Is world an illusion? – Ishvara Srishti and
Jiva Srishti
The question is, why does the
world appear to be external to the thinking mind. What is it that projects the
world as an outside element independent of the mind? Often it is said that the
world is an illusion, that it is the body of God, that it is the reflection of
God or that it is the appearance of God. All these considerations would lead us
to believe that there in an objective reality called the world, and no human
mind can conceive or produce such a world. Here comes in the great distinction
made between Ishvara Srishti (creation by God) and Jiva Srishti
(creation by the individual). The point here is that the world is a projection
of God's Mind, and not a creation of the individual mind. World creation is Ishvara
Srishti and interpretative experience of the world is Jiva Srishti
or individualized viewpoint. There is a verse in the famous Panchdasi of Swami
Vidyaranya:
Ikshanadi-praveshanta
srishtir Ishana kalpita;
Jagradadi-vimokshantah
samsaro Jiva-kalpitah;
Which states the correct view
of the relation of the individual to God and the world to God. The individuals
do not create the world, rather they are involved in the world. After
separation of the individual from the Universal Creation of Ishvara or
God, the individual receives such a shock that it becomes stupefied and finds
itself in a state of delirium whereby it sees itself as cut off from the world
outside and totally helpless in interfering with the affairs of the world. The
severance of the soul from universal inclusiveness drives the individual into a
state of unconscious sleep (Anandamaya), from which it slowly wakes up
through the apertures of the components of the Anandamaya to its
conditioned perceptual instrument known as buddhi or the intellect, and manas
or mind, prana or the vital force, and finally the physical sheath, the
body. It is through the waking consciousness conditioned by physical existence
that one interprets the world as if its conclusions are final and the only
things to be known.
But the intellect is a puppet
pulled by the strings of conditioning potentials hidden deep behind in the
mental and the unconscious levels, particularly the Anandamaya. The
individual thus has a blinkered vision of the world, to which is added a
distortion of perception, so that the individual can never know what exactly
the world is and what its own relation is to the world. By a reversal process
of the perceptual procedure, drawing in the sensory knowledge into pure
intellection and further down into the very source of individuality itself, one
can have a glimpse of the borderland of Brahman, the Absolute, by crossing the Anandamaya
and piercing through its veil.
When the Brahma Sutra refutes
the yogachara doctrine that the world is a mental creation, it does not
seem to be intending to say that the world is real in itself, independently on
its own. There are levels of existence, perceptual in their nature, which are
usually known as vyavaharika or empirical, pragmatic and workable,
different from the world of dream where also one beholds a world through the
impressions created by waking experiences. There is further a totally illusory
experience as in the case of seeing a snake in a coiled rope in twilight due to
insufficient cognition. The levels of empirical reality are (1) the totally
illusory one as the rope snake, (2) the conditional world seen in dream, and
the (3) practical world of waking experience. The highest level, however, is
the absolute experience of Total Being (Paramartha-satya).
Excerpts from:
Chapter 13: An Analysis
of the Brahma Sutra by Swami Krishnananda
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