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Knowledge of Brahman is no exception: |
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That being so, knowledge of the true relationship between Brahman and the self is not subject to injunction. Though verbs in the imperative mood etc. are seen to be used with regard to this knowledge, they are dulled, like a razor striking against a stone, for they are aimed at something which cannot be the object of compulsion; for knowledge has as its object something that exists, not something to be done or avoided.
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Apparent injunctions, such as "must be seen," etc., serve another and auxiliary purpose: they bring to an end various preoccupations, and turn the Advaitin away from the world, toward the inner self.7 They prepare the way for knowledge of Brahman, contributing to the construction of the environment in which knowledge can occuran environment which is comprised essentially of the prepared, competent reader. |
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The steps of knowledge can be enjoined insofar as they are the exterior activities related to knowledge; but the knowledge that occurs is not the guaranteed result of those activities, even if they are well performed. By its nature, knowledge eludes reduction to the predictable availability of either repeatable statements or imitable actions; at no stage can it be enjoined, since at the very moment that injunction becomes possiblewhen the object is clear and the activity definablethat clarity and definition make the enjoined activity superfluous. Knowledge is always an event, occurring only as the increasingly clearer apprehension of the intended object at each stage in the assimilation and clarification of what is initially perceived, heard or read. |
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Nonetheless, it cannot be practically disassociated from those accompanying steps. Advaita's refusal to characterize knowledge of Brahman as an activity which can be carried out is not a wholesale denial of the component activities which normally precede knowledge; rather, it is a nuanced distinction between knowing and its ordinary context, a precise apprehension of the implications of what we mean when we say that we have come to know something.8 The position thus relies on these nuances as to how knowledge occurs purely and simply while |
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