In the preceding chapters, the basic structure has been the subject-object dualism, or, more specifically, the large distinction between the means of knowing and the object of knowing. Even in chapters on dharma and rasa, we are still considering domains of possible objects of knowing (namely, moral laws and aesthetic essence) and so means of apprehending them. While Indian philosophy is thus determined by the subject-object dualism, there is also a tendency on the part of the philosophers to overcome that dualism. From the time of the Upanisads, philosophers have pointed to the possibility of a kind of experience or even of knowledge that is beyond the subject-object dualism.
In some of the Upanisads, we have very well-known accounts of knowing the brahman, which reject the subject-object dualism and dispense with any conceptual mediation. Thus it was frequently emphasized that knowing the brahman, is also becoming the brahman: brahmavit brahmaiva bhavati. Of none of the means of knowing reviewed in the chapter on theory of knowledge (see chapter 2), this seems to be true—not even of the so-called indeterminate perception (nirvikalpaka pratyakṣa). This last mentioned cognition is not conceptual and linguistic but nevertheless is of an object that is distinct from the cognition, of something that stands over against the knower. But the Upanisads, in saying that by knowing the brahman one becomes the brahman, are talking about a kind of cognition that is radically different from any pramāṇa-generated cognition. The Greeks seem to have thought that the larger the object that one contemplates, since the soul assumes the form of the object it contemplates, the soul becomes more expansive and noble. In the Upanisads, if there is an object X such that by knowing X the knower becomes X, then the X must pertain to the innermost nature of the soul of one’s own being. Furthermore, if knowing X transforms my being, and since knowing can remove only ignorance, the transformation of my being through becoming X must have to do with getting rid of wrong self-understanding and reaching the right self-understanding. Philosophers such as Henri Bergson have spoken of a mode of cognition that is higher than the intellectual, and have described it as one whereby the knower achieves an identification with the known. The Upanisads seem to point toward such a mode of knowing.
That this knowledge of the self is not intellectual, the Upanisads do not desist from emphasizing. The self, we are told, is that from which words return after not being able to reach it. The mind also fails to reach it (“yato vācā nivartante aprāpya manasā saha”). The texts also indulge in paradoxes: one who knows does not know, and one who does not know knows. Such paradoxical locutions suggest a mode of knowing that is different from the familiar modes of pramāṇa, and so—if the latter define “knowledge”—may amount to not knowing.
Within the Vedāntic framework, what all this amounts to is something like this. Knowledge as a process and as an achievement is nothing but the overcoming of ignorance. Once ignorance is removed, the knowledge that is of the nature of the brahman stands unconcealed. This knowledge is not produced, it is not acquired through the pramāṇas, it is self-revealing once its concealment is removed. To know in this sense is to be one with that knowledge. “Knowledge” in this sense has no object; it is not of something. Nor has knowledge in this sense a subject; it is not some one’s knowledge. This knowledge is eternal, universal, ubiquitous, the foundation of all things. The goal of philosophy is to realize it.
Let it not be misunderstood. The sort of knowledge that involves subject-object dualism, which is acquired through a pramāṇa, is not unimportant, nor is it dispensable. It is also through such knowledge that ignorance can be removed, so that the other knowledge would be revealed. The one cannot take the place of the other. The Indian philosophies sought to keep both in their places.
The nondualistic Vedāntin does not find any theoretical justification for concepts such as “means of knowing,” “object of knowledge,” and “real existence” as they are employed by the epistemologist. They consider various available definitions of “object,” and argue that all of them apply to the contents of nonveridical cognitions such as hallucinations. The contents of such hallucinations as perceiving a snake where there is a rope are also “presented;” they also give rise to appropriate practical response. The only reason some contents are regarded as real is that they have not yet been contradicted. Replacing “truth” by “uncontradictedness,” one can only, at best, speak of “uncontradicted as far as experience up to this point of time goes.” The idea of real existence or nonexistence is here not of much worth. X is said to exist, just in case it is an object of a pramdna or veridical cognition, and the cognition is veridical just in case its object X really exists. It is not any better to say, as the Buddhists do, that X exists in case it is causally efficient. The nonexistent may also have causal efficiency; a particular nonexistent has its own distinctive causal efficiency. The cause should be defined, in that case, simply as the invariable antecedent, entity or nonentity. In any case, the effect arises only when the cause has ceased to exist. The Vedāntin goes on to critique the idea of an existent entity. The realist Naiyāyikas understand it as the relation between the putative entity and the universal “existence.” The Vedāntin finds the very possibility of this relation unintelligible. The entity must then be nonexistent prior to the relation to “existence,” and the realist must have to say how something nonexistent could enter into a relation. One may suppose that each object has its own individual self-existence, prior to the relation to the universal “existence.” But that only means that the object must have its individuality, and the question of existence is redundant, giving rise to additional problems regarding the relation between individuality and existence.
Thus while the Vedāntin admits objects and their causal relations within empirical discourse, he or she resists the attempt to raise them to a metaphysical level. Metaphysically, the only reality is the brahman—pure consciousness, which alone is self-manifesting and that is beyond the dualism of subject and object.
The Mādhyamika Nāgārjuna uses the Buddhist law of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) to demonstrate the intrinsic emptiness or essencelessness of all things. If things arise through dependence on something else, nothing is real by its own right; nothing possesses its own essence (svabhāva). The argument, in its utmost generality, rules out the validity of the so-called pramāṇas or means of true cognition. One may then ask, What legitimizes their claim to validity? The validity of the pramāṇas cannot be established by any means other than other pramāṇas, for if they were capable of being legitimized without the use of pramāṇas, that would contradict the thesis of the epistemologist, namely, that all objects are established through pramāṇas. But if other pramāṇas are needed to legitimize the pramāṇas under consideration, then there would be an infinite regress. Could one reply, on behalf of the epistemologist, that the pramāṇas while legitimizing their objects are themselves self-validating? But this would involve something being both subject and object of the same act at the same time. Since the subject and object, pramāṇa and prameya, depend upon each other, neither of the two can be autonomous. If a cognition necessarily refers to its object, then the cognition cannot be self-validating while the object is not.
Can it be said that a cognition comes into being depending upon its object? But to say that X depends upon Y is to admit that X already exists, for only an existent X could be said to depend upon another thing. But then, in case X exists, to say that it comes into being is redundant.
Nāgārjuna concludes that the pramāṇas are neither established by themselves nor by one another, nor by their objects. The same holds good of objects as well.
This refutation of subject-object dualism, or of pramāṇa-prameya dualism, has a different implication than the Vedāntin’s. The Vedāntins want to assert a reality or an experience, which is none other than the self-shining consciousness, that is beyond that dualism. Nāgārjuna does not want to assert any such position, thereby leaving room for various possibilities of interpretation of his intentions—ranging from a complete nihilism to simply an antirealism, which just lets everything be what it is without metaphysically reifying it. But, be it noted, the logical categories in this critique are exposed with the help of logic, just as the poison of a disease is removed by poison (i.e., the medicine) or a thorn in one’s foot is removed by another thorn. Nāgārjuna is not simply doing a deconstructionist reading of texts. He is demonstrating the logical incoherence of the categories (padārthas).
It is in this context that we need to take a fresh look at the soteriological concepts of mokṣa and nirvāṇa. The concepts are, without doubt, very important for Indian thought, not merely for the religions. One would misunderstand their roles in Hinduism and Buddhism, respectively, if one holds any of the following two extreme positions. One extreme position is to claim that all Indian thinking is geared toward this large soteriological goal, thereby bolstering the claim that Indian philosophy is deeply religious. At the other extreme, there is a possible view that the ideas of mokṣa and nirvāṇa are entirely outside the domain of philosophy. They belong to religion, and even there to a mystical dimension. Both these are mistaken interpretations.
As a matter of fact, the following seem to hold good. In the first place, the idea of mokṣa is understood differently in various systems of Indian philosophy—in Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, in Sāṃkhya, and in the different schools of Vedānta. These differences both reflect and are reflected in the metaphysical theories of the systems. Second, one may want to say either that the mokṣa is the experiential equivalent of the theoretical position of a system, or that the theoretical position of a system is intended to provide for the possibility of actualizing that ideal. Both ways of describing the situation are valid. As regards the former: to begin with the example of the Sāṃkhya system, spirit and nature are in this system ontologically and essentially separate, and mokṣa (or aloneness, kaivalya as they call it) consists in realizing that distinction. In nondualistic Vedānta, the brahman and ātman are identical, the individual self is identical with the brahman, and the world is a false appearance, and mokṣa consists in realization of that truth. In Rāmānuja’s system, the individual selves and the world are parts of the brahman conceived both as the all-comprehensive absolute whole and as a person above all, in which case mokṣa would consist in knowing that dependence and through bhakti incurring the grace of God and enjoying his eternal company. One could extend the same relation between theory and practice to Buddhism. For Buddhism, there is no eternal self, no substance, the putative ego being but a series or an aggregate of momentary states, and such other theses as follow from these. Nirvāṇa then would arise from bringing your conduct and life in consonance with the accurate understanding of and conviction in these truths. Even for the Naiyāyika, liberation (apavarga) arises from knowing the categories listed by Gautama, especially the nature of the self and its distinction from the body. So, one could say it is as though there is no common goal of mokṣa to which there are different paths. But it is more appropriate to say that all the concepts of mokṣa do have a common core—namely, freedom from suffering, karma, and rebirth—while the total understanding of mokṣa varies from system to system, and each system’s theoretical position determines its total conception of that goal. The nondualist Vedāntins mokṣa is severely criticized by the followers of theistic Vedānta, so is also the Naiyāyika’s apavarga.
One can also say—as suggested earlier—that each system of philosophy provides the condition for the possibility of mokṣa. If a philosophical system is such that it makes freedom from suffering, karma, and rebirth impossible, then—in accordance with the spirit of Indian tradition—that system may be charged with the material fallacy of anirmokṣaprasaṇga (i.e., the impossibility of mokṣa). Thus the exact relation between a darśana and its built-in conception of mokṣa needs to be correctly understood, setting aside a lot of misleading rhetoric that abounds in Western language expositions of Indian philosophy.
There is a misleading inference made from the etymology of the word darśana (which stands for philosophy) that since darśana derives from the verbal root dṛṣ (= to see), philosophy, on the Indian view, has something to do with “seeing.” Does then each philosophical system represent, articulate, and conceptualize a way of seeing? Not too far removed from the last misconception is the view that philosophy, in the Indian tradition, was intuitive, not intellectual and discursive. The exposition of Indian philosophy in this book must have shown that this is far from the truth. Philosophy was an intensely intellectual, rigorously discursive and relentlessly critical pursuit. However, this activity was supposedly trusted and relied upon to lead to a kind of knowledge that would become transformed into a transformation of the thinker’s mode of being. How this could happen was explained, accounted for, within the system. Belief in mokṣa or nirvāṇa was belief in the possibility of such transformation. Mokṣa thus provided a distant horizon that loomed large before the Indian mind, giving meaning to all one’s mundane pursuits—from kāma through artha and dharma. A person’s being is not depressingly being in the world, but a being in the world that is grounded in the possibility of a transcendence into the beyond.