jivas. The cosmic jiva is alone the awakened jiva
and all the rest are but his imaginings. This is known as the
doctrine of ekajiva (one-soul).

The opposite of this doctrine is the theory held by some
Vedantists that there are many individuals and the world-appearance
has no permanent illusion for all people, but each person
creates for himself his own illusion, and there is no objective
datum which forms the common ground for the illusory perception
of all people; just as when ten persons see in the darkness a
rope and having the illusion of a snake there, run away, and
agree in their individual perceptions that they have all seen
the same snake, though each really had his own illusion and
there was no snake at all. According to this view the illusory
perception of each happens for him subjectively and has no
corresponding objective phenomena as its ground. This must
be distinguished from the normal Vedanta view which holds
that objectively phenomena are also happening, but that these

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are illusory only in the sense that they will not last permanently
and have thus only a temporary and relative existence in comparison
with the truth or reality which is ever the same constant
and unchangeable entity in all our perceptions and in all world-appearance.
According to the other view phenomena are not
objectively existent but are only subjectively imagined; so that
the jug I see had no existence before I happened to have the
perception that there was the jug; as soon as the jug illusion
occurred to me I said that there was the jug, but it did not exist
before. As soon as I had the perception there was the illusion,
and there was no other reality apart from the illusion. It is therefore
called the theory of d@r@s@tis@r@s@tivada, i.e. the theory that the
subjective perception is the creating of the objects and that there
are no other objective phenomena apart from subjective perceptions.
In the normal Vedanta view however the objects of
the world are existent as phenomena by the sense-contact with
which the subjective perceptions are created. The objective
phenomena in themselves are of course but modifications of ajnana,
but still these phenomena of the ajnana are there as the common
ground for the experience of all. This therefore has an objective
epistemology whereas the d@r@s@tis@r@s@tivada has no proper
epistemology, for the experiences of each person are determined
by his own subjective avidya and previous imp