A seeker once approached Brahm Bodhi for guidance on a question that troubles many who walk the spiritual path.
“Most scriptures declare that Brahman alone is real and the world is mithyā, and that nothing here can give lasting happiness or peace, for everything is subject to change and eventually perishes. The moment one desire is fulfilled, another arises; however much wealth or pleasure one gathers, complete satisfaction is never reached. We are told that whoever seeks lasting peace must turn within, realize their true nature as the Self, and become a witness. Yet no one explains what it actually means to “go within.” How does one experience one’s true Self? What does one actually have to do?”
Brahm Bodhi observed that the seeker’s question carried not only questions but also a few assumptions — and that it would help to examine these first.
“Brahman alone is real, the world is mithyā” — is this what all scriptures say?
The seeker had written that all scriptures hold Brahman alone to be real and the world to be mithyā. This statement, Brahm Bodhi explained, is not entirely correct. Advaita Vedānta is not the only philosophical tradition within Sanātana Dharma; there are also schools such as Dvaita and Vishishtādvaita.
Great teachers such as Bhagavatpāda Madhvāchārya, Bhagavatpāda Rāmānujāchārya, and Bhagavatpāda Nimbārkāchārya did not regard the world as a mere illusion or unreality. They considered it to be a real creation of Bhagavān.
Moreover, the word mithyā itself does not carry the same meaning in every tradition. In Advaita Vedānta it does not mean “absolutely unreal.” Rather, it refers to that which is experienced but has no independent or ultimate existence of its own.
What the Gita says about the world
The Bhagavad Gita, too, describes both Prakriti (material nature) and Purusha as beginningless:
“Prakṛtiṁ puruṣaṁ caiva viddhy anādī ubhāv api.”
At the same time, the Gita explains that the manifested universe repeatedly comes into being and again dissolves back into Prakriti:
“Sarva-bhūtāni Kaunteya prakṛtiṁ yānti māmikām... punaḥ punaś ca...”
The world, therefore, is neither eternal in its manifested form nor the ultimate Reality.
The analogy of the cinema
Brahm Bodhi illustrated this with a familiar example. When a person sits in a cinema hall watching a film, the world on the screen appears so real that the viewer laughs, weeps, feels fear, and rejoices along with the characters. While the film runs, the experience is entirely real. Yet the moment the film ends, one recognizes at once that everything seen on the screen had no independent existence of its own.
This world may be understood in a similar sense. If Brahman is the projector, then the universe is like the moving picture cast upon the screen. The experience is real, but the projected world has no existence of its own; it depends entirely upon Brahman.
The real question
This brings us to the question that truly matters: how does one rise above the fleeting, perishable pleasures offered by this moving picture of life and attain that inexhaustible bliss which, according to the Bhagavad Gita, already resides within us?
That subject deserves a discussion of its own, and so it will be taken up in the next part.