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’