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CHAPTER 2:
APAVADA DARSANA -VISION BY NON-SUPPOSITION
(METHODOLOGY) (negatively winding)
This chapter will neutralise the previous one:
this is reduction after the previous chapter's construction.
The first chapter is slightly teleological, this is removed here.
Apavada Darsana is Negativist
Apavada means literally: “arguments that reduce”.
VERSE 1
This world, which is both subtle and gross,
And which has come to be from living consciousness,
If existent, then everything is existent;
If non-existent, then it exists as consciousness.
You cannot abolish your mind, even if the world is unreal.
The duality between existence and non-existence is abolished in consciousness.
We descend backwards into the mind.
VERSE 2
Other than the cause, the effect cannot be,
Therefore, all this is non-existent.
Of what is non-existent, how can there be an origin?
And of something unoriginated, how can there be re-absorption?
Here cancellation is used to arrive at the Absolute.
We are sinking into the source: the World is reduced,
the source of the effect is the cause.
For smoke the cause is fire.
The carved statue of a lion is the effect
and the ontological basis or cause is the stone.
STRUCTURE P5 - P57 - DM5
The stone statue of a lion = cancellation of cause and effect.
Satkaranavada, a definition of Vedanta, means to delve into the cause –
do not get lost in the many.
VERSE 3
To that which origin and dissolution is not,
That is none other than the ultimate Absolute.
That there is origin and re-absorption,
By Maya`s confusion in the Self is supposed.
If cause and effect cancel , i.e. have the same status –
then you have the Absolute.
There is an interdependence between cause and effect.
How could the effect have being, and the cause non-being?
This is a “phenomenological epoche” ; bracketing –
any notion must be enclosed in brackets: turn the brackets.
The secret of dialectics is that one side of the bracket is open,
the other closed.
VERSE 4
Because of non-difference from cause,
The effect, how could it have being?
How could there be, for the same reason,
For the cause also, any non-being?
VERSE 5
Being an effect, and thus non-existent,
An existent cause there is; the world is thus not indeed.
On the other hand, it is the Absolute alone that is existent,
That dull minds mistake as non-existing.
VERSE 6
If one alone has reality,
Another in it how could there be?
If existence is posited in existence, tautology,
And if non-existence is so asserted, contradiction comes.
Avoid contradiction and tautology and you get the Absolute.
VERSE 7
Dividing all parts one by one,
Everything then is seen there
As mind stuff alone, and as no other,
As thus banishing Maya, relativity, far away.
Quantitativeness is abolished in the mind by division ad infinitum
- it becomes qualitative.
VERSE 8
Thus, it is pure mind-stuff alone that shines,
There is nothing, therefore, beyond pure mind-stuff at all.
What does not shine is not real either,
And what is not real does not shine indeed.
“Mind-stuff” implies “Neutral Monism”, cf. B.Russell.
“Pure”: he is describing here a “thinking substance”.
VERSE 9
High Value, bliss, alone exists and shines
Therefore nothing else at all,
Thus, everything is of the stuff of the High Value,
And besides this High Value, nothing else exists.
The Absolute in Vedanta is described as Sat-cit-ananda
( Existence - subsistence - bliss).
STRUCTURE SLP5-P51
CHAPTER 3
ASATYA DARSANA - VISION OF NON-EXISTENCE (PHENOMENOLOGY)
This chapter centres around the mind.
A philosophy that puts the mind at the centre as a phenomenon is called phenomenology.
The first chapter dealt with construction and the creator is seen from ten perspectives:
biological, cosmological, theological, psychological, etc.: cause and effect.
The second chapter is a reversal, there is a negative perspective,
by reduction, we arrive at an irreducible minimum:
sat, chit, ananda.(Existence/subsistence/bliss)
In the third chapter now the negative approach is continued and we have a further reduction
– from the ontological source of the universe, and from “sat - chit – ananda” to arrive at a negative source: Maya.
STRUCTURE SLC8 - P48A
A first degree descent is made, and unreality is dealt with here.
Is the world unreal? Many philosophers say yes.
There is a principle of falsehood, Avidya, on the negative side.
In this Darsana we have a first-degree negativity
- Asatya; when we press it one degree further,
we will get Maya - more intense and more general.
We are dealing here with what Western thought calls Eidetic Presentiments.
See Buber, Jaspers, Sartre etc. on the falsehood of experience.
Kant writes of the Noumenal, or Absolute,
and the Phenomenal, or the domain of cosmology.
This is a new Darsana, corresponding to Husserl.
Falsehood, or false presentiment, is here defined by Narayana Guru.
You think you see something,
but there is no basis or foundation for it
- this is an eidetic phenomenon.
Existence belongs to the phenomenological order
- thus it is only appearance.
All appearance is negative
The negative method: negating falsehood arrives at existence.
Spinoza : “Omnis determinatio negatio” - all determination is a negation.
STRUCTURE SLC8-P48B
STRUCTURE SLP5 - P60
STRUCTURE SLC8-P48C
Sat-chit-ananda in chapter two is at the neutral O point, from there downwards there is:
a first degree of negation in Asatya Darsana (chapter 3)
a second degree of negation in Maya Darsana (chapter 4)
a third degree of negation in Bhana Darsana (chapter 5)
Asatya is unreality.
Mayavada thinks the world is unreal.
Vedanta is Mayavada.
In Ramanuja, there is no Mayavada.
Asatya Darshana is an invention of Narayana Guru
- the world is false, not as an optical illusion
but as an eidetic presentiment.
Asatya Darsana takes a phenomenological approach,
as in Hume and Kant.
The snake and rope analogy, where a rope is seen as a snake through fear, or the Rorschach test
are examples of Eidetic presentiments.
Existence in this Darsana is phenomenological - an appearance.
For further study of Phenomenology, see Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre.
Phenomenology starts from the mind and views the rest as phenomena.
There is a delicate inversion in the first verse:
The numerator : in the expansive sky, the blue is seen.
Invert that sky - turn it upside down and put it inside yourself:
in the expansive Self this universe is seen.
The blue and the universe are both seen to be qualitative,
with a one-to-one correspondence between them.
A child has a presentiment of life in its doll.
Is the mirror-image real, or the object real?
Neither is real: Asatyam.
When the mind (negative) functions, you get the will (positive).
By examining falsehood you arrive at the Absolute or Brahman:
the mirror (horizontal) and the doll falsehood (vertical),
when seen together reveal a circle in the centre,
which is the Absolute, phenomenologically understood.
Extract the negative root, your brain will burst into Indra's magic,
as if through a tube.
Darkness is the cause of the blue, of the world, of Indra's magic, etc.
Then you get Absolute Falsehood.
STRUCTURE SLP5-P61
There is a one-to-one correspondence between these counterparts.
We cannot see the mind.
The quantitative sky has qualitative blueness.
VERSE 1
All this world is of mind-stuff,
The mind, however, is not anywhere.
Therefore, like the blue and so on in the sky,
The world is seen in the Self.
The world originates in the mind, but there is no mind to be seen.
The world is seen in the self.
In the negative side of ourselves
there is something corresponding to the blue in the sky.
There is an example and a definition in each verse.
Blue is a phenomenological effect. It is false.
The blue of the sky is the type of effect we are concerned with in this chapter.
The Self is the reality, the mind is false;
it is compared to the blue in the sky.
The mind is seen in the Self - it is false.
Asatya is the blue.
In the subjective self we have a presentiment of the world.
As we see the qualitative blue in the quantitative sky,
so there is a colour solid, which is qualitative
- the world seen in a nuclear form,
The world is seen in the self, which is quantitative, like an ocean.
Inside the self is a phenomenon corresponding to the blue of the sky: the colour is illusory.
The mind inside the self is equally illusory.
VERSE 2
By nescience, which is no other than the mind,
All this world is a presentiment of the will.
This nescience by knowledge gets reabsorped,
Then the whole world becomes a mere configuration.
Mind and Nescience mean the same thing.
The mind ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE is the cause of errors,
of eidetic presentiments.
It projects the world we see on the positive side.
STRUCTURE SLC8 – P49A
Make the mind more negative and it becomes nescience.
When it goes to the positive side we get a presentiment of the will which gives us our view of the world.
The mind on the negative side becomes the will on the positive side.
If nescience is abolished, then the will is a mere configuration:
i.e. it is not so real and frightening,
a milder form of reality, like a drawing.
This is when we push the mind back up to the O Point
at the centre of the structure.
The mind matches it with its own variety of presentiment.
Mind and nescience are the same thing and are negative.
The world is a presentiment of the will.
STRUCTURE SLP5 - P62A
The mind is nescience.
The mind operates to create a presentiment of the will
on the positive side.
This by knowledge gets reabsorbed,
then the whole world is a mere configuration.
STRUCTURE SLP5-P62B
VERSE 3
Here, what a coward finds through darkness
To be like a looming ghost,
The same is seen to be by the wise
Like a dream-world of a waking state.
The coward sees a ghost and begins to scream:
this is caused by ignorance.
The more knowledge there is on the denominator side,
the less reality there is on the numerator.
The source is the mind,
the effect is what you see on the numerator.
Cancel them out.
STRUCTURE SLC8-P49B
VERSE 4
This visible world results from a willing presentiment.
Where willing is present alone
Is this visible world seen, not anywhere else,
As a snake, too, when alone a rope is found.
This is the method of agreement and difference:
there are five electric switches, and you want to find the right one:
put them all on, put them all off: the result is certitude.
The world and the will are necessarily related.
The relationship could be expressed as:
"no will, no world; no world no will ":
( cf. “ no mind - no matter - no matter - never mind”: Eddington.)
thus, it is a necessary, not a contingent, relationship.
VERSE 5
Between the will and the mind,
There is no difference at all,
That which is mind and called nescience and darkness,
Like the magic of Indra, is a marvel.
The will is positive; mind, or nescience, or darkness is negative.
Magic, like that of Indra (King of the Gods) is on the positive side;
the mind is on the negative side as the cause.
They are interchangeable terms.
STRUCTURE SLC8 – P49C
STRUCTURE SLC8 – P51A
STRUCTURE SLP8 - P51B
STRUCTURE SLC8 - P51C
STRUCTURE SLP5 - P64
STRUCTURE SLP5 - P64A
STRUCTURE SLP5 - P64B
STRUCTURE SLP5 - P65
VERSE 6
Like a mirage, to a wise man,
The world looms in the Self,
Just as to an infant, by confusion,
A reflected image might real seem too.
A mirage is only a reflection:
it has a false status compared to real water,
just as a reflected image is false.
VERSE 7
This Self, like milk that turns,
Does not attain to another form.
Therefore, the whole universe, as if created
By Indra's magic,exists as an eidetic presentiment.
Vedanta does not accept evolution. Matter is a presentiment.
You think that there is evolution –
there is only an eidetic presentiment, created by Indra's magic.
This is the difference between Darwin and Bergson.
This is the Big Bang theory: someone switched the universe on.
Phenomenology - Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre.
Phenomenology starts from the mind
and views the rest as phenomena.
Vedanta does not accept evolution.
Evolution is the product of evolution.
See Bergson for creative evolution and emergent evolution
which contradict Darwin.
Evolution presupposes a horizontal world.
Error can be thinking a mirror-reflection is real.
Mistaking a doll for a child is a more excusable error.
See LACOMBE :"L'Absolu selon le Vedanta".
The world originates in the mind - but where is the mind?
The mind cannot be seen.
The Atma or self is Absolute consciousness.
Absolute mind is false - it is intangible.
VERSE 8
Maya itself is the prime material cause
Of the world, by that which is no other
Than the Maya-maker, the Self, is all this
Created, as various magical effects.
The terms have to have a bi-polarity arranged and graded.
VERSE 9
To the mature mind, this universe
Looms like a sky-forest in the Self -
Even as an unreal puppet-form
To a child would seem contrariwise.
A child will say that the doll is hungry.
A mature man sees the world as an eidetic presentiment.
Falsehood has a plus and a minus side:
the plus side is tolerable to the mature man.
VERSE 10
One alone is real, not a second,
What is unreal, indeed, seems as being real.
The Siva Lingam is stone itself,
Not a second made by the mason.
STRUCTURE SLP5 - P63
The extreme limit of negativity is Asatyam (the unreal).
Satyam (the real) is the positive pole of the same structure.
The negative pole is the Absolute Unreal
To continue the analogy of the stone statue of a lion:
it is a stone in this chapter,
in another chapter it can be a lion- teleologically.
Here it is a stone which is real.
The Phenomenological Epoche is what is under reference here:
see Husserl, Heidegger, Jaspers and Buber.
Always use synonyms : arrange the terms negatively,
and find the synonyms on the plus side.
There are different kinds of errors:
Thinking that the reflection is real
is more foolish than thinking the doll is alive.
The first is horizontal, the second is vertical;
more deep and peculiarly human.
The grades of error of appearance and falsehood have been given here in preparation for the next chapter, Maya Darsana.
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