Brahman And The “Real”
What our world consists of.
“‘All determination is negation’; to apply a predicate to something is to impose a limitation upon it; for, logically, something is being excluded from the subject. The Real is without internal difference and, in essence, is unrelated to the content of any other form of experience. The Real is thus unthinkable; thought can be brought to it only through negations of what is thinkable.”1 Further, “Being…points to the ontological principle of unity, to the oneness not constituted of parts…”
Brahman is that which is inconceivable to our limited minds, or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as that which is unknowable to us for, though we cannot know its nature, it is possible for us to conceive of something which we do not, and cannot, know.2 However, in spite of this, Brahman does, almost contradictorily, have a description of which we can know: it is the “One”, the unified, something which is not composed of any constituent parts, it is “that state which is when all subject/object distinctions are obliterated.”3
Brahman is a philosophical effort to comes to grips with the question, “What is there?” or “What is the nature of existence?” The question is answered by supposing the intrinsic unity of all things (Brahman), of which each one of us is a limited particular. We, as such limited beings, are necessarily then unable to comprehend the infinitely greater reality of Reality. We cannot know anything about it until we achieve moksa, casting aside our limited lives and embracing, becoming, Reality.4
Yet we are aware that this unknowable Reality is a unified “One”. Is this really a contradiction? There is nirguna Brahman and saguna Brahman. The former is the “true” Reality and can never be known until we become one with it. The latter is only an imperfect version of the former as we attempt to describe the indescribable. Then, when we say of Brahman that it is that which has no parts, can we really be referring to nirguna Brahman or, in trying to refer to it at all, do we only really succeed in referring to saguna Brahman?
As an initial starting point for this essay I wish to make the statement that to say nirguna Brahman is “a unified state of being where the distinction between subject and object is obliterated” is to only make a statement about saguna Brahman. The only thing that can be said about nirguna Brahman is that it is beyond description. If I were a teacher of the philosophical school of thought that I propose and I were asked by a student to describe nirguna Brahman, I might say “I cannot”, I might respond as the Zen Masters with a koan like, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”, or I might simply not do anything at all.
If the Advaitic is to maintain that nirguna Brahman is both beyond description and that it is also “that state which is when all subject/object distinctions are obliterated” then there is a problem, for surely the latter part of this definition is a description of a sort. Deutch comments on this when he says “Advaita Vedanta, then, must labor under this fact, which it explicitly acknowledges, that whatever is expressed is ultimately non-Brahman, is ultimately non-true.”5
It was to be able to describe Brahman, and yet to not falsify it, that the distinction of nirguna Brahman and saguna Brahman was initially drawn, and yet to apply this once more to the nirguna aspect is only to fall into an infinite regress of description without falsification. Such an internal discrepancy may only be apparent, as there may be some aspect of the philosophy which has been missed in this analysis, but I don’t wish to dismiss the problem quite so readily.
If we are to live with the fact that Reality is a (perhaps describable) state of unification, that it is the One thing or state, then we must also believe that all things which would bring about opposition are eliminated from its nature. This would not only include subject/object distinctions but also any other distinctions, (such as truth/falsehood, good/evil) which exist in our limited world. Only when there is no opposition can there be unification and the state of which Brahman consists.
In a “chart” of levels of being it is proposed that there is Reality, Appearance, and Unreality. The nature of the first level is what has been discussed, and, to a limited degree, contested, previously in this essay. Before bearing this in mind and proceeding to grapple directly with the question of the phenomenal world as illusion however, I wish to focus our attention on the question of Unreality.
Unreality does, in one sense, seem to bear little weight on the question of illusion, however in another it is quite important indeed. Consider for a moment the question of the nature of the Unreal. What exactly is it? “Unreality is that which neither can nor cannot be subrated by other experience. An ‘object’ is unreal when, because of its self-contradictoriness, it cannot appear as a datum of experience. A square circle, the daughter of a virgin, and the like are objects that have a conceptual status only, namely as contradictions…our human experience shows that all actual sense-mental experience of self and non-self is subject mentally to the law of contradiction. By definition certain objects are denied the possibility of possessing existence, of being objects of actual human experience. Unreality is that which can never be a content of experience. By the criterion of subration, the Unreal is non-being.” [Additional italics mine.]6
When I read this I was immediately struck by something, seeing, additionally, how it came directly after the section on Appearance. A great deal seems to be made that such things as square circles can have no objective reality and exist only as concepts in our minds. But experience need not be dismissed simply because it has only a “conceptual status”, and this is clearly demonstrated in the discussion of types of Appearance. Concepts are just as experientially based (“real”) and subratable as are material things. Furthermore simply because we cannot conceive of something certainly doesn’t mean that it cannot exist – the entire Advaitic philosophy admits to this.
What is left then as a reason for a square circle’s non-being is the fact that it comes under the law of contradiction so that even the very concept is unrealizeable. However, and this is what surprised me the most, this cannot be a reason if the Advaitic is to retain any sense of consistency. Consider the following: “Among [real existent] ‘concepts’ – those logical relations, such as the law of contradiction, that have a necessary, indispensable function in organizing and making possible propositional truth. These concepts, by definition, cannot be denied or contradicted by other sense-mental experience. What is logically necessary cannot be denied by a mind that is committed in advance to its use…[and] the real existent is subratable only by experience of Reality wherein any ultimacy that was previously attached to it is denied…”[Italics mine.]7
In light of this how can it still be maintained that a square circle is in the realm of non-being and hence beyond the concept of subration? Again, unless there is some philosophical point which has been overlooked in the above analysis, it seems readily apparent that the square circle, and other “impossibilities”, are no less valid forms of experience for just being concepts8, and are in fact subratable by the ultimate Reality. If this is the case, and if, as I suspect, there are no dissimilar examples of the Unreal, then it seems erroneous to consider the Unreal as a level of being, or other type of category, at all.
Once it is realized that there is no such thing as the Unreal, if such is indeed the case, then we are free to regard the relationship of illusion in the phenomenal world with Reality, and we can do so without having to further define some things as Unreal. At this level there is only illusion (maya) and Reality. But at this point we can ask ourselves whether or not the phenomenal world is all “just” illusion.
“The world then is not real, but it is not wholly unreal. The unreal or non-being, as we have seen, is that which never appears as an objective datum of experience because of its self-contradictoriness…the world that is distinguished from true reality (sat) and from complete non-reality (asat) has then an apparent or practical reality, which is called vyavaharika.”9 Note that the existence of such a non-reality as asat, as has been called into question, has no real bearing on the question of vyavaharika10 which can just as easily be defined as that which is distinguished from true reality (sat) alone.
Certainly the world then, has a practical reality for, in everyday life, we each act as if it were the Real (since it is the only thing which our limited beings can comprehend), but in a greater philosophical sense this is not going to be good enough for us. What we wish to know is whether our practical reality is in any way anything other than a false version of Reality.
One way of answering this may refer to the parable of the twelve blind men and the elephant, each of whom realize a different aspect of the animal and in so doing make it out to be something that it, in reality, is not. In a similar fashion we might invalidly understand the Brahman if we were ever given access to a partial truth of Reality. But, if such partial truth is available to us (and who is to say that it is not), we need not make such a generalization. Surely it would have sufficed each of the blind men to say that “there is something about the elephant which is like the rope, leaf, or tree” rather than to think of its part as its whole.
In this one respect we may be able to claim when we perceive maya that there is something about Reality which is the same as what we perceive. Certainly this would not be Reality, but even so we would not be subject to something completely false. There is something comforting in this as well since, in spite of the fact that we must still attain moksa in order to know (be) Reality, while we are here in our practical world we are not leading a completely metaphysically meaningless life in and of itself. To clarify, I am aware that “living” is meaningful in Hindu, and Advaitic, philosophy but through an interpretation of total illusion it is only meaningful in a practical-world sense or in a teleological sense where adherence to the Vedas is meaningful as it brings about union with Brahman.11 To admit that we have limited, incomplete access to Brahman, rather than none at all, is to affirm our connection with it. It is in this sense that the phenomenal world would not be considered an illusion, or at least not considered an illusion in its entirety.
In another respect it is perhaps meaningless to talk of the phenomenal world as separate from Reality. In fact, if “Brahman is that state which is when all subject/object distinctions are obliterated” then it is also that state which is when all subjective/objective and mind/body distinctions are obliterated, for the notion of the subjective may be derived from the subject and similarly the objective from the object. In this analysis what we see, what we think12, what we experience is as much a part of Reality as Reality really is. To ask, “What is Reality?” may, in this sense, be answered by, “This table.”, or “That chair.”, or just a simple embracing gesture of the world with both arms. Labels are always misleading, they can never express the essence of the thing. It is the thing itself, as experienced, which is the thing itself, its essence. We are Brahman because we are. Such an answer is realized in the ahain brahmasmi; “Brahman is One. Everything has its being in Spirit: everything, in its true being, is Brahman.”13
In claiming this it may be thought that the entire notion of subration and Appearance as separate from Reality is undermined; such is not my intent at all. Take the example of “This table.” in response to “What is Reality?” Such an answer says nothing to us about the nature of the table’s Reality; it only claims that the table exists as something which is a part of Reality. On one level this may only be a version of Descartes’ philosophy (i.e. simply proving the existence of something) but it is something more far reaching for which I search. Not only does this indication of our practical-reality show that we can only know the phenomenal world, as opposed to the Real, but it shows that whatever our practical-world may really be it is, nonetheless, Reality; and when asked if that table is an illusion or not I am able to say, no it exists. Further this does nothing to undermine the idea of subration. Although It (whatever It might be) is a part of reality it doesn’t alter the fact that we can have increasingly true, and subratable, judgments about It.
Again though, taking on a more literal interpretation of the Advaita Vedanta, the phenomenal world really is just an illusion. Even if we are to admit the existence of partial instantiations of Reality, and that itself is indeed questionable, we could never have access to Reality as it truly is (without, of course, becoming it, and that isn’t what we are concerned with here). Additionally, to say that “that table” isn’t an illusion, that it actually exists, is not an answer to the idea of illusion as it relates to nature rather than existence. In so far as we can never know the completely Real, what we experience is not the completely Real and so can be nothing more than an illusion. The world of Appearance is just that, composed only of maya through maya, and only by breaking the cycle of rebirth and achieving moksa can we ever break out of illusion and apprehend the Real as it is.
In conclusion then, after having examined these different aspects of the Advaita Vedanta and certain ideas of Brahman and levels of being, there is only one way that I can respond to the question which inspired this essay. “Does the Advaita Vedanta consider the phenomenal world as an illusion?” Yes. But additionally, “Does the Advaita Vedanta consider the phenomenal world as an illusion?” No. Perhaps, as before, I should say nothing at all in reply. Or it might be more accurate to reply, “I don’t know, what do you think?” since the answer lies in what lies behind the question; it depends upon the framework within which it is asked, and it has hopefully been demonstrated here that there is more than one. That, after all, is the best answer I think I can hope to give.
Endnotes
- Eliot Deutch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction, 1969, p.11.
- It is also possible for us to conceive of something of which we cannot conceive. Far from being a logical absurdity I postulate this in a much more meaningful sense. Although it is impossible for us as limited beings to conceive of a world without subject/object distinction (by virtue of our being subjective), it is still possible for us to conceive of Brahman, in which such an inconceivability is conceivable.
- Ibid., p.9.
- It should of course be noted that there is the doctrine of jivanmukta wherein one is said to experience moksa while still within the realm of the living. Such a state, where one is conscious only of the Atman is very rare and only a few individuals have been claimed to have achieved it. Alternatively there are those who say that such a thing cannot be; there is only videhamuktu where communion with Isvara is not possible without the release of the physical body and its this-worldly maya. Nonetheless, in either case, it still remains true that it is an experience that cannot be described to the “common person” in a way that the experience can be passed on or understood. Even as an Enlightened one would seek to do this they would necessarily have to do so within the practical world of illusion within which the seeker of this knowledge lives. Therefore to say that Brahman is that in which all subject/object distinctions are obliterated is just as false as if it were to be said by those who had never become one with Reality; Brahman is just as unknowable or describable as it ever was.
- Ibid., p.12.
- Ibid., pp.24-25.
- Ibid., p.21.
- It’s true that everything from the level of the illusory existent to the real existent is something which can be “imagined” as happening in a sense that a square circle cannot. But in terms of Reality and subration why is it different from the status of Alice In Wonderland‘s Chesire Cat? The Chesire Cat is a purely fictional concept and it in fact opposes certain concepts which we hold to be real. In a functional way we can imagine the existence of such an anomaly because we know what it would be like if it existed, whereas, in the case of a square circle, we have no idea what it would be like – in fact it seems impossible. But then, our analysis of this is based on an a priori judgement which is only a real existent concept – a concept which can be subrated by Reality, and once it is subrated who is to say that a square circle is impossible and/or cannot exist?
- Ibid., p. 32.
- Note that I also want to include the pratibhasika here, as I am discussing the illusionary nature of all which is not Reality; all which can be subrated by something “higher”.
- I realize that one of the assumptions of Hindu philosophy is that the pursuit of the Vedas (as with the purusharthas and ashramas in particular) is considered to be meaningful in and of itself, but I question that assumption here. At least I do so as regards a metaphysical level. I would argue that pursuit of the Vedas, as pursuit in and of itself, is only non-teleological if it is taken on a practical-world level of experience. To raise it above that is to connect it with Brahman and bring about the teleologocal considerations of moksa.
- Just as those things in objective existence are part of Brahman in this manner, simply because they exist, so must our own subjective thoughts and feelings be because we have them.
- Ibid., p. 110.