| This is how
Ramanujacharya explains the immanence of the Universal Spirit. To give a concrete analogy,
which may elucidate the thesis, it is the air in the football that jumps and functions in
all manners of ways when the ball is knocked about in the field. Yet we forget the air,
and we look on the ball as the thing we play with, not the air. What is all pervasive and
invisible is lost in the obvious tangible hard reality, the ball. Maaya, as understood by long tradition, is not that every thing is
unreal and that we are free to act as we please. It is not a negation of responsibility.
No school of Vedanta denies the validity of the doctrine of Karma. The doctrine of Karma
firmly holds, and with it individual responsibility stands unshaken.
Life is real and life is subject to the eternal and
unchangeable law of Karma. This and not unreality is the core of the Vedantic view of
life.The error against which the doctrine of maaya is directed in Vedanta is the false
values that men put on things. If we realized the truth regarding the immanence of the
Supreme Spirit in all fives and all things, we would put on men, things and events truer
and juster values. |
