Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s22.2

v2.c26.s22.2

The concept of māyā is intimately related with that of avidyā. There are passages in Śaṃkara where the world of experience is traced to the force of avidyā. The cause of the appearance of the world is to be sought in the nature of the intellect, and not in that of Brahman. Brahman exists entire and undivided in the smallest object, and the appearance of plurality is due to the intellect which works according to the laws of space, time and causality. In the Introduction to his commentary on the Brahma Sūtra he points out how avidyā is the force that launches us into the dream of life. The tendency to confuse the transcendental and the empirical standpoints, or adhyāsa, however erroneous, is natural to the human mind. It is the result of our cognitive mechanism.² As we perceive by our senses sound and colour, while the reality is mere vibrations, even so we accept the variegated universe for the reality of Brahman, of which it is the effect. Through an examination of the subjective side of experience, Śaṃkara argues that we cannot attain to a knowledge of reality, so long as we are subject to avidyā, or the logical mode of thinking. Avidyā is the fall from intuition, the mental deformity of the finite self that disintegrates the divine into a thousand different fragments. Darkness is the privation of light. Avidyā is what Deussen calls "the innate obscuration of our knowledge,"¹ the twist of the mind which makes it impossible for it to see things except through the texture of space-time-cause. It is not conscious dissimulation, but the unconscious tendency of the finite mind, which lives by the imperfect standards of the world. It is the negative power which shuts us from our godlike existence. The appearance of Brahman as the world is due to our avidyā, even as the appearance of the rope as the snake is due to defective senses. When we see the rope as it is, the snake becomes unreal. When we see the reality of Brahman, the appearance of the world will flee away. That which is proved to be an unreality by a higher experience cannot be connected with reality except through a confusion of standpoints. The appearances stand transfigured in the Absolute. If we are asked to connect the image of the snake with the reality of the rope, we say that no connection is possible between what is and what is not. We have only to blame the eye for the image. When we see the rope as rope, there is an end of the matter, and we say that the rope appeared as the snake. Relativity has no cause except defective insight. It operates no farther than the fact that we see things, while there is only caitanya, or pure consciousness. Avidyā is either absence of knowledge or doubtful and erroneous knowledge. It is not simply negative, but is also positive in character (bhāvarūpa). When Śaṁkara argues that the existence of avidyā is patent to all, he means only that there is the fact of finiteness. It is said that everybody has the feeling that he does not know everything.² The evidence for its existence is universal in scope, since all finite minds share the deficiency.