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67 CHAPTER FIVE Brahman as the World Brahman is limitless (ananta) and, since the limitless cannot be two, brahman is regarded as non-dual. The term advaita actually means “non-dual” and its use is indicative of the general preference in the Upanis³ads, and in the Advaita tradition, to speak about brahman by describing what it is not. Since all words have finite references, the limitless brahman cannot be directly and positively signified by any word. Only a limited entity can be properly defined in finite language. This is the problem, for instance, with describing brahman as one and with characterizing Advaita as monism. Numerical categories, such as the number one, gain meaning from the existence of other numbers. When reality is non-dual, we are constrained to use such categories with caution.1 D EN Y I N G T H E R E A LI T Y A N D VA LU E O F T H E WO R LD If brahman is non-dual and limitless, how are we to understand the status and significance of the world in relation to brahman? Some Advaita commentators appear to suggest that the knowledge of brahman requires and results in the eradication of the experience of plurality.2 The world must, in some sense, be discarded before we can discover brahman. “The complex world of our ordinary experience disappears in the pure white light of spiritual simplicity. All distinctions, contradictions and multiplicities are transcended and obliterated.”3 In affirming brahman as absolute and limitless, the reality of the world is often denied. The world is likened to a sense-illusion, which we conjure, and experience because of our ignorance. The most famous of these analogies equates the world with a snake that is mistakenly perceived in place of a rope. “The world,” as T. M. P. Mahadevan puts it, “is but an illusory appearance in Brahman, even as the snake is in the rope.”4 The implication here is that when the rope is properly known, the illusory snake will no longer exist. In addition , the disappearance of the snake is a condition for truly knowing the rope. Similarly, when brahman is known the world ceases to be, and brahman cannot 68 THE ADVAITA WORLDVIEW be known as long as the world is experienced. After the reality of the world is denied, it is easy to deny meaning and value for it. Just as things and events seen in a dream vanish altogether and become meaningless when one wakes up, so does the universe with all its contents disappear when one finds the Real Self. One then becomes perfectly awakened to what really exists, the Absolute. Compared with That, the universe is no more than a dream. So long as one sees in a dream, the dream objects are intensely real. So also is the universe with all its contents to one under the spell of avidyā (ignorance). On awakening to Absolute Reality, however, all these have no value, no meaning, no existence.5 In his well-known work on Indian philosophy, Surendranath Dasgupta advances a similar interpretation of the view of Śanùkara on the status of the world. “The Upanis³ads,” in the words of Dasgupta, “held that reality or truth was one, and there was ‘no many’ anywhere, and Śanùkara 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.”6 If the world has no existence for the person who knows brahman, how is it possible for the liberated, the one who has attained moks³a, to live in a nonexistent world? If the world has no value after liberation, what is the nature and meaning of human action for the liberated? Do human relationships have any meaning or are these ontologically equivalent, as suggested in the following story told by the Hindu teacher Ramakrishna, to experiences occurring in a dream? There was a farmer who lived in the countryside. He was a real jñāni (wise person). He was married and after many years a son was born to him, whom he named Haru. The parents loved the boy dearly. This was natural since he was the one precious gem of the family. On account of his religious nature, the farmer was loved by the villagers. One day he was working in the field when a neighbor came and told him that Haru had...

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