If the snake perceived (mistakenly due to poor lighting, etc.) in the rope proves very friendly for the Advaitins, the snake perceived in the snake creates a great deal of trouble for them. While they can draw heavily on the examples of illusions, hallucinations, and dreams for the purpose of proving the essential unreality of the objects actually experienced, what is generally acknowledged as the verdict of the normal waking experience goes strongly against their view.

To evade this difficulty the Advaitins declare that the verdict of the normal waking experience has no validity at all, that none of the so called sources of right knowledge (like perception and inference) can be philosophically trusted, that all perceptions are to be understood in the model of patent illusions and so on. But in spite of such summary condemnation of normal experience, the Advaitins also feel uneasy about the situation. The snake perceived in the rope may be too harmless to disturb the Advaitin's contemplation. But not so is the snake seen in the snake since it is something dangerous in actual life. Even the extreme idealist like the Advaitin has to take reasonable practical precaution against it, without which the very existence of the Advaitin--and therefore the possibility of his philosophising--is menaced.

 

The same is true of everything in the material world. The Advaitin may deny the reality of water as an imaginary product of ignorance. In his practical life, however, he has to run for water when thirsty. He has to eat food and wear clothes despite claiming that all these are not real.It is no use laughing at all this as mere banal talk. The real problem posed is a serious one. Does the Advaitin, in his own practical life, disown his theoretical outlook (according to which the world is ultimately unreal)? The evidence of practical life just cannot be overlooked here; it wants to undermine the grand theoretical superstructure built up by the Advaitins. This is therefore the problem and they have to offer some solution.

The awareness of the problem is perhaps not there during the Upanisadic age, when idealism is first foreshadowed in its originally naive form. We do not come across in the Upanisads any explicit tendency to reconcile extreme philosophical idealism with some explaination of the verdict of practical life.

The first philosophers to address this problem, from the idealist perspective, are the Mahayana Budhists; more specifically the sunyavadi Budhist Nagarjuna. (Mahayana Budhism itself has two prominent sects--sunyavada or Madhyamika and vijnana vada or Yogacara). And how does Nagarjuna perform such a philosophical feat? He does it by inventing the 'theory of two truths'--a theory that is reiterated with some terminological variation by both the vijnana-vadi Budhists and the Advaita Vedantists.

The terms Nagarjuna himself uses are samvriti satya and paramarthika satya. But what is meant by these two truths? Parmarthika satya or Parmartha satya simply means the ultimate truth, the truth of the highest philosophical wisdom--the truth, in short, that the indescribable Absolute alone is real. This truth is supposed to be realised only by the enlightened saints. The common people or the vulgar mob, uninitiated in the idealist outlook, have no acccess to it. What they are obssessed with is another kind of truth which the idealist also accepts though purely for the crude purposes of practical life. This truth is called samvriti-satya or 'truth that keeps the ultimate truth concealed'. Really speaking, from the idealist perspective, this is not truth at all. In the standard of genuine philosophical wisdom it is in fact flatly false. But it is called truth, by courtesy as it were, for the practical purposes of ordinary life. The snake-seen-in-the-snake has some sort of truth, though strictly in reference to the practical life. But why call it a kind of truth if it is really not so? Because it has a peculiar status as being distince from the patent illusions and total fictions (alika). The snake-seen-in-the-snake is is different on the one hand from the snake-seen-in-the-rope (something patently illusory) and from 'the son of a barren woman' (something totally fictitious).

A bare fiction--like the son of a barren woman--is never experienced, while the snake-seen-in-the-snake is actually experienced. It makes no sense to say that the son of a barren woman is tilling the ground, while the snake-seen-in-the snake or the water-seen-in-the-pool is actually experienced and has definite practical efficacy. The snake can bite, and the water does quench thirst.

What then is the difference between the snake-seen-in-the-snake and the snake-seen-in-the-rope? Even the snake seen in the rope cannot be totally fictitious--like the son of a barren woman because the illusory snake is actually experienced and has a limited practical efficacy in that it can make one run in fear. Therefore this too is samvriti though obviously of a lower grade: the illusion is totally dispelled and its practical efficacy is comparatively negligible. The illusory snake is not capable of biting after all.

Thus as contrasted with the ultimate truth or parmarthika satya on the one hand and the bare fiction or alika on the other, the sunya-vadins speak of two types of samvriti--or two grades thereof--called loka-samvriti and aloka-samvriti. The water-seen-in-the-pool is loka-samvriti while the water-seen-in-the-mirage is aloka-samvriti.

Such is the innovation of Nagarjuna: a concept of truth which is not really true. The later idealists (the vijnanavadins and the Advaita Vedantists) see in this the only hope of saving idealism from its glaring inconsistency with practical life. In the subsequent history of Indian idealism, therefore, this distinction between the 'two truths' becomes of fundamental importance.

The Vijnana-vadins speak of paratantra and parikalpita as contrasted with parinispanna. Parinispanna means the ultimate truth; Paratantra is the tentative truth of practical life (the truth for example of the snake-seen-in-the-snake); Parikalpita is simply illusory like the snake-seen-in-the-rope.

The Advaita Vedantists retain the term parmarthika satya or parmartha satya for the ultimate truth. For the loka-samvriti of the Sunya-vadins they use the term vyahvarika-satya and instead of aloka-samvriti they use the term pratibhasika. Thus the vyahvarika satya means the tentative truth of practical life, which is ultimately false. Pratibhasika means the patent illusions, like the snake-seen-in-the-rope. It should be noted here that the pratibhasika is more untrue or unreal than the vyahvarika no doubt; but this does not mean the vyahvarika is more true or more real than the pratibhasika. From the viewpoint of ultimate truth or paramartha satya, both vyahvarika and pratibhasika (i.e. both normal waking experience and illusory experience) are unreal or false. Never the less, within the general structure of unreality, there is something that is all the more unreal and that is the pratibhasika or the patent illusions.

We can of course dismiss this talk of 'two truths' as hogwash and nonsense. But then we shall be accused of iconoclasm and of having a destructive mindset. It is better, i feel, to leave the criticism to one of the all time greats of Indian philosophy, namely Kumarila Bhatta of the Mimansa school, who helps us see the glaring absurdities in the idealist outlook of both the Mahayana Budhists and also the Advaita Vedantists. I quote from the Sloka Vartika, niralamabana vada, 6-10 :

The idealist talks of some 'apparent truth' or 'provisional truth of practical life' i.e. in his terminology of samvriti-satya.

However, since his in his own view, there is really no truth in this 'apparent truth', what is the sense of asking us to look at it as some special brand of truth as it were?
If there is truth in it, why call it false at all? And, if it is really false, why call it a kind of truth?

Truth and falsehood, being mutually exclusive, there cannot be any factor called 'truth' as belonging in common to both--no more than there can by any common factor called 'treeness' belonging to both the tree and the lion, which are mutually exclusive.
On the idealist's own assumption, this 'apparent truth' is nothing but a synonym for the 'false'. Why, then, does he use this expression? Because it serves for him a very important purpose. It is the purpose of a verbal hoax. It means falsity, though with such a pedantic air about it as to suggest something apparently different, as it were. This is in fact a well known trick. Thus, to create a pedantic air, one can use the word vaktrasava [literally mouth-wine] instead of the simpler word lala , meaning saliva [vancanartha upanyaso lala-vaktrasavadivat].

But why is this pedantic air? Why, instead of simply talking of falsity, is the verbal hoax of an 'apparent truth' or samvriti? The purpose of conceiving this samvriti is only to conceal the absurdity of the theory of the nothingness of the objective world, so that it can somehow be explained why things are imagined as actually existing when they are not so.