Avidya is a false perception by which the ignorant Jiva takes the body and intellect as pure, permanent and a source of pleasure.
Just as a king acts the part of a beggar, out of his own free will on the stage in a drama, so also the Sat-Chid-Ananda Brahman acts the part of a Jiva in this drama of the world out of his own free-will for sport.
The question why the drama of the world appears has not satisfactorily been answered. It can be understood as a self-imposition on absoluteness, a limitation of infinity, a disconnecting of the Unified Consciousness, a sport of manifoldness in undividedness. It is explained that even as a king in a drama puts on the garb of a beggar out of his own free will, so also the One appears as the many.
It is understandable that as long as the king is conscious of his kingship even in the state of his counterfeit beggarliness, he is in sport and enjoys the fun! But if the king is to forget his pristine nature in his pretended state of the beggar, then the sport is no more a sport but an imprisonment in the consciousness of what he is not. Protracted belief in and imagination of one's being something makes one as such, because the original imagining Self is all-powerful.
The Satchidananda-Essence has put on the forms of the world as a play – we have to call it a play, for we cannot give any other reason for the appearance of the world – but the centres of subsequent imagination which were originally evolved out of the absolute mentation begin to play the part of the fool and due to continuous affirmation they become fools themselves, the individuals tied to earthliness.
The individual or the Jiva does not know that it is playing a sport, but thinks that it is actually what it appears to be in the imagined garb. Here lies the bondage of the individual in contradiction to the Essence of Satchidananda which consciously appears to itself as the manifold universe. The aspirants have to learn a lesson from this against feigning themselves to be something which is undesirable, even for the sake of mere fun. Fun later on turns into reality and the fun-maker is eventually bound by his own creation. Whatever one thinks, that he becomes, for the source of imagination is the omnipotent Self. One who believes that he is Brahman becomes Brahman Itself.
There is a story that a thief had by force of circumstances to pretend to be a saint and he later on actually became a saint. Even a Sattwika type of person, well established in religion and virtue, would turn to be Tamasic and brutal in course of time if he begins to act constantly the part of a demon in a drama. The emotions that are roused when acting have got a lasting effect and they affect the individual permanently. This theory is applied in the Bhramara-Kita-Nyaya of Vedantic Meditation where the meditator affirms his being Brahman and thus becomes Brahman actually.
Author and Credits: Swami Krishnananda