AVIDYĀ. Avidyā is the conceptual starting point of classical Indian thinking about the nature of existence. The Sanskrit term connotes "ignorance," "false understanding," or "nescience." There are, broadly, two schools of thought on its nature: Sāṃkhya-Yoga and Vedānta. Sāṃkhya locates avidyā's genesis in the proximate association of puruṣa (spirit) with prakṛti (nature), which results in a sequential evolution of qualities and substances, from intelligence, embodiment, and senses to elemental traces of matter. The ensuing multiplicity of "I"-consciousnesses, forgetting the true identity of puruṣa, misidentify themselves with vṛttis, or the wavering flux of forms and properties of materiality, through a convoluted mix of three ontological aspects (guṇas): the lightness (sattva), motion (rajas), and denseness (tamas) of matter. Thus arise certain incongruent life-worlds (self, other, and spheres) with their related domains of being, causality, time-space, motion...