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A Modern Understanding of...
Matrialists are sometimes afraid that such freedom may take a man wholly unconcerned with the world, freedom amounting only to a secluded enjoyment of its pure being. The Advaita reply to this we have already seen. One may, it is true, retire into his secluded free being, but one need not. What is more important for him is that one cannot freely respond to objects unless one has realized freedom in itself. Free response to the world of objects is to have it as a free construction or creation, of course, through stages. At whatever stage he is freely responsive, this is made possible by the amount of dissociation (freedom) he has attained.
As against the less revolutionary of materialists- those, viz., who hold that at least the sense of personal identity is no other than that of the identity of one's body- the Advaita reaction is simpler. Advaita would never object that the individuality of pure subjectivy (pure I-consciousness) is vitally related to that of one's body, but he will not say that it is unqualifiedly derived from that. With regard to body, the notion of individuality is ambiguous. Each body as a physical thing has its identity like any other thing of the world. But that does not make it as individual as my body. I cannot claim any body to be individual in the sense of its being my body. Individuality, in this other sense, determines whether it is my body or yours or anyone else's. Otherwise, whatever body is there could be claimed as my body. But if so much is granted it is only a small step to see that the individuality of my body is because of I the individual which ultimately is I the jivasākṣin, and similarly with your body, etc.
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At the same time, however, I the jiva-sākṣin is individual so far only as it refers (freely) to the world of mentals (mind) called mine and through that to the body called mine. What it all means is that the body and the mind are as much body and mind as also mine. So far, the concepts of I the individual and that mind and body imply each other. When the Advaitin claims that the individuality of the individuated pure consciousness derives ultimately from that body and mind they
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