The direct path teaching of Advaita Vedanta states very clearly that only awareness exists and thus that you are, and have never been anything other than, awareness.

For most, the statement above doesn’t “ring true,” and so the teaching also needs to provide an account of the illusory appearance of ignorance, of “not getting it.” This is variously termed avidya, ajnana, and maya. 

What must be underscored from the outset, however, is that ignorance is strictly nonexistent (asat). Ignorance is not real, not actual, not true. There is, in fact, “no thing” to ignorance other than a mere imaginary appearance, and this imaginary appearance is actually atma svarupa—or one’s true nature. Therefore, again, ignorance is not.

Drawing from Muruganar’s seminal Guru Vachai Kovai (on the teaching of Sri Ramana Maharshi), I’d like to “pull out” five different ways of explaining the illusory appearance of ignorance. Each, nicely, offers a way of understanding the practice of self-inquiry.

1. Externalized Attention: One seems to be ignorant of the Self owing to the way in which one’s attention gets focused on and thereby fascinated with objects (perceptions, sensations, thoughts, and feelings). It’s in this sense that the attention is said to be “externalized” rather than “internalized.” 

2. False Association: The Self that one truly is gets “falsely associated with” the non-self or insentience. This “false association” gives rise to the illusory beliefs that “I am the body,” “I am the perceiver,” and “I am the mind.”

3. Superimposition: A loose formulation of superimposition would say that the non-self gets “laid overtop” the Self and thus seems to “cover” or “veil” it. A tighter formulation would say that any sensation or perception rises and sets but then is “habitually followed” by a thought that “lays claim to” that sensation or perception (and that thought seems “compelling” or “very persuasive” because “real”). For instance, a sensation rises and sets, and then a thought arises and says, “I hurt my arm.” And the latter seems to have an intense and intensely believable “reality effect.”

4. Suttarivu: This is a Tamil term that refers to “relative consciousness” or “dualistic consciousness.” Broadly speaking, it could be said that when the finite mind rises, there also rises a separate world and a separate body. This illusory appearance of multiplicity is here referred to as ignorance.

5. Pramada: This Tamil term means “the forgetting of the Self” or the turning away from the Self. To forget the Self by turning away from it is the illusory appearance of ignorance.

In future posts, I intend to spell out how the practice of self-inquiry enables one, in the words of Ramana Maharshi, to “go back the way one came.”