Indra Sen (1903–1954) studied at Freiburg under Heidegger, was Professor of Philosophy at Delhi University, and resigned his position at the university for a life at the Aurobindo ashram. N. A. Nikam was a President of the Indian Philosophical Congress. Haridas Chaudhuri (1913–1975) studied and taught at the University of Calcutta. G. R. Malkani (1892–1977) was longtime director of the Indian Institute of Philosophy at Amalner and was editor of the Philosophical Quarterly. He was a follower of Sri Aurobindo and founded the California Institute for Integral Studies. In this symposium divergent views are expressed regarding the relation between Llāvada and Māyāvāda (between Aurobindo’s realistic challenge to the traditional doctrine of the illusory nature of the world due to Śaṅkara).
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The word ‘Māyā’ is as ancient as the Ŗgveda, but ‘Māyāvāda’ as a philosophical school came into being with Śaṅkara in the 9th century A.D. The author of this Weltanschauung was a most dynamic personality and even during his life-time, which was exceedingly short, his thought had become fairly dominant in this vast sub-continent. The succeeding centuries witnessed a growth in the power and influence of it and the philosophers who appeared on the stage of Indian life during this time, on the whole either accepted him and wrote elaborative commentaries on his works or rejected him and wrote refutations of the view that the world is māyā, an illusion, mithya, false, and asat, non-existent or vyavahārika, purely empirical and phenomenal. However, it continued to be the major and the dominant trend of Indian thought, with of course many vicissitudes, up till about the middle of the 19th century, when primarily through impact with the West a new ferment started in Indian life. A reaction appeared against the idea of ‘māyā’ and the world and life-denying attitude and thinkers and leaders of Indian life, one after the other, emphasized action and the value of life in the world. Under this changed cultural atmosphere the old ‘Māyāvāda’ or illusionism itself tended to become more or less a ‘Sattavada’, a positive creativity justifying life in the world.
The classical critics of Śaṅkara have often called him a ‘Pracchanna Bauddha’, a disguised Buddhist, meaning that he was virtually reaffirming the same Buddhist position regarding the world process, with the difference that he affirmed a Supracosmic Absolute too, regarding which Buddha had chosen to remain silent. This is, however, only a historical antecedent of Māyāvāda, which is hardly of any direct significance in considering the philosophical value of the doctrine.
We have said that since the middle of the 19th century, thinkers and leaders of Indian life have repeatedly rejected Māyāvāda and stressed life and world-affirming attitude. However, a full-fledged philosophical system, which offers a complete Weltanschauung involving a revaluation of Māyāvāda has found expression in Sri Aurobindo. But a refutation of Māyāvāda is no essential objective of his. His leitmotiv and the first formulation of the philosophical question is: How is divine life, a full life of the Spirit, possible on earth? How can Spirit be reconciled to Matter? These are the two practical and theoretical issues of his philosophy, which receive a comprehensive ontological, epistemological and axiological treatment at his hands. Obviously there are some assumptions here, but were there no assumptions in Kant’s question: How is knowledge possible? Or Hegel’s fundamental affirmation that reality must be rational. It is not necessary for us to go into the validity or otherwise of the assumptions involved. What we wish to show is that Sri Aurobindo’s philosophizing starts independently with an original question of its own and in seeking to work out its answer the refutation of Māyāvāda becomes an incidental circumstance, virtually an aid to evolve a fuller Monism free from the necessity of a negativist attitude towards any sphere or part of experience. The positive part of the system, its fundamental philosophical approach and the substantiation and correlation of its constituent elements have reinforced this refutation with a constructive alternative. Now assuming that the doctrine, as traditionally represented, is still held by some we can consider and discuss, “Has Sri Aurobindo refuted Māyāvāda?” or rather “How Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy refutes Māyāvāda?”
Māyāvāda is essentially an expression of a sense of inexplicability, anirvacaniya, in the presence of a contradiction between, on the one hand, the normal experience of the world or multiple finite objects and, on the other, the super-normal spiritual experience of an undifferentiated infinite existence. The quality and the intensity of the latter, its undifferentiated unity in contrast to the multiplicity of the normal experience and a rigid adherence to the logical law of contradiction are sufficient to show Māyāvāda as an intelligible philosophical consequence. Unity being undifferentiated, in fact absolutely featureless, and then more intense as an experience, multiplicity must naturally become unreal and illusory. Yet the multiplicity does exist, our practical life is intimately bound up with it, we cannot deny it altogether. Therefore it exists, but only as vyavahārika satta, a practical and empirical reality. Now this must somehow be related to the real reality, the transcendental or the paramārthika reality. That is obviously the crux of monistic philosophy, which, in essential impulse and character, Śaṅkara’s system is and, in fact, one of the best known to the history of thought. Now the Māyāvāda’s solution of this critical issue is that the world only appears to be, actually it is not. The world is no more than the jugglery of the juggler, the snake in the rope or the silver in the shell. It is like the dream, which appears to be real while it lasts but on waking we know it definitely as unreal. The world too we come to know as absolutely unreal when we awaken to the reality of the Brahman, which is the supreme, undifferentiated Unity, one and sole, without a second.
-- by Indra Sen
~~Indian Philosophy in English:From Renaissance to Independence
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