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III. VI]
AVIDYA IN THE VEDANTA SCHOOL
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of the bodily organism and its members which serve to make one eternal self appear as many selves. So when these limitations imposed by the physical organisms are destroyed the seeming plurality of selves is dissolved into the one eternal self, just as the spaces enclosed within the different enclosures are restored to their identity with one eternal space on the cessation of the enclosures. As the space occupied by jar (ghatākāśa) is neither a transformation nor a part of the one homogeneous space (äkāśa) so is always an individual self (jiva) neither a transformation nor a fraction of the eternal self (ātman). As the space appears to be soiled with dirt to the ignorant, so appears the self (ātman), too, with impurities, to those who are not enlightened.' The self exists unaffected amidst death, birth and other movements even as the space remains unaffected by its connections with various things.
All the sanghātas (conglomerations of limbs etc.) are like dream, being projected by the māyā of the atman. There is therefore) indeed no ground for greatness or smallness among things.'?
Gaudapāda refers to the fivefold koşas of the Taittirīya Upanişad and the madhuvidyā of the Brhadāranyaka and says that they reveal the supreme Brahman. The Upanisads extol absolute identity of the individual self (jiva) and the Absolute (Brahman) and censure all plurality. This is proper only if the Absolute Brahman is postulated.4 The Upanişadic statements about creation are to be understood in the context of the Absolute Brahman. They are all only a means for an introduction to truth. There is no plurality. The dualists are realists, that is to say, they believe in the reality of the empirical world—the world of our senses and understanding. They think that the world is as it appears and it exists even when it is unperceived. In other words, the objective world has got both empirical and metempirical reality. The non-dualists, on the other hand, do not deny the actuality of appearance and accordingly accord to the world an empirical reality, though they deny ultimate metempirical reality to it on account of contradictions. The non-dualist does not contradict experience, but only reinterprets it, while the dualists quarrel among themselves because
1 nā "kāśasya ghatākāso vikārāvayavau yatha
nai vã "tmanaḥ sadā jīvo vikārāvayavau tathā. yathā bhavati bālānām gaganam malinam malaiḥ
tathā bhavaty, abuddhänām ātmā 'pi malino malaiḥ.-AS, III. 7-8. 2 sanghātāḥ svapnavat sarve ātma-māyā-visarjitāḥ
adhikye sarvasāmye vā no 'papattir hi vidyate.-ĀS, III. IO. 3 ÄS, III. II-I2. 4 Cf. ĀS, III. 13.
5 Cf. AS, III. 14-15. 6 Cf. svasiddhanta-vyavasthāsu dvaitino niścitā drdham
parasparam virudhyante tair ayam na virudhyate. advaitam paramartho hi dvaitam tadbheda ucyate teşām ubhayathä dvaitam tenā 'yam na virudhyate.-ĀS, III. 17-18.
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