Sankara's Afterimage

The truths of religion delivered by the scripture can be known with greater certainty than those which we puzzle out by ourselves personally or hearken to. Such would have been the attitude of Sankara and it would seem an ostensible flouting of our rational nature until we scry the small print where he adds that scripture cannot establish fire to be cold or water not wet. Nor indeed can logical reasoning achieve truths which are in the province of religious faith. To react to Shankara as one cowed by the authority of scripture is a facile and false conclusion. Yet, as he experienced it, the great light of scripture was like an afterimage that burned out normal vision. This would cohere with his non-dualism of atman and Brahman. An individual consciousness was a limiting adjunct (upadhi) of pure unlimited consciousness.