Still Confusion regarding Shankara’s co

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Wed, 29 Jan 1997, Cameron Reilly wrote:

> Read what I wrote my friend. Did I say there was something other than
> Brahman? I said everything else is 'illusion'.
>

"else" implies a choice between two or more things.  From the standpoint
of Brahman there is no everything else and from the standpoint of
vyavahara there is no illusion (i.e. the vyvaharik person thinks his
world is real.) Either way your statement is wrong.

> Guess what? When moksha is reached, the phenomenal world DOES cease to
> exist!  To the person of understanding, the phenomenal world merges with the
> Brahman. There is no separation. It is not 'wished' away, it is simply not
> seen as being objectively 'real'. The phenomenal manifestation is known to
> be merely the reflection of Brahman in the mind.
>

If the world is only a mental construct which ends when moksha is acheived
why does it continue to exist for all the other people? Because the world
also has Brahman as its essence just like the jiva.  In fact it is the
bheda between the jiva and the world which is unreal and the product of
maya.  Brahman is self-luminescent so all the things which have Brahman as
their substratum exist without depending on anything else for their
existence.

> I quote from Ramesh Balsekar:

Never heard of him.  It's telling that his book was published by Zen Books
because the kind of idealism you have been describing is more akin to
Buddhism than Vedanta.

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