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THE BRAHMANICAL DOCTRINE OF LIBERATION
153
"One who sees all things in the self and the self in all things, is not repulsed by it because of the realization of truth. When to him, who knows, the self has become all things, how can any more there be delusion and sorrow for him who sees oneness ?""76
Regarding the existence of suffering in this phenomenal world Samkara points to māyā or avidyā as the root cause. The self (ātman) wrongly identified with māyā does not realise its true nature. Śamkara
observes:
"As long as the individual self does not free itself from ignorance in the form of duality-which ignorance may be compared to the mistake of him who in the twilight mistakes a post for a man-and does not rise to the knowledge of the Self, whose nature is unchangeable, eternal cognition-which expresses itself in the form 'I am brahman'-so long it remains the individual self.""""
Śamkara refers to ignorance (avidyā) or appearance (māyā) as 'causal potentiality' which is dependent on the highest Lord. According to him, māyā is called non-manifested since it cannot be defined either as that which is or that which is not.
The words ajñāna, vivarta, bhranti, bhrama, avyakta, nāma-rūpa, adhyasa, adhyaropa, anirvacaniya etc., are synonymous with mayā or avidya. It is apparently real from the phenomenal point of view but it is unreal for those who have realised brahman; for the awakened self "all this is brahman." For the ordinary persons this world is real as the dream is real in the dreaming state.
For Samkara, avidya has both aspects: negative as well as positive. In its negative aspect it is false (mithya) and illusory. There is utter absence of right knowledge in it. In its positive aspect, it is a mysterious power of God. This world is created by God through māyā. It is an inherent power (śakti) of brahman. It is the cosmic power belonging to God. The two elements, nāma (name) and rupa (form), also belong to God and are known as His māyā through which the world-process is going on. As Samkara says:
"Belonging to the nature, as it were, of the omniscient Lord, there are nama (name) and rupa (form), the figments of avidyā, indefinable either as identical with or as different from the Lord, the germs of the world-process, and known in the scripture (śruti) and the traditional literature (smrti) as maya, śakti
76. Isa Upanisad, 6-7. 77. Brahmasutra-Śamkarabhāṣya, I.iii,19.
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