PREFACE
Mon, 01/21/2008 - 16:14 — admin
It is my hope that this thesis will serve some additional purpose over and above helping me secure my Master of Arts degree.
With the thought in mind that the contents may be of interest to individuals other than myself and the members of my thesis committee, I have presented the subject matter in the form of a dialogue to facilitate easy reading. I have also tried to keep the language and terminology as simple and colloquial as possible without sacrificing the quality of the ideas and thoughts which are expressed throughout the text. My reason for this is simple enough: I prefer that others not be subjected to the sheer torture and boredom I have often gone through while trying to extract a concept or treatise from the work of an author who seemed more intent on impressing a small circle of friends or peers with big words and technical phraseology than in actually communicating his ideas to as many people as possible.
By choosing to present my thesis in dialogue format, I unknowingly increased the work load of my thesis committee members. Many problems regarding style, use of quotations, referencing, placement of subtitles, etc., arose, and the task of solving them fell not only on my own shoulders, but also on those of Professors Stan Mc Daniel, Ed Mooney, and Roshni Rustomji, the members of my thesis committee. I therefore wish to offer them my special thanks, not only for their assistance in these matters, but also for the challenges and criticisms they raised which contributed greatly toward improving the quality of this thesis.
I consider the comparative analysis of the philosophies of Sri Krishna Chaitanya and Sri Shankaracharya to be the highlight of this paper, and wish to acknowledge my extreme gratitude to my siksha guru (instructing spiritual master), Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Goswami, for first awakening my interest in this subject matter. I would also like to refer readers to his soon-to-be-published book, Dear Friend, You Are Not God, which analyzes personalism and impersonalism from a more contemporary angle. Points which I have mentioned in passing are expounded at great length in this work, as well as arguments I have not mentioned.
Finally, I would like to say that TEACHER and Michael, the principal characters in the dialogue, are entirely fictitious.
Neither of them is a reflection of my personal opinion of myself, nor is either of them based on any real individual whom I know. To the contrary, they are simply literary devices which I have employed to communicate the findings of my study.
If anyone expresses disappointment upon learning this, I can only reply that the value of this paper lies in the factual reality of the ideas it contains and not in the factual or nonfactual existence of the characters who express them.
You are your body, right? You are chemical in essence ... right? At least, that’s what one of America’s most influential scientists claims:PREFACE
I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label.*
Like Sagan, most people believe that they are their body. So if you ask them who they are, they think and respond in terms of bodily labels.
“I’m Susan. I’m blond, 29 years old, a mother, and still 36-24-36!”
“I’m Henry. I’m a white American male and proud of it!”
“I’m John. I’m a lawyer. I’m 40 years old and getting older every day.”
“I’m Alice. I’m a female student. I’m fat and I’m a Methodist.”
Name, race, age, sex, religion, nationality, occupation, height, weight, and so on—all these are bodily labels. Therefore if you consider your body to be yourself, you automatically identify yourself with such labels. If your body is fat and ugly, you think, “Woe is me! I am fat and ugly.” If your body is 60 years old and female, you think, ”I am a 60-year-old female.” If your body is black and beautiful, you think, “I am black and beautiful.”
But is the body really the self? Are you really your body?
Science of Identity Foundation - Jagad Guru Speaks
*Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 127.
It is my hope that this thesis will serve some additional purpose over and above helping me secure my Master of Arts degree.
With the thought in mind that the contents may be of interest to individuals other than myself and the members of my thesis committee, I have presented the subject matter in the form of a dialogue to facilitate easy reading. I have also tried to keep the language and terminology as simple and colloquial as possible without sacrificing the quality of the ideas and thoughts which are expressed throughout the text. My reason for this is simple enough: I prefer that others not be subjected to the sheer torture and boredom I have often gone through while trying to extract a concept or treatise from the work of an author who seemed more intent on impressing a small circle of friends or peers with big words and technical phraseology than in actually communicating his ideas to as many people as possible.
By choosing to present my thesis in dialogue format, I unknowingly increased the work load of my thesis committee members. Many problems regarding style, use of quotations, referencing, placement of subtitles, etc., arose, and the task of solving them fell not only on my own shoulders, but also on those of Professors Stan Mc Daniel, Ed Mooney, and Roshni Rustomji, the members of my thesis committee. I therefore wish to offer them my special thanks, not only for their assistance in these matters, but also for the challenges and criticisms they raised which contributed greatly toward improving the quality of this thesis.
I consider the comparative analysis of the philosophies of Sri Krishna Chaitanya and Sri Shankaracharya to be the highlight of this paper, and wish to acknowledge my extreme gratitude to my siksha guru (instructing spiritual master), Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Goswami, for first awakening my interest in this subject matter. I would also like to refer readers to his soon-to-be-published book, Dear Friend, You Are Not God, which analyzes personalism and impersonalism from a more contemporary angle. Points which I have mentioned in passing are expounded at great length in this work, as well as arguments I have not mentioned.
Finally, I would like to say that TEACHER and Michael, the principal characters in the dialogue, are entirely fictitious.
Neither of them is a reflection of my personal opinion of myself, nor is either of them based on any real individual whom I know. To the contrary, they are simply literary devices which I have employed to communicate the findings of my study.
If anyone expresses disappointment upon learning this, I can only reply that the value of this paper lies in the factual reality of the ideas it contains and not in the factual or nonfactual existence of the characters who express them.