The word 'anubhava' is translated into English as 'experience' by a number of people writing on Vedanta. The English word leaves a lot to be desired. The word 'anubhava' means pratyaksa or aparoksa jnana, direct knowledge in certain contexts. The word 'experience' does not convey the same sense. Any experience is inconclusive in terms of knowing. One may gain a certitude of knowledge from experience but experience itself does not constitute knowledge.

Any mental condition caused by a sense perception or memory can be called experience but one need not have knowledge of what is experienced. Emotional pain is one's experience but the knowledge of it implies its origin also. Therefore, it needs a certain process of reasoning leading to understanding. I may see an object outside without knowing what it is. Seeing is no doubt an experience but knowing is entirely different.

We often come across the expressionatma-anubahava in the literature of Vedanta whose meaning is direct Self-knowledge. Atma is Consciousness and its presence is never lost in any form of experience. In seeing, hearing, thinking, the presence of Consciousness is never missed. The svarupa of atma is this anubhuti, the content of every experience. Consciousness, the content of experience is recognised as Brahman, the limitless which fact the sastra reveals in sentences such as 'tat tvam asi - That you are'.

Now the compound atma-anubhava is translated as Self-experience. Does the translation convey Self-knowledge? Certainly it does not. It is also said by many that the Self is to be experienced. That means the Self is not within the ken of one's experience and it has to be experienced by some special means. If the Self is consciousness, can the experiencer be independent of Consciousness? The experiencer is but the Self while the Self is not the experiencer. So too the experienced object is again Consciousness and the experience thereof is to outside Consciousness either. This ever present Consciousness, the Self, is taken to be only the experiencer, different from the object of experience. This duality is certainly a superimposition upon the Self, the Consciousness. Vedanta negates this superimposition and makes one recognise the Self being free from this duality. This recognition is atma-anubhava or atma-jnana. While the word 'experience' fails to convey the meaning of the Self-knowledge, it misguides one to pursuit of gaining the experience of the Self. When will this experience come?

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