whole object was to revive
the traditions of the past and suppress his originality by attempting
to prove that his ideas are those of Badarayana and the Upanishads,
the magnitude of his contribution to Indian thought is often
under-rated. We need not suppose that he was the inventor of all the
ideas in his works of which we find no previous expression. He
doubtless (like the Buddha) summarized and stereotyped an existing
mode of thought but his summary bears the unmistakeable mark of his
own personality.

Sankara's teaching is known as Advaita or absolute monism. Nothing
exists except the one existence called Brahman or Paramatman, the
Highest Self. Brahman is pure being and thought (the two being
regarded as identical), without qualities. Brahman is not intelligent
but is intelligence itself. The human soul (jiva) is identical with
the Highest Self, not merely as a part of it, but as being itself the
whole universal indivisible Brahman. This must not be misunderstood as
a blasphemous assertion that man is equal to God. The soul is
identical with Brahman only in so far as it forgets its separate human
existence, and all that we call self and individuality. A man who has
any pride in himself is _ipso facto_ differentiated from Brahman as
much as is possible. Yet in the world in which we move we see not only
differentiation and multiplicity but also a plurality of individual
souls apparently distinct from one another and from Brahman. This
appearance is due to the principle of Maya which is associated with
Brahman and is the cause of the phenomenal world. If Maya is
translated by illusion it must be remembered that its meaning is not
so much that the world and individual existences are illusory in the
strict sense of the word, as phenomenal. The only true reality is
self-conscious thought without an object. When the mind attains to
that, it ceases to be human and individual: it _is_ Brahman. But
whenever it thinks of particular objects neither the thoughts nor the
objects of the thoughts are real in the same sense. They are
appearances, phenomena. This universe of phenomena includes not only
all our emotions and all our perceptions of the external world, but
also what might be supposed to be the deepest truths of religion, such
as the personality of the Creator and the wanderings of the soul in
the maze of transmigration. In the same sense that we suffer pain and
pleasure, it is true that there is a personal God (Isvara)