Consciousness-only, Kant, Husserl, and the Ego
A very crude account (as in western idealist philosophers themselves wouldn’t have such a naive or uncomplicated view) of western idealism would have it that “the mind produces the universe”.
Taking this view we (or more likely, “I”) would consider the same consciousness that stood at the kitchen counter watching and waiting for the kettle to boil for making coffee this morning produces absolutely everything in the universe; all the incalculable vastnesses of the spaces between galaxies, all the myriad phenomena of those galaxies, all phenomena both internal and external to every other mind or consciousness, on and on. Basically, it would make this ordinary ‘individual” consciousness into a god, or the God, and make god into a solipsistic Ego Mind!.
That is not the “consciousness-only” referred to in the Yogacara Hosso Buddhist school. Nor indeed is it the consciousness referred to in the most developed of idealist philosophies (like Hegel's dialectic idealism, or Bradley's absolute idealism of reconciliation of contradictions) I am aware of. It might be (in fact it most certainly is) conformable to an unrealistic capitalist mindset about the ‘limitless’ potential of the self in ‘making good in a world where everything is possible etc etc’, but it is not what is referred to in general idealist, and certainly Buddhist idealist philosophy.
Neither is the “oneness” often touted as being a pillar of ‘eastern mysticism’ the kind of oneness that would imply that everything is just an appendage of one’s ego-consciousness. It’s not a selfish oneness. Not even a numerical oneness.
All of these misunderstandings are predicated on the acceptance of the ordinary mind, the ego-consciousness, as being the non plus ultra of consciousness. In fact, the real barrier is this ego-consciousness itself, or rather it’s substantialisation, and even transcendentalisation a la Husserl and even Kant- remarkable and profoundly insightful though these two luminaries of western philosophy were.
Consciousness does not produce the universe in the way that we think of a mother ‘producing’ a baby, or a machine producing a consumer item, or even an artist producing a painting. Consciousness is not a thing apart from other things. ‘My’ consciousness does not produce ‘your’ consciousness, though it does produce at the level of function the ideas of “me” and “you”. It is simply a term as a designation for a phenomenon- albeit one that is only reflectively objectifiable- that is the first we can be said to encounter, and which paradoxically is nothing apparent in itself apart from it’s objects.
It could be described (but of course, in describing it is describing itself, and so is limited by it’s self-objectification) as a unifying principle which unites the phenomena of present appearance in a continuum with past appearance. But this is not to say that what appears as the universe is not also a complex of dynamic unity, or wouldn’t be without a particular (hence, abstract) consciousness unifying the appearances in perception. At the ground of perception which includes both subjective and objective fields is an already present reality that makes itself apparent through ordinary consciousness as the subjective and objective realms.
The problem hinges again on the notions of “unity/oneness” and “duality/plurality” as viewed through the lens of the ego-consciousness. When we begin to understand that the ego-consciousness -which is the discursive consciousness, or the functioning consciousness of every day life and ordinary interaction- is neither the base and limit of consciousness, nor persisting apart from it’s functioning except through delusion and the anxiety and fear of it’s own annihilation, then we can begin to realise that such dualities as mind/matter (and space), singular/plural, me-mine/you-yours, one/many (or all) even finite/infinite are all the work of the ego-consciousness through the other sense-consciousnesses which divides and evaluates “the world” into discrete entities in the processes of living as an embodied being.
They are very practical activities- essential even. But they are not themselves ever “detached” from the activities of the living embodied sentience. Whatever Reality really is, it includes these phenomena of ego-consciousness/activity, but is not limited by any singular abstraction either of the ego-consciousness as activity, or the ego-consciousness ‘itself’. (Here is the source of the problem; there is no “itself” apart from the grasping of a self- the delusion at the level of ego-consciousness). That's the philosophical basis in (very!) brief. Experiencing/seeing the reality of it is another…..thing?…subject?….……