Illusionism and Acosmism in Advaita Vedanta

 

The descent into acosmism and illusionism that Advaita Vedanta is often accused of may be due to the simple failure to distinguish between the metaphysical and the physical.  A metaphysical realisation of an intense reality so powerful that it eliminates the salience of the everyday conventional reality does not thereby cause it to disappear.  Maybe this is why the Sage of Kanchi (Shankaracarya Jagath Guru) wore such powerful spectacles.  No, the physical reality does not go away.  The sages die, sometimes in pain even if they, as the poster declared, ‘Remain Calm and Carry On’.

Would it not have been better to hold to the deepening of reality in the progress of the adhiropa/apavada dialectic?  This metaphysical realisation comes as the result of the transcendental hypothesis that proposes how things must fundamentally be for things to appear as they do.  The appearance in question is the object of perception.  Our simple belief, not a naive one, that the object is as it appears presents a puzzle.  Why should we think this when on analysis we must admit that all we are aware of is a presentation to the mind.  Here the specter of idealism looms which gibbering in the shade of Kant asserts that we do not know the ‘thing in itself’.  Advaita Vedanta instead holds to the simple ‘it appears as it is’ by virtue of non-material, non-numerical identity.  There is no need here to rehearse the mechanism of vritti and upadhi /mental modification and limiting adjunct which is masterfully dealt with in the classic ‘Vedanta Paribhasa ' of Dharmaraja Adhvarindra.

Besides why would the cognitions i.e. the awareness of the objects of perceptions, disappear when:

Being the witness of all cognitions, and by nature nothing but the power of consciousness, the Self is indicated by the cognitions themselves, in the midst of cognitions, as non-different from them.There is no other door to Its awareness. (my italics) Kena Up.II.4

How then can the cognitions disappear?  Yes we realise them for what they are but they remain as the door.