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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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15. The jīva. Avasthātraya

Śaṅkara asserts that ‘It is not the primary purport of scripture to make statements regarding the individual soul (jīva).’521

We are justified to view this as an expression of his own interest in such matters, about which ordinary experience informs us sufficiently. It is therefore necessary to refer only shortly to the status of the jīva and to a few connected topics (especially the avasthātraya, ‘the three states of consciousness’).

 

The jīva's status is characterized by saṁsāra, a term which denoted transmigration, became with the Buddha the symbol of all human suffering and came lastly to signify ‘empirical existence’ in general.522 But when the jīva's status is characterized by saṁsāra, the term signifies the ‘jīva's state of immersion in worldliness’, as it is expressed by J.L. Mehta (Banaras).523 The latter compares this with Heidegger's in-der-Welt-sein, ‘being-in-the-world’, which is the first existential in the analysis of human being.524 Similarly, saṁsāra is characteristic for the state of the jīva. Just as there is difference between ‘world’ and ‘being-in-the-world,’525 a difference can be made between jagat and saṁsāra. Especially Vallabha distinguished between jagat as the world in its objective reality, independent from jīva, and saṁsāra as the jīva's bondage and state of immersion in worldliness.526 Parallels with contemporary phenomenological investigations can be found due to the fact that we enter with the jīva a realm which is phenomenologically accessible.

 

The general cause of saṁsāra is avidyā; it is therefore discovered and realized as eternally non-existent with the sudden manifestation of brahmavidyā. The specific form of this cause in the case of the jīva is its karman, and the latter's cause is kāma ‘desire’. Śaṅkara comments upon this passage of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka: ‘The human being (puruṣa) is identified with desire alone.527 What it desires, it resolves; what it resolves, it works out; and what it works out, it attains’528 in the following terms:

‘Other authorities on bondage and liberation say: It is true that good and bad deeds prompted by desire, etc., are the cause of a man's taking a body; still it is under the influence of desire that he accumulates these deeds. When desire is gone, work, although present, does not lead to the accumulation of merit and demerit.529 Even if he goes on doing good and bad deeds, those, bereft of the desire, produce no results; therefore desire is the root of transmigratory existence’. This is further specified as follows: ‘The desire manifests itself as the slightest longing for a particular object, and, if unchecked, takes a more definite shape and becomes resolve. Resolve is determination, which is followed by action’. But as the jīva becomes what it does and acts, as the Upaniṣad has stated just before, ‘desire is the only cause of its identification with everything as well as of undergoing transmigration.’

 

When it is said that the soul is identified with desire alone we are on a phenomenological basis. This phenomenon may be phenomenologically identified as the cause of our immersion in worldliness, saṁsāra. Desire is not called the cause of the world, jagat, so that the above cannot be interpreted as subjective idealism.530 When saṁsāra is understood as transmigration, the phenomenological basis is left behind; but this is not necessary in the present context. When kāma and saṁsāra are interpreted as ultimately constituting the manifestation and outcome of avidyā or adhyāsa, we also go beyond phenomenology, and enter the realm of metaphysics.531 This phenomenological basis points in the direction in which contemporary analysis has gone much further. Husserl stressed the ‘intentionality’ of consciousness, which was still a relatively formal and intellectualistic characteristic. Heidegger considers Sorge, ‘care, anxiety’, as the ‘essential’ mode of being of our being. The concept of desire combines very well with the latter concept. Both are equally related to ‘attachment’, which is the human characteristic we have to overcome in ‘detachment’ according to Indian metaphysics and ethics in general. The term kāma, used in the above context, has come to denote in

particular ‘sexual desire, lust’ and refers as such to the strongest kind of human attachment.532

 

This leads to an important question: Is the desiring human being responsible for his desires and their consequences?533 Answers are virtually contained in some considerations of the previous section: souls act freely and are therefore principally responsible. Īśvara allots to them at birth a certain situation, but doing this he merely acts according to the karmic results of previous birth. Hence the soul is responsible for its situation and Īśvara is not. Where the latter deviates from the laws of karma it is only for the good, i.e., for mokṣa (never does he disregard good karma and stress bad karma, sending the soul to damnation). Īśvara, therefore is partly responsible for the good. In other words, God is good.534 Generally speaking, the individual soul is the cause of evil and the Lord is not,535 because evil is lack of knowledge and avidyā and results unwittingly in bondage. This is illustrated by Śaṅkara as follows: ‘No free person will build a prison for himself and take up his abode in it.’536 But whereas Īśvara cannot be held responsible for evil, though he allows it, the problem has in connection with Brahma no meaning at all since ultimately it does not exist. If these two answers are still regarded as unsatisfactory, it must be pointed out that the problem of the theodicee, perhaps the major problem of monotheistic (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) philosophies (i.e., how is the existence of evil and of suffering compatible with the goodness of God?) is merely a theological formulation of the central problem

of Advaita, i.e., why is there avidyā? To this the Advaitic answer is that there is no answer and that avidyā is anirvacanīya.

 

If we forward the claim of a phenomenological basis, i.e., Husserl's claim that our point of departure should be any entity as immediately present to us in our consciousness, Advaita will readily make this claim its own. But in addition to that it will point out that we unnecessarily limit ourselves to one state (avasthā) of consciousness, namely the waking state. Advaita bases itself upon a fourfold experience by adding also the dream state, the state of dreamless sleep, and lastly, transcending all these, the ‘fourth state’, turīya. A few remarks concerning this important topic must suffice here, as much literature on the subject exists and as especially Bhattacharyya has made this his main approach to the problem of Advaita.537

 

The dream state (svapna) is mainly considered in two kinds of context: (1) it exemplifies a total change of consciousness, as occurs in brahmavidyā, and thus it is in the same way related to the waking state as the latter to the state of mokṣa. The dream state is daily sublated, the waking state is daily sublated to make place for the dream state but is also in a different way sublated under exceptional circumstances.538 (2) The dream state is a good example of the effects of karma: ‘That state of sleep during which one sees dreams, is “Dream-cognition” which is accompanied by pleasure, pain and as such is the effect of merit and demerit....as for merit and demerit again, they can be productive of such effects as pleasure and pain and their cognition only through the momentum imparted by ignorance and desire, never other-

wise’.539 This interpretation is principally the same as the much more specific dream interpretations of Freud or Jung.

 

The state of dreamless sleep (suṣupti) is an important state of consciousness analogous to the state of brahmavidyā or samādhi. Not as if the idea of the latter would be copied from the former and as if Advaita would strive for a kind of deep sleep for the human being,540 but in so far as both are negatively the same: the world of diversity and of external and internal impressions has disappeared. In addition the absence of suffering produces the positive phenomenon which makes us say after waking up from sleep: ‘Happily did we sleep; we knew nothing in our sleep’.541 But there can be no doubt that we are in suṣupti also in the realm of avidyā. It is sometimes stated, rightly but somewhat misleadingly, that in sleep we are Brahman without our knowing it. This gives the impression that the state of samādhi is almost the same as sleep. Actually this description applies generally: we are always Brahman without knowing it. The difference is clearly described by Bhattacharyya:542 ‘In both, the consciousness of duality lapses; in both the self enjoys undifferenced bliss; in both, the timeless seeds of knowledge and action (vidyā-karma) persist, accounting for the recognition of the past on awakening from them. But whereas on awakening from suṣupti, the self remembers that it was in the attitude of knowing object though the object there was a blank,543 on rising from samādhi it ought to remember it was the object in that state and not in the object-knowing attitude at all. In the former, the self as always limited was simply isolated; in the latter, it burst its bonds, destroyed the barrier between subject and object, and became the absolute.’

 

Attempting an evaluation of these different states of consciousness as a possible basis for philosophical considerations, it has first of all to be borne in mind that whatever state of consciousness is our apparent starting point in any investigation, the waking state

records it. We know any state only in and through the waking state. We analyse whether for instance a certain dream image is a dream experience or not. But it never is, whatever the appearance may be. For only through conscious reproduction in memory in the waking state do we record it as an image. We do not only speak and write about it in the waking state, but we know it only in the waking state. To say that we know it in the dream state as such has no meaning, because we can only say this in the waking state whereas we would be unable to express it in the dream state. An introspective analysis of the rare cases where we seem to be conscious in our dream consciousness of the fact that we are dreaming, shows that we are only apparently conscious of this and not in fact realising that we are lying in a bed or on a mat and producing or reproducing mental images.544 It is likewise evident that no statements are made in a dream which are as such meaningful; they may in some cases become meaningful through further analysis and interpretation in the waking state. Likewise no scriptural passage concerning the dream state has been actually produced during that state. All the preserved texts can be shown to constitute pieces of conscious reflection produced in the waking state concerning memories from the dream state, recorded and recognised as such in the waking state. The dreaming state does not supply immediate information, but mediate information through the waking state.

 

Because of these considerations we must assign an unquestionable priority to our consciousness of the waking state, a priority which is in the first place methodological. In Western Philosophy this is formulated in the following claim: any philo-

sophical view or doctrine is ontically founded in the situation in which we are when we philosophize.545

 

Analogous considerations hold with regard to mokṣa where a paradoxical situation arises. Advaita is a speculative metaphysical system which aims at offering a rational world view and an explanation of all known phenomena. But the final proof of the truth of Advaita cannot be given on metaphysical grounds; it lies in the Advaitic experience. In that situation we realize, that Brahman is real, the rest unreal; the whole of Advaita can be deduced from this simple statement.546 But brahmavidyā and the waking consciousness in which we are when we philosophize, are incompatible: the one excludes the reality of the other. All thinking is bound to occur in the waking state. We may try to solve this difficulty by preferring the Advaitic experience and by giving up philosophizing and thinking; but even such an act of preference is a philosophizing act in the waking state. When Advaita claims that an experience in another state than the waking state constitutes its final justification, this poses a methodological problem - though it may be perfectly real and true at the same time. However we cannot prove or refute this, since proof and refutation are only possible in the waking state.

 

If we would actually possess the Advaitic experience it would be incommensurable with any possible content of waking consciousness. However our knowledge and interpretation of this state occur in the waking state only. But then the experience cannot be decisive as to its philosophical (that is: ‘communicative’547) interpretation. The two are incommensurable and therefore

different interpretations of the experience can be given. In addition there is another difficulty: we do neither know, nor are we able to judge, whether there is only one experience like samādhi which was differently interpreted by Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, etc., or whether there is an Advaitic, a Viśiṣṭādvaitic experience, etc. The evaluation of different experiences of this kind can only be given during the waking state. The evaluation of the Advaitic experience can never immediately follow from this experience itself.

 

Though the Advaitic experience cannot philosophically justify the system of Advaita, it may well constitute the basic experience to which the system leads. We must distinguish between two points of view regarding a state of consciousness which is different from the waking state. The one accepts the state of consciousness as a datum, just like any other experience.548 The other invokes it as proof for a certain view. We have no justification for contesting the validity of the former.549 But we can contest the validity of the latter since validity of a proof is a matter of logic and occurs entirely within the waking state. Similarly we cannot contest that Columbus discovered land; but we need not accept that the land he discovered was India. The interpretation given in Advaita of the Advaitic experience is consistent with the philosophic tenets of the system; but neither is based upon the other in the philosophical sense. Śaṅkara seems to have been aware of this for, unlike some other philosophers, he nowhere invokes the Advaitic experience as a proof for his doctrines. Neither Śaṅkara nor the later Advaitins recognized mystical experience in any Western sense as a pramāṇa. This may have puzzled some Western observers, but is the outcome of a sound philosophic outlook. It need not of course prevent Advaitins from considering mokṣa the authentic mode of human existence and the ultimate aim of man.


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