It’s important to read the Upanishads carefully and distinguish between literal and metaphorical utterances. They were not written in the manner of philosophical documents which carefully make these distinctions. Certainly we are at the very edge of language, the apophatic, that is a given; yet if we hold that on realisation the world disappears because the organs of perception are trumped then we stray into nonsense. Swami Satchidanandendra observes:
“For once the true nature of the Self is known, there can no longer be any more experience of the true nature of the Self is known, there can no longer be any more experience of the means and objects of empirical cognition. For the final means of knowledge put an end to the condition of the Self as a knower whose knowledge comes through the empirical means of knowledge. And in putting an end to this condition, the final means of knowledge itself ceases any longer to be a means of knowledge, just as the means of knowledge, present in a dream cease to be such on waking. (B.G. Bhasya II.69)
Realisation of the Absolute is not anywhere found either to destroy or create any reality. What it is invariably found to do is to put an end to Ignorance. So here also, the sense of not being the Absolute and the sense of not being the totality of all that exists, which are induced by Ignorance alone, should be put to an end by realisation of the Absolute. (Brhad.Up. Bhasya: I.iv.10)
(from ‘The Method of the Vedanta’ pgs. 62/3)
The imputation here is not that all ordinary means of knowledge are transformed into clairvoyance or clairaudience. The organs remain intact but now there is no identification of the Self as the agent. ' Only the Gunas are acting’ (B.G. 14.19)
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