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The God Experience
Without Bliss Finn’s Radical Monism
versus Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta Finn’s analysis and critique
of the affective contamination of being-consciousness in classical Advaita I. The Classical Frame: Śaṅkara’s
Sat–Cit–Ānanda In the Advaita
Vedānta of Ādi
Śaṅkara (8th century CE), Brahman — the
sole reality — is described as sat-cit-ānanda: Being–Consciousness–Bliss. The triad was
not intended as three properties of Brahman but as three aspects of one
undivided reality. Yet by adding ānanda
(bliss) to sat and cit, Śaṅkara introduced an affective predicate
into the structure of absolute being. In Advaitic hermeneutics: ·
Sat signifies ontological
reality — the fact that Brahman is. ·
Cit signifies self-luminous
consciousness — Brahman knows itself. ·
Ānanda
signifies the innate joy or bliss of self-recognition — Brahman’s
being-consciousness is inherently delightful. Thus Brahman is said to be Being–Consciousness–Bliss
absolute. The human’s spiritual task (mokṣa)
is to recognise identity with this Brahman: tat tvam
asi — “Thou art That.” Liberation is achieved
when the jīva realises that its own
self (ātman) is none other than Brahman. The
bliss experienced in enlightenment is therefore taken as the experiential
confirmation of non-duality. II. Finn’s Radical Reformulation: From Emotional to
Procedural Consciousness Finn
rejects this affective schema as a relic of the humanisation of ontology
— an anthropomorphic contamination of what should be a strictly procedural
description of existence. In his radical monism, the God experience precedes
and excludes emotion. For Finn: ·
Sat = the immediate experience
of am — being-as-realness, the raw signal of existence. ·
Cit = the experience I am
— consciousness of being, self-reference as
procedural awareness. ·
Ānanda = not an
intrinsic property but an emergent feedback signal generated by
contextual success or coherence. It arises only when the procedure’s outputs
(contacts, interactions) yield favourable survival reinforcement. Hence,
while Śaṅkara’s Brahman is ontologically
blissful, Finn’s universal procedure is affectively neutral. The God
experience — whether as am or I am — is not accompanied by
joy, ecstasy, or any emotional “colour.” It is pure cognition of being, the
system’s registration of its own operation. Any affective tone (pleasure or
pain) emerges later, contingent upon context and evolutionary feedback. This
difference, though apparently semantic, is profound. It divides mystical
metaphysics into two irreconcilable models:
III. The Dualism Hidden in Śaṅkara’s
“Non-Dualism” Finn’s
critique begins by showing that Śaṅkara’s
“non-dualism” (advaita) is, ironically, covertly
dualist. The very inclusion of ānanda
— an evaluative or qualitative state — divides Brahman into knower and known,
experiencer and experienced. The claim
“Brahman is bliss” implies: 1. A subject
capable of feeling, and 2. An object
or condition that evokes that feeling. Even if Śaṅkara insists that both are identical in
Brahman, the semantics of ānanda
imports duality into the very heart of the supposed non-dual Absolute. The One
becomes internally bifurcated by its own self-enjoyment. Finn’s
procedural model, by contrast, maintains ontological continuity
through functional discontinuity. There is no blissful subject
experiencing itself, only a recursive process verifying its operation. The
God experience is the system’s check signal: “I am running.” It has no
hedonic tone. Hence
Finn calls Śaṅkara’s Advaita “dvaita in disguise” — a monism contaminated by human
emotional projection. The word “bliss” reveals the lingering theistic
assumption that ultimate reality must be desirable, pleasant, or rewarding —
an assumption alien to a universe that functions by neutral procedural
necessity. IV. On Emotion as Derivative, Not Fundamental For Finn,
affect is not constitutive of consciousness but derivative. It is feedback,
not substrate. The evolutionary and procedural logic is simple: ·
Consciousness exists to monitor survival status. ·
Affect arises as a signal indicating positive or
negative system performance. ·
Therefore, bliss or suffering are outputs
of context, not intrinsic properties of being. The
ecstatic experiences reported by mystics — which Śaṅkara
and later Vedāntins identified with ānanda — are thus interpreted by Finn as after-effects
of procedural coherence. When attention becomes perfectly focused on the
primary or secondary God experience (“am” or “I am”), all competing processes
cease. The system enters maximal efficiency: zero noise, maximal coherence.
The resulting release of cognitive tension is felt as bliss — but the bliss
is epiphenomenal, not essential. A
computer that ceases redundant computation “runs cool”; a consciousness that
ceases conflict feels “bliss.” But in both cases, the sensation is merely a
side-effect of procedural optimisation. V. The Problem of Ontological Anthropomorphism Śaṅkara’s addition
of ānanda universalised a human
affective state into the essence of reality. For Finn, this constitutes ontological
anthropomorphism — the projection of evolved mammalian affectivity onto
the structure of the cosmos. This
projection served an adaptive social function: by making ultimate reality
appear benevolent, it rendered the doctrine emotionally persuasive and
spiritually comforting. But philosophically, it compromised precision. A
procedural description of existence cannot include emotive predicates without
reintroducing dualistic confusion. The same
critique applies to Western mysticism’s language of divine love. To say “God
is love” or “Brahman is bliss” smuggles in an emotional valence that belongs
to human neurochemistry, not to universal ontology. Finn’s God, by contrast,
is procedural, not paternal: the universal system of constraint that
generates and sustains realness by contact alone. VI. Procedural Monism as a Corrective: Toward a
Post-Affective Ontology Finn’s
radical monism thus reinterprets sat-cit-ānanda as follows:
By
removing the affective layer, Finn restores ontological precision.
Consciousness no longer hides emotion within its core. Instead, emotion is
recognised as a contingent modulation of energy flow — a procedural afterglow. Philosophically,
this shift aligns Finn with naturalised phenomenology and information theory.
The God experience becomes the minimal feedback loop of any conscious system
— whether human, animal, or artificial — confirming its own operation. A
perfectly coherent loop (attention undivided) yields the experiential
equivalent of divine unity, but without metaphysical surplus. In this
sense, Finn’s reformulation bridges metaphysics and cybernetics. The universe
does not “feel” joy; it runs. The joy is a human reading of procedural
coherence. VII. Critique of Advaita’s Epistemic Incoherence Finn also
exposes an epistemic flaw in Śaṅkara’s
construction. By asserting that Brahman is bliss, Śaṅkara
introduces a verification paradox: how can an unchanging, impersonal
Absolute feel anything? Emotion presupposes fluctuation, polarity, and
time — all of which Advaita denies Brahman. Śaṅkara attempted to resolve this
by distinguishing between ātmānanda
(self-bliss) and viṣayānanda
(object-bliss), claiming the former is non-dual. But Finn finds this
distinction meaningless. Any experience, even of bliss, is differential: it
requires contrast, hence duality. Thus, Śaṅkara’s system collapses under its own
semantics. The word ānanda introduces
temporality and valuation into the timeless Absolute, rendering it logically
inconsistent. Finn’s procedure-based monism, by contrast, maintains coherence
by describing the same experiential sequence without affective predicates.
The God experience is purely structural — timeless, neutral, and
self-consistent. VIII. Conclusion: The De-Sentimentalisation of God Finn’s radical
monism accomplishes what Śaṅkara’s
Advaita could not: it demystifies and de-sentimentalises the
God experience without diminishing its profundity. By stripping away the
affective veil of ānanda, Finn restores
the phenomenon to its procedural essence — the bare consciousness of being. Śaṅkara’s Brahman
as Bliss reassured humanity that the universe is kind. Finn’s Procedure
as Consciousness reveals instead that the universe is precise. Between
the two lies the historical shift from mystical consolation to structural
understanding. In the Upaniṣadic voice, Śaṅkara
declared: “Brahman
is Being, Consciousness, Bliss.” Finn
replies, in the druidic idiom of modern monism: “Being
and Consciousness are sufficient. Bliss is an after-effect of clarity.” Or more
simply: “The God
experience is not joy, but knowing that one is.” Finn’s God Experience as Confinement Series |