EPISTEMOLOGY
Shankara argues there are three orders of truth: (1) the unreal (in fact, untruth), (2) the empirical (appearances), and (3) the absolute. Examples of the unreal include the logically contradictory (for instance, a married bachelor) and the imaginary (such as a unicorn or a mermaid). Empirical truths are those experienced through perception (e.g. the multiple facets of the visible world). Absolute truth is limited to Brahman and the identity of atman with Brahman.
Lower levels of truth are subject to badha, meaning “cancellation” or “sublation,” This simply means that previously accepted beliefs are continuously corrected or revised by later experience. Thus, if one believes all swans are white, one changes that belief once one sees a black swan. However, absolute truth is not subject to sublation (we might use the example of “2 + 2 = 4”). Now we come to the crux of Shankara’s argument: the illusion of the phenomenal world is sublated by the experience of Brahman.10
Another way to think if this is: “The experience of release [moksha] stands to verdical perception as veridical perception stands to hallucinations.”11 Moreover, the absolute truth of the identity of atman and Brahman is self-authenticating, but it is not directly communicable, rather it must be evoked.12
In short, Shankara’s deploys a kind of non-falsification (abadhitva) as the criterion of truth. Common-sense truth (vyavaharika) develops through ongoing experience correcting earlier erroneous impressions. Likewise, common sense truth is veridical until falsified by the higher experience of Brahman. Falsification does not apply only in the case of the truth of Brahman.13
Returning now to Shankara’s analogy of the rope:
“Owing to the appearance of a rope in the twilight it seems to be a serpent. In the same way the unhappy condition of the individual soul is imposed upon it by want of realization. When the illusion of the serpent is dispelled by the admonition of a friend only the familiar rope remains. So, by the admonition of my own Master I am no longer the individual soul but the Immutable Self that is the Seer, I am the Supreme Bliss. Such a man lives in bliss because his mind is freed from all contrasts (of happiness and misery, gain and loss, etc.), ever pure, devoid of my-ness and I-ness, always contented, steady in thought, imperturbable, cleansed of all illusions.”14
(third continuation next post)
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10 McGreal, Ian P. (editor) Great Thinkers of the Eastern World. HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-06-270085-5, page 215.
11Edwards, Paul (editor), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press, 1972. Vol 7, page 280.
12Ibid.
13Ibid.
14Beck, L. Adams, The Story of Oriental Philosophy. The New Home Library, New York, 1942. Page 74.
