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The Jaina Theory of Liberation and the Non-absolute :: 241
how can we select the one and call the other false and nonexistent? By rising to the higher categories we are never negating the lower. The globe is certainly a higher category than the north and the south poles. When we advance from the poles to the globe, we never mean a globe without poles. On the contrary the globe takes the poles into its womb without exhausting their existence. It is why when we come down to the lower again the poles are seen to emerge again. In the same way we can reach the ultimate universal of existence, but by that we cannot negate the reality of the particulars. The particular and the universal together constitute the reality. It is only an abstract way of thinking that we talk of the universal alone or the particular alone. Neither of them can exist without the other.
Again the absolute is held to be one hence without distinctions. Distinctions belong to the lower levels of existence. Even existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ānanda) are said to exist in it only from the lower viewpoint. Distinctions arise out of particularity, so if particularity is attributed to the absolute, distinctions must belong to it. If there is nothing in the absolute to determine the perception of distinctions like the perception of the existence-universal, then we do not understand why the percepton of distinction should at all appear. There must be a principle to regulate our perceptions of distinctions. Advaita Vedānta assigns this function to māya, but again the difficulty is that māyā is itself a category of the lower level. If Advaita Vedānta wants to give a meaningful explanation of the world, its māya must be somehow connected with the absolute and must stand parallel to the absolute. Contrasting Sankara's position with that of Nāgārjuna it is maintained that the phenomenal world, for Śamkara, is not absolutely unreal like the horn of a hare." There must be some community between the phenomenal and the absolute worlds, and we can talk of this community only when the reality of the two worlds is first admitted. "The very contrast between the
1. A.C. Mukerjee: Nature of Self, p. 303
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