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I ADHYAYA, I PÂDA.
knowledge such as perception, inference, &c., and scriptural texts have for their object that which is dependent on Nescience ? ?—Because, we reply, the means of right knowledge cannot operate unless there be a knowing personality, and because the existence of the latter depends on the erroneous notion that the body, the senses, and so on, are identical with, or belong to, the Self of the knowing person. For without the employment of the senses, perception and the other means of right knowledge cannot operate. And without a basis (i.e. the body ?) the senses cannot act. Nor does anybody act by means of a body on which the nature of the Self is not superimposed 3. Nor can, in the absence of all that “, the Self which, in its own nature is free from all contact, become a knowing agent. And if there is no knowing agent, the means of right knowledge cannot operate (as said above). Hence perception and the other means of right knowledge, and the Vedic texts have for their object that which is dependent on Nescience. (That human cognitional activity has for its presupposition the superimposition described above), follows also from the non-difference in that respect of men from animals. Animals, when sounds or other sensible qualities affect their sense of hearing or other senses, recede or advance according as the idea derived from the sensation is a comforting or disquieting one. A cow, for instance, when she sees a man approaching with a raised stick in his hand, thinks that he wants to beat her, and therefore moves away; while she walks up to a man who advances with some fresh grass in his hand. Thus men also—who possess a higher intelligence-run away when
It being of course the function of the means of right knowledge to determine Truth and Reality.
? The Bhâmati takes adhishthanam in the sense of superintend. ence, guidance. The senses cannot act unless guided by a superintending principle, i.e. the individual soul.
3 If activity could proceed from the body itself, non-identified with the Self, it would take place in deep sleep also.
I.e. in the absence of the mutual superimposition of the Sell and the Non-Self and their attributes.
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