Kena Upanishad on 'Can Brahman be Known'?

 

3: The eye does not go there, nor speech, nor mind.  We do not know (Brahman to be such and such), hence we are not aware of any process of instructing about it.

4: “That (Brahman) is surely different from the known; and again, It is above the unknown” - such was (the utterance) we heard of the the ancient (teachers) who explained it to us.

(Kena Upanisad I.3, 4 )

There  is what seems a straightforward admission that the logico-empirical method cannot establish the existence of Brahman.  Why might that be so?  If Brahman is the Self then the Self cannot be grasped in the way that any object might be.   The consciousness that is being grasped would have to grasp itself being grasped and that grasping of etc.  Bertrand Russell noted this in a letter to Frege.  There is inevitable infinite regress.  Shankara in his commentary :

Though the mind thinks and determines other things, it does not think or determine itself; for of it, too, Brahman is the Self.  A thing is cognised only by the mind and the senses.  As Brahman is not an object of perception to these, therefore,na vidmah,we do not know.

How then is Brahman to be communicated or taught to a disciple?  Brahman escapes all categories but there is deep wisdom embedded in the realised masters of traditional authority.  Put the disciple in the vicinity of a realised sage and he will begin to resonate with the knowledge of “the Brahman that is immediate and direct - the Self that is within all” (Brhadaranyaka Up. III.iv.1)

In this way, the text, “Thus we heard” etc., states how through a succession of preceptors and disciples was derived the purport of the sentence which establishes Brahman that Self of all which is devoid of distinguishing features, and is the light of pure consciousness.  Moreover, Brahman can only be known through such a traditional instruction of preceptors and not through argumentation, nor by study (or exposition), intelligence, great learning, austerity, sacrifices, etc.....

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.

Shankara and The Witness (Saksin)

 

The ego which is pervaded by the reflection of Consciousness is called the knower or the agent of the action of knowing.  One who knows oneself, the Witness, to be distinct from all these three is a (real) knower of the Self.

The modifications of the intellect, called ‘right knowledge’, ‘doubtful knowledge’, and ‘false knowledge’, deviate from their existence.  There is one and the same Consciousness in all of them.  The differences are due to the modifications. (paras 118- 120 Upadesa Sahasri)

The Witness?  Who let him in?  The three that it is distinct from are/is the agent, the object and the means of valid knowledge (pramana) ie. perception, inference etc.  How is the Witness distinct from them if it is non-different as Consciousness from Subject and Object?  Can this be an example of the adiropa apavada move or an interim realisation that what remains unchanged is Consciousness as such.  Its self-luminous nature does not change.  Taking that stance towards the deliverances of ‘the three’ i.e. ‘right knowledge’ etc. brings the seeker into the sphere of the Witness.

“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......

As for the explanation, “The expression, pratibodha videtam (known with every state of awareness) means that the Self is known to oneself”, it is possible in a context where the Self appears as a conditioned thing through identification with the limiting adjunct, intellect, so as to have such apparent activities as knowing the Self by the self (jiva).  This is referred to by the texts. “Sees the Self in his own self” Brh.Up. IV.iv.23 - “ O Purushottama, (lit Supreme Purusha, i.e. Being) you yourself know your Self through the self”. B.G. X.15. (from Kena Up. commentary II.4)

 

 

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.

Knowing Brahman

 “It is known to him to whom it is unknown; he does not know to whom it is known.  It is unknown to those who know well, and known to those who do not know”.(Kena.Up. II.3)

There are different classes and grades of people who have views about Brahman.  There are those who are opposed to the concept completely.  Those are the people ‘whose intelligence is extremely primitive’ (Sankara’s view)  They are not taken into consideration.  They lack that basic sense of the numinous and the continuous fascination with the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing.  High I.Q. is no bar to this obtuseness and may even help as a ‘halo’ effect.  ‘How’, they feel, ‘could I be wrong who am so clever’.

There are two sorts of don’t knows being considered.  The rare and wonderful are the self realised sages and saints who manifest divinity and do not know it in the way that you would know some sensible object.  They do not know their own reality.  A curious observation.

Then there is the ignorance of the devotee or sincere aspirant whose faith in the reality of the goal is profound.  He is on his way there.  “I know and I do not know as well” - how can this be?  The contradiction is resolved in a higher synthesis.   He may still be at the stage of identifying with the senses, mind and intellect as his Self.  Even so freedom is a goal that is espoused as a real one and the presence of a self-realised master as an exemplar inspires.  Very often there will be indications to them that they are not deluded in this.  The present intuitive view of identity will be eroded over time.

"But is Indian Thought really Philosophy?" (really, really)

It was probably a rhetorical question – “But is Indian Thought really Philosophy?” I suggest ‘eating the peach’ on that one. Try the opening sutra of the Kena Upanisad:

Willed by whom does the directed mind go towards its object? Being directed by whom does the vital force, that precedes all, proceed (towards its duty)? By whom is this speech willed that people utter? Who is the effulgent being who directs the eyes and ears?

2: Since He is the Ear of the ear, the Mind of the mind, the Speech of speech, the Life of life, and the Eye of the eye, therefore the intelligent men, after giving up (self-identification with the senses) and renouncing this world, become immortal.

In so far as these things can be known the Kena Up. is dated around about 500 B.C. which puts it in line with the Pre-Socratics and their physics and Heraclitus and his gnomic logoi. No one has ever disputed that they promulgated philosophy. In the Kena you have Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity, consciousness and the binding problem which continue to be an important part of Metaphysical speculation. What is perhaps different in Indian thought is that inquiry might lead to commitment. The immediate intuition that is Self-Realisation can lead to apodeictic justification or an intellectual reverse engineering. The analytically ‘trained’ will whinny and balk at that jump.