Page Text
________________
x]
Consciousness as Illumination
449
flash like the work of the light of a lamp in removing darkness; so it is not possible that the external reality should have to pass through any process before consciousness could arise; what happens is simply this, that the reality (sat) which subsists in all things as the same identical one reveals the object as soon as its veil is removed by association with the vṛtti (mental mould or state). It is like a light which directly and immediately illuminates everything with which it comes into relation. Such an illumination of objects by its underlying reality would have been continuous if there were no veils or covers, but that is not so as the reality is hidden by the veil of ajñāna (nescience). This veil is removed as soon as the light of consciousness shines through a mental mould or vṛtti, and as soon as it is removed the thing shines forth. Even before the formation of the vṛtti the illusory impositions on the reality had still been continuing objectively, but it could not be revealed as it was hidden by ajñāna which is removed by the action of the corresponding vṛtti; and as soon as the veil is removed the thing shines forth in its true light. The action of the senses, eye, etc. serves but to modify the vṛtti of the mind, and the vṛtti of the mind once formed, the corresponding ajñāna veil which was covering the corresponding specific part of the world-appearance is removed, and the illumination of the object which was already present, being divested of the veil, shows itself forth. The illusory creations were there, but they could not be manifested on account of the veil of nescience. As soon as the veil is removed by the action of the vṛtti the light of reality shows the corresponding illusory creations. So consciousness in itself is the ever-shining light of reality which is never generated but ever exists; errors of perception (e.g. silver in the conch-shell) take place not because the doșa consisting of the defect of the eye, the glaze of the object and such other elements that contributed to the illusion, generated the knowledge, but because it generated a wrong vṛtti. It is because of the generation of the wrong vṛtti that the manifestation is illusory. In the illusion "this is silver" as when we mistake the conch-shell for the silver, it is the cit, consciousness or reality as underlying the object represented to us by "this" or "idam" that is the basis (adhiṣṭhāna) of the illusion of silver. The cause of error is our nescience or non-cognition (ajñāna) of it in the form of the conch-shell, whereas the right knowledge is the cognition of it as conch-shell. The
| SR No. | 007593 |
| Book Title | History of Indian Philosophy |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Surendranath Dasgupta |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Publication Year | 1922 |
| Total Pages | 2517 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 125 MB |