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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Vedānta (S'amkara)
481
with Praksti.”! The God or Isvara is the Brahman but qualified by certain adjuncts like the Māyā and has personal relations with the individual souls that are devoted to him. God creates the wonderful world to delude the individual souls having finite and limited powers of cognition and who are unable to penetrate through the veil of the Māyā; but He Himself knows that it is quite unreal and unsubstantial. S'aṁkara quotes Gauda pada in the following passage regarding this point -“As the magician is not at any time affected by the magical illusion produced by himself because it is unreal, so the highest self (Paramātmā) is not affected by the world-illusion. And as one dreaming person is not affected by the illusory visions of his dreams because they do not accompany the waking state and the state of dreamless sleep; so the one permanent witness of the three states (viz. the highest self which is one unchanging witness of the creation, subsistence and reabsorption of the world) is not touched by the mutually exclusive states. For that the highest Self appears in those three states, is a mere illusion, not more substantial than the snake for which the rope is mistaken in the twilight."2 Thus Māyā is created out of the imagination and unique power of God, but it does not delude Him as He himself is
1 Radhakrishnan S. : Indian Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 572.
% S'ařkara (Com.) on Vedanta Sūtras. Tr. Thibaut, 2.1.9. Vol. I, p. 312.
यथा स्वयं प्रसारितया मायया मायावी त्रिष्वपि कालेषु न संस्पृश्यते,
अवस्तुत्वात् , एवं परमात्माऽपि संसारमायया न संस्पृश्यत इति । Ā 31
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