Awareness and Knowledge, 30 March 1989, part 5

So how many types of valid cognitions are there? How many types of what? Valid cognition. Valid cognition. Valid cognition.

Prime cognition. Valid How many types are there? Answer. Two types of valid cognition. Direct prime cognizers and inferential prime cognizers.

Inferential. Inferential. Inferential. Inferential. Inferential prime cognizer and direct prime cognizer.

How many divisions if you divide? How many types of direct cognizers are there? How many types of direct cognizers? Five. What are the five?

So there’s the five sense direct perceivers. That’s the question. How many types of direct prime cognizers are there? You can you can you can discuss between you, among you. Yeah.

That’s one. Yogic direct perceiver is one. So we have to We’ve got one out of four. Yogic direct perceiver. There’s three others.

And you know one. You’ve already listed. No. No. No.

Pardon? That’s right. Sense direct perceiver. I got two. Mental.

It’s three. One more to go. Intuition. Only one more. Self knowing knowing direct perceiver.

Self knowing direct perceiver. What is the definition of awareness? This was the very the very first thing that we studied was the definition of awareness. Pardon? Sorry.

The very first thing. That’s right. Knowing is the definition of awareness. What’s the definition of prime cognizer? A new and incontrovertible A new and incontrovertible knower.

So you ask you ask some question. I I answer them. So the two types of prime cognizers, direct prime cognizers and inferential cognizers are incontrovertible knowers. So the consciousness which, newly realizes the flower, the very first moment of realizing the flower is an incontrovertible knower, or is a prime cognizer. It incontrovertibly realizes its object.

So it’s not confused. So it means it’s not mistaken with respect to the object. You know, if we were to The eye consciousness which apprehends this table as red is not mistaken with the object. But if our pen is yellow, it would be mistaken. It would be able to be controverted by a non-mistaken consciousness.

It would be controverted by a non mistaken consciousness. It doesn’t realize its object correctly. It’s mistaken. The the the consciousness which is doing the Realizing. So the the that which is doing the realizing is a valid cognizer.

It’s a prime cognizer. The the the eye the eye consciousness which apprehends realizes. So this the the eye consciousness can realize Jampa. So when we talk about, for example, the being which imputed to the five aggregates, the imputer is a conceptual consciousness. The imputer, that which is doing imputing, the designating, is a conceptual consciousness.

Alright. So things can be Uh-huh. So things can be designated by either terms or concepts. Initially, say that the being we say with words, with terms, that the person is imputed to the five aggregates. And then we think about this and then we conceive of the person, as imputed to the five aggregates.

So things can be designated or imputed by either terms or concepts. This is the imputer. So what are what are minds and mental factors? What are what are minds? What are the what what are minds?

Do we do we know our our mind? I’ve never seen a mind. Shape it. Same shape of it. So the difference between mind and mental factors is much like as we’ve just explained with respect to investigation and analysis.

That when we see, for example, the flower just seen roughly, this would be the quality of a mind. Whereas mental factors would be seen as particular qualities of that flower. This would be like the mental factor. So special insight and calm abiding are both mental factors. Is the hand a mind?

Is the hand a mind? Is is the hand? Is that a mind? Doesn’t that doesn’t doesn’t the hand know things? It has touch.

Right. How So the hand, the senses touch, it knows objects of touch. Does the hand know things? No, that doesn’t know. It’s dumb, it’s stupid.

The hand is stupid. Not that either. But does the hand know things? No. The mind recounts relates back to it.

Similarly. These are similar. Does the hand have a consciousness? So the hand The hand doesn’t have a consciousness.

So the hand doesn’t have a consciousness. Before you cut off the hand, does the hand does the hand know things? What do you mean by just by hand? No. The first thing is a no.

Can my hand does my hand feel the table? Does my hand feel the table? Does is does the hand have a mind? Does the nose have a mind? So if the nose doesn’t have — come on and help me out — consciousness.

So when the when the nose smells a smell and knows it as a a fragrant or fragrant smell or unfragrant smell. Who is it that’s that’s smelling? What is it that’s smelling when the nose smells a flower or fragrant? Where does the consciousness reside? If it doesn’t live in the nose.

The nose consciousness resides in the nose, the eye consciousness resides in the eye, the tongue consciousness resides in the tongue. So when your nose is stopped up, you you can’t smell. So if there were no nose consciousness, if no consciousness resided there, then it wouldn’t it wouldn’t be able to smell or anything. So the hand has a consciousness, you know, when we can know how smooth a surface is, we can feel how smooth a surface is. So the five places residing in the faculties, the five consciousness, five consciousness and in the hand, the bodily consciousness resides in the hand.

So the eye consciousness, nose consciousness, ear consciousness, tongue consciousness and the body consciousness pervades the body. Without without what? Without the consciousness. Without. Without minds?

Without minds. You can’t have mental factors. So the finger has a consciousness. That’s why if we get an injury we can feel the pain. We can feel it.

But the nail, it doesn’t have consciousness. So we can cut the nail and we don’t feel any pain. If we cut off the finger, then the consciousness withdraws from the finger and that cut off finger, we can do anything with it and there’s no feeling. There’s no pain. This is a sign that there’s presence of consciousness or not.

How does he view it? Well, I mean, my training would say that that what the finger has in it is a series of pressure receptors, touch receptors, all sorts of things which are connected by a synaptic system which has this sort of central registry of information that that the finger in itself doesn’t actually feel anything, and that you can you can block the nerve here. And the finger can go So this due to the for this for injection, when you’re doing anesthetics you block the due to the condition of the present of anesthetic there’s no feeling. There is consciousness or when you sit on your foot for a long time it goes to sleep. There’s consciousness, but there’s no feeling due to that condition.

So if the presence of knowers was a sign of feeling then a corpse should have consciousness. Why doesn’t a corpse have consciousness? Because a corpse has a nervous system and a brain, but there’s no consciousness. Why doesn’t it have consciousness? But it has a nervous system and a brain.

It has a nervous system and a brain. A corpse. So, if the nervous system and the brain were the mind, then the nervous system and the brain aren’t the mind. I mean, the mind could be somewhere The formless the form beings, the celestial beings in the form realm, they don’t have a nervous system, but they have consciousness. Like for you, it’s the same.

They have hands. Here, take note. How is this argument about where you how you can say where where consciousness is? Just discussing where consciousness is. Yeah.

So and there’s no common. So we are each being has an individual continuum of consciousness. They’re they’re not there’s no common consciousness between beings. That, you know, I can talk about the the that the being that I was in previous existence is, in the same mental continuum as I am. But, as far as the different continuums of beings, there’s nothing there’s no sharing or common continuum.

So it was a previous position of science that they said that the mind, that the brain and nervous system were the same as the mind. That they were the mind. Now they’re beginning to move away from that view. And their view is more they’re investigating the Buddhist point of view. It seems to be their position is coming closer to the Buddhist point of view as to the nature of consciousness.

So previously I thought the mind was the nervous system in the brain, But no, they weren’t, actually they had no real, clear presentation of what they meant by mind. They didn’t quite know what it was. And now they’re beginning to use the Buddhist interpretation as a basis for trying to understand what the actual nature of mind is. So Murray exists because he writes notes. [laughter] He asks questions.

He answers questions. So we say, well, what what the why does the table exist? Because it’s very useful for putting books on. I don’t know this. Do I exist?

I didn’t look at it doesn’t translate very well. It’s very good to ask questions try to back and forth and try to understand whatever you can and just not to do. Kindly carry on discussion research.