Paul Cannell: Robert, On page 73 of Depending On No-Thing, you said, "I think what I think and feel what I feel, knowing that ‘myself’ is not the author of thoughts and feelings, but more like the noticer of them, the recognizer of them.
Yes, that is my experience as well. I would add that at the moment of noticing there is no separation between noticing and what is noticed, only a constant flow of experiencing. There is no way to grasp this noticing, because one can't step outside this noticing to grasp it, but try we will until we get the joke.
Love this response Robert. The lava analogy is helpful. Or, even a lava lamp, where the red (or blue, green) goop heats up, rises to the top of the bottle, then cools, and tumbles back down to the bottom. Over and over again. I guess thoughts and feelings are sort of like that, coming and going without rhyme or reason. Or, maybe like popcorn in a popcorn machine...
Thank you for the response, Robert. I agree that to say "nothing exists but consciousness that is (implicitly) prior to or superior to the material world" is a fantastical idea without empirical justification. Why even suggest a mysterious prior thing that can only be known conceptually, if not to satisfy some psychological need we have?
That's why I expanded the definition to what Vedanta actually says rather than the half baked idea (that we both dismiss) that consciousness is some kind of reified substrate. Vedanta says only one thing really, which is that "what is" is non-dual in nature, meaning only that it is whole and complete and there's nothing other than it.
There is a lot more that can be said about it, but all of that "more" is not meant to be taken as ontological truth, but is strictly intended to support that one conclusion: if reality is non-dual, whole and complete, and there is nothing other than it, then seeing as I cannot be said to be separate from that, I can adopt that vision as a vision of myself as well. I'm fine, how can I not be? That's the conclusion.
To attempt to reconcile the current point of view you expressed with Vedanta, I would put everything you said into two categories.
The first would be your self, or whatever term you would use for the conscious entity reading this. That is the only factor in experience that cannot be recognized as having a form, either gross or subtle. It's a weird category, because there is nothing (no-thing is much better) in it except you. That self is what you know yourself to be, and the only way you know it is that you know you know it. That is why it is called self evident.
The second category is everything else, which is made up of everything that makes a discrete appearance, gross or subtle, including whatever you call the totality of those discrete things.
If I am interpreting your viewpoint correctly, you put the "I" that you are squarely in the second category, and you accommodate the first category (which you recognize exists) of your conscious self into that by concluding that it emerged from the biological primate.
For me the reconciliation comes by not concerning ourselves with the "origin" of that consciousness, and focusing instead on what we know about it. Is it not the "part" of you where what matters, matters? What do you know or feel or experience that your "self" is not the subject of?
This is the observation that matters from the point of view of Vedanta. It's very subtle, and easily dismissed as being fantastical, but that's fine because remember the points made in the earlier paragraphs. Vedanta is not declaring an ontological proof, but pointing us into our own experience to determine for our self what we are. All opinions fit just fine with Vedanta, since it is not in opposition to opinion or ignorance (the belief that I don't know what I am).
My own opinion is that functionally we agree completely, and functionally is actually all that matters. As you say, we are human primate animals, doing what we do. When it comes to the theory that forms the basis of our viewpoint, that's ultimately a minor curiosity, and doesn't come into play in any aspect of "day-to-day" life (thank goodness) other than in enjoyable conversations like these 😊
You may not be interpreting my viewpoint correctly, VG., or at least not entirely. I do not see your two categories, one containing a single self-evident item and one that includes everything else, all of which is not "self-evident."
For me, the self comprises this body, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and the awareness of all that. I cannot split an idea from the awareness of an idea. They are one and the same. This applies to the whole shebang, which is, in that sense, non-dual: without a body, there is no "me," without thoughts, there is no "me," and without awareness of thoughts, the body, thoughts, and everything else, there is no "me" either.
The experience of this aliveness cannot be dissected or understood. It is what it is. I have spoken of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, but those are just names for a mystery, and naming explains nothing.
I don't know if awareness depends upon a biochemical process or not, and no one else does either. But given my own observations of what happens when the brain is anesthetized, I suspect that consciousness is a biochemical phenomenon. If not, we have the old duality of spirit vs. matter.
Hi Robert, Yes I'm aware that you don't see my two categories. That was my attempt to reconcile. That's how you could see what you are saying in the context of Vedanta. Obviously, that's not necessary.
The crux of the (surface) disagreement, so to speak, between our viewpoints I think is our definition of "me," less than it is our understanding of "what is" which is non-dual. Perhaps you would say "what is" includes me (even though it's illusory), where I would say it is me? To me there seems to be total agreement about the nature of it, which is non-dual, unknowable.
In the end, whether it is what you speak about, Vedanta, or any other viewpoint, philosophy, endeavor, or purpose, I think we all seek the same thing which is wholeness (same as freedom, to rid ourselves of limitation). Whatever works for that works, because in the end (and every other time and place in between) there is only ever "what is," which is the same as saying there's nothing to know.
Yes, VG, we can agree that the nature of reality is unknowable. Whether or not it is non-dual is another question. Experience seems to be non-dual in that at any moment, now is all we know—there are not two "nows."
However, since most of reality is beyond my ken, I do not assume that my version, my experience, what I think and feel, necessarily indicates what reality is like. The only way to make that equation would require defining reality as whatever my moment-to-moment experience is, and I am not willing to describe reality in that way. I assume that reality includes endless information about which I am entirely ignorant and always will be.
From my perspective, what is includes humans and all other biological systems, as well as the streetlamp on the corner, the oceans, the stars, black holes--all of it. I do not see any of that as illusory. Those are all material objects, but what is includes non-material entities as well--the English language, for example, the taste of watermelon, a jazz tune, or what you feel when reading this. None of that is illusory, in my view. The illusion involves imagining a "myself" apart from all that--a myself that regards all of that as not-myself. This is where we seem most to disagree, thus my resistance to the idea of two categories.
For me, freedom is not about ridding myself of limitations but about accepting the many limitations that are part of being human. Then I am free to be as I am, which is the only freedom I know.
It seems that we agree most on this point: what is, is, and there's not much to do or say about that.
>>The first would be your self, or whatever term you would use for the conscious entity reading this. That is the only factor in experience that cannot be recognized as having a form, either gross or subtle. It's a weird category, because there is nothing (no-thing is much better) in it except you. That self is what you know yourself to be, and the only way you know it is that you know you know it. That is why it is called self evident.<<
I suspect this "self evident" conclusion is not really self evident. It is intuitively tempting, and has been the primary assumption throughout history and probably pre-history, that we *are* the "conscious entity", in the sense I imagine you imply by that phrase. I do not consider myself the conscious entity experiencing my writing this, except in another interpretation of the phrase - I am a human being, a biological machine, which at some times has the property we call "consciousness". If I identified myself as the conscious act itself - as I think you're pointing to - then I wouldn't exist when I'm in deep sleep, and would miraculously appear again on waking. My consciousness may do that. "I" do not. I am a materialist/physicalist through and through, and I see no other way to deal with this question that doesn't involve invoking some non-physical substrate, and then calling it "me".
I have spent a good amount of time trying to see things much as you describe them - and, of course, I have no ultimate idea what is the right formula - but recently I have worked at seeing myself as just this living animal, mere physics, and this makes more and more sense, despite having to fight against my intuitive dualism (embedded in all our cultures), and I encourage you to spend a little time considering it. It makes a lot more sense of evolution, including theories of "general evolution" (i.e. not just of life, but of everything up to and including life), of which we have a lot of evidence. I wrote a blog post about this idea, that I "experience" in a way a rock "experiences", only modulated via evolution. https://lettersquash.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/natural-consciousness-part-2-being/
Hi John, Thank you for the comments. As you will see, it inspired (and required it seems) quite a few words for me to reply to! Please take this as my opinion, I offer it to you as not just what I understand Vedanta to be saying, but how I resolved the same questions for myself. Nothing more. What I'm doing my best to summarize is logic that took me a year or two to assimilate, and I may have gotten out over my skis even trying to keep it this "short" 🤪. I hope it's entertaining and of some interest, and I would be most curious about any response or questions that come from it should there be any.
Also, I appreciate everything you said in your last paragraph. To me being a human primate animal is not distinguishable from being my "self," unless you're asking why I see things the way I do. The viewpoint of Vedanta made this primates internal life a whole lot better! I look forward to reading your blog post too. 😊🙏🏻
There is no "non-physical substrate" in Vedanta. If there could be said to be a substrate, it would be self, a term that Vedanta uses to reference that which is never not present. We usually hear about it as "consciousness" and because that is not well understood, it is usually interpreted as a vapor like nothing substance which is supposedly what we are. This is ridiculous of course, but it isn't remotely what Vedanta says or implies.
As I've mentioned a few times here, I think the best definition for non-dual or for self is "what is," which is whole and complete. That accounts for everything, which includes two discernible categories: consciousness and matter/energy. I don't know of anything that can be said not to be in one of those categories. The matter/energy category includes subtle material as well, like thoughts and feelings, which cannot be touched by form but nonetheless have recognizable form (obviously since we know them as "objects").
That brings up an interesting thought experiment that just occurred to me. If you also agree with the statement I just made, that (gross) matter cannot touch "subtle matter," then how are thoughts and feelings known? What instrument knows them? In a sense, they are "touched" since they are known, even though there is no physical contact. So what touches them and how are they seen by you?
Anyway... so we have these two categories consciousness and matter/energy. You might say wait a minute, if thoughts and feelings are included in the matter/energy category, then what is consciousness? Consciousness means the knowing factor. Thoughts and emotions do not have a knowing factor, they are known. They are just like rocks and body parts in that sense. Vedanta does not reify this factor, it acknowledges it.
Our own presence is almost always unaccounted for in our experience, due to its subtlety, and yet with reference to our experience it is never not present. Just because it is unaccounted for as an ever present factor, however, does not make it go away. It makes it ignored. Because it is ignored yet undeniably present, it does in fact get accounted for. Non-photographers don't notice (they are aware of it, but inadvertently ignoring it) that photography is entirely about something that they don't notice, light. They think it is about objects, and of course it is as well, but the light must be taken into account. Remove it, and photography ceases to exist. 
This is exactly what we do when we ignore consciousness, or in other words, our self. We project it outwards onto objects, and we say "I am blonde" and "I think the Yankees suck" and "I am a loser." Vedanta would say, no. Those things are just happening, you are the knowing factor of the aliveness "playing out," and that only seemingly but not actually affects you. You think it does, based upon only the most superficial inspection, but it doesn't.
In fact, if you chose to take the attitude that I am whole and complete no matter what, considering the fact before you that you do not control any of the circumstances you encounter, and you took this to be fundamentally true about yourself despite appearances to the contrary, you've freed yourself from circumstances. You know full well that the human primate animal you are is still affected by circumstances and cares about them, which is why you do your best to give that primate a pleasant and easeful life, but you do so happily as a contributor not greedily as a consumer. Not because you are righteous, but because you know you don't need anything to complete you. 

So, back once more to the two categories. The two categories are conceptual, not actual. Vedanta is not saying that these two categories exist and that you need to or should know about them because they are "true" or they are "what is." This is not a philosophical viewpoint essentially, in that the entire philosophy is meant to be discarded once it has served its purpose of freeing you from any notion whatsoever of being incomplete or inadequate. That's the entire purpose of it.
If reality is non-dual, as Vedanta declares, then the way things are and the way things seem are not different. Therefore, what seems dualistic, which is our entire experience of being here taken from the point of view of the humane primate animal being a separate individual, upon close scrutiny and inquiry can be seen to be only apparently real (dualistic). Science has helped us with that tremendously. Quantum physics has gotten down to the point where it demonstrates empirically that what appears real in the "material" world is only real upon observation. Upon observation it does become seemingly real (existent), but strictly in the sense that that seeming reality is temporary it cannot be called real because its temporary existence is bordered by non-existence on both sides. this has not led scientists to the conclusion that reality is non-dual, and they apparently still seek for material answers, but maybe they are barking up the wrong tree?
With that all said, there is one more important part of the teaching methodology to help dispel the idea that Vedanta sees consciousness as a non-physical substrate. Reality is non-dual, which means it can neither be said to be physical or non-physical. It is both, and neither, depending on how you look at it. There is both a changing and unchanging factor in existence, which is observable but not otherwise explainable. We don't know what it is, only that it is. Understanding this involves the logic of cause and effect, and how the causal (potential, un-manifest) and actual (manifest) are only seemingly different.
The first thing to recognize is the logic that something cannot come from nothing. It is necessary to accept that as being so, in order to understand what Vedanta is saying. If there is nothing, zero, then there is nothing to cause anything to happen, so there would never be any effect. Since effects make up the entirety of our experience, we either need to presume an entirely magical and unexplainable creator that can do the impossible, or we need to presume that zero does not actually exist.
That does not mean that there are never no objects, it means that when there are no objects, those objects are in causal or potential form. This explains why I seem to vanish completely when I sleep, because from my own perspective my equipment (body and mind) are in their causal form. When that same I reappears in the morning, which is obviously not caused by me, what was in causal form manifests. Why must it be this way? Well it mustn't, however it makes perfect sense considering that every single aspect of my body and mind returns just as it was before I went to sleep. It's not possible that it was nonexistent, otherwise how would that happen?
What force or power would cause that to happen? It's a fantasy typically attributed to God, but the problem is God is also gone (from my perspective) when I sleep. It's ironic that we generally dismiss the notion of consciousness or self as nonsense, considering that in order to do so we have to either attribute what happens to (the magic of) God or if not God then some unknowable and unexplainable force.
That factor, the unknowable and unexplainable, is still present in Vedanta but it refers to that factor as Maya, or "that which makes the impossible possible." There may not sound like a difference there, but there is a logical one. The commonly accepted Judeo Christian notion is that a separate God (which I would say is like a substrate) created a separate thing called the world which it is not.
Vedanta says what that is is Maya, macrocosmic ignorance, which is eternal because if there is something to be known (self) it is always possible not to know it, but is only seemingly real because it is not always present. Maya, or God, is what the world of appearance is. There is no why to it, but if it is not that way then there is somewhere a separate "magician" pulling all the strings, and that magician must in turn be somewhere, and the infinite regression continues.
Therefore, consciousness is neither a thing or a no thing, it is the knowing factor in/of "what is." "What is" is this knowing factor, which for whatever reason is never not present (existence itself), and Maya which itself is always present though not always manifest. Maya (macrocosmic ignorance) can never be gotten rid of, because it is the liveness in which we find ourselves, but Avidya (personal ignorance) can be removed by the knowledge that I am non-dual, ordinary self and there is nothing other than me. 
Vedanta does not invoke anything. It labels as "me" (self, Brahman, consciousness, existence, to list a few) as the non-dual totality of what is. If there is a substrate, it is only that which is, inclusive of everything this aliveness is.
I'm sorry to say I find all that entirely unconvincing. I was immersed in Vedanta philosophy for many years, so I know the concepts you're describing. It is just that, on reflection, I decided they were mere sophistry. It is not surprising: they arose at a time long before even rudimentary scientific methods were developed, and what passed for science (practiced by meditating monks, apparently) was introspection. That is the essential flaw: they imagined that introspection must reveal truths, and categorised their various intuitions. All the descriptions I've read, including yours, are full of nonsequiturs and self-contradictions and waffle. You set out above to dispel the notion that consciousness was non-physical, for example, but then said that everything (the "non-dual") has two "categories, consciousness and matter/energy". The logic of that is that consciousness doesn't fit in the "matter/energy" category, so is "non-material", or "non-physical", which is the notion you were trying to dispel.
Some concepts are just made up, like "macrocosmic ignorance". Sorry. As for quantum mechanics involving "observation", and its support for ancient mystical visions, this is a common misconception. "Observation" is an unfortunate term that has a reasonable history, but doesn't actually involve consciousness at all. It involves merely the interaction of the wave function with some object, and it is that interaction that causes the collapse of the wave function. The object might be a photon, for instance, which is of course why the unfortunate term originated, because in order to see what state an experiment is in, the experimenter has to observe some result, which involves photons impacting the system. Many scientists can be found explaining this error online, and this is why they are not, in fact, "barking up the wrong tree," when they fail to endorse non-duality.
And you manage to convince yourself that these dubious abstract ideas explain your unconsciousness when you sleep, like this:
>>That does not mean that there are never no objects, it means that when there are no objects, those objects are in causal or potential form. This explains why I seem to vanish completely when I sleep, because from my own perspective my equipment (body and mind) are in their causal form. When that same I reappears in the morning, which is obviously not caused by me, what was in causal form manifests. Why must it be this way? Well it mustn't, however it makes perfect sense considering that every single aspect of my body and mind returns just as it was before I went to sleep. It's not possible that it was nonexistent, otherwise how would that happen?<<
It's very easy to explain sleep. The animal doesn't need to be conscious all the time, particularly when it hides from predators (during either the day or the night, typically), saves energy and repairs its cells. So whatever consciousness is, the brain doesn't bother producing it for that time. We don't need to invoke two states of consciousness, actual and potential, on the grounds that when it's not there it can't be non-existent.
I agree with you that the "nothing but consciousness schema" is *usually* a "kind of psychological dissociation," but (as always 😊) I think it is worth saying that that idea in Vedanta points to the non-dual nature of "what is" and not in any way to a separate thing or a substrate.
What you call aliveness is the non-dual whole (existence, what is). Vedanta simply draws attention to the absence of an actual difference between that and the knowing factor "inherent in" that.
Sat, Chit, and Ananda are synonyms for each other that reference the unchanging factor in what is, while aliveness (or in Vedanta, Ishvara) references the changing factor. Actually, "aliveness" really covers all of it, but as a with anything it needs to be defined/unfolded.
Amanda is really the "point" of Vedanta though, so to speak. After all, knowing "I" am existence/consciousness doesn't really get the juices flowing does it? But, knowing that AS that, my essence is whole and complete, ever-present, unending - that has juice.
"My essence" doesn't mean something other, better, or in any way different than the body/mind/person I am while I'm here (the person part of course being illusory in nature). It isn't mystical nor is it possible to experience it, but appreciating what it is intellectually and emotionally (knowing it, not just believing it) can give my life a foundation of gratitude and ease of being that seeps into everything.
Kind of like being on what I would imagine MDMA to be like, only not because of a drug. Instead, because all my experience plans on that foundation rather than the idea that I am inadequate and incomplete. You could call a crutch, but it's a good one, and based on what actually is.
You and I may disagree on this. I do not see any justification for saying that nothing exists but consciousness or that consciousness exists prior to or superior to the material world, including human beings and other animals. As far as I know, consciousness is something that brains do, and without a living, properly functioning brain, consciousness no longer exists.
I understand that others believe differently, and I do not claim that my perspective is better than theirs. I am only stating my present point of view, which is, as I said in my essay, that so far as I know, I am a human primate animal living according to the laws of physics and their lawful biological outcomes on an actual planet comprised not of consciousness but 118 or so chemical elements—a “myself” that has as much control over or comprehension of the big picture as an ant does of a picnic.
You know more about Vedanta than I do, so tell me if my view can be reconciled with what you understand about Vedanta. I may be missing something, but I don't see what.
Yes, that is my experience as well. I would add that at the moment of noticing there is no separation between noticing and what is noticed, only a constant flow of experiencing. There is no way to grasp this noticing, because one can't step outside this noticing to grasp it, but try we will until we get the joke.
Love this response Robert. The lava analogy is helpful. Or, even a lava lamp, where the red (or blue, green) goop heats up, rises to the top of the bottle, then cools, and tumbles back down to the bottom. Over and over again. I guess thoughts and feelings are sort of like that, coming and going without rhyme or reason. Or, maybe like popcorn in a popcorn machine...
Thank you for the response, Robert. I agree that to say "nothing exists but consciousness that is (implicitly) prior to or superior to the material world" is a fantastical idea without empirical justification. Why even suggest a mysterious prior thing that can only be known conceptually, if not to satisfy some psychological need we have?
That's why I expanded the definition to what Vedanta actually says rather than the half baked idea (that we both dismiss) that consciousness is some kind of reified substrate. Vedanta says only one thing really, which is that "what is" is non-dual in nature, meaning only that it is whole and complete and there's nothing other than it.
There is a lot more that can be said about it, but all of that "more" is not meant to be taken as ontological truth, but is strictly intended to support that one conclusion: if reality is non-dual, whole and complete, and there is nothing other than it, then seeing as I cannot be said to be separate from that, I can adopt that vision as a vision of myself as well. I'm fine, how can I not be? That's the conclusion.
To attempt to reconcile the current point of view you expressed with Vedanta, I would put everything you said into two categories.
The first would be your self, or whatever term you would use for the conscious entity reading this. That is the only factor in experience that cannot be recognized as having a form, either gross or subtle. It's a weird category, because there is nothing (no-thing is much better) in it except you. That self is what you know yourself to be, and the only way you know it is that you know you know it. That is why it is called self evident.
The second category is everything else, which is made up of everything that makes a discrete appearance, gross or subtle, including whatever you call the totality of those discrete things.
If I am interpreting your viewpoint correctly, you put the "I" that you are squarely in the second category, and you accommodate the first category (which you recognize exists) of your conscious self into that by concluding that it emerged from the biological primate.
For me the reconciliation comes by not concerning ourselves with the "origin" of that consciousness, and focusing instead on what we know about it. Is it not the "part" of you where what matters, matters? What do you know or feel or experience that your "self" is not the subject of?
This is the observation that matters from the point of view of Vedanta. It's very subtle, and easily dismissed as being fantastical, but that's fine because remember the points made in the earlier paragraphs. Vedanta is not declaring an ontological proof, but pointing us into our own experience to determine for our self what we are. All opinions fit just fine with Vedanta, since it is not in opposition to opinion or ignorance (the belief that I don't know what I am).
My own opinion is that functionally we agree completely, and functionally is actually all that matters. As you say, we are human primate animals, doing what we do. When it comes to the theory that forms the basis of our viewpoint, that's ultimately a minor curiosity, and doesn't come into play in any aspect of "day-to-day" life (thank goodness) other than in enjoyable conversations like these 😊
You may not be interpreting my viewpoint correctly, VG., or at least not entirely. I do not see your two categories, one containing a single self-evident item and one that includes everything else, all of which is not "self-evident."
For me, the self comprises this body, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and the awareness of all that. I cannot split an idea from the awareness of an idea. They are one and the same. This applies to the whole shebang, which is, in that sense, non-dual: without a body, there is no "me," without thoughts, there is no "me," and without awareness of thoughts, the body, thoughts, and everything else, there is no "me" either.
The experience of this aliveness cannot be dissected or understood. It is what it is. I have spoken of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, but those are just names for a mystery, and naming explains nothing.
I don't know if awareness depends upon a biochemical process or not, and no one else does either. But given my own observations of what happens when the brain is anesthetized, I suspect that consciousness is a biochemical phenomenon. If not, we have the old duality of spirit vs. matter.
Hi Robert, Yes I'm aware that you don't see my two categories. That was my attempt to reconcile. That's how you could see what you are saying in the context of Vedanta. Obviously, that's not necessary.
The crux of the (surface) disagreement, so to speak, between our viewpoints I think is our definition of "me," less than it is our understanding of "what is" which is non-dual. Perhaps you would say "what is" includes me (even though it's illusory), where I would say it is me? To me there seems to be total agreement about the nature of it, which is non-dual, unknowable.
In the end, whether it is what you speak about, Vedanta, or any other viewpoint, philosophy, endeavor, or purpose, I think we all seek the same thing which is wholeness (same as freedom, to rid ourselves of limitation). Whatever works for that works, because in the end (and every other time and place in between) there is only ever "what is," which is the same as saying there's nothing to know.
Yes, VG, we can agree that the nature of reality is unknowable. Whether or not it is non-dual is another question. Experience seems to be non-dual in that at any moment, now is all we know—there are not two "nows."
However, since most of reality is beyond my ken, I do not assume that my version, my experience, what I think and feel, necessarily indicates what reality is like. The only way to make that equation would require defining reality as whatever my moment-to-moment experience is, and I am not willing to describe reality in that way. I assume that reality includes endless information about which I am entirely ignorant and always will be.
From my perspective, what is includes humans and all other biological systems, as well as the streetlamp on the corner, the oceans, the stars, black holes--all of it. I do not see any of that as illusory. Those are all material objects, but what is includes non-material entities as well--the English language, for example, the taste of watermelon, a jazz tune, or what you feel when reading this. None of that is illusory, in my view. The illusion involves imagining a "myself" apart from all that--a myself that regards all of that as not-myself. This is where we seem most to disagree, thus my resistance to the idea of two categories.
For me, freedom is not about ridding myself of limitations but about accepting the many limitations that are part of being human. Then I am free to be as I am, which is the only freedom I know.
It seems that we agree most on this point: what is, is, and there's not much to do or say about that.
I enjoy chatting with you, VG.
Hi VG.
>>The first would be your self, or whatever term you would use for the conscious entity reading this. That is the only factor in experience that cannot be recognized as having a form, either gross or subtle. It's a weird category, because there is nothing (no-thing is much better) in it except you. That self is what you know yourself to be, and the only way you know it is that you know you know it. That is why it is called self evident.<<
I suspect this "self evident" conclusion is not really self evident. It is intuitively tempting, and has been the primary assumption throughout history and probably pre-history, that we *are* the "conscious entity", in the sense I imagine you imply by that phrase. I do not consider myself the conscious entity experiencing my writing this, except in another interpretation of the phrase - I am a human being, a biological machine, which at some times has the property we call "consciousness". If I identified myself as the conscious act itself - as I think you're pointing to - then I wouldn't exist when I'm in deep sleep, and would miraculously appear again on waking. My consciousness may do that. "I" do not. I am a materialist/physicalist through and through, and I see no other way to deal with this question that doesn't involve invoking some non-physical substrate, and then calling it "me".
I have spent a good amount of time trying to see things much as you describe them - and, of course, I have no ultimate idea what is the right formula - but recently I have worked at seeing myself as just this living animal, mere physics, and this makes more and more sense, despite having to fight against my intuitive dualism (embedded in all our cultures), and I encourage you to spend a little time considering it. It makes a lot more sense of evolution, including theories of "general evolution" (i.e. not just of life, but of everything up to and including life), of which we have a lot of evidence. I wrote a blog post about this idea, that I "experience" in a way a rock "experiences", only modulated via evolution. https://lettersquash.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/natural-consciousness-part-2-being/
Hi John, Thank you for the comments. As you will see, it inspired (and required it seems) quite a few words for me to reply to! Please take this as my opinion, I offer it to you as not just what I understand Vedanta to be saying, but how I resolved the same questions for myself. Nothing more. What I'm doing my best to summarize is logic that took me a year or two to assimilate, and I may have gotten out over my skis even trying to keep it this "short" 🤪. I hope it's entertaining and of some interest, and I would be most curious about any response or questions that come from it should there be any.
Also, I appreciate everything you said in your last paragraph. To me being a human primate animal is not distinguishable from being my "self," unless you're asking why I see things the way I do. The viewpoint of Vedanta made this primates internal life a whole lot better! I look forward to reading your blog post too. 😊🙏🏻
There is no "non-physical substrate" in Vedanta. If there could be said to be a substrate, it would be self, a term that Vedanta uses to reference that which is never not present. We usually hear about it as "consciousness" and because that is not well understood, it is usually interpreted as a vapor like nothing substance which is supposedly what we are. This is ridiculous of course, but it isn't remotely what Vedanta says or implies.
As I've mentioned a few times here, I think the best definition for non-dual or for self is "what is," which is whole and complete. That accounts for everything, which includes two discernible categories: consciousness and matter/energy. I don't know of anything that can be said not to be in one of those categories. The matter/energy category includes subtle material as well, like thoughts and feelings, which cannot be touched by form but nonetheless have recognizable form (obviously since we know them as "objects").
That brings up an interesting thought experiment that just occurred to me. If you also agree with the statement I just made, that (gross) matter cannot touch "subtle matter," then how are thoughts and feelings known? What instrument knows them? In a sense, they are "touched" since they are known, even though there is no physical contact. So what touches them and how are they seen by you?
Anyway... so we have these two categories consciousness and matter/energy. You might say wait a minute, if thoughts and feelings are included in the matter/energy category, then what is consciousness? Consciousness means the knowing factor. Thoughts and emotions do not have a knowing factor, they are known. They are just like rocks and body parts in that sense. Vedanta does not reify this factor, it acknowledges it.
Our own presence is almost always unaccounted for in our experience, due to its subtlety, and yet with reference to our experience it is never not present. Just because it is unaccounted for as an ever present factor, however, does not make it go away. It makes it ignored. Because it is ignored yet undeniably present, it does in fact get accounted for. Non-photographers don't notice (they are aware of it, but inadvertently ignoring it) that photography is entirely about something that they don't notice, light. They think it is about objects, and of course it is as well, but the light must be taken into account. Remove it, and photography ceases to exist. 
This is exactly what we do when we ignore consciousness, or in other words, our self. We project it outwards onto objects, and we say "I am blonde" and "I think the Yankees suck" and "I am a loser." Vedanta would say, no. Those things are just happening, you are the knowing factor of the aliveness "playing out," and that only seemingly but not actually affects you. You think it does, based upon only the most superficial inspection, but it doesn't.
In fact, if you chose to take the attitude that I am whole and complete no matter what, considering the fact before you that you do not control any of the circumstances you encounter, and you took this to be fundamentally true about yourself despite appearances to the contrary, you've freed yourself from circumstances. You know full well that the human primate animal you are is still affected by circumstances and cares about them, which is why you do your best to give that primate a pleasant and easeful life, but you do so happily as a contributor not greedily as a consumer. Not because you are righteous, but because you know you don't need anything to complete you. 

So, back once more to the two categories. The two categories are conceptual, not actual. Vedanta is not saying that these two categories exist and that you need to or should know about them because they are "true" or they are "what is." This is not a philosophical viewpoint essentially, in that the entire philosophy is meant to be discarded once it has served its purpose of freeing you from any notion whatsoever of being incomplete or inadequate. That's the entire purpose of it.
If reality is non-dual, as Vedanta declares, then the way things are and the way things seem are not different. Therefore, what seems dualistic, which is our entire experience of being here taken from the point of view of the humane primate animal being a separate individual, upon close scrutiny and inquiry can be seen to be only apparently real (dualistic). Science has helped us with that tremendously. Quantum physics has gotten down to the point where it demonstrates empirically that what appears real in the "material" world is only real upon observation. Upon observation it does become seemingly real (existent), but strictly in the sense that that seeming reality is temporary it cannot be called real because its temporary existence is bordered by non-existence on both sides. this has not led scientists to the conclusion that reality is non-dual, and they apparently still seek for material answers, but maybe they are barking up the wrong tree?
With that all said, there is one more important part of the teaching methodology to help dispel the idea that Vedanta sees consciousness as a non-physical substrate. Reality is non-dual, which means it can neither be said to be physical or non-physical. It is both, and neither, depending on how you look at it. There is both a changing and unchanging factor in existence, which is observable but not otherwise explainable. We don't know what it is, only that it is. Understanding this involves the logic of cause and effect, and how the causal (potential, un-manifest) and actual (manifest) are only seemingly different.
The first thing to recognize is the logic that something cannot come from nothing. It is necessary to accept that as being so, in order to understand what Vedanta is saying. If there is nothing, zero, then there is nothing to cause anything to happen, so there would never be any effect. Since effects make up the entirety of our experience, we either need to presume an entirely magical and unexplainable creator that can do the impossible, or we need to presume that zero does not actually exist.
That does not mean that there are never no objects, it means that when there are no objects, those objects are in causal or potential form. This explains why I seem to vanish completely when I sleep, because from my own perspective my equipment (body and mind) are in their causal form. When that same I reappears in the morning, which is obviously not caused by me, what was in causal form manifests. Why must it be this way? Well it mustn't, however it makes perfect sense considering that every single aspect of my body and mind returns just as it was before I went to sleep. It's not possible that it was nonexistent, otherwise how would that happen?
What force or power would cause that to happen? It's a fantasy typically attributed to God, but the problem is God is also gone (from my perspective) when I sleep. It's ironic that we generally dismiss the notion of consciousness or self as nonsense, considering that in order to do so we have to either attribute what happens to (the magic of) God or if not God then some unknowable and unexplainable force.
That factor, the unknowable and unexplainable, is still present in Vedanta but it refers to that factor as Maya, or "that which makes the impossible possible." There may not sound like a difference there, but there is a logical one. The commonly accepted Judeo Christian notion is that a separate God (which I would say is like a substrate) created a separate thing called the world which it is not.
Vedanta says what that is is Maya, macrocosmic ignorance, which is eternal because if there is something to be known (self) it is always possible not to know it, but is only seemingly real because it is not always present. Maya, or God, is what the world of appearance is. There is no why to it, but if it is not that way then there is somewhere a separate "magician" pulling all the strings, and that magician must in turn be somewhere, and the infinite regression continues.
Therefore, consciousness is neither a thing or a no thing, it is the knowing factor in/of "what is." "What is" is this knowing factor, which for whatever reason is never not present (existence itself), and Maya which itself is always present though not always manifest. Maya (macrocosmic ignorance) can never be gotten rid of, because it is the liveness in which we find ourselves, but Avidya (personal ignorance) can be removed by the knowledge that I am non-dual, ordinary self and there is nothing other than me. 
Vedanta does not invoke anything. It labels as "me" (self, Brahman, consciousness, existence, to list a few) as the non-dual totality of what is. If there is a substrate, it is only that which is, inclusive of everything this aliveness is.
No need to be sorry. Thanks for your reply.
I'm sorry to say I find all that entirely unconvincing. I was immersed in Vedanta philosophy for many years, so I know the concepts you're describing. It is just that, on reflection, I decided they were mere sophistry. It is not surprising: they arose at a time long before even rudimentary scientific methods were developed, and what passed for science (practiced by meditating monks, apparently) was introspection. That is the essential flaw: they imagined that introspection must reveal truths, and categorised their various intuitions. All the descriptions I've read, including yours, are full of nonsequiturs and self-contradictions and waffle. You set out above to dispel the notion that consciousness was non-physical, for example, but then said that everything (the "non-dual") has two "categories, consciousness and matter/energy". The logic of that is that consciousness doesn't fit in the "matter/energy" category, so is "non-material", or "non-physical", which is the notion you were trying to dispel.
Some concepts are just made up, like "macrocosmic ignorance". Sorry. As for quantum mechanics involving "observation", and its support for ancient mystical visions, this is a common misconception. "Observation" is an unfortunate term that has a reasonable history, but doesn't actually involve consciousness at all. It involves merely the interaction of the wave function with some object, and it is that interaction that causes the collapse of the wave function. The object might be a photon, for instance, which is of course why the unfortunate term originated, because in order to see what state an experiment is in, the experimenter has to observe some result, which involves photons impacting the system. Many scientists can be found explaining this error online, and this is why they are not, in fact, "barking up the wrong tree," when they fail to endorse non-duality.
And you manage to convince yourself that these dubious abstract ideas explain your unconsciousness when you sleep, like this:
>>That does not mean that there are never no objects, it means that when there are no objects, those objects are in causal or potential form. This explains why I seem to vanish completely when I sleep, because from my own perspective my equipment (body and mind) are in their causal form. When that same I reappears in the morning, which is obviously not caused by me, what was in causal form manifests. Why must it be this way? Well it mustn't, however it makes perfect sense considering that every single aspect of my body and mind returns just as it was before I went to sleep. It's not possible that it was nonexistent, otherwise how would that happen?<<
It's very easy to explain sleep. The animal doesn't need to be conscious all the time, particularly when it hides from predators (during either the day or the night, typically), saves energy and repairs its cells. So whatever consciousness is, the brain doesn't bother producing it for that time. We don't need to invoke two states of consciousness, actual and potential, on the grounds that when it's not there it can't be non-existent.
Hi Robert, Amazing reply 🙏🏻☀️
I agree with you that the "nothing but consciousness schema" is *usually* a "kind of psychological dissociation," but (as always 😊) I think it is worth saying that that idea in Vedanta points to the non-dual nature of "what is" and not in any way to a separate thing or a substrate.
What you call aliveness is the non-dual whole (existence, what is). Vedanta simply draws attention to the absence of an actual difference between that and the knowing factor "inherent in" that.
Sat, Chit, and Ananda are synonyms for each other that reference the unchanging factor in what is, while aliveness (or in Vedanta, Ishvara) references the changing factor. Actually, "aliveness" really covers all of it, but as a with anything it needs to be defined/unfolded.
Amanda is really the "point" of Vedanta though, so to speak. After all, knowing "I" am existence/consciousness doesn't really get the juices flowing does it? But, knowing that AS that, my essence is whole and complete, ever-present, unending - that has juice.
"My essence" doesn't mean something other, better, or in any way different than the body/mind/person I am while I'm here (the person part of course being illusory in nature). It isn't mystical nor is it possible to experience it, but appreciating what it is intellectually and emotionally (knowing it, not just believing it) can give my life a foundation of gratitude and ease of being that seeps into everything.
Kind of like being on what I would imagine MDMA to be like, only not because of a drug. Instead, because all my experience plans on that foundation rather than the idea that I am inadequate and incomplete. You could call a crutch, but it's a good one, and based on what actually is.
❤️ VG
Thank you, VG.
You and I may disagree on this. I do not see any justification for saying that nothing exists but consciousness or that consciousness exists prior to or superior to the material world, including human beings and other animals. As far as I know, consciousness is something that brains do, and without a living, properly functioning brain, consciousness no longer exists.
I understand that others believe differently, and I do not claim that my perspective is better than theirs. I am only stating my present point of view, which is, as I said in my essay, that so far as I know, I am a human primate animal living according to the laws of physics and their lawful biological outcomes on an actual planet comprised not of consciousness but 118 or so chemical elements—a “myself” that has as much control over or comprehension of the big picture as an ant does of a picnic.
You know more about Vedanta than I do, so tell me if my view can be reconciled with what you understand about Vedanta. I may be missing something, but I don't see what.