Description

About the Book

The present edition pays special attention on two central ideas that is consciousness and the ontological status of the phenomental reality. While elucidating them, this edition raises the question whether the Advaitic claim of non-duality can be proposed and defended consistently or whether we are forced to admit that the jiva has individuality and identity of its own, though it is dependent on Brahman for its being and continued existence. To answer this question, this study turns to Bernard Lonergan’s analysis of the idea of the ego, the ‘I’. In his analysis Lonergan has shown that there are various levels of existence for the same subject according to the various levels of acts. Based on this insight, this edition concludes that the individual is a subject and a person and that Advaita which apparently denies this is an inadequate explanation of reality, since it fails to take the subject and the phenomenal world seriously.

 About the Authors

Dr. Sebastian Carri was a Sanskrit scholar and researcher in the meaning of Hindu scriptures. Early in his long academic career, Dr Sebastian Carri took up Indian philosophy as his area of specialisation and spent his active years studying and analysing Vedic Sanskrit. He completed his Master’s degree in Sanskrit from Bombay University and later went to Pune University to study Shankara’s Advaita Philosophy as the area of his doctoral research. After completing his doctoral studies at Pune University, Carri spent half a century searching for the inner meanings of Hindu scriptures, especially the Vedas.  He spent a decade of this long period in researching on the concept of the cow in the Vedas. This was done as a part of his post-doctoral research work at Cologne in Germany. The result of this research is an original work titled Gavesanam or On the Track of the Cow and in Search of the Mysterious Word and in Search of the Hidden Light published in English by German publishers Harrassowitz Verlag in the year 2000. The goal of this book, as Carri clarifies in the preface of his book, is to “solve the Vedic riddles” which employ equivocality of terms and hide “multiple meanings.” Dr Sebastian Carri died in 2010, at the age of 76, as he was completing his latest work on the philosophy of Adi Sankara.

Dr. Augustine Perumalil: Augustine Perumalil is the Dean of St Xavier’s College, Jaipur. He received his Master’s degree in philosophy from Poona University and PhD from Punjab University, Chandigarh, specializing in philosophy of religion. Later, he did one-year post-doctoral research in Loyola University, Chicago. For two decades, he taught philosophy at various colleges: Sacred Heart College, Chennai, Loyola College, Chennai, and Arrupe College, Harare, Zimbabwe. For three years, he was the director of Satya Nilayam Research Institute, an institute authorized by the Madras University to conduct research and guide students for obtaining PhD in philosophy. During this time he was also the editor of Satya Nilayam, Chennai Journal of Intercultural Philosophy, a semiannual published in collaboration with the Vienna Society for Intercultural Philosophy. He carries on his research interest as the chief advisor to Impetus, the multidisciplinary journal of St Xavier’s College, Jaipur, India. He has authored seven books and over twenty-five articles in various national and international journals.