The preoccupation continues

Mind.. This mind of mine.. Is it a subject or object in the process of perception of world? Vedanta deems it as an object. As the real subject who perceives is the Atman.. But without getting into contemplation on how laws of perception at such higher levels, what I plan to get into is the dynamics of perception of the lower order.. where the mind is the subject and the world is the object perceived..
Providence had brought me across people and books that lured me into the terrain and I thought its time I consolidated it all..
Hegel, an idealist, like all other idealists believed that the 'object' world that we perceive is the creation of the 'subject' mind. Outer world as we see, know, realise it is but a projection of mind..

Mill and Baine would argue, they being the realists. According to them, the world outside exists as a objective reality, be there a mind that perceives it or not. The object world for them is independent of the subject mind.

Vedanta's treatises on Perception brings about a dialectic of the two contradicting theses. Sometimes i really think all truth is at the mid point of a dialectic. Be it a physical truth or philosophical truth. Anyways, before I let myself digress- Vedanta holds that world as we perceive is so perceived because of the creative function of mind and the existing nature of the objects perceived.

For example, imagine there is a pebble. The pebble has certain inherent qualities. And the mind had a conception of a pebble. It's when the mind's conception of pebble and the pebble's existence of being a pebble, converge that perception take place.

In that sense, what we perceive is the overlapping area of what we know and what exists out there..
And as what we know expands, the things we perceive also expand.. I remember.. just an year ago, I'll see a bird and it'd be just a bird, a flower would just be a flower, a colour would just be a colour.. Now it's different. When I see a bird, if it's the crow, I see something in it that I also peceive in lead.. when I see yellow.. i see in it something that I perceive in an elephant.. Something intangible.. Something till now unperceived.. but now as my conception of an object has changed, expanded, there is more of an overlap of what it is and what i know, and i perceive it different..

The enlightened seers say, while a quality of a particular object is it's structure, there is an an underlying Absolute Reality which is the substratum..
Like wise, while the discrimating nature is the mind's function it too has an underlying substratum which is the underlying Absolute Reality..
Parthasarathy has beautifully simplified it into an equation.
A flower = The Qualities of flower + Absolute Reality
Mind that sees it = Constructs of flower+ Absolute Reality
But since we have not identified or touched that Absolute Reality in us, we cannot perceive the Absolute Reality that underlies the flower. We just see in the flower what the mind has learned to discriminate.
No wonder, they say, when a person becomes truly enlightened, the world for her/him truly dissolves away..
I guess then it'd be just the Absolute reality perceiving the absolute reality.. or rather, seeing it's own self extended..
Sweet! :-)