Advaita Vedanta

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

Page 30

The Absolute as..."
21
to them, in other words, subjectivity is symbolizable a priori and in a graded order, as mental (with appropriate a priori varieties), bodily (with space, time and qualitative varieties ), and extra-bodily (as mahābhūtas only13). Much of the so-called empirical variety thus stands covered by Indian apriorities
There is still, however, a snag. Whatever variety is a priori is only a type, none a definite actual particular. If that be so, our actual experience of the actual world, including the bodily and the mental, is still left unaccounted for. How can pure subjectivity as the only genuine reality account for this actual variety?
The simple reply to this question is that it is not a problem for transcendentalism only. It is a problem equally for pan. objectivism. The pan-objectivist too cannot answer the question: Why the actual variety in the actual world ? He too has to start with rich details as after all given; he can at most connect them logically through types, showing that some of these types can be understood in terms of others--in the ideal form of explanation all the types in terms of one that is considered basic. The transcendentalist has proceeded the same way. Both talk of types and both are for reduction as far as possible. For both, again, what common people take as actual is what is ultimately to be perceived, and for both there is no concei. vable explanation as to why something is perceived as it is. What is perceived is by both taken as what is just given, the given being the datum for all explanation. Should anyone still insist on an explanation of the variety, it would only be from a new angle of vision--and in a new dimension altogether : the explanation would be in terms of the law of karma and the theory of re-birth with which we are not for the present concerned.
13 Body at one stage, which is nearer subjectivity, comprises tanmatras
and sensations and temporality only, space not being denied, though not explicitly asserted therefore, and at a grosser stage comprises mahābhūtas and temporality.