Advaita Vedanta

Author(s): Kalidas Bhattacharya, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 12

The Absolute as...
intriguing, that even its different parts have distances and directions relatively to one another--and what it all points to is that when this body is considered as the centre of all reference it is somehow understood as other than a spatial obiect. though there is no denial at the same time of its being in the space of the world. It follows that space in which body finds itself is itself to te urderstocd in sane necessary reference to the body that is so far non-spatial. Not merely that; anything that is called 'this is so only in relation to my body, and as this body too is often called 'this' there is no escape from the phenomenological conclusion that it is subjective relatively to every thing of the world. The so-called objective this is only another name of the self-identity of the thing miscalled that way and falling considerably short of the full meaning of the term, the full meaning being present before me'.' Body, in short, is as much in the space we perceive as not in it. Phenomenologically, this is more evident when it is a question of body as felt from within."
Mental status (vrttis, better, antahkarana-vritis) come next to be distinguished in their freedom from this bodily sub jectivity. They are the states of cognition, feeling and will 3 that are not only felt as somehow dissociate from the corresponding objects—somehow standing at a distance--but also known that way explicitly when we introspect. 4 There
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The so-called objective space with fixed positions, distances and directions of objects in a conceptual construction, a logical device. Vide K. C. Bhattacharyya, Studies in Philosophy, Vol. II, 'Subject as Freedom', Chapter III, ed. Gopinath Bhattacharyya, Progressive Publishers, Calcutta. Indeed to K. C. Bhattacharyya I am indebted for all the central ideas developed in these chapters. Unconscious traces (saīskāras) as never intuitively distinguishable we keep apart. Except, of course, in the case of perception where the mental and the physical coalesce. To introspection into perception there is no percept as a presentation other than the object perceived. Something like a mental percept is distinguished when an illusion is detected
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