Śaṅkara’s philosophy of dreaming: Constructing an unreal world
Asian Philosophy September 12, 2022 Neil Dalal 1 citation
In Advaita Vedānta, dreaming serves as a direct phenomenal inquiry into mind and consciousness and as a syllogistic illustration that unreal dream objects do not exist apart from the mind, thereby demonstrating the waking world's nonrealism and that waking objects are consciousness alone. The article argues that for Śaṅkara, the individual's waking cognitive construction is primarily epistemological rather than an external ontological power akin to a creator deity, though distinctions between individual and īśvara become indeterminable from the standpoint of nondual brahman.