[In the following essay, Roy discusses how the Advaitic philosophy embodied in Sankara's work is a synthesis of two extreme schools of Hindu philosophical thought.]

(1) The Heritage of Sankara: A Meeting of Extremes.

… The question is—What are the extremes in the Indian philosophical thought? And what do we actually mean by saying that these extremes have met in the heritage of Sankara? For answering the first question, we need a fundamentum divisionis, whereby we could indicate the extreme points of view. In the last chapter we discussed at some length the transcendental reaction against Realism as exemplified in a critique of the pramanas by the Absolutists of both the traditions, namely, the Advaitic and the Buddhist. The two extremes of Indian philosophical thought, then, are represented by the Realists and the Transcendentalists. According to the Realist, the objective world, including all that can be an object to a subject, actually or possibly, is real. The real as an object-content to a mode of consciousness, is not made by the act of knowing. Yet that which is an object of knowledge is real. Whatsoever can be established by means of a pramana (an instrument of cognition) is real, even though the process of its establishment is not a condition of its existence. Howsoever varied may be the ways of knowing an object, one thing is certain, that the object in question 'ante-dates and post-dates' knowledge, and that knowing makes no difference to facts. It has no constitutive function. Realism is not a species of Mentalistic Cosmology. Whatsoever is revealed as an object of cognition by one of the accredited and accepted pramanas is real. Under this epistemico-ontological scheme would come almost all the schools of Indian Philosophy, except those that pronounce the pramanas as self-refutative and self-stultifying in the last analysis. Those schools that refute the validity of the pra-manas are transcendental in their inclination. For them the very schema of subject-object dualism belies the nature of the real. The real cannot be known through anyone of the alternative ways of knowing an object. Pratyaksa, anumana, sabda, upamana, arthapatti and anupalabdhi, which have been accepted as the valid means of knowing reality, have been proved to be subjective in import and therefore the means only of falsifying the real. So the real is not an object revealed in one of the modes of knowing as described above. The dialectician of the transcendental disposition has given specious arguments for demonstrating (i) the self-contradictory nature of these ways of knowing, and (ii) the self-contradictory nature of what these ways of knowing reveal. The two extremes of Indian Philosophy are exemplified in doctrines of two kinds: (i) maintaining knowability as knowability of an object presented to consciousness—it does not matter whether this know-ability is perceptual or non-perceptual; and (ii) maintaining that knowability in the last analysis is not the awareness of an object to a subject. The latter, however is prone to understanding knowability as an object, as not the very best, among the alternative formulations of the knowledge-situation, that reveals the real. On the other hand, they press for the unknow-ability of the real, if knowability necessarily means knowability as an object related to a subject. The extreme form of a doctrine of the latter type is illustrated in the view that refutes 'objectivity' as the 'essence' of reality and unqualifiedly pronounces the unknowability of the real. The real is not an 'object' to a 'subject' and therefore the real is unknowable. Not only this. The 'real' is not only 'unknowable' but also 'unspeakable'. Its 'meaning' cannot be conveyed through a statement of any kind, for every statement states the nature of an objective content related to consciousness, in one of the ways specified as pramanic (veridical). The two extremes are instantiated in the following traditions of Indian philosophical thought: (1) the Realist extreme, in the Carvaka, the Sankhya-Yoga, the Nyaya-Vaise-sika, the Mimamsa and the non-Advaitic Vedanta (a-mong the astika darsanas) and the Jaina and the Sarva-stivada (among the nastika darsanas); and (2) the Transcendentalism of the Advaitins (among the astikas) and the Vijnanavadins and the Madhyamikas (among the nastikas).

In the above mentioned dichotomy of Indian thought, we have classified Advaitism as one of the extreme positions; at least as a position that shares the Madhyamika and the Vijnanavadin view in respect of the metaphysical status of the object-content and the epistemical validity of 'the ways of knowing' an object-content. But our contention in this chapter is not that the Advaitin's is one of the two extreme positions of Indian philosophical thought. We have already made our standpoint clear in this context by saying that in the Advaitic heritage, more precisely the heritage of Sankara, the extremes of Indian Philosophy have met. How can the Advaitic position in philosophy be an extreme position among extremes, and be yet a meeting point of extremes? This can be demonstrated only in two ways: (a) by showing that the polemical attitude shared by Advaitism with other transcendentalists in refuting the validity of the pramanas, is not the whole of the Advaitic attitude; and that the larger truth of Advaitism lies neither in an unqualified refutation of the Realist point of view, nor in an unmitigated acquiescence in the negative attitude of the Vijnanavadins and the Madhyamikas, envisaging, in the first instance the unreality of 'objectivity', and next, the unknow-ability of the real, but in an affirmative view of the knowability of the real in reflective consciousness along with its communicability; and (b) by showing the archi-tectonical character of the Indian philosophical consciousness, of which the Advaitic view is the key-stone. In the latter aspect, it can be maintained that the whole of Indian philosophical thought presents, as it were, a morphological unity, and that a key to this morphological unity is to be found neither in the Realistic schools, nor in the points of view which exclusively devote themselves to a refutation of the realistic hypothesis, but in Advaitism, which neither accepts the unreflecting 'objectivism' of the former, nor does submit to the agnostic and the skeptical conclusions of the latter. We shall, in this aspect have to indicate that Realism and Negative Transcendentalism (the unqualified refutation of Realism) merely state the problem,—a problem, which philosophy must solve in theoretic consciousness, without acknowledging defeat, without retiring in favour of a supposedly more adequate, but generically different way of annexing the Real, viz., the way of aesthetic, moral or devotional consciousness.

(a) The Larger Truth of Advaitism:

The larger truth of Advaitism consists in presenting a view of Reality and knowledge that synthesises the two extremes of shallow pantheism and empty transcendence. The Absolute that Brahman is, is neither altogether unrelated to the pluralistic universe comprehended in empirical consciousness, nor is it of a nature that is lost in this relation. It transcends the universe of empirical consciousness, not by pronouncing it as nonexistent, but by recognizing it as symbolic of the privation of a value, which finds its fulfilment not in the symbol, but in the symbolized, not in the objective manifold lacking the certitude of self-attestation, but in the unitive experience, self-fulfilled (sat), self-fulfilling (cit) and all-embracing (ananda). The Advaitic point of view is a rational vindication of two seemingly antagonistic ontologies, describable in the words, 'it is not this, it is not this', and the words, 'the Brahman is all this'. The Advaitic view is synthetical in nature. The philosophy of the atmanic consciousness is no plea for a negation of plurality, nor is it one for the unreflecting vindication of it. It transcends both literal affirmation and literal negation by commuting their constitutional opacity into a transcendening symbolism. This transcendence is effected in three steps: (1) disillusionment brought about by an experience of the anityata of the phenomenal plurality, (2) the indication of a beyond, which furnishes the disillusioned consciousness with a theoretical norm—a general criterion, an ab extra definition of the nitya, the enduring; and (3) the synthesis of these two steps in an experience that cancels the sense of otherness, that necessarily attends the attitudes of being bewilderingly in the world and being necessarily transcendent to it. The first step is the postulation of plurality in an attitude of despair, and the second is only an incomplete communication of this despair. Neither static disillusionment, nor the dynamic perpetuation of this attitude in the consciousness of a criterion that is intellectually satisfying, comprehends the fulness of the Advaitic position. Disillusionment with the pluralistic universe given in empirical consciousness only poses a question. It is only the starting point of the inquiry into the nature of the real. It marks the dawn of reflective consciousness in which questions and counter-questions arise, concerning what is enduring, if it is not this mass of phenomenal diversity. And this 'reflection' is deepened in a certitude born of ratiocination, a ratiocination which points unmistakably to a beyond, uninfected by the contradictions of what merely appears. Intimations of this beyond furnish the consciousness with a general idea of a 'that' in which could be quenched the inadequacy of the bewildering mass of empirical diversity. The 'realistic' attitude in its unreflecting aspect represents one extreme. The other extreme is represented by the dawn of an understanding, which cancels phenomenality, by pointing to an ens, which, even while it explains the inadequacy of phenomenality, is not ostensibly amenable to comprehension in all its richness of content. The two extremes are exemplified in the naively realistic and the transcendentalist attitudes. Of the Transcendentalist attitude there are two versions: (1) the abstract, illustrated in the metaphysic of the Madhyamika school of Buddhist Absolutism, and (2) the concrete, illustrated in the Advaitic metaphysic.

The Madhyamika transcendentalism is abstract because it does no more than merely point to an ideal in which the limitations of the object-content-appearing-to-thought can be made good. But the awareness of the ideal does not get beyond the mere intimation of an ens, that is not of the nature of the universe revealed in thought. But what is the content of this ens is unknowable. Whatsoever may be the alternative ways of envisaging this ens, it is certain, that theoretic consciousness has no approach to it. The phenomenal content of consciousness is not free from contradiction, but that which is free from contradiction (the tattva) is in no sense graspable in theoretic consciousness. The Madhyamika position in Logic and Metaphysics presents an all-out contrast to the Logic and Metaphysics of common sense. In suggesting the definition of this ens and the criterion which adumbrates the cancellation of a discursively contemplated universe, the Madhyamika is simply presenting to us the two un-meetable extremes of Naive Realism and Transcendental Negativism. How often must we repeat that the Madhyamika in insisting upon the unspeakability of the Tattva is simply acquainting us with the nature two extreme situations—one determinable in thought and speakable, and yet self-contradictory, and the other indeterminable in thought and unspeakable though free from contradiction? Phenomenality is comprehended by that alone which negates it. Negation of phenomenality is the essence of philosophical wisdom. Reflective consciousness, consequent on disillusionment respecting the pluralistic content of consciousness can go no further. Its sole aim is to display the contrast between the two universes. The Madhyamika and the Realist are extreme positions in Indian philosophical thought. The Advaita Vedanta reconciles the two extremes by negating the negative view-point of the Madhyamika. The negation of negation is an affirmation in reflective consciousness of the objective world and finite subjectivity in the aspect of their transcendental incorruptibility. What is actually negated in reflective consciousness according to the Advaitin is the literal entitative character of the objective world and empirical individuality, but that in which they are negated is their Transcendental Ground (Brahman). But the negation of the content in question does not mean their existential effacement. It only means their reevaluation—a re-evaluation, which is communicable and stateable. The point of difference, which marks out Advaitism in contrast with the Madhyamika position, may be stated by saying that the Madhyamika merely points to a that, in which possibly could be quenched the inadequacy of the content of empirical consciousness, but he is all too averse to the idea of saying what it is. Its contentuality remaining unascertainable, and if ascertainable, being likely to turn out self-contradictory, the Madhyamika discovers a hiatus between the this (the content of empirical consciousness) and the that (the Tattva). The Tattva and the content of empirical consciousness represent two extremes for the simple reason that the Tattva being indeterminable in thought, is understood as indeterminate, one without a what. Being not contradictable like the pluralistic content of phenomenality, it is understood as a 'what-less' 'that'; and this is so, because whatfulness is considered as necessarily self-dissipating and riddled with contradictions. The Madhyamika, thus, goes to the extent of suggesting a tatastha laksana of a 'that' in which phenomenal diversity could be comprehended as quenched and cancelled. And in doing so, he only shows that his position is an extreme other of the Realist standpoint, and that there is no meeting-ground for the two. The one cancels the other. The discovery of the Tattva by the Madhyamikas is not a re-evaluation of the 'this' and the 'mine', the pluralistic content of phenomenality. It is only an outright devaluation of it. Devaluation of phenomentality turns out to be a wholesale occupation of the Madhyamika philosopher. He takes the negative dialectic to be the essence of reflective consciousness, the be-all and end-all of the philosophical venture. His system lacks a transcendental ontology. The Advaitin, however, goes beyond the unreflecting Realism of common-sense, and the unqualified and de-ontologizing negativism of the Madhyamikas. His is a synthesis of these extremes. From the Madhyamika he takes the negative dialectic; but the use which he makes of the negative dialectic consists in the deepening of the reflective consciousness, which at its core is constructive without becoming tawdry and self-contradictory. The Advaitin's Brahman is the Tattva of the Madhyamikas, and even while it is not determinable in terms of the categories of the understanding, it is understood. Even while it is unthinkable as an object, it is known. Even while, it cannot be spoken of, its speakability is not to be doubted. Once it is realized that there is a that, in which all the lack encountered in empirical consciousness is made good, it becomes incumbent to ask, what after all is the nature of the that in question. Disillusionment, in which, alone, philosophical consciousness is rooted is an axiological predicament. It points to a situational thinking, a thinking, which is characterized by a striving towards a better destiny than the one ordinarily known and experienced. It indicates a lack of satiety—a discomfort, a dissatisfaction with what merely is. It also indicates, as it were, an uncanny awareness of a state of things, which 'ought to be', which ought to transform what 'merely is'. Realizing this situation as axiological, alone, can indicate what that 'is', which 'ought to be', which is the lever of the dialectic of reflective consciousness. And this also must not be forgotten that the dialectic of reflective consciousness is nothing, if not a spiritual adventure—a proneness to be what ought to be, not a mere awareness of the hollowness of what is, and the unknowability of a depth that swallows this hollowness. The Madhyamika takes the situation in question as purely epistemological in essence. He is all too hesitant in proceeding beyond the argument a contingentia mundi. Even if he has an axiology and a transcendental ontology, these are cut off from theoretic consciousness.

The Advaitin goes beyond the unreflective complacency of the layman as also the reflective pessimism of the Madhyamika. The Madhyamika philosophy is an organon of a that, which only points to the limitations of the 'this' and the 'mine'. 'That is not This': this is the long and short of the Madhyamika position. The axiological attitude as a key to the unravelling of the mystery of Being, contemplated in the mode of a disillusioned consciousness, not merely indicates a That,—a situation, which ought to be, but also indicates the nature of its What. The content of a consciousness under disillusionment reveals its incompleteness under the three aspects of knowing, willing and feeling. Disillusionment is consequent on the discovery of an object that is not self-luminous, a will that is obstructed by an other, and a feeling of restiveness rooted in the differentiating attitude—namely, an attitude that endures through a dichotomy of the ego and the non-ego. The Brahman of the Advaitin is the Ground that comprehends this disillusionment. The discovery of an object that is not self-luminous implies a self-lumious object. The discovery of an obstructed will, implies a will that cancels otherness. The discovery of the feeling of restiveness implies a situation, in which feeling would be emptied of restiveness, by a transcendence of the differentiating attitude. But this Brahman, which may be described as the norm for measuring the incompleteness of the content of empirical consciousness, is itself not in the last analysis an other of consciousness. The Madhyamika is not able to formulate this norm in its contentual richness, in the aspect of its whatness, for this reason only that this norm, if made determinate would lose its absoluteness. By becoming an object related to consciousness, which might determine it in categorial thinking, it would lapse into an actuality, whose incompleteness it is supposed to measure. And once a situation of this nature occurs, the norm would degenerate into a fact, placed in a predicament, which on account of its poverty evokes disillusionment. The Madhyamika like Kant fails in indicating the knowability of the norm, for factuality alone is knowable, and factuality implies an otherness of contentuality to consciousness. The Advaitin insists not on the cancellation of empirical cantentuality in Brahman or Brahman in empirical contentuality, but on a transformation of outlook, coextensive with a transfiguration of existence. This transformation of outlook envisages a whole-sale transition from the 'differentiating point of view' to the 'non-differentiating point of view'—from knowing characterized by relations and experience schematized by subject-object dualism, to knowing characterized by immediacy, and to experience that has sunk all otherness. In the non-differentiating attitude, the contents of a differential epistemic situation gain a new meaning and acquire a transfigured factuality—a transvaluation, as it were. In the transformed attitude, the factuality of the contents of empirical consciousness only loses its incompleteness and contradictions; and the Brahman instead of being understood as a transcendent norm, the slayer of factuality, brings about its resurrection, through its becoming indistinguishably immanent in the factuality it resurrects by transfiguring. The vacuous transcendentality of the Absolute (the Madhyamika position) and the disappointing factuality of unreflecting Realism, are the two extremes which meet in the transmuting vision of the Advaitic Brahman. As against the realistic metaphysic of the commonsense philosopher, the Advaitin would go with the Madhyamika in showing the incompleteness of such a metaphysic of existence and experience. As against the Madhyamika he would not insist on erecting impassable barriers between the Absolute and the apparent mass of empirical factuality. He would not condemn the realist position outright. He would only insist on its inconceivability in the last analysis. The Advaitic philosophy is not the revelation of something unknown and unknowable. It is only the deepening of the consciousness, of what is already known; it is the reflection of consciousness upon itself in its mixed up functionality (vrtti) of knowledge and Ignorance.

(b) The Architectonical Character of Indian Philosophy:

Our purpose in speaking about the archtectonical character of the Indian philosophical thought is not to divest it of its richness and variety. Nor can it be to support the view that the development of Indian Philosophical thought in its chronological or doctrinal aspect is consciously and deliberately disposed to approximate to an unchanging norm. In saying that the Indian philosophical thought has an architectonical unity, and that the Advaita is the keystone of this unity, we do not mean either to minimise the importance and uniqueness of the non-advaitic philosophies or to show that the non-advaitic philosophies are really advaitic in purport. All that we mean is this, that the Advaitic philosophy does present a schema of thought, which can well be employed for grouping up the scattered threads of Indian philosophical speculation into a yarn of unitary texture. From the Advaitic Belvedere, we can have an overall view of Indian systems of Philosophy—a view, which is as revealing in its character as it is unifying. The various shades of philosophical speculation, with all their antagomisms and seemingly irreconcilable differences do not remain in an unconnected and rhapsodistic state. To the Advaitin, who is not their rival, in any but the best sense, these systems, appear, as it were, interknitted in a graded series—all exhibiting in varying degrees of clarity and distinctness, the self-same tendency to a state of being, shorn of incompleteness in all its aspectual details.

The essential unity of the Indian philosophies consists in their common axiological moorings—a striving for something that is somehow lost and is yet there, waiting to be recovered and reclaimed. A re-orientation of being, a changed attitude towards life and things, is the theme of them all. This re-orientation, largely and predominantly axiological in essence, means a re-orientation in the metaphysical and epistemological aspects also. The Advaita of Sankara gives us the quientessence of this attitude, and one, who has understood aright the philosophical message of Sankara, will have no difficulty in placing other speculations in a unitive perspective. We are therefore, of the opinion, that the Advaita of Sankara corrects the astigmatism of other systems of thought, and indicates a point of view, which unifies conflicting dogmas by transforming them into a kind of reflective awareness.

Before we tell how the Advaita Vedanta can be made to present to us the keystone of the architectonical unity of Indian philosophical thought, it would be proper to take into account the differing components of it. This means an attempt of a two-fold nature; first we shall have to classify Indian philosophical systems in respect of their differences, and secondly we shall have to show, how their differences are reconciled in a higher unity, envisaged by the Advaita Vedanta.

We have in the first instance two main divisions of Indian philosophical thought. On the one hand, we have the unreflecting attitude of the Caravaka, who is not prepared to go beyond the perceptually available datum of experience, and to whom nothing is lost in a world so given, if one only cares to make the most of it by extracting from it, in all manner possible, all that would be productive of a feeling of pleasure in him. A philosophy of this nature is clearly positivistic in its methodology and doctrine, and if it has an ethics too, the ethics is unmistakably hedonistic in substance. At this level of thinking there occurs nothing considerable in respect of a radical distinction between the objective and the subjective. Subjectivity is recognised only in an implicatory manner, namely, as the locus of a pleasurable or painful experience. Else the essential destiny of this locus of enjoyment is the dust to which it returns after being consigned to the flames.¹ A philosophy of this nature is anything but metaphysical. And, no wonder, one comes across in such a philosophy an obvert arraignment of all speculations in the metaphysical key. As against this unqualifiedly objective attitude, sustained by an unmixedly positivistic logic, we have the philosophical speculations in the two traditions of Indian thought, the Upanisadic, swearing by the 'permanent' and the 'unchanging', and the Saugata, whose enduring feature is 'change' and 'modification'.² The various systems of Indian philosophical thought, other than the Caravaka, would be found to exemplify one of the two traditions, or some curious amalgam of these two.

Our aim here, not being, a detailed analysis of the special doctrines of the traditions or the schools, we shall only indicate certain general features of these traditions and schools. Our aim shall be to point out their dovetailing character, in spite of their chartered antagonism. We have simply to demonstrate the plausibility of our contention that the advaitic attitude reconciles the sharp antagonism of the traditions and the schools by transmuting their contents into elements of an all-embracing, all-harmonizing vision. In this vision the seemingly irreconcilable dogmas find a new meaning—a meaning which dissolves their differences, without effacing their literal identity. The process of this unification marks a gradual and steady transition from the objective attitude of a purely positivistic kind to an objective attitude of a metaphysical nature, and then to the subjective and the transcendental attitudes.

The question is—What is ultimately real? And the question takes its rise in a sense of disillusionment caused by what is experienced at the merely perceptual and unreflecting level of consciousness. In a disillusioned mode of consciousness the datum consisting of a perceptually given objective content may alternatively present itself as irremediably changeful and shifting, or as enduring and unchangingly entitative. One disillusioned by it seeks something other than what it is, something other than what it is taken for, something hidden from our sight, which encounters only an appearance and not the real. Alternatively, therefore, we may envisage the real as something enduring and permanent behind the changeful and shifting mass of the perceptual datum, or as something inherently evanescent and fleeting behind the perceptual content, illusorily believed as enduring. The two alternatives which come before us as correctives to the naively objective attitude of the positivist are represented in the two traditions of the Indian philosophical thought, the Upanisadic and the Buddhist. The philosophical substance of these two traditions is essentially metaphysical in so far as they seek to contemplate a reality beyond the merely empirical and the given. But the metaphysical conception of reality is variously conceived in the two traditions. The metaphysic in question may be realistic or idealistic or it may be of a texture, which literally speaking looks like being both realistic and idealistic, and is yet of a complexion that transcends literal description. The realistic temper in the tradition that swears by an unchanging real, is exemplified in the metaphysical speculations of the Sankhya, the Nyaya-Vaisesika, the Purva Mimamsa, and all those systems of thought, which define knowledge as the apprehension of an object (prameya) by means of an instrument of valid cognition (pramana). In the other tradition, the most oustanding examples of the realist trend in metaphysical thinking are the Vaibhasika and the Sautarantika schools of Buddhist Philosophy. The idealistic view, in the former tradition is adopted by the Advaitins of almost all shades. In the latter tradition it is exemplified in the Yogocara epistemology and metaphysics. The reaction against the purely objective attitude, grounded in the logic of unmixed positivism, has been a developing sort of reaction, and it has a morphological character. The course of development has been like this. In the first instance, the reaction comes in the form of a need to go beyond the merely given. So all the systems of Indian philosophical thought qua philosophical, are metaphysical in import. This that confronts us in the presentational mode of consciousness does not satisfy. So a turning away from it is the first step that one has to take. 'Away from it' necessarily implies 'towards something else'. This 'something else' being supra—presentational, is essentially metaphysical. Whether it is, the atoms of the Vaisesikas, or the Prakrti of Sankhya, the bhutas and the skandhas of the Sarvastivadins, the vijnanas of the Yagacaras, the Sunya of the Madhyamikas or the Atman of the Advaitins, we have something trans-sensuous, and metaphysical. The metaphysical attitude, then is to be understood as a turning away from the merely given and a turning towards something that is not so given. The question is, what are the alternative modes of this 'turning away' and its complimentary 'turning towards'? What is the nature of the content attended to as a consequence of this re-orientation? And why after all, this radical transformation in attitude? To the last question, the answer that Indian philosophy has to give is this. We have, as discriminating individuals, to turn from darkness to light, from the falsely existent to the truly existent, from death to immortality. A change in attitude is necessitated by an awareness which is preferential in character—a mode of consciousness, which is valuational in essence. Philosophy elsewhere might have its origin in wonder, but in India, its origin lies in a perplexity which is axiological, in the sense of disillusionment in respect of being-in-the-world-as-it-is. Philosophical consciousness takes its rise in a dissatisfaction with the merely given. It is a plea for the re-evaluation of one's being-in-the-world, consequent on its devaluation, and on the consciousness of its being tuccha (trivial and as such worthy only of being relinquished). Except for the Caravaka, whose attitude is characteristically one of dashing acceptance, all other systems of Indian Philosophy take the opposite stand, and some kind of withdrawal from being-in-the-world-as-it-is, constitutes a necessary step towards emancipation from this puzzling existence. But in addition to a psychological pathway³ to a 'turning away' from being-in-the-world-as-it-is, there is the epistemological examination of the content of experience, or a dialectical scrutiny of what is treasured in the attitude of mere acceptance, the attitude of commonsense, supported on grounds of so-called empirical unassailability. Disillusionment with the world-as-it-is, takes its rise in a valuational attitude, which has a dispositional foundation, but which, nevertheless can be made firm and stable through a ratiocinative process of argumentation. All the schools of Indian philosophy with the exception of the Caravaka, point to the necessity of a preferential attitude. So a 'turning away' from what is disappointing and self-contradictory, means turning towards something else. This something else, in spite of the fact that it is metaphysical in essence, may or may not be conceivable as an object-to-a-subject in the empirical situation. It may be understood as an object of trans-empirical order, self-subsistent in nature, and not presentable as a fact given in the perceptual mode of consciousness. Or, it may not be conceivable in the image of an objectifiable nature, even while to deny reality to it may be a transcendental impossibility. We have in this case another stratum of metaphysics—the stratum of the trans-objective, which is essentially subjective and transcendental. This layer of metaphysical thinking is the layer of ideal necessity. If we attempt a stratification of the Indian philosophical consciousness, this schema would help us to arrange the vast array of schools and dogmas in an architectonical configuration. The entire content of India's philosophical heritage would be found to oscillate between the two extremes of naive objectivism and transcendental spiritualism. The Caravaka represents the former extreme, and the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara and his followers the latter. The development of thought is from mere acceptance at the level of empirical objectivity to transcendental ideality. And in between these two poles we have the metaphysics of the non-perceptible objectivities and a falsely conceived subjectivity, both of which have to be commuted into a transcendental ideality, which is metaphysical without being objective, and subjective without being phenomenalized and literally meant. There is a seemingly inextricable telescoping of the objective and the literally meant. We have a natural tendency to take the knowable as something meant. An apparently unavoidable intentionality accompanies our speech, which translates our modes of awareness. The acme of philosophizing consists in going beyond this seeming limit of human speech and human consciousness. To philosophize is to rise systematically and steadily above the limitations constructed by reasoning and language, and to know the truth concerning the contents of our consciousness in their unlimited aspect. To be aware of such a truth is to be aware of one's freedom, to shake of one's limitations, to transcend one's imprisoned consciousness, to cast off the sheaths, which seem to give it an insulated countenance, a muffled being. To be transfused into such an awareness is to taste of the intimations of the numinous, in which nothing around us, above us or within us is ever lost entitatively, but in which everything around us, above us and within us sheds off its literal import and withal becomes a symbol of an essential freedom, that is known as one literally unintendable and indicated without being meant. Such is the nature of the Atmanic illumination as envisaged in the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara and his followers. Without standing in a situation antagonistic to other systems of Indian philosophical thought, the Advaita only helps to invest them with a transparency, which they lack in a false perspective. The Advaitic critique of other metaphysical systems has not for its aim the establishment of a rival system of metaphysics, as much likely to be subverted as the systems it refutes. Its aim has largely been misunderstood and misrepresented, and the result has been a counter-attack on the Advaita by the non-Advaitins. Any two metaphysical doctrines conceived in the objective attitude can engage in an interminable crossfire of arguments, without ever coming to a categorically necessary conclusion. What is an object of thought, is in an a priori sense indeterminable, and is therefore neither wholly unassailable, nor wholly condemnable. The philosophies refuted by the Advaitin are for this reason not on the same conceptual level as the Advaita itself. For this reason, they can well refute each other, with more or less plausibility. The Naiyayika's criticism, for instance, of any non-Advaitic system of philosophy can be as plausible as the criticism of the Nyaya doctrine by such an one. And such would have been the case with the Advaita too, had there not been a fundamental disparity of levels between Advaitism and the points of view it criticises.

It is our contention that almost all the schools of Indian philosophy, except the Advaita, exemplify the objective attitude in various manners. The Carvaka, being empirically objective, need not be considered here as one of the metaphysical systems. The Vaisesika, the Jaina, the Sankhya, and the Sarvastivadins are manifestly objective at the metaphysical level. The Vijnanavada, in spite of its literal claim to be subjective, contemplates subjectivety in an impliedly objective manner. The Madhyamika, even while it recognises more than others, the futility of speculation in the objective key, succumbs to the objectivistic fallacy, by insisting upon the unknowablity of the tattva in theoretic consciousness. By knowledge the Madhyamika necessarily understands the awareness of an object, and because all cognition of an object is fraught with contradiction, that which is really real, can never be known. The Madhyamika realises the falsity of a cognition in the objective attitude. Yet, the objective attitude clings on to the Madhyamika way of philosophizing, in its insistence on defining knowledge in the manner in which it has been defined by those, who are plainly objectivistic in their philosophizing attitude. The Advaita Vedanta completely transcends the objective attitude by commuting each one of these positions into a symbol of the non-objective truth and non-objective reality. It would not be inappropriate to speak of the non-objective truth and reality as subjective, but nonobjective subjectivity is not be understood as the literal counter-part of negatived objectivity. Neither the objective in the affirmative situation, nor the negation of it, understood as a position in a literal sense, can be said to give a clue to the understanding of the real. The objective in the affirmative situation is an object to a subject. Even so is its negation, if understood or meant in a literal sense. The negation of objectivity is not intended to bring back objectivity by investing negation itself with the status of an object. The negation of something understood in the objective attitude is not so much a negation of a thing or a content, as the negation of the attitude itself. Negation of objectivity has only to be understood as symbolic of a transfigured attitude. Both position and opposition stand as symbols of their own transcendence. But transcendence does not mean the postulation of a fresh position. If we understood aright this transcendence of the objective, we could protect ourselves against the mistake of postulating the truly real as a subject, which the negation of objectivity would give us as a matter of consequence. We are of the opinion that sentience or subjectivity, which remains as a precipitate of the negation in question, is only an abstract subjectivity, a false sentience. Through a process of filtering out the objective content of experience, one can never come to real subjectivity. Such a subjectivity would not differ in description from Bradley's 'psychological monster' and 'metaphysical chimera'. The advaitic Atman is definetely not the objective content of the relational mode of consciousness. Nor is it the subject scissored off from its base in such a mode. Both the objective content and its corresponding subject are conceived in the objective attitude. Terminological innovations or devices of naming, do not mitigate the situation. The real subject is not the one conceived as obtainable by draining out the objective content from the knowledge situation. The process of draining out is a process of negation, but if the negation of an object is understood in its literal meaning, we would again be facing something that is not a non-subject. A situation of this nature may well imply a claim to giving a 'persuasive definition' of subjectivity, but this does not mean much on the plane of metaphysics. Postulation of a subjectivity that completely disowns all objectivity is a questionable metaphysical procedure. It makes a false claim, for it simply disowns objectivity without ever transcending the objective attitude. This is the substance of the Advaitic critique of Vijnanavada. But it does not mean that the truly subjective attitude is impossible of attainment. A clue to the attainment of such an attitude is found in the Madhyamika refutation of discursivity, and its implicate, the objective attitude. Nothing that is known and understood as an object, can ever be free from contradiction. The Madhyamika dialectic stands for a negation of all positions, including the negation itself, if it is owned as a position. The Madhyamika clearly insists on a rejection of all acceptance, of all positions. Even while the tattva is a necessary implicate of self-cancelling discursivity, it is kept out of the reach of theoretic consciousness. Because it is unthinkable as an object, it is understood as being unknowable. To invest it with knowability would mean its devaluation, its degeneration. So the avowed prediliction of the Madhyamika is for a view of no position. Thus, there are two implications of the Madhyamika critique of the objective attitude. The negation of the objective attitude may be taken as pointing to an affirmation of the non-objective, in two radically different senses. The two radically different senses in which negation is to be understood are the literal and the symbolic. In the literal sense the negation of the objective attitude is understood simply as the negation of the object, and the affirmation of its counter-part in the epistemic situation, namely of the subject, functionally named as vijnaptimatrata, or being-as-nothing-but-ideality. The literal upshot of the negation of the objective attitude is employed for hypostatising the sentient aspect of the epistemic situation into a sole reality. So we have in the Yogacara tradition of the Saugata siddhanta, an all-out cancellation of the objective world. The external world is negated for affirming the interminable flux of sentience. In the symbolic sense, the negation in question, is not so much a negation of objects or objective existence as of the objective attitute itself. Negation thus becomes the symbol of the self-transcendence of all positions, and it is asserted that the tattva (ens realissimum) is not to be identified with a content encountered in the objective attitude. The negative element in the dialectic of reason is only symbolic of a noetic situation, which has to be understood as trans-objective. As against the relational and mediated mode of consciousness, it is a plea for immediacy and the transcendence of the relational. There is in the architectonic of Atmanic experience a process of progressive transcendences. The objective attitude is transcended in the subjective, and acceptance gives way to negation. Yet neither subjectivity nor negation has a literal import. They have only a symbolic function. They merely point to a reality and truth, which is comprehended as known without being intended, and stated without being meant as an other of consciousness. The objective contents of the jagrta and svapna states of consciousness, as also the muffled subjectivity of the susupti state, are not to be equated with the Atman or Pure Consciousness. They are only the symbols of the atmanic experience. We could simply make an assertion about the Atman in an as-if strain. The Atman is neither the muffled subjectivity of the susupti state of consciousness, nor is it the object of the jagrta and svapna states of experience. Yet the contents of these awarenesses could be understood, as if they were atmanic in character. Of course, they are the symbols of such a consciousness. Only their significance has to be read aright. And their significance can be read aright, only when we resolve to look at them in their mutual relatedness. What holds these strata of experience together is their self-transcending character, and every successive step in this aspect, only brings the jijnasu closer to the Atman, which can be indicated without being understood as an object, and known without being made thinkable. The Advaitic truth and reality are only symbolised at the objective, the dialectical and the subjective levels of thought. To know the Atman, it is necessary to turn away from the given in its literal aspect to its symbolic implication. The Atman is not one of the entities given—the object and the subject, as literally understood; yet the Atman embraces both, if we are prepared to take them as symbols of the limitless and the infinite. Each arrested breath, each fragmentary theoretic construction, is the symbol of that, which is freedom itself. Each step in the philosophical morphology of the Indian consciousness, can be seen in two aspects: (1) the dogmatic and (2) the critical. In the dogmatic aspect each step becomes a closed system of thought, subject to refutation, and fit enough to be disbelieved and disowned and to be understood as literally false. In the critical aspect, each content understood as literally false, can be commuted into a symbol, which brings home to us, the awareness of something known, without being objectivised.…

Notes

¹Radhakrishnan and Moore: A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, pp. 228-29.

²See Cultural Heritage of India, Vol. III, p. 28, concerning the distinction between the Dravyarthikanaya (The Substance view) and the Paryayarthikanaya (the Modal view) in Indian Philosophy.

³Of the psychological pathway to a turning-away-from-the-world-as-it-is, one funds illustrations in the statements made by the philosopher-saints of India like Kabira, Sura, Dadu, Gorakha and others.…