ad, and dreams
may be so bad as to affect or incapacitate the actual physical
functions and organs of a man. So it is that the past impressions
imbedded in us continuing from beginningless time are sufficient
to account for our illusory notions, just as the impressions produced
in actual waking life account for the dream creations.
According to the good or bad deeds that a man has done in
previous lives and according to the impressions or potencies
(_sa@mskara_) of his past lives each man has a particular kind of
world-experience for himself and the impressions of one cannot
affect the formation of the illusory experience of the other. But

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the experience of the world-appearance is not wholly a subjective
creation for each individual, for even before his cognition the
phenomena of world-appearance were running in some unknowable
state of existence (_svena adhyastasya sa@mskarasya
viyadadyadhyasajanakatvopapatte@h tatpratityabhavepi tadadhyasasya
purvam sattvat k@rtsnasyapi vyavaharikapadarthasya
ajnatasattvabhyupagamat_). It is again sometimes objected that illusion
is produced by malobserved similarity between the ground (_adhi@s@thana_)
and the illusory notion as silver in "this is silver," but
no such similarity is found between the Brahman and the world-appearance.
To this Vedanta says that similarity is not an indispensable
factor in the production of an illusion (e.g. when a
white conch is perceived as yellow owing to the defect of the eye
through the influence of bile or _pitta_). Similarity helps the production
of illusion by rousing up the potencies of past impressions
or memories; but this rousing of past memories may as well be
done by _ad@r@s@ta_--the unseen power of our past good or bad deeds.
In ordinary illusion some defect is necessary but the illusion of
this world-appearance is beginningless, and hence it awaits no
other do@sa (defect) than the avidya (nescience) which constitutes
the appearance. Here avidya is the only do@sa and Brahman is the
only adhi@s@thana or ground. Had there not been the Brahman, the
self-luminous as the adhi@s@thana, the illusory creations could not
have been manifested at all The cause of the direct perception
of illusion is the direct but indefinite perception of the adhi@s@thana.
Hence where the adhi@s@thana is hidden by the veil of avidya, the
association with mental states becomes necessary for removing
the veil and manifesting thereby the self-luminous adhi@s@th