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A Modern Understanding of...
period) prior to the cognition-is admitted this way. It cannot be said that this prior being is not known, for it is admitted, however, implicitly, and admitted quite as much as the object in the form 'such and such' Nor is that prior being perceived or remembered or inferred. Not inferred, because any such inference would presuppose its admission in some other case It is, therefore, known as unknown, meaning that its knowledge is not through any mental state In contrast, its being now and such and such may be said to be known as known, and the only intelligible meaning of this latter phrase is that these aspects are known as revealed through mental states. From this, again, it follows that there is a kind of knowledge, however mysteriously related to the object known, which is independent of mental states altogether This precisely is the Advaitin's pure consciousness as knowledge proper which not only, as already seen, reveals mental states direct but, as just seen, somehow reveals other things too direct, ie. without any mental state intervening as a medium.
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Not only the prior being but the very being-the inde pendence of the objects, its thinghood, is also known in the same way, known, in other words, as unknown. Empirically, the Advaitin is not an idealist. he, like any normal man, admits the prior being and independence of the object known. He only insists that though both the object as such and such and its prior being cum independence are known and, therefore, undenied so far (rather asserted, as against the Vijnanavādi Buddhist), the two sides are known in two different waysone known as known and the other known as unknown.
Demands too that, we have held earlier, emerge from time to time on the pathway of progressive realization of pure impersonal consciousness are known as unknown. The only difference between these and the other things known as unknown is that while demands, initially known as unknown, come later to be known as known, this cannot be said of the other things that are known as unknown. And, secondly, when the demands higher up on the path of progressive realization
