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III. XII]
CRITICISM OF THE VEDĀNTA AVIDYA
193
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 gauge unreality. It is only the real that can be determined
y 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.
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-cumdifference. The merit of this theory lies in the consideration that it does not entail repudiation of anyone of the felt facts—the world and its cause the Absolute. Why should you postulate an irrational and unreal principle as the cause of the world process?
The Vedāntist answers that after all his theory is the simplest of all. Secondly, it makes the postulation of a large number of irrational entities uncalled for. Thus the opponent who believes in the reality of the world process has to admit that it is both different and nondifferent from the Absolute. In the second place, he has to posit that bondage, though it is real and also uncaused, is liable to cessation. In the third place, he has to posit that emancipation is the product of
1 avidyāyā avidyātve idam eva ca laksanam mānāghätäsahişnutvam asādhāraṇam isyate.
-Sambandhavārttika, 181. Astasahasri, p. 163. JP-25
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