Advaita Vedanta

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

Page 22

The Absolute as...
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is not also experienced as an independent existent. It is experienced as an adjective but understood at the same time as capable of transcending that of which it is an adjective. This is exactly what Kant meant by “transcendental', as I=I'. not I am '.
But this is not the whole story of subjectivity, nor is 'I=ľ the finale of the story of dissociation. The subjectivity which is only of the form *I=I' is just noticed, not known reflectively. Notice is unreflective awareness, and not even of the form 'notice of X', as though that X is other than the notice. The notice of subjectivity is but subjectivity as self-revealing, even though the whole thing is unreflective yet. Even the transcendental-ity of this subjectivity is at this stage noticed unreflectively, this mere notice of transcendental-ity alone justi. fying us in calling it an overtone.
This very notice, however, poses a further demand that the situation be explicitly, i.e. reflectively, apprehended in that form. How, otherwise, could we at all describe the situation as we have done above? When we have the autonomous subjectivity reflectively apprehended that way, we are introspecting-we are experiencing pure subjectivity as really dissociate, as substantively in itself, as standing aside of the mental states of which it had so long been experienced as only an overtone. This is pure subjectivity. Like the subjectivity that is just noticed, it too is self-revealing; only, while in the former case the subjectivity in question was revealed by itself and that was the whole story, in introspection it is revealed by itself to itself. The just noticed subjectivity is not revealed to introspection: at the unreflective stage there was no explicitly distinguished introspection, and what is more important—when introspection intervenes, the just noticed subjectivity is found to have been identical with it, as introspection undistinguished, as introspection itself in so far as it was fused with mental states and yet semi-autonomous as an overtone.