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. 

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.

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)

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 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.

Illusionism and Acosmism in Advaita Vedanta

 

The descent into acosmism and illusionism that Advaita Vedanta is often accused of may be due to the simple failure to distinguish between the metaphysical and the physical.  A metaphysical realisation of an intense reality so powerful that it eliminates the salience of the everyday conventional reality does not thereby cause it to disappear.  Maybe this is why the Sage of Kanchi (Shankaracarya Jagath Guru) wore such powerful spectacles.  No, the physical reality does not go away.  The sages die, sometimes in pain even if they, as the poster declared, ‘Remain Calm and Carry On’.

Would it not have been better to hold to the deepening of reality in the progress of the adhiropa/apavada dialectic?  This metaphysical realisation comes as the result of the transcendental hypothesis that proposes how things must fundamentally be for things to appear as they do.  The appearance in question is the object of perception.  Our simple belief, not a naive one, that the object is as it appears presents a puzzle.  Why should we think this when on analysis we must admit that all we are aware of is a presentation to the mind.  Here the specter of idealism looms which gibbering in the shade of Kant asserts that we do not know the ‘thing in itself’.  Advaita Vedanta instead holds to the simple ‘it appears as it is’ by virtue of non-material, non-numerical identity.  There is no need here to rehearse the mechanism of vritti and upadhi /mental modification and limiting adjunct which is masterfully dealt with in the classic ‘Vedanta Paribhasa ' of Dharmaraja Adhvarindra.

Besides why would the cognitions i.e. the awareness of the objects of perceptions, disappear when:

Being the witness of all cognitions, and by nature nothing but the power of consciousness, the Self is indicated by the cognitions themselves, in the midst of cognitions, as non-different from them.There is no other door to Its awareness. (my italics) Kena Up.II.4

How then can the cognitions disappear?  Yes we realise them for what they are but they remain as the door.

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.

Advaitin Antinomy and the Witness: I am Brahman

Advaitin Antinomy:

Knowledge is an action which has its source in the intellect.  The Self does not act but it pervades (analogy alert!) the intellect as it were lighting up the intellectual event.

As is asserted, by the hearing (sravana) of the mahavakya, I am Brahman, the ripe seeker can achieve self-realisation.   Avidya (ignorance/illusion) is dispelled by vidya (knowledge).  But as already asserted the Self does not act; only the intellect or body-mind complex acts.  In that case it would seem that the Self benefits by an action i.e. the access of knowledge.  Is the catalyst which precipitates realisation  the immediate comprehension that it is the action of the Self that gives rise to all the modalities of awareness.  Is this the genesis of the concept of the Witness?

#205:  The Witness is known by Itself which is of the nature of knowledge only.  It is the birth of modifications of the intellect pervaded by the reflection of Consciousness that is what is known to be the knowledge of the Self. (from Upadesa Sahasri Chap.XVIII. Thou Art That)

The modifications of the intellect (vritti) are realised as essentially pure consciousness presenting under the limitation of the individual mind.

Note on the Preamble to the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Shankaracarya

A Note from 2008 on the preamble to Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Shankaracarya translated by Swami Gambhirananda published by Advaita Ashrama.


With primary texts that are encrusted with commentaries I think it is vital to read the text first before our minds are clouded by a view which gets between us and the initial experience. It thus can speak directly to us. That may in fact be difficult when the matter is very abstruse. Certain errors which one is liable to fall into can be avoided by a general grasp of the problem fields and the characteristic approaches. It can happen that one is not reading what is on the page because of the interference of received views. How does one get over that? You need to get the sense of strangeness of the text to have it grow into you unimpeded by a veil.
So having read it, now read on: (original text bolded)

It being an established fact.

Now that’s interesting; Shankara believes that there are established facts. He is at least not a sceptic because he accepts that there are some things we just know or that are given. I may even take it that when a fact is established the implication is that there is general agreement. It is not dependent on my personal validation.

that the object and the subject

This seems to come under the notion of what is given as an established fact, stuff that we don’t have to think about, that is just there. Take it or leave it, you can’t deny it. This is important. Objects exist, subjects exist. Odd though it may seem there are some philosophies that hold that only the existence of a subject is immediately given and that the object is the result of an inference that ‘explains’ sense-data.

that are fit to be the contents of the concepts "you" and "we" (respectively)

This again marks the direct intuition. I mean intuition in the sense of the sort of things we know about without having to think about them i.e. the world has stuff that is not us. The pencil on the desk is not an event in my brain.

and that are by nature as contradictory as light and darkness

One seems to cancel the other out as the light does the dark. The consciousness of the subject is being compared to the inertness of the object as object.

cannot logically have any identity

They are utterly different from each other. I am here and the object is out there.

it follows that their attributes can have it still less.

Observation on Shankara’s ideas on the attributes of the subject and those of the object:

In this first sentence Shankara has set out the field so that we are clear about the basics which are the stuff of everyday intuition. Having done that he now springs the paradox that lies at the heart of perception on us.
Let's talk about the attributes for a moment. The attributes of the subject as subject and those of the attributes of the object as object. The chief attribute of the subject viewed as subject is consciousness otherwise there would not be an object; the two being linked together conceptually. There is more to be said on this but as we are strictly adhering to the development of the argument in the text we will restrict our remarks to that alone. An object has location, weight, dimension etc. What is the weight of a thought? Does it have extent? Their attributes are incommensurable. Some philosophers have been led by this consideration to psycho-physical dualism. This is "the view that human beings are made up of two radically distinct constituents (body, constituted by matter like other natural objects, and an immaterial mind or soul)" (Penguin Dict. Of Phil.)

Accordingly, the superimposition of the object

Here the concept of superimposition is introduced. There would have to be an assumption that most students that have come to read the B.S.B. have a notion of what 'superimposition' is in the technical sense of a transfer of attributes.

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.

The idea here is that the thing that is inert and of material dimensions somehow comes to be in the consciousness of the subject which is immaterial in nature. Inert in the advaitic philosophy carries the connotation that even though it is of the nature of pure consciousness the witness element is missing in it and therefore it is not conscious unto itself. Consciousness has to be applied to it for it to reveal itself as an upAdhi/limiting adjunct.
Perception is such a common thing that it is difficult to enter into a sense of its fundamental oddness. At the level of the psychology of perception there is much that can be learned about it but this learning does not dissipate the paradox at the ontological level. We cannot say that the activity in the brain is consciousness and claim that we understand what this might mean. The physical and consciousness are incommensurable. Therefore it is the case that subject/object awareness ought to be impossible.
Clearly this is not so. This brings Shankara on to his next point:

Nevertheless, owing to an absence of discrimination between these attributes, as also between substances, which are absolutely disparate,

'Absence of discrimination' has the tone of blame about it because we generally think of discrimination as a good thing. Here I think it is a neutral description of the ontological/epistemological basis of perception. For it to take place there must be an ignoring of the patent difference between the conscious and the inert. That ignoring applies also to the substances or the free standing entities at issue viz. the subject and the object. The object somehow comes to be in the subject.

there continues a natural human behaviour based on self-identification in the form of "I am this" or "this is mine".

Before the individual has begun to reflect on the nature of perception and the puzzle at the heart of it, he will be stuck at the level of the everyday acceptance of the disjunction between the subject and the object. Without philosophical analysis this may seem a fixed and final condition. Even with philosophical analysis one may end up with a view of self-luminous cognition that approximates to the Buddhist shunya vAda .

This behaviour has for its material cause an unreal nescience and man resorts to it by mixing up reality with unreality as a result of superimposing the things themselves or their attributes on each other.
Here we have large blocks of ideas being introduced such as 'material cause' and 'unreal nescience'. First we must get the general purport of the sentence and then how the blocks of meaning move within it. Essentially what Shankara is saying is that we have a limited understanding of reality and suppose that it is complete. We accept perception as a fact and go no further to enquire as to how it is possible. Perception has already been presented as superimposition of the inert on the conscious and the conscious on the inert. Simply sticking at that we are left at the stage where we take the gulf between subject and object to be fixed and final. It is our ignorance of the reality of the unity of being and consciousness, an ignorance exacerbated by the material conditions of perception such as location, ambient conditions, presence etc that make us accept a narrow view of the self. I take material conditions to be what Shankara means by 'material cause'. It is an extension of the base concept of being made out of something or arising out of something.

If it be asked; "what is it that is called superimposition?" - the answer is: It is an awareness, similar in nature to memory, that arises on a different (foreign) basis as a result of some past experience.
He now finds it necessary to give his account of the place superimposition has to play in Advaita. Here I must say that I have found the extensive discussion of the various sorts of confusion, illusion and delusion to be excessive and contrary to the purport of Shankara's basic use of it. He uses superimposition as an analogy for the way in which the object comes to be in the consciousness of the subject and also the way that the consciousness of the subject 'covers' the inert object. He later makes it clear that confusion is not a parallel for superimposition i.e. that all sorts of superimposition must conform to the example of confusion. In fact it is taking an analogy as an example that is the problem. An analogy is like that which it seeks to clarify in one fixed facet only and not in a global way. The facet that is focused on is the coming to be in the mind of an object. That the object in the case of confusion is not really there is not a relevant consideration. It is not the purport of the analogy. Many generations of over-interpretation have befogged this.
Shankara goes on to make it clear, to me at least, that this is his intent.

But others assert that wherever a superimposition on anything occurs, there is in evidence only a confusion arising from the absence of discrimination between them. Others say that the superimposition of anything on any other substratum consists in fancying some opposite attributes on that very basis. 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.

What we have there is a swift review of all the theories of confusion which were an important topic for the philosophers of the day in their discussion of error. The paradigm or central case of error is taking something to be that which it is not. That is a very interesting discussion in its own right, but what Shankara is using the phenomenon of error for, is to bring out is the notion of the mutual transference of attributes i.e. superimposition. He is not interested in the minutiae of the mechanics of confusion.




there continues a natural human behaviour based on self-identification in the form of "I am this" or "this is mine".

Before the individual has begun to reflect on the nature of perception and the puzzle at the heart of it, he will be stuck at the level of the everyday acceptance of the disjunction between the subject and the object. Without philosophical analysis this may seem a fixed and final condition. Even with philosophical analysis one may end up with a view of self-luminous cognition that approximates to the Buddhist shunya vAda .

This behaviour has for its material cause an unreal nescience and man resorts to it by mixing up reality with unreality as a result of superimposing the things themselves or their attributes on each other.

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.

The Brahma Sutra Bhasya of Sankaracarya

Received opinion is a good place to start but don’t live there permanently. The clever people who inhabit philosophy are often complacent about their surroundings and tend to accept the wisdom of their elders. Their examined life is no more than a cursory glance to discover what the experts tell them is the case.

However there is often little in the way of conscious effort to substantiate the Brahmasutra’s (Sankara’s Commentary is meant here) own position by the use of logical arguments and philosophical problems are often circumvented by the use of parables and references to the infallibility of scripture. This is not surprising given that the Brahmasutra’s essentially theological approach, and foundational regard for the Vedas. As a means of persuading one’s philosophical opponents, however, it remains highly unsatisfactory.

(from Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism by Richard King.)

There is nothing more misleading than a half truth but to be mislead by a smaller proportion is due to careless prejudice. My copy of Brahma Sutra Bhasya has more post it notes than spines on a hedgehog and most of them indicate a rational argument or clarification. I have often written here about the Preamble which is a profound metaphysical intuition of the basis of superimposition. Vedic or eternal words is a another topic with Platonic overtones. Satkaryavada or the doctrine of the non-difference of cause and effect is a major rational exploration of the problem of causality. Being orthodox he will of course try to find vedic texts that support his view.

Another way that he develops the rational basis of his thought is by engagement with what he considers error. This is like drawing by tracing the negative space around an object thereby revealing it. His refutation of Vaisesika, Samkhya and Buddhist thought on various topics by implication reveals what his positive thought is. A discussion of the Atomic theory (B.S.B. II.ii.17 ) allows him to reveal his own views on substance and quality.

This is just a short note on a prejudice which will not survive any thoughtful acquaintance with the famous commentary but to be cynical for a moment good grades are not achieved by immersion in long and complex texts. That sort of reading has to be strictly rationed so you are better off taking your nourishment in pill form. Check my labels/topics for dietary supplements.

Superimposition / Adhyasa as manifest in ordinary Awareness. Upadesa Sahasri 8

54. 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 objects of different knowledge, like a human being and a trunk of 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 knowledge 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).

(from Chap.2 Upadesa Sahasri)

What Shankara is doing here is moving the concept of Superimposition to a new locus viz. to human self-awareness. The Self as encountered empirically is not known as separable from the physical entity through which it manifests. Consciousness is always manifested under some form or other. We can conceptually grasp the reality of the Self. However this apprehension is always in some state or other of manifest awareness. This is the basis of the pratibodha videtam (known with reference to each state of awareness) as delineated in Kena Up. II.4. cf. my previous remarks:
pratibodha videtam

Adhyasa (Superimposition) as a Two-Stage Rocket. Upadesa Sahasri 7


51. The disciple said, Though eternal, I am not the Supreme Self. My Nature is one of transmigratory existence consisting of agency and experiencing of its results, as it is known by evidences such as sense-perception etc. It is not due to Ignorance. For it cannot have the innermost Self for its object. Ignorance consists of the superimposition of the qualities of one thing on another e.g., well-known silver on well-known mother-of-pearl or a well-known human being on a (well-known) trunk of a tree and vice versa. An unknown thing cannot be superimposed on a known one and vice versa. The non-Self cannot be superimposed on the Self, for It is not known. Similarly, the Self cannot be superimposed on the non-Self for the very same reason.

(from Chap.2 Upadesa Sahasri)

Here is kernel of the problem with using analogies. They can be mistakenly understood in two ways. (I’d love to be able to find three ways to conform to standard philosophical practice) First there is the error of misconstruing what the element is that you are attempting to offer an analogy for and second the tendency to overgeneralize the point of the analogy i.e. to turn an analogy into an homology. So we can take the superimposition analogy to be about error or scepticism or belief and get sidetracked into the interesting but irrelevant to the purpose of the analogy, ways of establishing veridical knowledge or the status of the ‘false’ object etc.

The disciple here is making the over generalization error. He views the template of their having to be two separate and separable things as the fixed nature of superimposition. In fact as a teaching strategy the introduction to the advaitin concept via a graduated explication is an excellent one similar to the adhiropa/apavada device. It’s a two stage rocket!

The Maya of Henri Bergson

This is worth quoting in full:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words
again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and opernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ver took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

(from Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Mindful of the penetrating awl eye from the podium, I, as a matter of mental economy, try to save on my negative capability against the rainy day of outright paradox. So then finding that the metaphysics of Bergson and Shankara are both genial I hereby justify my simultaneous adherence.

To keep my very distractable mind focused I am in the habit of writing notes as I read. One of those files on that excellent little app Fastnote is called The Maya of Henri Bergson. Maya though generally understood as illusion is much much more. The use of the term ‘illusion’ indicates a judgment that can be corrected by
analysis. Maya is a natural state that makes the subject/object dyad possible. It therefore underpins veridical perception. It is unavoidable but contains within itself the aporia - how does that external object come to be, in some sense, in me? It is the object’s ‘perceptuality’ that corrects Maya while at the same time leaving perception as it is. Our understanding has changed not our experience.



The leading analogy in the case of Maya and superimposition is that of the rope that is taken for a snake in poor light conditions. In Bergson the leading analogy re the lapse from duration is the cinematographical mechanism. The core of both of those analogies is the concept of in Bergson's case 'superposition' and in the case of Advaita/Shankara superimposition'. There is more than just a simple similarity of term here, there is a fundamental congruence of a metaphysical standpoint. What both assert is that a practical view of how things are, the one led by mathematics and the other by the inevitable subject/object dyad , both of these views are metaphysically incomplete. They do not represent an ultimate reality.

The trouble with analogies is that in order to understand how they are to be taken you must already have a grasp of what they analogise. If you don't you are almost certainly going to focus on some point which is irrelevant. In the case of the cinematographical mechanism some people have taken it as a critique of the cinematic art's i.e. the film's, capacity to represent reality. In the case of the 'adhyasa'/superimposition concept some people have become fascinated by the epistemological problem of illusion and its psychological foundations.
So what then are those analogies good for if they distract from their true import? My tentative answer is that they are a mnemonic device that holds a complex philosophical position in a single image. The internal elements of the analogies draw together a complex of abstract elements.

Superimposition (Adhyasa) Once Again

It is through ignorance (avidya) imposed on the Self, that people suffer the sorrows arising from desire and work (karma). But that ignorance does not really inhere in one’s Self just as the snake, the silver, the water, and the dirt, superimposed on a rope, a mother of pearl, a desert, and the sky (respectively) do not in reality exist as the distortion of the rope etc.. But they appear as the defects of those things (rope etc.) because of the superimposition of false notions on the substances (rope etc.) that provide the basis for them. They (the substances) are not tainted by those faults, for they are outside the notions thus falsely superimposed. Similarly, people, after having superimposed on the Self the false notions of action, agent, and fruit, like the snake (on a rope) experience the misery of birth, death, etc. consequent on the superimposition; but the Self, though it is the Self of all, is not tainted by the sorrows of the world outside. For just like the rope etc. It is extraneous to the superimposition of false notion.

(commentary of Sankara on Katha Up. II.ii.11)

This is an outline statement of the adhyasa (superimposition) thesis using all the standard examples. It is, in my view, best understood after the fashion of a Kantian transcendental postulate. It is not as though there is an act of superimposing as an act amongst other acts: adhyasa is a background, supervenient condition. Realising it as operative is a matter of understanding and knowledge rather than experience. Strictly speaking ecstatic experience such as samadhi does not banish ignorance in Sankara’s view. Others hold that it is certainly at the very least propaeduetic. They would be of the yogic persuasion.

Part of the realisation of the Self, contra the ego/self, is the dismissal of the narrative diachronic notion as Galen Strawson does. One then falls back into the pratibodha viditam concept of the Self as known with every state of awareness or the Self as immediate presence.

It (i.e. Brahman) is really known when it is known with (i.e. the Self of) each state of consciousness, because thereby one gets immortality. (Since) through one’s own Self is acquired strength, (therefore) through knowledge is attained immortality.

(commentary) Pratibodha-viditam, known with reference to each state of intelligence. By the work bodha are meant the cognitions acquired through the intellect. The Self, that encompasses all ideas as Its objects, is known in relation to all these ideas. Being the witness of all cognitions, and by nature nothing but the power of consciousness, the Self is indicated by the cognitions themselves, in the midst of cognitions, as non-different from them. There is no other door to Its awareness.

(Kena Up. II.4)

Some Thoughts on Adhyasa/Superimposition

A few thoughts on the notion of adhyasa or superimposition:

The view of Padmapada in his Panchapadika that adhyasa is creative is plainly wrong. Adhyasa is a completed operation on an existing reality and cannot first create that reality in order to operate on it. Incoherent and circular argumentation that has become accepted remains wrong. Being an analogy, adhyasa is capable of development and is not the final and fixed doctrine which the opponent in the preamble to the B.S.B. attempts to rebut. He says: What about the Self and the ego-sense which you say are mutually superimposed? Those two are not like your paradigm examples i.e. snake/rope, shell/silver because they are not two objects. It is a characteristic quibble of mine, fascinated by the interesting but irrelevant as I am, to hesitate when asked to accept that the notion of adhyasa also covers cases of formal error. The form of a wok is projected onto space i.e. the dome effect. Is Sankara, as the football pundits say ‘taking too much out of the ball’? If he had said ‘well that central paradigm of adhyasa is merely propaedeutic. What I am trying to do is introduce you to the ‘inner’ constellation of Self and ego-sense’.

Sankara metaphorically has passed the mike to me:
Think of the famous duck/rabbit. What is it, is it a duck or a rabbit or both? Answer: It is a mass of marks that perception organises. Think of the Self as a mass of consciousness which is constantly morphing. Infinite rabbits, infinite ducks.

I had a dream once in which I was walking along a beach to some event with a large crowd of people. Oh, hippies, I thought. We were then in a big tent in which there was a dais with a woman sitting on an armchair, a Mother. As I looked Her face constantly changed from young to old, to plain, to beautiful, myriad forms. Then we were outside chanting with a humming resonance - Engrossed is the bee of my mind :
Many Versions, this is one,
Bee

Sankara and Rope/Snake analogy

That the Chinese character for sunya (emptiness) is the character for sky assures me that abstraction has a solid foundation. In the Hindu Sankhya system of 5 elements akash or space is sometimes translated as sky. When Sankara was attempting to answer the objection to his superimposition/adhasya analogy in which the attributes of one thing are transferred to another as in the coils of a rope being seen as a coiled snake, he took the example of akash. The objection took the form of saying that the analogy presupposed two sensible items being confused whereas the attributes of the Jiva, weight, complexion etc cannot be superimposed on that which is not a sensible item namely the Self. On the contrary wrote Sankara (Preamble to B.S.B.) akash/sky which is without attributes has the convex shape of a frying pan (wok) and the smudges of clouds projected on to it.

Two observations are pertinent. One is the patent misunderstanding of the role of analogy in argument. It is narrowly focused to bring out some point that its proposer regards as salient. Why then does Sankara,who understands this well, attempt to extend the analogy to answer a specious objection? Perhaps here we have the operation of a temporary approximation which will be discarded as knowledge increases similar to the method of adhiropa/apavada (attribution followed by retraction). The objector is at a level which is not very sophisticated. The important element of the teaching, adhyasa, should be retained for further reflection without being diluted by irrelevant considerations. In time it will be understood that it is the fact of the movement of attributes that is the important point and not the objects involved whether sensible or not.