WE ARE, AND DO WHAT WE ARE.

Wayne Holland January 15 2001

Response:

Your basic formula is contingent on the word, "if", and since the challenge proposition pertains to "who we are" or "whatness", your notion of "seekers" and "askers" when added to your formula are not relevant.

Moreover, even if we substitute "who we are" into your formula,

"If we are who we are, and know who we are, by being who we are, we both know who we are, and be who we are."

we get repetition, and a statement claiming that we can do something (i.e. know who we are) without showing how. The competition is interested in how we can know who we are. Also, note that we cannot use the word, "do" as in "do who we are", which shows that there appears to be a difference between conscious things like "seek" and "ask", and who we are. (i.e. we seek and ask, whereas we are who we are. We who we are implies separation between who we are and who we are, which is nonsensical.)

Entries 146-147 Entries 152-156