Advaita Vedanta

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

Page 66

Some Clarifications
the same. Further, all questions are not about whether a known thing (actually) possesses a certain character or not. Questions like 'Are you coming?' may with some effort be translated that way and questions like “What are you thinking? may be dismissed as casual and, therefore, not serious. But what about the question 'Is there God ?' or the very question itself “What about the question Is there God'?” The latter is, of course, a second-level question and may, like corresponding higher level questions, be dismissed as merely formal. But the question Is there God ?' is unambi. guously a first-level one and yet not about some character of a thing. Existence is no character of a thing; the question is clearly about the actualization of a possibility--the content remaining unchanged; which means that the content stands known. Only, when there is question it is known as unknown. The content of every question and search is thus known as unknown.
There is another case of knowing something as unknown. In the case of error detected as error, when, for example, in the rope-snake illusion the snake is now known as false and the rope as what was truly there, the snake that was perceived earlier can only be said to be what was known as not known as unknown. If the snake was known and was yet no
t all comes to is that though it as snake was known its prior being and independence were not known. Rejeci now of that snake means that it is denied to have been known as unknown, though there is no denial of it having been known. Normally, when a thing is known as real it is known as known as unknown, meaning that it was not merely presented as an object but also that its prior being and independence (thinghood) were known too, and these latter, we have seen, are known as unknown. True, in normal unreflective cognition the object is not known explicitly-as real. It is only in contrast with illusion detected as illusion that we feel retrospectively aware that in normal unreflective knowledge we implicitly knew the reality of the object, meaning at least that its reality was not denied. Illusion unravels for the first time, the mysteries of normal unreflective cognition.