Outlines of Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Paul Deussen
Publisher: Crest Publishing House

Page 56

COSMOLOGY
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Samsara though not the absolute truth, is a mythical representative of a truth which in itself is unattainable to our intellect; mythical is this theory of metempsychosis only in so far as it invests in the forms of space and time what really is spaceless and timeless, and therefore beyond the reach of our understanding. So the Samsara is just so far from the truth, as the sagunâ vidyâ is from the nirgunâ vidyâ, it is the eternal truth itself, but (since we cannot conceive it otherwise) the truth in an allegorical form, adapted to our human understanding. And this is the character of the whole exoteric Vedânta, whilst the esoteric doctrine tries to find out the Philosophical, the absolute truth.
And so we come to the esoteric Cosmology, whose simple doctrine is this, that in reality there is no manifold world, but only Brahman, and that what we consider as the world, is a mere illusion (mâyâ) similar to a mrigatrishnika, which disappears when we approach it, and not more to be feared than the rope, which we took in the darkness for a serpent. There are, as you see, many similes in the Vedânta, to illustrate the illusive character of this world, but the best of them is perhaps, when Çarikara compares our life with a long dream; -- a man whilst dreaming does not doubt of the reality of the dream, but this reality disappears in the moment of awakening, to give place to a truer reality, which we were not aware of whilst dreaming. The life a dream! this has been the