THE Doctrine of Maya - HolyBooks.com

""DEVELOPMENT OF ITS CONCEPTION 79rather a circuitous way long after by Western thinkersas well, and we believe that in spite of all the threatsof materialistic, atheistic and pragmatistic movements the present century witnesses here and there,or other destructive tendencies that the future maywitness, this one principle of the identity of the Atmanwith the Absolute will ever remain unshaken.Take away this principle and you destroy all metaphysics worth the name.Now, the adaptation of the higher truth to theempirical understanding went still further. Thisidentity of the creative principle with our inner selfwas not so attractive to the hard-headed men accustomed to look always to the external. They failedtp understand how the great and infinite Brahmanwho created the world could be the same as the littleAtman within us of the size of a thumb (angusthamatrah).Oh," they would say, the proclaimedidentity is not true, it is meaningless to us ;even ifit be true, it isbeyond us to understand it." Thisnecessitated a further concession to suit the innateempirical tendencies of such people in fact, all ofus as men do have such tendencies, and our inefficientintellect fails to grasp this higher truthand it washeld that the Atman who creates the world may bedistinguished from that who is within us. The formerwas called the Paramatman (the Great Atman) orthe Isvara (the Governor), and the latter, theJivatman (the individual Atman). Cosmogonismthus paved the way to Theism. The distinction