Advaita Vedanta

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

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A Modern Understanding...
ing we need not postulate a higher stage, call it spiritual or psychological introspection. The Advaitins, however, would here first draw a distinction, as we have seen, between the phosphorescence of a mental state and the reflective awareness of it as an object (though in that awareness it may be known as subjective too, to whatever extent) and then another distinction between that phosphorescence and the unreflective notice of the mental state and, consequently, a third distinction between this unreflective notice on the one hand and that reflective awareness on the other. These points will be thoroughly discussed in the pages to follow.
Still others hold that as there is difficulty in proving the existence of introspection it should better be understood as outside the question of existence and non-existence altogether. It should, in other words, be understood, in the Kantian or semi-Buddhist fashion, as only a logical or transcendental 'presupposition as the pure I think that neither exists nor does not exist. The Advaita rejoinder, however, would be quite simple. Advaita would readily agree that introspection=subjectivity is qualitatively different from all the first-order primary cognition but would add that the difference is not so catastrophic as to forfeit its ontological import altogether. The difficulty in proving the existence of introspection could be avoided if only it were recognised as self-certifying. Besides in introspection, subjectivity is, as a matter of fact, experienced as existent, at least, in the form l am'. The translation of I am' into I=I’ is not merely forced, it is gratuitous too.
Not that there is never an experience like '[=l. The experience of subjectivity as an overtone of mental states is definitely one such. An overtone is always a feature which, though experienced along with that of which it is an adjectival overtone, is yet understood as dissociable, as demanding in other words some sort of autonomy, an autonomy that is at least possible. So far it is already semi-autonomous, though, in so far as it is not experienced as actually autonomous, it
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