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XXX] The theory of Avidyā refuted
285 It cannot be held that, just as in the Nyāya view the soul is associated with pain only through the intermediacy of body, so the pure consciousness may be regarded as associated with ajñāna in association with its limited form as jīva; for, since pure consciousness is itself associated with the mischievous element, the ajñāna, the attainment of Brahmanhood cannot be regarded as a desirable state.
Madhusūdana in reply says that pure consciousness, in itself not opposed to ajñāna, can destroy ajñāna only when reflected through modification of ajñāna as vịtti, just as the rays of the sun, which illuminate little bits of paper or cotton, may burn them when reflected through a lens. It is wrong also to suppose that the ignorance has its basis in the ego; for the ego-notion, being itself a product of ajñāna, cannot be its support. It must, therefore, have as its basis the underlying pure consciousness. The experience "I am ignorant" is, therefore, to be explained on the supposition that the notion of ego and ignorance both have their support in the pure consciousness and are illusorily made into a complex. The ego, being itself an object of knowledge and removable by ultimate true knowledge, must be admitted to be illusory. If ajñāna were not ultimately based on pure consciousness, then it could not be removable by the ultimate and final knowledge which has the pure consciousness as its content. It is also wrong to suppose that the ajñāna qualifies the phenomenal knower; for the real knower is the pure consciousness, and to it as such the ajñāna belongs, and it is through it that all kinds of knowledge, illusory or relatively real, belong to it. The criticism that, there being ajñāna, there is the phenomenal knower, and, there being the phenomenal knower, there is ajñāna, is also wrong; for ajñāna does not depend for its existence upon the phenomenal knower. Their mutual association is due not to the fact that avidyā has the knower as its support, but that ignorance and the ego-notion are expressed together in one structure of awareness, and this explains their awareness. The unity of the phenomenal knower and the pure consciousness subsists only in so far as the consciousness underlying the phenomenal knower is one with pure consciousness. It is well known that, though a face may stand before a mirror, the impurities of the mirror affect the reflected mirror and not the face. The reflected image, again, is nothing different from the face itself; so,
