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Rāmānujadāsa alias Mahācārya 369 ignorance has a reference to the root-ajñāna, there is no justification for admitting separate ajñānas constituting the stuff of the objects. It cannot be suggested that the existence of such ajñāna may be proved by the fact that each perception implies the cessation of a particular ajñāna, for the disappearance of such an ajñāna is only a matter of inference, and it may as well be assumed that it does not mean anything more than that a particular cognition follows only the absence of that particular knowledge. A negation-precedentto-a-production is always destroyed by the production of a particular entity. When one says “I did not know the jug long, but I know it now," the cessation of the absence of knowledge or the ajñāna has a direct and immediate reference to the subject, the knower. But the removal of the ajñāna hiding the objects is only a matter of inference from the fact of cognition, and it can never be immediate or intuitive. Again, if the root-ajñāna is supposed to veil the pure consciousness as underlying the objects, it is unnecessary to suppose the existence of separate ajñānas hiding the objects. If it is supposed that the pure consciousness underlying the objects, being identical with Brahman, which is referred to by the root-ajñāna, may appear in consciousness as being limited under the object-appearance, it may be asked how on account of the association of the root-ajñāna the object may appear to be unknown even when it is known. Again, the root-ignorance implied in such an experience as "I do not know” cannot belong to the mind (antahkarana), for it is a material object and it cannot belong to the self-shining pure consciousness. Being what it is, it cannot be ignorant about itself.
Further, it may well be said that though the self is manifested in self-consciousness yet it often appears as associated with the body, and though objects may generally be known as “knowable” yet their specific nature may not be known and it is this that often leads to doubt; all these are inexplicable except on the assumption of ignorance. They may all be admitted, but even then the assumption that ajñāna acts as a veiling agent is wholly unwarrantable. Uncertainty (anuradhārana) and veiling (āvaraņa) are not one and the same thing. In the appearance of water in a mirage there may be doubt due to uncertainty, and it cannot be denied that there is all the appearance of water which could not have been if the so-called ajñāna had veiled it. Nor can it be said that the uncertainty
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