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Ontology according to Vedanta (Vedānta)
by Swāmi Siddheswarānanda
in 25 May 2008
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As soon as we have recourse to discrimination for releasing the ultimate Truth, we are making an ascertainment of the highest importance:
The intuition of the Reality is prior to all our thoughts.
Certainly, the intuition of Brahman-Ātman appears in the shape of the sensible world, but, since this appearance alternately arises and subsides, we do not have the right to take it for the ultimate Truth.
Apart from this second order of reality, Vedānta recognizes a third one: the illusory reality (pratibhasika satta). In the West such terminology does not fail, at first sight, to provoke some surprise. Nevertheless it does relate to a reality, for, as long as we have an experience of this type, we do not have the least feeling of being the victim of an illusion.
The illusions may be classed under three main headings:
a. The individual illusion: In the twilight I mistake a piece of rope for a snake, or a piece of nacre for a silver coin. The illusion is short-lived. As soon as it disappears, I find that the piece of silver or the snake were only the simple creations of my mind. From that experience I draw an important conclusion: The mind has the faculty to divide itself and to project an order of phenomena outside itself in such a way that to me, in the present moment, objects that do not really exist, assume a temporary form, and that I behave towards them as if they were real.
b. The collective illusion: For example, those that are produced by a magician. If it is claimed that the proof of the reality of a thing lies in the fact that that thing is perceived simultaneously by several persons, collective illusions go beyond the individual sphere to which experiences of the first type were limited, for in the case of the magician - we allude to the rope trick - numerous spectators witness the performance. Here the experience is no longer private. It is collective. Once the performance is over, the spectators realize that, in the end, absolutely nothing has happened. Besides, the camera will provide irrefutable proof of it: All that this crowd saw was really nothing but a simple, mental creation. The internal organ, therefore, has the property to produce a certain type of phenomena in which the two categories of existence that are inevitably associated with empirical life, i.e. thoughts and objects, are clearly and distinctly presented to experience.
c. The dream illusion: As long as the dream illusion lasts, it is a reality of the waking state. The dream has to end, so that we may recognize its unreal character. But, during the illusion, the actor and the scene which is being enacted, are situated on the same level: They have exactly the same degree of reality. Moreover, all the characters that have a role in the comedy or drama of the dream, participate in the spectacle in the same quality as the main actor. This in contrast with the experience of the snake which is private, or with the rope trick which is public, for, in the latter case, a gathering - which is, none the less, limited - is perceiving the spectacle. In the dream illusion the dreamer himself is playing an unlimited number of roles: Those of all the personages that fill the dream. And the ego of the dream - modified or multiplied - lives, moves and has its being in a world which, itself, is as real as this ego. Once the dream is broken, we keep the persistent impression that the mind, of its own, created an experience within a universe that was, in and by itself, complete.
In studying these three kinds of phenomena, Hindu metaphysics does not stop at their illusory aspect. It rather applies itself to bringing out the following fact: One and the same substance has the capacity to present itself, at the same time, as subject and as object, without its essential nature being affected by it. This substance is the mind.
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