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VEDANTA (A) ADVAITA
355 If the ego or jiva were simple and endured throughout, all experience would alike involve a reference to it. But that is not the case, for sleep as interpreted here is without such reference. We are therefore compelled to explain it as consisting of two elements one of which, viz. the sākşin alone, endures through the three states. The other, viz. the internal organ, is common only to waking and dream; and to it accordingly should be ascribed all the specific features of those states. 'Love, desire, pleasure, pain and so forth are experienced when the internal organ functions, but not in sleep: hence they must be of the internal organ.' Now the NyāyaVaiseșika and the Māmāmsā, which hold that the ego is not analysable, maintain that it is distinct from the body, senses, etc. But there is ordinarily an implied identification of these distinct entities, as for instance when one says 'I am stout,' 'I am blind,' where 'stoutness' and 'blindness' which are respectively the characteristics of the body and the sense of sight are predicated of the self. These systems explain the identification as more or less consciously made, as for example when we describe a man as a 'giant' and as therefore having only a secondary or rhetorical significance (gauņa)-supporting their position by reference to the equally familiar experience finding expression as 'my body,' etc., where the distinction appears explicitly. The Advaitin does not accept this explanation. He contends that the characteristic of gauņa or secondary usage, viz. the consciousness at the time of the distinction between the objects identified, is lacking here and ascribes the identification to an unconscious confusion between the entities involved, viz. body, senses, etc., on the one hand, and the sākşin on the other. It accordingly involves, in his view, ignorance of the true character of those entities and is a case of error or adhyāsa. There are indeed occasions, he admits, when we do distinguish between the two, as when we speak of our body,'
1 Rāgecchå-sukha-duhkhadi buddhau satyam pravartate:
Suşuptau năsti tannāśāt tasmat buddhestu natmanah. These are all vșttis as inspired by the sākşin and it is their vịtti aspect alone that belongs to the antah-karaņa. The resemblance to the Sāņkhya-Yoga here is clear,
