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VEDANTIC MONISM
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anything within and without. But whatever be the ontological or logical character of the relation of the nescience, its actuality cannot be disputed. Even an unreal relation is possible just as an unreal nescience is.
A difficulty has been raised that the Absolute has been described as omniscient and certainly nescience is incompatible with omniscience. Anandagiri has anticipated this difficulty and given a solution. It is this. Omniscience does not mean empirical knowledge of all things, but the eternal perennial light of consciousness which makes all knowledge possible. So there is no logical repugnance in the unreal association of unreal nescience with it. By logical thought we can understand that this is not impossible, but the actual nature of it can be realized only by perfect knowledge. When nescience is destroyed by knowledge, it becomes identical with the Absolute. Nescience is a fact which refuses to be determined by logical thought. Nescience cannot be said to exist unless the Absolute quâ transcendental consciousness is known. In other words, nescience cannot be felt without consciousness. But nescience also cannot be intuited as existent if the true nature of the Absolute as pure consciousness is realized. Moreover, who will be the knower of it-the person who suffers from nescience or who has emancipated himself from it? The determination of the nature of nescience is not possible for the person who is subject to its sway, because this will mean that he is not fettered by nescience. As regards the emancipated self, the logical distinctions of the subject, the object, and the act of knowledge have totally vanished for him for ever, and so such determination is not possible. An organ of knowledge is not competent to guage unreality. It is only the real that can be determined by it. But nescience is ex hypothesi not a real because it does not stand the scrutiny of accredited cognitive organs. Nescience is called nescience because it is incapable of standing critical examination with success. In fact, the criterion of nescience is nothing but this incapacity for standing the trial by accepted instruments of knowledge. 1
But the question may be asked "Why are we enamoured of such an irrational concept ?' You have yourself admitted that it is not capable of being determined by the accredited organs of logic. Why don't you admit that the world is both different and non-different from the Absolute ? Both you and myself admit the Absolute and the World, and the relation between them is asserted by us to be identity-cuin-difference. The merit of this theory lies in the
1 avidyāyā avidyātva idam eva ca lakṣaṇam; mānāghātāsahignutvam asadhāraṇain isyate.
--Sambandhavārttika, 181, quoted in SSP, p. 8.
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