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.

 

Realism Clew

 Realism Clew:

Very well.  There doesn't seem any way out of it.  If you want realism, thourough going realism, you have to hold to the immateriality of consciousness and the intellectual faculties.  This is the thread running through all of the various versions.  Plato has the forms or ideas impressed on the mind from their special realm.  The immateriality of the mind allows this pervasion and assures us that what we know and what is 'out there' is one and the same.  Philosophy tries to clear up the distortions that occur.  Aristotle and the Scholastics are more grounded, finding the relationship between the mind and the object the source of knowledge.  Aristotle says in Bk.XII of the metaphysics - "Everything which has not matter is indivisible".  This is I presume the core of the insight that object and mind can interpenetrate, that the object can be in the mind in its subtle form as it really is.  The mind grasps the reality of the object.  If we do not accept this as the default position then as Maritain writes:

"But it also indicates that there is an incomparable unity, a unity deeper than that between a model and a transfer, between the thing and thought, thought in act, I mean. For if things were modified or changed in any way by sensation or intellection (I do not mean in the conditions in which they exist, in their way of existing, I mean in regard to those things that properly constitute them, in what they are), then there would no longer be any truth or knowledge. Then the theorist of knowledge could not even express himself by wagging his finger because in such a case there would be left but two equally impossible recourses: either to say that knowledge implies a relation to things but deforms those things, and as a result they are never known; or else to say that knowledge implies no relation to things and that it is an absolute unfolding of thought having only itself as object. This is a position which is quite incompatible with the fact of error and negative ideas." ( from 'The Degrees of Knowledge")

Advaitins likewise relay on the immateriality of consciousness with the joint theory of vritti (mental modification) and upadhi (form of limitation/object) allowing knowledge to happen.  As in all the various schemas of Realism the fine print can be intricate.

Getting the Real Right

 

I am going to be more than usually tendentious in asserting that Realism is fundamental and Idealism a reaction to it.  What use are sacrifices, mantras, invocations, prayers, rituals etc. unless there is a reality corresponding to the performers intent?  Philosophy begins when that Realism becomes critical and considers the incorporation of error into experience.  Prior to that the fear of error gives rise to an immensely complex congeries of safeguards to prevent the priest from getting the Real wrong.

Brhadaranyaka Upanisad - Upadhi and Self

An upadhi is a thing which communicates its own property to another situated close to it as for instance, when a red flower is placed near a crystal, it imparts its red colour to the glass which then appears red; here the flower is the associate of the crystal.

(from Vichar Sagar by Sadhu Nachildas)

That is the standard example which is of course an analogy attempting to give the sense of a relationship between two objects which are separate. Clearly they must have the capacity to affect each other. An important point is that the nature of both elements is not changed by their association. Away from the rose the crystal is as it always was.

Likewise and similarly the inert mind body becomes aware by being 'close' to pure consciousness. Other expressions of that relationship mention pervasion and saturation.

The intellect being transparent and next to the self, easily catches the reflection of the intelligence of the self. Therefore even wise men happen to identify themselves with it first; next comes the Manas, (mind) which catches the reflection of the self through the intellect; then the organs, through contact with the Manas; and lastly the body, through the organs. Thus the self successively illumines with its own intelligence the entire aggregate of body and organs. It is therefore that all people identify themselves with the body and organs and their modifications indefinitely according to their discrimination.

(from Sankara's commentary on Brh.Up. IV.iii.7)

Thus it is said that the mind is an upadhi (limiting adjunct) of pure consciousness. It, as it were, shrinks it to its own size.

Next Sankara explicates the central advaitic concept of adhyasa (superimpostion) and its relations to upadhi. Later....

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.

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.

Note on Substance

Substance ought to be easy. 'Thus I assert thee' as I stumble over a stone, as it were. That's fine but then we are obliged to distinguish between 'stone' as stuff, generic stone and this particular stone called by Aristotle the primary substance and the former the secondary. By the way none of the interpretations of Aristotle's views are uncontroverted so shop around. However the primary/secondary division seems to me a sensible view of the basic furniture of the world or the floor we start from. The Advaitins who employ different criteria of what really is regard 'stuff' as more fundamental than individual items. In their airy way they assert that 'clay alone is real, things made from clay are mere names'. The changeless element, the material cause in the Aristotelian schema, is the clay and the various forms that are made out of clay are simply conventional names. We can see this view in some Western ontologists who would regard a table as 'timber arranged table-wise'. Is this a monist view which would regard our primal encounter as being with an undifferentiated continuum? Given evolution this seems unpersuasive as animals seem to be 'designed' to fit a habitat and prey. For the fox is a rabbit 'food arranged rabbit-wise'?

The pramana of upamana seems to contradict the primacy of 'stuff' (cf various posts on the topic of upamana by label). Recognising genus and species is a basic function of this innate means of knowledge ie. a means of knowledge not reducible to any other. Once we have decided on the criteria of division we can place everything. Encountering anything precipitates automatic sorting on however crude a basis. True but for the Advaitins their concept of 'the real' as changeless supervenes so the opposition may be more a contrast than a contradiction.

The contrast that exists between everyday awareness and knowledge and the reality that underpins that knowledge is brought out in the concept of the primal reality of the substratum. At the risk of confusion it is arguable that the clay/vessels dichotomy with clay alone as real is merely an analogy for the reality of the substratum and the unreality of the upadhis/forms of limitation which the substratum manifests.

Or the characteristic of Brahman is Its being the material cause of the entire universe. By 'material cause' is meant the substratum of the superimposition of the universe, or the substratum of the cosmic illusion (maya) that transforms itself in the shape of the universe. It is in view of such material causality that Brahman and the universe have been described as identical in Sruti texts like the following: “This all is the Self” (Br.II.iv.6) “It became the gross and the subtle (Tai:II.6) and “Let Me multiply, let Me be effectively born (Ibid II.6, Ch.Up. VI, ii, 3) Conventional statements like, “The jar exists,” “The jar is manifest,” and “The jar is desirable,” are also on account of the superimposition of its identity with Brahman, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

(from Vedanta Paribhasa tranlated by Swami Madhavananda.)

Identity and Upadhi

There’s an interesting contrast between the western metaphysicians who have considered the problem of identity and the Eastern sages for whom it was a lifetime quest. The who-am-I inquiry for Ramana Maharshi is made into the purpose of life whilst for Lewis or Parfitt it seems just another topic to be made interesting by the devising of science fiction scenarios to stress test their concepts. The level of seriousness or engagement seems trifling in comparison and it may be significant that when the Western metaphysician turns to the East for inspiration it is Buddhism of a nihilist cast that captures his attention.

The problem of personal identity is fraught by circularity because it cannot be isolated and therefore it creeps into our definition of it through insidious assumptions. Without ruling out the consideration of identity over time, its persistence and whether the understanding of that persistence is fraught by a facile analysis the sages preferred to remain in the present moment in which each state, if indeed a state, is saturated by I-ness or that experience of self-identity which is ‘kuthasta’- solid as an anvil. The feeling is, that if this experience is understood then the problem of its continuity over a series of point instants will be dissolved.

What that understanding means in the advaitic tradition is not a breaking down of a problem into its elements and seeing how they all fit together it is more a sinking down into, and a complete feeling of, the reality of the intuition of self-identity.

Mental Modifications:(from Upadesasahasri by Shankaracarya)

The teacher said to him,"your doubt is not justifiable, for you,
the Self, are proved to be free from change, and therefore perpetually
the same on the ground that all the modifications of the mind are
(simultaneously) known by you. You regard this knowledge of all the
modifications which is the reason for the above inference as that for
your doubt. If you were changeful like the mind or the senses (which
pervade their objects one after another), you would not simultaneously know all the mental modifications, the objects of your knowledge. Nor are you aware of a portion only of the objects of your knowledge (at a time). You are, therefore, absolutely changeless."

At the same time the sage Ramana is willing to have Lewisian fun with his devotees:

In Talks with Ramana Maharshi the paradox is clearly stated:

Devotee: There was the case of the boy who was seven years old. "He recalls his past births. Enquiries show that the previous body was given up 10 months ago. The question now arises how the matter stood for 6 years and 2 months previous to the death of the former body. Did the soul occupy two bodies at the same time?
Sri Bhagavan pointed out that the seven years is according to the boy; 10 months is according to the observer. The difference is due to these two different upadhis. The boy's experience extending to seven years has been calculated by the observer to cover only 10 months of his own time."

The upadhis are different. But what is an upadhi? Various analogies are given but for Ramana’s purposes we can generalise. Everything that exists as an individual does so as an upadhi/limiting adjunct/form of limitation. It is a manifestation of pure being as that individual thing. The individual mind for instance is an upadhi of pure consciousness. Spacetime is also an upadhi and of course the individuals within this continuum appear under its dispensation. When that dispensation is altered or abated, when physical bodies no longer have the same power or presence, then the particular upadhis of body and mind i.e. the Jiva/Person are also altered and the rules of the normal spacetime continuum and sequence change. Thus “the upadhis are different”.

Because there is serious involvement with the problem then the fun has the capacity to throw new facets into view. Paradoxoi and aporiai come when identity is stretched over a period of time. Is that significant?