Snake and Rope - Superimposition and Substratum in Advaita.

 Ive been around this rope/snake area before and though it looks to be quite simple it has its complications due to the fact that it is an analogical vade mecum with subtle differences in its deployment.  My latest attempt to grasp its usage I offer for your metaphysical delectation.

It breaks in two, obviously, the snake and the rope or the superimposition and the substratum.  The latter is the reality, in theatrical terms the back cloth upon which the ‘snake’ is painted.  In Sankara’s commentary on the Mandukya  Upanisad he describes it thus.

“No, for an unreal illusion cannot exist without a substratum; for the illusion of silver, snake, human being, mirage, etc., cannot be imagined to exist apart from the (corresponding) substrata of the mother of pearl, rope, stump of a tree, desert, etc.”

There enumerated are the standard examples of confusion.  In a footnote Swami Gambhirananda writes:

“Since an illusion is perceived as soaked in the idea of existence, it cannot have non-existence as its basis.”

The analogy moves into the metaphysical when it is stated that similarly this mundane reality is as it were painted on the back drop of pure being.  As limited contingent being it requires absolute being as its reality.

An analogy is used to express what is beyond human reality:

“For a relation between the real and the unreal does not lend itself to verbal representation, since the relation itself is, unsubstantial.”

That is then the well known general use of the confusion/delusion analogy.  However in the Preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhyasa Sankara introduces a subtle variation.  Superimposition now becomes an epistomological/ontological method of transferring the really out there, in the ‘external’ world, object into the mind of the subject.  That is possible because the substratum of the consciousness of the subject and that of the object is the same.  This is the core of the non-dual/Advaitic philosophy.  What we have is a non-numerical identity between the subject’s reality and the object’s.  This is the basis of perception what in the the Vedanta Paribhasa of Adhvarindra is called perceptuality.

For the mind of the sage there is no other:

“On the view, however, that like the rope, imagined variously as the snake etc., the Self, too, though one, is imagined in the three states (waking, dreaming, deep sleep) to be possessed of such attributes as consciousness of the internal world etc., there follows the cessation of the phenomenal world of misery simultaneously with the valid knowledge , arising from the negation of such attributes as being conscious of the internal world;  and therefore there remains no need to search for any other means of knowledge or any other discipline (like constant thinking/Manana?)  for the realisation of Turiya/Enlightenment.  This is similar to what happens in the case of the knowledge of the rope where the elimination of the snake from the rope occurs simultaneously with the discrimination between the rope and the snake.” (Sankara's commentary)

Ganeri on Advaita Vedanta

I’ve been listening to some of the podcasts on Indian Philosophy put out by Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri on history of philosophy It’s good that it is being done but I have to say I found the talk on Advaita Vedanta
advaita vedanta
to be coarse grained for the undergraduate level at which they aim. What Shankara said was that what we take to be reality is like an illusion not that it was an illusion through and through. In fact the import of what he said is that conventional reality is like a mistake or a confusion. The rope/snake is an analogy with a strictly focussed point namely that an attribute of a real entity i.e. the coiledness of a rope becomes a snake in the mind of a perceiver in poor visual conditions. It is this transfer of attribute that connects to the philosophical concept of superimposition. Adhyasa (superimposition) is linked to Upadhi (limiting adjunct) and to Vritti (mental modification).

This is much more philosophically interesting than to say ‘conventional reality is an illusion’ and it could serve as an introduction to Shankara’s theory of analogy and his ideas on the continuous development of insight in the student. That of course is getting a little deep and far from the shore.

Indian Intro. to the Philosophy of Perception

There may be many who wish to find out more about Indian Philosophy but are put off by the Sanskrit jargon which surrounds it, pretty but prickly like a Berberis hedge. It keeps common cattle off of course. A good introduction to the problem of perceptual error, illusion, confusion and delusion is an essay in a collection that is available on Internet Archive, Contemporary Indian Philosophy by Various Authors
Contemporary Indian Philosophy
(note: the epub version is clean) pub. 1950 in a revised and extended edition.

The Problem of Truth by M. Hiriyanna is an exposition along classical Vedanta lines which avoids having to learn the rudiments of philosophy bazaar Sanskrit. The philologically minded may deplore this but philosophy isn’t poetry, it’s not lost in translation. In any case that classic text Vedanta Paribhasa by Dharmaraja Adhvarindra who flourished in the 17th.century seems to be the guiding light. It is also available on internet archive and a more modern version with glossary translated by Swami Madhavananda is (pdf)
Vedanta Paribhasa

Take a break from malign demons.

Accentuate the Counterpositive

The Indians, in asserting the non-existence of every term in possible experience, not only free the spirit from idolatry, but free the realm of spirit (which is that of intuition) from limitation ; because if nothing that appears exists, anything may appear without the labour and expense of existing.........

(from Chap.VIII Scepticism and Animal Faith

Santayana’s characterisation of Vedanta has been informed by the customary imprecision of Indian commentators and perhaps a tendency to draw the sceptical conclusion of the argument from illusion when presented with the snake/rope analogy. Things do exist but they exist as an appearance or manifestation. They do not have a free-standing reality, their reality is dependent or contingent. They have no necessary existence. When the rope appears as a snake this appearance has its reality in the substratum of the rope. It is also the case that the rope could not appear as a snake unless there were snakes in reality. The unreal snake has as counterpositive (pratiyogin) the real snake. In this way illusion has a basis in reality, it does not signify pure non-existence. There is a real substratum i.e. the rope and a real snake as a counterpositive.

The other thing that is forgotten in relation to Advaita Vedanta is that perception is taken to be veridical unless there is some defect in the conditions in which perception takes place. So given good sight in clear daylight and sobriety I can say with assurance ‘that’s a tree in the yard’. I can’t recall any discussion of absolutely sceptical brain-in-vat scenarios in which illusion is incorrigible.

It is the Indians who have insisted most sincerely and intrepidly on the non-existence of everything given, even adjusting their moral regimen to this insight. Life is a dream, they say : and all experienced events are illusions. In dreaming of nature and of ourselves we are deceived, even in imagining that we exist and are deceived and dreaming.  Some aver, indeed, that there is a universal dreamer, Brahma, slumbering and breathing deeply in all of us, who is the reality of our dreams, and the negation of them. 

(ibid)

Though the Swamis will say this sort of thing and early advaita has a great deal of illusionism in it cf. Gaudapada’s Karikas, the mature philosophy represented in the commentaries on the Upanishads by Shankara are more nuanced. In any case this cosmic illusion is not a sceptical position which is related to empirical fallibility wrought to its uttermost.