Conclusion 3

[This is part of Bhoja’s commentary following the previous pages and the final Sūtra 4.33]

The theory of the Vedantists, who believe liberation to be that condition of soul in which it is solely sentience and joy, is not correct. Joy being the identity of pleasure, and pleasure being manifested by perceptables, and perceptibility not being produced without perception, the doctrine of unity is destroyed by the admission of the two, the perceptible and the perception. Again, their saying of cognition itself being the joyous soul would be prejudiced by the incompatibility of two antagonistic qualities abiding together. Perception and perceptable cannot fitly be called one. Again, soul is said by the non-dualists to be of two kinds, the working or conditioned and the unconditioned or supreme. But if you admit that form in which the working soul becomes the experiencer of pleasure and pain, to be also the form in which it exists as the supreme soul, then the supreme soul becomes, like the working soul, subject to modifications, and pertain, the nature of ignorance. If it be said that the ex-periencership is not direct, but accepted as a present (by the soul) while remaining as a neutral superior, the case would be the same as in our system of philosophy.

The assumption about the joyous form (of soul) has already been refuted. It may be added that if soul be admitted to be of the character of ignorance, there would be no seperate existence left for working souls, and which should then be the object of philosophy? Certainly not the unconditioned soul, for it is eternally free; nor the working soul, for it is (admitted to be) of the character of ignorance, and thus will result the falsification of all systems of philosophy. If the creation be admitted to consist of ignorance, the question would arise, whose ignorance is it? It cannot be that of the supreme soul, for it is eternally free, and of the form of knowledge. It cannot be of the working soul, for that being without a seperate existence, how can it be connected with ignorance? It would be like the admission of horns of a hare (a mere fiction). It might be said that the ignorance of ignorance consists in its not being the subject of demonstration by argument. It may, like the dew on the earth with the rays of the sun (playing on it), melt away under ratiocination, and yet it may be ignorance. This, however, cannot be. Whatever does something must be distinct from, or identical with, something else, and since the agency of ignorance in the development of the universe must be admitted, and admitting it, if ignorance be indeterminate, then nothing whatever will be determinate; even Brahma itself will be liable to be put down as indeterminate, (but if it be described to be determinate, it will cease to be ignorance). It follows then that the form of soul cannot be other than that of a supervisor. This supervisorship is mere sentience only, for there is no evidence of its having any other quality.

Notes:

[The Vedantic doctrine is refuted on two grounds; 1st, because it involves a duality which the Vedantists themselves repudiate; 2nd, it makes soul liable to be affected by ignorance, thereby destroying its absolute purity, and if we admit that soul may be involved in ignorance then it will become indeterminate, and there would be no certainty about anything.]