Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s7: Analysis of Experience
Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s7
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Analysis of Experience
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We have referred, in another place, to the theory of the grades or kinds of consciousness sketched in the Māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad.³ Gauḍapāda takes his stand on this analysis and urges that dream experiences are on a par with the waking ones. If the dream states do not fit into the context of the general experience of our fellow men or of our own normal experience,¹ it must be understood that it is not because they fall short of absolute reality, but because they do not conform to our conventional standards. They constitute a separate class of experiences, and, within their order, they are coherent. The water in the dream can quench the thirst in the dream, and to say that it does not quench the real thirst is irrelevant. To say so is to assume that waking experience is real in itself and is the only real. The two, waking and dream states, are equally real within their own orders or equally unreal in an absolute sense.² Gauḍapāda recognises that the objects of waking experience are common to us all, while those of dreams are the private property of the dreamer.³ Yet he says: "As in dream, so in waking, the objects seen are unreal."⁴ His contention is that whatever is presented as an object is unreal. The argument that all objects are unreal and only the subject that is the constant witness self is real, is suggested in some Upaniṣads and developed with negative results in Buddhistic thought. It is now employed by Gauḍapāda to prove that life is a waking dream.⁵ We accept the waking world as objective, not because we experience other people's mental states, but because we accept their testimony. The relations of space, time and cause, which govern the objects of the waking world, need not be considered to be ultimate. According to Gauḍapāda, "By the nature of a thing is understood that which is complete in itself, that which is its very condition, that which is inborn, that which is not accidental, or that which does not cease to be itself.''¹ When we apply such a test, we find that both the souls and the world are nothing by themselves and are Ātman only.²
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³ See vol. i, pp. 32-33, 159 ff. Cp. Bradley: Truth and Reality, pp. 462-4.
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¹ ii. 203.
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² "When I consider the matter carefully, I do not find a single characteristic by means of which I can certainly determine whether I am awake or whether I dream. The visions of a dream and the experiences of my waking state are so much alike that I am completely puzzled, and I do not really know that I am not dreaming at this moment" (Descartes: Meditations, p. i). Pascal is right when he asserts that if the same dream came to us every night we should be just as much occupied by it as by the things which we see every day. To quote his words: "If an artisan were certain that he would dream every night for fully twelve hours that he was a king, I believe that he would be just as happy as a king who dreams every night for twelve hours that he is an artisan."
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³ ii. 14.
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⁴ ii. 4.
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⁵ ii. 31.
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¹ iv. 9.
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² iv. 10. 28, 61.
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The phenomena of experience present themselves to our mind as obeying certain laws and bound by certain relations, of which the chief is cause. What is the order in which the cause and the effect succeed each other? If they are simultaneous, like the two horns of an animal, they cannot be related as cause and effect. The analogy of the seed and the tree is not more helpful. We cannot call anything an effect if we do not know its cause.³ In the nature of the case, the causal explanation cannot be complete. We regard any given state of things as conditioned and ask for its conditions, and when the latter are found we have to go behind them. Such a process has no finality about it.⁴ If, however, we believe that there are beginningless eternal causes which are themselves uncaused and yet produce effects, then how, Gauḍapāda asks, can that which produces itself be unproduced (ajā)? How can a thing which changes be also eternal? Where can we find unproduced things producing things? Cause and effect are obviously relative, sustaining each other and falling together.⁵ Causality is not of the nature of reality, but only a condition of knowledge. Gauḍapāda says: ''Neither the unreal nor the real can have the unreal as their cause; nor can the real have the real as its cause . . . and how could the real be a cause of the unreal?''⁶ The difficulties of causation lead Gauḍapāda to say that ''nothing is produced either by itself or by another, nor is anything in fact produced, whether it be being, or non-being, or either.''⁷ Causation is an impossibility. We cannot say either that God is the cause of the world or that the waking experience is the cause of the dream states.¹ The various things, subjective and objective, the individual souls and the world, are all unreal.² They only seem to be real so long as we accept the principle of causality.³ “Everything is produced by the power of saṃvṛti (or relative truth), and nothing is therefore eternal; everything, again, is unborn, being inseparable from sat, and there is nothing therefore like destruction.” ⁴ Production and destruction are only phenomena, and in reality there is nothing produced or destroyed.⁵ We have to negate causality and other relations to reach the real, which transcends the phenomenal.⁶
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³ iv. 16-21.
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⁴ Ch. iv. 11-13, 21, 23, 25.
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⁵ iv. 14-15.
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⁶ iv. 40.
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⁷ iv. 22. Śaṁkara comments on this thus: ''In fact, the being produced by something is impossible to establish in any manner. Nothing is born of itself, *i.e.* from its own form. Nothing can reproduce itself, as a jar a jar. Nor is anything produced from something else, as cloth from a jar; and another cloth from the first; and nothing can be born both of itself and of another for obvious reasons; for a jar and a cloth cannot together produce either the one or the other.''
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¹ iv. 39. ² iv. 51-52, 67. ³ iv. 55-56; iv. 42. ⁴ iv. 57. ⁵ ii. 32. ⁶ Prapañcopaśamam, ii. 35. ⁷ Jacobi puts Gauḍapāda’s argument in the following syllogistic form: “Things seen in the waking state are not true: this is the proposition (pratijñā); because they are seen, this is the reason (hetu); just like things seen in a dream, this is the instance (dṛṣṭānta) : as things seen in a dream are not true, so the property of being seen belongs in like manner to things seen in the waking state; this is the application of the reason (hetūpanaya); therefore things seen in the waking state are also untrue; this is the conclusion (nigamana)” (J.A.O.S., vol. xxxiii, part i, April 1913). See also ii. 29, 31; iv. 61-66, 72-73. ⁸ ii. 15 and 17, and iv. 47. ⁹ iv. 45-48, 72; iv. 77; i. 17.
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It is necessary to note that the distinction of subjective and objective in the Advaita is not identical with the usual one. The mental world is as much objective or unreal as the material, for the only subject or reality is Ātman. While both Gauḍapāda and Śaṃkara advocate this view, Śaṃkara takes special care to distinguish the dream world from the waking one. While Śaṃkara insists that the two worlds, mental and material, are not of the same kind or order, though they are in essence Brahman, Gauḍapāda is liable to the charge of subjectivism in the traditional sense, since he uses the arguments which the Buddhist Vijñānavāda employs to prove the unreality of external objects of perception and traces them to ideas of mind.⁷ It is the movement of consciousness (vijñānaspanditam) that produces the appearance of the perceiving and the perceived, and we imagine a variety where it is not.⁸ The world exists only in the mind of man.⁹ Gauḍapāda reduces all reality to mental impressions, and declares that the latter have no objective causes. “Arguments drawn from the nature of the things points to the causelessness of the cause."' ¹ " The citta (or thought) does not relate itself to objects, nor does it allow them to reflect themselves in itself; for objects are unreal and their reflection is not apart from it (citta)." ²
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¹ iv. 25. Śaṁkara, commenting on it, writes: " Jars, etc., which you take as the objective causes of subjective impressions, have themselves no cause, nothing to rest upon; they are therefore not the cause of subjective impressions."
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² iv. 26.
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The realist contends that ideas and feelings would not arise if external things did not cause them. Gauḍapāda shows the unreasonableness of assuming objects existing beside and independent of ideas, and Śaṁkara is obliged to admit that this refutation is " the argument of the Buddhists of the Vijñānavāda school who combat the opinion of the realists (bāhyārthavādins), and the teacher agrees with them thus far." ³
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³ iv. 21, 25-27.
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But even the theory of a real flow of ideas is repugnant to Gauḍapāda. He refutes the central position of the vijñānavāda, *viz.* the reality of citta. " Therefore mind (citta) does not originate, nor do objects cognised by the mind originate. Those who pretend to recognise the origination of them seem to see only marks in the air." ⁴ If the whole experience is only apparent, what is the distinction between true and false perception? From the standpoint of the absolute, there is none at all. The perception of the rope as rope is as vicious as the perception of the rope as snake. The consciousness of objects present in waking and dream experiences is not a constant factor. We have dreamless sleep in which there is no cognition of external and internal objects. We have only a unity where all things seem to melt into one indiscriminate mass of sentiency.⁵ The existence of this state is a clear evidence that knowledge, with its distinctions of knower and known, is not ultimate. Dreams are real so long as we dream; waking experiences so long as we do not dream or sleep. Dreamless sleep from which we pass into waking or dream is as unreal as the other states, and all the three disclose their relative character when the individual wakes up " from the sleep of delusion, which has no beginning, and realises the unborn, ever awake, dreamless, one, without a second.” 1
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⁴ iv. 28.
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⁵ Yathā rātrau naiśena tamasā'vibhajyamānaṁ sarvaṁ ghanam iva, tadvat prajñānaghana eva.
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Another reason assigned for the unreality of the world is that “anything which is naught at the beginning and is so also at the end, necessarily does not exist in the middle.” 2 In other words, whatever has beginning or end is unreal.³ The test of reality is not objectivity or practical efficiency, but persistence for all time or absolute self-existence. Objects of waking experience come to naught in dreams, and vice versa. Gauḍapāda thus establishes the unreal character of the world of experience (1) by its similarity to dream states; (2) by its presented or objective character; (3) by the unintelligibility of the relations which organise it; and (4) by its non-persistence for all time.
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³ ii. 7.
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Admitting that relativity is the all-absorbing power governing things in the realm of experience, he posits the reality of something which transcends experience and relativity. The possibility of the relative implies the reality of the absolute. If we deny the real, we deny the relative also.⁴ The Upaniṣads declare that, beyond the three states, as the basis of them all, is the Ātman.⁵ It alone is. It is indivisible, for were there parts in it there would be plurality. There can be no differences or distinctions in being, for what is different from being is non-being, and non-being is not. “That which is cannot not be, as that which is not cannot also be.” 6 Being is identical with thought, for if it were not, it could not otherwise be absolutely one. Thought is the same thing as being; but this thought is not human thought, which needs an object. Such a conception would involve relations and therefore dualism. Thought here means simple self-luminousness, which renders possible all relative knowledge. “The ever unborn, awake, dreamless, illumines itself of itself. It is ever illumined by its very nature.” 7 The absolute is not to be confused with a negative blank such as we have in sound sleep. In the latter we have non-cognition, while in Brahman we have pure cognition.¹ The three states of waking, dreaming and sleep are the three modes in which the one unconditioned Ātman reveals itself when it is limited by different upādhis (limitations).²
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¹ i. 16.
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² ii. 6.
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⁴ iii. 28.
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⁵ i. 1. Eka eva tridhā smṛtaḥ. Cp. Sattvāj jāgaraṇaṃ vidyād, rajasā svapnam ādiśet, Prasvāpanaṃ tu tamasā turīyaṃ triṣu saṃtatam. See S.P.B., i. 91.
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⁶ iv. 4.
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⁷ iv. 81. See also iii. 33, 35-36.
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¹ iii. 34. See also i. 26–29; iii. 26; iv. 9.
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² The Ātman associated with the gross body, the subtle body and the causal body is called Viśva, Taijasa and Prājña. Cp. with this the Hegelian idea that the successive steps by which the human mind gradually passes from less adequate to more adequate conceptions of reality correspond to the stages of the process by which reality itself is manifested with ever-increasing adequacy in an ascending order of phenomena.
Cites (2)
- Āgamaśāstra — Gauḍapāda, Sanskrit
- Māṇḍūkyopaniṣad — Sanskrit