KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIOUSNESS

A VERY IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCE of the foregoing is that knowledge, understood absolutely and in all its universality, is in no way synonymous with or equivalent to consciousness, whose domain is coextensive only with that of certain determined states of being, so that it is only in those states to the exclusion of all others, that knowledge is realized by means of what can properly be called 'becoming conscious' of anything. Consciousness, as we have understood the term until now, even in its most general sense and without restricting it to its specifically human form, is only a contingent and special mode of knowledge under certain conditions, a property inherent to a being envisaged in certain states of manifestation; all the more reason, then, to say that it is not applicable in any degree to unconditioned states, that is, to all that goes beyond Being, since it is not even applicable to the whole of Being. Knowledge, on the contrary, considered in itself and independently of the conditions attaching to any particular state, can admit of no restriction, and to be adequate to total truth must be coextensive not only with Being but also with universal Possibility itself, and therefore it must be infinite, as the latter necessarily is. This amounts to saying that knowledge and truth, envisaged thus metaphysically, are basically nothing other than what we have called rather inadequately 'aspects of the Infinite'; this is something clearly expressed in one of the fundamental formulations of the Vedānta: 'Brahma is Truth, Knowledge, Infinity' (Satyam Jnānam Anantam Brahma).^[1] When we say that 'knowing' and 'being' are the two faces of a single reality, the term 'being' should be taken only in its analogical and symbolic sense, since knowledge goes further than Being; here, as when we speak of the realization of the total being, realization, which essentially implies total and absolute knowledge, is in no way distinct from that knowledge itself (of course insofar as the knowledge is effective and not merely theoretical and representative). At this point we should also clarify somewhat how the metaphysical identity of the possible and the real should be understood. Since everything possible is realized by knowledge, this identity, taken universally, properly constitutes truth in itself, for the latter can be conceived precisely as the perfect adequation of knowledge to total Possibility.^[2] It is easy to see all the consequences that might be drawn from this last remark, the implications of which are immensely greater in extent than those of a simply logical definition of truth, for here we have all the difference between the universal unconditioned intellect^[3] and human understanding with its individual conditions, and also, in another respect, all the difference separating the point of view of realization from that of a 'theory of knowledge'. The very word 'real', usually so vague and even equivocal, especially for the philosophers who maintain the so-called distinction between the possible and the real, takes on an altogether different metaphysical value when used in reference to realization,^[4] or, to be more precise, on becoming an expression of absolute permanence, in the Universal, of all that of which a being attains effective possession by the total realization of itself.^[5] The intellect as universal principle could be conceived as the container of total knowledge, but on condition that this be seen only as a simple figure of speech, for here, where we are essentially at the level of 'non-duality', the container and the contained are absolutely identical, both being of necessity equally infinite—a 'plurality of infinities', as we have said before, being an impossibility. Universal Possibility, which contains all, cannot be contained by anything, unless it be by itself, and it contains itself 'without this containing existing in any way whatsoever.^[6] Moreover, intellect and knowledge can only be spoken of correlatively in the universal sense, in the way the Infinite and Possibility were discussed above, that is to say viewed as one and the same thing, which we envisaged simultaneously under an active and a passive aspect, but without there being any real distinction. In the Universal we should not distinguish intellect from knowledge, nor, in consequence, the intelligible from the knowable; true knowledge being immediate, the intellect is strictly speaking but one with its object; it is only in conditioned modes of knowledge, which are always indirect and inadequate, that there is reason to establish a distinction, since this relative knowledge then operates not by the intellect itself but by a refraction of the intellect in the states of being concerned, and, as we have seen, it is just such a refraction that constitutes individual consciousness; but, directly or indirectly, there is always participation in the universal intellect in the measure in which there is effective knowledge, whether in any mode whatsoever or outside of every particular mode.

Since total knowledge is adequate to universal Possibility, there is nothing that is unknowable,^[7] or, in other words, 'there are no incomprehensible things, there are only things incomprehensible at present,^[8] things inconceivable, not in themselves and absolutely, but only to us as conditioned beings, that is, as beings limited in our present manifestation to the possibilities of a determinate state. We thus set forth what could be called a principle of 'universal intelligibility', not as this is ordinarily understood, however, but in a purely metaphysical sense, and hence beyond the logical domain in which this principle, like all those of a properly universal order (which alone truly deserve to be called 'principles'), find only a particular and contingent application. For us, of course, this postulates no 'rationalism', quite the contrary, since reason, differing essentially from intellect, without whose guarantee it could not in any case be valid, is nothing more than a specifically human and individual faculty. There is thus necessarily, we do not say the 'irrational,^[9] but the 'supra-rational', which, in fact, is a fundamental characteristic of everything of a truly metaphysical order; and this 'supra-rational' does not for all that cease to be intelligible in itself, even if it is not at present comprehensible to the limited and relative faculties of human individuality.^[10]This suggests yet another observation well worth considering in order to avoid any error: like the word 'reason', the word 'consciousness' can sometimes be universalized by a purely analogical transposition, something we ourselves have done elsewhere to render the meaning of the Sanskrit word Chit,^[11] but such a transposition is only possible when one restricts oneself to Being, as was done when the ternary Satchidānanda was under consideration. It should be strictly understood, however, that even with this restriction, consciousness thus transposed is no longer understood in its proper sense, such as we have defined it above, and as we have generally taken it. In this usual sense, let us repeat, consciousness is only the special mode of a contingent and relative knowledge, as relative and contingent as the conditioned state of being to which it essentially belongs; and, if one can say that it is a 'raison d' être' for such a state, it is so only insofar as it is a participation by refraction in the nature of that universal and transcendent intellect that is itself, finally and eminently, the supreme 'raison d' être' of all things, the true metaphysical 'sufficient reason' that determines itself in all the orders of possibilities, without these determinations being able to affect it in any way whatsoever. This conception of 'sufficient reason', very different from the philosophical or theological conceptions in which Western thought is imprisoned, immediately resolves many questions before which the latter must confess itself impotent, by bringing about a reconciliation between the point of view of necessity and that of contingency. Here we are in fact well beyond the opposition of necessity and contingency understood in their ordinary acceptation, ^[12] and thus some complementary elucidation on this subject may perhaps not be without value in our effort to understand why the question need not arise in pure metaphysics.