________________
A Modern Understanding of...
27
there is between them is only verbal And this is exactly what the Advaitin bas claimed . all distinction between self (ārman) and pure consciousness (cit --between knower (nara ) and knowledge (jñāna )--15 verbal
So far as the relation between the substantive reing and the functional pure consciousness is concerned, the Spinozists (and with them may be grouped some schools of Suivism ) hold the same view They differ only with regard to the relation between consciousness (subjectivity) and objects As distinct from most of the Indian trancendentalists, they hold that subjectivity and object, and, therefore, grades of either ale parallel functions in Spinozistic language, attributes of the same substantive being
It may be noted, however, that through it is wrong to speak of a self or knower behind pure consciousness* Such use would not be out of order if the knowledge in relation to which the self is to be called knower be only mental states (citta-yrttis), not pure consciousness. Mental states, we have seen, are not subjective in the proper sense of the term. Subjectivity proper is but pure subjectivity which, though realized first as individual pure subjectivity (jiva-sähşın!, is really pure consciousness itself just delimited It is to this pure consciousness as delimited that appropriate mental states and, through them, bodily and extra-bodily affairs-stand as objects, which means that in that respect it is their subject Pure consciousness can in this sense be called knower, But it the same time, and exactly in the same sense, it is its know ledge too As, therefore, the context and the sense remain the same, it matters little whether one calls pure consciousness knower or knowledge of everything else. In any case, there is no distinction here between substance and a feature that could be predicated of it.
5
For all Indian transcendentalists pure 477531Jusn353 (subjectivity) and knowledge proper are one and the same thing Why it so will be evident as we proceed
