Dreams, horror and beauty are real

Bernardo's dialogue with Sthaneshwar Timalsina was personal and revealing. It did not shy away from a deeply human response to the horror reality can contain, and how emotion doesn't always keep step with our philosophical commitments.

As such, both Sthaneshwar and Bernardo revealed their personal responses to political violence and the nightmare of evil, in moments that were both vulnerable and heart opening.

Consciousness is dynamic and understanding Time

But first, they contrasted their views with strands of Advaita Vedanta that dismiss appearances in consciousness as "unreal."

Although Bernardo acknowledged that change requires time and space, and that these are artifacts of our cognition, that doesn't mean that what is projected in time and space isn't saying something true about that which is projecting. There is something in eternity that corresponds to the notion of structure, change and purpose. For them both, consciousness is inherently dynamic.

East vs West and the Reality of Reality

I especially liked how Sthaneshwar pointed out the limitations of 'bottom up' philosophy. When you start with the fragmented perception of the senses, in the hands of great philosophers like Nāgārjuna the inevitable conclusion is that everything is dependent on everything else, and therefore 'empty'.

But he hints at another perspective: taking the absolute or the 'whole' as the starting point, and seeing time, space and dynamism as expressions of its freedom and power.

They compared Western and Eastern perspectives - blurring the lines whilst acknowledging distinct trends. Sthaneshwar pointed out how in Trika philosophy, the awakened one realises the absolute, whilst totally awaken and alive to all their senses - eyes flaming and wide open, known as Bhairava.

Beauty, rapture and transcending emotion

He spoke movingly about how our raw emotions, love, humour, grief and compassion, can connect us to the absolute.

"When there is the self-experience of Shiva, (consciousness) he cannot transcend his subjectivity beyond Shakti. Shakti's self experience is Shiva. They interpenetrate to the extreme that in their love they are absolutely merged within each other."

In this way, the pure raw emotion of grief, love or even anger can be transformed into aesthetic experience. If we are deprived of worldly experiences we cannot have aesthetic experience, and the emotions become conduits to the ultimate. This is the gift of the body.

The Reality of Dreams (& Nightmares)

Advaita and Buddhism often used dreams as a teaching device, pointing to the unreality of everything we experience. In a dream we feel hunger, pain, fear, love. We experience colours, shapes, sounds and smells. When we wake we can see it was all just imagined - not real. So consider all of reality the same.

In contrast, Trika philosophy takes all experience, including dreams, to contain their own reality. There is a reason people in the West see aliens and people in Nepal and India see ghosts. These visions say something real about the consciousness experiencing them. They have causal power, influencing our decisions and perspectives.

The problem of religion the last 3000 years

Sthaneshwar shared a critique of the last few millennia of religion, and their sales pitch to relieve suffering, indicating there is something wrong with reality and spirituality is the cure.

In contrast, the Trika perspective is that the world is not a problem, and philosophies are not the solution. The anticipation of eternity and absolute freedom within the finite is an over-reach of the spiritual industry. The problem-solving factory simply creates more problems. In contrast, realisation would be preferable - correcting misconceptions, and even deconditioning.

As such, the body, as well as sensual pleasures are reconciled with the absolute. Equally, in Bernardo's model in which the Body is the appearance of mental activity, there is no issue with enjoying good food, sexuality, the pleasure of swimming...

And more

Much more was discussed, in the poetic and energetic way both these speakers share.

I hope you enjoy, and I look forward to any thoughts shared in the comments below :)

Amir

Video #1 Intro to Kashmiri Shaivism

The first 20 minutes we had Sthaneshwar give some conceptual and historical overview of Kashmiri Shaivism, or Trika philosophy:

Speakers

Dr Sthaneshwar Timalsina

Dr. Sthaneshwar Timalsina received academic and philological training from Mahendra Sanskrit University in Kathmandu, Sampurnananda Sanskrit University in Varanasi, and Martin Luther University in Germany, where he acquired his Ph.D. in Classical Indian Philosophy. While working on his dissertation, Dr. Timalsina taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Washington University in St. Louis, before attaining the rank of Professor at San Diego State University in 2005 and Chaired Professor at Stony Brook University in 2023. 

Dr. Timalsina specializes in the areas of Hindu Studies and comparative philosophies and religions. As a traditionally trained and authorized lineage-holder within the Sarvāmnāya Order, he is dedicated to the goal of preserving the traditions he inherited in a modern, institutionalized way, including by founding the Department of Tantric Studies at Nepal Sanskrit University in Kathmandu and establishing the Vimarsha Foundation in 2019, which provides a global forum for the study and practice of classical tantra.

Speakers

Bernardo Kastrup

Analytic idealism

Bernardo Kastrup is the Executive Director of Essentia Foundation and Founder/CEO at AI systems company Euclyd BV. His work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence).

As a scientist, he has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect’ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years, having founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Most recently, he has founded AI company Euclyd BV.

Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured in Scientific American, the magazine of The Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. His most defining book is Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century’s only plausible metaphysics.

Explore Bernardo’s work →