SOURCE: "Epistemology" in The Pure Principle: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Shankara, Michigan State University Press, 1960, pp. 37-55.

[Below, Menon and Allen discuss Sankara's theory of knowledge and how his epistemology "steered a middle course between the two main Hindu schools of thought."]

How can we come to know the Self? The answer is that if we truly know anything at all, it is the Self; and everything else we seem to know is a product of avidya or ignorance, which splits up the pure or integral knowledge into subject and object. For if the Self is universal and is the only reality, then, as Sir S. Radhakrishnan has said, it is not the real that calls for explanation, but the false, the erroneous, and the unreal.

Why should avidya exist at all? Is it ingrained in the Self? If so, the non-dualist conception of the Self would be destroyed. If it were altogether outside the Self, it would have to bear some relation to the Self—a type of relationship which, as we saw in the last chapter, is unreal.

Before we can get any further with answering these questions and understanding the nature of avidya itself, we must look at Shankara's analysis of the antahkarana and the part that it plays in the perceptive process through which we derive our empirical knowledge: in Western terminology, we must consider his theory of psychology.

Here we encounter a fresh difficulty in the exposition of his philosophy. As we have said before, in talking of the Self we are trying to explain something which by its very nature cannot be split up into bits and "explained", but can only be intuitively grasped as a whole. Shankara had to deal with this difficulty in teaching his philosophy among the intellectual philosophies of his own day. In his analysis of the antahkarana, he was dealing not with a spiritual entity, but with what we may for a moment loosely call the "mind". He was in the territory which the "school" philosophers did, and still do, rightly regard as part of their province, and he was compelled to take notice of the theories of his time. This makes much of what follows deceptively familiar to the student of Western philosophy and makes it essential for him not to forget two important things: (1) The propositions are intended to be no more than a counterpart on the intellectual plane to Shankara's whole view of life. Any similarity between them and the views of Hume, for example, is coincidental: Hume just happened to hit on the same argument 1,000 years later in the same limited context: in other repects, the views of Shankara and Hume are on different planes. (2) Shankara would not have regarded the arguments themselves as proving anything particularly valid. He was aware of the limitations of this sort of reasoning, and, no doubt, with the clear insight of a liberated sage he "felt in his bones" that the arguments are to some extent circular: he produced them to meet the challenge of intellectual philosophers. We must therefore warn the Western student—especially the student well-trained in European philosophy—that he will not get any nearer to the essence of Shankara's philosophy by analysing, criticising and construing the arguments set out in the latter part of this chapter.

The antahkarana is, so to say, the "material" mind; and it is the seat, not only of intellectual processes, but also of feelings. It is not, however, a kind of sense organ, because it has on its own level a direct perception of itself and its own changes—(this self-consciousness must not, however, be confused with the intuitive "self-consciousness", when the inner self looks at the antahkarana as if it were another person). The senses are the tools by which the antahkarana apprehends objects. If it is not in a state of attention, the senses do not function. We may have a thing in front of our eyes and still not see it: we aptly say "My mind was somewhere else".

The antahkarana is neither infinitely great nor indefinitely small. It is usually thought of as pervading the body and thus being about the same size as it: not gross and solid like ordinary matter, but an ethereal, transparent, shining thing in which objects are manifested, as it were, in a mirror. This power of the antahkarana is not, however, inherent in it: it gains this power through its association with the Self. In the Self we "live and move and have our being". In another metaphor, the Self is: "reflected in the ethereal element of the antahkarana and, like the sun, reveals the entire world of matter".

These metaphors are at best merely rough indications of what is intended; the exact nature of the interaction between the Self and the antahkarana cannot be expressed in words. An example in which a similar difficulty occurs, but is calmly accepted, can be found in music. As a matter of scientific fact, the vibrations per second of the higher note of a perfect fifth are exactly one and a half times those of the lower note. From the strictly musical point of view, the essential thing is that the fifth has a characteristic "bare" sound, which every person with a reasonably musical ear can recognize. Now, the knowledge that the two notes were separated by a perfect fifth could be obtained by a musician, if he were also a physicist, by measuring the rate of vibration of the two sounds separately and comparing them (indeed, a tone-deaf person also could do this with the appropriate apparatus). The musician can however, tell by ear alone that it is a fifth. This fact that he can get the same knowledge on two different planes, does not lead him to question its validity on either: he accepts that a certain kind of noise is "associated with" a vibration ratio of 3:2, but no amount of analysis will ever disclose the nature of the association. This is an analogy to the interaction of the Self and the antahkarana in the process of perception of the world. The two ideas run parallel, and they interact, but they do not coincide, because they are on different levels. In the normal process of knowing, the antahkarana splits the Self up into three: the subject who knows, the object known, and the process of knowledge or cognition. The Self is seen in the mirror of the antahkarana, and it is a principle of our constitution that the mirror should be a distorting one; we "see through a glass, darkly".

The antahkarana is ever active and assumes various forms or "modes"—except in deep sleep, when its activity is latent in itself. One of its modes is the consciousness of itself, which may be called "ego-hood". The ego commonly confuses itself with the real Self. When we say "I am restless", we mean that the antahkarana is restless, but we wrongly transfer the restlessness to our inner Self. Herein lies the essential difference between mere introspection and the knowledge of the inner divine Self, which comes from knowing this philosophy as Shankara knew it. Knowing his philosophy and knowing "about" it are on two different planes.

When the antahkarana assumes the mode of doubt or indetermination, it is called "mind"—in the sense used in the statement "I cannot make up my 'mind'. The item "mind" includes (as it would in the mouths of some Western psychologists) resolution, sense-perception, desires, and emotions. When the antahkarana has the mode of certainty or determination, it may be called "intellect", including the powers of judgment and reasoning; and when in the mode of reflection and remembrance, it may be called "attention". The ego, the mind, and the intellect function only intermittently; their activity has a birth, growth and death. An argument, for example, begins with the premises and works through a chain of reasoning to a conclusion. "Attention", however, may endure; and this mode of the antahkarana is regarded as the most important, because meditation, contemplation and concentration belong to its province, and these are the activities by which a person uses his antahkarana to seek and find Reality. They are the point of the thorn used to extract the other thorn of avidya.

It is an essential function of the antahkarana that when acting as an instrument of perception it not only perceives objects but determines our reaction to them. To this extent, it is a sort of mental counterpart to the nervous system of the body. Professor Deussen says that "the assigning of a common organ for mind and conscious will, and a common function for ideas and resolves, corresponds to the physiological fact, according to which the brain both shapes the impressions of the sensible nerves into ideas, and also carries into execution these ideas so far, as they become resolves of the will, by means of the motor nerves." This does not mean, of course, that the concept of the antahkarana is necessarily valid. The antahkarana is a psychological and not a physiological entity, but the parallel which Professor Deussen drew is suggestive: it is a parallel which we might well expect to find.

The antahkarana is not, however, a purely philosophical' concept. It is not an entity invented to meet some logical or formal difficulty—like Locke's "substance", which was introduced because one could not have ideas in nothing; or the "luminiferous ether" of the nineteenth century scientists, who could not contemplate light waves in nothing. The antahkarana is regarded by Shankara as a real object which the student can detect by direct experience.

The interaction of the inner Self and antahkarana is essential to the functioning of the antahkarana. Shankara does not say on the one hand that the antahkarana can know itself, as the materialists openly or tacitly do contend; nor does he say on the other hand that "spirit" (i.e. the Self) and matter exist in two separate water-tight compartments. Both these theories lead to ludicrous conclusions. The materialist theory, taken in conjunction with the determinist view which logically accompanies it, is self-stultifying. If the mind is a machine, both (I) the proposition that it is a machine and (2) its consciousness of itself as such a machine are inevitable products of the machine itself, and therefore have no validity—though it is fair to say that equally they are not necessarily false.

The second theory—that spirit and matter exist in water-tight compartments—leads to a difficulty that confronted Aristotle: it is difficult to assign appropriate areas to teleology (his conception of spirit) and matter without violating the unity of "reality". If spirit influences matter, is its influence a spiritual or a material influence? If it is a spiritual influence, matter must have a spiritual aspect. If it is a material influence, then spirit must have material properties. Descartes regarded mind as disparate from matter, but to get them together for psychological purposes, he had to invent a fluid which he called "animal spirits"!

Shankara's approach to this basic problem is quite different. In the first place, there are in his view three entities to be accounted for—(a) the pure Self, (b) the antahkarana, and (c) the body and other matter. The essential interaction was, for him, between (a) and (b), whereas the Western philosophers have been looking mainly at the interaction of (b) and (c). For him, the apparent incompatibility of the pure spirit or Self and the antahkarana was not real but only empirical: ultimately, both of them are in essence the non-dual Atman. He says frankly that the Self contains the antahkarana, and the antahkarana reflects (though it does not contain) the Self. If this view seems inexplicable and contrary to commonsense, it is no more inexplicable than the relationship between the two aspects of a musical fifth, and no more contrary to commonsense than such theories as Descartes'.

On the theory of perception—which is in effect the relation between the antahkarana and matter—Shankara had not himself worked out any well-established theory, but it may be interesting to set out briefly the ideas developed by his school, and particularly by Dharmaraja, who lived about 1600 A.D.—almost contemporary with Descartes.

These views are not a part of Shankara's own teaching, but they show the way the Vedantist mind has worked under his influence.

Broadly, the Vedanist view is that the antahkarana "streams out" of the body through the senses and comes in contact with the object. One part remains within the body, another gets in touch with the sense object, and a third or "modal knowledge" connects the two. If the ego is then illuminated by the pure consciousness, perceptive knowledge arises. Merely directing the sense organs does not in itself cause perception: the activity of the antahkarana is indispensable; otherwise we stare at an object without perceiving it. The "mode" of the antahkarana determines what we perceive, such as the colour, sound or weight of the object. The mode of the antahkarana and the object are not perceived as two because both occupy the same space—even as the pot and the space within it are located in the same spot.

In perception, the object and the antahkarana must both be present. This distinguishes perception from memory, which is a recollection of past perception. Inference is distinguished from perception in that there is no contact of the antahkarana with the object inferred. For instance, in inferring fire from smoke, the antahkarana is in contact with the smoke and the connection between the smoke and the fire is only recognized from memory. In memory, we have the Self associated with the past experience determined by the antahkarana. In recognition, we have perception and the memory of past perceptive experience fused together.

The later Vedantins also held that it was necessary for perceived objects to be suitable for being perceived. Virtue and vice are attributes of the antahkarana, but they cannot be perceived in the sense in which a chair can be perceived. The Vedantins also drew a subtle distinction between perceptions effected through the senses and perceptions not effected through the senses. A book is perceived through the senses of sight, touch, etc., but pleasure and pain are not perceived through the sense organs.

But to return to Shankara's own theory of knowledge. The antahkarana plays an important part in his epistemology; for, as we have seen, it is the antahkarana that creates individuality by an illusory splitting up of the non-dual Self into the self and the not-self. The Self as associated with the antahkarana appears in two aspects: (1) the Self as immanent in the antahkarana—the "spark divine" or Atman in the "deep heart's core" of each one of us; and (2) the Self as the transcendent Spirit or Brahman, but conditioned by the operations of the antahkarana. To be brief and also to avoid misleading translations, let us call these aspects SI and S2. Relatively to S1, the antahkarana is an attribute; relatively to S2, it is a limitation. In other words, S2 is a limited conception of the universal Self generated by the antahkarana. Empirical knowledge is a mode or posture of the antahkarana as illuminated by S2. It is this illumination which confers the validity which we all instinctively ascribe to intellectual processes. The processes might go on without the illumination, but they would not be conscious processes.

The modes of the antahkarana being subject to constant change, there arises, as S2 constantly illuminates these changes, the delusion that SI is also subject to constant change. In other words, the ego is mistaken for SI. It is like saying that the sun itself is quivering, when we see it reflected in the ripples on the lake. Shankara says: "Though the body, the senses and the mind carry on their respective activities only by their dependence on the conscious Self", yet, "owing to non-discrimination (avidya), the qualities and activities of the body, the senses, the mind, etc., are attributed to the Self, that is pure existence and pure consciousness, in the same way as blue colour is attributed to the sky".

One of the difficulties that have bothered Western philosophers is the explanation of this sort of error. The difficulty is a serious one, because on almost any view—whether "commonsense" or "philosophical"—error seems to enter to a greater or less degree into both perception of events and judgments about them. True, the problem is not so bad for the idealist philosophers, because they maintain that the "mind" (by which they mean in effect the antahkarana) never makes contact with outside reality at all; it merely knows "ideas", which at most are "representations" of what goes on outside. We do not see a table: we merely experience some impression of brownness, solidity, coldness, etc., which are really in ourselves. On this view, it is always possible for the mind's judgment on its own ideas to be at fault. But the realist view, according to which the mind is pictured as a searchlight playing on a real object outside ourselves and reporting on what it finds, does not provide for error. If the mind is really in contact with a real thing, there can be no mistake about what the thing is.

Shankara's view was that all errors in perception are located in the antahkarana. The error arises through a mistaken attribution or transference of ideas.

For example, the perception of silver where there is only a silver-coloured conch shell is explained as follows: When the senses come into contact with the shell, there is a modification of the antahkarana with reference to the shell. The illuminating Self (S2) then shines on the shell itself and on the antahkarana as so modified. At the same time the person's avidya is awakened, and, working on the recollection of real silver (which is, of course, revived by the similarity in appearance between the silver and the shell), it causes the impression of silver to be attributed to the real Self (S1). So it comes about that the ordinary earthly personality can be at fault, but the real Self is not touched or sullied by the false attribution of the error to it—any more than the sun is defiled through shining on a forgerer.

Errors due to physical defects in the antahkarana—such as defective eyesight due to jaundice—are similarly explained, although in this case there is no need to assume the specific intervention of avidya. In all perception and in all human judgment, however, there is always some element of limitation or error due to false attribution (adhyasa). Dreams are also illusory perceptions. They are not mere memories; for in a dream one says to oneself, "I am talking to a beautiful woman". One does not say, "I remember talking to a beautiful woman". Dreams are different from waking perception, but the difference is one of degree and not of kind. The shell that remains after the erroneous silver has been seen for what it is, is in neither case the ultimate "ground"; there is always the supreme unity, the Self, the Brahman. The Western student may compare this view with Kant's threefold division of things into the "phenomenon" (the shell), our representation of the phenomenon (the silver), and the "thing-in-itself'. To Kant the "thing-in-itself was unknowable; but to Shankara it is the ultimate ground of being, the Self, and is accessible to direct intuitive experience.

These explanations should not, however, be taken too literally or pressed too far. They are themselves empirical theories and have their limitations; in the ultimate analysis, all errors and illusions are inexplicable. If the silver did not exist here and now, it could not have been perceived: nor could mere memory have accounted for it, for when we remember something, we are really recalling a past perception of an object that is no longer present. But if the silver really does exist here and now, we should be able to pick up silver and not shell. So the silver perceived is neither real nor unreal. It belongs to a third category. Thus, of error and illusion we can only say that they exist and we know that they exist; but in saying so we imply that though we fall victims to error and illusion we are in part beyond and above them. The purpose of philosophy—in the sense in which we apply it to Shankara's teaching—is to bring us into a realm of Reality in which error and illusion no longer exist.

How, then, does illusion arise at all? We can only say that it is the product of avidya. What is avidya? Avidya is the empirical form of another concept called maya, for which there is no equivalent English term. Where does maya come from? That again is inexplicable for the same reason that illusions are inexplicable. The student is entitled to ask what use there is in embarking on an explanation of something inherently inexplicable, if that inexplicable is to be explained in terms of other inexplicables. The only answer is that the final inexplicable, maya, provides us with a fundamental principle that underlies the infinite variety of errors and illusions. Maya, in the famous Upanishadic metaphor, is the clay from which the jugs, plates and pitchers of errors and illusions are made. But the very process of explanation is illegitimate when we discuss ultimate reality, because explanations involve chopping reality up into bits and establishing relations between them—a process which is itself invalid.

To summarise: Shankara taught that there are three orders of reality—(I) the absolute, (2) the empirical, and (3) the illusory. To the illusory belong all illusory perceptions, including dreams; to the second order belong all empirical perceptions; to the first order the cognition in which there is neither subject nor object, nor mediation of any kind, the Self alone illuminating itself.

Nobody is in a position to throw stones at those who deal in inexplicables. We are surrounded by miracles all the day long—the orderly operation of our bodies, the skill with which thousands perform delicate manual operations, the mechanism by which love or anger can appear in a subtle and indescribable flash in a person's eye. Above all, there is the immensely complex and differentiated set of physiological and psychological processes by which a child becomes created as a cell so tiny that it can barely be seen by the most powerful microscope, and yet contains shut up within itself some very slight and subtle cast of countenance or idiosyncrasy of gesture, which will later give it an inescapable likeness to its parents, and which by some further miracle may persist for the best part of a century. A great deal of valuable work has been done in describing the mechanism of growth and classifying the facts of heredity. The various factors in heredity have even been related in a rough and ready way to some of the parts of the individual after it has started to grow, but very little headway has been made towards understanding the miracle of the original cell, and none at all, on the scientific level towards understanding the cause—if that is the right word—of the whole process.

Most European philosophers have challenged the common-sense notion of cause and effect—or at least the commonsense description of the processes usually regarded as causal, Shankara also subjected the idea of causality to a penetrating analysis and showed that ultimately it is unintelligible. It is interesting that Shankara's position is very much the same as that of A. N. Whitehead.

In the first place, the causal law requires a relation between the cause and the effect, and all relations of this kind are unintelligible, since a relation is either (1) identified with one or other of the two things related—in which case it is superfluous, or (2) separate from the things related—in which case we have to look for two fresh relations connecting the ends of the relation, so to speak, with the two things related, which lands us in an "infinite regress".

Shankara then refuted the various theories advanced by the schools of thought of his time—all of which have counter-parts in Western philosophy. These theories were based broadly on one of two assumptions: (1) that the effect is pre-existent in the cause, or (2) that the effect is not pre-existent in the cause but is an entirely new thing produced out of the cause. Taking the second view first, the primary difficulty is that only like causes produce like effects: one cannot sow oats and reap barley: curds must to some extent exist in milk—otherwise they might equally well be made from clay. The argument that there is some "subtle predisposing form" in the milk that produces the curds merely takes us back to the first assumption. If it is argued that a cause has a certain "potency" to produce a specific effect, this potency being non-existent until it is itself produced, it may be cogently asked whether this potency is (1) of the nature of the cause, (2) distinct from it, or (3) altogether of the nature of non-existence. If (1) is true, then the potency is superfluous. If (2) is true, then since the potency is distinct from the effect (and from all other effects) it is difficult to see how it could produce a specific effect. The third possibility would not explain the emergence of a specific effect at all. In other words it is difficult to conceive of any such potency unless it were in some sense one with the cause and also the effect.

If the effect is pre-existent in the cause in a latent form—and it cannot be in any other form—and becomes manifest as the effect after the passage of time, we are still in difficulties. What is this manifestation? It must itself in some sense have been produced, for otherwise (a) it would be eternal and all effects would be liable to become manifest at all times, and (b) it would be the one causeless thing in existence—a formidable exception to the original assumption that all effects have causes. Does the manifestation exist before it is itself manifested? It is a contradiction in terms to say so. On the other hand, if it is non-existent, we are faced with an effect that was altogether non-existent before it appeared, which is contrary to the premise from which we started. Moreover, if the effect is preexistent "in" the cause, in what manner can the effect be said to abide in the cause? A separate "intimate relation" linking the two would, as we have seen, be unintelligible. How, moreover, would the effect which is an aggregate of parts subsist—if it is to do so—upon its cause, viz.: its constituent parts? Would it subsist (1) upon all the parts taken together, or (2) upon each one of them singly in turn?

If (I) is true, then it would be impossible to perceive a whole as such, because the theory would apply to the process of perception itself, and there would not possibly be in one act of perception a perceptive contact between the individual elements of the cause and the perceiving sense. In fact, of course, we do grasp complex wholes collectively—the notes of a chord for example.

If (2) is true, and one segment of the whole effect comes into contact with its corresponding constituent causal part, then although the difficulty of perceiving the individual elements of the cause disappears, we shall have to imagine a series of constituent parts other than those out of which the effect was actually produced, so as to make it possible for the former series of parts to subsist upon the latter series in succession; it is by a series of constituent parts distinct from those of the scabbard that the sword fits into the scabbard. Such a supposition would lead to an infinite regress, because a new series of constituent parts would have to be imagined which would reside upon the series of constituent parts first imagined, and thereafter a second new series and so on.

On the other hand, if the whole effect were to reside completely in any single one of its constituent parts, then while the whole cause is performing its function in one part, it can scarcely be performing its function in another. If the cow effect resides in nothing but the horn cause, on this view the horn would be expected to perform, inter alia, the function of the udder in addition to its own function, which is absurd. In a chord one note would be sounding not only for itself but for the other notes of the chord.

On this subject Shankara's logic reaches a new and finer shade of subtlety in the following passage: "Further, if the effect were to be non-existent before its origination, then the process of origination would have neither a grammatical subject nor any substantiality. For origination certainly is an action, and as such requires—like any other action, such as walking—a grammatical subject. That we should have an action without a grammatical subject is a contradiction. When we speak of a jar originating, if the origination is not to have the jar as its grammatical subject, we shall have in that case to imagine some other grammatical subject (say, potsherds). And similarly when we speak of potsherds originating we shall have to imagine something else as being the grammatical subject of that action. If that were true, when one says "the jar originates", one will have to be taken to say that it is the potmaker and other causes which are doing the originating. In ordinary life, however, when there is a statement made about the origination of the jar, one never understands that even the pot-maker and so forth are being originated; these are understood to have been already originated.

"If, further, we were to argue that the origination of, and the acquiring-of-a-concrete-individuality by, an effect is simply the effect's coming into relation with its cause and with the genus existence respectively, you would have to explain how a thing that has not yet obtained substantiality can have any relations at all. A relation is possible only between two existing entities, and not between two non-existing entities."

Shankara argues further that the very statement that an effect is non-existent prior to its origination is absurd, for since the non-existence of an entity is void of characterisation, we cannot apply to it a limitation such as "prior to origination". "Surely an attempt at delimitation, like 'The barren woman's son was king before the coronation of Purnavarman' cannot convey any specification as to when the barren woman's son (who is void of all reality) became, or is, or will become, king". Shankara concludes, on a characteristic note: "He … who considers the effect as non-existent prior to its origination: in his theory the operation of causal agencies will have no material on which to operate; for as the non-existent effect cannot be that material, it would be like using … a sword … for the purpose of hacking the ether to pieces".

The conclusion is that, however we may look at it, the causal law is unreal. The effect is in essence one with the cause. Cause alone is real, and change is only phenomenal. The cause only appears to change into effect; what actually changes is the name and form. The clay and the pot have clay for their essence; but there is a change of name and form when the pot is. made. Similarly, the space enclosed in the pot may appear to be an effect of infinite space, but it is manifestly one with the cause. The change is only in name and form, which are a fabrication of avidya and valid only for the phenomenal world. The snake that one perceives erroneously where there is actually a piece of rope may be considered to be an effect of the rope, but when the cause, the rope, is known, the effect vanishes. Thus the cause alone is real. This view is not far distant from that of Aristotle. To Aristotle's view, it is often objected that the process of analysis between form and essence can be carried back indefinitely, and that we can no longer stop at the "earth, air, fire and water" of Aristotle's time, but this does not seem so serious in the light of modern physical research into the constitution of matter. At any rate, neither his view nor Shankara's is inconsistent with the results of scientific research. Where Shankara parts company with both Aristotle and the scientists is that, whereas they feel that they have come to the end of their research when they have reached earth, air, fire or electrons, or whatever they regard as the basic "material cause", Shankara saw as the "ground" or essence of all such material causes the all-pervading Self or Brahman.

Cause and effect are always presented together to our consciousness. Though we may distinguish them within the consciousness, we cannot separate them in fact. For instance, it is only the presence of the clay-cause that brings us the knowledge of the jar-effect. A good example of a cause and effect which clearly cannot be distinguished is a cloth, which is an aggregate of the constituent threads. The effect here is the cause arranged in a certain way—given a particular form and name. All that the "efficient" cause—to use Aristotle's terms—i.e., the weaver—does with the "material" cause—threads—is to rearrange the material cause into the form of the effect—the cloth. The new effect-form is also one in essence with the cause, "inasmuch as what does not exist already in the cause as being one in essence with it, cannot be originated". Mere change of form cannot alter the essence of things. For surely Devadatta (the Indian equivalent of John Smith) seated with his hands and legs drawn together does not become a different entity in essence when one observes him in another position with his hands and legs stretched out … In a like manner, our parents and relations, even though we observe them day after day in different postures, do not become different in essence, inasmuch as we can recognise them. A child in the womb is not reckoned as distinct in essence from the child that is born. We should not be misled by the manifestation of that which is latent. We cannot see the pattern of a roll of cloth until it is unrolled. The plant is concealed within the seed, the apparent concealment being due to our avidya.

In other words, neither the hen nor the egg comes first, but both stretch back into the infinite past and promise to stretch to infinity in the future. No causal explanation can ever be complete. This again is a view which has been accepted by some European philosophers and scientists. Jeans says "There is no scientific justification for dividing the happenings of the world into detached events, and still less for supposing that they are strung in pairs, like rows of dominoes, each being the cause of the event which follows and at the same time the effect of that which precedes".

Shankara regards the idea of a "first cause" as involving a self-contradiction; because it would mean that there was a causeless cause. Nevertheless, Shankara demolishes the causal theory only to maintain the doctrine of the Self on which his whole philosophy is based. This does not mean that the relationship of cause and effect has no validity at all: it has an empirical validity in the field of material objects. It is true to say that the dog has died today as an effect of the poison it ate yesterday; what is not true is (1) that the poison and the live dog are somehow transformed into a new article, the dead dog; (2) that giving the poison and the death stand by themselves without any relation to the past or future; or (3) that the whole of experience can be chopped up into isolated events connected by causal relationships of this sort going back to some "first cause".

It is now possible to summarise Shankara's position regarding empirical knowledge. The notion of "consciousness-of-objects", which is the basis of all our empirical knowledge, is a source of error. We split up the one reality of consciousness into the subject, the object, and the subject-object relation; but no such relation is ultimately true, or even intelligible. Moreover, our knowledge of objects involves some notion of a "materiality", whose nature we regard to be in a region of non-self and non-consciousness. The consciousness of objects is the result of a confusion between the real Self and unreal objects; it is the product of "adhyasa" given rise to by avidya. An illusory perception of a thing is attributed to the real thing in itself and thus to the all pervading absolute Self. Similarly, the causal law, although it has a relative validity in relation to our empirical knowledge, is in the last analysis a fiction.

In Shankara's view, all objects existing in space and time, and space and time themselves, are manifested only in relation to the Self and are all ultimately found to be either the Self in essence or nothing at all. In truly knowing anything we know only the Self; and the object-consciousness of ordinary life is true only for a particular mode of consciousness conditioned by the antahkarana.

We therefore come back to the essence of Shankara's approach. Dialectical thinking is dependent on the self-illuminating consciousness for its manifestation, but such thinking cannot bring us to a knowledge of the real. To say "I am I" is a tautology and gets us nowhere; to say "I am X" is, on the face of it, absurd. This is just what we do, however, when we are thinking dialectically. This is how we perform the false attribution of outside things to the inner Self. These attributions are natural and beginningless, and are the root of all false knowledge and sense of duality.

The real is inexplicable; it simply is. In going from the unreal to the real, we jump on to another plane of thought. It is not a continuous development or a series of steps. No man by taking thought can add a cubit to his spiritual stature. And when the unreal is known, it vanishes immediately the reality behind it is perceived. The process is instantaneous and there is no time lag between the two, for if there were such a gap between the superseding of the unreal and apprehension of the real, this gap would be filled with something which was of the nature either of the real or of the unreal—and so on in an infinite regress. The real comprehends the finite, but the most which the finite mind by itself can acquire is a vague sense of the infinite reality. Thought cannot know the real.

It is this limitation which forces us to seek the real by negative rather than positive methods; otherwise we remain, so to speak, hypnotised in the state of the unreal and unable to proceed to the higher plane of the real. Right knowledge is therefore defined as that which is not nullified or contradicted by subsequent experience. Right knowledge is self-manifest and therefore not dependent on any extraneous agency such as physical light, sense organs, or even thought. Knowledge acquired is valid only until it is superseded by higher knowledge. Of course this is equally true in the empirical realm studied by science. A straight stick appears crooked when dipped in water. In relation to the eye, the crookedness is real. When touch reveals the straightness of the stick, that is relatively a higher truth.

On the other hand, because our empirical knowledge shows this sort of relativity, this does not mean that knowledge itself is only relatively true. The relativity resides in our finite minds. In science, hypotheses and theories are constantly overhauled and rejected and fresh ones substituted, not because scientific knowledge is admitted to be relative, but because we have in us an innate faith that even in this realm absolute knowledge is attainable. In the view of Shankara, the world-appearance is true to our waking consciousness, but it will be finally superseded in its entirety when Brahman, the absolute reality, is realised. Brahman is not superseded by any experience. When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part is done away.

In taking this view, Shankara steered a middle course between the two main Hindu schools of thought. One school held that all knowledge—empirical or spiritual—was self-valid, self-proved or self-evident; while the other held that knowledge was only valid if it withstood certain tests such as consistency (they were what we should to-day call "verificationists"). Shankara held that knowledge was self-valid insofar as it was not vitiated by defect (dosa)—or what we should call "errors of observation". He argued that this purely negative test did not destroy the inherent self-validity of knowledge.

This chapter has taken us through some rather complicated by-ways of thought; and at the end we are not left with any imposing system of constructive metaphysics. This conclusion amounts to little more than that reached by Hume—that ratiocination is not in itself a sufficient means for the discovery of truth. The importance of the part of the writings of Shankara and his school that we have just reviewed lies in that we can see him going over the same problems that have occupied metaphysicians from Aristotle 1,000 years before his time to Whitehead over 1,000 years after. Putting the matter at its lowest level, his conclusions point to a solution of these verbal puzzles on the intellectual level, which on the one hand is at least not inconsistent with the empirical scientific approach and on the other is a reflection of a coherent attitude on the spiritual level.