DTH AT 7KPH

 A

ASA

 Shankara’s approach to this basic problem is quite different. In the first place,

there are in his view three entities to be accounted for—(a) the pure Self, (b) the

antahkarana, and (c) the body and other matter. The essential interaction was, for

him, between (a) and (b), whereas the Western philosophers have been looking

mainly at the interaction of (b) and (c). For him, the apparent incompatibility of

the Pure spirit or Self and the antahkarana was not real but only empirical:

ultimately, both of them are in essence the non-dual Atman. He says frankly that

the Self contains the antahkarana, and the antahkarana reflects (though it does

not contain) the Self. If this view seems inexplicable and contrary to

commonsense, it is no more inexplicable than the relationship between the two

aspects of a musical fifth, and no more contrary to commonsense than such

theories as Descartes’

BMS. Body Mind Spirit C

 The antahkarana is ever active and assumes various forms or ‘modes’

— except

in deep sleep, when its activity is latent in itself. One of its modes is the

consciousness of itself, which may be called ‘ego-hood’

. The ego commonly

confuses itself with the real Self.

‘When we say ‘I am restless’

, we mean that the

antahkarana is restless, but we wrongly transfer the restlessness to our inner Self.

Herein lies the essential difference between mere introspection and the

knowledge of the inner divine Self, which comes from knowing this philosophy

as Shankara knew it. Knowing his philosophy and knowing ‘about’ it are on two

different planes.

Hfz

 The Sufi philosopher, Hafiz says:

Self-knowledge is the only pearl

In the-sea of life;

Like whirlpools round our self we whirl

In incessant strife.

A Sufi hymn reads:

I am none else than Thou, and Thou than I

I am Thy body and Thou art my Soul. Let no one say hereafter that I am

Other than Thou or Thou other than I.

ASA x Berkeley

  Berkeley seems to have been groping for the view of the

Self which Shankara adopts. Although, in many way a solipsist, he believed,

with praiseworthy inconsistency, that the mind had an inherent ‘notion’ of a real

Self—although in other contexts he denies the existence of a priori knowledge of

this kind.

Body in pain. Ami bhaloi achhi. SWSPA

ASA. TI

 Where Shankara parts company with both realists and idealists is (a) that he

regarded what we normally regard as subject and object as being both contained

in a Self which was neither subject nor object, and (b) that he regarded, the Self

as pervading both subject and object — as both immanent and transcendent.