________________
250 Controversy between Dualists and Monists [CH. status of the defects producing the world-appearance, which has a relative existence. The tables cannot be turned on the dualists by supposing that on their side also the reality of the defects, body and senses, can be affirmed only when the non-illusory nature of the world is known, and that the knowledge of the latter is dependent upon that of the former; for knowledge of the reality of the world is to be obtained directly from experience, and not through such a logical quibble. It may also be pointed out that, if the analogy of the conch-shell-silver be pursued, then, since the defects there have the same status as the locus of the illusion, viz., the "this” of the conch-shell, so in the world-illusion also the defects should have the same status as the locus.
Again, if the defects are not regarded as ultimately real, but only as illusory, then it must be admitted that there are in the world no real defects, which would imply that our world-knowledge is valid. The assumption that defect, the body, the senses, etc., are all illusory demands that this be due to the presence of other defects; these in turn must depen we may have a vicious infinite. If the defects are spontaneously imagined in the mind, then the self-validity of knowledge must be sacrificed. If it is urged that the avidyā is either beginningless or self-sustained and immediate (like the concept of difference), there is no vicious infinite, the reply is that, if avidyā is selfsustained and beginningless, it ought not to depend upon any locus or ground of world-illusion, Brahman, as its adhisthāna. Again, if the experience of avidyā be not regarded as due to some defects, it could not be regarded as invalid. But it would be difficult to imagine how avidyā could be due to some defect; for then it would have to exist before itself in order to produce itself. Again, the conception that the world is an illusion because it is contradicted is false, because the contradiction itself is again contradicted; this may lead to a vicious infinite, since it cannot be admitted that the knowledge that contradicts is itself contradicted.
Just as in the silver illusion the locus of the illusion has the same kind of existence as the defect, so in the world-illusion also the locus of the illusion might have the same kind of relative existence as the defects; which would mean that Brahman also is relative. Moreover, it is wrong to say that the knowledge of the locus (adhisthāna) of the world-illusion is ultimately real, while the defects have only a
