The Nature of Ignorance

 

 

 

 

 

 

The word ignorance is used quite frequently when discussing Vedanta and other teachings of non-dualism. It is important to understand that there is a difference between ignorance used in the context of Vedanta and the minor acts of ignorance we all face in our everyday lives. These minor acts of ignorance denotes the lack of knowledge within relative reality. For example, I can be ignorant about the mechanics of an airplane. I can also be ignorant about how the human body functions or how biology works.  We can all be ignorant about many different things due to our lack of knowledge. So how do we remove this kind of ignorance? Simple: We gain knowledge.  This knowledge however only works within relative reality as it only sustains the ego which operates in this plane of existence.  When you learn mathematics, it is the ego that is learning mathematics and the ego that is applying math in their lives. However, in the context of non-duality (Advaita), ignorance refers to the mind or what is known as avidya.  Avidya or ignorance is just a bundle of thoughts that the pure "I" (Brahman) attaches to.  When there is attachment to thoughts, this "I" becomes a thinker (mind). The thinker is the mind or the ego.  Hence, ignorance or avidya is that which makes one identify as the ego who believes it owns and controls the body-mind character. The mind itself is a false identity which awareness takes on in order to be immersed in an illusory play of life. It is the most ultimate form of delusion in existence because it gives an unattached presence the illusion that it can be attached to something other than itself.  Though this illusion is never really there, since one perceives it as such, we need to work on correcting this false perception.  The only way to remove this ignorance completely is through the knowledge of Brahman.  Knowledge is the only cure for ignorance.  However, given this ignorance is much more deeper than the minor acts of ignorance we face in our everyday lives, it cannot be cured by simply learning about Brahman through books or by hearing someone speak about Brahman.  This will only sustain ignorance because it is the ego that learns about Brahman and entertains this relative knowledge.  In order to cure deep rooted ignorance or avidya which sustains the ego-mind, this fundamental knowledge of Brahman can only be gained via experiencing samadhi which exposes the mind to the current of jnana (i.e. the very essence of Brahman which is unbroken knowledge of the self).

Right now you are operating the physical body and mind while claiming ownership of both. We all are born and conditioned to say “I am happy…”I am sad”...“I am thirsty” or “I am hungry”. All these statements and questions are common because they all have an “I”. It is this “I” we claim as ours and no one else’s. How can we not claim this “I” if it seems that we own the body and are in total control over everything we do? We automatically own this identity the second we are born and most of us do not even question this identity throughout our entire lives because we are programmed or pre-conditioned to think it is normal since no one ever talks about it. This type of ignorance is therefore the most difficult to resolve. In vedic knowledge, ignorance of your true nature is due to avidya. Avidya is mistakenly believing this world and yourself to be real. It is a misperception of a fact. Avidya is the opposite of vidya meaning to know or to see. Therefore avidya means to not know or to not see. Avidya is the delusion which splits the original unity of non-duality (the only true subject) and mistakenly presents it as both subject and object and as doer and result of the deed. It is what keeps humanity captive in samsara or grounded in a dualistic world of experience. This avidya is what veils our true self and the world from being known for what it truly is. At the most deepest level, avidya is known to be none other than the mind.  The mind itself is ignorance because it makes Brahman appear to be something other than what it truly is.  Therefore, to reveal the truth of Brahman, we must dissolve ignorance (the mind) so that Brahman's attention no longer attends outward on something that is ilusory but is kept inward on its own source (free from the false perception of duality).

Before we go into avidya or individual ignorance more in depth, we also need to consider another type of ignorance at the cosmic level. Cosmic ignorance is known as maya.  Although there is no true difference between maya and avidya, maya denotes ignorance at the cosmic level while avidya denotes ignorance at the individual level. Maya is ignorance that *seemingly* veils Brahman from being known and causes the dream of the universe to appear.  It is the hidden power of Brahman or the innate potential that allows Brahman to appear as something it’s not.  This is similar to the innate potential we all have to dream every night without having the ability to control it from happening. Because of this error, all individuals now hold an identity they believe is separate from God. Ignorance at the cosmic level (maya) starts at the level of causality (i.e. hidden un-manifested potential).  This is due to Tama guna (pure nescience) which conceals the truth of Brahman.  This concealment of truth is referred to as non-apprehension. When there is non-apprehension, there is no longer a knowing of your own truth.  Because of this, the pure "I" projects false knowledge (due to Raja guna) onto itself and this leads to a mis-apprehension of reality.  This means knowing but in the light of the wrong knowledge. Because the "I" no longer knows its true self, it has no choice but to project its own view on what it thinks reality is. The resulting projection is the reality you perceive, which further conceals Brahman from being known. As a result you have an appearance of a world with content and characters that are all fundamentally untrue. The concealment from tamas and projection from rajas happens simultaneously all-at-once.

A perfect analogy to explain all the above would be that of the dreamer and dream. The dreamer (Brahman) has the hidden power or the potential to dream. This potential is called maya (cosmic ignorance). The impersonal Brahman dreams up a world automatically without any intention via its own power of maya. The dream world appears with dream objects and dream characters automatically contained within it (just like you automatically dream a world with characters already inside the dream).  Each and everyone of us are dream characters inside the dream of Brahman. In reality, there is only Brahman. Instead of knowing we are all but that one Brahman, we mistakenly identify ourselves to be separate dream characters. This is avidya. The projection of the dream is very convincing, so much so, it conceals the truth of Brahman from being known since our attention is so immersed inside the dream.  

You must be asking why is the dream there in the first place? There is no reason as to why the dream is there because the dream is negated upon waking up. When one wakes up, one realizes there is only the dreamer and there was never such thing as a dream of multiplicity. There was never any separation, but only non-separation from the dreamer’s perspective. So how can the contents of the dream hold any truth at all when it was fundamentally a dream and not really real? It never held any independent existence on its own. Only the dreamer is the truth and from the vantage point of that truth, no such dream exists. This means all the laws within the dream world including time, space, causation, karma, jivas, moksha, the vedas, and everything else were all fundamentally false.  We only question the existence of the dream within the dream itself.

The ignorance we have as individuals (jivas) is due to the superimpositions (adhyasas) of our very being. In other words, there are upadhis or limiting adjuncts that prevent us from knowing the truth of Brahman. These upadhis are the different bodies (physical, subtle and causal). These upadhis are all projections of something that isn't truly there.  It is that which makes something appear as something it is not. It is not material but an imaginary phenomena. It makes Brahman appear to be a jiva (individual). However, what belongs to the jiva does not belong to Brahman. This is similar to the dream character that doesn’t exist when the dreamer wakes up. From the perspective of the awakened dreamer, the dream and all of its contents no longer exist. They were simply an imagination concocted up by Brahman's own power of maya. 

In addition, we can never say there was a beginning to ignorance either. If Brahman is eternal, that would make his own power of maya eternal as well since there is only eternity. If maya is eternal, then avidya must also be eternal since the two only exist simultaneously.  In other words, you only know there is a dream because you are already in it.  Once you wake up, you and the dream disappear together. If there was a beginning to this ignorance, it would have already ended and the dream would have already stopped existing. Since the dream clearly exists right now, ignorance is said to be beginning-less (anadi). It only appears to be there as a mysterious phenomena just like our very own power to dream every night. This doesn’t mean Brahman created the dream. The dream is just an appearance of Brahman while Brahman rests detached from any false appearance.  Though this ignorance is said to be eternal, it can be ended with self-knowledge about one’s true self.  It is only then we realize that ignorance never even existed! So how can we even ask the question if it had a beginning or end?

But for us to realize that we are all just individuals inside the dream of Brahman, we must remove ignorance so that we can all awaken as the dreamer (Brahman). We can remove ignorance by performing spiritual practices (sadhanas). Through this process, karma (the desire to perform an action in duality as the perceived agent) is burned by killing the potential it has in manifesting into concrete actions. As a result, the mind gets purified and begins to dissolve tamas and rajas which was the very reason the truth was concealed and projected false knowledge (knowledge about something other than oneself). When the mind is spiritually purified, it reveals more sattva as its innate nature. It becomes transparent enough for truth of Brahman to shine through. The upadhis no longer block the truth of Brahman from being known because they begin to fade away.  Brahman is then realized experientially, not as a complete mind-experience (such as learning about Brahman through books and teachers), but as the very presence itself, void of the upadhis. The more you remain in intimate contact with Brahman via samadhi, the more the mind dissolves which allows one to become Brahman permanently void of any empirical phenomena (which is only a result of the mind).

Ignorance can be removed at the surface level and it can also be removed at the deepest level (mula-avidya).  At the surface level, ignorance can be removed by cultivating sattvic qualities. This turns all selfish actions into selfless actions. When actions become selfless, the ego becomes weakened. Since the ego is what gives you individuality and a sense of separation/falsehood, when it’s weakened, it results in having a mind that can grasp the knowledge of the self and seeing all as fundamentally the same.  By weakening the ego, ignorance is gradually removed.  However, to remove the deepest level of ignorance which turns the pure "I" into "I AM", fixing attention on the formless self is required.  This allows one to abide in samadhi by holding the knowledge of Brahman while witnessing the appearance of the mind.  This is also called turiya.  By practicing this samadhi and remaining in turiya, this will remove or kill the potential for the pure "I" to turn into something that it's really not. You begin to remain as the pure subject/witness. Remaining in this samadhi allows the mind to fully dissolve so it never again projects a false world to be entangled with. If attention is not taken inward to expose lower levels of samadhi, then one will continue to perpetuate the existence of the jiva.  This will only sustain the waking state experience.  But by taking attention inward through meditation, different levels of samadhi is exposed until the intellect becomes completely still, revealing the true self.  'Sama' means equanimity, and 'dhi' means intellect (buddhi). The highest samadhi is therefore held with an unwavering intellect, which no longer projects attention onto illusory things.  It is completely still and is equivalent to the pure self.

We only say we are ignorant because we can’t see the truth. But with self-knowledge, we realize that truth was all there ever was. There was only non-separation. It only seemed that things were separate through the lens of ignorance.  We only speak of ignorance because we are ignorant, but when this ignorance is removed, ignorance ceases to exist. So long as we have ignorance, we will continue to have some form of suffering since duality can't exist without there being an opposite effect. Ignorance is not removed just by telling yourself you are Brahman. This will not lead to liberation. This is why we must keep performing sadhanas to purify the mind. The more the mind is purified, the weaker duality appears to be as the intellect becomes still and ceases to differentiate between things. When duality is weakened, you will no longer feel as if you’re participating in the game, but rather begin to feel as if you are only witnessing the game and thus witnessing yourself.

Everything is awareness but awareness is appearing as tangible things.  You become identified with those things through the delusion of believing them to be real. The more you continue to believe in them, the more the illusion is sustained. This causes awareness to remain stuck inside a false identity.  However, if you allow your attention to reverse back into its own source, it remains free from identifying with whatever appears to exist when it attends outwards.  It remains free from all forms of relative knowledge. At this point, there is nothing left to identify with other than your own attribute-less self. This is because there is no access to objective knowledge and therefore no possibility of oneself turning into a mind that perceives thoughts. Knowledge about reality and all of its many possibilities collapses and becomes meaningless. This type of relative knowledge is what keeps awareness seemingly busy in a world of false appearances. But by removing ignorance, one realizes they were always free in their own glory, void of any type of information or phenomena. It only seemed that awareness was entangled with something other than its true self. This is the perception we need to correct.  This is why we must remove ignorance so we can abide in truth permanently.