The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.64

c11.64

the *ātman*. As long as this is not recognised, the Hindus say there is *avidyā* "ignorance," or, more literally and philosophically "nescience." Or they say that there is *māyā* "illusion." All else aside from this single truth is a mere mirage in the desert, and is so far as it must after all have some kind of a connection with Brahma, have some reality in Brahma, it is no more real than the reflection of the real moon which we see trembling on the ripple of the waters. Even the very conception of nescience or illusion is, of course, not real, because it can be annihilated, and whatever is temporary is not real. What induced the time-less, space-less, and cause-less Brahma to enter upon the escapade of this phenomenal world of time, space, and causality, the Hindu thinkers cannot tell us. Their mythology is full of crude ideas of the primitive being's loneliness and desire to multiply, but these ideas belong to the lower forms of their religion; they are not entertained by their philosophers. This is the point where Hinduism like every system of idealistic philosophy breaks down. Plato's *τὸ ὄντως ὄν*; the *ens realissimum*; Kant's *ding an sich*; the Upanishads' "That only True" are all very well, but the world of phenomena to explain that—aye there's the rub. This pesky world of plural things, full of irrational quantities—why does it exist, and is it not pounding along toward some end that will show a uniting principle? With that kind of suggestion the Hindu will have nothing to do. Entranced by the absolute reality of the one Brahma he wafts away the world of experience as a conjurer an optical delusion.