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tree etc. This type of experience undoubtedly belongs to higher level than pratibhâsika experience and it is called Vyavaharika (empirical) reality, This world which is the ground of all our activities and experiences, the individual ego, Isvara, belong to this order of reality. This world is relative, phenomenal and finile. But it is not illusory like Pratibhāsika. This phenomenal world and worldly objects exist because we all experience them. All experiences, thus, of worldly things belong to the level of empirical reality. Tais empirical world is real for all practical purposes. No one can deny it. If this world and individual souls are unreal, then it would be against the practical notions of our ordinary life and expe. rience. Sankara recogoizes the relative, empirical and pragmatic reality of the world. The empirical world cannot be called completely nonexistent because, then the practical utility of all worldly experiences would collapse. According to Sankara, the entire complex of phenomenal exis... tence is still true to a person who has not reached true knowledge and realized his self. On account of ignorance (avidya), we believe that this world and individual souls are completely real. As long as one is in the grip of this ignorance, the reality of the world and self is vouchsafed for him. For ordirary. ignorant people, this empirical order is the highest reality, because they do not rise to a higher level of experience. Yet, actually it is not the highest reality, because it becomes sublated after realization of Brahman or supreme self. Though the world is not real in the ultimate analysis, it is not absolutely unreal like the hare's horn. The unreality of the world is realized only when the absolute is realised. Till then, it is true for all practical purposes for man.
It is entirely erroneous to suppose that Sankara treats the world as illusory or unreal. He does not dis piss the experiences of the world and worldly objects as absolutely unreal. The world characterised by diversity and change is not wholly unreal. He only shows that this world becomes ontologically less real when Brahman is realized. He rightly points out that the world of the waking state cannot be reduced to the level of dream objects, though it resembles dreams in certain respects, “An object will not lose it's real nature and aquire that of another, merely because it resembles that other in certain respects."55 This manifold world is taken to be real as long as the essential unity of the Jiva with Brahman is not realiz-d.56 As long as this unity with Brahman, the supporting ground of all phenomena is not realised, the world with all its difference is perfectly real. 57 When Sankara says that world is 'mithya 58 it does not mean that the world is utterly unreal. This word is used by him to emphasize the ultimate unreality of the phenomenal world. It's existence in got denied but assigned to a lower ontological level. So, long w
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