A Vedantin views the Tree in the Yard

 The tree in the yard, that staple of solidity, reality and undeniable fact is sometimes referred to as unreal by the Vedantin.  What can he mean?  

Essentially the rope/snake analogy is being flaunted and asked to do a great deal of work.  We need to pull back a little further to get better focus and ask what the paradigmatic form of error is for the Vedantin.  It is confusion or taking something to be that which it is not.  That is perfectly fine for the everyday physical world.  In poor light we take the stump to be a man, the piece of shell to be silver etc., etc.

That sort of talk does not translate/transfer to the metaphysical however.  The tree is real but we may ask wherein does its perceptuality arise ?  How does that out there physical reality come to be in my consciousness as it actually is.  The short cut answer without going into the technicalities of upadhi and vritti is that there is a unity of the substratum of consciousness, a unity of Being.  What is real on the physical side, a tree that is separate and real for the perceiver is unified on the metaphysical side.  Taking the physical to be the only reality is a mis-take.  This is the world of duality.  Keeping both sides going is the world of non-duality.  

Thus we get the extravagant closing down sale of the world: everything must go.  This is an unreal bargain. 

Anirvachanaya

 I see anirvachanaya has come up as a topic in an advaitic blog which does not welcome ontological pondering so I won’t engage with it there. 

anirvachanaya

  It gets to the anirvachanaya quandary by way of an initial stipulation of  what is really real.

“Sat (Real): That which exists in all three periods of time (past, present, and future) and is never sublated or negated. Only Brahman/Consciousness fits this definition.

1. Asat (Unreal): That which is absolutely non-existent and can never be perceived, such as  “the son of a barren woman” or “the horns of a hare”.

Framing a position by starting from a stipulation is I would suggest a pointless venture.  That quandary about the co-existence of the real and the unreal only arises when conclusions have been reached by other means, down the line as it were.

Ask yourself: How does Sankara open his ontological position on the real?  He accepts sense perception but is puzzled by what the Greeks called an aporia (plural aporiai) : How is perception possible?  How does that out there concrete reality somehow come to be in here in my consciousness as an awareness of the thing as it is.  The concrete and immaterial consciousness are incommensurable.  

I have gone into the nuts and bolts of the progression of Shankara’s  thinking on this subject several times so I won’t repeat it here (follow the topic heads below).  Essentially what allows us to know the object is the unity of the substratum. (vritti - upadhi- adhyasa).  If I may be so bold as to add my own twist on the problem.  Ask why the overall form of awareness, which is ‘I AM’ , does not reflect back on itself instead of reaching the object.  

This is the fundamental transcendental hypothesis as sketched in the Preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya.  I would hold that it dissolves the Real/Unreal dyad by establishing the concept of the non-dual or Advaita.  That division has become factitious.

 

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. 

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.  

Truth and Falsity in Advaita

 

In Advaita terms like ‘mithya'/false, avidya/ignorance and their synonyms are sprinkled about with abandon but what is their existential import in the life of a seeker?  When I encounter lies, untruth, falsity in my everyday existence I take, when I am at my best, a moral attitude.  I am affronted, I reject this version of reality, this cannot stand.  Can I accept that adhyasa/superimposition is false in the same manner or do I rather think that it is hyperbolic to do so?Adhyasa may be at the core of the deep structure of reality, the discovery of which I am deeply interested in, yet not be opposed to the validity, in its own terms, of the everyday.  One reality underlies the other without negating it.

Tantric Saying: What is here is there, what is not here is not anywhere.

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.

 

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.

Panpsychism and the Native State

 

Colin McGinn writing on ‘The Body in the Mind’: (colinmcginn.net)

Panpsychism has seduced more adventurous souls. Desperate men have declared deep mystery—we just can’t know how the mind and the brain manage to join hands. 

Or else a form of panpsychism exercises its attractions: the only way that material properties can coexist with mental properties is that the former have traces of the mental already in them.

(in a footnote)panpsychism, for example, can be seen as a response to the body-mind problem. The idea that the physical world is really mental in nature suggests an answer to the problem, though one carrying heavy baggage. Idealism is the logical conclusion to this line of reasoning. I think myself that both mind and matter need to be reconceptualized in order to make progress with the problem, whether that be possible or not

That is a very difficult problem and re-conceptualizing is the key.  But where is the door?  There seems to be a slide towards begging the question when examination of the validity of panpsychism involves the use of the concepts mind and body which the probandum rejects.  Not of course that it can be proven.  Somehow a direct intuition must establish it.  It must be an immediate experience.  Could it be in some sense a primitive experience, the lack of distinction between the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’ of infancy which if kept up admittedly leads to idealism in the adult but is a manifestation of the plenum, the fullness of non-duality?

The concept, the mental construct and the ‘external’ reality are identical in a non-numerical way.  The ways of ‘appearing’ are part of the joint reality of subject and object.  This is a fluctuating reality which, pace Plato, is the only real we have.

Advaita re-conceptualizes it by proposing that mind-body dualism is not primal.  The object is placed in the mind; the analogy for this superimposition/adhyasa being the well known snake/rope confusion.  In this way mind/body comes to pass, as a sort of naive metaphysics that is utterly native.  What results is ‘my body’, ‘my mind’, my mental modifications.  We are locked from the beginning into that automatically constructed metaphysics.  This is what we share with the animal kingdom.

“Moreover there is no difference (of the learned) from the animals (in regard to empirical behaviour).  Just as animals and others turn away from sound etc. when these appear unfavourable after their ears etc. come in contact with them, and they move towards those when they are favourable, and just as by noticing a man approaching them with a raised stick, they begin to run away, thinking, “This one wants to hurt me” and they approach another carrying green grass in his hands, similarly even the wise are repelled by the presence of uproarious people with evil looks and raised swords, and are attracted by men of opposite nature.” (Brahma Sutra Bhasya - Preamble)

Bergson as a Dualist

 

In the introduction to ‘Matter and Memory’ Bergson states that his philosophy is dualist but having read his rejection of both Materialism and Idealism we are inclined to say ‘yes Henri, it’s dualism but not as we know it.  He starts from the common apprehension of a primal division between subject and object.  It’s perfectly natural and inevitable but the aporiai that it spawns sends him in a new direction.  Let’s take it that there is an interaction between a sensitive actor, the subject, and the world of sensible inputs. It is this interaction which is experienced as a plenum but not from the vantage point of a subject.  The natural tendency to place this experience in the subject is what the Advaitins call adhyasa or superimposition.  In Bergson’s panpsychist analysis memory pervades this interaction and lays it up never to be forgotten.  Now the perception which is a function of the superimposed subject has its images in a direct way in contrast to memory which is non-temporal but can insert its input.  This I think is the source of the notion of reality as the ‘aggregate of images’.  There is a pooling together from both sources.

I have previously mentioned  my intuition of the metaphor of mirror and images as being a source for his philosophy.  Metaphors instead of being merely an illustration of a point to be clarified can themselves be a higher realisation which hovers on the edge of the inexpressible.

More anon on that.

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.

The Disappearance of the World in Advaita Vedanta

 

It’s important to read the Upanishads carefully and distinguish between literal and metaphorical utterances.  They were not written in the manner of philosophical documents which carefully make these distinctions.  Certainly we are at the very edge of language, the apophatic, that is a given; yet if we hold that on realisation the world disappears because the organs of perception are trumped then we stray into nonsense.  Swami Satchidanandendra observes:

“For once the true nature of the Self is known, there can no longer be any more experience of the true nature of the Self is known, there can no longer be any more experience of the means and objects of empirical cognition.  For the final means of knowledge put an end to the condition of the Self as a knower whose knowledge comes through the empirical means of knowledge. And in putting an end to this condition, the final means of knowledge itself ceases any longer to be a means of knowledge, just as the means of knowledge, present in a dream cease to be such on waking. (B.G. Bhasya II.69)

Realisation of the Absolute is not anywhere found either to destroy or create any reality.  What it is invariably found to do is to put an end to Ignorance.  So here also, the sense of not being the Absolute and the sense of not being the totality of all that exists, which are induced by Ignorance alone, should be put to an end by realisation of the Absolute.  (Brhad.Up. Bhasya: I.iv.10)

(from ‘The Method of the Vedanta’ pgs. 62/3)

The imputation here is not that all ordinary means of knowledge are transformed into clairvoyance or clairaudience.  The organs remain intact but now there is no identification of the Self as the agent.  ' Only the Gunas are acting’ (B.G. 14.19)

Sankara's Adhyasa Bhasya: Advatic Stone Kicking

A la Samuel Johnson - ‘Thus I refute thee’ of the immaterialism of Bishop Berkeley.  It sounds like that, because in both the translations of the adhyasa bhasya (Preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya) at my disposal the declaration of the foundational externality of perception is declared emphatically.

(a) It being established etc. (Swami Gambhirananda)

(b)It is not a matter requiring any proof etc. (George Thibaut)

Then there is the paradox that this externality, which is so patent that it does not require proof, comes burdened with the aporetic: how does that object out there, a material entity, come to be somehow inside me as a cognition which we intuitively accept as a true picture of what the object is.

No wonder the idealist says ‘stop, there is no outside and externality is an illusion’ and by the great razor of Occam this is the simplest explanation.  That only leaves one with the difficulty of an illusion of something that has never occurred.  A rare beast indeed.

Sankara declares that externality (a) should be impossible; (b) it would be wrong, given the aporia/impasse just detailed.  Nevertheless it is so.  Let us describe what seems to be taking place and work from there towards a transcendental hypothesis which accounts ontologically for it.  This is a ‘saving the appearances’ operation and is begun with the concept of superimposition viz. adhyasa.

More anon.

 

Cutting Sankaracarya, Cutting Advaita

 I’m adapting the saying of Frank Pain from his book ‘Practical Woodturning’ - ‘cut the wood the way the wood likes to be cut’.  How does Sankaracarya cut Advaita and who does he cut it as?  As a Teacher and non-dually straight to the consciousness of the seeker that has come to him:

“with fuel in his hands, he should approach a teacher versed in the Vedas and established in Brahman in order to know the Eternal.”

The earnest disciple with full faith in the wisdom of the Vedas will receive instruction according to the rubric of the mahavakyas.  Dwelling on them and drawing out their implication is his path.   Another type of seeker will be served Vedanta with a helping of rational argument.  Those two types are dealt with in the first chapters of ‘Upadesa Sahasri’

(1) A Method of Enlightening the Disciple

(2) The Knowledge of the Changeless and non-Dual Self.

The latter instruction and explication is heavily epistemological and culminates in the argument for the nature of the Self deduced from the knowledge that we have been in a state of Deep Dreamless Sleep (Sushupti).

Upadesa Sahasri is Sankara’s only authenticated non-commentarial work and we may assume that it covers his classic procedure.  The other work that stands out as an onto-epistemological disquisition peculiar to him is found in the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya.  This is also known as the adhyasa Bhasya (superimposition).

Those are my thoughts on the shape of an introduction to Sankara.  Follow the tags for more on each topic.

The Irony of Error in Vedanta

 As I was saying (prev.post), when hieratic realism tries to intellectually resolve the problem of error philosophy is born.  The witty ironism of Vedanta is to analolgise error itself as having the same form as perception.  Error is defanged and sways to the philosopher’s flute.  Whether the rope seems a snake or the snake seems a rope there has been a superimposition (adhyasa) of the object on the subject.  This is the ontological ground beyond which we cannot dig.  The focus on the psychological basis of error severally; memory, faulty sensory input, organic loss of function etc., is very interesting but it does not touch the ontological event.

The next concern must be - what is the nature of the object such that it can come in some sense to be ‘in’ the subject.

Maya, remarks on

 Sankara’s use of the analogy of perceptual illusion was ontological/epistemological rather than psychological.  In his preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya he considers the puzzle of how the inert unconscious object comes to somehow be ‘in’ the consciousness of the subject.  This is the launch pad for the rest of his transcendental postulate.  The initial question then is - How must things fundamentally be for things to appear as they do?  His  assumption is that what is out there is real and is within us as it actually is and is grasped by perception.  The snake/rope is a focused analogy for the transference/superimposition of the object on the consciousness of the subject.  In a later Advaitic work ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’ this capacity of the object is called its perceptuality.  A single unity of being unites the object and the subject.  They share the same substratum of pure Consciousness.  The limiting adjunct of the object and limiting adjunct of the subject can flow together.  This is the source of the ‘cit jada granthi’ i.e. the knot of the inert and the conscious.

Where does avidya or personal Maya come into this?  It is the natural tendency of the sensing subject to place its identity where it feels it is.

Corne van Nijhus writes maya

“The existence of an object can only be proven when it is perceived. But suppose there is an object that has never been seen. No one would recognize that object as valid!  ! There must first be some consciousness to observe this object, to prove its existence. So every object depends on Consciousness to be validated. So the object is Mithya“

In Advaita the ‘ajnatta satta’, the unknown object, is recognised as a reality.  Perception is regarded as a disclosure or the removal of the darkness veiling an object.  That unknown object is out there awaiting disclosure and is distinguished from the object that is real only during the time that it is being known/experienced.  Fleeting emotions are examples of this.

Professor Daya Krishna and Adhyasa

Daya Krishna wants to deconstruct the concept of adhyasa as proffered.
adhyasa pdf
It is very likely that he is following the standard explanation which in my view misinterprets the confusion (snake/rope) analogy.

The point is that the example on which the advaitin has built his whole edifice is so weak that it can hardly support his case. He has not even thought of the other possibility that one may mistake the snake for a rope and the fatal consequences that may follow on this type of wrong identification. will the Brahman, then, be like the rope and the rope like a snake or conversely. The whole thing is so childish that one wonders how so many intelligent people could have been taken in by it for so many years.

Thus, even if one grants that the foundational identification of the self with the not-self is a mistake, it does not follow that all identifications in the realm of the not-self are bound to be "incorrect" because of this. The criterion of a "correct" identification in the rearm of the not-self is not dependent on the fact whether the whole realm of the not self is itself the result of a "wrong" identification.

But no example of erroneous cognition, particularly if be perceptual in character, can ever establish the "unreality" of either of the objects which are said to be "erroneously" identified with each other. It is, of course, true that only the advaitin draws this conclusion.

These citations establish D.K’s. view which is a reaction from the standard account of adhyasa. Is he correct in this? Perhaps but he proves too much in declaring that Shankaracarya is guilty of a greivous error. Might it not be the fault of the usual interpretation? I propose to go back to the original text and ask what was the aporia that Shankara was attempting to resolve. Classically it has been referred to as the chit/jada granthi – the knot between the conscious and the inert. It presents itself as the fundamental problem facing the pre-theoretic acceptance of the reality of the given. Plato also had that point of departure and it is useful to examine how he cut the chit/jada knot. Reason/Logos had certain powers which had to be accepted because there they are. The immediacy of experience could be faulty yet the universals which allowed us to use that experience were insulated from error. As in the myth of the cave – there were shadows but they were real shadows.

Shankara also accepted the default position of the reality of the given. But how? His solution of this conundrum has some likeness to that of Plato’s. Neither of them are from Mars so that is not surprising. His question was: How is there any relation between the awareness of an individual and the concrete object out there? We must assume that there can be no identity between them. Yet I have this pre-theoretic ‘animal faith’ as Santayana called it. (all Sankara citations are from the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya)

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.

This should locates the aporia. How is superimposition/adhyasa possible? Is it even a thing? The examples given e.g. rope/snake, shell/silver seem plausible and not much more thought is given to them. We seem to understand what he is on about and as with D.K. we are puzzled by the way this is generalised into maya, avidya and all the other paraphrenalia of advaita.

Adhyasa has two aspects, the activity of superimposing and the superimposition as a finished operation. Shankara is initially concerned with the superimposing as an analogy for the means whereby the concrete object out there comes to be within us as it really is. The analogy has the single focus of attempting to give an idea of how the inert can come to be ‘within’ the conscious through the use of a simple everyday occurrence. He is thus using the ‘transferring’ aspect rather than the transference. Even in Shankara’s time this was not understood as is demonstrated by his dismissal of the importance for his thesis of the various theories of how confusion arises.

From every point of view, however there is no difference as regards the appearance of one thing as something else. And in accord with this we find in common experience that the nacre appears as silver, and a single moon appears as two.

His interest here is ontological not epistemological. How is there a non-numerical identity between the object and the subject’s consciousness of it?

In the extremely compressed preamble Shankara also deals with the apparently completed superimposition of the body and the self. Enlightenment comes when we stop superimposing. This notion of superimposition as a completed operation has no doubt given rise to the sense of the universal compromise of reality which D.K. impugns.

Incarnation, Reincarnation Identity and Theodicy

An objection to reincarnation as a way of avoiding theodicy is put on the basis of legal culpability. What does the fawn in the burning forest have to do with the genocidal tyrant? A rebuttal on this basis can go on all fours only on the assumption that there is a continuity of identity between the tyrant and the fawn. That is not reincarnation as espoused in the Vedic tradition. What is passed on to the next life is the skein of hopes, fears and desires that the individual identifies with. This is a false superimposition (adhyasa) on the true reality of the person viz. pure consciousness. Until this is realised rebirth continues as this ‘skein’ finds a suitable way of working itself out.

B.G. 8: 5, 6 (Krishna):

And whoever dies, remembering me alone at the moment of death, attains to my state once he is liberated from the body - there can be no doubt about that.

Indeed, whatever state he calls to mind as he abandons his body at its end, he inevitably attains it, Son of Kunti, transmuted to that state.

This mental congeries held together by superimposition is reinforced by physical continuity in a particular incarnation. That false centre disintegrates at death and the now unhoused mental energies must find a new dwelling. Ramana Maharshi’s belief that incarnations could overlap or that one could be the reincarnation of someone not yet dead makes sense on this basis. Mentality can be common in different persons.

The analogy with the Christian view of eternal punishment is striking. To the question: why am I in hell; the answer comes - You sent yourself to hell.

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.

Richard King on Asparsa Yoga in Gaudapada's Karikas (Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism)

Writing on Asparsa Yoga: the Gaudapadian Phenomenology of Perception:

Perception is base upon the possibility of contact (sparsa) between a perceiver and a perceived object. An attack upon this notion then is fundamental to an attack upon all “realist” theories of perception. The Nyaya Sutra, for instance, defines perception (pratyaksa) as “the determinate, unnamed, and unerring knowledge which arises from the contact of a sense organ with its object.” This is an inherently dualistic understanding of experience and as such is clearly unacceptable to the non-dualistic authors of the Gaudapadiya Karikas. An attack upon the notion of “contact” is fundamental to a thorough-going non-dual theory of perception. In fact, it is the GK’s position that:

“Consciousness does not make contact with an object, not even with the appearance of an object. In fact, the object is unreal, and the appearance of the object is non different. (GK IV.26)

(pg.154 Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism by Richard King)

There is a dense tangle of non-dual epistemology here. What we are immediately aware of is the mental modification (vritti) ‘caused’ by the object. In that sense we are not in contact with the object. But we are also aware of the object as it is because the same reality is fundamental to the vritti and the object. The object is a form of limitation of Consciousness (an upadhi) and it is this which allows it to be superimposed on the consciousness of the perceiver. The ‘unreality’ of the object, for Gaudapada, is due to the fact that it can be sublated. It is not changeless. Objects in the dream world on waking and illusory objects in the waking state are sublated because they are ultimately only true or real as consciousness. In fact the fundamental reality is Pure Consciousness, a boundless (anantam) unity of being in which there is no separation and therefore no contact (sparsha).

It is non-duality which makes perception possible, what Vedanta Paribhasa calls perceptuality. Non-duality makes duality and veridical perception possible to put it aporetically. In disagreeing with King on this point I believe that I am tracing Gaudapada’s core insight which was explicated by Sankara particularly in the preamble to his commentary on the Brahma Sutras.