English
”* The analogy between Samkara’s and Plato’s formulation of the problem of knowledge is so striking that one seems to be the exact echo or replica of the other. A difference, how¬ ever, comes out, it would appear, in the respective working out of this problem. So far as the answer is given by Plato in the form of a myth that “ all learning is recollection,”! it might be construed as * Meno, 80 D. t Ibid, 81 B. ANALYSIS OP EXPERIENCE 143 a surrender to unscientific consciousness or poetic fiction—an inevitable sequel to his failure in taking by the horns, as the phrase goes, the persistent dilemma of knowledge. Samkara on the other hand, can legitimately claim to have escaped be¬ tween the horns, so far as he holds that enquiry or knowledge is possible for us. For, although there is knowledge in the form of confused notions with regard to the nature of Brahman, as the sole object of knowledge, there is the absence of true knowledge (which can be of one form only) and hence the pre¬ sumed uselessness of enquiry has reference to those varieties of contradictory opinions and not to right opinion or truth.* On a closer comparative study of the answers given by Plato and Samkara respect, ively, we find that there is thorough agreement between them on the fundamentals. The Platonic doctrine of Reminiscence is not a mere mvth or a worthless husk ; even if it be a husk, it conceals a rich kernel of philosophic truth. For in studying Plato we must cultivate that mental alertness which does not accept things at their face-value ; for Plato was first a poet said then a philosopher, and so the form of analogy came readily to him. “ The metaphor of 4 Reminiscence,’ ” as Edward Caird rightly interprets it,t “ is a convenient way of bringing before us the idea that the acquisition of flfiiM wfa ftsfinHk—Com. on V.S., I. 1. i. f Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, p. 8. A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA knowledge is not a process of putting something into the mind ab extra, but the evolution of some¬ thing involved in its own nature.” Stripped of all metaphors, the doctrine in question means not going back to the beginningless past in search of truth but delving into one’s deeper nature and collecting or gathering it up anew by separating it from its extraneous associations. The echo of the Socratic yvtadi (reavro'v (“ know thyself ”) makes itself heard here. That this was the deeper meaning of the myth of Reminiscence seems to be further countenanced by the fact that the Platonic Socrates was known to have practised the obstetric art upon the souls of those questioned by him, as did his mother Phsenerate upon human bodies. The task of the philosopher is simply to help the soul in giving birth to the truth that is struggling for expression. To Samkara as well as to Plato, opinion ( ) is not a mere synonym of ignorance but a tertium quid mid-way between knowledge and ignorance. Erroneous opinion, though false, is knowledge all the same : it is inchoate or confused knowledge, experientia vaga in the Spinozistic sense; and it is not by negating or excluding opinion but only by incorporating or transmuting it that knowledge justifies its existence as something essentially dynamic in nature. The service that all scriptures and all teachers of philosophy can render in this transition from the implicit to the explicit state of knowledge is, after ajl, a negative one—of removing the obstacles that stand in the way of this self¬ revelation of Knowledge. Knowledge shines, According to the Vedanta, by a free grace as it Vfere. ANALYSIS 0? EXPERIENCE 145 Thus beyond all verbal differences, there is a funda¬ mental agreement between Plato and Sainkara. All knowledge, according to one, is Recollection; while, according to the other, all knowledge 1 is Reve¬ lation. From the trend of foregoing reflections it is evident that immediate experience or common- sense valuation forms, as it needs must do, the in¬ evitable starting-point of knowledge from the stand¬ point of the Vedanta. This stage of knowledge, with unreflecting acquiescence super-induced there¬ on, is necessarily characterised by distracting varieties of opinion, the inherent contradictions of which lead one to doubt, and wonder, and finally to ask like the jesting Pilate : * What is truth? ’ What was originally uttered in jest is, however, the characteristic mood of philosophic earnest. This occasions the necessity of transcending the stage of immediate unreflecting experience, and entering upon that of thought proper, which promises a satis¬ factory answer to the age-long question : “ What is truth?” Now, if thinking is questioning experience, the characteristic form in which such thinking expresses itself is: what is that ?—that is to say, the form of judgment proper. This judgment as the unit of thought involves a reference beyond the that ’ or datum of immediate experience to a ‘ what ’ that it means and stands for, and thus owns it as the predicate. The * that * and the * what * as brought together in the judgment clearly impli¬ cate a relation. But what is emphasised from the standpoint of Advaita-Vedanta is that it is tjje 19 146 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA underlying meaning and not the mere relational form of judgments which is the real determinant of the import of propositions—whether the knowledge expressed therein is relational or non-relational in character. The crucial instance of this is to be found in such well-known judgments as ‘ this is the same Devadatta ’■ or ‘ thou art that ’ ( afwfa ) —which though entering into the rela¬ tionship of subject and predicate do yet remain non-relational in respect of their resultant know¬ ledge ( filfqqreWi jfa ifonw i fc YTT^ )• In view of the fact that a rigorous distinction between Indeterminate and Determinate knowledge has been enforced in Eastern as Well as Western philosophy, something more than a passing notice is here called for. In the first instance we can class together the Buddhists, Samkara and Kant so far as they agree in holding the indeterminate state to be a pure manifold. The determinations (fSmrc ) are extraneous additions and the manifold, when schematised, gives.only phenomena. The agreement extends so far only. Kant holds that the ‘ manifold of sense ’ arises on the action of the ‘ things in themselves ’ (Dinge an sick), which are different from, but tran- scendentally not less real than, the principle of consciousness. According to Samkara, however, -the manifold is a determination in caitanyam () which is to be ascribed to the process of adhy&sa (xpzrren) or illusory superimposition condi¬ tioned by rmya (writ). But mdya, unlike Kant’s Dingean $ich has not the same transcendental Analysis of expebience 14 ? reality as ‘ Brahman, ’ for Brahman is sat (n) pr the Reality, while maya, is indeterminate as a cate¬ gory, and thus ineffable (). Ac¬ cording to the Buddhists, again, the manifold is a determination in the primal Void or Negation and arises by a process of negation within Negation. We can, on the other hand, place the Naiyayikas, Ramanuja and Hegel, in a class apart, so far as they unanimously believe that in determinate perception there emerges nothing that is adventitious or foreign but that which has a prior implicit existence in the indeterminate state. According to the Naiyayikas, the indeterminate perception is the first stage in the process of perception, and is some¬ thing of which we are not conscious directly. It is something whose existence is inferred from the existence of determinate perception, of which the indeterminate perception is the indispensable back¬ ground or logical prius. The indeterminate per¬ ception reveals the things with their characteristics and universals, but not being associated with any name, it is more or less indistinct. It has been sometimes called dlocanajMnam which is indeterminate to begin with, and com¬ parable to the knowledge of children and of the dumb, like the product of something inarticulate.' x The categories such as ‘ generic nature ’ (|Tf?n), etc., that lie implicit in the indeterminate stage, are explicitly predicated, in determinate perception, J48 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA of their proper subjects in the form of judgment. The judgment in determinate perception thus does not import anything new or foreign, but states only explicitly in the relational form what is already implicitly present in the content in a non-relational foam. The Naiyayikas further sub-divide the relational consciousness into vyavasdya (sqroro:) ;hr -determinate perception and anuvyavasnya or self-conscious perception. The former gives only the cognition of an object; in it the form Which is implicit in a content is explicitly related to it as predicate to a subject. The latter, however, is the cognition that I am aware of this cognition and succeeds the former: in it the relating activity itself is made the object of cognition. Hegel also agrees with the Naiyayikas in recognising the forms and categories as not something foreign or alien, but as already lying implicit in the indeterminate state, only waiting to be made explicit. From the Hegelian point of view this passage from the im¬ plicit to the explicit is itself something necessitated by the nature of the content. It is, in the technical phraseology of Hegel’s philosophy, the inner dialectic of the Idea. With the Naiyayikas, on the contrary, it is the relating activity of the thinker and, not the necessity of the content that brings about this transition.