Advaita Vedanta

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

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A Modern Understanding.
ness as only a property of the object. In the former case the very use of the term 'introspection' might be questioned, but in the latter case the use is not illegitimate because, after all, this awareness is one of knownness. But, then, the object of this awareness, the knownness of the object of primary cognition, is not revealed as subjective relatively to that earlier object, not revealed, in other words, as livingly dissociated from that object. The only introspection that reveals its object as yet relatively subjective that way is the awareness of my primary cognition of an object, where the distinctive object of the introspection is that cognition (not that object), though with its erstwhile object somehow both hanging on and slipping. This sense of the object of the primary cognition somehow both hanging on and slipping is precisely what we mean when we say that the cognition is being livingly dissociated from that object and so far standing as subjective relatively to it. The introspection that does not reveal this relative subjectivity of the primary cognition may be called psychological introspection (anuvyavasāya), the type of introspection we find spoken of in common psychological literature. The type of introspection which, on the other hand, reveals that relative subjectivity of the cognition introspected may, in contrast, be called spiritual introspection (sākşin). It may be noted in passing that the reflective awareness of an object (not of its cognition)- apparently introspection of the first type-- need not always refer to that object through the intervention of an intermediary like knownness or primary cognition : though reflective, it may refer straight to the object of the primary level. When there is such straight reference, reflective awareness is, in reality, introspection of the spiritual type (sūkşin). The illusory snake, for example, detected as illusory, is known straight, though reflectively. Reflective knowledge of snake as lliusory snake, which is the same thing as the retrospective account of what it is in the original experience, 6 Vide K. C. Bhattacharyya, Studies in Philosophy, Vol. II. 'Subjeci
as Freedom', Chapters I and II.