28 February 2014 - QA 1

Gurudev, one day you spoke about duality and non duality with examples of door and window and seeing all as wood. So where does the philosophy of Vishisht Advaita (a sub-school of thought of the Vedanta philosophy) fit in with the same example?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Well, Vishisht Advaita says that both (the duality and non-duality of Creation and Consciousness) are true. So as per Vishishta Advaita, that is also true and this is also true. Advaita usually doesn’t consider the other things as true (implying that Advaita believes in the essential non-dual nature of Creation).
You know, the whole idea that the creation was ‘created’ is false. Who said it was created? It was never created. A mirage is never created. A mirage is an illusion of what appears to be but is not in reality.
You put a pen in a beaker of water, it appears bent. When was this bend created? It was not created. It just appears. So in that sense, nobody created this universe. It simply is. It just appears to be that way. It is not real.
When the sun sets, it does not really set. It appears to set. That’s all.