________________
OO
DOCTRINE OF MĀYA-A CRITICAL STUDY
Dr. Yajneshwar S. Shastri
Adi Sankarācārya is one of the most outstanding philosophical personalities in the history of world-thought. There is no second opinion among the scholars that in metaphysical profoundity, logical acumen and spiritual insight, he is unparalleled among Indian thinkers. His Advaita philosophy is a rare contribution to mankind. Sarkara-the chief exponent of Advaita, adopting absolutistic approach to Reality maintains that the real is Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. It is one without a second.2 It is attributeless, beyond space and time, indeterminate, real being, but it appears to be non-being to dull-minded people.3 It is the highest universal in which all the particulars merge. He declares in clear terms that, Brahman is the only ontological Reality and except it everything else is just name and form.5 For Sankara, Brahman is all-pervading energy. The most outstanding feature of Sankara is that he proclaims the ultimate identity of the individual self (Jiva) or consciousness with the universal Principle of consciousness--Brahman. He also advocates the non-difference of the entire world with the Brahman-Absolute existence, but by that non-difference he does not mean the same kind of identity as that of the self with it. Vācaspati Mišra rightly points out that, non-difference to Sankara is merely a denial of difference or independent reality, and not an affirmation of identity in the strict sense. And it is, according to him, only, when a person has directly realized his own identity with Brahman, that can have a fully convincing experience of the universal non-difference.8
Again, it is most essential to know the definition of 'real (Satya) and ‘unreal (ansta) given by Sankara to understand his philosoplıy. Without giving the notice to this fact, critics of Sankara have missed the essence of Advaita philosophy of this great genious. Sankara maintains that a thing cannot be said to be real simply because it is perceived, for, perception is common to both the real and the unreal things. Real is something which is never non-existent, something uncontradicted in tripletime (i.e. in past, present and future). It is not subject to change, is unalterable in its essential nature. That object, which essentially remains what it is, is truly real. Thus, Sankara has defined the real as 'that the ascertained nature of which does not undergo any change' or as 'that
