Review
In Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought, Peter Wilberg expertly develops Boss's intuition in new depth and detail, showing the proximity of Heideggerian thinking to the most profound phenomenological dimensions of Indian yogic and tantric thought...He superbly shows that these are dimensions of awareness unrecognised in Husserlian phenomenology and sadly obscured by the persistent Eurocentrism of Western academic philosophy in general. --Publisher - New Gnosis Publications
Product Description
Ordinary consciousness is 'intentional' or 'focal' awareness –awareness of something. Indian thought on the other hand, has long acknowledged a 'non-intentional' dimension of consciousness -a pure and spacious awareness field that, like space itself, transcends everything that we can possibly focus on or be aware 'of within it.
Yet whether in the form of 'philosophy of mind' or 'phenomenology', 'neuroscience' or 'cognitive science', 'noetic science' or 'consciousness studies', Western thought continues to ignore this non-intentional or field dimension of consciousness. Clinging to the notion that consciousness is the private property of individual 'subjects', it cannot conceive of subjectivity without a subject -a 'universal consciousness' or 'absolute subjectivity' of the sort that Indian thought understood as the ultimate source and essence of all individualised consciousness.
It was because of the entrenched Western notion of 'subjects' of consciousness that Heidegger initially rejected the phenomenological language of 'subjectivity'. Yet in his own later language we find terms such as 'The Open', 'The Region' or 'The Illuminating Clearing' (L ichtung), all of which, as Medard Boss first intuited, resonate with those of Indian thought -suggesting as they do a primordial 'field', 'space' or 'light' of awareness which is the pre-condition for any 'intentional' consciousness of things.
In Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought, Peter Wilberg develops Boss's intuition in new depth and detail, showing the proximity of Heideggerian thinking to the most profound phenomenological dimensions of Indian yogic and tantric thought -dimensions of awareness unrecognised in Husserlian phenomenology and obscured by the persistent Eurocentrism of Western academic philosophy in general.
Yet whether in the form of 'philosophy of mind' or 'phenomenology', 'neuroscience' or 'cognitive science', 'noetic science' or 'consciousness studies', Western thought continues to ignore this non-intentional or field dimension of consciousness. Clinging to the notion that consciousness is the private property of individual 'subjects', it cannot conceive of subjectivity without a subject -a 'universal consciousness' or 'absolute subjectivity' of the sort that Indian thought understood as the ultimate source and essence of all individualised consciousness.
It was because of the entrenched Western notion of 'subjects' of consciousness that Heidegger initially rejected the phenomenological language of 'subjectivity'. Yet in his own later language we find terms such as 'The Open', 'The Region' or 'The Illuminating Clearing' (L ichtung), all of which, as Medard Boss first intuited, resonate with those of Indian thought -suggesting as they do a primordial 'field', 'space' or 'light' of awareness which is the pre-condition for any 'intentional' consciousness of things.
In Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought, Peter Wilberg develops Boss's intuition in new depth and detail, showing the proximity of Heideggerian thinking to the most profound phenomenological dimensions of Indian yogic and tantric thought -dimensions of awareness unrecognised in Husserlian phenomenology and obscured by the persistent Eurocentrism of Western academic philosophy in general.
