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XIX] Yāmuna's doctrine of Soul
143 on waking the notion that “I slept so long." Nobody has ever experienced any pure knowledge. Knowledge as such must belong to somebody. The Sankarites say that the rise of knowledge means the identity of the knowledge with the objects at the time. But this is not so; for the truth of the knowledge of an object is always with reference to its limitations of time and space and not to the intrinsic quality of the thing or the knowledge. The assertion also that knowledge is permanent is without any foundation; for whenever any knowledge arises it always does so in time and under the limitations of time. Nobody has ever experienced any knowledge divested of all forms. Knowledge must come to us either as perception or as inference, etc.; but there cannot be any knowledge which is absolutely devoid of any forms or modifications and absolutely qualityless. The Sankarites regard the self as pure consciousness or anubhūti, but it is apparent that the self is the agent of anubhūti, or the knower, and not knowledge or pure consciousness. Again, as in Buddhism, so in Sankarism, the question of recognition remains unsolved; for recognition or personal continuity of experience means that the knower existed in the past and is existing even now
-as when we say, “I have experienced this”-but, if the self is pure consciousness only, then there cannot be any perceiver persisting in the past as well as in the present, and the notion “I have experienced this” is not explained, but only discarded as being illusory. The consciousness of things, however, is never generated in us as “I am consciousness,” but as “I have the consciousness of this”; if all forms were impure impositions on pure consciousness, then the changes would have taken place in the consciousness, and instead of the form “I have consciousness" the proper form of knowledge ought to have been “I am consciousness." The Sankarites also hold that the notion of the knower is an illusory imposition on the pure consciousness. If that be so, the consciousness itself may be regarded as an illusory imposition; if it is said that the pure consciousness is not an imposition, since it lasts till the endthe stage of emancipation—then, since the result of right knowledge (tattva-jñāna) is this, that the self ceases to be a knower, false knowledge should be welcomed rather than such a right knowledge. The notion “I know" proves the self to be a knower and apart from a knower so manifested no pure consciousness can be experienced. The notion “I” at once distinguishes the knower from the body,
