VEDANTA REVALUED AND RESTATED

By Nataraja Guru

CONTENTS

       
 To a newcomer, India is a land of enigmas and wonders. Besides its mountains, rivers and seas, its people present such a variety of types, dress and language, and such a wide range of beliefs and behaviour-patterns as to puzzle him.
Prevailing cults, doctrines and dogmas present a confused tangle. Their time-honoured customs and manners challenge and baffle the researches of the most penetrating of inquirers. The Indian sub-continent may thus be said to present to him the aspect of a veritable museum, with an endless variety of interesting features.
 Exaggerations and superlatives are normal in this land of rolling plains and snow-capped mountain peaks. The pitch-dark nights alternate with days when sunshine manifests more colourfully what was absorbed within the womb of Nature. Enjoying comparative isolation by natural frontiers, this land has preserved something of its ancient personality, surviving those cross-breezes of time that have more easily ruffled the atmosphere of neighbouring regions.

THE HISTORICAL - CULTURAL BACKGROUND

  More like a weed than a garden plant, humanity in South Asia shows striking contrasts as between high and low, rich and poor, Brahmin and Pariah, who segregate themselves in toil or in leisure, assorted into groups with distinct traits, or in an almost amorphous matrix or mixture.

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         The major portion of the submerged masses is inarticulate and dumb-driven by the stark necessities of life. Castes and tribes have thus persisted, with their distinguishing names and special outer marks, graded between static and closed groupings and more open and dynamic ones.
  The Indian mind has an accentuation of subjectivism. The historical sense in respect of the actual dates of facts is poorly deve-loped. This is due to the seven, five, or at least two thousand -five hundred years to which memory has to be stretched back-wards to find the sources of secular or spiritual life. Errors have to be allowed in terms of centuries, not decades, and sometimes even in terms of millennia, in respect of many impor-tant events, or of the dates of important books. Often too, a contemplative geography takes the place of one in which longitude and latitude are valid. India is spoken of as a Jambu- Dvipa, an Island of Berries, in certain Sanskrit books; and there is a vast submerged continent called Tamilakam to which it belonged, as spoken of in ancient Tamil literature.
Epochs are referred to in terms of yugas, each of them having a duration of a million years. Speculation has gone on un-bridled through the ages on the Indian soil. There abound specific and generic personalities, half-real and half-mythological, such as a Brihaspati vying with a Dakshinamurti; a Visvamitra with a Vasishta; and a Vyasa with a Valmiki. We are offered a gallery of figures about whose lives we know next to nothing.
 Scepticism and belief, reason and sentiment, like bright and dark strands, have crossed over from one side to the other, changing between what was considered orthodox at one time into what was heterodox at another: and so on, many times over, during the long history of Indian thought. It is like a rope with many strands, whose individual fibres take up the continuity, one after another.
Such are some of the background aspects into which we have to fit our study of Vedanta which is a revaluation of the Veda that went before it. We can think of this situation as a tree of Wisdom which has put forth its best blossoms through a period of about five thousand years, as Dr. Paul Deussen has described it.

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 We have to think of this cultural expression as a process of dialectical revaluation and restatement, taking place imperceptibly and in infinitesimal gradations through decades, centuries, even millennia: resulting in what is even now recognisable as present-day Vedanta. Alive even to this day, it may be said to be its culminating expression. Much of present-day Vedanta, however, having become overcovered with the debris of latter-day Indian scholasticism, stands in need of restatement, after being correctly revalued in the light of a correct Vedantic methodology, epistemology and axiology, in order to give it a normalized scientific status, balancing both scepticism and belief, and applying the instru-ments of reason, criticism, and intuition to the total knowledge-situation implicit in it.
This is the task which we shall undertake, in a running fashion, in the pages that follow. Empty "Lord-Lord"-ism; harsh exclusiveness; wrong loyalty to the dead letter rather than to the spirit; partial preferences and the lack of a resultant firm justice; a misplaced sense of value; and errors of judgement which spell disasters, big or small; are some of the evils sought to be mitigated by our present inquiry.

PRE-VEDIC INDIA

India was already civilised before the Aryans came with their Vedic religion. Until the significance of the Indus Valley civilisation was recognized, Indian historians invariably began their first chapters with reference to the Vedas as the source of Indian spiritual life. But the excavations at Mohenjodaro and Harappa in the Indus Valley and at sites such as Lothal in Gujarat, have opened a backward vista of a couple of millennia more in which a pre-Aryan civilisation existed. When the Aryans came, they had to face the challenge of an order of things that existed before, and to respond to the new situation.

The Vedas, which began by reflecting a simple, natural and fully human sense of wonder about the phenomenal aspects of life, based on a vague belief in the Absolute, had to be subjected to several revisions, revaluations, and restatements, after this contact with the previous civilisation.

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       The result is discernible in the various grades of wisdom-literature, of which the three Vedas, the Rik, Sama and Yajus stand apart as a group in themselves, by the primitive purity of their style and subject matter. They are filled with a sense of the numinous. They represent the first lispings of the awakened self of man at the dawn of the history of India.

       If prose is suited for practical purposes, and poetry for purer or spiritual purposes, the language of the Veda may be said to excel in the latter; and whatever reference there might be to action in the hymns, chants and liturgies of the Vedas, refers to the context of burnt sacrifices to propitiate the pantheon of personifications of cosmological and phenomenal aspects of the Absolute. Their status in theology or psychology may be questioned, but their high proto-linguistic and poetic value in the context of the wonder of the adorable Absolute is beyond question. They must be subjected to their own innate standards of criticism, as has been done by Jaimini, and then they become a body of wisdom which can hold its own against any philosophy in the world, including the Vedanta, which itself in many respects has to presuppose the anterior and more antique of the two disciplines, the Veda and the Vedanta.

 The challenge and response, or the blast and counter-blast aspects as they prevailed in India when the Aryans came into contact with the pre-Aryans, known by whatever name, has to be visualized somewhat as follows:

THE REVALUATION PROCESS

       The green pastures and fields attracted the invaders in small groups as they penetrated inward from the north-west through a period of centuries; or of the millennium between two- thousand five hundred to one thousand five hundred years ago, roughly speaking - if we are permitted to guess between controversial dates. They had their cattle and horses too, and were formed somewhat like a city-state, with three groups which tended to segregate themselves by their natural functions as priests, soldiers, and traders; to which they added a fourth group which was not within the fold, but could come and go as servants.

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       The Aryans seem to have brought neither servants nor enough women, judging from cases such as that of Dronacharya, who was a preceptor of archery to the Pandavas and who took Kripi for wife.

       The origins of Vyasa and his father Parasara sufficiently reveal the state of intercourse prevailing between the originals and the newcomers. The story of the Pandavas and the circumstances of their birth and parentage show that some complexity, promiscuity, and polyandry was normal in those days, as with many prehistoric peoples the world over. Vyasa, otherwise called Veda-Vyasa, the central figure of Indian spirituality looked at from any angle or point of view, had a fisher-damsel for mother, and had for father Parasara, who was born of a Pariah woman, as stated in the beginning of the Mahabharata itself.

       The settlers soon created for themselves pockets of influence, and as between those who joined the side of the newcomers and those who were of the original group, whether by loyalty or blood, two blocs developed in and around Hastinapura or Ayodhya (modern Delhi and Oudh respectively), not necessarily at the same epoch. The story of the clan of Raghu (or Rama) had the latter city for its epicentre; and the Pandavas under Krishna, who were of the Mahabharata context, had the former.

       About the activities of both of these groupings, we have ample literature on which to base our broad guesswork in the two great epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Ramayana has a story that moves from the north to the south, bringing a revalued culture, not necessarily all Aryan, to put law and order and some refinement into the peoples of the South. This may be recognized as an expression of the "blast" side of the situation in which challenge and response must be distinguished, if we are to place Veda and Vedanta in their proper perspectives.

       The Mahabharata episode moves from the prehistoric pre-Aryan context to an Aryan heaven which the eldest of the Pandavas refuses to enter if his dog is not admitted, and where his enemies are already fully acceptable persons holding respon-sible offices.

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       The Bhagavad Gita episode itself states the way in which Vedic relativism and Samkhya dualism are revalued and restated in terms in keeping with Vedantism. Elsewhere  we have given to these matters fuller space already, and we are only referring to this aspect here in passing, to show that Veda and Vedanta are to be looked upon as counterparts, Vedanta being the revaluation of the Veda.

FROM NON-BRAHMIN SOURCES

        If  Veda belongs to the orthodoxy of the Brahmin priest, Vedanta was in the possession mainly of kings like Janaka; or of men of lowly social status like Raikva, the cart driver with itches on his body, who as custodian of Vedantic Wisdom, would not readily impart it even to superior people such as the Brahmins. Similar references elsewhere in the Upanishads, which are not at all few, point in the same direction.

       Vedanta is the result of the interaction of primitive and crude Vedism - which latter was vitiated by the acceptance of cruel and unclean animal sacrifices and a harsh, exclusive priesthood, who would not allow a Sudra (the servant who necessarily belonged to the rival group) to study the secrets of its wisdom - with a form of higher Wisdom of the Absolute, which grew up from the meeting of the twin philosophical and critically revalued spiritual traditions called the two mimamsas, (critiques): the purva, (former) and the uttara, (later), this last being closer to Vedanta proper.

       The subtle dialectical relation between these two critical schools will be examined by us later. Suffice it to say that Vedanta combines and reconciles Veda with the critical and philosophical aspect of wisdom, into Brahma-vidya, as a Science of the Absolute. How this was made an accomplished fact is what we have to explain.

       Within the limits of belief in the Vedas and a full-fledged agnosticism, scepticism, and even atheism, at its core, the tree of Indian wisdom presents to us many problems, requiring, for full justice, a large treatise.
 
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       In this present study we shall content ourselves with the revision, restatement, and revaluation of some aspects of Vedanta that interest us; particu-larly in the light of modern developments in scientific and philosophical thought; and pertaining also to the philosophy of Narayana Guru, which may be said to mark the culmination of revalued Vedantism in the India of recent times. The structural, subjective, and selective features pertaining to the notion of the Absolute, as we shall see, are shared by Vedantic thought also, and it is exactly this aspect that is of interest to us, as these features are evidenced also in the writings of Narayana Guru.

HOW TO DISTINGUISH VEDA FROM VEDANTA

       Strictly speaking, the distinction between what is known as the Veda and its dialectical revaluation into Vedanta is one of the most central and difficult problems to be faced.

       For this purpose, we have to draw first the preliminary distinction between Vedism as it manifested itself in its primitive form as a natural and actual historical occurrence, and critical Vedism, as it was subjected to later additions and amendments. Mere elaboration of the raw material of the Veda is one thing, and its subjection to dialectical revaluation is another. Both have gone on abreast in respect of the Veda, as it passed through the stages of Agamas, (traditions), Brahmanas, (commentaries) and Aranyakas,  (forest teachings), forming various sakhas, (branches) tending to be more critical, rational or philosophical; from mere ritualistic beginnings, supplemented by hymns, chants or mantras, (evocative sound-spells).
The four stages in a man's life may be said to correspond to the stages of the historical development of Vedic thought itself, as it passed through simple sacrificial acts, with their connected gestures and chants, into more elaborated forms of ritual and mutterings, suited for various occasions and circum-stances, and on to non-ritualistic pure wisdom.

       Various Rishis (seers), Gurus (wisdom preceptors), or Munis (quietists), who lived in the forests away from society, had their own favourite or particular Vedic traditions and chants, each with a form of ritual belonging to it, which made them into distinct units of Vedic schools, some of whom specialised in Vedic exegetics, semantics or grammar.

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       In this way, a complex situation arose in which Vedism underwent a drastic modification of context as well as content.

       Thus, if Veda is the tail end of a knowledge situation, we have to think of the Vedanta as belonging to the front pole, where it gets more finalised by ever-greater dialectical revaluations.

       The intermediate literature presents a region where specu-lation thrives both ways as in a no-man's land between two contending armies. Each of the eighteen chapters of the Bhagavad Gita represents the various permutations and combi-nations possible in this dialectical revaluation, pertaining to the categories of Existence, Subsistence and Value in Vedanta philosophy. (As we have devoted a volume to the unravelling of the intricacies of the Bhagavad Gita it is not necessary to linger here on this subject any longer).

       The two mimamsas, (critiques) called the pracina, (antique) or the purva, (anterior), and the uttara, (posterior or more finalised), have between them a subtle dialectical affinity, based on an apparent opposition. It is to explain this affinity that the subtlest polemical, logical, exegetic, and semantic powers of great teachers like Jaimini and Badarayana have been lavishly expended in their writings. When one is understood in terms of the other, reciprocally both ways, with all their subtle epistemological and axiological implications; cosmologically, psychologically, and eschatologically; we can consider ourselves to have touched the core of our subject.
There are three canonical texts, which have been accepted for this purpose in Vedanta: namely, the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita.

       Between these three we can reasonably expect all Vedantic doctrines to have been touched upon in one context or another. When these texts are treated together with the Mahavakyas (the great dicta of the Vedanta); if properly explained and understood with their significance and position in the body of knowledge; we can rest satisfied that we have given some definiteness of content to the complex and multi-apartmented mansion of what is vaguely referred to as Vedantic Wisdom

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THE TWO CONVENTIONAL DIVISIONS

       The totality of Indian spirituality of the Vedic context may be broadly divided, as is already conventionally accepted, into the jnana kanda  (section on pure reason) and the karma-kanda (section on practical, ritualistic or other action), respectively.

       When both of these exist together, they enter into conflict with each other if non-dialectically handled; or, when they are dialectically treated, they are absorbed without contradiction into a middle ground which is inclusive of both, where both contradiction and paradox are transcended.

       There are thus two methods and two distinct epistemolo-gical positions possible: the one that admits the principle of contradiction and the other that does not do so.

       Advaita (non-duality); visishta-advaita  (non-duality admitting some difference between quality and the qualified Absolute); and dvaita  (accepting the duality of ambivalent poles within the structure of the Absolute); are all possible varieties of Vedanta. Each of these finds justification in the three canonical texts referred to above, without violating the requirements of the great dicta and the spirit of Vedanta as a whole. They represent grades in which the Absolute Idea or Norm can transcend paradox or bypass the principle of contradiction and excluded middle, in giving differing accentuations to the value-factor of the content of the Idea from the theological, psychological or purely epistemological angles.

       Ritualism and gnosis, which are rival factors involved in Vedanta, either enter into conflict horizontally, or absorb one another when vertically treated. Herein is the secret of Vedanta on which the author of the Gita has put his finger with precision and certitude when he says:

"On what is action and what is inaction, even intelligent men here are confused. I shall indicate to you that action, on knowing which you will be emancipated from evil. One has to understand about action and understand about wrong action. Again one has to have a proper notion of non-action. The way of action is elusively subtle (indeed)! The one who is able to see action in inaction, and inaction in action - he among men is intelligent, he is one of unitive attitude (yogi) while still engaged in every (possible) kind of work." (IV 16-18)

       In the last of these verses we have the paradox of action and inaction most squarely faced, and the dialectical solution suggested without contradiction of their rival claims. When dia-lectically treated, the paradox is resolved; but when treated from the point of view of ordinary logic, which excludes the middle ground and accepts the principle of contradiction, the conflict stares us in the face - and so to treat jnana and karma together would be unjustified. We shall have more to say on this kind of dialectical methodology of the Vedanta as occasions present themselves in this study.

       Meanwhile, these quotations from the Bhagavad Gita, which is perhaps the most central authority for Vedanta; being repeatedly cited in the Brahma-sutras of Badarayana, which latter is perhaps its only possible rival, if any; suffice to show that the gnostic and the ritualistic traditions in the Vedanta need not divide the wisdom of Vedanta into two water-tight compartments (as popular opinion might want us to believe), when viewed in the context of the higher wisdom that Vedanta is meant to represent.

       What Sankara refers to as the evil of promiscuously mixing up wisdom with action (jnana-karma-samucchaya) can thus be avoided when the dialectical methodology proper to Vedanta is fully explained and understood: since samanvaya (dialectical agreement or "harmony" as often translated) can replace the samucchaya  (mixing up) which would spell wrong Vedantism.

        At the core of Vedantic wisdom there is lodged a paradox which we have approached frontally here, to get started on our subject. As we go along, some of the points or aspects still left obscure in the Vedanta philosophy will perhaps be cleared up. Vedanta transcends paradox by the postulation of an over-all normative notion of the Absolute as an Existent-Subsistent -value.

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II. THE THREE CATEGORIES OF REALITY

       All philosophy and science stand for certitude through thinking. Logic and mathematics lay down the methods by which certitudes are reached when mere thought, unsupported by methods or calculations, involves varying degrees of doubt about the steps of thinking or research.

       Vedanta philosophy or Brahma-Vidya (the Science of the Absolute), as it is more correctly named, is no exception to the rule. It seeks certitude about absolute Existence, Subsistence, or Value, comprised in one notion called Brahman. (Brahman should not be confused with Brahma, the four-headed god of the Hindu pantheon: it represents the Absolute when used as a neuter and not as a masculine.)

TEXTS AND THE GREAT DICTA

       To reveal the nature of the Absolute in poetic, figurative, or other convincingly authorised or valid language, is what the Upanishads, the most important body of literature of canonical status for Vedanta, have as their principal task.

       The Absolute, being by nature a mystery and a wonder, means that the teaching of the Upanishads refers to a kind of philosophy that tends to be esoteric. However, when it has been subjected to more critical, rational, and intuitive treatment in the Brahma-Sutras of Badarayana (which is universally recognized as the second canonical text of Vedanta); and in the third similar canonical text called the Bhagavad Gita (which, however, is sometimes referred as a smriti - a code of obligatory duties of secondary importance); the subject matter of these three authoritative texts attains to a fully philosophical status, both from esoteric and exoteric norms of thought.

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       Both a priori and a posteriori means of valid reasoning are employed in Vedanta to arrive at the four great dicta (or maha-vakyas) which define the finalised finds or (lakshya) of Vedantic research or inquiry.

       Expressed by the first, second, or third personal or impersonal pronouns as referring to the Self or ultimate Reality, they read: "Pure consciousness is the Absolute"; "That existent is the Absolute"; "This Self is the Absolute"; or "That thou art". In whatever grammatical or syntactical form they may be put, they represent an equation between two aspects of the Absolute, one which is visible and the other which is intelligible, whether in the context of the cosmological, the psychological, or the theological orders of reality

       The great dicta may be said to be answers to the two most generalized problems of all philosophical inquiry; two grand problems arising ever and everywhere in the human understanding, and contained in the questions: "who am I?" and "how came this world?" These two questions are fundamental and basic to all philosophical inquiry on the part of any man endowed with natural curiosity to know about his environment and himself, as together making a sensible whole in the Absolute.

       Vedanta follows such wholesale lines of inquiry and boldly claims to hold the answer for these questions, which is more than the most intrepid of modern analytic philosophers dare to claim.

       There are modern philosophers who tend to believe that wholesale answers to globally or totally conceived problems are no longer justified, and that the scientific spirit pertains to the piecemeal annexation of one fact after another to the total store of human knowledge by demonstrable steps of trial and error. They are thus sceptical empiricists or pragmatists, confined to the instrumental or the operational world of probabilities, with a partial epistemology, methodology, and axiology.

VALID MEANS OF CERTITUDE

         Vedanta, on the other hand, is rather a bold, wholesale, frontal, and a priori approach to ultimate realities of the most generalized order; and its natural starting point is belief rather than scepticism.

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       The other valid means of certitude, such as what is demonstrable and given to the senses, such as the eyes, etc. (pratyaksha), are not omitted; but are given a revised epistemological and subjective status in Vedanta. They are fitted into an overall scheme with a transparency or homogeneity in the common medium of participation, which is neither mind nor matter, but something with a neutral status in the Absolute.

       Vedanta is thus a complete philosophy of the Absolute; with a rather subjectively-biased epistemological status; with a methodology which admits of all valid means of certitude, from empiricism, through rationalism, criticism and intuitionism; with an importance also attached to semantic considerations; and referring to a high human value or goal to be reached for all mankind.

       Although often mistaken for pantheism, pessimism, solipsism, eclecticism, idealism, or syncretism; none of these terms can be considered sufficient to cover the character of Vedanta, which is an integrated philosophy, a psychology, a cosmology, and a theology in its own right at one and the same time. It is often legitimately or illegitimately used as a surrogate of religion.

       Although some aspects of Vedanta stand in need of revision or clarification in the light of modern norms and standards in philosophy, there is no gainsaying the verity that it represents a monument of the heights to which speculation in the human mind can attain. Progress in modern times tends rather to confirm Vedanta rather than discredit it or put it into cold storage.  When properly restated, it can even offer the basis for a one-world philosophy or a unified science of tomorrow.

         The much-misunderstood Purva Mimamsa will be seen, on closer study, to be nothing but semantics, offering the frame of reference for a language of unified science. Schematicism, structuralism, subjectivism, and a selective epistemology: all lie at the basis of Vedanta, in which not only the Vedas but the six systems of Indian philosophy, all of which have gone into disuse and mistrust at the present day, have been successfully integrated already into one body of unified Wisdom.

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        The normative notion of the Absolute is the factor giving unity and organic coherence to the various elements of philosophy or science, logic, or mathematical discipline, that have contributed, or should legitimately be taken to have contributed, to this body of unitive wisdom called Advaita Vedanta, of which the other varieties, such as Dvaita (duality) and Visishta-advaita (non-duality with Value), are only as corollaries to axioms.

VEDANTA AND MODERN THOUGHT

         There are both points of contact and difference between Vedanta and modern Western philosophy. Having reviewed some of the significant aspects of such thought in another study , we have here to keep the matter in mind again, so as to enable us to see Vedanta in its revised perspective, noticing agreements and disagreements between the two extremes of Eastern and Western ways of thinking, widely separated as they are.

       We have already seen how the official or academic philosophers of Europe, even up to the time of Hegel, treated Eastern philosophy and Indian speculation generally, as unworthy of any notice. Exceptions to the rule, such as Schopenhauer, Schelling, Schlegel and others, besides Max Müller and Paul Deussen, were those who admired it, as we have seen, almost as partisans in its favour.

       It is the mean between the two attitudes of disadoption and adoption that we have to strike, to arrive at the normal view in this matter. The sceptical and the empirical standpoints have great credit at present in modern Western thought. This is due partly to the reaction against the extreme dogmatism of the Middle Ages and the rise of the scientific spirit after the Dark Ages had passed into the Age of Enlightenment and Reason.

       From the paradoxes of the Eleatic philosophers, and the hylozoism of the pre-Socratic animists and nature philosophers who speculated about the reality of the elements of water or fire in a scheme of existent realities, to the extreme idealism of a Hegel, we have one sweep of the story of human speculation in the West, which we can keep in mind in order to see the highlights and contributions of each new development, insofar as these are likely to be of interest to us in placing Vedantic thought in its proper perspective in the context of human understanding and the lines of its speculation, as natural to man at any time and anywhere.

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       A perennial and world background, in which normal human speculation naturally thrives, when once properly visualized, will help us to rid ourselves of the parochial or mental barriers of the language or customs of different regions or times. We can then seek that central scientific notion common to both philosophy and science; and clarify it for the thought of the one world of tomorrow, in which the idea of one language too would have full relevancy; as helping to avoid confusion of tongues, which a scientific language alone can be expected to solve - as it has to some extent already done. A Russian and an American scientist can now communicate in the language of formulae and equations, with letters of the Greek alphabet: and so it becomes punishable to pass on any information in such a language from  one side of a frontier to another.

       Philosophy too, when rid of linguistic or cultural frontiers, will tend to bring humanity together in a more real sense than in the case of the Tower of Babel, which left the question of a common language outside its scope.

       Integrated Wisdom must accommodate existential laws, logical rules, and critical methods, and give full scope to intuition. Modern phenomenology and existentialism also have their contributions, which we have to notice so that we get a total or global view of speculation as a whole, as normal to man anywhere and at any time.

       What is often referred to as perennial philosophy, at present tends to come near to mysticism rather than to the philosophies of the present time, which are referred to as analytic. This distinction itself will be seen to be arbitrary, when we have examined the whole field of speculation and understanding in the light of a normative notion of the Absolute. We cannot here attempt a thorough or systematic study of these aspects, but only a summary review of the whole position in a sweeping and general way.

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THREE BROAD DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

       The Vedanta examines absolute reality under the three categories of sat (Existence), which is philosophically the domain of ontology; chit (Subsistence which results from abstract reasoning) which is the domain of the ratiocinative or rational aspect of philosophical inquiry; and ananda (which refers to the world of Value, whether moral, aesthetic, or of higher contem-plation), with the good and the beautiful coming under this division, which has recently been named axiology.

       Ontology, epistemology and axiology may be said to cover roughly these three zones or degrees of speculation. Often these divisions overlap or presuppose each other until they become merged into one central, neutral, normative notion, called the Absolute. The actual, the logically true, and the beautiful, or the good as summum bonum, may be said, in a more popular way, to cover the same divisions.

       The cosmological, psychological, and theological versions of the same have been recognized in Vedanta as the adhibhautika, the adhyatmika and the adhidaivika aspects of the Absolute, which is yet another way of dividing up the total field of speculation, based on the "subject matter" or "object matter" to which it refers. Sometimes too, both subject and object matters are treated together more unitively, as in keeping with the non-duality of approach.

        Although, strictly, Vedanta adheres to ajata-vada  (the theory of non-creation), yet there is in popular Vedantic works, under a chapter known as utpatti prakarana (chapter on genesis), some reference to how, in the beginning, the world originated. Thus some aspects of genesis are included in Vedanta as also its inevitable counterpart, eschatology, which treats of matters pertaining to the soul after its departure from here, or refers to the end as pralaya (general finality).

       Theories of reincarnation and the survival of the soul in various regions have been variously worked out in Vedantic texts. A total subjective and absolutist way of approach, giving primacy to the mind rather than to matter; which is of the essence of spirituality, as against mere one-sided materialism; characterises Vedanta on the whole - although the rejection of the materialist standpoint from its scope altogether is not intended by Vedanta, strictly speaking. Mind and matter in Vedanta may be said to be treated as counterparts with equal claims, as in the standpoint of neutral monism postulated by William James and approved by Bertrand Russell.

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       As a result, empirical evidence (pratyaksha) occupies a respectable position side by side with sabda (a priori validity based on authoritative texts) in Vedantic methodology.  When the story of creation and the survival of the soul, with its progress in the spiritual world, are brought into the scope of philosophy, it begins to resemble theology or religion.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

       Indians have had no reason to divorce religion from philosophy to the same extent as Europeans had to do because of the extremes and excesses of the dogmatism of the Middle Ages. The horrors of the Inquisition that haunted the conscience of the West were a nightmare which can vie only with the cruelty and injustice of the caste system that has persisted in India. Both have tended to drive a wedge between aspects of spiritual life which, without them, should have belonged together to one discipline or expression of aspiration for Truth or Freedom. As a perennial philosophy, Vedanta tries to steer free of historical and other considerations, and thus has a global, integral, and unitively comprehensive character of its own, with its own necessary methodological, axiological and epistemological peculiarities.

       Though coloured somewhat by Vedism in its origin, it is not to be mixed up and thought of in terms of any genetic fallacy of its origin and growth on the Indian soil. Advaita Vedanta or more simply Advaita Philosophy, when revalued and restated, can give us the norm and reference, both theoretical and practical, of a way of life and a certitude that can claim a fully scientific status, while being a complete philosophy in its own right.

       Partial philosophical growths or expressions which have gained the foreground in various epochs in the history of the world, can all be given their proper places as aspects of such a Philosophy of philosophies or science that Vedanta has claimed to represent, even from Upanishadic times.-

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       How far the various philosophies of the Western world can, by their light, confirm and not discredit some of its primary methodological, epistemological, or axiological postulates in yielding more certitude to Vedanta as a complete philosophy in itself, is what we shall try to show in the pages that follow. For purposes of orderliness, we shall adopt the Vedantic categories of sat, chit and ananda (Existence, Subsistence and Value) as aspects of the Absolute, to establish points of contact or contrast between Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy as represented by the Advaita Philosophy of the Indian soil.

THE ABSOLUTE AS EXISTENT

       We have the experience of existing things. This experience is the natural starting point of all inquiry of truth, whether scientific or philosophical. The mysterious universe of Jeans, or the "all things wonderful" that the Lord God made, of the children's hymnbook, refer to the existential order of things.

       This aspect of reality refers to what is observed by the naked eye, or when aided by instruments like the microscope or the telescope. Particle physics or bacteriology reveal one side of the existing universe; while the galaxies of the expanding universe refer to the other pole: these are known as the microcosm and macrocosm respectively.

       We have to distinguish, however, the metaphysically existent from the ontologically existent. In scholastic philosophy, as opposed to existence there is essence, which has also to be noted. Brute actuality based on sensation is called the sensum: when removed one degree subjectively or second-arily, it has more of the status of a percept, rather than that of a sensum. Conceptual and nominal abstractions of the existent are also possible to abstract from the given actuality of a situation.

       Significant existences have to be separated, as coloured by degrees of interest in things that exist. Epistemological realism and idealism are both possible in modern philosophy. Materialism itself has no definite meaning, especially in modern days where matter and energy are becoming interchangeable terms.
When we look for support in the history of Western thought in fixing the connotation of what exists, we have to hearken back to the pre-Socratic hylozoists to find any firm philosophi-cally valid ground.

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ALL-ENCOMPASSING CHARACTER OF 'SAT'

       Sat (ontological reality), as understood in Vedanta, has no metaphysical limits put on it as in the West, where ontology is excluded from the purview of epistemology. Physical sat, ontological sat, and axiological sat are all comprised in Vedanta under an over-all epistemology. All these have metaphysical presuppositions implicit in them, so that when Vedanta speaks of something as sat, it is to be a significant aspect of reality, rationally, critically, or intuitively understood. It is also good, morally and aesthetically too, in the context of the Absolute; which is the highest of significant values in the Self.

       An actuality that exists in the most primary of senses has to be given to the senses, especially to the sense of sight and touch. Lightning and thunder, though related as cause and effect, are not as actual as a stone that we can see and touch, although the former, too, enter our consciousness directly, though separately through hearing and sight. Weight is a reality that is not so directly given to the senses as colour. The outside colour of the room in which we might be sitting at night, as seen during the day, is not an actuality  - to the extent that memory has to support perception. Thus, when closely examined, empirical ontology referring to material existence, which is treated as if it had apodictic certitude, has no such simple status. The position of neutral monism, which treats of reality as consisting of neither mind nor matter, comes very near to the concept of sat as used in Vedanta.

       Sat is one of the three possible categories under which the Absolute can be viewed. It comprises the truth of the dictum cogito ergo sum of Cartesianism and the esse is percipi of Berkeley; and holds them both together by means of the ulti-mate notion of the Absolute, which is the basis of them both; and which could not be conceived by human understanding if it did not exist in the pure sense of sat as used in Vedanta.

       A verse in the Bhagavad Gita stresses this all-encompassing philosophical character of the notion of sat sufficiently to bring out the three grades in which existence is to be understood:

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"This (term) sat (the real) is used in the sense of existence and also of goodness, and likewise 0 Partha (Arjuna), to all laudable actions, the expression sat is usually applied." (XVA.26)

       Immanent, empirical, transcendental, and even value aspects are comprised in the notion of sat in Vedanta. How this is made possible in Vedanta will become clearer as we proceed. It is an inter-subjective and trans-physical value--factor in the Absolute Self.

WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL AFFINITIES

       It is in the hylozoism of the pre-Socratic philosophers that we find anything near to the notion of sat in the history of Western philosophy.

       Thales of Miletus gave to water the status of the source of all things; and Anaximander spoke of the original material substance as the 'principle' of all things. He is said to have described the soul as aeriform.

       Heraclitus assumes ethereal fire as the substantial principle of all things. He at once identifies it with the divine spirit which knows and directs all things. The process of things with him is twofold, involving the transformation of all things into fire and then of fire into all things. This latter movement is styled the 'way downward', which leads from fire (identical with the finest air), to water, earth, and so to death. The former movement is the 'way upward from earth and water to fire and life'. Both movements are everywhere intertwined with each other, all identical and not identical. We step down a second time into the same stream and yet not into the same stream etc.

       Indian philosophy may have been influenced by Egyptian thought and Egypt might have had affinities with India. Which-ever might have been the earlier, it is here in the hylozoist absolutism, which speaks in terms of flux and of ascent and descent of the substance treated as a pure principle, that we must establish, if at all, a point of contact between existential aspects of the Absolute of Eastern or Western philosophy.

       Modern phenomenology has borrowed this way of looking at the world of things or elementals from the pre-Socratics.

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       The Phenomenological epoché which, as an entity non--theoretical in status but still referring to no single predicable thing in the world; arrived at by a 'bracketing' and 'discon-necting' from the natural 'world about one' which Husserl tries to distinguish; comes near to the notion of sat of the Vedanta.

       In Bergson the flux or process of becoming of matter that is non-mechanically conceived under a schéma moteur, as a cross-section of fluid reality, has also points of similarity with the notion of sat in Vedanta.

       The quantum mechanics of modern physics, which tends to make matter a mere wrinkle in space, vectorially understood, would also suggest the pure notion of sat as understood in Indian philosophy. Plato's reference to 'the mobile image of eternity' and Aristotle's idea of the mind that 'becomes all things' touch the same entity or notion that sat represents.

        In Vedanta sat is an extreme philosophical abstraction, and we shall not enter more elaborately into its epistemological validity here. For the present, we must content ourselves by indicating where the points of contact lie in the Western world of speculation for the notion of sat to be understood in its proper philosophical perspective.

VALUE GIVES STABLE CONTENT TO EXISTENCE AND VICE- VERSA

       Brahman or the Absolute is the highest of human values in Vedanta, and if existence is to be thought of as belonging to the context of the Absolute, the notion of existence must, by implication, indirectly at least, have reference to this high value. Anything non-significant and inconsistent with the highest aims of man becomes ipso facto non-existent in principle, although it might be an actuality in the merely empirical context, having no reference to the Absolute.

       This way of interpreting the meaning of existence is supported by the theory of indirect meaning that Sankara accepts and adopts, when explaining the three attributes of satyam, jnanam, anantam brahma  (the Absolute is existent, knowing and infinite). The connotation of one of these is to be looked upon as modifying the other, till they refer to the Absolute in a total meaning-content.

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         This semantic principle of indirect meanings (laksanartha) applied to one Absolute, without any contradiction between component terms, is one of the secrets of Vedantic exegesis. This same way of giving significance of reality to sat (existence) is seen employed and explained, in the Bhagavad Gita:
"Whatever is sacrificed, given or done, and whatever austerity is gone through, without faith, it is called asat (non-existent, no-good) 0 Partha (Arjuna): it is not (of value) here or hereafter." (XVII. 28)

       All truth, reality, or fact must satisfy the three tests of (1) being a significant value in human life here or hereafter; (2) being valid according to reason; and (3) being conceiv-able as existent; at one and the same time. This will apply equally to actions, gifts, things, or properties dealt with in transactions between man and man. Vedantic methodology, epistemology and axiology have thus to be treated together in order to yield the integrated unitive wisdom which it is meant to represent.

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III. THE PROBLEM OF TRANSITION FROM EXISTENCE TO SUBSISTENCE

       How the mind is inserted into matter; how the body is articulated to the mind; and how there is participation between the subjective and the objective aspects of reality - are questions pertaining to one and the same problem. This problem has puzzled and eluded philosophers, theologians, as well as scientists, everywhere up to the present.

        Whichever term is used, the link which enables psycho-physical interaction can be conceived only by what the terminology of Vedanta describes as samana-adhikaranatva  (homogeneity of ground, context, or medium).

       When different metals have to be soldered together there has to be a special medium or flux to hold them together effectively, intimately, and strongly. Water or air can each mix with their own kind most intimately without any difficulty. Sounds and colours can blend imperceptibly with degrees of clashing or lack of harmony. Through participation, it is not hard to infer from common experience; as also from the syntactical and semantic requirements of the grammar of any language - that the law of homogeneity is a common matrix in a fully intimate blending, where there is perfect harmony.

       When participation itself is possible, it is thus legitimate to infer from common experience the presence of a common medium or a matrix in which that possibility exists. Conversely, consciousness, which is homogeneous and absolute, without any internal contradiction or conflict within itself, provides for participation between any apparently heterogeneous factors or elements, whether they are concrete or abstract.

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       The notion of the non-dual Absolute can be taken here as an a priori postulate; or we can arrive at this common ground as an inductive hypothetical inference where mind and matter stand on neutral ground. Thus we see that the law of homo-geneity holds good, not only in physics, but also in logic, language, mathematics or metaphysics.

THE LAWS OF CONTRADICTION AND HOMOGENEITY

       How can the two laws of contradiction and of homogeneity both be accommodated within the Absolute as the common ground of reality, truth or value, on which basis alone these laws can even be conceivable? This is the next problem that we come up against.

       This problem has been the source of much difference of opinion in the rival philosophies of non-duality, qualified non-duality, and duality, each of which has held its ground successively in the Vedanta. Duality can be accepted mildly, or in a stronger sense within the heart of the notion of the homogeneity of the matrix of reality, which is none other than the Absolute.

       In the transition from the world of existence to that of subsistence (which depends for its reality on the mind and its power of reasoning), we have to face the implied paradox of having to think of the possibility of these laws as being together in one and the same medium, matrix or basis.

       Philosophers usually attempt to get over this difficulty like the performer on the flying trapeze. At a certain stage in their argument, they let go of their hold on existence and catch up with a reality of a different order. Theologians also skip over this same difficulty when they pass from the reality of the world to that of God. Scientists confront this same problem by trying to distinguish between the relativistic and the absolutist approaches and end up with speculative subtleties as puzzling as those of the scholastic metaphysicians whom they look down upon.

       The law of homogeneity cannot be accommodated alongside that of the inner contradiction in reality without transcending the implied paradox. In order to transcend this paradox, each philosopher resorts to some favourite pairs of expressions such as the distinction between the immanent and the transcendent, the practical and the pure, or the visible and the intelligible.

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       Modern scientific philosophers may prefer the terms "observables and calculables". Whichever the terms used, we always find that there are two of them, having a polarity, an ambivalence, a dichotomy, or an antinomy implicit between them. The phenomenal and the noumenal; the worlds of appearance and reality; the relatively and the absolutely real - are other twin terms implying contrast, contrariety, or contradiction of various degrees in different philosophies, whether of the East or the West. Transcending paradox is the main difficulty that the magic of words is meant to accomplish.

UP AND DOWN MOVEMENTS IN THE SEARCH FOR CERTITUDE

       Thought circulates in an existent, subsistent, and value world, whether in science, logic, or philosophy. The thinking mind is guided by interests; and each life-interest gives some satisfaction to the self. Like a bird who might light on the branch of a tree, subjective interests settle for a moment on the ramifications of rival interests claiming attention at a given time and place in the subjective-objective world. The subjective and objective counterparts of the existent-subsistent-value-factor tally for a moment and attain the real: but they are soon dissolved, like a bubble that bursts in rainwater.

       According to alternating inner dispositions and urges, such as those of appetite or sex, there can be imagined an alternating circulation in the global consciousness of every man and of all men treated together. When value attaches itself to Platonic intelligibles, culminating in the summum bonum, we have what might be visualized as ascending dialectics. When the reverse process takes place, thought lingers on values that are "of earth earthy" -  the prime matter in the unmoved mover, where pure acts reside and where Aristotelian entelechies become possible.

       In between these ambivalent poles of the supreme good and the essentially actual, in the circulatory amplitude of thought, we have other possibilities, too numerous to classify.

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         This is the domain of maya's uncertainty of value in the context of absolute reality. We should think of this intermediate negative zone differently from its positive counterpart. The transcendent and the immanent change sides here. Cause or effect, subject or object, the specific or the generic, prevail in interest or significance alternately. There can be no rule of thumb to determine which has real value significance, and therefore existence or reality. So it is in between the plus and minus factors that all becomes unpredicable in this zone which is both intermediate and negative in its content. The Sanskrit word anirvachaniya (unpredicable) refers thus to the over-all maya, the most generalized category of error possible in the fullest context of absolutism.

       When maya is eliminated, all uncertainty finally vanishes: and then, by double assertion prevailing over what is discarded by double negation, the Sun of truth-value dawns. This notion of maya thus corresponds to the negativität of Hegel. But Hegel's positive Absolute lost its way in pan-Germanic enthusiasms of which Vedanta was innocent. The bright sun of the high value that was fully absolutist, reached by double positive assertion, was given its due importance in Vedanta. It is here that Vedanta scores over Hegelian absolutism, indicat-ing a clear and normative philosophy as well as a correct way of life.

THREE ZONES OF REASONING

       To complete the methodology of the Vedantic Absolute, we have therefore to recognize three distinct zones, each having its own kind of reasoning. Because thought is, as it were, refracted as it passes through a transparent prism, there prevail here certain structural peculiarities, which give a complicated innate structure to the total field of Vedantic inquiry.

       The level of existence is the bottom stratum where human inquiry begins. From natural curiosity about actual single objects of interest, the understanding penetrates into more generalized and abstracted situations, with memories and anti-cipations of past or future possibilities or probabilities colouring the relation. Sense data assume an ontological compactness and, directed by life interests, there is ascent or descent in the scale of possible human values.

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       The object prevails and looms large at one moment; and then at another moment the subject is the centre of interest. Life tendencies give both content and direction to these relational interests as they move in a time or space field within normalized consciousness, which is neither inside nor outside.

       After existent aspects have been sublimated, the bipolarity passes into the indeterminate zone of maya's domain where there is a confusion of indeterminate values which attract and repel in alternation or together at a given moment.
On rising above this level there is a steady betterment in a world of values which are free of sensual, perceptual, or even of conceptual content. All are of a purely nominal significance. Even naming is finally abandoned when descending dialectics is used to remove the over-positive tones of values which do not refer fully to the Self or the Existent.

       Thus existent, subsistent and value factors correct the exaggerations of each other and of one another. Finally, pure being attains to self-awareness in the Absolute.

       It will suffice here to indicate that, in this dynamic structure of the circulation of thought, there is an upward and downward movement between the a priori and the a posteriori; and between the synthetic and the analytic aspects of thought as it circulates between the plus and minus poles, within whose amplitude of dialectical reasoning or intuition Vedantic reasoning lives and moves.

       In order to show that such structuralism is present and fully recognized in Vedanta, we give here two references from L'Absolu selon le Vedanta by Prof. O.Lacombe. He writes:

"One sees also that the aspect of abundance of being, so dear to Bhartrprapancha, who sacrificed in it the first and most fundamental of strictly ontological requirements, the principle of contradiction, was not less dear to Sankara. It decomposes, however, in traversing the prism of non-being, into two coupled notions, one of which is altered in relation of the other."

        The reference to the prism of non-being, through which ontological abundance passes, indicates in complicated language that structuralism which we have already examined.
 
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AN ALTERNATING PROCESS

        Writing about the alternation of immanence and transcendence, the same author not only deals with this kind of structuralism but even of a kind of osmotic process that takes place between these aspects of the self. After saying that the 'order of emanation' has priority over the 'order of return to the absolute principle', when viewed from the side of the relative, Lacombe describes the circulation as follows:

"On arrival as on departure, at the very core of the dizzy unevenness marked by the opposition; transcendence-immanence, where the osmosis that is infinitely subtle and gentle, of their correlation plays; there reigns the infrangibility of their equalising movement."

       These extracts will suffice to show the outlines of a structuralism and of a process which have to be imagined as abiding at the core of the notion of the absolute as viewed from the side of the relative.

       Such ideas are not fancifully conceived by the professor, but are fully justified in Vedantic texts. In the Gaudapada Karika of the Mandukya Upanishad, whose authority is by no means negligible, there is the analogy of the fire-brand that is moved, a comparison intended to bring out the relationship between the thing in itself as the Absolute and its own relativistic aspect:

"A fire-brand, when set in motion, appears as straight, crooked, etc. So also consciousness, when set in motion, appears as perceiver, the perceived and the like" 

       In the writings of Narayana Guru we find that this circulation in consciousness is referred to more pointedly and clearly in his Atmopadesa Satakam:

"Awareness in order to know its proper state
Itself the earth and other manifestations became;
And in inverted state, now mounting, now changing,
Like a circulating faggot of fire, it keeps turning round."
(Verse 33)"

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       The Bhagavad Gita too has this idea of circulation and alternation:

"The Lord dwells in the heart-region of all beings, 0 Arjuna, causing all beings to revolve through the principle of appearance (maya) (as if) mounted on a machine."
 (XVAI. 61)

        The alternating process is more expressly indicated by Professor Lacombe in the same paragraph already quoted:

"At the time of manifestation, the accent weighs more and more on immanence; at the time of re-absorption it refers more and more to transcendence. Never, however, is either the one or other term ever sacrificed."

        If we were to put the matter in our own words as a circulation taking place with a dialectical ascent and descent, we would describe the process as follows:

       The chain of associations flits from one object of interest to another and is regulated by value considerations. Between cognition and conation, as psychologists would put it, there is an analytic and synthetic alternation in the phases of reasoning, which can be ratiocinative at a given moment and emotionally coloured at another. Circulation of thought normally takes place in the mind's search for certitude. Each certitude has a corresponding element of interest on which it rests, before passing on to the next element where it can find satisfaction momentarily or more enduringly as the case may be. Absolute happiness is the highest of satisfactions, where the movement of the circulating fire faggot is quenched to put it in the language of the Mandukya Karika. Happiness would thus result from a form of finalised certitude which Vedanta promises.

       When value factors predominate, experimental and formed reasoning gives place to more intuitive and dialectical reason-ing. Existential aspects alone demand experimental demon-strations. These are based on the a posteriori approach. Full a priorism prevails when dialectical intuition comes to be employed, where value factors are more significant. Intermediate between these we have syllogistic forms of reasoning which depend on the universal or the particular alternately; yielding certitude and the satisfaction that goes with it.

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       Thus descent and ascent in the circulation of thought, based on interest alternating with intelligence, takes place all the time within human understanding, as it seeks greater and more significant certitude in life's problems and interests, great or small.

THE IMMANENT TO TRANSCENDENT LEAP

       There is a feat, like that of the leap of the trapeze athlete, involved in the transition of the process of human inquiry, as it proceeds normally in graded order from one subject of interest-significance to another; if we can imagine the process on the lines outlined above, with the gift of some intuition added to mechanistic reasoning. This transit is necessary if we are to follow further along the path of contemplative philosophy that Vedanta really represents. .

       Thus between existence (sat) and reason (chit) in the contemplative and absolutist context of Vedanta, there is a deep chasm where brute actuality is left behind and nature or substance, both immanent and transcendent at once, is attained.

       The participation of the existent with the subsistent does not take place on even ground. When one has been left behind, the other is attained by human understanding, after consciousness itself attains to a certain degree of lucidity in the awareness of the Self, however dim in the beginning.

       Transcendence belongs more intimately to the absolutist context, while immanence leads directly to the world of multiple relativistic values. The localised and pluralistic items that demand our attention minute after minute, which have been compared by Narayana Guru to a group of small fancy-feathered birds pecking at fruits and changefully roving in the branches of a tree, have to be brought down so that they are abolished and absorbed in the bright self-awareness of general human understanding in purer consciousness.

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MECHANISTIC AND INTUITIVE THOUGHT

       The case of absolute truth has suffered from ancient times, and still suffers, because three steps of thought remain undistinguished and promiscuously mixed up.

       When we formulate a law such as 'action and reaction are equal and opposite', as in the mechanics of the Euclidean and Newtonian order, we have an epistemology and methodology that go together with such a statement. On the other hand, when we say that 'the entropy of the universe is tending towards zero', we generalize and state a more subtle universal law where observables enter weakly, and calculables are treated in a purer or higher mathematical fashion.

        Although both statements are capable of being expressed by equations, one refers to the mechanistic and the other to the purer world given to mathematical intuition. When we pass on higher still into the domain of pure value and try to equate items such as 'pure reason' with the 'summum bonum'; intuition comes into play more strongly, and thought proves itself by its axiomatic content.

       The laws of physics, the truths of logic and higher and purer equations of the value world require different treatments for verification or demonstration. In actual practice it has been taken for granted till recently that science relies on the first kind of reasoning only. This, however, has now definitely been given up. In order to mark the latest position in this all-important question of the relation between the 'mind and the machine' let us examine extracts from an authority on the subject. Writing in The Listener, London, of Oct. 17, 1963, P.G.M. Dawe of Oxford University, says:

"To interpret the results of elementary mind-body experi-ments in vocabularies appropriate to the engineer, such as those of information theory, entropy, or computer tech-nology or in terms of models, may sometimes be theoretically interesting and even elegant, but has had limited psychological significance…It is now clear that the discoveries and theories of the scientists always directly involve developments of their imagination or mind and otherwise of the story of their subject. The concepts of physics, or the invention of a machine are therefore to be fully understood only in terms of a story relating to the lives of individual men and women, and not vice-versa."
 
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       The latest tendency in scientific psychology is thus in favour of considering thought-processes as non-mechanistic and as coming nearer to living intuitionism rather than being empiri-cally rational. We have to let go our hold on brute facts and even of the language appropriate to mechanics to describe or understand the inner workings of the mind, even in everyday matters of utility values. When more idealistic or spiritual values are involved in individual or collective human behaviour, the accent has to be placed on the fully transcendental aspects. Between the poles of what Kant has called the a priori synthetic in transcendentalism, and the analytic or aesthetic, there is a subtle movement which, as we have seen above, has been compared to an osmosis between the two aspects of the Absolute of Vedanta.

       What interests us directly here is the fact of the transition from the existent (sat) to the subsistent (chit). The subject on which we shall focus our attention next is how the value factor, named ananda, enters subtly into the sat and chit; and how they fuse or combine by subtle osmosis, and thus help to give content or significance to the Absolute as understood in Vedanta.

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IV. THE ABSOLUTE AS WORD-VALUE SIGNIFICANCE

          Fact, truth or reality must have some significant value-content. If this is absent it becomes empty and cannot do any good to man who might have mere intellectual certitude about it. Man is the measure of all things, and the self which seeks certitude through science or metaphysics must have a resting place in utility or a final good that works and makes the man happier and better in one sense or another.

       Thus the value-factor is an inseparable counterpart of what is merely true mathematically or logically. A tautology is a statement of truth which leaves the man who believes in it unaffected: while a mere contradiction when discovered helps only to reject wrong but not to accept any truth or value.

       The charge against metaphysics by positivists of the present day holds good in so far as metaphysics often exults in mere verbosity; relying on mere tautological a-priorisms of synthetic transcendentalism; without relating truth operationally to the working or living world of human significance, whether at the utilitarian or real level. In short, the truth must make man free and supply the bread with the freedom for which man hungers, at one and the same time.

        Thus it is that the third category of the Absolute Reality called ananda  (value interest) enters into a complete philosophy such as Vedanta claims to be. Ananda is often translated 'bliss', which would suggest the trance of a yogi. It is to be understood, however, in revised and restated terms as that axiological factor which, side by side with existence and subsistence, is an integral part of all true philosophising when it is not limited merely to abstract metaphysical speculation.

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       The three categories of Existence, Subsistence, and Value have to fuse together by a sort of osmosis or interaction between them; cancelling one-sided exaggerations possible at each level before a significant notion of the Absolute can emerge to view. Thus it is that the Self and the non-Self cancel out into a high value in oneself, which becomes fully significant.

A COMPLETE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

       The value element has to enter into the composition of the two other categories of existence (sat) and reason or subsistence (chit) in a very intimate manner of inherence or samavaya, before the alchemy of the absolute Value can emerge at every level of life. Just as a mechanical mixture and a chemical compound are distinguished in science, so the intimate manner whereby existence is modified by attributes to substance in terms of chit requires the exercise of the subtlest form of intuition to grasp.

       The Substance and Attribute of Spinoza's philosophy have natures which make for 'thinking substances'. There is nature which is still in the process of becoming something else by attributes (natura naturans); and there is nature that has become an existent thing in a more actual sense (natura naturata). This is a philosophical subtlety which, like the paradox of the participation of mind and matter, is a major one that philosophy has had to face whether in the East or the West.
Metaphysical speculation, whether in the East or in the West, has lingered long on this subtle distinction between material evolution (parinama) and purer change or becoming (vivarta) in a more vital sense, as intuitively and non-mechan-istically understood as in Bergson.

       Pure becoming is referred to as change in prakara or mode of expression by Ramanuja, while Sankara would call it a mere eidetic phenomenon, calling it vivarta  (specific cognizable aspect of the same absolute substance), in which both kinds of change have to inhere.

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       Samyoga and samavaya are two relations in absolute Substance: the former based on mere contiguity in space, and the latter in continuity in mental associations. Potassium nitrate, sulphur, and carbon placed contiguously in space do not enter into intimate contact with each other as when gunpowder actually explodes. Being and becoming have to be conceived as twin aspects of the same relationship: one vertical and the other horizontal. The 'blue lotus' inheres in the class 'lotus', understood without its specific colour, and vice versa, very intimately; while a 'blue' lotus in wood painted blue has its substance and attribute merely horizontally associated by samyoga, which is accidental or incidental. Thus there are vertical and horizontal specifications to which existent and subsistent realities are subject in the context of Absolute Reality as understood in a complete philosophy of life.

THE THREE CATEGORIES INHERE AND SPECIFY ONE ANOTHER

       The Absolute of Vedanta is given a priori and then confirmed a posteriori. Axioms and postulates are valid at one end; and at the other pole of the knowledge-situation, visual or experimental demonstration has its place, though only inductively.  If we admit now that any truth that has no value-significance to the Self or to man cannot be treated seriously by any philosophy worth the name, we come to the position that a thing of no value is equivalent to being false or non-existent.

       Existence, Subsistence and Value have to fall in a certain vertical line, giving to each object, truth, or interest, its place in an absolute scheme under the aegis of an overall normative notion of the Absolute. The Absolute is the highest of value-references available to philosophical speculation; and when the Absolute, Self, and Value are all thought of together as one giving meaning to the other; abolishing possible unilateral error or exaggeration; we succeed in giving content to the otherwise empty word called the Absolute.

       The sat, the chit, and the ananda aspects or categories have all to be fitted into a common scheme as comprised in the notion of the Absolute as the reality of highest significance to life. Metaphysics otherwise would be verbose nonsense.

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       In order that this may not be so, philosophers of the East and the West have depended on the magic of words to clear the situation finally. Cause and effect; the generic and the specific; the analogically understandable relationship of semantics of higher mathematics, algebraic as well as geometrical - have all been already explored to find a proper frame of reference, where speculation could cohere and make sense. Syntactics and semiotic processes have not been omitted, either in India or in Europe, by ancients as well as moderns. We can enter only very cautiously into this domain where stalwarts like Sankara, Panini, and others have trodden the ground with confidence and ease. All we can say generally here is that the magic of words has been freely employed by Sankara and others.

       Modern thinkers too give increasing importance to such questions as 'the meaning of meaning.' It is here that Vedanta stands on common ground with the most advanced of modern thought. Works like Vedanta Paribhasha, Bhasha Paricheda, Vakya Vritti and other advanced texts of Vedanta and allied disciplines, call for greater recognition in order to show that the world has a central place in revealing the final nature of the Absolute.

       If Sankara, the greatest of Vedantins, gives primacy to the word and its direct and indirect meanings (calling them vachyartha and lakshanartha respectively) in revealing the final nature of Truth as the highest Good, the reason is that sabda or word is our final epistemological reference for ultimate certitude.

       Thus, ranging from pratyaksha (given to the senses) through anumana (inference), arthapatti (hypothetical postulation), anupalabdhi (negative certitude), and sabda (word), the valid means of knowledge become acceptable to the Vedantin at one and the same time.

       At one pole we have verification of existence by means of pratyaksha (observable demonstration), and, at the other extreme, we have sabda (word) which is fully a priori and synthetic in status. Pratyaksha is empirical, analytic, positive, and a posteriori; while sabda is the other pole where axiomatic validity prevails.

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THE ABSOLUTE AS WORD-VALUE SIGNIFICANCE

      The structure of the relation between these means of testing truth is complex and needs reduction to simplicity by Vedantic thought. The net result is that we can arrive at simplification by a process where sat, chit and ananda inhere and specify each other to result in the full notion of the Absolute of Vedanta. What is too vague and generalized here can only be explained step by step as we examine items of method, epistemology or value, one after another.

THE ULTIMATE STRUCTURE OF THOUGHT AND WORD

       The question that a modern man will ask naturally about this taking refuge in subtleties like "the meaning of mean-ing" for proving the reality of the Absolute would be: "Why take so much trouble when the visible, demonstrable, practical world in which we live is sufficient for man for all ordinary purposes?"

        This is quite true, if bread here was all that we needed for life. Man, however, does not live by bread alone; he craves for freedom too and, as homo sapiens, he is a thinking animal. This means that he must solve problems big or small to fulfil his life purpose. Speculation steps into the breach inevitably.

       Philosophy would be superfluous if building bridges or developing a country for gaining bread were all that man wanted. Man wants to live in security, free from fear. Fear of cala-mities, avoidable or inevitable, comes from various sources. Doubts from within cause discontent in each man. The mystery of life itself causes alternate fear or wonder in all normal men who do not wilfully live in a fool's paradise, whether they are considered primitive or civilised, however much the latter may deny it in their pride. Wars and pestilences, famines and genocides, due to fanaticisms or idolatries, need effective remedies which wisdom alone can give. Truth must make man free.

       Such are some of the implications of a full philosophy which tend to get overcovered by extraneous considerations brought about by some technological triumph of man in modern times. Vice and crime cannot be corrected merely by technical skill or space conquest.  Problems of divorce and delinquency cannot be overcome by a mechanistic approach.

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       The problem of evil or suffering is as much within human nature as in nature outside. As even Russell would admit, there are realities, both mental and physical, which belong to the two domains of two distinct dictionaries, the empirical and the mental, at least as Berkeley saw it. The form of logic, the structure of thought and language, conceptualism, subjectivism, structuralism, and other aspects of what is ultimately real, occupied and are occupying the minds of fully qualified scientists such as Eddington and Schroedinger, even in this age of science. Vedanta, though an ancient discipline, is no exception here.

VEDANTIC METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND AXIOLOGY

       The three categories of Existence, Subsistence, and Value have to be approached with the methods and theories of knowledge proper to each, so that their dynamism and inter-relationships within the core of the Absolute can be understood.

       On the Indian soil, philosophical speculation has gone on unbridled through the ages; and different points of view of the Absolute have taken shape, all having some common basis of method or value significance.

       India has had its sceptics and empiricists in the Charvakas and the Lokayatikas, before Vedantic thought began to evaluate them in more absolutist terms. In European thought scepticism came late and persists with force even to the present. Belief and scepticism are in reality two poles of the same knowledge-situation, when understood globally, completely, and in the light of the structure of thought as a whole. There is no physics without mathematics; and there is no proof without reliance on axioms. Observables and calculables have to go hand in hand to yield worthwhile or workable certitudes.

       When the total structure of the absolute knowledge situation is taken in by the mind, we can clearly visualize the subtle dynamism, the osmosis, the semiotic processes or apperceptions taking place within consciousness when viewed in its proper epistemological perspective. There are thoughts or truths that are transparent to some, and others which have an ambivalent polarity between them, repelling one another. There are thoughts more essential than others, and relationships that are more eminent.

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       Full-flooded generosity prevails at the core of the Absolute. Thoughts are reflected and refracted at certain planes or levels, and in the insertion, participation or articulation of certain aspects of thought elements, there is osmotic interchange of plus or minus, existence or essence. There is neutralization of existence and essence.

       Finally, thought processes circulate, making figures-of-eight within consciousness; changing inter-physically and trans--subjectively, as when two people converse. There is a change-over from synthetic to analytic; from the a priori to the a posteriori; from the positive to the negative - at different ontological or teleo-logical levels where phenomenological epochés take place. Here we are only using terms current in modern philosophical literature to indicate that Vedanta too has its time-honoured methodology and axiology in its dynamically, though perhaps tacitly, understood schematic representation of the Absolute consciousness in which all philosophy has to live and move.

       Schematism and structuralism of a subjective status, in which mental events are isolated and studied to be put together into a global whole, are notions that are all becoming more and more acceptable to modern thinkers who are philoso-phers of science or scientific philosophers. Some of them tend to be classed as sceptics while others are believers. Whether classified as one or the other, they have necessarily to belong together as seekers of truth, fact or high value, if they are philosophers at all.

        It is here that Vedanta steps in with its contributions which, when re-examined and restated, would help a global philosophy or an integrated science to evolve. It is in the structure of thought, which itself lies at the basis of the spoken word, that the details of thought processes can best be studied. Linguistic usage, semantics, syntactical peculiarities, and the pragmatics of language are looked upon more and more to give up the secrets -that have remained closed to speculation until recently.
 Quantum mechanics and logistic, vectorial, or projective geometry, are all making their contributions. Vedanta too, in the days of Sankara, entered into subjects such as the semantic polyvalency of words to reveal the final nature of that Absolute which, instead of being a mere tautological verity or a contradiction within itself, would help to relate fruitfully for thinking man the two limbs which pertain to it - the world on the one hand and the self of man on the other.

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        When Vedanta is revalued and restated in the light of modern knowledge, especially of the physical world as seen by modern philosophers of science, a Science of the Absolute may reasonably be expected to emerge.

SANKARA'S USE OF SEMANTICS

       The notion of the Absolute in Vedanta recedes from the concrete actual facts of the pluralistic phenomenal world presented to the senses by distinct stages of perceptualism, conceptualism, and nominalism, into the core where it can meet on common homogeneous ground its own counterpart of the pure noumenal aspect.
Thus when negatively focussed through these stages, it reaches the world of the word and its meaning, where 'the meaning of meaning' gains full reality. And so, when we take the leap from the empirical to the transcendental, we cross a deep chasm separating aspects of word-meaning to where the neutral notion of Absolute Reality abides as the common ground of the physical and mental worlds.

       The semantic polyvalency of words thus gains primacy when we begin to analyse the notion at this inner subtle core, where the Absolute thinking substance, with its accidents and attributes, makes existence and essence meet eminently in its status of pure philosophical relationship.

       After reaching the core by this kind of negative abstraction and generalization, we can travel along a deflected direction of the same light that has taken us to the core of the substance and follow up positively and analytically the conceptual and nominalistic attributes of the thinking substance in its process of becoming and not merely being.

       Ascending and descending dialectics are possible in this circulation, as is evident in many parts of Sankara's commentaries of the Gita, the Brahma Sutras or the Upanishads. Taking refuge in semantics, when speculation on rational lines fails, is not a new way whose originality goes to the credit of Sankara.

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        Jaimini, the author of the Purva-Mimamsa-Sutras, relied on semantics to a fuller extent in order to serve his philosophy based on the exegetics of Vedism. Sankara, having to establish his conclusions on the anterior position taken by Jaimini, had necessarily to refute them, using similar weapons.

       Thus it is in the semantic analysis of word-content that Vedantism gains full validity. Not only the scriptures are relied on unquestionably, but even popular usage, belonging to the pragmatics of language rather than to pure semiotic processes, is relied on by Sankara to refute a successive range, sometimes of as many as five purva pakshins or graded oppon-ents, set up by himself as representing wrong positions, each one of whose opinions he first states in his own words, before refuting them by his retort beginning 'iti-chet-na' ('If you say that, no').

       On final analysis, his own position, when all others who seem sufficiently intelligent are refuted in succession, is some preciously subtle stuff which is like foam picked up on the seashore, leaving almost nothing but an absolute meaning-content notion, bitter or sweet, as a residue. Before the last bubbles burst, we find that it is on semantics that his Vedanta largely relies.

       We cannot do better here than to give an instance of how all is finally viewed in semantic terms by Sankara, following the purva mimamsa (anterior critique) which showed him the way in this matter.

SANKARA'S VEDANTA RESTS FINALLY ON SEMANTICS

       Veda means wisdom, and its reference to the four Vedas of the Aryan tribes as they entered India, is only its secondary meaning. Vedas were distinguished as sruti, or that which is heard from a rishi (seer) or fully qualified authority in teaching wisdom. .

       Wisdom is largely a collection of axiomatic a priori verities and, like the axioms and postulates of algebra and geometry, these are infallible in the certitude-quality they contain. There are other Vedas equal to the Indian Vedas, such as the Pentateuch of the Jews. When wisdom is said to be "revealed", it only means that it is not the work of any single individual like a chariot made by a chariot-builder.

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         A priori truths exist by themselves, mathematically valid, as it were, in the sky or something corresponding to the sky in vectorial space or pure space, understood as the basis of both algebra and geometry. The truth of the Pythagoras Theorem is not in actual space nor in theoretical space, but in both.

       Language lives and moves in a space where all descriptions become valid, whether treated as perceptual or conceptual. Thus the ultimate notion of the Absolute, when understood in most general and abstracted terms as a thing-in-itself, can belong only to the world of the word.

"The Word was in God and it was God"- such biblical statements refer to the Absolute as the Logos, which is nothing new; and when Vedanta reduces all into the syllable AUM, as in the Mandukya Upanishad, it only recognizes the same verity.
It is in this sense that Sankara reduces the Absolute into its purest form by a semantic analysis which is at least as valid as logical or mathematical proof. The practical proof and the theoretical proof join in the Pythagorean Theorem as a central verity combining both into one certitude in knowledge. Simi-larly, the Absolute of Sankara is neither empty of all content nor filled with the multiple entities of the phenomenal world.

       As genus and species can be made to refer to one unique genus in universal terms, it is possible to reduce by a semantic negative process and reach the unique class of all classes in the Absolute. Sankara avoids both leaning on the side of pantheistic pluralism and favouring the theory of emptiness (sunya) in arriving at the Absolute of the Upanishads. He does this masterfully by his approach through semantic analysis of a text in the Taittiriya Upanishad, which deserves careful scrutiny on our part. Sankara excels and succeeds in making his several rivals in polemical duels thoroughly vanquished and silenced before his sledgehammer arguments.

AN EXAMPLE OF SANKARA'S METHOD

       Taking the text, satyam jnanam anantam brahma (Brahman, the Absolute, is Reality, Knowledge and Infinity) of Brahmananda Valli of the Taittiriya Upanishad, Sankara first makes it clear that these attributes have to be treated as 'indirectly' applicable and not 'directly'.

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         The latter, which would be literal, treating the words as they are understood ordinarily, he distinguishes as vachyartha; while the former, which is based on analogy, and has the notion of the universal and unique genus of the Absolute to reveal, he calls lakshanartha, where the attribute refers backward to help us to see the unique nature of the Absolute; distinguishing it negatively from any other specified object in the universe. In his own words in his Bhasya, we read:

"Brahman is Reality, Knowledge and Infinity" is a sentence which indirectly distinguishes the Absolute Brahman. Reality and others are verily three terms qualifying Brahman, which is the qualified.

       (If it be said) that because of being specified by attributes indirectly, they refer (positively) to the qualified aspects, there is no such defect. Why? Because the attributes give primacy to the indirectly qualified (subject), rather than giving primacy to the attributes themselves. (If it be asked) where there is the specification as between sign and thing signified, quality and thing qualified, we say it is to distinguish between objects of the same genus that attributes are used; but the indirectly qualified (subject) however, is as in the definition of space as that which gives its room to every other thing, to be distinguished from everything else in the universe. It is (this kind of) indirect meaning that has to be given (to the text in question)"

        Answering further in the same commentary to the objection whether by applying the negative method of 'not this, not this', (neti-neti) the Absolute would not itself vanish into nothing-ness, Sankara relies again on a semantic argument, and says that the words "Reality" etc., would not have any function at all if they referred to nothing. Since grammatically they are meant to have a function in the scriptures, they must at least specify the subject, Brahman, by excluding negatively those which are in conflict with the attribute mentioned, thus delimiting the function of each attribute such as Reality etc.

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       Sankara's own sentence on this last point of saving the notion of the Absolute from falling into the nothingness (sunya) of the Buddhist reads:

"'Meaning of Reality etc' in effect, however, would (still) delimit the meaning of Brahman, the qualified, by excluding those attributes whose function would be in conflict with what is proper to it."

       The word-content of the Absolute is finally underlined by Sankara in the third part of the same comment, as follows:
 
"The word Brahman, by its proper meaning, has force of 'signification'". (brahma sabdo' pi svarthena arthavan eva).

         Existence, Subsistence and Value thus inhere in the notion of the Absolute, giving it content and significant value all together and each by each, negatively and indirectly, by analogy. These discussions above have necessarily to remain complex and subtle at present. We have to bring in the structure of thought schematically in order to simplify and clarify the position here. This we shall tackle presently.

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V. SEMANTIC POLYVALENCE IN VEDANTIC THOUGHT

       The history of Indian philosophic thought is related to the Upanishads either by agreement or by difference. Rationalism and ritualism have played rival roles. Scepticism and belief have alternated, as also the primacy of existential or subsistential aspects, which have invited attention alternately.

       The course of this alternation has been referred to as the 'white and black' onward paths in the Gita (VIII.26), giving such an alternation a perennial status in the context of the progress of thought in the world anywhere. When the a priori is stressed and the scripture respected by a believer, the white pole of abs-tract ideas is touched. On the other hand, when the pendulum swings to the other end of the scale of values, we have rank scepticism, empiricism, stress on the visible at the expense of the invisible world, and naturally too, an a posteriori approach to where demonstrably and operationally valid verity takes the field as a high pragmatic or utilitarian value in the world of the conquest of factors such as space. Time and eternity do not belong to this pole, and tend to have decreased significance.

       The absolute knowledge situation has to be clearly visualized before we can see Vedanta in its proper perspective and context. It is neither orthodox nor heterodox; sceptical nor believing; immanent nor transcendent; ontological nor teleolo-gical; pure nor practical - but combines both matter and mind on its own neutral ground. Vedanta, when it gives importance to the validity of what is given to the senses (pratyaksha), tends to keep company with the heterodox; and when it gives primacy to the word or the validity of scripture (sabda), it tends to be uncompro-misingly and even harshly orthodox.

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       An examination of the further implications of the semantic polyvalence, side by side with the structural implications, of Vedantic thought, supported by Sankara or the Upanishads, would therefore help us very much to clarify our position. In the first instance, it will help us to see clearly that Vedanta is neither a rival philosophy nor a religion, but a correct attempt to integrate all Indian thought under one methodological, epistemological and axiological discipline.

SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF 'THAT THOU ART'

       We have already scrutinized the semantic subtleties implied in the three attributes of brahman (the Absolute) in the words satyam (existent), jnanam (rationally subsistent), and anantam (infinite) (which last attribute was meant to cover anandam (bliss or value factor ), where we have noted the distinction between vachyartha (literal or direct meaning and lakshanartha (indirect meaning by analogy). The negative specification has also been noted.

       Another semantic analysis of the great dictum (mahavakya) of the Vedanta, tat-tvam-asi (That thou art), will give us a clearer perspective which will serve as a stepping-stone for us to see the schematic or structural features of thought as an integrated global unity or whole, where word and meaning cling together in the central context of the notion of the Absolute.

       The indirect meanings possible in any context have been divided into jahat (losing its original meaning) and ajahat (not losing) as a further subdivision of the indirect. In modern lan-guage we can distinguish these subdivisions as those based on a metonymical one. Ajahat can be called quantitative or analytic, and jahat qualitative and synthetic. The familiar examples, used by Sankara in his Sarva-darsana-siddhanta-sara-samgraha (verses 733-751) to bring out this subtle semantic distinction, are two in the first instance: (1) "A milk-village in the Ganges" (gangayam-ghoshah); and (2) 'The piebald runs' (sono-dhavati). In the first case the defect of meaning is corrected by treating it as a metonymy with an inner logical relation, while in the latter example the figure of speech to be employed is a synecdoche. When the two instances are thus still understood figuratively and not literally in two different ways, we can paraphrase them as: (1) 'The village where milkmen live is on the border of Ganges', and (2) 'The piebald horse is running.'

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       In the first instance the defect to be corrected is of a mere relational nature in description; while in the second instance quantitative ideas of part and whole enter. This distinction in the two semantic or meaning-worlds is a fundamental one, and if we decide to label the second quantitative significance as 'horizontal' we would be justified in calling the relational one 'vertical'. The horizontal is near to the pragmatics of language while the vertical would correspond to a purer semantic process.

THE THIRD EXAMPLE: 'HE IS THIS DEVADATTA'

       Sankara resorts to a third example before he comes to the "That thou art" formula, to which he wishes to lead us. This example is the phrase so-ayam-Devadatta  (He is this Devadatta). Here there is a combination of vertical and horizontal factors required to make sense. One of the words "he" or "this" has to shed part of its vertical or horizontal significance in order to avoid any inner contradiction standing in the way of the phrase making full sense.

       Sankara himself, following the precedent of more ancient linguistic experts before him, calls this third way of making sense out of indirect figurative language, bhaga lakshana (partial indirect usage). The relevant verse , translated as it stands, reads:

"When that part which is opposed, having been rejected, non-contradiction is indicated. That is called partial indirect usage (bhaga lakshana) by those experts who understand signs."

       This last or third variety of figurative or indirect meaning is what Sankara recommends when analysing the dictum "That thou art".

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        The scriptures that repeat this formula cannot be wrong and have to make sense somehow. This being a given position for Sankara, by this partial indirectness (bhaga lakshana), resulting in the rejection of what is not agreeable in the two expressions "that" and "thou", as referring to God and man respectively in ordinary non-figurative language, we have to understand that they must be neutralized or cancelled out reciprocally.

       One expression is thus made to correct the asymmetry of the other, and this corrected meaning is sometimes spoken of as the bhaga-tyaga-lakshanartha (meaning arrived at by the rejection of the part that is incongruous).

       Thus we see that for giving significant content to the Upanishadic formula referring to the Absolute, and saving it from the danger of nihilism, Sankara is so hard put to it as to resort to subtleties of grammar, rhetoric, syntactics, semiotic processes, and pragmatics in the structure and mechanics of language and usage, in reasserting the validity of the Vedantic position. Vedanta thus becomes a complex affair; and but for the life of the Sannyasins in India who conformed to the Vedantic way of life, the whole school must have killed itself by now; and like European Scholastic hair-splitting, must have died a natural death by over-specialisation.

       Fortunately we find, however, that in modern India teachers of Vedanta like the Guru Narayana, whose writings we have examined elsewhere, are able to simplify the position again, and thus keep Vedantism still alive in the land of its birth. Modern mathematics, logic and semantics only help to give it a further lease of life instead of letting it become outmoded.

TWO AXES OF REFERENCE

       To simplify the position which, as we have seen, is too complicated for the ordinary man, and even for an expert in any one aspect, Narayana Guru has reduced the whole problem in his Atmopadesa Satakam (Verses 36-42 inclusive) and, side by side with the examination of the structure of thought processes as such, he also makes use of semantics to clarify the powers of thought, by taking two typical propositions: (1) "This is a pot" and (2) "This is knowledge,"

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       Both these move semiotically from the general and virtual to the particular and specific: one in the domain of the practical, and the other in the domain of the pure world of meanings. If one is distinguishable as a horizontal movement towards the plus side, the other may be said to be a vertical movement to the plus side which could be also thought of as a negative specification of a pure notion such as that of the Absolute Self. Reduced to two such axes of reference, and making them cross at right angles so as to indicate the principle of contradic-tion or contrariety implied as between a mediate and immediate process of semiosis, treated together as a unitive whole, with a subtle osmotic reciprocity at the point where they participate with each other on homogeneous ground - we have for our use a schematic and structural plan of the interaction of the two sets of processes.
 
       The content of the sentence 'This is a pot' being given immediately to the senses, and the movement resulting in positive specification of the pot as against any other object in the visible world, is an exclusive one that rejects many possibi-lities in favour of a single specific fact. The content of the sentence 'This is knowledge' has to be understood through the mediation of many examples which have to be thought of together as coming under the category of knowledge inclusively; and the synthetic process is further to be accentuated negatively or in a priori fashion to arrive at the certitude that the pure self of man alone can offer as a firm ground. Negative inclusion leads to certitude of the unique Self, which is no other than the Absolute.

THE IMPLIED PARADOX BETWEEN REFERENCES

       The Bhagavad Gita (II.16) states the nature of the implied paradox between two aspects of the absolute Reality in the following words:

"na 'sato vidyate bhavo
na' bhavo vidyate satah
ubhayrapi drishtontastv--
anayos tattvadarsibhih"

"What is unreal cannot have being and non-being cannot be real;
The conclusion in regard to both these has been known to philosophers."

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       The osmosis of the subtle thought process takes place in the semantic world of the meaning of meaning of words. Within this paradoxical core of the knowledge-situation understood unitively, globally, and integrally, is the context of the normative notion of the Absolute. The whole of this has to be intuitively understood as belonging structurally, schematically, and subjectively to the background aspect of human understanding, where thoughts circulate and trace their courses. Some attempt to justify this view has been made elsewhere in our examination of modern thought. Here it is our object to give evidence in passing only, for the present, that even in Vedanta the same peculiarities are valid in its methodology and epistemology.

THE SCHEMATIC STATUS OF EXISTENCE IN SANKARA'S EPISTEMOLOGY

       We have already seen how the ontology of Vedanta has a notion of Existence (sat) which has neither an immanent nor transcendental, empirical nor idealist, material nor mental status, epistemologically understood. It has a subjective status of its own.

       We shall try to fix more definitely here the ontology of Vedanta, where Existence (sat) is to be understood schematically and intuitively in the context of absolute Self-consciousness.

       If we can think of space philosophically as a generalized abstra-cted notion, both existing and subsisting, as Kant recommends, we shall have got near to the schematic status that is meant here. Sankara himself, as we have seen at the end of the last section, relies on the definition of space as: "that which is not a thing itself, but gives room to all things within it". He defines it as Aristotle would himself have done, when he says it is avakasa datr (that which gives room), which is the same as Aristotle's definition of space as "that without which bodies could not exist, but itself (space) continuing to exist when bodies cease to exist" . When space exists horizontally as static and fixed space in extension, it can be called space spatialised, and when vertically conceived as successively capable of giving room for other bodies to occupy it, we have space spatializing.

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SPACE MENTALLY ANALYSED

       Thus space, when intuitively scrutinized, yields two axes of reference: one in which bodies refuse to give room to others as in the property of impenetrability of matter, known to physics textbooks; and the other, in which space is still in the dynamic flux of becoming (bhava rupa).

       Aristotle explains further this aspect of space, in the same context of his definition given above: "for in case it (space) were a body, then two bodies would exist in the same place."

       Thus we can think of inclusive space and exclusive space, the former vertical and the other horizontal. As many vessels of graded sizes can be telescopically fitted into one another, many objects can occupy the same space: but the same vessels arranged on the table horizontally would each represent a space exclusive of every other. Space can thus be of two kinds: as that which rejects another; and at the same time, as that which includes all at different times or at once. Space can thus be specified negatively or positively, vertically or horizontally. We have seen how Sankara himself makes use of such a frame of reference to bring out the negative specification of the Absolute by defining it by attributes.

       To bring out more clearly than hitherto that it is such a schematically conceived factor that Sankara has in mind when he thinks of absolute Existence (sat), we shall give an example here of his way of refuting a series of anterior questioners, in the following quotations:

       (The questioner argues; if causes as well as effects such as clay and pot, being transitory, were to be considered unreal, would not such a procedure in reasoning abolish everything? To this Sankara answers):
 
"No: for we are conscious that all our experience consists of a double notion: the notion of being, the real; and the notion of non-being, the unreal."

          (Here Sankara pauses a moment to explain the bipolar relation in terms of thought between what is said to exist (sadbuddhi) and its object in thought (sadbuddhi vishaya).

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       They have their reality established on functional co-ordination (samanadhikaranatva). On the homogeneous ground as between them, Sankara explains that the attribute, as object, being transitory, is alone abolished, but not that of being, and consequently, the object of the pot is unreal, by reason of the transitory character of that thought, but not the object of the thought (sad-buddhi-vishaya), because this latter does not pass).

"Sankara: No. For one perceives the thought of being in respect of cloth also. It is the thought of being which has the object for its attribute. .
 Q: Like the thought of being, the thought of pot also is conceived by relation with another pot?
 S: No. Because it is not conceived in respect of a cloth, etc.
 Q: But the thought of being also, when the pot has disappeared, is not known either.
 S: This is not valid, because there is no correspond-ing subject. The thought of being is related to the attribute; because it cannot, in the absence of the subject, have any attribute; how could it have anything to refer to at all in such a case? But this is not because there is no objective reality corresponding to the thought of being.
 Q: If the subject - the pot for example - is not real, the unity of the functional reference of the two notions is not justified.
 S: The objection is not valid. Because in the case of mirages and the like, we judge 'this is water,' although one of the two terms is not real, we recognize this co-ordination.
"In consequence, from the unreal-body, etc., coupled with their contraries and their causes - there is no passage to being; and, similarly, from the Real - the Self - there is no cessation of being, in existence, for at no time does the thought of the Real pass away, as we have said."

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       We have expressly indulged in this fairly long quotation from Sankara, the greatest perhaps of the representatives of Vedantic thought, as he, with his characteristic insistence, presents here in fully critically philosophical form, acceptable even to moderns, a point of view which will reveal itself to be schematic in status.

       The distinction between a pot as a single object actually sensed, and the 'thought of a pot' as a subjective counterpart of something that has being, is a point vital to his argument. The latter is an abstraction and a generalization, which the mind makes so that in the homogeneous ground of the Absolute, both the pot as such and the being as such can meet on common ground. Horizontal attributes can be substituted, but both the pure subject and the object of being subsist, at least schematically and structurally, within the very core of the notion of the Absolute, eternally. The Absolute is thus saved from nihilism on one side and from pluralism on the other.

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VI. TWO CERTITUDES FOR THE SAME TRUTH

           The truth of the Pythagorean theorem is one while the certitude in regard to it is derived in two different ways. 

            In the lower classes of high school, pupils are asked to cut out of paper the squares on the two sides of a right-angled triangle, and to divide them into convenient bits so as to fit them correctly into the square on the hypotenuse. When the bits fit the latter correctly without overlapping we arrive at a form of certitude which we call a practical proof. 

       The same certitude or proof can be approached by descending from mathematical axioms of algebra, irrespective of all quantitative or visible implications, as when the teacher of the higher classes of the high school proves the theorem on the blackboard. Thus two different approaches lead to the same neutral or central truth which is neither merely practical, nor merely theoretical. The visibles and the calculables come together to yield a unitive certitude in the heart of the Absolute itself.

       These two approaches to one certitude thus envisaged have been at the basis of much polemic in Vedanta; giving rise to different schools, some tending to accept contradiction and others passing beyond it. If we think of the Buddhist Nihilists as taking a very extreme leftist position in this matter; and those like Bhartriprapancha, who incline towards the other extreme of pantheism, as taking the rightist position; we can fit the intermediate schools in graded fashion between them - putting Sankara as the one next and nearest to the Nagarjuna school of Madhyamika Buddhists (so­-called Nihilists), and Nimbarka or Madhva at the other extreme.
 

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         We have to remember, however, even here, that a duality in the name of epistemology is not the same as a duality in the name of axiology. Ramanuja and Madhva, thinking as they do in the name of one adorable Absolute, belong to the context of axiology in their Absolutism. Sankara's position is more tenable epistem-ologically than axiologically.

       As in the case of photographic prints, some of which might have more contrast or more faintness of outline; these possible gradations do not intrinsically affect the absolutist content of any of them. A magic lantern, when focussed in a certain way, might show structural details which might get faint or effaced when over- or under-focussed. The circle of white light could