Part 7 - In what sense is the world-appearance false?

The world is said to be false—a mere product of māyā. 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 (jagatprapañca) 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 how’ever 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 (sadvilakṣaiia); for the real is known to us as that which is proved by the pramāṇas, 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^[1]. 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 (svaprakāśa) 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 drśya (objects of consciousness), while it is the draṣṭā (the pure consciousness comprehending all objects). As soon as anything is comprehended as an expression of a mental state (vṛtti), it is said to have a form and it becomes drśya, 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. Brahman also, so long as it is understood as a meaning of the Upaniṣad 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 svaprakāśa and draṣṭā.

The knowledge of the pure Brahman is devoid of any form or mode. The notion of dṛśyatva (objectivity) carries with it also the notion of jadatva (materiality) or its nature as nonconsciousness (ajñānatva) and non-selfness (anātmatva) which consists in the want of self-luminosity of objects of consciousness. The relation of consciousness (jñāna) 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 (ānanda) shines forth, the ānanda 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 (jāti) such as cowness or jugness, but it is on this pure being that different individual forms are illusorily imposed (ghatādikam sadarthekalpitam , pratyekam tadanubiddhatvena pratīyamānatvāt). 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 (upāaānaniṣṭhātyantābhāvapratiyogitvalak-ṣaṇamithyātvasidahiḥ —as Citsukha has it).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See Advaitasuddhi, Mithyātvanirukti.