“Now at the same time it is just those self-same things which his mind, as we say, perceives; and the whole philosophy of perception from Democritus’s time downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer space and in a person’s mind. ‘Representative’ theories of perception avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the reader’s sense of life, which knows no intervening mental image but seems to see the room and the book immediately just as they physically exist.” (from ‘Radical Empiricism’ by William James)
In his clear way James has set out the aporia which in Advaita is called the chit jada granthi (the knot between the conscious and the inert). It is the initial statement of the puzzleShankaracarya deals with in the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya. He writes:
“Accordingly, the superimposition of the object, referable through the concept “you”, and its attributes on the subject that is conscious by nature and is referable through the concept “we” (should be impossible), and contrariwise the superimposition of the subject and its attributes on the object should be impossible.”
What he finds to be a difficulty that must be stated before his commentary on the body of the sutras is simply this: how does that out there a material object come to be in here in my mind as a subjective unextended state of awareness.
This is just that very ‘double entry’ problem that under various modalities keeps cropping up. The problem of universals comes under that rubric, primary and secondary qualities thinking is coloured by it and it may even be that the hard wired moral tenets, the evolutionary adaptive, correspond to the really out there as against the ‘in here’ cultural mores. To put it at its most general: is Realism a thing?
Aristotle and Plato thought so and got to it in their different ways. Advaita as I have pointed out mentions the problem and via the pramanas assumes the truth of realism but its discussion of the problem is put to one side by the very practical problem of self-realisation. That gives a Cartesian critical tinge to its philosophical investigations. What is ‘kuthasta ‘, unchanging, as firm as an anvil? It is Consciousness irradiated by self awareness, underlying that advice given by Nisargadatta’s guru - focus on ‘I AM’ and become liberated.
Earnest Advaitic seekers will demur claiming that none of this Western problematic exists. It does but they are dazzled by the shiny object of confusion, summarised in the snake/rope analogy and are thereby led into interesting problems such as ‘how is error possible’ and the various fata morgana of Idealism.
Sankaracarya stated the central aporia in the preamble and therefore we must assume that the commentary on the sutras is a working out of a solution. Essentially the answer is non-duality or how you can have non-numerical identity between consciousness and the objective world. I have written several notes on this for anyone who is interested in following the subject topics/labels.
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