Raffaele Torella : la mémoire

The present paper deals with the Vivṛti on ĪPK I.4.1-2. In the previous chapter Utpaladeva, referring to an enigmatic statement in the Bhagavad-gītā, [1] had identified three powers (śakti) in the Lord : Cognition, Memory and Exclusion. After making some preliminary remarks concerning them as a whole, he starts now a detailed inquiry into each of them. His aim is to show that cognition, memory and exclusion, which constitute the very basis of the knowledge process in human mind, are indirectly also a proof of the coinciding of the individual subject with universal Consciousness. None of these phenomena can be really explained and their complex functioning accounted for satisfactorily in merely ‘mechanic’ terms, as first of all the Buddhists do. The individual subject can cognize, remember and exclude only if it is conceived of as inscribed within an eternal and, at the same time, dynamic universal I-ness, i.e. Śiva.

If Utpaladeva’s investigation starts with memory, by infringing the above stated order, it is “because in a very clear manner (suṣpaṣṭam) memory can serve as a logical reason for the establishment of the identity of the self with the Lord”. [2] The starting point is the classical definition of memory given in Yogasūtra I.11 : “Memory is the non-extinction of the object formerly perceived” (anubhūtaviṣayāsampramoṣah smṛtih). The sustained analysis of Utpaladeva singles out a few crucial points contained in such an apparently simple process : How is it possible to attribute temporal differentiation to a cognizer that is permanent in his essential nature ? What is the relationship between the cognitive act of the original perception and the cognitive act of the subsequent memory ? How can the latter bring the former to light again without objectifying it ? On this point, in fact, the Șaiva and his principal opponent, the Buddhist epistemologist, are in full agreement : a cognition is self-luminous and cannot be the object of another cognition. The standard Buddhist explanation is far from being satisfactory : saying that the perception produces a saṃskāra, which in turn will produce the phenomenon of memory, only accounts for the fact that memory has a certain objective content but leaves out the ‘subjective’ component represented by the fact that the object has been ‘coloured’ by the previous perception, or, to be more precise, by its having been ‘already’ perceived in a certain past moment. Memory, in fact, is indeed the memory of the past object but also of the past perception of it. Instead, as Abhinavagupta says, [3] what the saṃskāra is able to convey (or resurrect) is neither the original perception nor the object insofar as it was cognized by such past perception. This presupposes a living organism at work, a dynamic and unitary consciousness able to freely move between different moments of time. [4] Having this in mind, Utpaladeva deliberately introduces an apparently little but in fact quite significant change in the Yogasūtra definition, by reading asampramoṣaṇam in the place of asampramoṣah. [5] Due to the very nature of the phenomenon of memory, consciousness is expected to work at the level of individual subject, fully within the world of māyā. As Utpaladeva puts it : [6] “For this function belongs to the Lord alone, identical with consciousness, and takes place due to His freedom, in these terms : it is the Lord that, having assumed the form of the [limited] knower, identified with the puryaṣṭaka and other planes onto which freedom is superimposed, cognizes, remembers or ascertains.”

But how, analytically, does the process of memory work ? Both the act of ascertainment (niścaya, adhyavasāya) and memory belong to the category of vikalpa, being the māyic form of vimarśa. The main difference between adhyavasāya, immediately following the original manifestation (or ‘shining’) of the object — that is, its perception —, and smṛti, which is instead more or less distant from it, is that in the former case we have the reflective awareness (parāmarśa) ‘this’, while in the latter we have the reflective awareness ‘that’. However, according to the Pratyabhijñā philosophy, only a parāmarśa of a presently ‘shining’ object is possible. So memory cannot have as its object something which only ‘shone’ in the past (Vṛtti : prakāsitasya parāmarśo na kṛtaḥ syāt). [7] Once the matter has been put in these terms (the possibility that memory might have as its ‘object’ the former perception had been discarded at the outset), Utpaladeva is able to point to the centrality of a dynamic I as the only way to get out of the impasse. It is the I that ensures the possibility of unifying the various cognitions occurring at different times, thus resolving the apparent inconsistency between a (present) vimarśa and a (past) anubhava. The one and same svasaṃvedana of both cognitions creates that necessary bridge between them which the Buddhist epistemologist fails to account for. [8] A further clarification is provided by Abhinavagupta in the ĪPVV (II, p. 32, ll. 10-13) : the prakāśa concerning the part-object (arthāṃśe) belongs to the past ; but the prakāśa as grasped by the vimarśa, concerning the part-self (svātmāṃśe), is not limited by time. Thus the vimarśa in the memory can connect itself with the vimarśa in the perception and, through it, with the former light of the object — in this way meeting both requirements : taking place in the present and not being divorced from prakāśa (Torella 2002 : 106f., fn. 12).