A Critique of the Mithyānumāna
According to Advaita, both jāgrat and svapna are more or less identical in their nature as being false appearances superimposed on consciousness. The proof for this is an inference made by Gauḍapāda in his Māṇḍūkya Kārika:-
Pratijña- the world is false (mithyā)
Heṭu- because it is perceived (drśyatvat)
Dṛṣṭānta- like nacre in silver
Here, the sādhya or major term is mithya, which has many definitions such as indefinable as being real or unreal, being subject to bādha, being the pratiyogi of some absolute absence in its own locus, etc.
Now let’s examine the major premise of the argument: whatever is subject to perception is eventually falsified. When we perceive silver in nacre, we find that it is eventually falsified by the perception of the nacre. However, why was it that the erroneous appearance shifted to genuine appearance? The answer is that when the falsifying cognition (bādhaka jñāna) happened, the error inducing condition was absent. For example, when we perceive the silver, it is because we made an improper judgement due to the distance between ourselves and the nacre. When we eliminate that distance, we have proper cognition of the nacre. Likewise, when we perceive a snake on the rope in the dark, the erroneous cognition was caused by the lack of light. When we switch on the light, the erroneous condition ceased to exist, allowing us to perceive the rope.
Thus, the presence of some condition is the reason for erroneous knowledge. So wouldn’t it be more proper to state that whatever is perceived under conditions of erroneous cognition is more likely to be subject to bādha?
So what are these erroneous conditions that lead to improper recognition (pratyabhijña)? When it comes to perception of external things, there could be things like distance from the object, lack of light, the extreme velocity of the object, the similarity of its characteristics to some other thing, etc. But there are also internal conditions as well- when our attention, concentration, discrimination, memory, etc are impaired we are bound to make many other errors. Having control over these internal conditions is called lucidity. Thus we may say that lucidity is a condition for proper knowledge and that lack of lucidity increases the chances of erroneous knowledge. Thus, the greater our lucidity, the lesser our chance of erroneous knowledge.
In dreams, our lucidity is heavily impaired. We have very little control over memory, attention, concentration, etc. Thus, dream cognition is highly likely subject to falsity. Compared to dream cognition, jāgrat has far greater lucidity. Thus, it is least subject to bādha. Since there is no known state of awareness is more lucid than jāgrat, there is no reason to believe that waking cognition is subject to bādha. Let’s represent this using a syllogism:-
P1: the more the lucid the state of awareness, the lesser that it is subject to bādha
P2: jāgrat is the most lucid state of awareness
C1: it is the least subject to bādha
P3: only a more lucid state of awareness can refute another state of awareness
P4: there is no state of awareness more lucid that jāgrat
C2: jāgrat is not falsified by another state of awareness.