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I ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 1.
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cognition; but the latter is false all the same, and its object, viz. the doubleness of the moon, is false likewise ; the defect of vision being the cause of a cognition not corresponding to reality.-And so it is with the cognition of Brahman also. This cognition is based on Nescience, and therefore is false, together with its object, viz. Brahman, although no sublating cognition presents itself. This conclusion admits of various expressions in logical form. The Brahman under dispute is false because it is the object of knowledge which has sprung from what is affected with Nescience; as the phenomenal world is.' 'Brahman is false because it is the object of knowledge; as the world is.' Brahman is false because it is the object of knowledge, the rise of which has the Untrue for its cause; as the world is.'
You will now perhaps set forth the following analogy. States of dreaming consciousness—such as the perception of elephants and the like in one's dreams are unreal, and yet they are the cause of the knowledge of real things, viz. good or ill fortune (portended by those dreams). Hence there is no reason why Scripture-although unreal in so far as based on Nescience-should not likewise be the cause of the cognition of what is real, viz. Brahman.-The two cases are not paralled, we reply. The conscious states experienced in dreams are not unreal; it is only their objects that are false; these objects only, not the conscious states, are sublated by the waking consciousness. Nobody thinks
the cognitions of which I was conscious in my dream are unreal'; what men actually think is the cognitions are real, but the things are not real.' In the same way the illusive state of consciousness which the magician produces in the minds of other men by means of mantras, drugs, &c., is true, and hence the cause of love and fear; for such states of consciousness also are not sublated. The cognition which, owing to some defect in the object, the sense organ, &c., apprehends a rope as a snake is real, and hence the cause of fear and other emotions. True also is the imagination which, owing to the nearness of a snake, arises in the mind of a man though not actually bitten, viz. that he has been bitten ; true also is the representation of the imagined
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