the same self-luminous Brahman or atman as forms of the highest truth of my subjective consciousness) because the ajnana phenomena in these forms serve to veil their illuminator, the self-luminous.  It was only by coming into contact with these phenomena that the anta@hkara@na could be transformed into corresponding states and that the illumination dawned which at once revealed the anta@hkara@na states and the objects with which these states or v@rttis had coalesced.  The consciousness manifested through the v@rttis alone has the power of removing the ajnana veiling the cit.  Of course there are no actual distinctions of inner or outer, or the cit within me and the cit without me.  These are only of appearance and due to avidya.  And it is only from the point of view of appearance that we suppose that knowledge of objects can only dawn when the inner cit and the outer cit unite together through the anta@hkara@nav@rtti, which makes the external objects

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translucent as it were by its own translucence, removes the ajnana which was veiling the external self-luminous cit and reveals the object phenomena by the very union of the cit as reflected through it and the cit as underlying the object phenomena.  The pratyak@sa-prama or right knowledge by perception is the cit, the pure consciousness, reflected through the v@rtti and identical with the cit as the background of the object phenomena revealed by it.  From the relative point of view we may thus distinguish three consciousnesses:  (1) consciousness as the background of objective phenomena, (2) consciousness as the background of the jiva or pramata, the individual, (3) consciousness reflected in the v@rtti of the anta@hkara@na; when these three unite perception is effected.

Prama or right knowledge means in Vedanta the acquirement of such new knowledge as has not been contradicted by experience (abadhita).  There is thus no absolute definition of truth.  A knowledge acquired can be said to be true only so long as it is not contradicted.  Thus the world appearance though it is very true now, may be rendered false, when this is contradicted by right knowledge of Brahman as the one reality.  Thus the knowledge of the world appearance is true now, but not true absolutely.  The only absolute truth is the pure consciousness which is never contradicted in any experience at any time.  The truth of our world-knowledge is thus to be tested by finding out whether it will be contradicted at any stage of world experience or not.  That which is not contradicted by later experience is to be regarded as true, for all world knowledge as a whole will be contradicted when Brahma-knowledge is realized.