has its manifestation up to the moment that the right knowledge
dawns. It is not therefore "is not" in the sense that a "castle in
the air" or a hare's horn is "is not," for these are called _tuccha_,
the absolutely non-existent. The world-appearance is said to be
"is" or existing, since it appears to be so for the time the state of
ignorance persists in us. Since it exists for a time it is _sat_ (is),
but since it does not exist for all times it is _asat_ (is not). This
is the appearance, the falsehood of the world-appearance (_jagat-prapanca_)
that it is neither _sat_ nor _asat_ in an absolute sense. Or
rather it may also be said in another way that the falsehood of
the world-appearance consists in this, that though it appears to
be the reality or an expression or manifestation of the reality, the
being, _sat_, yet when the reality is once rightly comprehended, it
will be manifest that the world never existed, does not exist,
and will never exist again. This is just what we find in an illusory
perception; when once the truth is found out that it is a conch-shell,
we say that the silver, though it appeared at the time of
illusory perception to be what we saw before us as "this" (this
is silver), yet it never existed before, does not now exist, and
will never exist again. In the case of the illusory perception of
silver, the "this" (pointing to a thing before me) appeared as
silver; in the case of the world-appearance, it is the being (_sat_),
the Brahman, that appears as the world; but as in the case when
the "this" before us is found to be a piece of conch-shell, the
silver is at once dismissed as having had no existence in the "this"
before us, so when the Brahman, the being, the reality, is once
directly realized, the conviction comes that the world never
existed. The negation of the world-appearance however has no
separate existence other than the comprehension of the identity
of the real. The fact that the real is realized is the same as that
the world-appearance is negated. The negation here involved
refers both to the thing negated (the world-appearance) and the

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negation itself, and hence it cannot be contended that when the
conviction of the negation of the world is also regarded as false
(for if the negation is not false then it remains as an entity different
from Brahman and hence the unqualified monism fails), then this
reinstates the reality of the world-appearance; for negation of the
world-appe