ATMA BODHA 63
“JAGAT VILAKSHANAM BRAHMA BRAHMANO- ANYAT-NA- KINCHANA
BRAHMA-ANYAT-BHATI-CHET MITHYA YATHA MARU- MARICHIKA.”
“BRAHMAN IS ENTIRELY OTHER THAN THIS, THE UNIVERSE. NOTHING EXISTS WHICH IS NOT BRAHMAN. IF ANY OBJECT OTHER THAN BRAHMAN APPEARS TO EXIST, IT IS UNREAL LIKE THE MIRAGE>”
In the previous stanza, the iron ball is other than the fire: Is then the Brahman other than the universe which has an empirical existence; or is it in itself ever uncontaminated by the world of matter?
What appears as the world of diversity with its names and forms to the ignorant is realized by the illumined as an indivisible and non-dual Brahman. This multiplicity is only illusory. Hence it does not defile the Brahman. In the case of the desert and the mirage, the desert alone exists. It is the ignorant thatthat have the delusion of water-pools in the desert called the mirage. The deluded mind, after seeing mirage, multiplies its misapprehensions and sees waves in the waters of the mirage. The mind sees even the sun reflecting on the water surface of the mirage.
The mirage and the desert are two different entities. But without the desert the mirage cannot exist. The mirage water cannot wet even a grain of sand on the desert. Therefore if one thinks that this world of plurality is real he is totally mistaken because it does not and cannot exist without the Brahman. Like the mirage its existence is unreal. The Infinite or the Brahman is never contaminated by the world of plurality.
The aim of illusion is to give us the wrong notion that the names and forms are real. These are caused by the plurality agitations caused in one’s own bosom. Therefore, the Ultimate Reality----the Supreme Brahman is different. It is other than the universe. Yet , in a different angle, it permeates everything iIt has created. There is nothing other than the Brahman. If there should be anything different from It, it can only be an unreal appearance.
