Samayasara

Author(s): A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 89

INTRODUCTION
extraneous conditions of caste, birth, etc. But for this false conception Vedic Dharma could have no meaning and no validity for Dharma pertains to Varna, which in turn depends upon the body and not upon the soul. Because of the false identity between soul and body we speak of one as a Brahmin or a Ksatriya. These attributes are true only of the body and yet are falsely associated with the self. Thus Sankara not only indicates the truth that the self and the environment are distinct but also suggests that the confusion and false identity is due to avidya. From a thinker who emphasised the danger of this philosophical error we should naturally expect consistently a system of philosophy strictly maintaining the opposites. On the other hand, Sankara offers just the reverse. He dismisses the distinction between self and non-self as unreal and unphilosophical. What is the nature of the external world according to Sankara? Gauḍapăda already compared it to a dream. Sankara accepts the same without question. The diversity and objectivity of the world of things and persons are all illusory. The objective world around is but the maya of the juggler, the juggler in this case being Atman himself. Since the juggler himself is not a victim to his own illusion so the highest self is not affected by the world-illusion, The whole of the external world is but the manifestation of Brahma or Atman. The substance of which this world is constituted being Cetana is genuine ly akin to dreams. That it is a dream will not be evident to us so long as we are dreaming, so long as there is avidya. When we wake from this dream to another world then the dream-world will vanish. When the individual wakes up into highest selfhood then he will understand the dreamlike illusory nature of his former experience. When he rids himself of overpowering avidya the multiplicity and objectivity will automatically disappear.
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Is the individual atman real according to Sankara? The individual self shares the same fate as the objective world. All the other Indian systems of thought recognised individual atman to be eternal and uncreated. But in the hands of Sankara the individual soul dwindles into a shadow of a higher reality. In the passages emphasising his own advaita view he rejects the panthetistic view according to which the objective world and the individual self can be real and yet subsisting in the same universal. Several passages in the Upanisads compares the Brahma to a tree and the individuals to various branches thereof. Unity and multiplicity are both real in organic life. So is the ocean one though the waves are many. So the clay is the same though the pots are many. These Upanisadic passages do not and need not necessarily imply the doctrine of the illusoriness of the world and individual selves. But such an interpretation Sankara does not want. He sternly rejects that as erroneous. He emphasises the unity as absolute. If the phenomenal world and individual souls are unreal then it would be against the practical notions of ordinary life. Such consequences are not disconcerting to Sankara. Such objections do not damage his position,