 Perhaps the greatest difficulty is describing what Śaṅkara thought about the transition from what appears to be descriptive knowledge to direct knowledge, or from a type of modal knowledge to a knowledge of intrinsic being that is pure consciousness. In his view, understanding the Upaniṣadic identity statement generates a unique cognition revealing the veridical knowledge, “I am brahman”—that one is indiscernible from nondual consciousness, numerically identical with brahman, and the reality of everything. This knowledge removes root ignorance to negate superimposition veiling one’s true nature. It strips all qualifications and relationships from consciousness, deconstructs the I-sense and knower-ship as unreal, and deindividuates the individual from all conditioning adjuncts (see Ram-Prasad 2001b: ch. 4). Then suffering, karma, and rebirth have no locus in which to cling because only nondual consciousness remains.