Illusion! For whom? (Upanishads...)

The Advaitic concept of Maya or illusion is often taken for granted and projected as the obvious conclusion of the Upanishads. But is it really that obvious?

Opponents of Šankara have written volumes, criticizing him for his concept of Maya. I have lot of respect for Šankara’s intellectual eminence. But I too find it difficult to accept this concept. Not just because it does not match my understanding of the Upanishads, but also because it leads to contradicting Advaita’s own tenets. 

The key proclamation of Advaita is

“Brahma, (or Ätma), is the (only) reality, (Satya). This world, (Jagat), is an illusion, (Mithya). An individual soul ,(Jiva), is no different from the Brahma”

If there is nothing else that exists, but only the Brahma, and if you say that someone sees an illusory world because of ignorance, then the obvious conclusion is that the Brahma is sometimes prone to ignorance! 

But the Brahma, by its very definition, is omniscient and can’t suffer from ignorance. So who is that one, who is ignorant, and the one who needs to dispel this ignorance?

Most Advaitis try to wriggle out this tricky question, and even go to the extent of saying, that the entire idea of someone in ignorance; someone wanting to know who that is… ,and so on, are all part of illusion! That means Šankara, his theory of Advaita, Upanishads, and so on, are all part of a grand illusion! That leads us nowhere!

Šankara tries to address this question, in his own way. But I am not very convinced by the explanation he gives.

In the next posts I will talk about whether the Upanishadic concept of universal identity is useful to realize.

                                                                                                      

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