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VEDANTA (A) ADVAITA
345 internal organ in which the sākşin is immanent. Knowledge which gives the object directly is not here equated with sensory perception, and there may be immediate knowledge not involving sense-perception. The empirical self for instance is immediately known, but it cannot be said to be presented to any sense. Hence the word pratyakşa, which literally means 'presented to a sense,' is here usually replaced by the wider term aparoksa or 'not mediate. If the following conditions are satisfied, knowledge will be immediate, no matter whether it comes through a sense or not. First. the object must be such as can be directly known (yogya). For example, a table can be so known but not virtue. This is not so much a condition of immediacy as an indication that not all things are perceivable. Secondly, the object must be existent at the time; otherwise even a perceivable object will not be immediately known. Our recollection of a table that no longer exists cannot for this reason be immediate. Lastly, there should be established a certain intimate relation between the subject and the object in question. The means of such relation is the vrtti which flows out in the case of external objects, but remains within where it originates in the case of internal ones like pain or pleasure. It will be convenient to take the former variety of immediate knowledge for finding out the meaning of this condition. The subject and object are here by hypothesis removed from each other and occupy different positions in space; and the vștti which relates them brings about for the time being what may be described as an identity of ground for the two. The exact manner in which this takes place is stated as follows: When an organ of sense is brought into contact with an object, the antah-karana, like a searchlight as it were, goes out towards it and gets itself determined by it or assumes the 'form' of that object. The existence of the object previous to the appearance of knowledge is thus necessary so that existence of an object (asattvāpādakājñāna); immediate knowledge, that regarding its exact nature also (abhänäpädakājfiāna). See SLS. PP. 94 and 147; Panca-dasi, vi. 16.
The metaphor is drawn from water in a tank flowing through the sluice to a field to be irrigated and assuming its shape. VP. P. 57.
