Advaita Vedanta

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

Page 50

Some Clarifications
pure bliss as equally the ultimate essence of man. But these are not distinct from pure subjectivity, in the sense that they are addable as coordinate factors. Subjectivity=consciousness is, for him, no mere logical or transcendental presupposition. It exists, so that, as in other cases of existent things, pure being (pure existence ) is here too an ultimate metaphysical essence, with only this difference that, as the ultimate essence of subjectivities of different grades, it shows itself as non-different so far from pure subjectivity. I am is not merely I think but also I exist. Only, much as in the case of 'am' denoting thinking, here too there is no distinction between I and am. Pure consciousness and pure being are the same essence, only spoken of differently. Or, they are the same essence discovered through different alternative approaches of metaphysical dissociation.2 Pure bliss too might, in the same manner, be extracted as the ultimate essence of every man's life and shown as non-different from pure consciousness and pure being. 3 The three being nondifferent, no substantive self over and above them is needed.
2 The concepts of pure being (sat), pure consciousness (cit) and pure bliss
(ananda) vis-a-vis one another will be discussed in greater details later. 3 The Advaitins have sometimes demonstrated non-difference of pure
consciousness, pure being and pure bliss from one another very ingeniously through interpreting each in terms of double negation. We need not discuss that logical demonstration here. Sometimes, however, they present this double-negative interpretation in a simpler and more convincing manner. It is that the absolute is the negation of the world (including jīvas) which is asat, acit and anānanda. In other words, as sat it has to be understood as not-nonsat, as cit it has to be understood as not-non-cit, and as ānanda it has to be understood as not-non-ananda. There is no question so far of these three double negations to be either identical with or different from one another. So far, this absolute has to be understood as just the negation of the world which they claim they have shown to be not-sat, not-cit and not-ānanda. As for the relation between this negative not-world and the positive absolute, the two are obviously the same thing, only spoken in two different ways in the vyāvaharika mode of speech.