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Bhattacharyya's law that "consciousness of the false is consciousness of the subjective"). Carried to its theoretic limit, knowing purged of all apriori aspects is apprehension of the object as it is in itself; consciousness simply reflects the object. We purge our willing of its nonvolitional (cognitive or emotional) accretions by rejecting its objective elements. Willing purged of all external aspects is determined entirely from within consciousness, not determined by but completely determining its object. We purge our feeling of its non-emotional (cognitive or volitional) accretions by rejecting the objective or subjective biases which interfere with the aesthetic union of consciousness and content. Feeling purged of all abstract80 (either objective or subjective) aspects is togetherness of subject and object. Knowing freed from all subjectivity is absolute truth, uncategorized being in its concrete richness. 81 Willing freed from all objectivity is absolute freedom, unrestricted consciousness. Feeling freed from all separateness is absolute value, unalloyed bliss. Each is absolute, pure experience, alike negatively as lack of confusion and practically as salvation. But they are incompatible, opposed to each other, incommensurable, neither reducible to each other nor comprehensible under a higher synthesis. They are alternative absolutes.
Logic of Alternation The conclusion is that there are alternative absolutes; more precisely, there are alternative forms of the absolute;82 still more precisely, the Absolute is an alternation--and even this formula expresses the ineffable doctrine rather awkwardly. Alternation is opposed to condemnation and to integration. According to condemnatory or dogmatic philosophy, there is one Absolute and one path; among opposing views, all but one are false. According to integrative or liberal philosophy, opposing views find ultimate agreement through integration or synthesis; there are many paths leading to the same mountain peak. According to alternative or selective philosophy, there is a choice among incompatible alternatives; there are many paths, each
or categories of understanding. Whatever we impose on the world is, strictly speaking, will, not knowledge.
80 As concrete experience not differentiated into content and consciousness, feeling may be considered psychologically as the primitive form of experience.
81 Not to be confused with concrete experience (feeling).
82 “The self-caused is understood in three forms-self-known, self-willed or self-felt; knowing, willing and feeling amount to self-becoming in the region of the absolute" (1 181).
