Sandeha Nivarini - Post 53

Chapter XVII. The Power of Ignorance

Devotee: Swami, this delusion of the objective world (samsara) over-powers us, thick and strong, like the darkness of clouds in the rainy season. 

What is this mighty force that drags us along? This is what has been bothering me. I feel that people like me should understand these things clearly in the very beginning. Will you kindly enlighten me?

Swami: Well, my boy. What am I to say? You are suffering from fright, imagining a tree stump seen in the park to be a person. That is, you are mistaking the non-dual (a-dwaitha), the full (purna), which is Brahman as a separate incomplete soul (jiva) and suffering from that error. That delusion is the cause of all your sufferings.

Devotee: How, then, did this delusion come about?

Swami: You slept, or you dreamed. You slept the sleep of ignorance (a-jnana) and delusion (moha). Therefore, you dreamed this objective world. Awake, and you will have no more dreams. When the dream is gone, the delusion also goes.

Devotee: Swami, what is this ignorance? What are its characteristics? How does it operate?

Swami: That, which is attached to the body and feels as “I” is the individual soul (jiva). The soul is outward-faced; it believes all this mutable creation (jagath) and objective world; it is immersed in both. When the soul ignores and forgets its non-dual embodiment (a-dwaitha-swarupa), we call it ignorance (a-jnana). Is that clear?

Devotee: But Swami, the spiritual texts, all of them, say that this objective world is caused by illusion (maya). You are now saying it is due to ignorance. What is the distinction between the two?

Swami: Ignorance (a-jnana) is known variously as illusion (maya), primordial matter (pradhana), nature (prakriti), unmanifest, ignorance (a-vidya), delusion (thamas), etc. Hence, understand this well: the objective world is the consequence of ignorance.

Devotee: How can ignorance produce this objective world; I want to know from you, Guru-God (Guru-deva).

Swami: Know that ignorance has two powers: the veiling power (avarana-sakthi) and the projecting power (vikshepa-sakthi). It veils Reality and projects upon it the unreal. The veiling power acts in two different ways: veiling with untruth and veiling with appearance.

When a spiritually wise person (jnani) and ignorant people (a-jnanis) meet, even though the wise one teaches that the Atma is One and non-dual, the ignorant ones deny it, because they can’t grasp the reality so easily. Even when they hear the truth, they don’t have the faith and steadfastness to imbibe it, so they dismiss it with a shrug of indifference. This is the veiling with untruth.

Now about veiling with appearance. Even when someone believes by study of the scriptures (sastras) and by the grace of providence that there is non-dual Atma, one can be carried away by cursory and superficial arguments and dismiss it as non-existent. Though one has the consciousness (chit) that is aware of the very thing that one denies, the delusion (moha) makes one declare that it is non-existent. This is the sinister role of veiling with appearance.

Continued......

Bhagwan Mahavira