World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 811

The dream world is private and personal. The world of experience is public and has an objective reference. It also satisfy the pragmatic test. Far from condemning this world to be unreal, Sankara claims some sort of reality even for error and dillusion. It is the real which appears and hence every appearance must have some degree of truth in it, though none can be absolutely true. Objects, seen in a dream are quite real as long as the dream losts. The water in dream can quench the thirst in a dream. It is only when we are awake that we can realize the falsity of the dream states. So long as rope is mistaken for a snake, it is sufficient to frighten the person who mistakes it. Similarly, so long as we are engrossed in ignorance, the world is quite real for us. It is only when true knowledge dawns that the world becomes sublated. This world becomes ontologically less real when Brahman is realized.65 Sankara rightly points out that the world of waking state cannot be reduced to the level of dream objects though it resembles dreams in certain respects. "An object will not lose its real nature and acquire that of another, merely because it resembles that other in certain respects." This manifold world is taken to be real as long as the essential unity of the Jiva with Brahman is not realized. As long as this unity with Brahman, the supporting ground of all phenomena is not realized, the world with all its difference is perfectly real. It is only from the absolute stand point when right knowledge is attained that the Advaita Vedānta declares the world to be unreal.
Criticism of Māyāvāda
Sankara's doctrine of Māyā, is unfortunately, misunderstood and misrepresented by many thinkers. For certain thinkers the word Māyă connotes nothing but the utter illusoriness of the world. This doctrine has been the target of much adverse criticism, even by the eminent philosophers, all down the ages, from Bhāskara to Sri Aurobindo. Even great Jain thinkers, like Vidyānandi and others criticise the Mayāvāda. Bhāskarācārya, is the first thinker to criticise Māyāvāda, who was either contemporary of Sankara or flourished just after his death. Bhāskara thinks that Māyāvāda is due to the influence of Māhāyāna Buddhism67 and it is an unwarranted hypothesis; Quoting a verse from Pudmapurāna, he states that, Sankara's Māyāvāda is asat 'Šāstra' and it is hidden Buddhism with its roots cut assunder.68 While criticising the doctrine of Māyā Bhāskara argues, that so called Māyā or Avidyā, which projects the sensible world of
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