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284 Controversy between Dualists and Monists [CH. with pure consciousness, it is improper to think that its effects should affect the reflected image and not Brahman. Moreover, the analogy of reflection can hold good only with reference to rays of light, and not with reference to consciousness. Again, if the jīvas be regarded as a product of reflection, this will necessarily have a beginning in time. Moreover, the reflection can occur only when that through which anything is reflected has the same kind of existence as the former. A ray of light can be reflected in the surface of water and not in mirage, because water has the same status of existence as the ray of light; but, if Brahman and ajñāna have not the same kind of existence, the former cannot be reflected in the latter. Moreover, ajñāna, which has no transparency, cannot be supposed to reflect Brahman. Again, there is no reason to suppose that the ajñāna should be predisposed to reflect the Brahman, and, if the ajñāna is transformed into the form of ākāśa, etc., it cannot also at the same time behave as a reflector. Moreover, just as apart from the face and its image through reflection there is no other separate face, so there is also no separate pure consciousness, apart from Brahman and the jīva, which could be regarded as the basis of ajñāna. Also it cannot be suggested that pure consciousness as limited by the jīva-form is the basis of the ajñāna; for without the reflection through ajñāna there cannot be any jīva, and without the jīva there cannot be any ajñāna, since on the present supposition the ajñāna has for its support the consciousness limited by jiva, and this involves a vicious circle. Again, on this view, since Brahman is not the basis of ajñāna, though it is of the nature of pure consciousness, it may well be contended that pure consciousness as such is not the basis of ajñāna, and that, just as the jīva, through association with ajñāna, undergoes the cycles of birth, so Brahman also may, with equal reason, be associated with ajñāna, and undergo the painful necessities of such an association.
The analogy of the mirror and the image is also inappropriate on many grounds. The impurities of the mirror are supposed to vitiate the image; but in the present case no impurities are directly known or perceived to exist in the ajñāna, which stands for the mirror; even though they may be there, being of the nature of rootimpressions, they are beyond the scope of the senses. Thus, the view that the conditions which are perceived in the mirror are also reflected in the image is invalid.
