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XXI] Controversy with Monists by Mādhava Mukunda 421
Further, if the experiences are supposed to belong to the states of ignorance, then emancipation, which refers only to pure consciousness, would refer to an entity different from that which was suffering from bondage. On the other hand, if the experiences belong to pure consciousness, then emancipation will be associated with diverse contradictory experiences at the same time according to the diversity of experiences.
The Sankarites may urge that the conditions which bring about the experiences are associated with pure consciousness and hence in an indirect manner there is a continuity of the being that experiences and attains salvation. To this the reply is that the experiencing of sorrow is a sufficient description of the conditions. That being so, where the experiencing of sorrow does not exist, the conditions, of which it is a sufficient description, also do not exist. Thus, the discontinuity of the entities which suffer bondage and attain emancipation remains the same.
Again, since it is held that the conditions subsist in the pure consciousness, it may well be asked whether emancipation means the dissolution of one condition or many conditions. In the former case we should have emancipation always, for one or other of the conditions is being dissolved every moment, and in the latter case we might not have any emancipation at all, for all the conditions determining the experiences of infinite individuals can never be dissolved.
It may also be asked whether the conditions are associated with the pure consciousness in part or in whole. In the first alternative there would be a vicious infinite and in the second the differentiation of the pure consciousness in various units would be inadmissible.
Moreover, it may be asked whether conditions are associated with pure consciousness conditionally or unconditionally. In the former alternative there would be a vicious infinite and in the second case there would be no chance of emancipation. The theory of reflection cannot also explain the situation, for reflection is admitted only when the reflected image has the same order of existence as the object. The avidyā has a different order of existence from Brahman, and thus reflection of Brahman in avidyā cannot be justified. Again, in reflection that which is reflected and that in which the reflection takes place must be in two different places,
