The Vedanta of Adi Sankara

Sankaracharya

In the second part of the July 19 lecture, Dr. Hebbar began discussing Vedanta as expounded by Adi Shankara (आदि शङ्कर). He spoke about the rope-snake illusion (rajju-ahi bhrama), in which one mistakenly perceives a rope as a snake in the dark. The way to correct this illusion is by shining a lamp onto the object.

The metaphysical interpretation of the rope-snake illusion is as follows:

The rope represents God
The "snake" represents gods, souls, and matter, that is, mulitiplicity
The illusion itself is Maya (माया)
The lamp represents spiritual discernment, or viveka (विवेका)

Maya and ignorance, that is, avidya conceal the real (the rope), project the false (the snake), and confuse the real and false (the person stumbling around in the dark).