Schools of Indian Thought - Part 5 - Advaita Vedanta - The Empirical Self

In Advaita Vedanta there are two I’s, the empircal self and the transcendental self or the ego (aham) and the Atman. The former is a modification of antahkarana and appears as a moral and rational agent (karta) due to possessing the reflection of the pure consciousness within Antahkarana. So what is illusory is the apparent identity of the empirical self and the Atman. The nature of this identity is this, the properties of one appear within the other, like red color is taken to be a property of a crystal because the color gets reflected within it.

Now for Advaita Vedanta any illusion always contains two parts - a real one and an illusory one. The real one in this case is the Atman, without some reality no illusion can occur because an illusion is not anything else but taking something not-real to be real. When we break it up, it would always contain a real and an unreal component. Coming to the consciousness that sublates the illusion when one realizes the difference between the real and the apparent I. So the question is what makes this particular sublating consciousness veridical rather than illusory. The objection states that it must be illusory because to negate the empirical self, what is needed is another empirical self because the negating consciousness is an empirical consciousness which presupposes the ego and as a result the ego is not removed at all. The sublation fails (rather than regarding the sublating consciousness as illusory).

For Advaita Vedanta however the final realization of the truth is due to a Brahma-Atmakara- Vritti which has for its object Atman / Brahman conditioned by the totality of illusory creations including itself. This vritti negates the entire world and itself along with it just as a medicine cures the disease and is dissolved together with it. So what this final vritti does is it negates the world and itself along with it, so that the pure Atman is left as a remainder.

Now lets deal with the objection raised. The objection was based on the premise that empirical consciousness presupposes an empirical ego and hence an empirical consciousness cannot bring to an end the illusion of an ego because it is based on it. This is quite true, every mental state is followed by another in succession, I see a plant in my lawn, then a noise distracts me and I begin to look at a car passing by and so on and on. Every mental state is as it were pregnant with possibility of other mental states and even deep sleep does not put it to an end. But Advaitins believe that a certain very peculiar mental state is possible that does not give way to the production of future mental states because it is based on the perception of the truth. It destroys itself without giving way to another because in destroying itself it also destroys the basis on which production of future mental states depended. It is like that spark which destroys itself along with the machine. So it is the final state of an empirical consciousness which is self-destructive and hence terminates the series of mental states itself and the ego too because the ego is nothing else but a mental state (aham-vritti, as a result Advaitins point out there is no ego sense in deep sleep but the possibility of its resurgence is not destroyed by sleep as will become clear below).

Since there is no further production of mental states, empirical consciousness is destroyed. But the person who achieves final realization is still alive. To reconcile these two facts Advaitins argue that the cause of these mental states does not lie only in illusion of the empirical ‘I’ but also karmic tendencies and mental impressions that have to be exhausted too. Hence just like putting brakes on a speeding car, does not immediately stop it but erodes it momentum steadily without creating any new momentum, just like that the final realization does end the illusion but does not take away the possibility of future mental states which would terminate only with death of the self-realized person. And till then the ego will persist but without the illusion and with the exhausting of past momentum (and since any new momentum is not being created) with death the empirical consciousness would also end. Does this however compromise the Adviatins position? I will answer why Advaitins think that it does not, because the illusion was due to superimposition of the characteristics of one entity on another. If the superimposition ends, the illusion end. What you thought were identical, turn up to be different and the consciousness of this difference rather than the termination of this difference is what counts, termination of the series of mental states count too but this is indirectly realized by the final vritti - practically the series has been brought to an end but some past momentum is left that needs to be seen through.