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CV111
SAMAYASARA
not want.
individual self can be real and yet subsisting in the same universal. Several passages in the Upanishads compares the Brahman 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 Upanishadic 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 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, because the entire complex of phenomenal existence is still true to a person who has not reached the true knowledge and realised his true self. As long as one is in ignorance the reality of the world and self is vouchsafed for him. He may behave as if these were true and his life not affected by the higher philosophical doctrine. Sankara's self is thus an absolute-a sort of Parmenidean absoluteeternal and unchanging.
What has Sankara to say about the several passages in the Vedic scriptures which speak of the creation and evolution of the world? If the world of concrete reality is illussory the Vedic doctrines of creation would have no meaning. This objection he wards off with the remark that the creating qualities of Brahman depends on the evolution of the germical principles Nama and Rupa. The fundamental truth that we maintain is that the creation, destruction and sustenance of the world all proceed from an omniscient and omnipotent principle and not from an unintelligent Pradhana. While maintaining absoulte unity or Advaita of self how can the above be maintained? The longing of the self-the name and form are the figments of Nescience. These are not to be either as being the same or different from it. The germs of the entire phenomenal world is called' in the Sruti, Maya or illusion, Sakti or Power, Prakriti or Nature. Different from these is the omniscient world. Hence the Lord depends upon the limiting adjuncts of Maya and Rupa the products of the avidya out of which Is→
