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SRI RAMANUJA'S
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
A STUDY
BY
K. C. VARADACHARI.
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The book 11 nder review is a modelin lucidi exposition of abstruse and knotty
questions of philosophy and does a great service to Ramanuja's system by
expounding his Theory of Knowledge and his Pratitantra of Sariraśarīribhava
an organic body soul unity in the language of Western Philosophy, and
supporting it by quota tions from Western philosophical literature, ancient
and modern. Our thanks are due to the Sri Venkatesvara Oriental Institute
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-THE HINDU.

·THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
A STUDY
♡
BY
Dr. K. C. VARADACHARI, M.A., Ph.D.
Render in Philosophy, Sri Venkatesvara University, (formerly Professor of
Philosophy cind Comparative Religion, Sri Venkatestara Oriental
112stitute Sri Venkatesvara College.)
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1956
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·FOREWORD -10: My friend Dr. K. C. VARADACHARI asked me to write a foreword to his book " Rāmānuja's Theory of Knowledge." I gladly comply with his request on account of my interest in the subject and my desire to express my appreciation of the scholarly contribution made by the author to the Philosophy of Rāmānuja. Dr. Varadachari rightly begins his study with the thesis that Rāmānuja is a synthetic thinker who reconciles all conflicts in the pramāņıs and seeks to do justice to the facts of physical, moral and spiritual experience. He expounds Rāmānuja's Theory of Knowledge in a succinct way by repudiating all rival theories and removes the misconception that Viśiştādvaita is qualified monisın. Realism and Idealism are only partial views and their defects are removed by the Organic theory of Rāmānuja. In the sections dealing with Perception he clearly brings out the truth that the physical-object is a real entity and is not constructed by thought. Whatever is presented in perception is a differenced object and an undifferenced consciousness is unthinkable. The Veda is free from all defects as it deals with eternal truths intuited by the Rşis and forms a single organic unity. Consciousness is an attribute or function of a subject or self and every cognition is of a real thing and even appearances are real. There are degrees of perfection and not degrees of reality. The theory of aprthaksiddhavišeşana is an eternal and intrinsic relation and not external and it is misleading to say that Rāmānuja's theory is an adjectival theory of the Absolute. Epistemology is based on Ontology and the central concept used by Rāmānuja to explain it is sarira-sartribhāva or the relation of body and soul which is called by the author organistic and personalistic. It harmonises the physical, moral and spiritual orders of Reality. The physica ·iv order is ever changing and it serves as the common field of all our activity. The selves undergo changes only in their consciousness and not in their nature. The unifying principle is the indwelling presence or Person that is the source, controller and goal of all beings. Thus physics is related to metaphysics and metaphysics has its basis in religion. The selſ is not God, but belongs to God who is the supreme Subject of Knowledge and the Object of love. In Mukti, the self regains its universal knowledge and attains fulness and freedoin. Dr. Varadachari has thus clearly brought out the central truths of Epistemology of Viśiştādvaita and shown its integral relation to metaphysics and religion, and it is fervently hoped that the author will soon publish the other aspects of Visiştādvaita and complete the work which he has so well begun. P. N. SRINIVASACHARI, (Retired Principal and Professor of Philosophy, Pachaiyappas's College) 1943.

·INTRODUCTION -:0: In my earlier work on the Metaphysics of Śrī Rāmānuja's Śrī Bhāşya (1928) I dealt among other topics with the nature of the soul and incidentally with the nature of consciousness. The soul is a sentience-point or an intelligence that is utterly finite, that is capable of being aware of itself without the inediation or functional activity of its consciousness, as is seen to be the case in states other than the waking and the dreaming. The soul's consciousness is inevitably used when it knows objects other than its own soul-nature. This is true even in relation to the soul knowing its own body. This indeed is the reason for considering the body to be other than the soul which possesses it and utilises it for its own purposes. This consciousness is to the soul what the rays of the Sun are to the Sun, which reveals at any moment the objects to its own substrate and reveals itself along with them Anubhūtitvam nāma vartamānadaśāyān svasattayaiva svāśrayan prati prakāśamānatvam. Svasattayaiva sva viņayasādhanatvam vā. Thus it is svayam-prakāśa but not svasmaiprakāśa. As a function of the soul or knower it is known as jñāna. It is unlike a quality for it is deemed to be a dravya for it is capable of expansion and contraction or in other words capable of modification (avasthāvad dravyam) even as the rays of the Sun. But it is not a substance in the sense in which the soul or Ātman is a substance. The consciousness as a function is incapable of being considered as a body (śarīru) of the soul, since even though a dravya in so far as it undergoes modification, it does not fulfil the conditions laid down for its being called a sarīra, since it is an attribute (visesana) of the sentient soul through which alone a body is utilised, controlled and enjoyed by its substrate. Śrī Venkatanātha writes on this point most clearly: “Yasya cetanasya yad dravyam ·vi sarvātmanā svārthe niyantum dhārayitum ca yaccheşataikasvarūpam ca tat tasya śarīram: cetanasyeti caitanya-višiştatayā pratisambandhit deśāt dharma-bhūta-jñānasya śarīratvam nirasyate. jñānam jñāna-viśistasyādheyavidheyaśeşabhūtam.' muktā-kalapa, p. 531.) The other doctrine which is more important doctrine of dharma-bhūta-jñāna and is unique to Rā system and is the cardinal principle of his syste śarīra sarīri bhāva. Throughout this thesis I har clarification of all the diverse problems implic Theory of Knowledge with its help. What is esse a constructive exposition and criticism of any s not so much the ability to refute other systems presentation of the thesis as emerging from thes sions but the necessity to show the synthetic O. integral theory in its largest development. I lav thesis attempted to do it in respect of his Epistemo have shown how it is closely inter-related with th physical and religious issues which confront u every minute. This is the first time such an att been made. This work was accepted for the Doctor of P. degree by the University of Madras in 1932. It tantially the same, though certain parts have beer rably expanded and appendices have been added. I am deeply thankful to the authorities of Venkateswara Oriental Institute and the T, T. D. tee for having included it in their Sri Venk Oriental Series. To my distinguished Professor P. vasacharya who kindly wrote the Foreword to thi offer my heartfelt thanks. To Sri P.V. Ramanujasve Director of the S. V.O. I. and General Editor of th I wish to express my gratitude for his special inte Sri D. T. Tatacharya, M.O.L., Curator of the S. V.

·vii helped me in correction of the proofs I owe sincerest obligations. A word of thanks are due to the Manager of the T. T. D. Press, for having supervised the work and seen to its publication early despite many difficulties. K. C. VARADACHARI, 1943. I am glad that a Second Edition has been called for as the First Edition bad been out of print for some time. Some corrections have been carried out in this work which is otherwise the same as the earlier edition except for the addition of an appendix on “Theism and Illusion". I once again record my deep thanks and sincere appreciation of all those who have made this publication possible. TIRUPATI Vaikuntha Ekadasi 25th December, 1955. K. C. VARADACHARI ·CONTENTS PAGE iii FOREWORD INTRODUCTION ... ness CHAPTER 1-The Theory of Perception:-Perception- What is presented in perception is not consciousness- -Two kinds of perception-Nyāya Nirvikalpaka Pratyakşa and Advaita Nirvikalpaka Pratyakşa- Consciousness and Cognition-Yogic Pratyakşa 1 CHAPTER II-Intuition and Śruti-prumāņa :-Intuition-Parāvidyā or Parajñāna-Why śabda should be accepted as authority-cosmological argument and God-Seeing and Being-Divine Knowing- Time 26 CHAPTER III-The Nature of Consciousness :-Consciousness - Consciousness not a substance Consciousas attribute--Consciousness as absent-Consciousness not the witnes nor the self but a function of a self-Consciousness not the Absolute CHAPTER IV–The Cognitive Rel tion :-Cognition as a Relation-Representationalism untenable--Degrees of Reality not valid-Nyāya-Vaiseșika view criticized - Nature of Relation-Criterion of Falsity - Reality of all cognitive content-The two-fold criterion of Reality and falsity - Reality as content of all Cognition 67 CHAPTER 7-The Problem of Unity:-Unity between the primary and secondary qualities -śarīra-śarīribhāva as the typical unity-Infinity and what it means-Brahman, the true Infinite-Consciousness and its ideal nature--Thing-in-itself - Diunity of Reality and Appearance, Organic Unity 102 ... + .

·ix PAGE CHAPTER VI-Brahman-The Higlest Unity:-Brahman--Brahman the Śarīri-Brahman the Person- Brahman the Supreme Freedom-Brahman the Siddhopāya 131 .. CHAPTER VII-Conclusion ... APPENDIX I–Višiştādvaitic Theory of Perception 171 II - A Study of Dreams in the Philosophy of Śrī Rāmānuja 184 III - Duhātmabhrama in Višiştādvaita 215 IV-Negation in Višiştādvaita 223 V Theism and Illusion S. ... INDEX ·CHAPTER I THE THEORY OF PERCEPTION I The Philosophy of Sri Rāmānuja, like most other systems of thought in India, is based more on Religious Experience, metaphysics and ethics, rather than on epistemology. Epistemology came in to substantiate the conclusions of metaphysics arrived at through psychology, It is undoubted that at a later critical period as evidenced in Buddhistic schools and Advaita, the psychological approach had more and more yielded ground to transcendental a priori thonght-construction. This transcendental approach is considered by some to be well grounded, and it is claimed that our experience must vield its place to the transcendental deductions of a priori philosophers. That logic should legislate for our experience, is certainly an important thing and cannot be denied. But logic itself should find its feet on the ground and cannot and should not soar in the sky without any let or hindrance or control of fact. Thus the viciousness of the a priori usually consists in its consistent rebuttal of the evidence of experience. Nor could experience be considered to be only of a particular kind. Experience is manifold, and the truth about experience must embrace all facts falling within experience. The doctrine of nihilism will result if any particular segment of experience alone is accepted and the rest denied. Universal propositions founded on the basis of partial applications will find logical collapse. The critical method is all for the best, but with the best of intentions the critical methods of early Buddhists and of Kant have floundered hopelessly in the ocean of fact. There is no other alternative to the criticist except to end ME 1. The Revelational a priori is different from the Kantian a priori.

·2 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE n that wonderful night wherein all cows are black,' or else simulate a phantom dialectic and claim reality to a non-existent Spirit. A hard-headed or rather tough-minded' policy of discrimination of experience in all its manifold expressions, and even when they refuse to fall into a scheme, to seek to discover that unity which is their reality, is the first and foremost need of a philosopher A realistic outlook, a scientific bias, a matter-of-fact attitude, so to speak, an intention to know things as they are ere they are reduced to forms which they are not, and a definition of the limitations or condition under which any proposition can apply with validity, constitute the fundamental approach of the common sense realist. Yathārtha-jñāna is the main aim of all philosophizings, and if we know things as they are in themselves, and as they are for others, then we may be said to know really. All propositions avail within limits. Does this mean that there are no universal propositions? As in science, we say, that' given the conditions or the limits so to speak, the proposition enunciated is universally applicable. No one will deny 'the truth of this. A universal panacea for all troubles, despite the claims made for its existence, for example, the philosopher's stone, wbich will disclose all truth, under all" conditions, and at all times, is an imaginary thing, a.' fiction, necessary, as Nietzsche will say, for making man strive to attain the impossible.::The impossible, even if it be a monster, a non-existent impossible, will have to be considered to be a possible, if life is to be bearable on this planet of revolutionary ardour. V :- All metaphysical search, then, is after the concept. of the Real, the total. Knowledge of Real is possible; and this total reality is not self-contradictory and discrete. It is a comprehensive explanation of this Reality that is being sought. Knowledge about reality 'turns out to be a real knowledge of itself. Reality is the source, and substance.

·one or the cognitive relation. Conscia than consciousness PERCEPTION 3 The causal and the teleological, and, the cosmological factors about it have been examined in an earlier work?. There are several theories of knowledge. Epistemology deals with the how, that is, as to how we apprehend the real. It investigates the apparatus of knowing and the structure of thought. It is psychological in 'approach as well as logical. The 'criterion' of 'reality has to be 'formulated. The nature of the subject, 'and the nature of the object, the nature of their comprésence have to be understood. They all depend on these three factors. Some Philosophers seek to reduce these three to homogeneous existence. . Some retain only two, and dispense with the third. Even if all the three terms are retained, their natures are altered. A self-evidency test is applied by some ; an extraneous test is applied by others in regard to the truth of the cognition. Some combine the extraneous and the intrinsic tests into one: These theories as already "remarked are results of metaphysical assumptions of certain utilitarian and scientific interests. Thus usually epistemology which is said to be the creator of metaphysics, is really a hand-paid finding reasons for the systems adopted. External reality, which is the objective world of transient plieonomena, apparently reveals no dependence upon the mind perceiving it. This is what has led to the assumptions of realism which takes consciousness to be a factor in reality but by no means the only, factor about it, Reality is more than consciousness Consciousness further is the function of the subject who perceives "the outer objects. The momentariness of outer objects, which is certainly not the truth about them, does not vitiate their existence outside the perceiving mind and does not make them unreal in any sense. Such being the case, epistemology, if it is not to be speculative but scientific, has to accept the dictates of the system of metaphysics of realism and 1. The Metaphysics of Sri Rāmānuja's Śrī Bhāsya. 1928. 1 -- .

·4 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE science, or in other words, of Common sense which i admitted and tested evidence of trained experimentere observers of experience. In Pragmatisin epistemology has a higher funct It becomes the interpretor of facts given in experience, have been tested and verified. It seeks to explain facts presented to consciousness and affirms a relativ truth, a truth that is progressively being amplified enlarged by growing experience, and incideatally capa of being modified and corrected by future experiences. In Idealism, consciousness or knowledge weeks become all important and absorbs or at least seeks absorb entire reality within itself. ! The question for us is, how far idealism is justifier claiming supremacy for Consciousness over the objects the subject. Does idealism prove that truth and bring knowledge and existence are identical? If this questior objected to on the ground that we never know anyth apart from knowing and therefore that they are identic then, what is the process of knowing or of being ? idealism that takes for granted that reality and truth identical on the basis that consciousness is reality {1 truth, such as that of Yogācāra Buddhism, Subject Idealism of Berkeley, and to a certain extent Absoli idealism, surreptitiously uses epistemology to prc reality to be consciousness only. It tries to prove th reality is consciousness only, that reality is psychic stuff, is mere consciousness not either a consciousne89 anything or belonging to any subject. Nowhere do we reality or in experience come across this kind of expe ence, except in the sophisticated Experience of Absolu Idealism. It is therefore important that we shou criticize epistemological idealism as something fund mentally unsound because it pleads for subjectivism and a absurd unreal objectivity which it cannot dissolve, muc ·PERCEPTION 5 less explain. Likewise, there is another kind of epistemological idealism which claims that One undifferenced Consciousness (Experience) under the stress of illusion of diversity fulgurates or differentiates, or appears to do so in an unreal manner, into subjects and objects.' This is epistemology that has ascended to metaphysical status. This also therefore is what we have to criticize if we would save true metaphysics. sri Rāmānuja undertakes to point out the defects of the epistemological absolutists. Epistemology must be realistic, founded on the tested experience of the ordinary man, enabling him to understand the true nature of knowledge as well as truth, in order to be able to function in the ordinary universe of action and to struggle to realize of the highest values of life, paramapuruṣārtha. Epistemology determines the validity of the system of metaphysics accepted, but on that account it should not be construed to be fit to override the facts of the inetaphysical order. All facts fall within experience in one sense, and all have to be known in order to be accepted as real. That there may exist other things than what we experi. ence, and that a higher consciousness may know more than ourselves, and that the highest consciousness might apprehend all things at once, might all be agreed to on the basis of inference and ordinary experience of relative knowledge. To go beyond these limits and to affirm that experience is something over and above, and other than all that we in ordinary cognition introspectively as well as observationally find to be the fact, is to construct an epistemological metaphysics, as spurious as, if not worse, than the naive affirmations of the materialist. That is to say, in the construction of metaphysics it is necessary to take into account all types of experience, all types of cognitive relationships and not merely the more abstract relationships 1. avibhāgopi buddhyātmā viparyäsitadarśanaiḥ ! grāhya-gränakasamvittibhedavāniva lakşyate. Dharmakirti : quoted by Yamunācārya : Atma-Siddh ..

·6 SRI RAMANUJA'S, THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE subsisting between the knower and the known in th act of cognition by the knower, which is made to yiel an abstract cognition or Consciousness. -- Science taking its start from perceptual' experienci (undoubtedly the only type of experience that we can hav of reality), arrives with the help of the laws of self-consis tency, and the methods of inductive inference at the concer tion of the whole reality on a realistic basis. Undoubtedl an idealistic interpretation of reality is possible as evidence by Mach's efforts, and even necessitated in certail respects. The mass of evidence, on the other hand, has no been able to get rid of contradictions with idealistic inter pretations of experience. Whilst materialism has sough to affirm merely perceptual reality and ended in a solipsign which is the characteristic feature of subjective idealisn also, the realist has been trying to arrive at approaches to reality through the twin-concepts of unity and difference of subjective and objective, of permanence and change, of perception, hearsay evidence, memory and inference. Ir. thus trying to seek guidance from these twin-concepts and in granting them fundamental solutions, realism has emerged as a type of organistic view. It is true that mere organism can never explain reality. Nevertheless between the several types of organistic explanation we can select that which is non-self-contradictory and, which converges into one focus, so to speak, the partial views due to onesided interest and experience. 1 1 Organistic Theory is typically theicomnion-sense view but with a difference. The ordinary type of common-sense view of Reality that has been expounded by Reid, Hamilton and others, and in modern times by Prof. Joad and Dr. Stout has not culminated in the Organistic view, whereas the realistic view of Prof. A. N. Whitehead has definitely taken the organistic explanation. We might even hold that the Holistic and other evolutionary and emergent theories.,cannot but, accept the organistic theory, ·PERCEPTION 7 ! though, as far as we know, they have not made up their minds on the issue. The common sense view is definitely not what the plain man in the street -- that peculiarly un available creature made claseical by Berkeley - thinks. It is what an expert in observation of reality finds to be the most acceptable, not what a speculative and adventuresome philosopher or scientist schematises or geometrizes.. There is enough scope for a fundamentally correct view of reality without the sophisticated idealistic arguments which have sought to reduce experience to nullity and vacuum and illusion on the basis of principles of abstract non-self-contradiction, infinite regress and possible invali. dity of memory and testimony. There are varieties of the above and in the above; there are apparent self-contradice tions in the abstract which turn out to be perfectly con patible in experience; there is an infinite regress which does not vitiate the conclusions; and there is testimony which is unvitiated. These can be perfectly explained in accordance with the facts of experience. Experience itself needs definition. Epistemology must investigate the conditions and limits of each principle and criticize the sources of knowledge and understanding and all the facts of every order must be considered sd as to make them 'fall into a view that is fundamentally self-consistent, efficient and all-embracive. Sri Rāmānuja starts from a metaphysical view and seeks to make out that his is a metaphysics that reconciles all conflicts according to every pramāņa (source of knowledge).' The Cognitive relation is inquired into in all its manifold phases, such as cognition of objects, cognitiveconative functions in conduct, cognitive religious functions in regard to the Supreme Cause, Being, Reality, Self, and 1. Trividhnın pramanam. pratyaksanum.nasabdabhedat Nyayapari. śuddhi, p. 36 cf. Prajaparitrana: quoted by Nyaya Parisuddhi, p. 38 (Memorial cd.) Svayam sidakis"tatha divyain pratyaksamanumagamah! Pånica santi pramānani jaimini-vyäsayorhirri !! . - ·8 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Destiny (parama-puruşārtha). in arriving at the central and basic concept of organism, Rāmānuja traces the tenets of the several schools of thought and shows their weak. nesses and their untenability. Rāmānuja thus first and foremost, is a samanvaya (synthetic) thinker who seeks to do justice to the facts of spiritual ,moral and physical orders as well as to the facts of realism and idealisin. Undoubtedly this tendency to syncretise or synthesize is traceable to the period of the Upanişads themselves, and to the Vedānta Sūtras. The intention of the author of the Vedānta Sūtras was to give a synthetic presentation of the views of the Upanişads and Brāhmaṇas and the Veda about Brahman's Nature, and attainment. Rämanuja accordingly claims to interpret the Vedānta Sūtras on the lines laid down by earlier commentators. II What is presented in Perception is not Consciousness Rāmānuja takes up perception which is the first source of right knowledge. Perception belongs to the realm of external events which are changing and perishing constantly. It is an admitted fact that objects perish or undergo change constantly. The question of duration may be left over, though this is all important to the Schools of Buddhism as well as to Advaita. The external world of objects is the world of space-time (kāla and desa), and is perceived by the self through its mind, which is its mukha or face, when its sensory organs come into contact with it in the forms of sound, touch, form, taste and smell. These sensations are of very brief duration in as much as they are shifting and changing and are non-existent in the absence of the objects of perception, though they are preserved in consciousness in a somewhat attenuated forrn of memory (jñānākara). sankara held the view that what is presented in perception is not of the stuff of sensations, not sound, nor smell, nor form nor taste nor touch but principally Pure Consciousness itself. “In the beginning ·MOTOR PERCEPTION 9 there is nothing beyond what is presented, what is and is felt, or rather felt simply." The p..rest perception which has not been influrnced by the sense-organs or their functions, reveals only knowledge or more correctly consciousness alone. Thus the essence of all objects is pure consciousness. The forms and sense-characters are merely modifications generated by sens -organs due to karma and ignorance. In that pure' apprehension which is initial uncorrupted and unmodified by any element of karma or ignorance or kal pana, ratiocination, what is revealed is pure 'isness' which is undifferenced and unqualified This is true being. All that exists exists? purely as this stuff. In order to prove this thesis, the element of change or even momentariness of all things is a necessity forced upon any theory of modification hy reason or understanding (kal panā). If this is accepted, then the Advaitic theory lands itself in buddhistic psychology of perception, and it can never get rid of this allegiance. Śrī Harşa had urdoubtedly found this to be the case, and affirmed that it is not at all a fault to accept even the buddhistic theory if it did prove to be right, as he felt it to be. But the ordinary advaitin, or inore correctly the māyā. vādin, could find a way out from the theory of momentariness (kşaņikatva) through the orthodox schools instead of the heterodox. Indeed it appears that Advaitic theory was a powerful effort of the orthodox to win over the majority of buddhists to the Vedāntic fold, and in this Gaudapāda and Sankara played the most prominent rôle. In order to prove the theory of kalpana or modification and therefore falsification or illusification, Advaita snatched upon the Nyāya-Vaiś şika distinction between two kinds or rather stages of perception the nirvikal paka, indeterminate, and the savikal pitka, determinate, perceptions. The nirvikalpaka pratyakşa reveals, according 1. Nirvikalpaka-pratyakşa is primary cognition. 2. Sarvāsti-vădins hold a simular view to the above. 2 ·10 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE to Sankara, “a permanent reality and not a momen tary isolated this... ..as in the case of buddhist theory of nirvikalpaka"! but according to Nyāya-vaise şika, it is non-definite, confused knowledge which waits determination and definition and distinctness. Rāmānuja undertakes to show that what experience involves in perception is never a mere 'is', the so-called permanent behind the momentary 'thi.', but always a well-formed isolated event which can only, because (if these characteristics, point to a'this'. Nor does it mean that the activity of knowledge is merely an 'is'-- the Inetaphysical reality of a psychical stuff. Nor can it be ever identified with consciousness as such. Between the Naiyāyic nirvikalpaka pratyaksa and the pure 'is' of Sankara's theory, there is nothing in common except thes name. Thus where Sankara is prepared to see one problem alone, Rāmānuja sees three. They are (i) The Naiyāyika nirvikalpaka pratyaksa is not definite knowledge and hence is neither true nor false. Nothing can be said about it without further investigation and looking into, and the test by pragmatica! action becomes necessary. (ii) The Naiyāyika' nirvikalpaka praksatya may be identical with Sankara's nirvikalpaka pratyakşa but it is not anubhūti, the undifferenced consciousness or Pure Experience void of subject or object. (iii) The act of cognizing may mean the fundamental functioning of consciousness, but what that consciousness reveals is neither consciousness merely, nor is it merely that which cognizes, namely the self. It is always an object, self or non-self. Rāmānuja's theory is an elucidation of these three points. 1. Tarka-Samgraha : MM. S. Kuppuswami Sastriar. 'p. 220, ·PERCEPTION 11 III Two kinds of Prceptiun There are two kinds of perception, the determinate and the indeterminate. The indeterminate perception is that in which is presented a mere 'is' or pure being, according to Sankara. According to Yogācāra, what is presented is à momentary existence, sva-laksana or pure particular. Against this view, Rāmānuja holds that non-determinate perception is the apprehension of the object in so far it is) destitute of some differences but not all difference." The apprehension of a mere 'is' without any difference whatever is in the first place not observed to take place, and in the second place, it is impossible. All cognition can be stated in terms of this is such and such'. • The true distinction between non-determinate perception and determinate perception is the apprehension of the first individual among a number of things belonging to the same class, while the latter is the apprehension of a second, third, and so on individuals." "Determinate perception is the extension to the perception of the generic character of a class-manifestation in a certain out-ward shape, which connects this act of perception with the earlier perception of the individuals of the same class. Such extension or continuance of a certain generic character is, on the other hand, not apprehended on the apprehension of the first individual, and perception of the latter kind thence is indeterminate." . 1. S B. I. i. 1. Nirvikalpakam-nānā kenacid višesena-viyuktasya graha nam na sarvavişaya rahitasya 2. S. B. I. i. 1. (p. #1 Thibaut's traus.) 3. cf, Nature of Thought by Brand Blaushard Vol. I, p. 62 4. S. B.1, i. 1. Nirvikalpakam ekajātiya dravyeşu prathamapindagrahaņum : Dvitīyādi-pinda-grahaņam sa vikalpat :...(Ananda Press ed Vol. I. p 27). Savikalpakain jatyādyaneka padārtha-visişta-vişayat vād-eva sa ise. şavis.yam. Nirvikalpakawapi savişaya-visayameva. (Ibid p. 26) cf. Vedārtha Sangraha 399, Niſvikalpakapraiyakşe’pī sa višeşameva vastu pratīyate: cf. Gangesa who defines perception as immediate awareness : pratyaksasya sākşātkāritvam laksanam.

·12 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE According to Rāmānuja every kind of perception involves (in a psychological interpretation) the perception of a structure or form (samsthāna) along with qualities of colour, touch and etc. Even the most initial perception reveals some form or structure (scimasthāna) which is a jāļi (for generic character is nothing but structure).' The apprehension in nirvikalpaka or indeterminate perception is the apprehension of structure or jāti that gives rise to the judgment of difference or unique setting. This means that all perception is, firstly an apprehension of a rūpa, a form, or sumsthāna-ākāra, and secondly, when it is connected with some other recollected or memoryda a, the form cecomes the mediating class-concept, a universal, jāii. Jāti is the extension of the rūpa especially when the rūpa is available in more than one thing. The apprehension of a relation of identical form in two things which have been observed is called determinate perception, since it determines the nature of the thing in relation to other things around it. This extension of generic connection in several things and the judgment thereon may give may give rise to julgments of difference as well as uniqueness, but no less than the second, the first perception displays the structure or form as an inherent characteristic of the thing perceived. Form is the structure of a thing and is perceived in the most initial perception, such as, this', that'. Form is a category in perception and there is no perception with out form. Every is or this' is a formed is ( sarūpa) and sumsthan 2-visosa (a structure-event). "Even if perceptive cognition takes place within one moment, we apprehend within that moment the generic character that constitutes on the one hand the difference of the thing from others, and on the other hand the 6 a 14 1. S. B. I. i. 1. p. 46 (Thibaut). Jainas also hold that every perception is of savisesa vastu ci. Hist of Indian Phil. Das Gupta Vol. I. p. 183 cf. Vedārtha Sangraha : 178 and 179 (p. 160 Telu ed.) Sannātra grähi pratyakşam na bheda grābi" ityādi vādāḥ nirastāḥ. Jātyadisainsrlānasarii s!hitasyaiva vistudaḥ, pratyakşena gļhitatvāt, tāsı aiva samsthānarūpajātrādel, pratiyogyapekṣayā bliedavyavahāra hetutvācca.

·PERCEPTION 13 peculiar character of the thing itself. And thus there remains nothing to be apprehended in a second moment." Every perception thus is a structure-event, and is an individual occurrence. It is not a mere mass of feeling, undifferenced and inarticulate. It is consciously perceived and articulated and is never to be confused with mere feeling. Even feeling is not altogether free frem quality ; awareness, even whilst it is almost soaked in feeling has yet a quality. Perception even in its most elemental and initial character is a perception of a forni, however vague it might be. It is only logical relationship and comparison that makes for determinate perception. It is the sensation of modern psychology which later on becomes perception. Modern Gestalt theory in Psychology whose special attention has been directed to perception, has adequately and amply proved that even the most elementary sensation is a perception of g stalt, samsthānusthiti or rūa. Thus it is clear that a perception of the most primitive character which is said to be nirvikalpaka. is in reality defined, relatively less of course than the savikalpaka but nonetheless defined, by structure and colour etc. (nirvikal pakamapi saviseşa-visayameva)." The refutation of the Nyāya-theory of nirvikalpaka pratyakşa (as interpreted by Advaitins) lies in the fact that there is no sensation or perception which is not characterized by some form (rūpn) and colour even if it be a mere patch. But we can conceive of the first point of awareness as sensation, indeed very pure, in so far as it is not characterized by any definite quality: it is that awareness when the consciousness is reduced to extremest 1. Ś, B ). i 1. (p. 44., T., cf. Nirvikalpakasya savićeşavişa yatām darśayati: Tātparyadipikā : udarśanasū i, p. 77. 2. Savikaltaka-pratyakşa. 3. cf. Gestalt Psychology: Kohler, p. 12) cf Psychologics of 1925 article by Koffka 4 Śatadūsani by Sri Vedānta Deśika, 11th refutation.

·14 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE poverty, as Bergson says'; and we can in modern psychological parlance, call it sensation as distinguished from perception which involves discrimination and exploration and comparison and all the other activities of constructive correlation of the mind. Sensation that is the undetermined unutterable matrix of perception, is something on which the mind has not operated in any manner and has not schematized it in any way and has not made it or reduced it into the set: patterns of objects which it pragmatically deals with. The unique quality of the sensation becomes in perception overlaid with construction of the mind and as such unreal. Sensation, nirvikulpaka, that is, that which is not compared or schematized by mind, is thus the unique first contact of the object with the mind. The main question then resolves itself into what that first moment should be like. It is, as has been well said, the point-instant when there is barely sufficient activity of consciousness to apprehend the object. Such a state of consciousness alone facilitates the awareness of the sensation, a sensation from which withdrawing we shall not be able to state at all as to what it is like. According to Rāmānuja, there is nothing wrong in accepting two steps in perception a first moment namely the sensation, and the second moment the perception which is a product of descriminative activity (v kalpız) including comparison and inference: nirvi kal pakam ekajātīyadravy-șu prathamopindagrahanam. Sensation is not to be reduced to the almost non-cognitive state, the state of rigidity of mind-body when no comparison or construc- 1 .. Creative Evolution : p 293 2. cf Buddhist Logic: Prof. Stcherbertsky : 1. p. 151, who quot s Dharmakī-ti's view ou tnis Nirvikalpaka pratyuksa. "That sensation is something quite differe-t from productive'imagiuation can be proved just by int ospection Indeed, everyone knows that an mage is a mething utterable (capable of coalesiog with a pame). Now if we b gin to stare at a patch of colour and withdraw all our thoug ts on whatsoever cther (objecta), if we thus educe ur consciousness to a cou lition of rigidity, (and become as though uncouscious), this will be the condition of the pure sensation...

·PERCEPTION 15 tion (vikul pa) is possible, Nirvikal paka is either a state of cognition or it is not; it has either an element or object of consciousness or it has not. If it is, then even as such it is characterized as having an object of consciousness. If it is not, then the alternative is that it is not at all The genetic theory of perception is utilized to discredit the very cognition. The contradictory contrast between thought and sense, which is said to be the highest peak of ancient as well as modern philosophy (more truly of idealism from Parmenides and Plato, to Hegal and his followers), is utilized to demonstrate the correctness of the illusory theory. Once such a contradiction is raised no power on earth can rescue that view from ending in that thoroughgoing illusion whose culmination is to be found in Nirvāņa and Nihilism. The savikalpaka jñāna is what we seek in knowing. It is undoubtedly a product of mental activity linking present experience with the past. As Vişņu Citta has said it is influenced by samskāra and udbedha. If nirvikalpaka pratyakşa is merely the reaction of the sense-organs to the object.' savikalpaka is the discrimination which expands that sense-k..owledge. It is that which relates that fragm intary experience to the total reality and educts its relations to it. It is synthesis as well as analysis, comprehension which follows on appre. hension." We find that tie iinportance given to the nirvikalpaka as the ding aan sich, thing-in itaelf, svilaksaņai, as the real, are extreme statements which seek to reduce the error arising out of the subject's previous cognitions and habits of interpretation Thus having turned unduly critical of mind itself, idealisty have inevitably reduced all cognition into illusionary imposition, all reality into chimerical display of causality that cannot iupply anywhere. Prof. Dawes Tricks takes a standpoint very much similar to Rāmānuja's 1. Kıväli-cakşuräli-inriya-janyam nirvikalpakam, N P.p. 43, CD NI, " Soine Problems of Indian Logic" J.S.V.0.1. Vol. 1953.

·16 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE no views on the nature of Perception. There is no place for mere sensation in a dynamic consciousness. Even the sense-organs are operating only by the will of the cognizer. There can obviously under these circumstances be mere or abstract sensation. “ Cognition is essentially the same in all its forms, both in its lowest and its highest levels. There is no break in its development. It is from the beginning a process of separating, distinguishing and comparing. (distinguishing differentiation, discernment and comparison of features, characters and marks, which are to be found in the object). Cognition includes an act of synthesis, but this synthesis is not a putting together of the parts of the object. It consists rather in holding together different views of awareness. The essence of an act of cognizing is a process of distinguishing and comparing features which as given are already synthesized and not any creative synthetic activity exercised on the given manifold of experience." Rāmānuja's view on perception is identical with the above. Whether as a pure sensation or as definite cognition, the object is not constructed, but what are in it are educed, to use the expressive phrase of Prof. Spearman. Every cognition from the simplest sensation to the most highly correlated perception, is more or less mediated and the distinction drawn between knowledge through acquaintance and knowledge through description cannot be deemed to be absolute indeed if it is not denied. IV Nyāya Nirvikulpa-pratyakșa and Nirvikal paka-pratyjakşa of Advaita. We shall next consider how far we can assume that the Nyāya nirvika? paka-pratyakşa, sensation, is identical with the sensation of Advaita. 1. cf. Hundred Years of British Philosophy : Rudolf Met2. p 513. ..

·PERCEPTION 17 In the first place supposing the Nyāya nirvikal pakapratyakşn is capable of revealing the mere isness' of a thing undifferenced and undefined, is it the same as the sanmātra of Advaita ? The latter 'isness' is the isness of consciousness or ānubhūti, experience or samvid, and is not the mere 'is' of Nyāya--the atomic structure or material presentation in its mass-character. The tertiary com. pounds made out of binary atoms alone are the perceptible matrix of all objects. Their combinations and ar: ange. ments make objects. These are being perceived. The isness of this character is different from the psychical 'isness' of Advaitic idealism That which is perceived in the one case is pure maiter of the thing; in the other case, it is the pure expansiveness of consciousness without any limitation or name or quality. The latter is the pure consciousness alienated from the impressions and re-collec. tions and associated tags of individual ignorance, which overlay all cognitions of objects. Every savikalpaka pratyakşa is a relational knowledge wherein the matter of the object is pure consciousness, and the form and name and relations, which constitute, what for us are outer and inner objects, are constructions of the mind itself on that original matrix. It is thus absolute for this theory of Advaita, and incidentally of Buddhism which was the parent of this theory, that savikal paka-pratyaksa should be wholly erroneous from the ultimate standpoint; whereas for the realistic schools, though savikalpaka pratyuksa might become erroneous due to over-burdening impositions of progressive symbolic relations,' or due to the application of thought for the limited purposes of conduct and effici. ency in a particular manner, it is not something that is fundamentally false; on the contrary, it is that which is fundamentally true, because it is that which has been arrived at through careful observation and comparison, and experimentation. Knowledge in order to be true 1. cf. Kant's a priori synthesis. 3 ·18 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE should be definite, and well-defined so that it leaves one in no doubt as to what is true, and as such unambiguous and clear. Therefore savikalpaka-pratyakşa can become a pramāņā, a source of right knowledge. If, on the other hand, it be uninformative, nebulous and ambiguous, it can never be a pramāna. It is thus self-contradictory to hold at that rate that pratyakşa, determinate or indeterminate, is true at all. Other sources of knowledge indeed have to be approached Knowledge is definition, and definition can have and has a place, as we have said, in sensation understood in the sense of nirvikalpaka. We have already described the qualities of this sensation. But Sankara's nirvikal paka-pratyakşa is said to transcend the definitions of true and false. Says Sir Radhakrishnan "Since indeterminate perception does not transcend immediacy, is dumb and unanalysed, is what James calls 'raw unverbalised experience, the distinction betwcen true and false does not apply to it." There is certainly nothing against accepting this statement which goes to show that it is immediate, that is, that it is almost a reflexive type of action, pratibimba. As we have said the most initial sensation can only be definite, with distinctions however vague and blurred; there might be relative indefiniteness, but it is something, a 'somewhat' and not a mere that'. But the implications of sensation do not go only that far. Advaita holds that the sensation presents, firstly, non-difference; secondly, that it is unqualified ; thirdly, that the stuff presented is homogeneous consciousness where there is no distinction between subject and object; and fourthly, that it is unutterable, anirvacanīya. It is, of course, a true claim to make that we shall never know the infinitude or the illimitability of truth, but that is not equivalent to saying that it is unknowable and unpredictable. Unspeakable it might be, but it is not unknowable. It is one of those 1. Indian Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 60.

·PERCEPTION 19 claims of intuitionists who do not wish to see that defini. tion is the fundamental nature of right knowledge, since definition precludes all watering down of the laws of contradiction and excluded middle. But even these laws can be cvercome through imagination. Intuition comes to birth as result of enquiry, and imagination helps this enquiry; in limiting all imagination by the principle of non-self-contradiction we might arrive at new angles of vision, and achieve a synthesis that shall not possess the cast iron moulds of mechanical logic. Direct intuition has universal significance. because it is synthetic apperception, definite in knowledge and essentially communicable in some manner, if not in words, in symbols that the mind in its multi-dimensional nature might grasp. Religious consciousness might be touched to the core by it and reveal essential significances inexpressible in words. But to mistake direct apperception of intuition for the initial raw unverbalized immediate sensation of mass-feeling is fundamentally wrong, and vitiated by inner contradiction, though forsooth it is impossible to refer any inner contradiction to it. Thought might not be adequate to express the tension of the spirit, and the rich concreteness of the sensation might be made to live an unreceptive life when the mind becomes rigid in its reception and as if unconscious of it. But sensation is the tension of the organ which is impinged upon by the object. Its liveliness, it owes to the object. Intuition is equally lively, but it is unambiguous and definite, and the complaint about its inexpressibility is due to the finiteness of the subject and its distance from integral truth and its limitations. The claim that intuition is sensation is untrue and such an experience does not exist.' 1. cf. Modern Philosophers : H. Hoffding. It is true that Benedetto Croce accepts intuition as equivalent to sensation even as Kant does. But they were aware of the difference between an intuition of sense and intuition of reason. A confusion on this point has led to the view that all of us are intuitive in an elemental manner and tha all experiences are intuitive. To ·20 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE The activity of thought (vikal pa' on the content of sensation modifies it, so to speak, and makes it a percept. It is not a merely additive function that thought has for it makes the perception organic with the world of experience that it already knows. By no stretch of imagination can it be said that this sensation is mere consciousness, samvid. Even Kant who made the region of Pure Reason almost universal, could not surrender the realm of brute fact, so much so he held that conceptions without intuitions are empty. This has a nature indeed different from the cognizing consciousness. By no stretch of imagination can it be argued that we see in sensation a barren 'that'; even if it be true, it can nover be consciousness. Consciousness does not get any place in sensation, since from it every effort of consciousness has been sedulously withdrawn. Consciousness gets a contact, and establishes a relation between the sense-organs of the embodied self and the external object. Without this relation there can be no cognition. This is the importance of the consciousness in cognition. An obsessed idealist thinks that all things are merely states of consciousness or streams of states of consciousness and just psychical stuff. To find reasons for this unfortunate deduction through introspective psychology he has to invent a theory of phenomenalism or categorial make-up and conjure up a power of ignorance that makes a world of appearance and creates a permanent subject. The material of this world of appearance has finally to be found in the creative activity of the subject, the storehouse of all these impressions or rather psychical imaginations, the ālaya-vijñāna ; and thus there exists nothing else except series of states, and a storehouse of psychical impressions which might well be called the self in a phenomenal sense according to Buddhist Yogācāra, and in a noumenal sense according to Advaita. whatlogical faults this d ctrine may lead one need not be canvassed here. It is absolutely true that every idealism has encied in a clualisin between the absolute and finite. Ergo ihe truth lies in dualism.

·I. i. 3: Atyantātindriyatvena pratyakşādi pramāņavita! TRAL PERCEPTION 21 The 'that' in sensation is not of the stuff of consciousness. Though whatever is perceived is a consciously perceived object, it cannot be spoken of as consciousness itself, or as a formation of consciousness. Experience is a conscious experience. but experience involves also an experience of a *that'. The 'that' might persist or might not persist in the outer world, be it a momentary existence or persistent thing, but so far as the inner memory is concerned it belongs to consciousness and exists as psychical stuff or knowledge. At no time does it give up its reference to the outer object. Though it is a representation in one sense, in perception itself it is not the representation that we perceive but the object itself directly as standing out there, The representation in memory at no time loses its outer reference and projection, but on this account it cannot be said that representionalism is accepted. It is the given, and between this and the undifferentiating (undifferenced) consciousness, there is nothing in common. It is an ingenious device to ask for a sanction of Nyāya for the Advaitic conception of nirvikalpaka as the core of reality. Even if it were an independent conception, which it is not, since tliis is undoubtedly buddhistic, it is an unprovable assumption. As Rāmānuja says there is no barren sensation, a sensation without an attribute of form, rūpa, and colour even if it be merely a patch of light. The concept of an undifferenced-sensation as a limiting phase of consciousness inight be conceäed ; but without the qualifications attached to its appearance, it is an impossible experience, if not an unreal abstraction. 1. S. B. I. i. 1. Na sanmátrameva vastu. Na-kenāpi pramāņena nirvišeşavastu siddhil: Vedārtha Samgraha 308. wydrukuda vas śāstraikapramāņakatvat uktas varūpanı brahina : The Bishman is altogethet beyond the senses, and so does not form the object is means of proper such as perception etc., and the śāstra alone form in Tip provides Hini. Kena Up. I. 1 LIBRARE 22996 CENTRE ·22 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE V Consciousness and Cognition. The next print we shall discuss pertains to the nature of the act of cognition and the nature of consciousness which is claimed to be a homogeneous substance, the known and the act of knowing rolled into one. Consciousness is a function of the knower revealed in the act of cognition. It is realizable as a function of the knower, necessary for the purpose of life itself, and it is inseparable from the existence of the knower. Every act of cognition reveals more or less simultaneously three terms; the object, the subject and the cognitive relation. It is the essence of cognition to reveal both the object and the subject within itself as two poles which it connects, though it belongs inseparably to the subject-end. It is found that it is purposive in so far as it bears the message of the outer existence to its owner, the self, whose function it is revealed to be. It is thus a dharma, a function, a quality, dynamic, purposive and essentially belonging to some selt. It is not found apart from its substrate, the self, whose function it is'. It reveals its owner as well as itself in the act of cognition, as also the object. Yāmunācārya writes that perceptive consciousness is that which reveals a thing through itself at the time of presentation? He defines Consciousness as svāśrayasya svasıttayaiva prakāśamānutvam svavişaya-sādhanutvam vă anubhūtitram. Rāmānuja accepts this definition of Consciousness as stated by Yāmunācārya?. “The essential nature of consciousness... consists therein that it shines forth, or manifests itself, through its own being to its own substrate at the present moment; or that it is instrumental in proving its own object to its substrate". ... ### +++ PHILFI 1. Siddhitraya : p. 21 (Benares Ed) 2. Siddhitraya : p. 23 Pratyakşasa nivit svasattākale svavişa yasya sada bhāvam sādhayanti. 3. Ś B. I. i. 1. “Anubbūtitvam nāma vartamānadaśayām svasatt:yaiva svāśrayam prati prakāśamānaivam...". (cf. Thibaut's p. 48) ·PERCEPTION 23 In the above definition one important feature is that cognition which is perceptive refers to the present moment and not to the past or the future. This limitation of cognition to the present moment has a has a fundamental reference to the conditions of time and space, refutation of which has led the other schools into pitfalls. This consciousness is awareness of something be it ever so much as a mere structure or a jāti. It is not bare awareness without content or with non-existence as content. It is not either a form of consciousness that we perceive or consciousness merely that does not reveal even the subject. That which is perceived is a real being, a sattā, as we have already said, which is objective, and is never a mere cit. Even if it were another elabodied being, a cit encased in a body, it is as an object that it is being perceived and not as one's self, whatever identity in jāti the subject and object might here possess. A sanmätra thus can never be identified with one's own cinmātratra in perception. So far from conscious mind being owned by experience, it is experience that is being owned by conscious minds, just as the light is owned by the flame rather than the flame is owned by the light. Prof. Dawes Hicks says that “so far from conscious minds being owned as F. H. Bradley conceived, by experience, the fact rather is that experience is owned by conscious minds, if, indeed, it is permissible in this context, to talk of ownership’at all”, VI Yogi-Pratyuksa and Conciousness as Object. A further contention is made that in the higher states of Consciousness we perceive the highest experience as a mere mass-feeling and that this can be attained by the practice of yoga (trance). In aparokşa-experience immediate higher experience) we are told that we do experience the Undifferenced Consciousness, nirvişaya, nirabhilapya, HALL + P 1. Philosophical Bascs of Theism : Prof, lawes Hicks : p. 31.

·24 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE as anir vacanīyı consciousness, all the substrate of phenomena. In Yoga there is a state of consciousness which is called the fourth, turīya, in which there is said to be the realization of the unchanging Self.' Gauda pāda, one of the most profound thinkers undoubtedly influenced by Buddhistic Yogācāra school, in his Kārikā on the Mān. dūkya Upanişad, maintains that this state reveals the dissolution of the subject-object relation in an allembracing consciousness.? It is in this state that the purest and undifferenced identity of all reality, its singleness or monism is realized or known. Difference is the stigma of all phenomena and is the cause of all disruption and deceit, is the cause of perishability or mortality. The real is neither perishable nor difference nor causal prius, Yogi-Pratyakşa (this a parokşānubhūti) has nothing to do with this turya-consciousness of the Māņdūkya. “Although such a perception-which springs from intense imagination-implies a vivid presentation of things, it is, after all, nothing more than a reproduction of the previously perceived and does not therefore rank as an instrument of knowledge: for it has no means of applying itself to objects other than those perceived previously." It is on the other hand a source of error. What we find on analyzing Yogic experi nce is that it is most often nothing more than a hallucinatory selfprojection of one's own memories nnd previous experiences gaining the vividness characteristic of perception, due to internal stimulation. It is a product of over-wrought 1, Budhistic thought does not accept ā perinanont self, though it might accept an ālaya-vijñāna a storehouse of impressions which also is a momentary thing, 2. Ajāti-vāda is that of Gaudapāda. 3. S. B. I i. 3, Nāpi yogajanyam: bhāvanaprākarşaparyantajanmanas tasya visadāvabhāsatve 'pi pūrvānubhūtaviş :yasmr'tiniātratvāu na prāmânyam. 1 ·PERCEPTION 25 1 imagination which might lead to erroneous judgment, and in any case it cannot be un instrument of pure knowledge. The realization of the turya state may be the state of realization of the limitless expanse of conscionsness divested of all limitation of hody and mind and all contradiction which thwart the apprehension of the real. Consciousness perceived in this manner in turya may be taken to be not the substance of all things but rather as the attribute of the individual who has been freed from all its limitation-nirūpādhiku-jñāna. Yogi pratyakşa can never reveal reality as such, since it is imagination. It can never be real. This conclusion ought not to be taken to mean that Rämänuja does not accept any experience such as that. Yamunācarya himself affirmed that the proof of divine existence can only be through Yoga; that is, Yoga-praxis leads to or grants the divine perception. God in His infinito grace endows the vision which the norinal eye cannot have. This indeed is different in kind from the pratyakşa that is said to be caused by Yoga. The super- Sensory perception is granted by the grace of God as a fruit, so that the individual night perceive the entire organic character of reality even as the visions of Bali and Arjuna. Bhagavad-prasädı.laldh'ı yogi-pratyakşam divyam." Thus this also is yogi pratyakşa but it is a free gift of the Divine to the individual. This is the real intuition in relation to the external world when the individual is fit to receive this grace-tat yuktāvasthāyām manonmātrajanyam. This is perception by the mind that has become an eye divine (divga-cakşus).' 3 . 1. Siddhitraya : Iśvarasiddhi, 2, Nyaya-Parisuddhi: question froin Sri Visnucitta p. 38. 3 Ibid., p. 39 4. 'Spavantopi na Sçıvanti, Japantopi na jamate, paśyantopi na pasyanti pasyanti jñana-caksasah.' 4 04 ·26 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE It is a fruit of disinterested service of the Divine, a fruit of freedom from vacillation and dejected consciousness. Whether it is the Divine Knowledge (gnosis) or the integral or complete knowledge of the world, does not make much of a difference. It is the attitude of absolute disinterestedness in imagination, coupled with complete union with the Divine in all activities that can lead to the true knowledge about any object. Constant remembrance of prior experiences cannot be a source of knowledge. Bhāvana balaja mātram jagat-kartıiri-pratyakşam pratikșiptam. In either case, real knowledge is available through the disinterested pursuit of truth, or truth pursued for its own sake. This truth is many-faced and undoubtedly infinite, and includes an integral aspect which granits it the unity or singleness as much as it does the manifoldness or plurality. This knowledge is zvailable to all freed souls after they are liberated from their physical bodies which they had inherited : viyuktā- vusthāyām tu bāhyendriya-janyamapi. When the individual by his consecrated devotion to the Highest God earns his freedoin to know everything, which is said to be carūpāvatharinam, (an individual possessing capacity to know the entire world and merge himself in the Divine Lord who is the Self of all other individuals too), then he gains the divine vision, the capacity to know the infinite inansions of the Divine. A new body that does not hide or interfere with perception but grants fullest freedom, knowledge and bliss, beconies his; a divine body is at it were worn. Thus Divyu-prutyaks, is not an iinpossible thing. Indeed it is the truth of the individual consciousness when it is liberated from the trammels of the sensory organs. But this is not the inagination intensifisd by praxis of Rāja and Hatha yogas. 1. Nyāya-Parisuddhi p. 40. 2. Nyāya Parisuddhi, p. 39. 3. Ibid p. 38. Corner ind ·PERCEPTION 27 Thus we find that despite the fact that there is a variety of perception different from nirvikalpaka and savikalpaka. such as the perception through the divine eye or mind, it does not even give a proof of the bare being. the nirviszyn-consciousnes or experience. The subject object relation can never be reduced to mere experience. The object can never be made into a function of the subject, that is mere consciousness. The subject cannot be dissolved into its attributes or functions, though the three are inevitably implied in all perception. It has been suggested that intuition reveals a bare or pure consciousness. meaning hy intuition something different from perception. Rāmānuja considers this problem in detail. For our purpose it is not necessary to enter into the meaning of the texts. Suffice it to find out the logical basis of these experiences themselves.

·CHAPTER II INTUITION AND ŚRUTI-PRAMĀŅA I In the previous chapter we have seen that Rāmānuja contends against Advaita and other schools who hold that experience is all and that it is proved by perception and that the 'that' revealed in perception is qualitiless and a without any differentiation or having any parts. In this chapter further consideration of the Aparokşajñāna which is said to be superperception involving no mediation of inference is made. 6 Rāmānuja holds that inference involves the discriminating activity of the knowing mind; and surely ro one denies that inference involves subject-object relation, and plurality. All that is sought is somehow to get over the limitations imposed on us by the discriminating intellect. Nor does inference shew anything more than the interrelationships subsisting between individuals belonging to varying times and places and types and causality. Indeed our ratiocinating mind functions according to the laws of thought seeking synthesis of diverse facts no less imperatively than it seeks to analyze tho given in perception. Its content then is nothing more than what is perceived. Perception involves an elementary recipience, whereas inference disposaid towards synthesis of the given involves greater activity of the mind. In this greater activity is involved the whole group of activities which we designate the personality, its wants, desires, memories and affections; its total being carves out of the given only such parts as stimulate its needs. Danger indeed lies here; and all faults of reasoning bave their source in this. Thus the given is likely to be vitiated by the mental conditions. A pure A pure mind devoid of all these conditions ·INTUITION 29 might he expected to know the real all the same. Savikalpaka involving, as it does, the activity of mind, howev-relight, is vitiated; so also is inference. The pure perception got through effort of the activity of the mind in yoga, leads to an immediate perception, or niore correctly, sense-organs are not the agents of this perception Or experience. Rāmānuja refuses to recognize any distinction between perception and aparoksa in so far as they are experiences. Perception does not grant illusion; nor is granting of reality the prerogative of immediacy, or non-sensory cognition, as such. Rāmānuja does not use the word iparoksi, his word being divya-p atynkşa. Śankara creates a dualism beta ween the practical and pure phenomenal and the transcendental, aparı and para, and it stands for a new distinction between reality of the external world of matter and the reality of the self. In reality aparokşa can only mean the perfect consciousness unlimited in range and intensity due to purification of the mind and prāņa (vital consciousness). If we grant that pratyakşa gives us only the knowledge of events which are transitory and changing, and thus gives us knowledge of the external world of constant impacts between elements and actions on a huge mechanical scale. consciousness, which is pure, gives us not only the knowledge of the particular perishing existences but also the true and unique nature of their real relatiɔns with one another. Divine Perception is an apprehension of the whole, of which these crashing atoms and movements are party Consciousness, in its limited condition, gives us knowledge of discrete data of the external world without any significant connections or unifying formula of interrelationship. The self same consciousness in its fully expanded condition gives us a fully articulated definition of ieality throbbing with signifirance, and all fall into a unified picture as it were. Thus, consciousness, however veiled is not a giver of illusion. This is the basis of the satkhyāti-theory of Rāmānuja.

·30 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Thus facts of the objetive world are given to an embodied soul through perception: relations, general and narti«ular, between these facts are inferred or seen by the activity of thought or intellection, vikalp and with the help of vyāpti, invariable conconitance, and meniory. The highest knowledge is attained neither by perceptions through sense which are particulars nor by inferences which present generalities as such, but only by supersensory perception or intuition. To achieve even this, the Words' of those who have already achieved and known have to be consulted and followed. Intuition even :hough natural to the individual, is feeble, and has to be strengthened by practice of disinterested devotion to to knowledge and to the highest purposes of the Divine. Such then is the difference between the perceptive knowledge and intuitive knowledge, which we designate as insight into reality, for it is neither influenced by vyāpti nor karma nor väsanı nor vy'ivahāra nor disease of the sense organs. f a more clear-cut distinction has to be made, we may say that thie external reality is perceived, whilst the internal or the spiritual is intuited, defining external and internal as the two aspects of a thing distinct indeed from the internal and external to the subject who perceives or intuits. Rāmānuja refuses to recognize the three degrees of reality of pratyakşa, anumāna and sabda, or in advaitic terminology, pratyakşı, parnkșa and aparoksı since that would mean that we are trying to impugn the reality of each in turn, especially the reality of the data given in perception. Further it is a distinction without a differencce. An identical consciousness is operative in these three phases, and in each of these three phases some aspects of the real ale exhibited. It is true that perception is of a fragment of realiły, a snatch and a patch, nothing more. It does not reveal the constitutive principles of knowledge or reality. It supplies, ·INTUITION 31 it is true, only snapshots, but even then snapshots do exhibit ce tain elementary relations and configurations, and these induce, so to speak, other extensions of the relationships with the help of principles governing perceived invariable.concomitances and similarities. But the limitations under which inference suffers are serious when we consider that it has to build a superstructure on the basis of these snatches and patches of perceptive data. Relieved from the immediate, contemplating the wide range of similar plienomena mediately or in imagination, undoub. tedly there is facilitated the understanding of the principles of truth. And predictability becomes more and more sure and exact. But there are limits to this. Rāmānuja points out that despite the annount of expansion in our knowledge that intellectualizing reason or understanding might make, it can never lead to the knowledge of the highest perfection which is the limit supreine of intelligence itself. That there is a Trancondent above the experienced, has never been denied hy Rämānuja. The Transcendent can be known and experienced : this also Rāınānuja clains to be possible. But he does not adınit any opposition butween the consciousness that knows this and the consi:iousness that knows That. He avers that whilst reas in or understanding infers correctly about other things it can never infer correctly about the Whole and the Supreme Transcendent. -- II Purä vidyā or Purā jñāna Rämänuja accepts the idealistic view that the essence that substands or supports the whole of reality is Spiritual and not material. It is the immanent principle of order, and inust be considered to be the active pervasive principle of reality al. over. It is the absolute permanent in the chang. ing world. Thus the truth of all existence inust in this essence, supreme rasa. It can be said to be the cause ·32 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE of the entire universe or the primary base of the cosniological arguments of the theists. An inference from the nature of experience to the existence of God is said to be sufficient proof for the existence of God. Rāmānuja contends that all arguments based on cosmology and teleology are grounded on comparisons and analogies available in the fragmentary creative activities of finite beings, and cannot lead to the proof of the omni-causal, omni pervasive omni-potent being at all. Further such arguments prove a substance not a personality and a spirit. The Spinozistic proof without teleology led him to substance. The Cartesian proof, ontological though it was, was grounded on nothing more than belief. The teleological principle cannot prove an omniscient being. Kant's famous criticism is perfect; all these proofs at best may reveal the upper limit to the notion of cause, nothing more, never a real existence. The Nyāya argument is that God could be inferred from the conception of the most perfect intelligence required for the sake of explaining the order and design of the world and its motion and arrangement. Due to anth ropomorphism inherent in common sense, the inference from the appearance of order in human creations leads to the inference of a supreme creator other than the mechanical movements of the atoms. At the back of all creation there is an intelligence. This in substance is the argument of Udayana. Adrsta, the unseen force, is a natural potency, not an intelligence like the Nous of Anaxagoras. Thus neither karma nor adrsta can explain the design, though they might explain the moving and the acting. The world has a plan which no material entity, mechanical movement or inner necessity like adrsta can explain; therefore God. must be postulated as an existent being, as the supreme cause of creation, whereas the atoms and adrsta are the material and instrumental causes.

·INTUITION 33 Rāmānuja inaintains that these proofs are not sufficient to prove the Divine. They may prove a very capable creator not the all-creator. Rāmānuja holds that God cannot be proved by perception, nor by inference which depends on the former, though inference may gather in many more perceptions into its reckoning. It cannot go beyond the given in the experience. And God is not given in perception. Continuity and extensity might be inferred to a great extent but one cannot infer the exis ence of a supreme Intelligence. The cosmological argument cannot prove the existence of God: it may prove that it is necessary for the existence of the world that there should exist an intelligence, superior to any we know. It cannot affirm its existence though it may necessitate a presumption. And presumption is not proof. That is why it is said that the existence of God is proved by vision of Him, säksätkūra. Inferentially idea cannot involve existence. Existence depends on the conditions of space-time, des ikāla-ākāra; ile existence of God transcends the conditions of space and time. God thus cannot be known through ordinary prception or by inference. Nor do all ideals or ideas involve existence. Existence is a predicate. The sky flower cannot have existence though it is an idea.. It exists as an idea. Such ideas do not have place or time. Others exist at some places and at some times. Fictions such as horn of the hare and sky-flower or son of a barren women, involving intrinsic contradiction, are ideas outside Space-time and causal conditions. The Divine Being thus is outside the pale of the pramāṇas of perception and anumāna and upamāna. " Whom He chooses by him He is perceived." "Not by austeritics nor yet by mere jñāna nor yet by works, but by the grace of the Divine only can the Highest be known, Kara Up. 1 i. 23. Yan evaişa vrnute tena labhiyah er ·34 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE understood and entered."! Then alone does the Perfect Being become for the individual a real being: till then it should be content to believe in it as a regulative idea. i demand of practical reason or morality, and only possess a precarious existence as an idea constantly getting modi. fications as to its satisfying character as the most real and most perfect. That there is a higher demand on us, the parama-puruşārtha, which means the demand to conceive of and perceive and experience the actual existence of the Most Perfect, even here and now, apart from which we have no place and being, entails the faith that fulfils itself as vision, as intuitive realization of His being or Existence. The moral demand and the religious impera tive compel our cognition to struggle forward beyond the immediate sensory and the mediate inferential towards the Vision that comes from Grace. 1. B. Gita IX. 53 and 54. III Why should Śabda be accepted as absolute authority The Pūrva-Mimānsā is a variety of tarka, reasoning. It assists the sabda pramāņa, Its main topic is the discovery of the correct apparatus by which we could arrive at Vedic truth. It is more interested in the truth that we have known through communication through sound or rather hearing (śruti), than through the other ways of knowing, like pratyakşa, anumāna and upamāna. The premāņas pertaining to the latter three are discussed at length by the Nyāya-schools of thought. The schools of Nyya, Sāmkhya and their metaphysical and practical allies the Vaišesika, Yoga and Buddhistic schools, did not seriously consider the nature of the sabdapramāņa, the authoritative utterances received by seers from a transcendent source. In most cases they were content to define sabda-prumunu as āpta-vacana, meaning by apta one who is interested in the ultimate welfare of the individual. It bears a very wide connotation since any one could be classed as an upta, ·INTUITION 35 na. Lay not refer to the Vedas, upanişads and the other which were deemed by the Vedāntins to be specially wise, seers. All the other systems were more istic in the sense that their reasoning was not n the scriptural texts of the Vedas, though some lox schools do hold allegiance to other texts of man teachers such as Gotama Buddha and Mahä- At the best, words such as theirs represented neral tendencies of speculation as did not find e representation in the Vedas not to speak of their erely snatches without coherence from the body of trine propounded by the Vedas and upanişads. It intention of the Vedānta Sutras to undertake a zensive synthetic unification of the entire body of iptural Teaching so as to enable us to know the To the rationalists however the Vedas and the .ds meant nothing more than one of the many tations of life's problems. most the first question that faces us here is, wliy we consider that the faults inherent in the other las do not inhere in this sruti or sabda-pramana ? is needed an analysis of the conditions of error vitiate others and not this. Traditional knowlay be considered to vield a coherent picture of in so far as it has been on the anvil of criticism retty long period in the history of experience. But re differences in the traditions, for empirical tradilre different indeed from tho ritualistic which has part and parcel of all religious practices every- The question is which tradition has the authentic ure of truth. Antiquity hy itself does not sanction ess of a thing. The mimāmsakas being rationalists >urse within the ambit of investigation into authoithout denying the efficacy of the rituals at all t pains to discover the principles of analysis and V. S. 1.1.4 Tattu s«7140l'a yat.

·36 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE synthesis, and in so doing to discover the sources of (Tor. There are, therefore, theories of error formulated by the mīmāmsakas in addition to the absolute claim they make for the sabda-pramāna We shall consider at another place in extenso the theories of perceptual and other types of error. Here the point to note is that the Sabda is claimed to avoid the triple sources of erro” (karlınır.coşii). Nyāya. Vaisezika has given us the tues to the determi nation of what is wrong with perceptual knowledge. has found the causes that lead to misapprehension due to the non-correspondence with reality. The defects are ilue to factors of senses or the mind itself, but these defects can never be known or perceived except by a reference to reality directly through action, a reference that is incapa. ble of being made via representation or comparison. This practical test is indeed extraneous to thought but it is not by any means extraneous to reality which is amenable to both thought and action in a synthesis of conduct. Thus everything is known not only is to what it looks to the eye, but also as to what purpose or use it can be puc to, and for which it is adequate. Thus the causal principle and teleological nature of every object get proved, for they are implicit in each and every object of reality. To separate this two-fold nature, the thought from the practical use or content or nature of each thing, is to divorce reality of its worth and value. Illusions are resolved by the dual test rather than by any one. Indeed the cognition enforces the conduct in relation to it, is a preparation for action or use. With regard to the theory of Prabhākara which upholds that non-discrimination, akhyāti, is the source of error, we have to say that it does not prove or explain all error. The anyathākhyāti - theory of Kumārila does not either. Whether there is any one theory which exh:109- tively explains all error on the perceptual level of experience without taking in, in some form, both the theories of ·INI'UITION error aforesaid, is a matter of grave doubt. Error in perception in the first place is due to non-discrimination, and in the second place is due to the mistaking of one thing for another. In the first case, more and more discrimination will get rid of the error, but in the second case, nothing less than the practical test will avail to dissolve the error in perception. Verification of the perception is necessary to avoid error. That is to say, to act in an erroneous manner leads not to the predicted consequences or known results but to some other results and consequences. Action becomes a failure, and that decides the truth about a thing's existence or rather nature, svarūpa. It is true that the best cure for non-observation is more ohservation and careful observation Such a thing is fruitful when there is nothing wrong about the senseorgans theniselves as well as with our mind which is liable to fluctuations of attention and interest, grasping greeds and potencies. When however, the sense-organs are not in good condition, the test of svatuh pramānya, self-evidence, will be found to be indeed inadequate. But metaphysically speaking, almost all the theories of Indian Philosophy hold that the sense organs are products of karma, action, and are imperfect veiling agents, making things appear otherwise than what they are. Coherence of facts continuously derived from derived from faulty conditions might get a coherenc: of a sort, but that does not vouchsafe that that is the only test of reality. Reality is finally to he lived and experienced. As Rāmānuja said, for the universal vision of double moon (timiradoşa) on 9 1. In Buddhism tlie sense-organs lelude by piaking things wh.ch are momentary, appear perni inent, llie atomis as having forin which they do uot possess, in hypostatizing objects wliich are inside as outside, in si'ewing the 110n-existent as existen:. In Jainism we have the karma.matter distorting perception. In Advaita Vedāuta there is agafn the action of Karma and Māyā which distort the one consciousness into the appearance of inany. In Rīmīnuja's doctrine too this karmalis an effectiv.- contracting agency which limits the ambit of perception, though it does not distort it. In Sāmkhya and in Nyava also Karma plays an important role as an illuding or distorting device.

·38 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE a particular island, there is no cure, even as the irremovable categorial blue spectacles of Kant can never make us perceive reality as it is in itself, As Bertrand Russell argued. we can create any number of self-consistent systems of philosophy none of which bear any semblance to reality at all. The criterion of self-evidence or self-consistency cannot avail us in these cases. Nor would it be possible to arrive at truth if every one spent a fevered existence. However much then this might satisfy us in so far as We seek to arrive the theoretical consistency without going forward towards objects themselves in order to testify to their truth or otherwise, truth would remain an idl. dream. To contend that knowledge must be full and complete before action can take place is as sane a possibility as that a man should know.swimming before he learns to swim. Action and knowledge mutually correct themselves in order to facilitate greater and greater knowledge. A healthy interaction between conduct, experience and experiment, is a necessity forced upon any theory of truth. So far then as our affirmations go, knowledge is its own testimony, provided the instrumənts of our cognition are all in a healthy condition, undiseased, sane and unemotional, Mīmāmsā accepts the theory of self-evidence with the con ditions we have enumerated, namely, that there should be no error or mistake in the nature of the several instruments of cognition in perception. The senses and the mind must be freed from all defects. Is this condition fulfilled by any person ? Such knowledge is true only of the Veda according to Mimāmsā. If the source, that is the object itself, is vitiated by ambiguity, that is, if it has a plausible or possible similarity with other things as in the ca-e of snake or rope or mirage, then the knowledge that follows upon that perception is uncertain, indefinite, frustrating and invalid. We would be forced to settle this ambiguity only by a recourse to fact, a reference which could be only by way of conduct. Thus ·INTUITION 39 if in the case of (khyāti, non-discrimination, more observation, carried out fully and scientifically can not lead us to definite truth though it may lead us to some ways of knowing other than the purely cognitive, in the case of anyuthākhyāli, we have to find out more and more fully the defects of sense-organs and the mind, and the ambiguity in the object's nature itself in order to get over the illusion. By doing so, we arrive at the causes of error. Again it is a fact that error is a fruitful source of correct knowledge with regard to the objects other than those that we contemplate or seek to know about. Thus error leads to discovery of the properties of objects, that is to say, to knowledge as in the case of the illusion of a bent oar in water. Thus we find that one valuable principle emerges even out of the consideration of the incidence of error, that is, it could occur only at three points, the subject, the object, and the means: in the subject, so far as emotional samskäric or karmic or vāsana-propensities lead to non-discrimination or partial observation of the given (object): in the object, in so far as it might possess ambiguity, that is to say, superficial similarity that could at first look lead to identification with another object (the fallacy of upamāna): and in the means, in so far as these have defects, natural or due to conditions of perception in the sense-organs. We In a similar manner are enabled to discuss pramāṇas such as inference, and shew that vyāpti, invari. able concomitance, might be either superficial or intrinsic. Error would have to be detected in the pakşı or in the hetue or vyāpti, or the example. The pıkşa is the subject, the example udāharana is the means, the hetu is the objective reason vyāpti. Unless all these three are free from defects any true conclusion is impossible. Fallacies of palcșa (asiddha), of Hetu (vyabhicāra), of virodha, of bhäd ita and satpratipaksa, could all be seen to refer to defects in the three elements of cognition.

·40 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Thus we find that in regard to the Sabda-pramāna we have to reject or rather select our well-wishers on the basis of certain conditions we have laid down, All verbal testimony cannot be considered to be intuitive sabda, just as all friends and well-wishers cannot be considered to be wise : the testimony that we get must be free from the initial errors of means and source. The source must be pure and perfect; so also the means must be pure and perfect. Such śabda is true and perfect. Such is the Veda. By the grace of the livine granted to the Rşis their visions are super sensory, untainted by the sense-organs and karma. The objects of the sabda, are untainted and true and pure. Further to know them it is necessary to be in that receptive mood of mind wherein there is no confusion, no obsession, no inattention and no defect. Rşi-minds were in a high stage of yoga due to tapus. The truths themselves and the rituals taught were all not creations by an intensified consciousness, but were seen to be the truths of eternal existence, and not man-made sabda which is the Veda, is uncreated even by God, therefore the causality of an imperfect Being for their existence is ruled out. Therefore they form a perfect document. Such in brief is the view entertained by the Mīmänsakas regarding the validity of the sabda-pramāņa, which is pure in regard to the three possible sources of infection : the subject, the object, and the means. Other sästras owe tlieir origins to human beings, temporary historical figuros of humanity or even master minds. But they are vitiateri by lack of perfect truth. Sankara accepts sabda as valid testimony. But he pleads that it leads to tire knowledge of the absolute pure Being which is the undifferenced consciousness. Sabda is 1. Vārdukya Up. 7. The wise think that the fourth caturtha) wlich is cognizant neither of internal objets nor of external objects in tlie distinc, tive and analytical way), nor at the same time of the one and the otlier (vieweil synthetically and in principle), and which is not (even a synthetic whole o integral kuowledge, being neither cognizant nor non-cognizant is ·INTUITION 4) most close to intuitive cognition, and as such is superior to perception. “The śruti depends on direct perception in the sphere of transcendent knowledge) for in order to be an authority, it is necessarily independent of all other authority; and smrti plays a part analogous to that of induction since it also derives its authority from an authority other than itself." This sabda consists of two types of texts it is said, and śankara dichotorpously divides these into the the transcendental texts and the phenomenal texts. This is in the realm of knowledge texts; for there is a division into knowledge texts and ritual texts. Rāmānuja accepts the supremacy of the sabda even like Sankara: he does not however admit that it teaches an undifferenced Consciousness: he does not accept the dichotomous and mutually exclusive division into transcendental (para) and phenomenal (apara, vyāva vāra) texts, nor does he consider the two-fold division into knowledge-texts and ritual-texts to be mutuaily incompatible. They are all one coherent structure, a single organic unity. To divide them in this manner can never lead to synthesis but to division which will constantly be at with experience as we know it. war invisible (adrsta, and equally inıperceptible by any faculty whatsoever), nona tive (avyavahāra in its immutable identity), incomprehensible (agrāhya since it conpaises all),indefinable (alaksana, since it is without any limit)- unthinkable (acintya, incapable of being invested with any forun), iudescrib. able (avyapadeśya, incapable of being qualified in any particular attributio. of determination ), the sole basic essence (pratyaya-sāra) of the seif (atma, present in all states), devoid of any trace of development or manifestation (prapanca upasama, and therefore absolutely and totally liberated from the special conditions of any mode whatever of existence), fulness of peace and bliss, without duality; It is Ātma(itself, beyond and independently of all conditions : (Thus) Must it be knowo." 1. Śankara Bhāşya quoted by Rene Gnenou; Man and his Becoming P.11. 2 Ramanuja claims that Pūrvamīmāmsā and Uttaramīmāmsă are sastra. Sri Bhāsya, I. 1. 1: Mīmāmsă śāstram-- Athāto Dharpajijñāsā ityārabhya "Anāvịttiosabdadanāvſttiśśabdat "ityevam antam sangativiseşeņā visiştakramam. one ·42 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE sankara dichotomized the texts as pertaining to two different and even antagonistic teachings such as Karina and Brahma, saguņa and nirguņa, as phenomenally and transcendentally real instructions. Sankara relegated karma and saguņa to the phenomenal realm of Māyā or Avidyā which is contradictory to Jñāna and Nirguņa. Rāmānuja holds this dichotomy to be false and unwarranted, as it does not really show his allegiance to the unitary teaching of the Veda or its total worthiness. If it is conceded that Veda refers to two contradictory teachings we should seek a criterion that shall distinguish between them for our purposes. That would imply that a criterion other than self-evidence (svatah-pranmānyu) would have to be framed. It means thus a refutation of self-evidence, and is a subtle way of entering into scriptural thought through reasoning which is valid only within the limits of actual sensory experience (pratyakşr). It may be difficult to unify the divergent trends of the Vedic ad upanişadic instructions. Classification into vidyās, ways of knowing has always been welcome but dichotomous division is unfortunately not the path towards synthesis, samanvaya. We have to discover a third principle froin which or within which these two phases might get a realized unity. ity. But such a unity which holds within it two opposites is irrational and cannot be substantiated. Further if Hegel is appealed to to help us in this predicament, we can remark that such an outlet is ruled out for sankara, even if he had recourse to it, as some modern interpreters of Sankara are wont to, because the matter on which the discussion revolves does not belong to the perceptual or inferential order. We have admitted that classification and definition are the means to understanding the several trends of thought in the Upanişads. But we have to note them not as contradictory to one another or annulling one another but as ·INTUITION 43 helping to make for an integral realization of the nature of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Further the doctrine of negation as affirmation is crucial to the understanding of the classification. Dichotomy believes only in the opposition of its two terms or divisions and never admits distinctive synthesis. The use of the negative un or a or na only leads us to suppose that the qualification is to shew that the thing so qualified is other than and not the opposite of. This interpretation is valid in regard to the scriptural texts in general, because the insistence is that they form a synthetic or integral body of unitary instruction. Examples of this are furnished by the terms A-Vidyā which means Karma, A-sambhūti which means immortality, A-Karma which means Vidyā, A-sat which means Prakrti, ind Na-iti, which means the Transcendente Again on the same count the karma and jñāna portions of the Vedic literature or Sabda are a synthetic body of doctrine. This is substantiated by the teaching of the Upanişads themselves as evidenced by the Iśāvāsyopanişad which teaches that by the one (karma) one crosses over death, and by the other jñāna), attains the Immortal; thus once for all disposing of the argumeut for irreconcilable dichotomous division of the texts. one Considered in this way, the true instruction contained in the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas and the Upanişads is not at all about a nondual consciousness, but only about a true Being characterized by qualities of the highest perfection. In other words, the instruction contained in the Upanişads is regarding the Supreme Personality. Intuition is a fundamental type of cognition capable of apprehending the true and the true only, when an individual is freed from all ignorance and karma and when he is freed from his body (deha) that is a product of karma. And Vedas alone can and do speak the voice of intuition ·INTUITION 45 the fundamental nature of the Lord. Creation being the real activity of the Lord, the order manifested by Him and His creation is of a fundamentally identical nature, though not of an eternally recurrent nature in so far as any parti cular individuals and instruments are concerned There is no eternal recurrence in the Nietzschean sense, though there is an eternal recurrence in the order of the unfoldınent and enfoldment, creation and dissolution. In fact "He chooses the makers of the mantras " who see the hyinns and transmit them loyally. Thus valid insight is approached and realized through the practice of the ways of knowing prescribed in the scriptures such as madhu-vidyā or duhara-vidyā etc., which are meditations on the Supreme. No other way is possible. In every case inference fails to establish the real and the perfect creator of the Universe. IV Cosmological Argument and God. The Nyāya cosmological argument for the existence of God is dieproved by Rāmānuja on the ground that the world is not of the nature of an effect in the same sense as jars, pots and cloth made by intelligent beings. Nor is it an effect in the sense that it is made up of parts or displays the connection with or control by an intelligent being as is the case with a body controlled by a mind. Nor should it be said that there must be an intelligent being to fit the several parts in an order so as to be a working or living tissue of existence. All the arguments merely reveal that the world is a product of the individual soul or self and not of a universal or perfect being. We do observe that some persons of great yogic attainmeots or who are liberated are capable of creating some things and performing miracles too in many ways. rom all this it follows that the individual souls only can be causal agents : no legitimate inference leads to the Lord different from them ·44 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE fully and adequately. If the acceptance of śruti is to be valid, it must be valid on the ground of its experiencability in some manner by the individual. Thus the validity of the Sruti finally depends for its sanction on the experience and Vision of the Divine by the individual.' According to Rāmānuja, the śrutis are eternal.? They are of non-human origin (apaur ușeya). “The superhumani origin and the eternity of the Veda really mean that intelligent agents having perceived in their minds an impression due to previous recitation of the Veda in a fixed order of words, chapters and so on, remember and again recite it in that very same order of succession. This holds good both in regard to men and the highest Lord of all: there however is that difference between the two cases that the representation of the Veda which the supreme person forms in his own mind are spontaneous, not dependent on any impression previously made. In other words, the Vedas are universal truths of intuition or fixed immutable principles by which the Lord manifests or crea ies and governs the moral and physical orders of the universe. The world of the Veda so to speak is the unchanging permanent. The Lord alone is capable of spontaneously generating it. Since Vedic principles form the body of truth, they express 2. 1. Iu śri-Rangarājastava it is claimed that ivine Experience 's more truly a vision than Perceptiou is. The Jaina concept of vision is more or less similar to the above position purificatioa of the body of the fruits of karma leads to vision or perception, pratyakşa. According to them however sensory vision is not perception. S.B.: I. iii. 29 : etideva ca vedasyāpauruşeyatvam uityatvam ca... cf. Adhikarana Sārāvali I. i. 3 "The Veda not having been made and being therefore nerfect, its testimony is implicitly accepted, like the statements of a friend returniog from a distauce. Where any of the statements conflict with what is known from other sources, they are rejected. Similerly if the Veda makes a statement conflicting with sense percep ion, it should be understo d in a sense as mere praise" 3. ibid. Yat pūrvapūrvoccāraṇakrama-janita-samskāreņa tameva kraina višeşam smrtvā tenaiva kramenoccāryatvam. 4. ibid. Samiskārāṇapekşam-eva svayameva anusarndhatte puruṣottamah. A ·46 SRI RAMANIJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE in nature.” Tanubhuivunādi kşetrujñukartykam, kāryitval ghatarat, īśvāraḥ kurta na bhuvati, pray janaśūnyu/vāt, muktāi mavat, īśvaraḥ kariā na bhuvati, aśarēratvāt na ca kşetrujñānām svasurīrādhisthāne vyabhicāraḥ, tatrāpyanādessūkşmaśırīr isya sadbhāvāt, vimativişayah kālo na lokaşūnyaḥ, kālatvad vartamānakālavat-iti. "The body, the world, &c, have the individual souls for their (producing) agents : because they possess the character of being produced effects (even) as a pot does: (2) The Lord is no agant (in the act of creation); because he has no purpose (increation) just as released souls (have not): (3) The Lord is no agent (in the act of creation) because he has no body (just as those same rr leased souls have not).” And this last reasoning is not fallacious in being too widely applicable to the case of individual souls getting to preside over their own bodies, because, in such a case also, there is the (previous) existence of the beginningless subtle body (in association with those souls). (4) Time about which there is difference of opinion, can never have been devoid of (created) worlds; because it possesses the character of being time, (even) like the present time. ” (Ś. B. I. i. 3) All these arguments and many more that pertain to the embodied nature, active nature, & etc., remind one of the paralogisms of Pure Reason that Kant utilized to shew the inapplicability of causality beyond the realm of the phenomena. All transcendental applications involve inner contradiction. The appeal for Kant lay in the Practical Reason and more fully in the intuition of the Critique of Judgment. To Rāmānuja it lies in the Veda, the beard-word of the sages. The ultimate word of Rāmānuja is that Veda alone makes us know about the unity of the instrumental and material and the teleological causality of Brahman. For "if we thought" says Rāmānuja, that these texts do not mean to intimate the real existence of Brahman, the mere idea to which they give rise would not satisfy Au panişadeşrapivākyeșu brahmāstitvatāt paryābhāvaniscaye brahmajñā ne satyapi puruşārthaug in any way.'

·46 SRI RAMANIJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE in nature.” Tanubhuvunādi kşetrujñukartýkam, kārytte ghatarat, īśvāraḥ kartā na bhuvati, pray janaśūnyu: muktāímavat, īśvaraḥ karia na bhavati, aśarīratvāt 10 kşetrujñānām svaśurīrādhisthāne vyabhicāraḥ, tatrā}, nādessūkşmaśırır isya sadbhāvāt, vimativişayah kālu lokaşūnyaḥ, kālatvād vartamānakālavat-iti. "The bo the world, &c have the individual souls for their (pro cing) agents: because they possess the character of bei produced effects (even) as a pot does: (2) The Lord is agent (in the act of creation); because he has no purpose i creation) just as released souls (have not): (3) The Lord no agent (in the act of creation because he has no be (just as those same released souls have not).” And t last reasoning is not fallacious in being too widely appi able to the case of individual souls getting to preside on their own bodies, because, in such a case also, there is t (previous) existence of the beginningless subtle body association with those souls). (4) Time about which the is difference of opinion, can never have been devoid of (* ated) worlds; because it possesses the character of bei time, (even) like the present time.” (Ś. B. I. i. 3) All the arguments and many more that pertain to the embodi nature, active nature, & etc., remind one of the paralogisi of Pure Reason that Kant utilized to shew the inapplicit lity of causality beyond the realm of the phenomena. transcendental applications involve inner contradictio The appeal for Kant lay in the Practical Reason and me fully in the intuition of the Critique of Judgment. Rāmānuja it lies in the Veda, the leard-word of 1 sages. The ultimate word of Rāmānuja is that Veda ale; makes us know about the unity of the instrument and material and the teleological causality of Brahma For "if we thought" says Rāmānuja, " that these te do not mean to intimate the real existence of Brahma the mere idea to which they give rise would not satis us in any way. Aupanişadeși:apivālyeşu brahmāstiti tāt paryābhāvaniscaye brahmajñāne satyapi puruşārt.)

·INTUITION 47 paryanvasānam na syāt. (Ś. B. I. i. 4). Thus whatever the sabdapramāņa, all its ideas are eternal existences. In the case of Divine intuition all the ideas or repre sentations that are discovered by it are existent OL rather possess existence as a predicate. The test of śruit does involve the practice of its methods (virlyās). Mere knowledge without practical test of the same will not make for insight and revelation (anubhava). We must percern them even as God perceives them : that is the promise of the equality that we shall attain when liberated from karma and rebirth. This is the vindication of the ontological argument. V Seeing and Being inoms. seeing ' of the scriptures by the Divine and the individual souls grants them an eternal value according to some thinkers. Does the highest Being see all things as eternally existent or as created by Himself ? Rāmānuja says that the power of seeing and so on that belong to the Highest Self are not dependent on the sense organa: "it rather results immediately from its essential nature, since its omniscience and power to realize its purposes are due to its own being only.” It is because of this infinita capucity of His own nature, their beings are included in His song, or rather His seeing and their beings are one and the silme thing. As the infinite Being whose nature is tarnal knowledge and knowledge of a different kind in dened from any of the individual souls, bond or freed or eternally free. He is the source of all their being. In His casualon” could it be truly said that id:a (essencel involves priste uce. In the case of the individual souls, existence is contingent. We might also in perfect truth argue that II. alone can cause or bring out anything from out of nothing!, sinca in Him nothing is non-existent. It is Jeaning of Creation : Very Rev. lIugh P..pe in Man: Summer S: 11001 of Catholie. Sindies Sheer & Ward pp. 89ff. 77 ·48 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE true only of the individual finite soul to say that out of nothing nothing comes, ex nihilo nihil fit, tuccăd tuccameva abhavat. Not so with the Divine Baing who could out of His own wish by a single act produce out of nothing even the material and the ultimate form. There is nothing repugnant in endowing all impossibilities of the finite being to the Infinite Being. But Rāmānuja holds that whilst there may be enough justification for such a procedure and even acceptance, it is necessary also to hold that from out His eternal Being, which indeed is illimitable, anything that comes into existence is in one sense eternally realized in His Being and therefore eternally existent. Knowledge of their eternal validity and existence is sanctioned by His nature itself and those who discover these hymns and truths find it impossible not to credit them with an eternal independent existence, independent of any human minds and independent of time and space. To grant to the intuitive truths existence that is eternal, is to posit a real realm of essences, adopting Santayana's phrase, different indeed from anything like the universals an! floating ideas. But not all intuitive realizations can claim absolute existence and truthness, since most of these are got at through efforts of imperfect individual souls. Those alone amongst the intuitive truths which have come out of the grace of the Divine can claim utter validity and peak of perfection. In the case of the Divine Lord Himself it is said that He sees them spontaneously without the mediation of sense-organs ,and other prakrtic instruments. IV Divine Knowing The Knowlege of the Divine is creative unlike the individual's consciousness whose creative nature as consciousness is trifling, since God's knowledge becomes true or is true, whereas the individual's imagination and knowledge ·INTUITION 49 1 3 cue. are not always capable of becoming true. Rāmānuja contends that the creative nature of the finite or bond consciousness is next to nothing, and its imagination is fraught with illusory character. But this view goes against all Creative art and inventive ability that we do observe. Most probably we shall he told that God is in that case acting through the agency of the individual. We find that the creative feature of knowledge most fully demonstrated in the inventions of man even in the most primitive contracted state of his being. The urge towards greater expression and the manipulation of the environment, have been achieved by the creative or constructive instinct of living beings. But it is an instinctive and unconscious tendency. It is only a higher consciousness that can make art creations perinanent. Else all creation of man is bound to be of a phenomenal and transitory nature. Hero we find Creations of the Divine are permanent, ynthärthaḥ śāśvutah, as the the Isopanişad says, and those of the humans otherwise. Conscious- DASS in its perfect actuality is creative in nature. The question then would arise whether creation is not progressively increasing in intensity and amplitude as the consciousness more and more becomes limitless. Undoubtedly this is possible as evidenced by the siddhis. This an individual attains as shown in the Yoga śāstra as also in Buddhistic literature. But the absoluteness of creation is possible only to the completely liberated being. There is yet a difference between the Divine and that individual, in so far as the creation of reality is concerned. This is the prerogative nature of the Divine only and of none else.? Otherwise a chaos of universes would result from the creative abilities of the individuals. Enjoyment and consciousness of ability may be had by the individuals, never indeed a Creation of another universe or universes. A free consciousness thus becomes a contemplating and enjoying con- 1. 2. S.B.li.1. Na jivasya sarikelpa- mitrena srastſtvam upapadyate. Jadvympiiravarjam sam:ino jyotisa. 7 ·50 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY (F KNOWLEDGE sciousness, participating no doubt in the work of the Divine, nothing more, or may even become a perfect instrument of the Divine in the governance of the world. Thus true creativity turns out to be dependent on the Supreme Being alone. Knowledge is real only in the Divine: outside Him, it is a figment of imagination, a fruitful source of illusion, hallucination and delusion. Māyā is the power of knowledge of the Divine,' but it is also the power of delusion for the unfree individual souls. In other words, it is in this hands of the individuals a power of ignorance, not of creation but of illusion, a creative power of the transitory fru ts not of permanent reals. VII Time. Time is one of the most important categories of experience. There has been not a little of talk about being beyond space and time; kālātīto being a term that denotes existence beyond time. But is it possible for any one to be beyond time and space? There is no possibility of even conceiving of a time or place beyond time and place, since all that is falls within the same. That being the case, the concept of beyond space and time interpreted literally yields no sense. The view that God is beyond space and time means only that He never had been absent at any time or space like the human ndividuals. He is coeval with Time and co-existent with Space. But it yields senso to sprak of Kalātīta, triguņātīta etc., when we consider the alternative interpretation tha! He is not limited by space or time or the guņas of matter The non-limitation by these entities means that He is not dependent on them but is their master, and that He exists beyond space and time. It might be held that what it really means is that God is atrePure Concept or Essence which is outside existence Exen when we speak about concepts can we legiti- ,,Māyā vayugam jññājam" iti jížānaparyāyamapi māyāśabdam naighanatukā arhīyale." 5.B.I 1.21. Nirukta) ·ht 51 inferences of unities so perceived. That BAKA merekING INTUITION mately speak of their being outside priori? Thathey do not exist but yet are, is a very uncolih self-contradiction. Time is a series, beginningles, and llesse all things occur at different stages of it. It is numerteat Infinity in so far as it is unlimited on either side; it is vibhr, it is never a pure finite though men divide it into dates and seconds and moments. So also space. It is also a numeri. cal vibhu though it is never a pure finite despite the divisions that might be made in it These two are infinites containing and subsisting or rather substanding the finites. They are infinite mainly and thus are identical with Brahman. But they are finite to the Divine mind in so far as His omniscience and onnipresence cover them. Thus when Brahma: is said to be Käla, Time, it means His co evalness at all times with time itself. He is beyond it in the sense that He is not itself that, rather He is the master of time, who brings into being creations, vast and multitudinous, within it. He is more than it. Nor is He Space. He is wherever it is and thus co-existent with it. But He is beyond it also, in the sense that He is aware of all that happens in it and in Time. So also He is beyond Matter which is also eternal, in the sense He controls it and sustains its changes etc., All that is meant by being Bevond Time' means that the individual is not affected by the divisions in it, which permit the judgments Now, Then, Afterwards, etc... That means man becomes omniscient and eternal. The nature of the concepts (ie, how they are when they are known or when they are conceived merely) is rather an intricate maiter, requiring an inquiry into the doctrine of their origins Firstly, the view taken by the Visiştādvaitic thinkers is that these concepts or class concepte (that is to say pseudo.concepts and concepts of Benedetto Croce) are the perceived forms of momentand the perceived behaviour of things and ese, due to mon cogitation and contemplation, lead to Hirect Experience, is ·52 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE UJA'S also granted by them. Sākşātkāra then is the fulfilment of the sensory perception. These concepts then are forms, resident in things perceived, and do not exist apart from the objects, and therefore are conditioned by space and time and number. But they are also remembered in the mind and persist as memory and bhāvanā, which could be re produced separately on paper or stone or wall in the form of pictures, or images. This sensory origin of the concept is never forgotten. They do not exist apart from spare and time and cannot even be conceived as existing apart from space and time. The contention is that concepts as akāra are retained in the memory of the perceiver or knower which he utilizes for anumāna or upamāna the next time he comes across similar experiences. The truth of the contention that images exist in this manner might more easily be admitted than in the case of these ideas or concepts. Since concepts are universals whereas images are particular, it may be said that Universals exist outside finito minds and outside space and thus are nowhere existent. This means that we cannot give a correct account of their being. This reduces itself to a futile explanation. On the other hand we can conceive of the Universals as the inherent laws of existence, that is, of all that are in time and space. That includes all minds, things, matter and categories. In other words, Kant's statement that all experience falls within these two intuitions of space and time and are categorized by categories, is valid and indisputably true. The only issue is whether we could legitimately speak of a Noumenon over and above the Phenomonon we know. Though Hegel himself rejected the Noumenon, his explanations of time and space are far from acceptable to the Roalist mind. The concept of Reality beyond space and Time is verily a spiritual intuition of the nature of Freedom which is the one fundamental truth of Reality known as spiritual, which is expressed by phrases such as Liberation, Mukti, Sākṣātkāra, Nirvāņa, Beatitude & etc.,.

·CHAPTER III TITE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS T We have seen that in perception what is presented is a differenced Dhject. What is presented even in the very initial sensation like the nirvikalpaka pratyakşa is a samsthii -rüpu, a structure-event, and not a bare existence. Even in the intuitive perception or vision We are not aware of any identity of mere consciousness or absolute consciousness but are aware of a supreme Personality, wlio is the Ultimate Deity or God. Even the nirvikalpaka-samidhi of the Yogi, to which appeal is made, does not annihilate the subject-ohject relation, since saeelf-consciousness is yet a consciousness of the self by itself. With the refutation of the consciousness as object of perception, we are presented with the problem of what consciousness is? The objects are not certainly psychic stuff or consciousness-stuff, either as limited or unlimited, either fictionaily or really. The fact that consciousness goes along with every object of cognition does not entail the conclusion that this invariable connection or relation is proof of the psycliic stuff-theory or the imaginal theory of Yogacärin. We may, therefore, ask the next question as to how or rather why consciousness is more related to the subject-side rather than to the object-side in cognition ? That is to say having sewn that consciousness can exist apart from its outer objects els in introspection, dream and imagination, We find that even under these conditions we are unable to rfuto the subject of cognition. As we have already said the subject owns the consciousness, rather than that consciousness fulgurates into subject and objects. We ·54 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE cannot raise the function or adjective or quality of a subject to the level of a substance. Idealistic thought feels chary of accepting the absoluteness of the terins and yet repugnance is felt when the subject and object are reduced to a function. Even if this function becom s infinite, it can never give up being the function of a su'vject. The exact reason for this kind of epistemology is not far to seek. Every experience makes the object come intro existence in a consciousness and therefore it beconies possessed by consciousness. This possession in other wor!s makes the object an adjective of that consciousness. Thus it follows from another rule that the adjective can never exist apart from its substrate, that this adjective also cannot exist apart from the consciousness which now possesses it. This is the rationale if it be one, for the clo-centriz predicament. Further the stream of consciousness is possessed of these objects and their images ; and all these objects reveal transitoriness of existence. The continuity of consciousness as a stream grants it the quality of being the substrate of these experiences of objects. Consciousness becomes in eternal and universal back-ground of all phenomenaal experiences. Against such views as these, Rāmānuja holds that the seeming absoluteness of consciousness, or rather its uni- Versal presence has been misunderstood and misinterpretrod for the sake of a false metaphysics. It is based on false psychology. A correct epistemological understanding of the nature of consciousness would require a more detailed study of consciousness and its processes. Perhaps it may be said that all psychology and epistemology are worthless, since they deal with the already vitiated experience or categorized a priori experience. In reply we can only say that such a whole-sale illusion cannot be cured. Further there is no proof of its truth. A false understand ing of psychology is bound to obsess a mind given to a mere metaphysical pursuit of reality. A correct under ·CONSCIOUSNESS & ogrizes I was tanding of consciousness reveals according to Rāmānuja ive fundamental features. I. Consciousness is an attribute belonging to vermanent subject ani is not the pure 'that' or existence vhich is observed in nirrikilpaka pratyakşa.' II. Consciousness is not a permanınt but a transitory unction, or rather it is present whenever the subject It is not eternal in the sense that it is not Iways in action, for consciousness itself testifies to its barnce as in the judgements " I was not aware,. sleep". Consciousness is itself limited in time." TII Consciousness is a function of a subject. Samvidisvāśrayım pruti sattayaivu kısyacit prakusanaśīlo jñānadjatyczubhūtyädtipudepuryāyanāmā sakrırmakaḥ samadditur ütmano dharmaḥ prasiddhiḥ says Yāmunācārya. ; is not a stream nor an pıxpanse nor is it made up discreto watches of momentary experiences like links in a chain. ut it is also true that consciousness is aware of its absence, bhämr. It cannot prove that consciousness was present aring its own absenc, aq some contend, on the principle at there njust be something that perceived the absence. abjects forsist in sleep, and even in death in a state of hat Dr. Mac Taggart calls 'suspended animation', where nsciousness is absent or, in other words, not active, due to ck of body or lack of coördination. Consciousness exists power in that star fint ils potent, and not as act. There is -- ol. Pirst chaper" 2. Sri Blur , i. 1. Anublutiprigalshaville wielha atas-tat- amait-blīvaniyam: 'silti: Kim i vava kvaciil (vai virstam? Vena viy nam i visi llan'a tarni tatil (vil larsanit pragabhavallissiddha iti 11 tadapalıvalı, tatpragahnívam ca tatsamakülavartinam anumattal. ko braviti riyajınmanali piratyakşusya livenit svablivit niyamalı, yatsvasamakula tinali padartlisya grähakatvam. Annada l'rooms, ed. Vol. I, p. 31. Ani Ititvam nima varta manadasiyain svasattavaiva kvásrayam prati prakakanatvan, svasaltavilvi "Vil Visi vasichant van vi(Ananda Pr*. eid 1. p. 30,-1.) 3. 1tma-Suka 37 ·56 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE valid perception of non-consciousness (anu pilabılhi, in the same way as there is valid perception of darkness or black colour or non-existence (abhāra): IV. Consciousness is neither agent nor sulyject but the act of cognition of a subject to who'n it is specially related as a function, dharma or visesaņa. It is not a witness, sākşi, for witnessing implies the subjectness of consciousnless. "A knowing subject only, not mere consciousness is spoken of as witness : sākşitvam ca sūkşüt-j niitrium, pr. Consciousness is a function of a subject. V. Consciousness is not the Absolute Brahmiin nor yet the ātman, the individual soul. Because oven though one might seek to dissolve all souls or subjects into objects of the Divine Lord or dependent on His absolute existence the effort will not entail the granting the nature of being a substance to consciousness These five-fold objections against the monistic idealistic theory of Consciousness are serious enough. Rāmānujii shews that on grounds of actual experience and discri. minate criticisni there is no ground at all for asserting that consciousness is a substance or a witness or pure experience without subject or object. The true nature of consciousness reveals its polarity towards a subject to which it is invariably absolutely attached. Because this consciousness is observed in all subjects, it (innot be claimed that all these individual consciousness are: fulgurations or fragments of a universal consciousness or phenomenal representations or copies or reflections of an absolute Consciousness. The problem that confronts the epistemologist is a serious one, thanks to the rindiavours of the introspecting idealists. A universal consciousness which has been arrived at through a process of intense cogitation and refunding is an abstraction, a fiction and 4. Sankhya Sütras : 1. 56. Aniruddha's com. p. 33 "I trkness is all entity......from the fact tliat darkness is perceiveri, (because a preception in possible only) where there is an entity.

·CONSCIOUSNESS 57 not a real existence. It is a concept, a limiting one perhaps, but it is nevertheless a fiction. “ Whatever elese is real, the finite mind of which each one of us is immediately aware is real. Any notion of a ground of things which is incompatible with the reality of finite minds lias to be rejected as contrary to what we are bound to accept as fact. The question whether the absolute consciousness is a consciousness only has not been faced by the idealists. A theory of consciousness falle or lives on an adequate answer to this question. TI Consciousness not a substance. Ramānuja argues at considerable length against the theory that consciousness is a substance. I. Consciousness is an attribute of a conscious self who is the perman-nt or eternal being behind all change. The essential character of consciousness is that by its very nature it renders things capable of becoming objects to its own substrate of thought and speech ". “Of this consciousness which thus clearly presents itself as the attribute of agent or as related to an object, it would be difficult indeed to prove that at the same time it is itself agent, as difficult as it would be to prove that the object of action is the agent." Consciousness is like light that reveals the object as well as itself to the substrate, suapar.. nirvahakıt, and does not need a third entity to relate it to itself. II. Some persons hold that consciousness is the result of an act of cognizing or compresence of an object and the subject. This has been maintained by the Nyāya-school which ,holds consciousness to be a product due to conprosence (sannikarsa) between and object and sense-organs of 1. «1. Dawes Ilicks : Iſetaplıysical Systems of R. H. Brudley and James Warı : Journ of Phil Studies, Vol. I. No. 1, 36. 2 ss, , 1, 1, 8 ·58 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE the subject. Consciousness thus defined would be an epiphenomenon, distinct indeed from the subject and object, and therefore a new thing. This view might with ease be shown to lead either to cārvaka materialism or the idealistic theory of consciousness But Nyāya also holds that this situation itself is consciousness. It is contended that the subject was unconscious before the cognitive situation or compresence. The latter theory makes for the conclusion that is subject is himself of the stuff of unconsciousness (jada vastu)' and that he is capable of becoming conscious only through the conjunction, sâmyoga, with the object. Consciousness in the Nyāya-theory becomes thus only referable to the subject as quality that emerges in it due to the objective situation. In the absence of this objective situation it lapses into a state of non-consciousness. These conclusions do not follow according to Ramanuja, because the individual subject is capable of affirming himself as a self-existent conscious being without any need of a sensory compresence with an object. Perhaps this objection is invalid for the simple reason that the inner sense, like the manas acts in sumvedanā, introspection, which connects itself with its self. The sensory contact with an object only cails into being consciousness which is by no means a product, a new and original entity coming into being because of the relation of compresenet as a synthesis of opposites, but as the act of the subject who knows the object. The theory of realism standing on the rock of asatkārya-vāda could not accept the principle of inherence except as an external relation and never at a quality that is that is inseparably (aprathaksiddha) related Nyāya theory based on intellectual atomism and rationalism 1 Nyāya Vaišeșika holts that in the pralaya or dissolution - state the individual souls are as if unconscious In accepting this position it giants to selves the potency of becominy conscious Consciousness comes into existence as a reaction or reflex action, stimu atei hy the object. undoubtedly a behavio iristic explanatiun ·CONSCIOUSNESS 59 inultiplied entitites and categories galore and affirmed external relations between all things without any distinction. So much so even consciousness was bound to be a product of a relation, an epiphenomenon in that system. No wonder therefore that every entity and category can only be connected by another entity and so on ad infinitum Yet even that system has to recognize at the hands of the new school of Nyāya the sva-paranirvāhakatva of the relations. Despite this, consciousness is not adequately explained in that system. Further Memory becomes an inexplicable problem in Nyāya. The independence claimed for consciousness is impossihle. It is neither a product nor an independent entity. It is the activity or quality of a subject when it comes into contact with outer objects. It is a dynamic function, even as the the Buddhist thought avers. It is however the inseparable adjunct of self which is capable of becoming self-conscious. Consciousness also reveals memories and recognizes past objects of experience. Consciousness in one of its major roles is menory, smrti. It is more than this. It reveals the objects that are present before it in time and as such is implied in prutyāks. As bringing memory from the past into the present consciousness in relation to perceived objectsit, is the consciousness active in recognition ; and in keeping all iniages of previous experiences and perceptions it is memory that not is little influences our perceptions; and as the revelationary perception also it is this self-satne consciousness that is in function. In dreams trio, this consciousness is present, but it is only during sleep, suşupti, it is absent, or incapable of presenting anything to is substrate. Thus it is an insep..rable function of the subject in all cognitive activities whatever. Consciousness is also apoha.conjecture or ühanım 1 1 1. Vodartha Sarngruha : 237: Juinena dharmena svaru pa niriipi:am, na lu jūänamatram brahmeti cf. Suddhi Traya, p. 17: Svirupa-attayaivil Serviiwiriyat-au karya- ?«va viņayah prikāśata.

·60 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE or future knowledge. The subject is not a focalization of consciousnees, but is the substrate of this consciousness even as a flame is the substrate of the rays of light issuing from it which reveals the subject as well as the object and itself too. It appears when the self is active, and is absent when it is inactive. As William James wrote "I mean only to deny that the word (consciousness) stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it stands for a function." III Consciousness as attribute Consciousness is an attribute of a self, a quality risesana, inseparable and intrinsic to the self itself. On the occasion of every cognition it emerges to the fore and reveals the nature of the object to its substrate. In waking life it is always and continuously operating, and reveals the outer objects to its substrate, and makes possible the judg ments such as "I see that". • I perceive that as red", Here is this". 6. Whilst the Nyāya system holds that consciousness is at novel product, an emergent so to speak at the beginning when the souls, resting in prolaya like stones. päişānarut, came into contact with objects or rather congregations of atoms, like a light that arises from a wick, Rāmānuja does not treat consciousness to be a product or an emergent at any time, but that which is inalienably and inseparably aprathaksiddha-dharma, of the conscients even as the light is of the flame. Whilst the Vijñānavāda doctrine pleads for consciousness and the stream of mental-states as the only reality thus avoiding a self, that is other than the illusory permanence of the stream-contents, sam.skārā-skanda, Rāmānuja shows that this position cannot help at all, since the streamn-state 1. Gita Bhāsya XV, 15. 2. cf. William James : "Does Consciousness Exist."

·CONSCIOUSNESS 61 or the so-called store-house of consciousness is itself of momentary states, and thus even the samskāra-skanda can never resolve the difficulty of memory or recognition. A permanent conscinusness is an impossible notion, since consciousness is of states and objects, and is undoubtedly not permanent. There must be a basis in which these states find a permanent and this piust be other than the stream of consciousness, which is discontinuous as we have seen. Thus consciousness cannot be the self, whether this consciousness be a momentary store-house of impressions, or a permanent stream or even a permanent self, since consciousness is not found to be permanent at all. Memory and Recognition in pugn the consciousness itself as the self. Consciousness belongs to a self and is not the self itself. The self persists under all changes and vicissitudes. Not so consciousness which is found to be, in deep sleep at any rate, non-existent. Rāmānuja holds that consciousness is neither transient in the sense of momentary kşāņika, nor permanent in the sense of Advaita or Samklıya; it is a function, tharma, dependent upon the needs and conditions of its substrtae. 1V Consciousness (18 absent. Consciousness proves its own absence in the affirmation 'I was asleep", or I was not aware". In slep the self is inactive and not only unaware of external objects but also of internal images or dreams. Externality or objectivity is of two kinds, the on. is real externality of objects that exist inriependent of the individual's con ciousness or perception, the other in the field of memory antithkurana, which can be surveyed through remembrance and recollection. In deep sleep botlı these fields are not available for inspection or introspection. There are two views of this deep sleep The self is functionally passive [1 is mere selfness without action at ·62 SRI RAMANIJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE all either inwards or outwards. It is impossible to consider this state to be a state of passive awareness That the self might be self-luminous and as such be in a state of light is possible; but that there is awareness of any other objects, ideal or real, is out of the question. The Yogic description says that the self rests in the care of the heart, that the self goes to the Highest in deep sleep. Gaudapāda says that this stage is the stage of quiescence and lordship, stayam-prakāśa-īšatva ; hut no one ever affirms that there is cognition. It is likely that this selfluminosity of the self (ātman or jīva) has been mistaken for the activity of the consciousness, its function. The existence of self along with the non-existence of the consciousness under certain conditions is possible. Hence do we infer the presence of the self even in that state of deep sleep not because consciousness perceives its own non-presence, which is a self-contradiction, but because the self recollects that it was non-functioning. Further there is nothing self-contradictory in consciousness inferring its own past non presence. If no self is accepted and if consciousness is alone said to exist, then it is impossible to explain the possibility of sleep, since there is inherent contradiction between existence and non-existence of consciousness at the same time. Therefore the argument for the existence of a self, other than but never separable from consciousness which is its quality, function or adjunct, gets reënforced by this theory, whilst it is a pretty definite weakness in the theories which make consciousness itself the sell. V Consciousness neither the witness nor the self. It is a feeling of certitude of our own being aware that makes us recognize the distinction between ourselves and our awareness of objects and desires. It is usually 1. Ch, Up. VIII, iii. 2, ·CONSCIOUSNESS 63 contended that the use of the word 'I' in the sentence "I am aware' is due to ignorance, for the 'I' is said to be merely a closely-knit system of energies, memories and desires. Further we are told following the great experiments of Buudhists, who anticipated centuries earlier Hume's criticisms, that we never catch a self when we introspect, sva-samvedanā. Therefore the self is a kal pana, a création by intellect. It is usually the sense of unity of the physical body that makes us affirm a self that has at least as much unity and identity as the body. It is a practical convenience to refer this unity to the self which is just a reflection of the unity of the body and its organs. It is because the body is tired and is incapable of perception that we say that we are asleep Sleep is not a condition of the self but of the bodily nature. Dues not Yoga say that sleep must be avoided ? Sleep is a product of ignorance and is productive of ignorance. Awareness is the true nature of the self and is the self itself. Consciousness thus is self itself or rather there is no self at all but only consciousness. All the above arguments, from diverse sources, do not make the notion of a permanent self impossible, for the self is not an object of thought but is that which can be realized in a dir.ct vision or intuition. Try as we may it is impossible to find the self apart from the consciousness which is its function. But that does not make for the reversion of the relationship between consciousness and self. Consciousness is never the sākşi, the witness, but only the function of a witness, which is found to be the experience of all individuals. If an a priori deduction is ever to be made we should say that it is necessary that the witnessing self should exist a priori and not that consciousness should exist a priori. VI Consciousness not the Absolute. It is impossible to identify consciousness with the Absolute, the Absolute that is the ground of all experience ·64 SRI RAMANUJAS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE and life and being just because the Absolute has been characterized as Personality possessing power and perfection and bliss. Consciousness is none of these but the patient hand naid, not even a separate hand-maid. Rimānuja views consciousnes not as being in itself luminous but that its self luininosity is something that it gains by being the function of the self that is self-luininons. The self is of the very stuff of self-luminosity, whether it rests in itself or the Divine Lord, or in freedom or in sleep, or whether it is active in the sizlpni or jūgrat; it is essentially self luminous and luminous in its own nature for it elf, svuyamprakāśrı, and svasmai prikiisa." There is one objection that might with success be brought against the theistic and common sense position of Rāmānuja, namely, all these are perhaps true of the ordinary human consciousness. This w also admit but they are not true of the Absolute Consciousness. Illusion makes all the difference. Here there may be a subject and even a self, but there there is no need for self or anything resembling it but Pure Undifferenced Absolute Cous ciousness. This view, whilst apparently unanswerablı, is defining its position from a dichotomous view of reality that is intent upou misunderstanding and denying the world of apprehension as we know it, so as to enable us to postulate and affirm (a non-existent.ideal universe) (sic:) that is beyond all apprehension. In which use it is incapable of speaking about it and even knowing it in the sense of our knowing anything, and what it experiences or perceives (supersensorially) or is said to so experience, is something about which it cannot say anything, since it 1. Śrī Bhasya I, i. 1. (Ananda Press eil. Vol. I. J. 36,/ Atayi naşte'pi malto'nya kicijjñāptiravisthiti! Iti tatprăptaye vatnalı kasyrīpi na bliavisyati !! Svasailbandhitaya hyasyāssattaſ vijñaplitidi ca! Svasambandha viyoge tu jāaptireva nia siddlıyati" Chettuschedyasya câblive chedanaderasiddhivat! Ato' hamartho jñātaiva prai.yagātneri niścita in " 2. ibid. Cid-rī patā hi Svayamprakåsata. p. 37. < ·CONSCIOUSNESS 65 has itself to get dissolved in it never to come out of it again, na punarāvartate. Thus not only is epistemology impossible a fictional transaction but also Metaphysics and ordinary experience become fictional constructions, and beyond all this there is something or nothing (?) relatively speaking, and knowledge becomes just approximation towards more or less unreality. In the Buddhistic schools these approxiinations are dynamically construed. In Advaita they are practically construed In neither case. is reality possible within experience as we can know it. Further in these theories the constructive dynamism of thought is fundamentally of the vitiating character, Less and less of thought means more and more of Reality (caitanya)! Rāmānuja standing on the bed-rock of scriptural experience declares that inore and nore knowledge it is that leads to perfection of consciousness and not less and less. Knowledge it is that releases, not less of knowledge. And knowledge is not knowledge if it is indefinite and nebulous and more and more an approximation to experi ence of the n rvikal paka, the indistinguishable limit of sensations. Degrees of consciousness go with degrees of perfection and not with degrees of reality. The doctrine of degrees of reality is fatal to all reality. It is one thing to speak of awareness of the real, and the attainment of reality-consciousness, and quite another to speak of relative reality and approximations to reality in the eternal Reality. VII Consciousness as an attribute of a personality. We thus find that if it is admitted that consciousness is more of the subject than of the object, then "knowledge like pleasure manifests itself to that conscious porson who is its substrate and not to anybody else." The self thus owns consciousness just as it does all experiences as manifested in the judgments “I know this,” “I enjoy this.', 9 ·66 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Consciousness thus is not the absolute but the personal attribute of a self, invariably associated as its function, dharma. Therefore is it known as dharma-bhūta jñana as distinguished from the svayam-prakāśātman or jīva or the kşztrajña. It is creative in its perfect state of expansion (vikāsa), and in its lesser stages of perfection (sañkoca) it is not creative of reality, but has inventiveness based on the real which it apprehends, and thus is the source of illusions, which however alway betray the core of the real in them to a discriminative consciousness. That is to say, in imagi. nation, vikal pa or kalpana, the capacity of consciousnesses to present the real is diminished, and fantasies and fictions are created instead To say that creative activity is not of consciousness is to deny the psychological truth of consciousness itself. This is not to deny that consciousness presents reality. Other factors than consciousness impede its presentation of the real. The creative activity of consciousness is a result of God's own activity through the individuals who belong to Him. VIII Summary Consciousness has been interpreted in various ways. In the Nyāya system consciousness is a separable attribute in the case of souls, but in the case of Isvara or God inseparable, since, in the one case, there is no subordination to creation, and in the other case, there is. According to Mimāmsā of the Bhātta school, consciousness is a part of the soul whereas its other parts are unconscious. The iceberg theory of modern psychology is very powerfully recalled by the:e thinkers. In the Samkhyan system, consciousness is an independent entity and is not dependent upon any situation. Nor is it conjunct with any self as a part of it or whole of it. Nor is it an epiphenomenon as in the materialistic school. The catalytic action which it exercises on the evolving psycho-physical dynamic principle 1. Hindu Realism : Jagadish Chatierjee, p. 63, ff. A:lababad 1912.

·CONSCIOUSNESS 67 vere. brakrti implies its becoming powerful, as well as a power o influence the becoming of some other things.' In the idealistic schools there are four sub-schools as it In the first consciousness is described as perfect knowledge, as an element of the supreme reality, but it is 10t the whole of it. Reality is full of infinity of attributes ind there is nothing to suggest that consciousness or mind s that which supports all others. Spinoza and Rāmānuja agree in so far as they emphasize the richness of content of the Ultimate Reality. Pure consciousness according to this type of thought is an abstraction and not an experience. The second type whilst accepting the first view holds that pure consciousness is a reality not an abstraction. It is an illumination (jyotih) of the Lord which all must realize. What this consciousness does is to radiate the light and perfection and supreme nature of the ultimate reality which is rich in power and has attributes of the transcendental kind. The third type reverses the previous position and makes pure ronsciousness the goal of the all effort and reduces rual being to an illusory abstraction or construction. Thus there is a conversion of the logical real into a figment of the imagination. No better is the theory of alayavijñāna in Buddhistic thought. So too is the theory of Māyā. The theory of the Śāktas makes an adjustment in so far as it seeks to make pure consciousness (with infinitely rich content) and Pure consciousness (without content) as logical aspects of a supralogical Experience. In so far as this theory powerfully shows that consciousness as pure, (as described by Māyāvāda), is a logical outcome of the theory of reversion of substance-attribute relation, it refutes the view usually upheld that Māyāvāda view is the alogical culmination or the alogical Highest. The sākta view holds further that the pragmatical alone converts the alogical into logical or rather imposes its logical moulds on the alogical, even as Bergson claims. 1. Mahā Māyā: Woodroffee and P. N. Mukhopadlıyaya, Ganesh & Co.

·68 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Thus two points emerge: the attributive theory of Rāmānuja is the first, and it may approve even of the second ; Whiilst the Māyāvāda and the Śākta views are reversions of this view and hold a substantive view of consciousness. For Rāmānuja, consciousness is neither a stream nor a substance though it participa es in both qualities. As a function of a soul it is known as jñāna. It is unlike a quality for it is deemed to be a dravya as it is capable of expansion and contraction, or in other words, capable of modification avasthāvad dravyam. It is a function of a subject or person expressing his perfection and richness according to the nature of the person as a perfect or released or bond being. If consciousness is particularized and attached to limited wants and interests, it leads to the mechanical dead level of uniformity and rigidity. If on the other it is either humanized or divinized by working for the perception of the highest reality there is proportional enlargement of consciousness. Release or freedom for an individual consists in the enlargement of his consiousness to the fullest level of parity with the Everperfect Consciousuess of the Divine Lord. Consciousness is a stream as long as it lasts, that is to say as long as an object is possessed by it This objectivity might be physical or mental, as in dreams and in reflection. It is found that consciousness tends to be active in a mild or full from according to the state of tension of the individual in dream states.' “Consciousness in the sum total of all contents to which the ego stands in a certain unique relation which may be metaphorically indicated by the verb “to have' “Everything falls within the sphere of consciousness which the ego has”... “Every fact of consciousness is made up of at least three moments; every such fact depends for its existence . 1. Cl. Appendix I. Dreams in the Philosophy of Rāınānuja: cf: als , Anpals of the Sri Venkateswara Oriental Institute. Vol. I. No. 1, ·CONSCIOUSNESS 69 upon the presence of an ego, of a content of consciousness and of a relation between the two." .." The only necessity for consciousness is the presence of this relation or function. The nature of the content which enters into relation with the ego is a matter of indifference. It may belong to the psychical or physical." 9 "We must draw a sharp dividing line between the act of knowing on the one side and the object and content known on the other; the act of knowledge is always a psychical state of the subject knowing and bears the character of an event in other words, it is temporal) which comes to pass at the moment in which judgment is formed. On the other hand, the object and content of knowledge may be non-psychical, trans-subjective, and may belong to a different point of time from the cognitive act." “According to our theory of knowledge, even a changing and temporal content in so far as it is considered in relation to the act of knowing, may be a truth, that is, it has an eternal, identical and universally valid meaning. This result is not obtained by transforming a temporal element of the world into a timeless idea, but by admitting a specific and ideal relation between the subject knowing and the object know i. An act of cognition consists in a comparison. In this comparison, sameness and differences are establishedi that is, analysis is performed. In order that this psychological process may be set in motion, the presence of a certain something is necessary with which the content of consciousness can be com pared."... 1 “ The act of judging is an analysis which seeks to lay bare the synthetic necessity of connection between the contents of consciousness given-to-me.' The logical relation between subject and predicate of a judgment is not one of identity or of contradiction but of the synthetical necessity of connection. The judgment should be thrown ·70 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE into the form Where S is, P necessarily is also.' This relation is a functional dependence.” “There exists between the elements which make up the world a functional dependence and it is this very dependence, in so far as it firms the objective side of judgment, which represents a logical interconnection, an interconnection determined by a sythetical necessity of combination."... The above extracts are called from Professor Nicola Lossky's im; ortant contribution on intuitive Logic entitled Transformation of the Concept of Consciousness in Modern Epistemology and its Bearing on Logic to the Encyclopædia of Philosophical Sciences Vol I. They serve to illustrate the modernity of Sri Rāmānuja's views on the subject of consciousness. 1. cf. His Intuitive Basis of K110wledge.

·CHAPTER IV THE COGNITIVE RELATION I Cognition-a Relation We have seen how perception has marks of difference within the presented content itself and that no amount of effort to reduce these differerices in the presented can avail except to reduce the reality of the presented. In which case all perception will be vitiated so thoroughly as to be incapable in any manner of granting the real or even suggesting the real as substinding these presentations. The effort to drag in the disparity in the activities of the mind in the presented and the presented itself, or in other words between intellect and sensation so as to reverse the usual views that intellect is a better and truer instrument of knowledge than sense, is an effort that is fraught with consequences of self-contradiction and scepticism. The consideration of the cognitive relation is what we shall find to be most important. That cognition is a relation at all may be contested. But we shall show that cognition is a product of a particular kind of relation between the subject's consciousness and the object presented to it. This problein is truly a modern one and few thinkers had missed troubling themselves with metaphysics without at the same time being confronted with this. Cognition is the fact of subject-object relation. We find that these three terms go together. The two, subject and object, are entities, whereas consciousness is the function of the subj ct in relation with the object. Thus the cognitive relation does not imply merely a static type of status but a dynamic status of the subject. Samkhya accepted a kind of representationalism, since it made the world material and the Puruşa or self a passive ·72 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE spectator-consciousness, and the act of perception receptive dynamic, receptive in respect of the Puruşa, because of impressions and tendencies, and dynamic in relation to objects. It has dynamic receptiveness also in its pure state. But how could interaction occur between the inactive self which possesses (or is) consciousness and the active matter which is unconsciousness? This is the most important point of criticism against the Sānıkhya theory from the epistemological side. The explanation of catalytic action is valuable, and most probably explains the eternal persistence of the consciousness as such whilst it is in conjunction with matter. Even then the eschatological problem of release confronts the whole theory. If the self is active it would be involved in matter and release would be impossible. Connection with matter is therefore bondness. This is the cause of all misery. If the self be mere consciousness without volitional and emotional characteristics, then the suffering endured or unendurable is a characteristic product that cannot ever touch the self or consciousness. All these criticisms show that the theory has some fatal faults despite its excellent analytic discrimination and realism about the causes of ignorynce and sorrow. II Representationalism untenable. Representationalism is a theory of knowledge advanced by those who hold that there is impossibility of real contact between matter that is extended and mind that is unextended, or between the unintelligent and the intelligent. There happens thus a real difficulty regarding how we ever know the outer objects. Our imaginations and dreams show that tney are of the stuff of experience. That knowing is a process happening within the consciousness of a solf is an admittent fact. The facts of recollection and recognition lend credence to the view that what we perceive are the representations or mental copies registered within our consc ousness or mind rather ·COGNITIVE RELATION 73 than the objects themselves. Ohjects are inferred to exist outside the consciousness on the basis of their independence to our wishes and the persistence and vividness of the copies derived from them than in the case of images in recollections and imagination. Thus truth is possible when there is correspondence perceived he:ween the psychical (or material ?') copies and the original things themselves outside the body. are If the reprezentationalistic theory of absolute difference be upheid het woen matter and svirit and their relation has to be inconipatible in any direct manner, there can only be the reflection in consciousness of matter, or in th alternative o Sāmkhya, of consciousness in matter If not, there could be a third alternative all that the mind is capable of having imprints of matter in itself and even from a distance like the photo plate. The theories we have discussed all of the representationalistic school, and le represented by Samkhya and the Sautrāntika. buddhistis school. Whilst the representationalism of Säuträntika is true to type with Des cartes and Locke, the Samkhyar theory is peculiar. In Sámkhya prakrti or matter reflects the sell and the buddhi which is sizid to occupy the status of mind or consciousness-function in relation to the self, bahaves as the medium for the spirit to perceive the things of the world. Buddhi is of tenuous stuff, imperceptible to the eye though material in constitution. The stuff of representations or reflections is thus undoubtedly material though tenuous and imperceptible to the eye, and thus mediates between the perceptible matter and the imperceptible and conscious self. The images thus are not psychical stuff as in representationalism a la type. This feature does not make this doctrine any more acceptable than the other as this does not inake buddhi any inore perceptible than the rest to the selt. If the spirit or niind or self is absolutely of Samkhya in taplıysics. 10 ·74 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE - inactive and matter absolutely active, if the spirit or mind or self is absolute consciousness and matter absolutely an 'other', contact between the two is impossi. ble and inconceivable. Either we accept the fact of their conipresence and get along with this as basis, or use w have to find a meeting.ground or a solution that will mak this com presence possible. In the case of Sāmkhyet it is matter that mirrors and it is matter that cognizs, wills and experiences, and knowledge becomes a feature of matter in its subtle from as buddhi, Knowledge thu: having been relegated to the side of matter, there is no need for spirit, though Sāmkhya finds reasons for its existence on the basis of the purpose betrayed in the movements of the world. Knowledge or consciousness in Sāmkhya then will not be different from its place in Cārvāka. In the other case (Cartesian and Sautrāntikan), the entire activity of reception and imprinting belongs to mind, which is said to be a tabula rası or momentary series, capable of receiving sense-impressions from matter and getting imprinted. The contact between the self and matter is through the medium of representation a tertium quit which is of psychical stuff. But here also the spirit or mind is a pissive recipient of impressions from matter. All falsifications of these ini. pressions must be referred to the emotional and instinctive forces operating at all moments of an embodied creature's life. The importance here lies in the necessity for an entru mental reality or external reality without which there can be no representations at all, but which however could never be known to exist. As Berkeley proved there is no necessity to admit any exterial reality since the mind can of itself create its images, und secondly, since the objects said to exist outside can never be known or perceivd at all as to how they are. All sensations are of the same worth and value and, therefore, it is impossible to adnit an ·COGNITIVE RELATION 75 external reality other than what we perceive. And what we parceive are images and ideas. In which case matter is an appendage that could be dispensed with. The subjectivistic onslaught of Berkeley was followed up by Ilume who shewed that the images and ideas are the ultimate reals, and there is no subject that we come across, to whom we could refer these imaginings and ideas The doctrine of Representationalism thus, whether Eastern or Western, suffers from the defect of making the outer objects inferred in the sense of their being causes. If in addition to this, the doctrine of momentariness of impressions and things and conscious-states is accepted as in Sautrāntika buddhistic school, then, it follows that the proof or evidence for their existence is wellnigh impossible. Non existence alone is the terminus quid of Buddhist representationalism. The histry of Representationalism is identical everywhere. It fails to explain the cognitive relation. The doctrine of compresence is important, indeed all important, in this connection. The subject knows because of compresence with another object; it knows of its own knowing, and it knows that it is knowing, and it knows an ohject in the act of knowing. These facts belong to the order of experience as everyone knows. Unless there are adequate reasons to mark a departure from the ordinary explanation, to deny any one of these factors is to invite criticism. A priori reasons are not as such true. Nor is it found in most cases of inference or rationality that is divorced from experience. Sankara upholding the absolute difference and opposition between matter and mind and finding that it leads to the impossibility of any kind of representationalism of Vaibh āșika or Sautrīntika, concluded like the Yogācāris that the self itself can manufacture its own images which may be called māyā. The only difficulty of the Buddhist thought that it surmounts and refutes is that it denies the dynamic of the momentary consciousness-stream and instals a permanent self. The nihilistic appeal of Nāgārjuna was ·76 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE «OWS alluring undoubtedly, but it was a haven in which all were black and it meant also the surrender of the one omni potent assurance of experience of God which he knew and bore witness to. The eristic dialectic of Nāgārjuna, which finds its parallel in the West in Zeno, discovered antinomies underlying most hypothi eses about reality and declared that since all were nfected with self.contradiction, the nihilistic and the sceptical conclusions were inesca pita ble, śankara availed himself of all the battery of dialectie of the Buddhistic thought and utilized it to save the self that transcends all change and movement and dialectic. The result was something similar to Kant's philosopliy but niore vital and self-revealing. He built up his system of Advaita or the Non-dual reality on the experience of the Ātman or Atta. This atta or ātman is the neagnus or Brahman not the individual egoistic soul formed out of samskāra and vâsana. Buddhistic Buddhistic psychology und sămkhyan psychology had helped the discovery, comprising of the fourfold nature of ego, buddhi, hamkāra citta and This ego is the unreal reflection of the Infiniti Self and parades as the jīva or individual soul It IIlly even be construed as forming screens of increasing density that hide the self from itself. The rehabilitation metaphysics was made possible only on the basis of 1.1.is acceptance. Sankara was too inuch of a realist to accept the conclusions of Yogācāra which upheld a fictitious store-house of consciousness, alaya-vijñāna, which is nearer the concept of ahamkāra or antahkarana than the Self which is the unchanging permanent. In other words, Sankara refuted idealism vigorously when such idealism was not indistinguishable from Solipsism, but he was an idealist all the same in so far as he made reality consist absolutely only of the Spirit. It entailed the phenomenalizing of all ordinary experience of the senses; and the cognitive relation itself in so far as it betrayed thio three entities at once was a phenomenal experience and could never be the truth about reality.

·COGNITIVE RELATION 77 We cannot help discovering here, unfortunate though it is, that just as Kant was influenced both hy Hume and the rationalists whom of course he refuted with all vigour, Sankara was influenced considerably by the Buddhistic free-thinkers. Kantian influence was idealistic though Kant himself gave a refutation of it: Sankara was an idealist, though he refuted Nāgārjuna and the Yogācāra doctrines. Kant's main contention was that we do not know reality (is it in itself through Pure Reason, though in fact we are aware of it through Practical and Aesthetic Reason in Kant the Noumenon need not be merely one., it may contain the many, though this is a travesty of his own thesis that oneness and manyness cannot be applied transcendentally. The Practical Reason vouch safed for him the manyness of selves. Not so in Sankara's doctrine. The religious intuitions of Upanişads according to him declare the Oneness or Single nature of the Noumenon. (pāramārthika Satta). For him absolute identity is the truth, difference and manyness are false. This falsity is due to Māyā, a raticcinating, emotional instinctive factor whose nature is describable neither as real nor as unreal, --anirvacancya. Sankara's Māyā is an illusory principle understood firstly, as sensory, secondly, as ignorance of true nature (rational), and thirdly as activity (or will). As sensory, it is the world of experience through the body of objects : as ignorance it is the world of selves which seek to attain reality of being but actually identify themselves with their bodies and desires ; as activity, it is the Isvara, the governer and destiner of the world of objects and selves It creates the vyavahārika, phenomenal world. III Degrees of Reality nct Valid We will now consider whether in such a theory of reality there are available degrees of reality. It is usually contended that the dream states are less real than the ·78 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE waking states, that the state of dream is purely individual and imaginary and that it is caused by instinctive fears, and wishes of the individual. The waking state of cons ciousness is said to be less real than the direct intuitive But from the stand-point of the direct intuitive, apa oksi, insight cunsciousness, all the waking and dream and sleep states are absolutely unreal. There are degrees so to speak in the phenomenal and not in the real. Nor is this view helped by the conflicting views sometimes mentioned that the dream-state is a higher state of the self than the waking, because of the independence from objects and objectivity that it entails. This latter is the solipuist-view. Absolutely speaking, all are absolutely unreal. The doctrine of degrees of reality is a question that obtains in the phenomenal universe and not in the transcendental. There then happens another type of reality that is in sooth unreality, within which there are degrees. But the fact of unreality as such cognized in regard to the whole universe must be forgotten in that context. If we abandon then this transcendental, then what remains is the phenomenal, the only universe we know, and the criterion of truth would be non-self-contradiction; and, if another be needed, as indeed it will be, coherance with conduct. The phenomenal will reveal layers of veiling rather than degrees of reality. This solution does not solve the problem of the cognitive. The concept of Māyā brought in to dissolve the cognitive relation is futile in fact, as it is ineffectual in metaphysics and experience. The two-kind tneory of Mäyä, one universal and a priori, and the other, individual and a posteriori, the first leading to a transcen. dental conversion or veiling, the second to the individual illusions of sense, recalls firinly the two stages of a priori synthesis of Kant also, one of Sense and the other of Understanding -- Illusions are of the sense, and could never happen to the illimitable intelligence. The simile of crystal and red flower posits duality at the very start and does not avoid it.

·3 COGNITIVE RELATION 79 Metaphor's too entail the reality of the terms in some manner. Comparisons taken from experience may carefully be applied in transcendental explanations. The Spirit niay h.tve imaginations and creative power, and Vedānta does postulate this in the sūtras, janmadyasya yatıħ and jagadvyāpāra,' but it has no illusions. Illusion is the quality of the sense-experience impregnated by hasty generalization. It is different from hallucination which is creative imagi. nation fred outside the individual by some persistent psychic demand. Thus Māyā has no locus, āśraya, in Brahman. The Māyā principle that trichitomizes the unique one, is a fictional principle itself incapable of being an explanation of itself. It was on the ground that it is an un warranted principle that Rāmānuja refutez it. There are neither one veil nor two veils nor three nur an infinite number. What is true is that the power of Brahman in so far as it is not apprehended as power of creation, is not understood, so to speak, as the Upan śard instructs us to perceive it. It is a phenomenon that baffles understanding. Once the wondrous nature of Brahman Himself is understoo Māyā His power of creation or līlā becomes easily understandable. It is undoubtedly a curtain, yavanika,' but not unreal. IV Nyāya-Voiseșika vieu criticised When we turn to the schools of Nyāya and Vaišeşika. we find that they accept the in re connection between the self and its cbjects. In other words, they accept the cognitive relation. The objects are known in the presence of the contact between the sense organs and the objects. A sensation is due to the rays of light in the eye passing to the object. It does not explain how w.. ever can resolve the problem ot opposition in thy constitution of the two terms, inind and matter as atoms. Representationalism V. Sūtra. I. i. 2 & IV. iv. 17. 2. Catuśśloki of Vārnu nācārya 1. 1.

·80) SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE cannot avail here too. Direct appreh-nsion does explain, but what it can explain is next to nothing but the fact of ccrurance of perception. The failure to put the question on the part of Nyāya-Yaiseşikä is a serious fault in that system. It is the ordinary unreflective man's philosophy so to speak; or it is due to the perception of the very serious faults arising from any acceptance of representationalisni. Once representationalism is in some manner accepted, there is no way out of the nihilistic conclusion via subjectivisin. And yet that does not save Nyāya from being not sufficiently an anvikșiki. The purely objetivistic and external observational manner of the materialist did not avail itself of this serious problem of epistemology It is a purely descriptive philosophy and comprises a net-work of only two kinds of relations, the external and the permanent. It is a philosophy of discrete data, somehow se-king to find integrality that it refused to realise or recognize. The cul de ac of Nyāya logic is scepticism again, since absolute difference between atonis and souls cannot permit any adequate relation. The explanation of cognition that it is the act of grasping of the object by enveloping it with consciousness as quality, is that of Advaita, and that can at least explain how representations happen or copies reproduced. But mere conjunction at one point can never lead to the experience of the object as an object, nor can it ever lead to the reconstruction of all objects in memory. Nyāya doctrine clean forgot so to speak, the problem of memory. Nyāya's protest against internal relations led to th sacrifice of all explanations of the cognitive relation. The problem of cognition can be solved only by the acceptance of the psychological fact of the relation of mind and matter as represented in the embodied human being, for from thence can to infer the possibility of cognition. It is true that many criticisms are levelled against psychology as a science. The cognitive relation is a rral relation, fundamental to knowledge and available wherever there is consciousness and as such is fundamental we ·COGNITIVE RELATION 81 a to any theory of knowledge. Disembodied beings, if they exist, might have a way of knowing, about which we can have no idea, but knowledge is a feature of consciousness which is invariably available wherever there is subject The cognitive relation cannot be had in a vacuum without a subject and an object. It comprises three terms; and the cognitive relation itself is a phenomenon that is temporal, that is to say, it can occur with respect of many objects in succession or contiguity. It does not assume the permanent presentation of any one object or compresence or connection with any one object, since that is not its nature, but it reveals itself as related to a permanent subject to whom consciousness as effecting the cognitive relation is an inseparable adjunct. All idealisms end in systems of Experience. In any case they do not permit the real existence of time, space, nature and objects, though they are prepared to affirm their phenomenal appearance character. Realisins end in systems of relations and all of them finally seek to dissolve all objects into relations, or else they end in atomistic views in respect of every field of experience. An organic theory alone takes into consideration both these and affirms the unity and diversity character of these terms in cognitive relational experience. V Nature of Relation "The very nature of knowledge presupposes the independent existence of the reality known," and to show that means that idealism is a variety of the subjective point of view. The failure of the thinkers of the idealist and the critical school of Kant is the failure to realize "(1) the directness of the relation between the knower and the reality known, and (2) impossibility of transferring what belongs to one side of the relation to the other”,' This is 1. Kart's Theory of Knowledge: H. A. Prichard. p. 112 11 ·82 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE an admirable exposition of the realistic position and this refutes all assertions that it is "possible for the characteristic of a thing to belong to it as perceived though not in itself". To quote from the same author, Prof. Prichard, “Knowledge unconditionally presupposes that the reality known exists independently of the knowledge of it, and that we know it as it exists in this independence. It is simply impossible to think that any reality depends upon our knowledge of it, or upon any knowledge of it. If there is no knowledge, there must first be something to be known. In other words, knowledge is essentially discovery or the finding of what already is. If a reality could only be or come to be in virtue of sont activity or process on the part of mind, that activity or process would not be “knowing ', but making' or 'creating', and to make and to know must in the end be admitted to be mutually exclusive." The real difficulty of the Buddhist idealism and their corresponding thinkers in the West, Berkeley and even Kant, was that they ignored consideration of the world as a reality simply and appealed exclusively to its special character as a thing known. The misinterpretation of the psychology of consciousness as sich and the cognitive relation made it impossible for them to discover the essential directness and partialness of the cognitive relation as such. There are other powers of the mind that do not involve the dealing with objects os existent objects. The analysis of consciousness through dream states involved them in the autonomy of the consciousness as creator, but they did not see that it did not involve this autonomy in the experience or relation that is essentially discovery or knowing, and this is indeed different from the making-characteristic or kal panā and is in fact its negation There is danger and undoubtedly a serious defect if imagination should play the role of the perceiver. Such a function would be trespassing into knowing. Rāmānuja 1. bid., p. 114. 2, Ibid p. 118. (italics in the text).

·COGNITIVE RELATION 83 and the realists clearly admitted the capacity of the mind to delude itself because of its private wishes and desires and imaginations. But they found it to be different indeed in every respect from the knowing process, which in the words of Prof. Prichard involves the discovery of what already is.' This is the real, and always real. The content of dream states also is also real on the principle that they are engendered in the individual dream state by the Divine Lord according to the moral deserts of each individual, because even there the cognitive relation is normal and not interfered with by the emotions and desires of the individual himself. They are not his kal panā, but God's. The mentalistic theory of the object owes its force also to the wrong interpretation of the object as similar to selfconsciousness. The facts of ri-cognition make this interpretation possible. But as śri Vedānta Deśika argues the self-sme recognition, pratyabhijña, reveals that the content of the recognition is not anything other than the outer world which is apparently not self-conscious. This view that to be an object is to be inconscient was mani. festly at the back of the Advaita theory. Though some obje-ts are inconscient and some others are not and need not be, and indeed even self-conscient beings can become objects of consciousness of some one else, the fact remzins that there is the clear understanding of the position that the object of kncwledge is other than and is not selfconsciousness. This is directly contradictory to the view maintained that the object of consciousness, in the very initial stage of perception is cit, consciousness alone. The doctrine that the object's existence depends on its being known, esse est percipi, makes the cognitive relation the condition of existence. "The relation is one fact which has two sides which are separable and are not inseparable.” The subject is always the subject of an object and equally an object is always the object of a 1. See 'st chapter.

·84 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE subject", but the fact is that the subject and the ohject need not be subject and object all the time. The subject may continue to perceive or may not. and the object may or may not continue to be perceived The relation is terminable, and further the same object may not continue to be the obj-ct of a particular subject and it may vary its subjects ad infinitum. Likewise the subject may wander from object to object in a continuous effort of cognition. But it may equally desist from this perpetual effort. Action demands the cognition; the cognition is purposive therefore, and cessation from action may involve the cessation from the cognitive activity of knowing. The fact is, relations are of two kinds, terminable or separable, and inseparable. The one is the relation between universals and particulars, substance and qualities, genus and species. The very elements of the relation dissolve when the relation disappears. "The very being of the elements related involves the relation and apart from the relation disappears.” This is the aprathaksiddha-relation of the Viśiştādvaita, and this is in one sense an eternal relation. On the other hand the relation of object and! subject of knowing is essentially temporal. The elements exist independently of the relation. In other ·an words, the uprathaksiddha-relation is internal relation, the cognitive relation is an external relation The relation does bring about knowledge of the one to the other and is serviceable. But it does not involve the very being of the elements that it relates. Relations are non-regressive: there. fore the Cognitive relation also is non-legressive. The theories of representationalism and subjectivism suffer from a fundamental defect. They are worried about the nature of relation itself. How could relations relate ? How could they relate distinctly different entitites such as a mental subject and a material object? ARMA 1. Kant's Theory of Knowledge : II, A. Prichard p. 132 ·COGNITIVE RELATION 85 The first question raises a point that is not worth perhaps serious consideration. The fact is that there is the relation, and to ask for a further elucidation of the positior, is to land oneself and not the relation or the relata, in a fruitless task. Relations relate because they are relations and they cannot be either the terms they relate, nor do they require any other relation to relate then and so on ad infinitum. To say that the relation requires another relation to relate it, is to treat a relation as if it were an object-term or relatum, which it is not. To conclude on the basis of this wrong analysis-a hyper-critical analysis-that all rela. tions are illusion and that they are not available in the real, is to contradict the very possibility of knowledge. This extreme view has been held by several thinkers like Nagarjuna, Sankara, and in the West by the Absolute idealists amongst whom Bradley was the master-mind. Rāmānuja finds that the cognitive relation is like any other relation; it is external, conjunctive and direct. There is nothing repungnant in a mind knowing its material object, and the doctrine of homogeneity between the -ubject and object is a false one and no tertium quid is needed to mediate between the mental and the material, in the form of a quasi-mental image or representation, leaving the subject to infer the material object outside. The important part of the whole position is that because the image is sensory it should be a part of the mind, and as such is different from the object outside. but in so far as it is outside also, in the sense that it is seen as characterising the object, it is, in some manner, of it. The Samkhyan position in regard to the cognitive-relation is similar to this, and it was more alive to the issue of the homogeneity of the subject and object and made the mind (buddhi) a material, tenuous and reflecting medium, so as to be the locus of the representations. The theory of homogeneity is a device brought in to get rid of the theory of direct perception and ultimately to deny the reality of perception itself. There is indeed enough difficulty in the doctrine of ·S6 SRI RAMANTIJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE representationalist cognition without any need to take recourse to the theory of homogeneity. The fmbodied being is a unity, a psycho-physical rinity, and in so far as this is fur.damentally real and actual the theory of homogeneity is useless; and no recourse need be had to the theory of parallelism such as that held by Spinoza. The problem of direct perception or knowledge of processes is only postponed and not solved by this theory of autonomous dualism-cum-parallelism The cognitive relation thus gives rise to the following considerations : (1) It is a relation that is established between a spiritual subject and an object that might he'other' than itself. (2) The experieuce of the outer world is a direct transaction between the sense-organs nnd the outer world, needir.g no tertium quid, such as iniages or representations. Ideas are mental; not so images which have objective loci. (3) The transaction itself is an activity of the self which senses perceive or intuit. (4) The sense-impressions are parts of the outer reality which is a continuum characterised by space and time. (5) Space and time are perceived as much as senseimpressions are perceived by the mind which is the sensorium in this case and directly. These reveal that the conjunction of extra-sensory and the sensory in the perceived content is due 'o the activity of the embodied being simultaneously in both of its aspects. (6) All that is perceived in perception is real. VI Criterion of Falsity The difference between the perception and the intention of a sense-datum and the sense-datum itself consists in the essential interpretation that is laid upon the sensedatum. The illusions of sense-data are not unreal. They are sensed in the manner in which they are given, and there ·COGNITIVE RELATION 87 is much truth in saying that normal senses do not lie as even Kant held. The conflict comes in perceptions which are made to stana för objects in the external world and the objects sensed, that is, in their interpretation. It is undoubtedly true to say that it is just possible that we do not appre hend all that are in the external universe and that the nature of objects is such that they cannot be fully known. It is perhaps also correct to think that because we do not percieve the minutest atoms in their isolation but only percieve them in their constellations or groupings, the a toms are not capable of being inferred to have any of the forms that we endow them with in their groupings. That however need not deter us from thinking that this percievability or the objective nature or even the possession of these qualites are not in the objects themselves, even as space and time are objective perceptions and cannot be said to be mental. The fatal objection to the mental theory of space or time lies in its inability even to grant the necessity to geometry and other so-called sciences, which depend on the acceptance of space as the property of objects as such and not as perceived by us only. Those who make space merely that which lies between any two visible objects and merely a non-existence (that is a mental construction) cannot inake this non-existence fall into any category of nonexistence. It is a definite perception and not a nonexistence of either free space or non-existence werely. “ As non-existence is clearly conceived as a special state of something actually existing, space sıven if admitted to be of the nature of abhāvu would not on that account be a futile non.entity (something ruccha or niru pākhya) Falsity is that which pertains to the value of a judgment we pass with regard to an occurance, what 1. Sri Vedānta lieśika on the The Buddhist Schools of Thought (Paramnata Bhaliga)Tr ns. by K C Varadachari. Annals of Sri Venkatesoura Oriental Institute. Vol I. 1440 S. B II, 2, 23 : Abhavasya vidyamāna-padārtha-vāsthā-viseşatvo-pa. pādanācc-ākāśasya-bhāvarūpatvepi no nirupakhyat vam. (Ananda Press, ed. Vol. II, p. 94).

·58 SRI RAMANUJA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE interpretation we place on the datum given. rather than to the existence of the datum itself. This datum cannot be dismissed as an illusion. It exists, and is so far as it is, real. We have to find out only as to where and in what contest we shall have to place that event, discover the causes of its occurance and discover also the int nt that had the power to lead us astray. Its truth consists in what position or place it gets within th order of physical events not as to its existence, for that it is absolutely in its own right. Every fact faces the criterion whether it is a fact amongst other facts in a given context or otherwise, and secondly what it is within itself. Thus the cr terion of reality of any sense-datum has two faces, firstly how tar it can be a fact among other facts, a question that leads to the comparison of the sense datum with the objective reality of other events which are said to go along with this. The collocation of causes of diverse kinds leads to the production of this sensation and thus the causal theory of perception has in some sense to be assumed. Thus comparison is possible. Secondly, how far there are factors which are introduced by the subject himself into the object observed. "Truth can only be distinguished from falsity if there are marks by means of which the knowing subject can tell which elements proceed from the object and which are introduced by himself. the conscious subject." That this can be done also is actually seen. The fact that we can within the porception itself discover the causes of illusion and also within the perception itself discover, with the help of the intent, misleading affinities are sufficient to reject the theory of general falsity and indeed can justifiably explain on the basis of common sense realism all illusions of the porceptive kind. We find that our knowledge of objects is a direct process, not an effect on the sense-order as such, but really capable of declaring the nature of the perceptual field, whether it is one's own body or any other outside our body.