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which we see things as they are, as unique individuals and not as members of class or units in a crowd. It is non-sensuous, immediate knowledge. Sense knowledge is not the only kind of immediate knowledge. As distinct from sense knowledge or pratyaksa (literally presented to a sense), the Hindu thinkers use the term aparoksa for the non-sensuous immediate knowledge. This intuitive knowledge arises from an intimate fusion of mind with reality. It is knowledge by being and not by senses or by symbols.. It is awareness of the truth of things by identity."6
Radhakrishnan's reference to identity of subject and object is likely to blur the realistic distinction between the knower and the known. It, therefore, needs to be made clear here that according to Radhakrishnan, "Knowledge is an intense and close communion between the knower and the known."7 The communion between knower and known is so very intense and close in intuitive knowledge that the knower's attention gets fully absorbed in the known. Thus knowledge by identity' is not to be understood as implying the denial of the ontological identity of either the subject or the object of knowledge.
Radhakrishuan himself has closed all doors for idealistic interpretation of intuitive knowledge by the following observations:
(i) "There is the controlling power of reality in intuitive apprehension quite as much as in perceptual acts or reflective thought. The objects of intuition are recognized and not created by us. They are not produced by the act of apprehension itself."'8
(ii) "The reality of the object is what distinguishes intuitive knowledge from mere imagination. Just as in the common perception of finite things we become directly and inevitably aware of something which has its own definite nature which we cannot alter by our desires or imagination, even so intuitive consciousness apprehends real things which are not open to the senses. Even as there is something which is not imagined by us in our simplest perceptions and yet makes our knowledge possible, even so we have in our intuitions a real which controls our apprehension. It is not fancy or make-believe, but a bona fide discovery of reality. We can see not only with the eyes of the body but with those of our souls. Things unseen become as evident to the light in the souls as things seen to the physical eye. Intuition is the extension of perception to regions beyond sense."9
(iii) "The validity of divine existence is not founded on anything external. or accidental but is felt by the spirit in us. The Ontological argument
