Advaitins claim that Avidya is neither real nor unreal but incomprehensible, {anirvacaniya.} All cognition is either of the real or the unreal: the Advaitin claim flies in the face of experience, and accepting it would call into question all cognition and render it unsafe.
Advaita philosophy presents Avidya not as a mere lack of knowledge, as something purely negative, but as an obscuring layer which covers Brahman and is removed by true Brahma-vidya.
Brahman is knowledge; Avidya cannot co-exist as an attribute with a nature utterly incompatible with it.
Avidya is subjective, and can be explained as the natural tendency of the mind to superimpose the Self and the non-self on each other (adhyasa).
For instance, we first presuppose or accept the superimposition of the Atman and the non-Atman (avidya, adhyasa) and on this presumption alone all the means and objects of knowledge, including the Shastras, the Scriptures, philosophies and teachings, function.
Avidya and Maya lose their value and substance; they lose their existence, only after the ignorance of superimposition of Atman and non-Atman is destroyed.
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