Methods of Knowledge - According to Advaita Vedanta

The simple question, How we know?, is one of the toughest problems that have confronted the human mind. Methods of Knowledge presents to modern thinkers the Vedantic approach to this universal problem. It dwells on different types of knowledge from sensory experience, which man shares with the lowest animals, to the perception of Ultimate Reality claimed by great mystics and seers of the world. The commonest of all cognitions has proved to be no less enigmatic than the rarest of them all. Modern philosophers have grappled with the former without reaching a satisfactory solution, while they have hardly recognized the latter. The present treatise includes a comprehensive and consistent treatment of both these types of experience. Besides the interpretation of different forms of non-perceptual knowledge, it gives an elaborate explanation of illusory experience and the cognition of non-existence, to which Western epistemology has paid scant attention. True to the Advaita position, the book tackles the problem of knowledge with reference to its source, the self within, which is undeniable, although unnoticed. Though ancient, the process is ever new being applicable in all cases of cognition.

The author is the founder of the Vedanta Society of St.Louis, Missouri, and until his passing was a senor member of the Ramakrishna order. He lived in the United States for over three decades, authored several books, and was regarded as a well-versed scholar in Sanskrit scriptures and Vedanta philosophy.