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Fundamental to Samkara's thought is the distinction between the para ("higher") and the apara ("lower") Brahman. He articulates it as follows: Brahman is apprended under two forms; in the first place as qualified by limiting conditions owing to the multiformity of the evolutions of name and form; in the second place as being the opposite of this, i.e. free from all limiting conditions whatever [Many 鈥�

57 scriptural passages] declare Brahman to possess a double nature, according as it is the object either of Knowledge or Nescience.12 Of these two forms of Brahman, it is the lower that is described at Brahmasutras 1.1.2 as the source, the support, and the end of the world; it is the lower that, in a word, is the personal God. Isvara, as the personal God is termed, is the transcendent, supreme Brahman appearing as if conditioned and personalized by virtue of its relation to maya, the principle of phenomenality. The concept of Isvara is extremely important in Advaita Vedanta and will receive considerable attention as our discussion proceeds. While devotionalists have of course objected stridently to the Advaitins' apparent relegation of the Lord to the status of an inferior reality, the scheme of the twofold Brahman does unquestionably achieve several useful purposes. It enables Samkara, for example, to arrive at a consistent, systematic interpretation of the Upanisads, which speak of the ultimate in unsystematic and on occasion even contradictory terms--sometimes as an active, cosmically involved, conditioned, quasi-theistic or personal being and sometimes as inactive, acosmic, unconditioned, transpersonal Absolute. The descriptions of Brahman as "qualified" (saguna) are assigned to its lower aspect, the descriptions of it as "unqualified" (nirguna) to its higher aspect, and the revelation (sruti) is thus interpreted as a unified

58 whole. In addition to being useful for scriptural exegesis, this device of the two-fold ultimate also allows Samkara to combine his vision of the final unreality of all but the supreme, non-dual "One without second" with a genuine, if provisional, acceptance of a practical religiosity having all the elements of ordinary theism. It is this aspect of his thinking that will be our primary focus in the rest of this section. In order to understand Sankara's evaluation of conventional piety, it is necessary to look at a second distinction, one that is parallel to division between the higher and lower Brahman and designed to serve some of the same purposes. Samkara does not, as is commonly supposed, teach that everything other than the highest, unqualified Absolute is a bare illusion. He speaks, instead, of three levels of being or reality (satta). Within the realm of becoming and appearance, he makes a clear distinction between the ontological status of illusory objects (pratibhasikasatta), such as those produced by hallucinations and mirages, and that of the everyday empirical world (vyavaharikasatta). This distinction is based on the common-sense view that pots, jars, elephants, trees, and the like are experienced intersubjectively and are relatively long-lasting while illusions are not. The everyday world is therefore more real than the illusory realm. Sankara goes

59 on to make a similar distinction between the truth of the empirical or phenomenal level of experience and that of the transcendental or noumenal level, the level of ultimate Reality (paramarthikasatya), identified with the para Brahman.13 Illusions can be easily overcome by empirical knowledge of various sorts, but the empirical level of experience itself is much more difficult to transcend. Nothing but direct intuitive realization of the Absolute can take us beyond it. While the soul, the world, and even personal God are ultimately seen to be false appearances, reminiscent of a great cosmic dream, they are not exactly illusory, for they are constantly present to the experience of all jivas. It is worth noting here that the distinction between illusory and empirical experience shows that Samkara is not a subjective idealist. God and the world for him are much more than mere creations of the mind. There is in fact a certain realism in his thought that causes him, for example, to take pains to refute the views of the Vijnanavada Buddhist idealists. The teachers of the latter school deny the existence of external objects independent of perception.14 Samkara, however, does not see such subjectivism as a necessary consequence of the doctrine of maya. As long as one has not realized the ultimate truth, the world has empirical reality (vyavaharikasatta). Within

60 this empirical reality, external objects are quite as real as the cognitions we have of them; they exist in their own right, independent of the individual mind. The same is true of the world as a whole and of Isvara. When one jIva realizes its identity with Brahman, the activity of the manifest universe is not thereby terminated. It continues on its ordinary course, being experienced by other souls, directed as always by the personal God. Isvara, the creator and sustainer of the world, has at least as real an independent existence as anything else. He is certainly not an illusion, a mere product of the mind. From the point of view of embodied beings, he is in fact the most real of all conditioned entities since he is the eternal source of all levels of empirical existence other than his own. Samkara emphasizes repeatedly that as long as we have not attained the realization of the supreme Brahman, in which all duality is dissolved, we cannot avoid recognizing the pragmatic truth of the empirical (vyavaharika) world and all its relationships. As he says at Brahmasutras 1.1.14: The entire complex of phenomenal existence is considered true as long as the knowledge of Brahman being the Self of all has not arisen; just as the phantoms of a dream are considered to be true until the sleeper wakes. As long as true knowledge does not present itself, there is no reason why the ordinary course of secular and religious activity should not hold on undisturbed. 15 And again, at Brahmasutras 2.1.14: That 鈥� all those distinctions [Isvara, jiva, etc.] are valid, as far as the phenomenal world is concerned, 16 scripture as well as the Bhagavadgita states.

61 The vyavaharika realm, then, with its undeniable empirical reality, becomes the setting in Sankara's system for all of the symbols, activities, and emotions of ordinary religion.