Upamana Pramana (Comparison) and Genus and Species.

 Does the pramana of upamana translated as ‘comparison’ start somewhat in midstream?  We are immediately given the concept of genus and species, the cow in this case so in essence we already have the power to discover genus and species natively.  Taking the single example of the ‘gavaya’ ( bos gaurus) we can be immediately aware that it must be a member of a species and with that awareness comes the knowledge of differentiation which makes a species.  Sharing the same genus as the cow (bos Taurus) is a likely presumption.  

There is an element of the problem of universals lurking beneath the surface of Upamana:

This (upamana) is not possible through perception, for then the cow’s form is not in contact with the eyes.

We only sense particulars and actually to begin with genus and species is logically downstream from the universal ‘cow’.  The problem of universals is not salient in the ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’ of Adhvarindra.  Sankara deals with it in his section of Brahma Sutra Bhasya called ‘Vedic Words’.  I find some similarity (that word) between his treatment and the ideas of William of Ockham.

More anon on that.

Shankaracarya's Upadesa Sahasri and the Problem of Pain

 In the first chapter of Upadesa Sahasri by Shankaracarya, the one dedicated mainly to the establishment by Sruti/Scripture of the unity of the Self with the absolute Brahman, in the midst of a plethora of citations we get the irruption of what is inevitable - pain! The glory of the realised state of unity seems contradicted by that very salient fact. 

#33:

If he says, “ The pain due to burns or cuts in the body and the misery caused by hunger and the like, Sir, are distinctly perceived to be in me. The supreme Self is known in all the Srutis and the Smritis to be “free * from sin, old age, death, grief, hunger, thirst, etc., and devoid of smell and taste’. How can [ who am different from Him and possess so many phenomenal attributes possibly accept the supreme Self as myself and myself, a transmigratory being, as the supreme Self > I may them very well admit that fire is cool | Why should I, a man of the world entitled to accomplish all prosperity in this world and in the next and realize the supreme end of life, i.e., liberation, give up the actions producing those results and yajnopavita etc., their accessories?”

In all philosophy the interaction of the physical and the psychical is a perennial puzzle. There is evident interaction but the causal connection between extended matter and unextended consciousness is opaque. We stub our toe, we feel pain which we may identify materially as the firing of c-fibres. It is a fact that I feel that pain myself. The Self apparently is in pain. How is this compatible with the state of release from all the ills of this transmigratory existence which is supposed to be the natural state of the Self?

34. The teacher should say to him, “It was not right for you to say, ‘I directly perceive the pain in me when my body gets cuts or burns ’. Why? Because the pain due to cuts or burns, perceived in the body,’ the object of the perception of the perceiver like a tree burnt or cut, must have the same location as the burns etc. People point out pain caused by burns and the like to be in that place where they occur but not in the perceiver. How? For, on being asked where one’s pain lies, one says, ‘I have pain in the head, in the chest or in the stomach’. Thus one points out pain in that place where burns or cuts occur, but never in the perceiver. If pain or its causes viz., burns or cuts were in the perceiver one would have pointed out the perceiver to be the seat of the pain, like the parts of the body, the seats of the burns or cuts.

What the teacher is pointing out in his rebuttal is the objective nature of the perception of pain. It is felt by the Self. The pain is not in the Self but is perceived in the same way as we perceive a tree or any objective phenomenon. The Teacher goes on to elaborate this subject-object understanding.

#35

Moreover, (if it were in the Self) the pain could not be perceived by the Self like the colour of the eye by the same eye. Therefore, as it is perceived to have the same seat as burns, cuts and the like, pain must be an object of perception like them. Since? it is an effect, it must have a receptacle like that in which rice is cooked. The impressions ° of pain must have the same seat as pain® itself. As they are perceived during the time when memory is possible (i.e., in waking and dream, and not in deep sleep), these impressions must have the same location‘ as pain. The aversion to cuts, burns and the like, the causes of pain, must also have the same seat’ as the impressions (of pain). It is therefore said, ` Desire ^ aversion and fear have a seat common with that of the impressions of colours. As they have for their seat the intellect, the knower, the Self, is always pure and devoid of fear.”

Lurking behind this position is the deeper ontological thesis of the inert nature of the body-mind. It is unconscious by nature or jada. Advaitins speak of the chit jada granthi or the knot between the inert and the conscious. Related to this is the elaboration of the concept of the Saksin or Witness which gives a theoretical underpinning to the firm if false feeling that the Self is identified with the body-mind and its modifications. 

Bina Gupta in her book on the Saksin ‘The Disinterested Witness’ : A Fragment of Advaita Vedanta Phenomenology” enumerates six approaches to the understanding of this concept.

1.The saksin is indubitable, unerring, eternal. It is always directly manifested and its manifestation is not due to any extrinsic reason.

2. The saksin is the neutral (pure) consciousness as qualified by a modification of the inner sense.° 3. The saksin is that which is never concealed.® 4. The saksin manifests ignorance.’ 5. That which directly manifests is the saksin.® 6. The saksin is that which illuminates everything.

Clearly the concept is a complex one and deserves a note on its own. Probably the Saksin as a modification of the inner sense would be the most significant characterisation. More an

on.

Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya I.i.4

 How is Brahman known?  That is the question asked in a frequently referred to sutra B.S.Bh I.i.4  .The answer is of course through the Vedas.  Does that rule out any other way of knowing Brahman.  The standard answer is yes; what is beyond the ken of the human mind cannot be demonstrated rationally.  Yet at the same time Sankara offers in his counter to non orthodox views various indications of the intelligence inherent in the workings of creation. The world for instance cannot have come out of  insentient pure matter as that would deny what we know of the cosmos and the emergence of consciousness.  That in a sense is an incipient argument from design.Importantly all arguments that state that it is useless to rely on what can neither be accepted or rejected in a worldly empirical way are voided by the fact of realisation.  

“...it is but reasonable that all ideas of duality, involving action, accessories, etc., should be eradicated, because the absolute Brahman is neither acceptable nor 

rejectable.”

Metaphysical indications as are offered by the Thomistic 5 Ways, contingency, motion etc., are not accepted because a generalised inference cannot reach the unknowable. 

Very good it is said: You have heard about Brahman but that does not mean that you now have come to a knowledge of Brahman.  That would be just like having your mistaking of a rope for a snake pointed out to you.  Not so is the reply: hearing, reflection, and meditation on the Self is enjoined.

At this point the Vedantin comes in to summarize and clarify everything.  He mentions the things that are conducive to a state in which the truth of the Vedas will become clear.  The various post mortem fates of those that do good indicate a gradation of achievement.  Of course Sankara points out quoting an Upanisad: “For an embodied being there can be no eradication of happiness and sorrow to be sure”. (Ch.VIII.xii.1)  Embodied in this case means one who is identified with the body.

Taking the Vedantin role Sankara makes clear that unembodiedness is not, and cannot be, achieved, as a result of good deeds.  If you are definitely bodiless, what can this mean?  The only sensible conclusion is that the enlightened one does not consider his identity to be personal.  There is a physical form with perhaps residual karma that may require spectacles to avoid walking into the furniture but his identity is impersonal.  There is no doubt that some students of Advaita find this disembodiedness a sticking point.  They take it quite literally and are puzzled by the groans of pain emitted by a jnani when he stubs his toe or suffers from cancer.

Jnana then is not a sort of good luck/fortune thing (sampad).  It does not depend on that.  It is the direct absorption by reality or the recognition that such was the case all along. “ Brahman is denied to be the object of an act of knowing.”

“By presenting Brahman as not an object on account of its being the inmost Self (of the knower), they remove the differences of the “known”, the “knower”, and the “knowledge” that are fancied through ignorance.”  

My own way of getting this is that you cannot get ‘outside’ the self in order to know it.  You cannot comprehend it which is why the upanisad says ‘neti’, ‘neti’, not this/not this.

Now comes an important epistemological point:

Opponent: Is not knowledge a kind of mental action?

Actually no. Knowledge is an achievement, a state.  Meditation though mental may be done or not as the case may be.  Knowledge is the immediate fruit of a valid means of knowledge.  Might the application of these means of knowledge be an action?  Yes.  So knowledge is then a mental condition but not an act.  But in the case of ‘jnana’ or self-realisation knowledge is not grasped by the mind and it is beyond what can be described because the Self cannot be comprehended by the Self.

As I read this sutra I realise that it places all the important points of Advaita in juxtaposition.  What is its purport, its summum bonum?  How is that achieved and can we even speak of an achievement?  The answer to that would appear to be yes because knowledge is an achieved condition.  Even though knowledge is an achieved condition yet the preparation for that state involves actions which are enjoined in the Upanishads.  

The knowledge of Brahman is said to give rise to unembodiedness.  What can that mean?  Some take it literally but that can’t be right because clearly the sage walks and talks and has a physical presence.  This is a state of knowledge in which the identification with the body ceases.

“…the idea of embodiedness is a result of false nescience.  Unless it is through the false ignorance of identifying the Self with the body, there can be no embodiedness for the Self.  And we said that the unembodiedness of the Self is eternal, since it is not a product of action.”

Karma has ended for the sage but for the rest of us hearing, meditation and contemplation  are used to bring on that state of enlightenment. (sravana, manana, nididhyasana)

Perception in Gaudapada and David Hume - Paradoxes of Idealism

 II.15 M.K.: Those objects that appear as obscure inside the mind and those that appear as vivid outside, are all merely created by imagination.  Their distinction is to be traced to the difference in the organs of perception.

If there was ever an indication that Vedantins aren’t from Mars it is this.  The tendency to idealism brings to the fore the notion that it is only a matter of vividness that marks the difference between the imagination and perception.  This is to be found in Hume.  A similar epistemology will evoke a related  response to the problem of differentiation between the mental and the sensible.  Impressions and ideas together are perception, is how Hume  puts it.  So how does one distinguish them?  By their relative vivacity. 

The notion of vivacity comes up in Sankara’s commentary on the sutra only to be dismissed. 

“The fact that things in the mind, called up by mere mental impressions, have an obscurity, while externally as objects of the sense of sight etc., they have a vividness, (that fact) is not due to the existence of the objects themselves; for this distinction is noticed even in a dream.  To what is it due then?  This is caused by the difference in the organs of perception.  Hence it is proved that the things of the waking state are as much a creation of imagination as the dream objects.” M.K. II.15.

Obviously there is a difference between their views on the  ontological status of perceptions.  Gaudapada holds that because we have perceptions in dreams and perceptions in the waking state the common denominator of being perceptions is their true status.  They thus remain as items in consciousness.  The activity of the senses is also in consciousness. So all being in consciousness and  consciousness qua consciousness resulting from superimposition (adhyasa) all experience is mithya/false. 

Hume  bundles mental and sensible events  into the one category of perception but distinguishes between the constituent impressions and ideas by virtue of their relative vivacity.

It’s interesting to see how the attempts to fix the paradoxes, that arise from the adherence to Idealism, criss cross each other generating  bafflement. 

Bhagavad Gita 9:4/5 — Necessary and Contingent

 

You will have been told by those anxious to place Advaita in recognisable categories that it is essentially pantheistic, monistic, panentheistic, or indeed, in the popular formula  - All is One.  The relation between the Creator and the Created is a subtle one in the Bhagavad Gita.  Two citations in Chapter 9 are apposite:

B.G. 9:4

This whole world is pervaded by Me in My unmanifest form. All beings exist in Me, but I am not contained in them!

B.G. 9:5

5. Nor do the beings dwell in Me. Behold My divine Yoga! I am the sustainer and originator of beings, but My Self is not contained in the beings.

What can be taken from these two sutras is the contingent nature of creation.  It might not have been, but it is.  Contingent being requires something more than itself to continue in existence.  That must be a necessary being which sustains by its nature the contingent.  Obviously contingent beings are not one with the necessary.  They are in it by virtue of being but not of it.

In Sankara''s commentary he states that being a thing means being a something distinct from other things.

“Therefore, being possessed of their reality through Me, who am their Self, they exist in me.  Hence they are said to be established in Me.”

Obviously these sutras rule out pantheism or the notion that God and the universe are identical.  Panentheism or the idea that out of the nature of God the universe arose in a quasi necessary way must also fail to pass the advaitic test..

Gaudapada with his ajativada (unborn) doctrine would probably say that contingent being is non-being and that only being exists.  What does not have being of its nature i.e. necessary being, cannot come to pass.  Somewhat annihilating!

Sutra 2:4:11 of Brihadaranayka Upanisad with Sankara's Commentary

 

Brihadaranyaka Upanisad 2:4:11 

"As the ocean is the one goal of all sorts

of water, as the skin is the one goal of all kinds

of touch, as the nostrils are the one goal of all

odours, as the tongue is the one goal of all

savours, as the eye is the one goal of all colours,

as the ear is the one goal of all sounds, the

Manas is the one goal of all deliberations, as the

intellect is the one goal of all kinds of knowledge,

as the hands are the one goal of all sorts of work,

as the organ of generation is the one goal of all

kinds of enjoyment, as the anus is the one goal

of all excretions, as the feet are the one goal of

all kinds of walking, as the organ of speech is

the one goal of all Vedas."

Here then is the bird’s eye view, the forest view or being high enough up to be no longer in danger of missing the forest for the trees.  Yes I do know that the idiom is ‘missing the wood for the trees’  but in that locution is the germ of a typical equivocation which has consequences if that is not too portentous.  When was I ever afraid of the portentous, God help me.  Wood, as lumber, firewood etc.,  is a product of trees.  A wood is also a large number of trees growing in the same place. A forest is an even larger group of trees, co-located, as in the Black Forest and so forth.  This is the view that I want to focus on.  And while I am talking about ‘views’ let me assert before it is offered as a transcendental hypothesis, the ‘view’ in Sankara’s advaita is a Realistic one.  There is a world and it is independent of our knowledge of it and elements of it wholly unknown too also exist sheltering under the umbrella of being.  Unless that is kept firmly in mind the inquiry due to the pullulation of terms that relate to awareness, consciousness, illusion and so forth can beguile us into a species of Idealism.  In that direction lies Buddhism, Humean/Empiricist epistemology and other sloughs of error.

The forest view is the height of the sutra eye.  When you ignore all the differentiating factors of the modalities of sense you resolve them all into the category of awareness or consciousness.  Notice that this last sentence is the typical stepping off point into the thin air of Idealism.  Don’t walk that plank.  Reflect on the point also made by Sankara that Samadhi, taken to be the sine qua non of enlightenment by yogis, is also but another form of awareness.

Everything is pervaded by or its being is SatChit/BeingConsciousness.

“Moreover, it is not only at the time of its origin

and continuance that the universe, on account of its

non-existence apart from Pure Intelligence, is Brahman,

but it is so at the time of dissolution also just as

bubbles, foam, etc. are non-existent apart from water,

so name, form and action, which are the effects of Pure

Intelligence and dissolve in It, are non-existent apart

from It.” (from Commentary by Sankara on the sutra)

Paradoxically this ‘everything is consciousness/Brahman’ is foundational for the Realism of Advaita as expressed in the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya (Sankara’s Commentary) and also in succinct fashion by Dharmaraja Adhvarindra in his ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’.  I am referring to the concept of ‘perceptuality’ or the structure that underlies our experience of the ‘external’ world.  We see it as it is .  Error is possible but only from the standpoint of that default view.

That I think is a big enough bite for today.   Dinner will be the ‘chit jada granthi’, the knot between the inert and consciousness.  The ‘mind/Manas’ is not, you see, of its nature conscious.  Tomorrow.  Now I have to mow a lawn, a really real lawn.

The Really Real in Advaita

  As I have been hinting I have always had a problem with the Advaitic use of the term ‘real’. How does the apophatic, that which outruns the mind, about which we cannot speak, how can it be real or unreal? It is beyond all that. The state of realization is such that mundane life is obliterated by bliss. Well, let it be so, but that does not derealize it. The contrast between the state of the sage and that of the seeker may be such that the one causes the other to lapse into insignificance, mere Maya, a misconception. The deep structure of reality is the truth; all else a veil. In my view it isn’t possible to totalize the use of the polar concepts real/unreal in this fashion. They always occur within a world. ‘Is this real butter's? ‘That is a fake Rolex, but a real watch’. ‘Your fears are unreal’ ‘That’s what I call real hospitality’.

etc., etc., Without labouring the point the use of terms real/unreal are contrasitive.  

This problem is recognised by Sankara who holds that the Vedas themselves become ‘unreal’ for the enlightened to which the objection comes - what use are they then, how can the real be achieved by use of the unreal? The answer which amounts to - you’ll know when you get there, for now keep saying your prayers.

Is this satisfactory if in fact the deep structure of reality underwrites what ‘Vedanta Paribhase’ calls perceptuality? That superimposition is possible as in normal perception is due to the unity of being.  

Swami S.S.S. remarks in his work on the preamble to the B.S.Bh.:

This argument does not hold water here; for the

wisdom of the Unity of Atman is attained only after

sublating all empirical thought. The Sruti also says

, What could one know and with what, when to the

knower, all has become Atman alone?' (Br. 4-5-15).

Sankara himself writes in so many words :-

" Nor is it possible to say that this intuition is use·

less, or that it is a delusion; for we see that it removes

avidya and that there is no other knowledge sublating

it. We _have already stated that it is only before the

intuition of the Unity of Atman, that all conventions

of real and false, obtain." SBh. 2-1-14, pp. 19, 20.

Is not the latter observation by Sankara on the convention of true/false or real/unreal a tacit recognition of what I have been holding. When you are beyond all those pairs of opposites or polar concepts they become useless.

The Irony of Superimposition (Adhyasa)

 

In Chapter 2 of Upadesa Sahasri in response to the Disciple’s difficulty with superimposition the Teacher replies:

#65: Thus  told, the teacher said, “Do not make any superimposition, if you know it to be the root of all evils.”

Though the footnote of the translator interprets this as an injunction: “i.e. Give it up. Know that you are pure consciousness and never really identified with the body etc”. ; I offer the ironic observation.  The pair of interlocutors are engaged in a conversation, interacting with each other.  They are therefore using the sensory and intellectual faculties that require superimposition to be operative.

Does that apply to the Teacher who is a self realised sage?  Can he be using superimposition in an ironic fashion knowing its structure and how it is only possible via the unity of being.  As is said in a symbolic fashion in Katha Upanishad: 2:2:15

"The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings-not to speak of this fire. He shining, everything shines after Him. By His light all this is lighted.

Arthapatti/postulation, Adhyasa, and Vulcan

 

Arthapatti variously translated as ‘postulation’, ‘presumption’, ‘supposition’ is treated almost perfunctorily in the classic texts usually focusing on the simplest canonical examples of fat Devadatta who doesn’t eat during the day and the living Chaitra who is not at home.  A restricted diet of examples leads to intellectual starvation in that the inquiry can be led into the path of cliched thinking. Take the very topic itself ‘pramana’ usually translated as ‘valid means of knowledge’.  I seem to notice the error that ensues in the conviction that if valid knowledge does not ensue then there was no pramana employed which is bizarre considering that confusion/illusion/delusion is such a topic in Vedanta.  Perception, a primary pramana, was used but knowledge did not happen.  Therefore I must demur from the statement of Swami Satprakashananda in his ‘Methods of Knowledge’:

It is worthy of note that arthapatti is applicable only when there is but one alternative explanation of the fact to be explained.  When there are more than one possible explanations the assumption of any one of them cannot explain the fact assuredly (with certainty).  So this cannot be a case of postulation (arthapatti) which is a means to valid knowledge.

This is an elision of the use of arthapatti in science which proceeds by hypothesis and experiment.  In advaitic/non-dual metaphysics the adhyasa theory is the result of a transcendental hypothesis or arthapatti which attempts to solve the aporia of perception viz. how does that out there extended object come to be in my mind as a state of unextended consciousness.  This is the subject of the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya by Sankara about which I have written extensively.  It is noteworthy that this aporia only exists for a Realist epistemology, for the subjective Idealist there is only the presentment to the mind and the object drops out as at most an inference.  As Sankara says in his commentary we perceive objects, we don’t perceive our perceptions.  There is a non-dual (non-numerical identity) between that out there and this in here.  In fact the division into ‘out there/external’ and ‘in here/internal’ is a dubious one.  That’s another topic.

Vulcan, the home planet of Mr.Spock the eminent logician was proven to be an illusion by Einstein.  My Google AI friend has a succinct account:

Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity played a pivotal role in debunking the existence of the hypothetical planet Vulcan. Prior to Einstein's theory, astronomers, including Urbain Le Verrier, proposed Vulcan to explain discrepancies in Mercury's orbit, which couldn't be fully explained by Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. Einstein's theory, however, provided a more accurate understanding of gravity as the curvature of spacetime, eliminating the need for a hypothetical planet to explain the observed orbital anomalies.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

   The Discrepancy:

   Mercury's orbit showed a slight wobble, or precession, that couldn't be fully accounted for by the gravitational pull of the known planets in the solar system.

The Proposed Solution:

Le Verrier proposed that a planet between Mercury and the Sun, dubbed Vulcan, was causing the wobble.

The Hunt for Vulcan:

Astronomers searched for Vulcan during solar eclipses, but it was never found.

Einstein's Revelation:

Einstein's theory of General Relativity, published in 1915, explained that the precession of Mercury's orbit was due to the way spacetime is warped around massive objects, like the Sun. This warping effect was more pronounced closer to the Sun, making it unnecessary to postulate the existence of a hypothetical planet to explain the observed orbital anomalies.

The End of Vulcan:

Einstein's theory effectively eliminated the need for Vulcan, demonstrating that the observed precession could be explained by the curvature of spacetime, and not by the gravitational pull of a hidden planet.

Here arthapatti correctly employed produced the planet Vulcan.  Some people even mistook sun spots to be the transit of Vulcan across the Sun.  

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.

 

The Perception of the Enlightened

 

 

With this teaching of the Veda in mind, the revered Commentator raises the question, ‘But in what sense do we mean that perception and the other secular means of knowledge, together with Vedic tradition, belong to those in the realm of ignorance?’  And he replies:  ‘What we say here is this.  Without self-identification with the body and senses expressed in the feelings “I” and “mine” there can be no empirical knower, and so the processes of empirical knowledge cannot begin’ (B.S.Bh I.i.I, intro.)  Here it is clear that the revered Commentator quotes no authority to prove that the play of the means of empirical knowledge belongs only to those in the realm of Ignorance. (pg. 52 ‘The Method of the Vedanta’ by Sri Swami Satchidanandendra)

What I take from this is that even when adhyasa/superimposition ceases to be a factor, as in the case of a jnani/enlightened person, the world continues to appear to him as it does to anyone.  Perception continues to be normal but the substratum of pure consciousness that is the basis of all manifestation is known to be the reality.

Sri S.S.S. continues:

So if he (Sankara) is able to state flatly that the power of making use of the means of knowledge does not arise without self-identification with the body and its organs, such a statement must rest on universal experience.

Asparsa Yoga & The Mind going out to the Object of Perception

 Mandukya Karika of Gaudapad IV.26

“Consciousness has no contact with objects; so also it has certainly no contact with appearances of objects.  For according to the reasons adduced, an object has no existence, and an illusory object is not separate from the awareness.”

Here Gaudapada is taking the view as only Pure Consciousness exists in reality and there is nothing but it any division in it suggested by the fact of perception is not ultimately true.  He puts it thus:

“From the standpoint of reality, that is to say, of ultimate Reality. For unlike the existence of a buffalo independently of a horse, a jar does not exist apart from clay, after being recognised as clay that it really is, nor does a cloth exist apart from the yarns, nor the yarns apart from the fibres.  Thus if the reality is pursued successively till words and notions cease, we do not perceive any external occasion for knowledge.”
(Sankara’s commentary on G.K. IV.25)

In that extreme reduction Gaudapada differs from Sankara who held to different levels of discourse that could be separated.  It is important to not that in his Preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya he started out with the natural and inevitable Subject Object division given in experience.  Nevertheless in some discussions of Advaita it is forgotten that conceptual categories alter as the analysis of perception progresses.

Take for example the esoteric conception of perception as the mind going out to the object and taking its form.  The reasoning behind it is that superimposition must be taking place where the object is and as the object is ‘out there’ that’s where the superimposition must be happening.  Here the mingling of two levels is patent.  You have the material and the immaterial, the object and the knowledge of the object.  The knowledge is the immaterial factor.  Recollect that the apparent impossibility of the mingling of the material and the immaterial or the extended and the un- extended is the aporia that launched the preamble discussion to the B.S.Bh.  Recollect too that ‘the immaterial is indivisible’ (Aristotle) and ask yourself what sense is there to the spatial metaphor of the mind going out to anything.  In knowledge there is no distance as it were,  the blending of the upadhis of the mind and the object does not take place in any sort of container.  The vritti or mental modification is the precipitate in the mind of the subject superimposed there and creating the illusion of a permanent self.  

Indeed though Gaudapada’s rigourous approach may be excessive we ought still to alter our categories as our analysis deepens.

Sankara's Treatment of Buddhist concept of Possibility in Brahma Sutrra Bhasya

 In his description  of the Vijnanavada theory of perception which is strikingly like what in Western philosophy would be called subjective idealism Sankara introduces their concept of impossibility.

Accordingto this Vijnanavada, all dealings concerned with means of knowledge, objects of knowledge, and ends of knowledge become possible as subjective occurrences superimposed on consciousness; for even though an external object may exist, there can be no activity of the means of knowledge etc., unless it be through a superimposition of that object on consciousness (i.e.unless the mind or intellect is aware of it). If it be asked, "How, again, can it be known that all these processes are subjective, and that nothing but subjective cognition exists"?-the answer he (the Buddhist) gives is that, this is so because no external thing can possibly exist.

That’s a startling claim also akin to the thought of Berkeley’s immaterialism though the rationale is based on Buddhist atomic theory or what fundamentally exists, a purely metaphysical position being beyond human perceptual capacity.

"This is so because no external thing can possibly exist. When external objects are assumed, they must either be the individual atoms or an aggregate of them--a  pillar for instance. Of these the knowledge of the atoms cannot be acquired through a perception of the pillar etc., for the atoms are not objects of perception.38a And a pillar etc. cannot be a conglomeration of atoms, since the (aggregates like) pillar etc. cannot be ascertained to be either different from or identical with the atoms. Thus also are to be rejected genus, (quality, action), etc. Moreover, knowledge, as it arises, has the common feature of being a mere awareness; but it displays a selective bias for individual forms,such as the knowledge of a pillar, the knowledge of a wall, the knowledge of a pot, the knowledge of a cloth, and so on. This particularization cannot be possible unless there be some peculiarity in each individual cognition itself. "

That is a long citation but interesting for its delineation of the core insight which sustains subjective idealism in its myriad forms.  There is a subject, there is an object, there is internal reality and external reality.  How are the two realms to meet unless one be superimposed on the other?  This is the original aporia of metaphysics and there the paths of Realism and Idealism diverge.  To stay with the Buddhist anfractuosity for now Sankara has the answer to the ‘impossibility’ claim, the focus of this post.  He treats it as a flouting of modal direction if you like.

Buddhist : Since no object can possibly exist externally, I come to the conclusion that it appears as though it is outside.

Vedantin : This conclusion is not honest, since the possibility or impossibility of the existence of a thing is determined in accordance with the applicability or non-applicability of the means of knowledge to it, but the applicability or non-applicability of the means of knowledge is not ascertained in accordance with the possibility or impossibility (of the thing).What is known through anyone of the means of knowledge, such as direct perception etc., is possible, and what cannot be known through any one of these means of knowledge is impossible. In the case under discussion, the external things are known individually by the respective means of applicability or non-applicability of the means of knowledge is not ascertained in accordance with the possibility or impossibility (of the thing).

In other words you can’t get the results before you sit the exam.  Impossibility or possibility is ascertained by an application of a criterion, a test of some kind but you cannot say that a thing is impossible because a test cannot be applied.  There must be something to test and there is no testing of the inexistent.  This may also be connected to the Thomist idea that the reality of something guarantees its possibility.

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.             

Bhagavad Gita: Bookend verses in Chapter 9

The Gita contains two what might be called bookend metaphysical verses which may seem to contradict each other when one is simply juxtaposed with the other. “

This whole world is pervaded gby Me in My unmanifest form. All beings exist in Me, but I am not contained in them! (B.G. 9.4)

Pure Being as such is the reality behind all manifestation. We are in it and our awareness is saturated by it in a direct immediate way. Even so it cannot be perceived or intuited as we might grasp any other awareness. We have no direct intuition of being, or any experience of it as a ‘something’. At the same time it makes all experience possible. Etienne Gilson rejected the idea of an intuition of being as proposed by Jacques Maritain which seemed to suggest an experience of some kind. It may be that Maritain meant something akin to a universal realisation of connaturality, a major theme of his in his brilliant monograph on ‘Art and Scholasticism’.

 

Sankara in his commentary on the Gita:

“For, no created thing that is bereft of the Self (i.e. of Reality) can be conceived as an object of practical use. Therefore, being possessed of their reality through Me who am their Self, they exist in Me. Hence they are said to be established in Me.”

He further makes it clear that pure Being is not contained within the individual as its receptacle.

“Since unlike gross objects I am not in contact with anything, therefore I am not the inmost core even of space. For a thing that has no contact with anything cannot exist like something contained in a receptacle.”

The following verse 9.5 amplifies this point:

“Nor do the beings dwell in Me. Behold my divine Yoga! I am the sustainer and originator of beings, by My Self is not contained in the beings.”

The rest of Chapter 9 up to what I have been calling the bookend is the teaching of how to achieve realisation of pure being. Without that liberation however righteous a person might be they are reborn after a period of heavenly bliss.

B.G. 9.29: I am impartial towards all beings; to Me there is not detestable or none dear. But those who worship Me with devotion, they exist in Me, and I too exist in them.

Karma is the key to the endless round of transmigration. It simply means action. Strictly there is no such thing as good or bad karma, there is only karma. The salient aspect of work is that it is goal directed, we act towards an end. Surely it is impossible to get beyond that. We must have a plan or drift aimlessly. Renunciation is the answer. Even though we act the spring of action is subverted, grasping after a goal.

B.G. 9.27: O son of Kunti (Arjuna), whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer as a sacrifice, whatever you give and whatever austerities you undertake, (all) that you offer to Me. B.G. 9.28: Thus, you will become free from bondages in the form of actions which are productive of good and evil results. Having your mind imbued with the yoga of renunciation and becoming free, you will attain Me.

Karma being surpassed the boundaries and limitations of the individual are transcended and the erstwhile devotee becomes dissolved into the divine completely liberated and not any longer subject to reincarnation.

Realism, the Mind/Body problem in Western and Advaitic thought.

 

“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.

I blame the British Empiricists.

I bang on like an untethered gate about Idealism and Realism but I take consolation in the fact that I am in good company. Practically all philosophers have spurned Idealism even if like a mutating virus it comes on in waves weakening as they put about their noxious fumes. Even so, some philosophers share Kant’s dismay at the lack of proof for an external world and take pains to work abstruse demonstrations which commit the usual error. They attempt to move from an inner conviction to an outer reality. That can be about God for Descartes and Berkeley. Like the writer to the editor ‘I blame the parents’ or The British Empiricists in the case of the inner turning to found an outer reality. Following them one is balked from the world by the direct acquaintance with our sensations merely and their cause devolves into an inference. Occasional error damns us as though not knowing everything were to condemn to universal ignorance. My philosophic chums of the moment are Etienne Gilson and Thomas Reid, champions of common sense. Can you prove causality? Can you prove the excluded middle? Are there limits to demonstration? For them common sense is not folk epistemology though it may require work to show its depth. Guided by Gilson’s ‘Thomist Realism’ I and Reid’s ‘Intellectual Powers’ I follow that trail. Sankara the advaitin has words on that topic addressing the Buddhist vijnanavadin (subjective idealist).

“So also it has to be admitted that the regularity in the simultaneous appearance of the cognition and its object is owing to the relation of causality between them and not owing to their identity.” (B.S.Bh - commentary on the Vedanta Sutras)

There is much more to say on this but why is it important? In a nutshell: de-incarnation is a very subtle and powerful mind virus.

Here and There with Sankara and Bergson

Katha Upanisad: 2.i.10: What, indeed, is here is there; what is there is here likewise. He who sees as though there is difference here, goes from death to death.

 

This is the deep meaning of sadhana. You are not aimed elsewhere, you are here and now already there. What keeps us tethered to this point where we act is the nature of consciousness which is adapted to action or designed to navigate through the world. We do not have to strive which the meaning of the effortless effort that the sage discourse on. In the commentary by Sankara on this sutra he refers to the limiting adjuncts viz. the body and the senses. In Bergson’s well known depiction of the memory cone this is the point P intersecting the line of history. Living exclusively at that point is to be utterly submerged in the everyday practical reality. Being too far away from that point is to be in the grand flux of imagination and memory as a dreamer lost in reverie. All states whatever are immediately self-luminous and therefore reveal the nature of identity. Now we are practical then we are speculative and yet only the ‘mass of consciousness’ is taking on various forms of limitation. 

 

“This being so, anyone who - being deluded by ignorance, consisting in seeing differences that are natural to limiting adjuncts; sees, perceives; here, - in this Brahman, which is not a plurality; as though there is a difference; feels such differences as, “I am different from the Supreme Self, and the Supreme Brahman is different from me", he gets, death after death, he becomes subject to repeated death after death.”(commentary)

Bergson and Advaitic Superimposition (adhyasa)

 

Matthew Arnold reminded himself somewhere that he ought not to find himself everywhere.  That is a  perfectly sound stricture but here I am going to set it aside and indulge my synthesizing and syncretizing habit.  Neither Bergson nor Sankara came from Mars to astound the Earth with some utterly novel doctrine beyond anything which Earthlings could fathom.  That the lineaments of my assimilation be perfectly clear I will go briskly through what I think are interesting parallels.  In the samprajnata samadhi there is a resemblance to the pure perception of Bergson. Refer to my previous post. 

In those rare states of consciousness there is seeing but nobody sees, hearing but nobody hears etc.  or at least the identification with a jiva or person is exiguous.  This is practically next door to the pure asamprajnata or nirvikalpa samadhi in which there is just absorption into pure consciousness.  However as Sankara says the natural, ordinary, unreconstructed state is one in which there is full identification of the jiva and his states of mind.  What Bergson would say is that there is an element of pure perception in all our conscious states but that memory binds us to a personal history.  It is as though through memory a superimposition takes place.  The need to react to present demands brings the person down into a history.

"But inversely,, if recollection is regarded as a weakened perception, perception must be regarded as a stronger recollection. We are driven to argue as though it was given to us after the manner of a memory, as an internal state, a mere modification of our personality; and our eyes are closed to the primordial and fundamental act of perception, the act, constituting pure perception, whereby we place ourselves in the very heart of things. And thus the same error, which manifests itself in psychology by a radical incapacity to explain the mechanism of memory, will in metaphysics profoundly influence the idealistic and realistic conceptions of matter." (Matter and Memory pg.73)

You can discern here I think the suggestion that the condition of pure perception is primordial.  It is what the aggregate of images or the plenum of awareness that has as yet no personal centre implies.  The next step is the placing of all this or more correctly an edited version of this on a central ego This is the natural state.  This placing is what Sankara would call adhyasa.

  We never leave our total nature behind or otherwise enlightenment would be a mirage.

David Bentley Hart and Jacques Maritain on Natural and Supernatural

 The Chiasmus: The Created Supernatural and the Natural Divine (essay from 'You are Gods' by David Bentley Hart.

D.B.H. begins by finding in the natural order what might be considered to be propaduetic to the divine.  In the Platonic and Aristotelian onto-epistemology there is a surpassing of the apparent division between subject and object.  It is in this that he comes close to the non-duality of Advaita Vedanta which he admits as an influence which guides him past the Natural/Supernatural dyad beloved by the Thomist manualists that he impugns with all the scintillating nay coruscating invective that he commands.  All good fun until someone loses an eye.

Jacques Maritain in his ‘Degrees of Knowledge’ :

“To admit in any degree whatsoever, even in simplest inchoative form, a genuine experience of the depths of God's being on the natural level would necessarily mean either to confuse our natural intellectuality (specified by being in general) with our intellectuality as it flows from grace and is specified by the Divine Essence itself; or to confuse the presence of God's immensity (whereby God is present in all things in virtue of his created efficiency) with His holy indwelling (whereby He is present in a special way, as object, in souls that are in the state of grace); or, again, to muddle up in the same hybrid concept, the wisdom of the natural order (metaphysical wisdom), and the infused gift of wisdom; or, finally, to attribute to the natural love of God what belongs exclusively to supernatural charity.”

As I mentioned Hart finds an entry point into complete realisation of the divine through experience.  ‘There is no other door to that awareness’ (Sankara)

In WWF terms regard me as the midget compadre that runs into the ring and kicks the referee on the shin.

Hart begins as Aristotle does with the sense of wonder. Out of that comes inquiry.  I may as well admit that he sends me to the dictionary betimes.  What’s chiasmus?  The general drift seems to be the repetition of the general in the particular or something.  Anyways he begins with an advaitic note by a laying out of the aporetic:

“We are accustomed, here in modernity’s evening twilight, to conceive of our knowledge of the world principally as a regime of representation, according to which sensory intuitions are transformed into symbolic images by some kind of neurological and perceptual metabolism, and then subjected to whatever formal conceptual determinations our transcendental apperception and apparatus of perception might permit....

Knowledge, then, consists in no more than a kind of cognitive allegory of and logical deduction about Being, because Being in itself possesses an occult adversity or resistance to being known....

The more rational assumption, however, is that so implausible a liaison between absolutely incommensurable spheres of reality is impossible, and that in fact mind and world must belong to one another from the first, as flowing from and continuously participating in a single source that is at once ontological and gnoseological, and in which the ontological and the gnoseological are one and the same.”

Here Hart is moving towards an epistemology that is like that of Dharmaraja Adhvarindra’s ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’.  He calls it perceptuality/perceptability.  What we know is the object itself as it is by virtue of the mental modification/vritti or in Thomist terms the ‘conversio ad phantasmata’(?).

“Only in the transcendence of form over the formed—whether the latter be a material substrate or the intentionality of the mind—can there be a place of true indistinction between the being of an object and the knowledge of that object. Only in form—only in the informing cause of both an object’s finite existence and the act of understanding that takes that object in— can the secret and most primordial impulse of all philosophy realize its end.”

Maritain denies the knowledge of God via connaturality to those wholly dependent on the natural order.  Though that experience by mystics of Islam and Vedanta may be sublime it suffers from the  disability of being stuck in the natural domain. 

“There are Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, and other schools of mystics. But the mystical experience to which they lay claim does not proceed from theological faith. There must, therefore, be a natural mystical experience.”

Hart counters the two tier view on which this judgment is based.  The first sentences of this citation is an objection:

“Surely the temporal is, from the perspective of the finite, contingent. But, from the perspective of the eternal life of God, God’s manifestation of himself to himself is never without his manifestation in creation, and so creation is eternally present within the eternal act whereby God is God.”

Where Hart causes the complaint ‘but this is pantheism’ arises from utterances like this:

“ Our being in God and God’s being in us are both also and more originally God’s being as God”

“We are, from the moment when we are called from nonbeing, spirit becoming Spirit; God is, from everlasting, Spirit disclosing himself in the creation of spiritual beings and the continuous divinization of every spirit that he has breathed forth in breathing himself.”

Pantheism is an all-purpose dismissal which is never analysed.  Is it the atheistic pantheism of Hegel or Spinoza or something else maybe a doctrine that the world is divine.  To follow that through logically it would mean the Cosmos was uncreated which is very like the ‘ajativada’ of Gaudapada (unborn).  Hart uses a Trinitarian perspective, whereby the Cosmos is an emanation from the boundless creativity of the Father.  There is nothing necessary about creation but the connection is through the unity of being.

“We are, from the moment when we are called from nonbeing, spirit becoming Spirit; God is, from everlasting, Spirit disclosing himself in the creation of spiritual beings and the continuous divinization of every spirit that he has breathed forth in breathing himself.”

Hart’s essay is of course ‘per speculum in aenigmate’.  The ambhibological words which swim in two oceans are used to advance his speculations.  Deep meditations here and natation outside the flags.