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The witness that does not blink
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Section
Darśana
Pravāha
Smṛti
Mūla
Kalā
Sāhitya
·
Series
Aparokṣānubhūti, verse by verse
Saubhāgya Bhāskara
Bṛhadāraṇyaka readings
— None —
·
Verse
21 / 144
Śaṅkara's argument that the seer and the seen cannot be the same substance — read against modern theories of consciousness.
dhara.in/
darsana/aparoksanubhuti/v21-the-witness-that-does-not-blink
There is a sentence in the twenty-first verse of the Aparokṣānubhūti that, read carelessly, sounds like a slogan. Read carefully, it dismantles the reader. Brahmaivāham — "I am Brahman alone" — is not a claim about identity. It is a claim about what knowing is, and about what cannot be a jñeyam, an object of knowledge.
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Śaṅkara is doing something quietly radical here. The standard picture of cognition, then and now, is triadic: there is a knower, an act of knowing, and a thing known. The verse refuses this picture for the deepest case.
ब्रह्मैवाहम् इति स्पष्टम् अपरोक्षत्वम् ईयते। न तु ज्ञानं तदा सिद्ध्येन् न च ज्ञेयो भवेद् हि सः॥
brahmaivāham iti spaṣṭam aparokṣatvam īyate । na tu jñānaṃ tadā siddhyen na ca jñeyo bhaved hi saḥ ॥
Padacchedam: brahma · eva · aham · iti · spaṣṭam · aparokṣatvam · īyate · na · tu · jñānam · tadā · siddhyet · na · ca · jñeyaḥ · bhavet · hi · saḥ
I have used "apprehension" rather than "knowledge" throughout, because jñāna in this verse is not propositional. It is closer to a recognition than to a fact.
The seer cannot also be the seen. Not in this case. Not for this reality.
· · ·
The hardest move the verse asks for is not intellectual. It is the move from "I understand this argument" to "I am the one the argument is about."
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Article details
Author
Nag Rotte
Reading time
est. 9 min
Word count
2,138
Status
Draft
Text
Paragraph
A block of body text
P
Heading
Section heading — H2
H
Indic
अ
Verse block
श्लोक
Devanagari + IAST + padacchedam
V
पं
Pañca-ratnālu
Five takeaway gems (closing block)
5
Editorial
Pullquote
A line worth pulling out, centered
Q
Aside-note
Translator's note, sidebar thought
A
Section break
Three dots, a breath between sections
—
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