View source for Indian Philosophy: The S'ankara School Of Vedânta

==The main idea of the Vedânta philosophy==

The main idea of the advaita (non-dualistic) Vedãnta philosophy as taught by the S'akara school is this, that the ultimate and absolute truth is the self, which is one, though appearing as many in different individuals. The world also as apart from us the individuals has no reality and has no other truth to show than this self. All other events, mental or physical, are but passing appearances, while the only absolute and unchangeable truth underlying them all is the self. 

While other systems investigated the pramanas only to examine how far they could determine the objective truth of things or our attitude in practical life towards them, Vedãnta sought to reach beneath the surface of appearances, and enquired after the final and ultimate truth underlying the microcosm and the macrocosm, the subject and the object. The famous instruction of S'vetaketu, the most important Vedânta text (mahâvâkya) says, "That art thou, O S'vetaketu." 

This comprehension of my self as the ultimate truth is the highest knowledge, for when this knowledge is once produced, our cognition of world-appearances will automatically cease. Unless the mind is chastened and purged of all passions and desires, the soul cannot comprehend this truth; but when this is once done, and the soul is anxious for salvation by a knowledge of the highest truth, the preceptor instructs him, "That art thou." At once he becomes the truth itself, which is at once identical with pure bliss and pure intelligence; all ordinary notions and cognitions of diversity and of the
[Footnote 1: All that is important in S'ankara's commentary of the Brahma-sûtras has been excellently systematized by Deussen in his System of the Vedanta; it is therefore unnecessary for me to give any long account of this part. Most of what follows has been taken from the writings of his followers.]
many cease; there is no duality, no notion of mine and thane; the vast illusion of this world process is extinct in him, and he shines forth as the one, the truth, the Brahman. 

All Hindu systems believed that when man attained salvation, he became divested of all world-consciousness, or of all consciousness of himself and his interests, and was thus reduced to his own original purity untouched by all sensations, perceptions, feelings and willing, but there the idea was this that when man had no bonds of karma and no desire and attachment with the world and had known the nature of his self as absolutely free and unattached to the world and his own psychosis, he became emancipated from the world and all his connections with the world ceased, though the world continued as ever the same with others. 

The external world was a reality with them; the unreality or illusion consisted in want of true knowledge about the real nature of the self, on account of which the self foolishly identified itself with world-experiences, worldly joys and world-events, and performed good and bad works accordingly. The force of accumulated karmas led him to undergo the experiences brought about by them. 

While reaping the fruits of past karmas he, as ignorant as ever of his own self, worked again under the delusion of a false relationship between himself and the world, and so the world process ran on. Mufti (salvation) meant the dissociation of the self from the subjective psychosis and the world. This condition of the pure state of self was regarded as an unconscious one by Nyâya-Vais'esika and Mîmamsâ, and as a state of pure intelligence by Sâmkhya and Yoga. But with Vedânta the case is different, for it held that the world as such has no real existence at all, but is only an illusory imagination which lasts till the moment when true knowledge is acquired. As soon as we come to know that the one truth is the self, the Brahman, all our illusory perceptions representing the world as a field of experience cease. 

This happens not because the connections of the self with the world cease, but because the appearance of the world process does not represent the ultimate and highest truth about it. All our notions about the abiding diversified world (lasting though they may be from beginningless time) are false in the sense that they do not represent the real truth about it. We not only do not know what we ourselves really are, but do not also know what the world about us is. We take our ordinary experiences of the world as representing
it correctly, and proceed on our career of daily activity. It is no doubt true that these experiences show us an established order having its own laws, but this does not represent the real truth. 

They are true only in a relative sense, so long as they appear to be so; for the moment the real truth about them and the self is comprehended all world-appearances become unreal, and that one truth, the Brahman, pure being, bliss, intelligence, shines forth as the absolute—the only truth in world and man. 

The world-appearance as experienced by us is thus often likened to the illusory perception of silver in a conch-shell; for the moment the perception appears to be true and the man runs to pick it up, as if the conch-shell were a real piece of silver; but as soon as he finds out the truth that this is only a piece of conch-shell, he turns his back on it and is no longer deluded by the appearance or again attracted towards it. The illusion of silver is inexplicable in itself, for it was true for all purposes so long as it persisted, but when true knowledge was acquired, it forthwith vanished. This world-appearance will also vanish when the true knowledge of reality dawns. When false knowledge is once found to be false it cannot return again. The Upanisads tell us that he who sees the many here is doomed. 

The one, the Brahman, alone is true; all else is but delusion of name and form. Other systems believed that even after emancipation, the world would continue as it is, that there was nothing illusory in it, but I could not have any knowledge of it because of the absence of the instruments by the processes of which knowledge was generated. The Sâmkhya purusa cannot know the world when the buddhi-stuff is dissociated from it and merged in the prakrti, the Mîmâmsâ and the Nyâya soul is also incapable of knowing the world after emancipation, as it is then dissociated from manas. 

But the Vedânta position is quite distinct here. We cannot know the world, for when the right knowledge dawns, the perception of this world-appearance proves itself to be false to the person who has witnessed the truth, the Brahman. An illusion cannot last when the truth is known; what is truth is known to us, but what is illusion is undemonstrable, unspeakable, and indefinite. The illusion runs on from beginningless time; we do not know how it is related to truth, the Brahman, but we know that when the truth is once known the false knowledge of this
world-appearance disappears once for all. No intermediate link is necessary to effect it, no mechanical dissociation of buddhi or manas, but just as by finding out the glittering piece to be a conch-shell the illusory perception of silver is destroyed, so this illusory perception of world-appearance is also destroyed by a true knowledge of the reality, the Brahman. The Upanisads held that reality or truth was one, and there was "no many" anywhere, and S'añkara explained it by adding that the "many" was merely an illusion, and hence did not exist in reality and was bound to disappear when the truth was known. 

The world-appearance is mâyâ (illusion). This is what S'añkara emphasizes in expounding his constructive system of the Upanisad doctrine. The question is sometimes asked, how the mâyâ becomes associated with Brahman. But Vedânta thinks this question illegitimate, for this association did not begin in time either with reference to the cosmos or with reference to individual persons. In fact there is no real association, for the creation of illusion does not affect the unchangeable truth. Mâyâ or illusion is no real entity, it is only false knowledge (avidyâ) that makes the appearance, which vanishes when the reality is grasped and found. Mâyâ or avidyâ has an apparent existence only so long as it lasts, but the moment the truth is known it is dissolved. 

It is not a real entity in association with which a real world-appearance has been brought into permanent existence, for it only has existence so long as we are deluded by it (prâtîtika-sattâ). Mâyâ therefore is a category which baffles the ordinary logical division of existence and non-existence and the principle of excluded middle. For the mâyâ can neither be said to be "is" nor "is not" (tattvânyatvâbhyâm anirvacanîyâ). 

It cannot be said that such a logical category does not exist, for all our dream and illusory cognitions demonstrate it to us. They exist as they are perceived, but they do not exist since they have no other independent existence than the fact of their perception. If it has any creative function, that function is as illusive as its own nature, for the creation only lasts so long as the error lasts. Brahman, the truth, is not in any way sullied or affected by association with mâyâ, for there can be no association of the real with the empty, the mâyâ, the illusory. It is no real association but a mere appearance.
In what sense is the world-appearance false?
The world is said to be false—a mere product of mâyâ. The falsehood of this world-appearance has been explained as involved in the category of the indefinite which is neither sat "is" nor asat "is not." Here the opposition of the "is" and "is not" is solved by the category of time. 

The world-appearance is "is not," since it does not continue to manifest itself in all times, and has its manifestation up to the moment that the right knowledge dawns. It is not therefore "is not" in the sense that a "castle in the air" or a hare's horn is "is not," for these are called tuccha, the absolutely non-existent. The world-appearance is said to be "is" or existing, since it appears to be so for the time the state of ignorance persists in us. Since it exists for a time it is sat (is), but since it does not exist for all times it is asat (is not). This is the appearance, the falsehood of the world-appearance (jagat-prapañca) that it is neither sat nor asat in an absolute sense. 

Or rather it may also be said in another way that the falsehood of the world-appearance consists in this, that though it appears to be the reality or an expression or manifestation of the reality, the being, sat, yet when the reality is once rightly comprehended, it will be manifest that the world never existed, does not exist, and will never exist again. This is just what we find in an illusory perception; when once the truth is found out that it is a conch-shell, we say that the silver, though it appeared at the time of illusory perception to be what we saw before us as "this" (this is silver), yet it never existed before, does not now exist, and will never exist again. 

In the case of the illusory perception of silver, the "this" (pointing to a thing before me) appeared as silver; in the case of the world-appearance, it is the being (sat), the Brahman, that appears as the world; but as in the case when the "this" before us is found to be a piece of conch-shell, the silver is at once dismissed as having had no existence in the "this" before us, so when the Brahman, the being, the reality, is once directly realized, the conviction comes that the world never existed. 

The negation of the world-appearance however has no separate existence other than the comprehension of the identity of the real. The fact that the real is realized is the same as that the world-appearance is negated. The negation here involved refers both to the thing negated (the world-appearance) and the
negation itself, and hence it cannot be contended that when the conviction of the negation of the world is also regarded as false (for if the negation is not false then it remains as an entity different from Brahman and hence the unqualified monism fails), then this reinstates the reality of the world-appearance; for negation of the world-appearance is as much false as the world-appearance itself, and hence on the realization of the truth the negative thesis, that the world-appearance does not exist, includes the negation also as a manifestation of world-appearance, and hence the only thing left is the realized identity of the truth, the being. The peculiarity of this illusion of world-appearance is this, that it appears as consistent with or inlaid in the being (sat) though it is not there. 

This of course is dissolved when right knowledge dawns. This indeed brings home to us the truth that the world-appearance is an appearance which is different from what we know as real (sadvilaksana); for the real is known to us as that which is proved by the pramanas, and which will never again be falsified by later experience or other means of proof. A thing is said to be true only so long as it is not contradicted; but since at the dawn of right knowledge this world-appearance will be found to be false and non-existing, it cannot be regarded as real [Footnote ref l]. 

Thus Brahman alone is true, and the world-appearance is false; falsehood and truth are not contrary entities such that the negation or the falsehood of falsehood will mean truth. The world-appearance is a whole and in referring to it the negation refers also to itself as a part of the world-appearance and hence not only is the positive world-appearance false, but the falsehood itself is also false; when the world-appearance is contradicted at the dawn of right knowledge, the falsehood itself is also contradicted.
Brahman differs from all other things in this that it is self-luminous (svaprakâs'a) and has no form; it cannot therefore be the object of any other consciousness that grasps it. All other things, ideas, emotions, etc., in contrast to it are called drs'ya (objects of consciousness), while it is the drastâ (the pure consciousness comprehending all objects). 

As soon as anything is comprehended as an expression of a mental state (vrtti), it is said to have a form and it becomes drs'ya, and this is the characteristic of all objects of consciousness that they cannot reveal themselves apart from being manifested as objects of consciousness through a mental state.
[Footnote 1: See Advaitasiddhi, Mithyâtvanirukti.]
Brahman also, so long as it is understood as a meaning of the Upanisad text, is not in its true nature; it is only when it shines forth as apart from the associations of any form that it is svaprakâs'a and drastâ. The knowledge of the pure Brahman is devoid of any form or mode. The notion of drs'yatva (objectivity) carries with it also the notion of jadatva (materiality) or its nature as non-consciousness (ajñânatva) and non-selfness (anâtmatva) which consists in the want of self-luminosity of objects of consciousness. The relation of consciousness (jñâna) to its objects cannot be regarded as real but as mere illusory impositions, for as we shall see later, it is not possible to determine the relation between knowledge and its forms. Just as the silver-appearance of the conch-shell is not its own natural appearance, so the forms in which consciousness shows itself are not its own natural essence. In the state of emancipation when supreme bliss (ânanda) shines forth, the ânanda is not an object or form of the illuminating consciousness, but it is the illumination itself. 

Whenever there is a form associated with consciousness, it is an extraneous illusory imposition on the pure consciousness. These forms are different from the essence of consciousness, not only in this that they depend on consciousness for their expression and are themselves but objects of consciousness, but also in this that they are all finite determinations (paricchinna), whereas consciousness, the abiding essence, is everywhere present without any limit whatsoever. 

The forms of the object such as cow, jug, etc. are limited in themselves in what they are, but through them all the pure being runs by virtue of which we say that the cow is, the jug is, the pot is. Apart from this pure being running through all the individual appearances, there is no other class (jâti) such as cowness or jugness, but it is on this pure being that different individual forms are illusorily imposed (ghatâdîkam sadarthekalpitam, pratyekam tadanubiddhatvena pratîyamânatvât). So this world-appearance which is essentially different from the Brahman, the being which forms the material cause on which it is imposed, is false (_upâdânanisthâiyaniâbhâvapratiyogitvalaksanamithyâtvasiddhih —as Citsukha has it).