Tat tvam asi?

[nanda chandran]

>   Actually when we say Atman is the knower, don't we mean that=20
>Atman adds "experience" to the whole biological process of "knowing"=20
>rather than having its own memory?

Whether it "adds" experience or not, the mere fact that it is the knower is
established only because that it knew something. Would one which knows
nothing be a knower? So a knowers position would be established only in
opposition to the known. It is on this understanding it is said : "it is I
who experienced the past and the same I who experience the present" (see
Shankara's dialectic against the kshanikavaada of the Bauddhas). Here to
establish the "I", you need the things that the "I" experienced - so knower
implicitly means the known and a past known would imply the usage of memory.


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