World of Philosophy

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

Page 817

explanation. The difficulty arises only if we regard the one as preceding to other. But if we regard ignorance and individuality as but the two interdependent aspects of the same fact as a circle and its circumference or a triangle and its side, the difficulty does not arise. Rāmānuja himself, when he fails to explain the cause of bondage of the pure soul, falls back upon the notion that the relation of Karma and ignorance with the soul is beginningless. Again, Māyā or Avidyā does not really conceal the real nature of Brahman. Concealment does not mean destruction of essential nature, as Rāmānuja and others think. The ignorance conceals Brahman in the sense preventing the ignorant individual from realizing his real nature, just as a patch af cloud conceals the sun by preventing a person from perceiving a sun. So, ignorance does not do any harm to the nature of Brahman just as cloud does not destroy the self-manifesting nature of the sun. The Sun does not cease to be self-revealing because the blind cannot see it. 91 It is also said that, nature of Avidyā canot be proved. It is neither positive, nor negative. If it is positive, it cannot be destroyed and there would be Advaita, the other reality being Brahman. If it is merely negative it cannot produce world illusion. It is also said that, if the Nirguna Brahman has to restore to Māyā, or Avidyā to account for something, Brahman would cease to be one without a second. But, Māyā is germinal power of Brahman which is neither the very nature of Brahman nor something different form it. Nature of Brahman is not affected by it. Brahman is untouched by blemishes of Māyā. Just as the face is not affected by any blemishes associated with the mirror in which it is reflected, Brahman does in no way lose its nature in any circumstance. Avidyā is felt, fact thus. it cannot be denied. It is destroyed after right knowledge, so, it is not real. This self controdictory nature is realized only when one rises above it and not before. Again, Maya is said to be indescribable owing to a genuine difficulty.92 In so far as it appears to be something, an illusion or illusory object cannot be said to be unreal like a square circle or the son of a barren woman, which never even appears to exist. Again, in so far as it is sublaied or contradicted afterwards by some experience, it cannot be said to be absolutely real like Brahman whose reality is never contradicted. Māyā and every illusory object have this nature and compel us to recognise this nature as something unique and indescribable in terms of ordinary reality or unreality. To say that Māyā is anirvacaniya is only to describe a fact, namely our inability to bring it under any ordinary category, and it does not
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