Superimposition/Adhyasa in the Preamble to the Brahma-Sutra Bhasya.

 

I’m going to write about the development of the idea of superimposition (adhyasa) and mutual superimposition in the preamble to the commentary by Adi Sankaracarya on the Brahma Sutra Bhasya.   It starts off with the classic aporia: how does that out there the object, material and limited come to be in here in my consciousness which is immaterial and therefore unextended as such.  To develop the theory that he proposes he offers the analogy of confusion ie. a rope coming to be seen as a snake.  The snake is superimposed on our consciousness.  To use the example of confusion as an example of what happens during normal veridical perception is to say the least paradoxical and asking for trouble.  Anyway that is the first adhyasa example, two ‘external’ objects are confused.  I have ‘external’ in quotes to remind you that Sankara is a realistic thinker and that there is no truck with the contrast between ‘external’ and ‘internal’.

Moving on from that there is the development of what I am going to call the second adhyasa, the ‘internal’ one in which the qualities of the mental and physical are superimposed on the self and the nature of the self is superimposed on the physical and mental.  This is objected as not being a true superimposition which involves two external objects.  If it were really superimposition in the first sense the self and the mind/body/ would cancel each other out.  The dialogue between the Master and the Disciple in Sankara’s ‘Upadesa Sahasri’ Chap.2: #54/#55 develops this debate.

My analysis of what must have been a common impasse in the acceptance of the teaching is that the second/mutual superimposition analogy is developed on the basis of the first which is a natural phenomenon and therefore germane to standard perception whilst the second is to do with a spiritual and simultaneous event, the classic form of avidya/ignorance.  In the first adhyasa the items supplant each other, in the second adhyasa there is interpenetration.  It’s like the famous cartoon of the duck/rabbit.  Which is it, both or neither?

“The teacher said: “Listen.  It is true that the Self and the body are well-known, but they are not well-known to all people to be the objects of different knowledges, like a human being and a trunk of a tree.  (Question: How are they known then?) (Reply) (They are always known) to be the objects of an undifferentiated knowledge.  For no one knows them to be the objects of different knowledges saying, ‘This is the body’ and ‘This is the Self’.  It is for this reason that people are deluded about the nature of the Self and of the non-Self and say, ‘The Self is of this nature’ and ‘It is not of this nature’.  It was this peculiarity with reference to which I said that there was no such rule  (viz. only well-known things could be superimposed on each other.)” (Ch.2:#54 ‘Upadesa Sahasri’.)

The focus of the first adhyasa is on the real transfer that occurs between the object and the mind of the pereceiver, that of the second adhyasa is on the unreal transfer between the Self and the body.

I suppose what I’m trying to express is that when you move from the normal conventional reality of the First Adhyasa you move into the apophatic reality of the Second Adhyasa where language cannot go and knowledge is impossible because there is no other.

 

Chandogya Upanishad: Clay and Vessels made of Clay

 “A classic Advaita illustration of this, based on Chandogya Upanishad 6.1.4, is a causal substance such as clay shaped into new names and forms, like a pot or plate. The latter effects arise and resolve back into their cause. They have no existence apart from their metaphysical ground, the persisting clay content. Clay is therefore the reality (satyam). Not only does the clay possess more reality than either the pot or the plate because it continues through each form, but the individual existence of either artifact is entirely ontologically dependent upon its clay content. The clay is analogous to Brahman which is the underlying existence of the universe. For Sankara, each temporal artifact is simply a name (nāma) and form (rūpa), and unreal because it can be reduced to its cause.”

(Neil Dalal writing on Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta in ‘The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta’)

Let me pick a nit and pop it.  An illustration is on the same level as that which it illustrates e.g. Dickens illustrates the cruelty of the Murdstones in his novel ‘David Copperfield’ by  ....

An analogy attempts to guide us towards understanding by the use of an example that is removed from the area of difficulty.  The relation between pure Being and individual forms of being is difficult to comprehend because in our fallen state we have no experience of pure Being or Being as such.  The analogy drawn from the potter’s trade helps us towards an understanding or orients our attention towards this relationship.  That task completed the analogy retires from the scene.  The clay and vessels made of clay is not an ontological outline in a classic metaphysical theory.  Pure changeless Being may be more real, under a certain definition of ‘real’ than the fleeting manifestations of mundane being.  The clay/vessels does not partake of that disjunction of more and less real.  A cup or a marble is just as real as a lump of clay.   The final cause differentiates them; the one will hold a liquid and the other roll down an inclined plane.  The lump of clay is also an individual entity.  There is no ontological clay.  Substance or Prime Matter is another story and should not be conflated with the analogy of clay/vessels.

Snake/Rope Master Analogy

 

Most philosophy writing is like a pint in a two gallon bucket: a few good points wrapped in repetition and waffle which tends to obscure them.  Sankara in his preamble to the Brahma-Sutra Bhasya reverses this m.o. to give a  concentrated aphoristic  expression of almost poetic compression.  The whole argument is put before you in a way that allow you to see it in a single comprehension.  That is its strength and its stumbling block.  The philosophic mind must enlarge and expand on the thought to fill the bucket.  Here I am threatening to do the same.  "I had not the time to write a short letter so you are getting this long one instead -Pascal in his Provincial Letters. 

The Snake/Rope/ analogy is often the standard introduction to Advaita conditioning our sense of its scope and direction.  That is not the path of the argument taken by Shankara in the Preamble.  He starts with an onto-epistemological aporia but because this master analogy has become the default gateway I will try to offer a couple of points on what it is trying to express and what the wrong turns are as I see them.   First of all the Rope/Snake is a confusion not a delusion or an illusion.  Even offering this initial distinction is potentially  a wrong turn.  I have begun to become fascinated by the logical analysis of the common place occurrence and forget to pay attention to the main thrust of what the analogy is trying to accomplish viz. the orientation of the mind in the direction of a transcendental hypothesis about the nature of subject/object awareness. 

Shankara indicates this clearly:

"With regards to this , some say that it consists in the superimposition of the attributes of one thing on another.  But others assert that whenever a superimposition on anything occurs, there is in evidence only a confusion arising from the absence of discrimination between them.  Others say that the superimposition of anything on any other substratum consists in fancying some opposite attributes on that very basis.  From every point of view, however, there is no difference as regards the appearance of one thing as something else.

 

In a confusing move Shankara appears to himself get drawn into answering  a logical analysis: 

"For everybody superimposes something else on what is perceived by him in front, and you assert that the Self is opposed to the non-Self and is not referable (objectively) by the concept "you". 

He answers this objection by giving examples of non-objective things that are subject to superimposition.  This would appear to validate treating analogy as homology i.e. likeness in a global respect.  From the point of view of the adhiropa/apavada strategy or version of dialectic i.e. progressive approximation, this may be acceptable. 

Nor is there any rule that something has to be superimposed on something else that is directly perceived through the senses; for boys superimpose the ideas of survace (i.e. concavity) and dirt on space (i.e. sky) that is not an object of sense-perception.  Hence there is nothing impossible in superimposing the non-Self on the Self that is opposed to it."

Masculine, Feminine and Neuter Gender. Male, Female and Undecided.

It might be useful to try and trace the history of the present muddle about gender. It used, not long ago, to be a term in grammar. There were masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns so called by convention. They might as well have beeen called x, y, and z nouns. Some literal minded people were puzzled by the masculine and feminine appellation. How was ‘patria’ feminine? How is ‘cailin’ (girl) masculine in Irish? Is this early Celtic gender confusion? In other words there was an analogical extension from ‘feminine’ to female. Sex as Vilfredo Pareto often remarks is a very powerful residue.

As with the conventional ascription of gender in nouns the notion of the conventional applied to male and female arose. Each society has its folk ways, roles, duties and so on. True and useful; however to go on from there and to equate gender (masculine/feminine) as convention with sex (male/female) as convention is a category error. Of course it is also true that male and female conventional roles arise out of sexual differences.

So where are we now? Essentially this: I like what is conventionally supposed to be feminine so therefore I am a woman. On the other hand you are the rightful King of France.

Empty Rocks

When Brian (BBC Science prog) Cox picks up a stone and tells us that it is mostly composed of empty spaces he is speaking in analogical terms as though what we consider as empty in the normal way applies to the molecular level description. It involves a freezing in time of the molecular events which is essentially a falsification for practical purposes to produce a model of the molecule. This is useful but is not to be taken as the reality. It is an analogy with a very narrow focus in order to enhance understanding. Such abstraction is like the reducing of time to instants that gives rise to Zeno's paradox

Snake/Rope Analogy in Advaita and Analogies in General

Analogies are fluid devices that can easily be expanded to comedic levels. If I were were to say to you:
- I feel like my life is a play, a drama that will end inconsequentially.
You might respond:
- Have you forgotten your lines, or are you being upstaged by a clever dog?

Philosophical analogies or improvised epistemological devices can likewise expand past their original intent, not explosively but of the order of a trick cigar. The superimposition (adhyasa) snake/rope analogy has a slight touch of this. We can break it down into it two parts:
(a) Something is transferred to the mind of the percipient
(b) And this something is false.

There is in the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya a recognition of the aporetic nature of perception, namely - how is it possible given the disjunction between the conscious and the inert. This is the (a) part often termed the chit/jada granthi (the knot between the inert and the conscious).

Generally though (a) and (b) are run together as a unit even though Shankara plays down the mechanism by which it happens as not being relevant to his main point which is the demonstration of transfer of the object into the mind of the percipient. The paradox of the false perception being the exemplar of any perception has not been remarked on.

The (a) + (b) understanding is spun out into - only two perceptible things can be confused, both must have a potentially objective status. Shankara counters this, asserting that both elements do not have to be perceptible. Is this a defence of the original analogy or a wholly new understanding which refers back to (a)? That has the flavour of the adhiropa/apavada strategy.

Ganeri on Advaita Vedanta

I’ve been listening to some of the podcasts on Indian Philosophy put out by Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri on history of philosophy It’s good that it is being done but I have to say I found the talk on Advaita Vedanta
advaita vedanta
to be coarse grained for the undergraduate level at which they aim. What Shankara said was that what we take to be reality is like an illusion not that it was an illusion through and through. In fact the import of what he said is that conventional reality is like a mistake or a confusion. The rope/snake is an analogy with a strictly focussed point namely that an attribute of a real entity i.e. the coiledness of a rope becomes a snake in the mind of a perceiver in poor visual conditions. It is this transfer of attribute that connects to the philosophical concept of superimposition. Adhyasa (superimposition) is linked to Upadhi (limiting adjunct) and to Vritti (mental modification).

This is much more philosophically interesting than to say ‘conventional reality is an illusion’ and it could serve as an introduction to Shankara’s theory of analogy and his ideas on the continuous development of insight in the student. That of course is getting a little deep and far from the shore.

Paragon

To add to my remarks on ‘losing your temper with metaphor and analogy’;
losing your temper
once you have managed to grind your blade or intellect without drawing its temper you need to hone it to keep it razor sharp - sharp enough to split hairs. For that you need a paragon. An ‘akone’ is a whetstone (Gk.) against which (para) you hone away your rough edges, emulous as you are. If you study philosophy let not your paragon be the terror of the seminar room. Such persons are abrasive certainly but produce a scabrous edge. Some would say a rough edge is a good working edge, suitable for politics. Certainly a knife edge won’t last very long on a hatchet.

Adhyasa (Superimposition) as a Two-Stage Rocket. Upadesa Sahasri 7


51. The disciple said, Though eternal, I am not the Supreme Self. My Nature is one of transmigratory existence consisting of agency and experiencing of its results, as it is known by evidences such as sense-perception etc. It is not due to Ignorance. For it cannot have the innermost Self for its object. Ignorance consists of the superimposition of the qualities of one thing on another e.g., well-known silver on well-known mother-of-pearl or a well-known human being on a (well-known) trunk of a tree and vice versa. An unknown thing cannot be superimposed on a known one and vice versa. The non-Self cannot be superimposed on the Self, for It is not known. Similarly, the Self cannot be superimposed on the non-Self for the very same reason.

(from Chap.2 Upadesa Sahasri)

Here is kernel of the problem with using analogies. They can be mistakenly understood in two ways. (I’d love to be able to find three ways to conform to standard philosophical practice) First there is the error of misconstruing what the element is that you are attempting to offer an analogy for and second the tendency to overgeneralize the point of the analogy i.e. to turn an analogy into an homology. So we can take the superimposition analogy to be about error or scepticism or belief and get sidetracked into the interesting but irrelevant to the purpose of the analogy, ways of establishing veridical knowledge or the status of the ‘false’ object etc.

The disciple here is making the over generalization error. He views the template of their having to be two separate and separable things as the fixed nature of superimposition. In fact as a teaching strategy the introduction to the advaitin concept via a graduated explication is an excellent one similar to the adhiropa/apavada device. It’s a two stage rocket!

Moola-Avidya/Primal Ignorance

The moola-avidya people hold that avidya-sakti is a powerful primitive force, a force that prevents us from realising our true nature as existence//consciousness/bliss. Opposed to them are advaitins of the school that maintain that avidya is another name for superimposition. This is a simple characterisation of the divergence of views but I think it is fair to say that understanding ignorance as a force or a real existent arises from moving from an analogy i.e. ‘like a cloud’ to a metaphor,‘is a cloud’ . It may be just that simple.

Ignorance essentially is a non-cognitive relationship. We may know in general what the outlines of a topic are but the core of it is opaque to us. It also is the case that we may be in a state of complete ignorance in the case of the unknown unknown or the perfectly camouflaged. It just isn’t there for us. I would suggest that avidya/adhyasa is more like the known unknown that can be pointed to via the finger-post of a transcendental postulate. Start from the hard question - how is consciousness possible? On the face of it it ought to be impossible and there are various arguments for this ranging from causal closure to the gulf between the extended and the non-extended or cerebral events and qualia. Yet it happens. Here the outlines of a known unknown begin to become clear. We are at the start of atma-vichara or sefl-inquiry.

Sankara and Rope/Snake analogy

That the Chinese character for sunya (emptiness) is the character for sky assures me that abstraction has a solid foundation. In the Hindu Sankhya system of 5 elements akash or space is sometimes translated as sky. When Sankara was attempting to answer the objection to his superimposition/adhasya analogy in which the attributes of one thing are transferred to another as in the coils of a rope being seen as a coiled snake, he took the example of akash. The objection took the form of saying that the analogy presupposed two sensible items being confused whereas the attributes of the Jiva, weight, complexion etc cannot be superimposed on that which is not a sensible item namely the Self. On the contrary wrote Sankara (Preamble to B.S.B.) akash/sky which is without attributes has the convex shape of a frying pan (wok) and the smudges of clouds projected on to it.

Two observations are pertinent. One is the patent misunderstanding of the role of analogy in argument. It is narrowly focused to bring out some point that its proposer regards as salient. Why then does Sankara,who understands this well, attempt to extend the analogy to answer a specious objection? Perhaps here we have the operation of a temporary approximation which will be discarded as knowledge increases similar to the method of adhiropa/apavada (attribution followed by retraction). The objector is at a level which is not very sophisticated. The important element of the teaching, adhyasa, should be retained for further reflection without being diluted by irrelevant considerations. In time it will be understood that it is the fact of the movement of attributes that is the important point and not the objects involved whether sensible or not.

Guying the Metaphor

Skholiast was wondering like about my firm distinction between analogy and
metaphor. Metaphor arises out of analogy of course but it is more
general and unrestricted. An analogy has a narrow focus and serves to
draw out an aspect of reality that requires an aid to intelligibility
or serves to implant an image in the mind for rhetorical purposes. You
might say that someone had eyes like a hawk meaning that however remote
he was from your activity he was aware of it. Here the focus is on the
all seeing eye. However if you said that someone was a 'hawk' then the
extension of meaning into the sudden swoop of the raptor comes into
play as well. Polysemic might be the word for that expansion. That
generality can be 'guyed' for the purposes of mockery i.e. made an
effigy of, paraded through the streets and ceremonially burnt with
commination.

In the realm of advaitic analogy the snake/rope is a classic
illustration of superimposition. As I wrote, extending that analogy
into metaphor i.e. saying that the cosmos is a 'snake'and extracting
far more from it than was meant is also a classic wrong turn.

Losing your Temper with Analogy and Metaphor

What is the difference between an illustration and a metaphor? Put like that the question seems more soluble than if you were to ask; ‘what is the difference between an analogy and a metaphor’? That might be like the difference between a quadruped and a donkey. Or not. Could an analogy when pushed turn into a metaphor? Yes. Could an analogy used for the purposes of philosophical illustration when taken in the wrong sense end up as a metaphor which distorts its original intent? Yes.

Let’s take the metaphor ‘losing your temper’. Probably a lot of people would not be aware that this is a craft analogy from the time when all edge tools were periodically ground to renew their edges in preparation for honing. If excessive pressure was applied on the grindstone over a period of time without cooling through dipping in water the tool would turn blue at the edge and lose its temper. It would not afterwards be able to hold an edge. So don’t get overheated under pressure like the knife and lose your temper. ‘Temper’ I suggest here has lost its connection with its original analogical roots. Besides you won’t be able to ‘cope’. (f. couper/cut)

How dependent is philosophy on analogies? ‘Foundationally’ I would say and when ‘my spade turns’ (Wittgenstein) I know this is a sound ‘footing’.

But the greatest thing by far is be to a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others, and it also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.

(From Aristotle’s Poetics 22:1459)

Addendum/13.12.16: paragon

Analogies from Nowhere

Opponent: The comparison with the reflection of the sun in water cannot be reasonably upheld her (in the case of the Self), since nothing like that is perceived (here). A material thing, such as water, is seen to be clearly separate from and remotely placed from the sun etc. which are themselves material entities (with forms). There it is proper that an image of the sun should be formed. But the Self is not such a material entity (having form); and since It is all-pervasive and non-different from all, It can have no limiting adjuncts either separate or remote from It. Hence this illustration is inapt.

The opponent has a point, analogies on the same plane can be fruitful but the analogue from nowhere, the no place beyond physics, what are you standing under when you stand under that? Your analogy is a rumour from a resounding void but it is a void that inspires poetry when it is listened to . The vedic sages called it sruti, what is heard. Such analogies from nowhere are a Prolegomena to an Archetectonic of Pure Silence and Philosophy is what you pass through on your way there. A partial defence of metaphysical illustrations is that they are a reflection of a reality and enough to allow a useful transcendental postulate to strike (plant cutting metaphor). “As above so below” (Hermetic maxim)

"What is here is there, what is not here is not anywhere" (Tantric saying)

Note that the Magician of the Waite tarot combines in himself what the two philosophers of the School of Athens indicate.

Shankara on Analogy (illustration)

Shankara's way with analogies (illustrations) has its contradictions but his starting position is that an analogy of its nature cannot be congruent with what it analogises.

Brahma Sutra Bhasya: III.ii.19, 20:

Opponent:The comparison with the reflection of the sun in water cannot be reasonably upheld her (in the case of the Self), since nothing like that is perceived (here). A material thing, such as water, is seen to be clearly separate from and remotely placed from the sun etc. which are themselves material entities (with forms). There it is proper that an image of the sun should be formed. But the Self is not such a material entity (having form); and since It is all-pervasive and non-different from all, It can have no limiting adjuncts either separate or remote from It. Hence this illustration is inapt:

Vedantin: The objection is being remedied:
On the contrary, this illustration is quite apt, inasmuch as the point sought to be illustrated is pertinent. For as between the illustration and the thing illustrated, nobody can show equality in every respect over and above some point of similarity in some way, which is sought to be represented. For if such an all-round similarity exists, the very relation between the illustration and the thing illustrated will fall through. Moreover, this illustration of the reflection of the sun in water is not cooked up by anybody's imagination. But this illustration having been already cited in the scripture, its applicability alone is being pointed out here.

Opponent: Where, again, is the intended point of similarity?

The reply is this: "A participation in increase and decrease”, inasmuch as the reflection of the sun in water increases with the increase of water, and decreases with its reduction, it moves when the water moves, and it differs as the water differs. Thus the sun conforms to the characteristics of the water, but in reality the sun never has these. Thus also from the highest point of view, Brahman, while remaining unchanged and retaining Its sameness, seems to conform to such characteristics as increase and decrease of the limiting adjunct (body), owing to Its entry into such an adjunct as the body. Thus since the illustration and the thing illustrated are both compatible, there is no contradiction.

This is a defence of the utility of the illustration of pure consciousness/Brahman as being like the sun reflected in many vessels of water. It may appear to be many according to the forms of limitation of the vessels but it is the one selfsame sun. When an illustration is taken as alike in every respect to the entity, an aspect of which it seeks to illuminate, then I would say that the analogy has become a metaphor. The curious thing is that Shankara appears to do this himself on occasion. More anon.

Metaphor: The Kingdom of the Undead.

Douglas Hofstadter knows what an oxymoron is, “genuine artificial intelligence,” as Hofstadter now calls it, with apologies for the oxymoron. (from James Somers's article in The Atlantic)
Atlantic
I doubt that Hofstadter, ‘he’, apologised for it because the bringing to computation of the human power of making analogies is the limen as he understands it. I first wrote ‘crucial limen’ there, and that would be a mixed metaphor which tends to take away what it never gave in the first place.

All these figure of speech can be considered as falling under the heading of Analogy (upper case). Different spheres of meaning are brought into association. In the Oxymoron they are contrary, in the metaphor there is the moving of one sphere totally into the domain of another. Thus language is full of dead metaphors that we no longer see as such because they have displaced their abstract analogues so effectively. We grasp, comprehend, apprehend and understand but what is it to do that, what is being shunted? Maybe to do philosophy is to try to find the basis of metaphor. What is that kingdom planted by the undead?

When I offer the distinction between the Analogy and the analogy(lower case) I mean that the latter can appear under various guises; attribution, proportionality and illustration. It early struck me that the confusion of metaphor with analogy/illustration is a major element in the misinterpretation of Advaita. I have recently been reading the Essays on Indian Philosophy by Professor J. Mohanty and find traces of that heresy. It is the hazard of offering analogies that they tend to be taken in a way that was not intended. Shankaracarya regularly finds the purvapaksha (opponent) guilty of this solecism. I have been collating his observations.