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individual jiva, which then, by perception through the body, produces the illusory things of the world, including other bodies interpreted as other individuals supposed to perceive things realistically. Thus the world, including the plurality of illusory individuals, is an illusion produced subjectively by the one jiva (Atman limited by the body) and destroyed, together with all individuals, by knowledge. The true subject is the transcendental subject; this is the meaning of the Vedic formula Thou art That. Ekajivavada, Malkani maintains, is “the most satisfactory philosophical theory." Because of its paradoxes, however, it cannot be expressed systematically, but only as a series of solutions of problems taken in the context in which they arise.
The heart of a philosophy which takes the world seriously is its theory of knowledge, but the heart of Advaita is its theory of ignorance. An error itself has no explanation. It exists in its unreal way only because somebody thinks it. To recognize it as error, to say, "I was mistaken," is an explanation which leaves nothing more to be said about it. There is no logical reason for error. If it could be defended logically, it would not be error. But there is a psychological reason for error. Error occurs in thought, not in immediate awareness. Error is due to our attributing an epithet to this which this does not sustain. When seeing a rope I say, "This is a snake," there is no error about the this, which is real, but I erroneously judge is a snake. Error has no cause, but it has a twofold ground—the objective ground, the real this on which the illusion is superimposed by false identification, and the subjective ground, the psychological process which performs the superimposition. The objective ground, according to Advaita, is Brahman, the only reality. The subjective ground which superimposes illusion on reality, according to subjectivism, is the self, and this, according to ekajivavada, is not the individual (a product of ignorance and so not its ground) but also Brahman. Brahman, however, is not itself ignorant, for in that case it would be grounded in ignorance instead of ignorance being grounded in it. Brahman is not the ignorant subject (jiva), for absolute Brahman can only be thought of as omniscient, but it is the subjective ground of ignorance in the sense of being the intelligent principle without which there could be no ignorance.
