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.....

Rationalism and the Enlightened

 A rationalist does not believe that he has fully lived the reality of something until he has worked it out intellectually.  The jnani (enlightened) has no need for this.  He abides in knowledge.

Yes, ok, but how does that work out in Advaita, you ask, needing to know even without a need to know.  You’re here, so I’ll try to sketch in general terms how this might be understood.  Bring your own irony, we cannot guarantee supply.

There is a reflection of the Self in the intellect which is to say that the intellect is not the Self because it is not conscious.  It only seems to be conscious through being pervaded by the Self which is pure Consciousness.  Being qualified by the intellect makes the Self seem to be a limited entity.  In this way we come to identify the Self and the non-Self.  The three facets of the individual i.e. body, mind, intellect qualify the Self.  ‘I’ , ‘mine’, are an expression of this qualification.

At this point the notion of the Saksin (Witness) is brought in.  At first sight it seems a bonus explanation that merely serves to confuse?  Perhaps it induces  aloofness as an ascetic strategy.  But if we have already scored 100% what use are bonus points?

My understanding of it is;  that the Self as qualified by B.M.I. is the Witness.

#94: Everything  pervaded by the intellect together with the ego, is the qualification of the Witness.  Without being connected with anything and pervading everything by means of Its reflection, the Self is therefore, always of the nature of Knowledge Itself.

{The jnani’s statutory rights are not affected.}

#95: All this, described according to popular ideas is the reverse (of what is true) and exists for the undiscriminating; it does not exist at all for men of Knowledge. (from Chap.XVIII Upadesa Sahasri)