History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c95.79

v7.c95.79

The highest metaphysical standpoint can be realized by only a few. For millions of men, the empirical standpoint alone remains and it is for them that texts speak of a personal God, ritual and sacrifices; they are only on the first rung of the ladder to enlightenment and are only dimly aware of God; there is a much smaller class of people other than the preceding, who pray, seek God and come to realize that God is both immanent and transcendent; there is a third class of a very few people, the great sages and masters, the spiritual elite such as Śaṅkarācārya, who reach the peak of pure monism, who lose the sense of the ego and who are ripe for entering into union with the One and they cannot and should not say that the individual soul and the physical world are all unreal (or Māyā). Both Bādarāyaṇa (V. S II. 2 29 'Vaidharmyāc-ca na svapnādivat') and Śaṅkarācārya are agreed that the ordinary physical world is entirely different from dreams and that the impressions in the waking state are not independent of existing objects. Apart from the question whether the word 'Māyā' used in V. S. III. 2. 3 (Māyāmātram tu &c.) is used by Bādarāyaṇa in the sense in which Śaṅkarācārya understands it, it cannot be denied that Upaniṣad passages like Kaṭha Up. II. 4. 2, Praśna I, 16, Chān Up. VIII. 3. 1-2, the prayer in Bṛ. Up. I. 3. 28 (asato mā sadgamaya &c) could easily suggest the doctrine of Māyā and lead to it as an intelligible development. Hence the proper language for almost all men is not to speak about the world as Māyā (illusion). If the individual soul and the world are unreal, then it may be argued by one who does not subscribe to the doctrine of Māyā as against those who hold it that you are teaching that an unreal soul has to escape from an unreal Saṁsāra and secure what you call mokṣa by means which are themselves unreal (such as Upaniṣad study) and that therefore mokṣa itself is unreal. How the one Reality becomes many and expresses itself in the ever-changing physical world is really an inexplicable mystery, but that does not entitle all of us to say that the world is unreal or a dream. The few highly philosophical men may say that what is real is the one Absolute, that all else is only an appearance of that Absolute. Common men may, however, complain that explanations offered by these philosophers do not satisfy them or are beyond them.