World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 273

"Tat tvam asi" is a unique statement, a category by itself. It does not seek to render any factual information. It seeks to bring out a perspective that reorganises all the information that all the possible statements of human discourse as a whole could render. Hence it is called a mahavakya. The terms 'tat' and 'tvam' have technical philosophical use in the context of Advaita literature. 'Tat' signifies the ultimate reality Brahman and 'tvam' signifies the psycho-physico-intellectual jiva.
Daya Krishna regards Atman and Brahman as entities that are 'theoretically postulated' for understanding experience in its subjective and objective aspects respectively. They are not "directly experienced and hence require a special spiritual praxis for their existential realisation in experience." He argues that the Atman-Brahman identity is radically different from morning star-evening star identity that is realised in empirical experience. His view that Atman-Brahman identity is different from the morning star-evening star identity is indeed illuminating, but his view that the former is a matter of special spiritual realisation needs reconsideration.
R.K. Puligandla seeks to muster phenomenological justification for Atman-Brahman identification. In a paper entitled, "Is the Central Upanisadic Teaching a Reductionist Thesis?" he argues that "Atman is Brahman" cannot be a reductionist thesis in the sense in which this is conceived in the Western philosophical tradition. There the physical and the mental both are regarded as phenomena and one of them is regarded as being ultimate. According to Puligandla, "Nothing could be more absurd than to think of consciousness as a phenomenon." Consciousness is transcendental. "Transcendental' does not refer to something beyond the understanding of man, something, which is apprehended through some religious mumbo-jumbo or hocus-pocus. It only means 'non-phenomenal', that is, non-spatial, non-temporal and nonobject. In short, it is formless and nameless which cannot be raised and erased, expanded or contracted. There is no lower consciousness or higher consciousness, as it is impartite and unitary. He concludes by saying that the Upanisadic teaching is nonetheless a reductionist thesis, but it is better to call it as Upanisadic reductionism. Elsewhere, in an extension lecture delivered at the Department of Philosophy, Utkal University, he characterised the Upanisadic ultimate reality as being at once immanent and transcendent. According to him, Brahman is the power whose varieties of manifestation are the phenomena of the world without as well as within man. It is unborn, uncreated, undying and eternal which the senses and the mind cannot perceive. Brahman is not a he, nor a she, but that, tat. Atman like Brahman is unborn, uncreated, undying and eternal. It is pure, objectless consciousness not to be identified with the empirical ego or the metaphysical soul. Atman is also formless and nameless and it transcends space and time and is therefore unperceivable, inconceivable and inexpressible. Atman and Brahman are not, however, two numerically different realities. They are two different la
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