Use of Memory as an indication of Personal Identity in Sankara's Advaita

 This is so straightforward and simple an assertion of the rationality of diachronic identity that it requires no gloss and can be reproduced directly. Incidently Sidney Shoemaker has a similar argument in his book ‘Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity’.

Who denies diachronic identity anyway?  David Hume asks himself the question: How is a series of conscious states conscious of itself as a series?  His bundle theory of states of consciousness creates this problem which it is unable to solve.

It is important to note that Sankara is not offering memory as a criterion of personal identity.  He is merely using memory as sufficient to refute the momentariness (annica) doctrine of Buddhism namely that there is no connection between the string of conscious states that are had by a person.  His self identity is pure consciousness itself that remains unchanging through all states of awareness including that of deep dreamless sleep known as ‘sushupti’ in Vedanta. Follow the topic heading on Deep Sleep for more notes on that angle unique to Advaitic Vedanta.

Sankara’s Commentary on the Brahma Sutras in which he refutes Buddhist Realism (B.S.B. II.ii.25)

25. And (a permanent soul has to be admitted) because of the fact of remembrance (i.e. memory).

Moreover, when the nihilist asserts all things to be momentary, he willhave to assert the perceiver also to be momentary. But that is an absurdity because of the fact of remembrance. Remembrance means recalling to mind something after its perception, and that can happen only when the agent of perception and memory is the same; for one person is not seen to remember something perceived by another. How can there be an awareness of the form, "I who saw earlier see now", arise unless the earlier and later perceiver be the same? Moreover, it is well known to all that direct experience in the form of recognition, such as "I who saw that, see this now", occurs only when the agent of seeing and remembering is the same.             

Theories of Self in Sanskrit philosophy in the 9th.Century (from Sankara's Commentary on Brahma Sutras)

 

Sankara’s commentary on the Brahma-Sutra Bhasya I.i.1

Opponent : If Brahman be well known in the world as the Self, then It being already known, there arises the difficulty again that It is not to be deliberated on. 

Vedantin : No, for there is a conflict about Its distinctive nature. Ordinary people as well as the materialists of the Lokayata school recognize the body alone to be the Self possessed of sentience. Others hold that the mind is the Self. Some say that it is merely momentary consciousness. Others say that it i~void. Still others believe that there is a soul, separate from the body, which transmigrates and is the agent (of work) and the experiencer (of results). Some say that the soul is a mere experiencer and not an agent. Some say that there is a God who is different from this soul and is all-knowing and all-powerful;others say that He is the Self of the experiencing individual. Thus there ar emany who follow opposite views by depending on logic, texts and their semblances. If one accepts any one of these views without examination, one is liable to be deflected from emancipation and come to grief. Therefore starting with the presentation of a deliberation on Brahman, here is commenced an ascertainment of the meaning of the texts of the Upanisads with the help of reasoning not opposed to the Upanisads themselves, for the purpose of leading to emancipation (through knowledge).

There you have it, an itemisation of the known theories of the Self and Self-Knowledge in the sphere of Sanskrit philosophy in the 9th.Century. Note that many of its topics did not become salient in Europe until much later.  Momentary consciousness (Annica) a Buddhist doctrine had to wait for Hume and his bundle of perceptions/series of conscious states, theory.  I have written about this at length previously. Follow the topics.

The vijnanavada subjective idealism is akin to that of Kant’s thing in itself and its unknowability.  The whole question of the ‘external’ world and what we really are directly aware of is give a thorough examination by Sankara in the commentary on the Brahma Sutras. (B.S.B. II.ii.28)

Materialism is mentioned and so forth and so on.  Suffice it to say that Sankara was not a mere theologian, an idea that is often encountered in academic circles.  He wants to test those theories using rational means to uncover contradictions and fallacies.  His critiques are well worth an examination by readers who have chiefly focused on the Western canon.

Sankara on Memory and Identity in Kena Upanishad II.4

 It is my fixed view that the Vedic philosopher theologians while unaffected by Western thoughts generated broadly similar responses to the aporiai of consciousness, identity,  and memory.  Here in his commentary on Kena Upanishad II.4  Sankara rejects the idea of the aloof Self as  an agent of the act of knowing.

“On the other hand, the explanation my run like this; “The Self being the agent of the act of knowing, one infers It to be the agent of the action from the fact of the cognitive act itself, just as one knows that it is the wind which moves a tree”.”

The Self then is understood as being aware of what is going on in the mind.  It is not the knowledge itself.  As knowledge occurs via perception, inference etc. the Self is activated like a substance undergoing modification.  There appears to be two processes going on here, mental activity producing knowledge and the modification of the Self producing awareness of this activity.  The changeability of the Self per this theory counters our sense of the permanence of the Self.

A view ascribed by Sankara to the school of Kannada:

“Knowledge arising from the contact of the soul and the mind, inheres in the soul; hence is the soul endowed with  knowership.  But it is not changeable; it is merely a substance  just like a pot in which colour inheres” - since according to this view, too, Brahman is a mere substance without consciousness, it contradicts such Vedic texts as, “Knowledge, Bliss, Brahman” (Br.Up. III.ix.28), “Brahman is Consciousness” (Ai. V.3)  And as the soul is partless and hence has no locality in it, and as the mind is ever in contact with it, the consequent  illogicality of admitting any law regarding the origination of memory becomes insurmountable.”

This remark about memory in its extreme allusiveness is somewhat inscrutable but if connected to the critique of Buddhist annica (momentariness) becomes intelligible.  The soul and the mind being viewed on the analogy of mental subject and mental objects requires that some mark of the supposed mental data must be discovered for them to be recognised as memory.  Thus you might have the thought, ‘someone won the lotto and yes now that I think of it, it was me’.

“Remembrance means recalling to mind something after its perception, and that can happen only when the agent of perception and memory is the same; for one person is not seen to remember something perceived by another.  How can there be an awareness of the form, “I who saw earlier see now”, arise unless the earlier and later perceiver be the same?  Moreover, it is well known to all that direct experience in the form of recognition,  such as “I who saw that, see this now”, occurs only when the agent of seeing and remembering  is the same.  Should their agents be different, then the awareness will take such a form, “I remember, but somebody else saw”; but nobody in fact experiences in this way.  Where cognition takes such a form, all understand the agents of seeing and remembering to be different, as for instance in, “I remember that he saw this then”.  (from Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya II.ii.25 pg.412 trans. Swami Gambhirananda, pub. Advaita Ashrama)

This critique of Sankaracarya’s would also apply to Hume’s fardel.

Shankara and Buddhist Diabolism

Shankara, to be fair to him, never misses an opportunity to mock the Buddhist anatman doctrine. That Western philosophers have found a similarity to Hume’s incoherent bundle of perceptions theory is for me no recommendation being that he was wrong about everything but all in the most stately 18th.century prose. Adi Shankaracarya is commenting on Katha Upanisad II.iii.13:

The Self is (first) to be realised as existing, and (then) as It really is. Of these two (aspects) the real nature of the Self that has been known as merely existing, becomes favourably disposed (for self-revelation).

His initial comment:

Therefore, eschewing the devilish company of those who advance the theory of non-existence, the Self should be realised as existing (i.e. immanent in all) - as productive of effects in which existence inheres, and as having the intellect etc., as Its limiting adjuncts.

The diabolism of the Buddhist position is its initial plausibility. Nothing in the furniture of the mind seems to have a permanent status; annica or impermanence pervades it. Of course that is undeniable but there is one fixed pole star; the very feeling of identity itself. Each state of consciousness is saturated by ‘I-ness’. This is not a result of an inward examination of a mental state inspected in order to discover whether it is mine or not. In the case of a memory this is clear. ‘I dug the garden’ is not arrived at by a perusal of the knowledge of a dug garden and the discovery using evidence that it was I who dug it. The personal memory is seamless. Knowledge that has the appearance of being empirical without the requirement of evidence is contrary to the Humean tradition.

What follows on for the seeker from this bare sense of personal identity in the moment and across time, is what Ramana Maharshi called atma vichara, inquiry into the self using as a tool the ‘who am I’ question. Shankara’s more theoretically complex observation and analysis of self-identity proceeds from the previous citation above:

But when the Self is devoid of all that, and is not subject to changes - and effects do not exist apart from their cause, because of the Vedic text, “All modification is mere name, being supported by speech - earth alone is real” (Ch. Up. VI.4) -the of that unconditioned, attributeless Self that is free from becoming an object of such concepts as existence and non-existence, the true (transcendental) nature is revealed.

The “earth alone is real” refers to the analogy of material identity. Various vessels made of clay are finally but clay. That is the reality behind them. Clay is their cause.
My previous observations on this point:
adhiropa/apavada

The various ‘shapes’ that consciousness takes are the result of limiting adjuncts or forms of limitation of pure undifferentiated consciousness - sat cit ananda. “....the limiting adjuncts that are the effects of an existing entity"......"the real aspect being that from which all limiting adjuncts have vanished, which is different from the known and the unknown, is non-dual by nature.....”