Katha Upanisad and Adhiropa/Apavada//Sublation (adhyaropa/apavada)

Let’s do philosophy as though the continuing development of science was irrelevant. Certain sorts of scientist agree that this is already being done and it’s not worth doing. How would science alter the following observations:

The self-existent Lord destroyed the outgoing senses. Therefore one sees the outer thing and not the inner Self. A rare discriminating man, desiring immortality, turns his eyes away and then sees the indwelling Self.

(Ka II.i.1)

What remains here (unknowable to this Self) through which very Self people perceive colour, taste, smell, sound, touch, and sexual pleasures? This is that (Self asked for by Naciketa).

(Ka II.i.3)

Anyone who knows proximately this Self - the enjoyer of the fruits of works, the supporter of life etc. - as the lord of the past and the future, does not want to save (the Self) just because of that (knowledge). This is that.

(Ka. II.i.5)

What, indeed, is here is there; what is there is here likewise. He who sees as though there is difference here, goes from death to death.

(Ka. II.i.10)

Note for a start the difference between this form of philosophising and that arising out of the Greek tradition. Is it a matter of style or substance? Is adhiropa apavada implicitly a dialectical process which the adoption by some advaitins of the concept of sublation implies or is it something else? Each of the Vedic sutras (logoi) are stated in order to be transcended and brought into a higher synthesis. To view them as arguments that are subsequently surpassed is too simplistic. We have to feel the force of each of them in turn not merely as logical positions. We realize them and then transcend them. That is wisdom and not a pat, rote learned position.

Going from the first citation to the last one the Western mind observes the contradiction between the Self that is the witness (saksin) of states of awareness, a quasi-dualistic position, and the Self which is both subject and object. How is that managed? Shankara in his commentaries on the individual sutras does not offer a reconciliation because his assumption is of a graded access to supreme wisdom.

Now excuse me while I get to work on Ka. II.i.10. The Tantric path regards a version of this - what is here is there, what is not here is not anywhere as paramount. (Tantra but not as you have heard of it, probably.)