The analogy and explanation that I am going to discuss now apparently is first put forth by some well known Swami of Ramakrishna order, successors of Swami Vivekananda. This analogy is often used by many modern Advaita teachers to explain the concept of Maya or illusory nature of this world. The analogy is quite interesting and very close. But not quite close. Let us see how.
The story starts with a kid watching a movie along with its Dad in a movie theatre. The kid is quite perplexed by the events that go on in the movie. It takes them to be real. But it is quite puzzled how all those things can happen in a limited space in front of him. So, he asks his father for an explanation.
Father explains to the kid that whatever is going on in front is not real. They are merely images projected onto a screen.
But the kid is further puzzled.
“Where is this screen that you are talking about? I can’t see any screen!”
The father asks the kid to wait till the intermission when the projection stops temporarily.
The curious kid waits till the intermission. But in the beginning of the intermission, the child only sees darkness and no ‘screen’!
But after sometime, the lights in the cinema hall are turned on. That is when the kid clearly sees the screen in front of it. And now it understands what a screen is and how the movie is ‘created’ on this very screen when the lights are turned off. Once the movie starts, you cannot see the screen even though it is always there. To see the screen, the movie should stop and lights should be turned on.
Now the Advatis go on mapping this analogy to various things in their theory of Advaita.
They say that the Atma is the movie screen onto which the cinema of life is projected. Only when it is dark, which means when you are ignorant, you see the movie of life. And everything that happens in the movie appears as if real. But they are only projections on a screen which does not change in anyway. The screen merely supports this projection of movie of life.
The movie itself, though it appears to be real, is only an illusion created by play of light on the screen. Only the screen is real in the ultimate sense. To ascertain that truth, you need to switch on the light in the theatre. That instantly stops the movie illusion and makes the screen very evident. And this ‘turning ON’ of the light is the attainment of ultimate realization and coming out of the state of ignorance.
For a realized person, this entire world, the life that goes on in it are all illusions. Such a person sees only the movie screen which was hitherto supporting this illusion. He was seeing the movie and not the screen only as long as he was ignorant. And as soon as the light of wisdom dawns in him, he no longer is affected by the illusion.
Quite a close analogy. Superficially, it looks as if this analogy succinctly explains the concept of Advaita along with Sankara’s theory of illusion. But does it really?
In this analogy, there is a child who is ignorant in the beginning since it was in dark. And this child is unable to see the screen when it is dark. But it can see the screen when the lights are ON. That is when it is no longer ignorant. That sounds quite illustrative. But in an Advaitic world where there is nothing else other than the Atma – the claim of Sankara as well as the Upanishads – who is this ignorant kid who ‘attains’ wisdom and ‘realizes’ the illusory nature of the movie?
All Advaits reply to this question the way Sankara did. They say that the kid is someone who is yet to attain realization. But that itself contradicts the Advaita which says that there is none other than Atma. So, there can be no one other than Atma. And if it is Atma which undergoes illusion, then it goes against the very definition of Atma which says that it is wisdom personified – Prajnyanam Brahma. Something that knows everything cannot be ignorant at the same time.
Even in real life, we see a wide spectrum of people who are ignorant at various degrees. Saying that this ignorance is part of illusion is mere hand waving 😉 It is just an evasive explanation.
Surprisingly, even an erudite scholar like Sankara resorts to such evasive answers when faced with this question. In his commentary on Bhagavad Gita, Sankara creates a scenario where his opponent asks him the very same question – “who is the one who undergoes illusion?”. The way Sankara replies that question is not very satisfactory and appears evasive.
But still, many Advaita teachers use this interesting analogy to drive home their concept of Maya or illusion and talk as if it really explains this tricky issue. They go on recursively into an infinite loop of illusion within illusion and ultimately contradict their own theory.
I have great admiration for Sankara’s intellectual acumen. I am sure Sankara knew the answer. But, for some reason, he stuck to his theory of illusion which is neither substantiated by real life nor by the scriptures. I will be curious to know if some Advaiti has a clear explanation sans contradiction.
In subsequent episodes, I will take this movie analogy and try to extend it to explain the ‘reality’ of this world in conformance with the Upanishads. That to me is the ‘real’ Advaita as propounded by the Upanishads. While doing that, I would like to make it clear that I am not subscribing to any opposing schools of thought and my interest is only in making things more coherent.
No comments:
Post a Comment