conclusion admits of various expressions in logical form. 'The Brahman
under dispute is false because it is the object of knowledge which has
sprung from what is affected with Nescience; as the phenomenal world is.'
'Brahman is false because it is the object of knowledge; as the world
is.' 'Brahman is false because it is the object of knowledge, the rise
of which has the Untrue for its cause; as the world is.'

You will now perhaps set forth the following analogy. States of dreaming
consciousness--such as the perception of elephants and the like in one's
dreams--are unreal, and yet they are the cause of the knowledge of real
things, viz. good or ill fortune (portended by those dreams). Hence
there is no reason why Scripture--although unreal in so far as based on
Nescience--should not likewise be the cause of the cognition of what is
real, viz. Brahman.--The two cases are not parallel, we reply. The
conscious states experienced in dreams are not unreal; it is only their
objects that are false; these objects only, not the conscious states,
are sublated by the waking consciousness. Nobody thinks 'the cognitions
of which I was conscious in my dream are unreal'; what men actually
think is 'the cognitions are real, but the things are not real.' In the
same way the illusive state of consciousness which the magician produces
in the minds of other men by means of mantras, drugs, &c., is true, and
hence the cause of love and fear; for such states of consciousness also
are not sublated. The cognition which, owing to some defect in the
object, the sense organ, &c., apprehends a rope as a snake is real, and
hence the cause of fear and other emotions. True also is the imagination
which, owing to the nearness of a snake, arises in the mind of a man
though not actually bitten, viz. that he has been bitten; true also is
the representation of the imagined poison, for it may be the cause of
actual death. In the same way the reflection of the face in the water is
real, and hence enables us to ascertain details belonging to the real