For those seekers who are attached to the world, the world is considered to be a divine manifestation. For the more advanced seeker, the world is considered to be an illusion. Many teachers teach this the wrong way around – this, of course, is itself due to their attachment to the world, ie. this wrong teaching is due to ignorance.

This is why Sri Ramana says, right at the start in the beginning few verses of The Garland of Gurus Sayings (Guru Vachaka Kovai), in verse 21:

21. For those who take the world appearance as real and enjoy it, it is the Lord’s creation. But for those who, free from fear, have known the Truth, the undeluded Self, it is no more than a mere mental image projected by desire.

For those who are fearful of the world, Sri Ramana gives the following even more radical advice in the same text, verse 28:

28. Ye who in fear shrink from the world, know that the place has no existence. Fear of this phenomenal world is like being frightened by a rope mistaken by you for a snake.

In verse 35 he uses the same analogy as Gaudapada (in his commentary on Mandukya Upanishad, Mandukya Karika), of a glowing flame whirled in a circle:

35. The empirical world of jostling names and forms is false and has no real existence in bright, full Awareness. Like a ring of fire formed in the dark when one whirls fast a glowing joss-stick, ’tis an illusion, mind-created.

The idea here is that in the dark (ie. in ignorance), a whirling flame appears as a world (that is a body, a mind and a world), but in the light (ie. in self-knowledge or self-realisation, also known as liberation), it is not seen at all.

Sri Ramana explains this in page 193 of Day by Day with Bhagavan when he states:

‘In reality, saying ‘We must see Brahman in everything and everywhere’ is also not quite correct. Only that state is final, where there is no seeing, where there is no time or space. There will be no seer, seeing and an object to see. What exists then is only the infinite eye.’

Similarly, Sri Ramana says in Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 87:

‘…just as the snake is, on scrutiny, found to be ever non-existent, so is the world found to be ever non-existent, even as an appearance‘

And in Guru Ramana Vachana Mala, verse 21, Sri Ramana gives us the Ajata teaching, that no-thing ever really came into existence at all:

‘There is no mind, nor body, nor world, nor anyone called a soul; the One pure Reality alone exists, without a second, unborn and unchanging, abiding in utter Peace’

For more on this teaching see here and here

Namaste