The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s3.5

v2.c40.s3.5

The apparent multiplicity of the universe and the empirical knowledge of man is not in the view of Çañkara to be denied for a moment. Çañkara wages war both against the idealistic school of Buddhism, which denies that there is any real distinction between dreams and waking reality, and the nihilistic school, which asserts that all is mere void. Existence is not momentary at all: it has a substantiality and is real, but only from the point of view of the lower knowledge.¹ The Ātman in itself has allied with it a power, Māyā, illusion, which limits it: the limitation is not indeed real, for that would hopelessly violate the essential doctrine of Çañkara which denies any dualism whatever; but from the point of view of the lower knowledge that illusion exists, and through that illusion exists all that there is in the universe as known to us. Thus, there is room for a great god, the Hiraṇyagarbha of the Veda, who occupies the position of a demiourgos, inasmuch as he is the Ātman, when it is obscured by illusion, and there is afforded an explanation for the seeming multiplicity of souls, for the unending stream of life, for the world of living creatures and inanimate nature. All indeed is an illusion, but it has within that fundamental fact all the appearance of reality.²