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294 Controversy between Dualists and Monists [CH. admit the difference between ajñāna and abhāva, against which they have been contending so long. Moreover, when one says “I do not know what you say,” the ajñāna with reference to the speech of the speaker is directly known at the present time, and this would be inexplicable if the cognition of ajñāna did not involve a cognition of the defining reference. So, since ajñāna is cognized along with its object, there is no discrepancy in the object being manifested in its aspect as under the grasp of ajñāna as intuited by the sāksiconsciousness. Madhusūdana urges that the pure consciousness can remove ajñāna only by being reflected through the pramānavrtti and not through its character as self-luminous or through the fact of its being of a class naturally opposed to ajñānal. The difference between the vrtti and the sākṣi-consciousness in relation to ajñāna consists in the fact that the former is opposed to ajñāna, while the latter has no touch of ajñāna. The latter, i.e., the sāksiconsciousness, directly manifests pleasures, pains, etc., not by removing any ajñāna that was veiling them, but spontaneously, because the veil of ajñāna was not operating on the objects that were being directly manifested by it?.
Ajñāna and Ego-hood (ahamkāra). The Sankarites hold that, though during dreamless sleep the self-luminous self is present, yet, there being at the time no nonluminous ego, the memory in the waking stage does not refer the experience of the dreamless state to the ego as the self; and the scriptural texts also often speak against the identification of the self with the ego. In the dreamless stage the ego is not manifested; for, had it been manifested, it would have been so remembered.
To this Vyāsa-tirtha's reply is that it cannot be asserted that in dreamless sleep the self is manifested, whereas the ego is not; for the opponents have not been able to prove that the ego is something different from the self-luminous self. It is also wrong to say that the later memory of sleeping does not refer to the ego; for all memory refers to the self as the ego, and nothing else. Even when
pramāna-rytty-upārūdha-prakāśatvena nivartakatvam brūmaḥ, na tu jātiriseşena, prakasutra-mātrena vā. Advaita-siddhi, p. 590.
2 sāksini yad ajñāna-virodhitvam anubhūyate tan nājñāna-nivartakatvanibandhanam, kintu sva-r'isayecchādau yāvatsattvam prakāśād ajñānāprasaktinibandhanam. Ibid. p. 590.
