Effects of meditative trance

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The first is a Teaching roll, or a series of Teaching rolls.

The second is the acquisition of skill in Philosophy (Upanishadic) or (Vedanta), and the making of one or more skill rolls in it.

The third is a series of Meditation rolls, almost exactly as provided for in GURPS.

The fourth is probably a Discipline of Faith, or maybe True Faith, or both together; anyway, it's not of the nature of a skill, I don't think. Shouldn't knowledge of the Absolute be, well, absolute?

You are translating my more than imperfect explanation into GURPS mechanics. That's OK.

I wasn't being exhaustive explaining these steps, because I thought that they would be looked upon with some discomfort.

In the first part there should be, in addition to what you're saying, something similar to a Pact and/or the gifting of a Power Investiture, for representing the transmission not only of mental concepts but of a supernatural element or "blessing" to the disciple through the master. Some rituals of initiation are subtle.

Blessed could be included in the first stage, too. Some form of Disciplines of Faith should be included in the second and third stages. True Faith could pertain to the third stage, as a partial achievement (it could be too in the second, though).

Originally Posted by whswhs

The fourth is probably a Discipline of Faith, or maybe True Faith, or both together; anyway, it's not of the nature of a skill, I don't think. Shouldn't knowledge of the Absolute be, well, absolute?

The fourth step is the actual achieving of Enlightenment. Obviously that, being the goal, isn't a skill, but rather something non traceable by existing GURPS mechanics. The Power Investiture advantage could have something to do with that, but only very slightly. The Blessed advantage from the first step can go to Very Blessed, depending on how one wants to model this. Clerical Investment / Religious Rank, Status, Reputation and even Social Stigma could handle some of the social aspects of being acknowledged as an Enlightened sage in a culture of ancestral sort, or as a saint in a culture of religious type -although usually these beings are anonymous. And well, I acknowledge that modeling this in a rules wise way is definitely subjective.

"Seeing directly that the only reality is the Brahman" is one of the ways of expressing the effective knowledge and identification with the Absolute, which is operated through the "acquisition" of transcendent knowledge, indeed absolute knowledge leads to Enlightenment. It is advaita (without a second, non-dual, there's no subject-object polarity) because by being absolute, it "swallows" or "anihilates" the human subject, or in other words, the human identity - the ego . . . which in itself is a limitation and an altered state of the Consciousness (another term for the Absolute), and only is ego and operates as such when it holds the conviction of its autonomy regarding the Supreme Self or Brahman. However, until the time of the "anihilation" or "release" or "Enlightenment" (the three are the same in this context), the aspirant (the subject) was "pursuing" the knowledge and assimilating it as an object. Is in the final step where the distinction between subject and object is permanently abolished.

But this absolute knowledge acquired through Gnosis isn't like the scattered notions that we can store in our memory. It's tightly related with this view on Intelligence:

Originally Posted by demonsbane

According metaphysics, and quoting Chuang Tzu: "To see everything in as yet undifferentiated primordial unity, or from such a distance that all dissolves into one, is true intelligence."

This knowledge is identified with the synthetic nature of the Self (sometimes alluded as "a synthethic conjunct of knowledge"), and it's related with the Intelect in the highest sense of the term (Greek Nous, Hindu Buddhi, Arabic Al-'aql, etc...). It's not the faculty of the reason nor the memory. It isn't a feeling nor an emotion, neither. Indeed, this is the only faculty on the human being able to really tackle on the transcendent; without it any true spiritual achievement would be inconceivable, and all should be reduced to the level of subjective emotions and feelings. On the other hand, Enlightened "persons" just play the divine game, and usually they remain acting as normal humans, or act as spiritual instructors if that is their function. They don't need to demonstrate anything to others, unless there is something needed to do in that sense, as part of their function as individual persons. Many of them added much to their respective cultures, too (Plato, Shankara, Abhinavagupta, Dante, Meister Eckhart, Nicolás de Cusa, Lao Tzu, Dogen, etc).

Originally Posted by whswhs

i. "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" goes back to Aristotle; it's not distinctive to modern science at all.

Don't get angry with me for answering to this, but from the point of view of the metaphysics I'm talking about, Aristotle's thinking isn't particularly relevant, in the same way that Kant and many others aren't relevant. And in several ways, some of the Aristotle's views and philosophies are related with materialism, even if other parts of his theories were used for supporting Christian Scholasticism. OTOH, Aristotle and the Greek Classics are relatively "new" to history. "Sophisticated thinking" started IMHO much before, even in times in which anthropologists still are imagining the so-called "pre-logical" thought, and the Classic philosophers added for certain many distinctive things. Aristotle's philosophy, in various ways, remains as part of the modern mentality, and is viewed as one of its precedents.