[Advaita-l] Ramana Maharshi - Advaitin or Neo Advaitin?

Venkatraghavan S agnimile at gmail.com
Mon Oct 3 11:43:33 CDT 2016


I agree with your comments Swamiji. However, I am not trying to say that
the knowledge of shuddha chaitanya was gained by any means other than
vedAnta sAdhana.

The point I was trying to make was that for an uttamAdhikAri,
aikyAnusandhAnam may lead to jnAna, provided there has been sufficient
shravaNa - manana - nidhidhyAsana in the previous life. If aikyAnusandhAnam
triggers the activation of all the advaita samskAras, reminding one of the
shuddha brahma and shuddha aham padAs, the aikya message contained in the
aikyAnusandhAnam can generate jnAna  (not will, but can).

Further, there have been several examples of jnAnis who have ostensibly not
done jnAna sAdhana in the current life, but are said to have "gained" jnAna
in that life- Vamadeva, JaDabharata, HastAmalaka etc.

I am not saying that jnAna utpatti is only possible in the current life, or
that jnAna utpatti was because of some other means than shruti, it could
also be that jnAna was generated in a previous life, but there were
pratibandhakas preventing the jnAni from getting the jnAna phala in the
previous birth. A subsequent birth may resolve those pratibandhas and jnAna
phala may be obtained then.

Therefore, there are a couple of  possibilities
1)  JnAna was gained in a previous life, but there were pratibandhakas
then, which have been resolved in the current life. Once resolved jnAna
phala was gained in the current birth.
2) JnAna sAdhana was done in a previous life, but before jnAna was gained,
the sAdhaka died. In the next birth, they were born in circumstances
favourable to jnAna utpatti, and some incident triggered the activation of
advaita vAsanas which led to Atma vichAra on lines of shruti (as recalled
from previous birth) and jnAna utpatti in current life. This jnAna was made
dRDha and they became jIvanmuktAs.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan


On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 4:45 PM, श्रीमल्ललितालालितः <
lalitaalaalitah at lalitaalaalitah.com> wrote:

> I think, I missed to reply to this one.
> It needs some help.
>
> On Sun, 2 Oct 2016 at 21:07 Venkatraghavan S <agnimile at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ​First of all, these are not those tattva-s which are said to be one by
>> shruti.
>> The parichchhina-chaitanya is not tattva.
>> So, no knowing these two is not enough.​
>>
>>
>> Yes, I agree. Knowing the two is not enough. However, one knows these two
>> - I and Ishvara, and knows them not to be the same. The question is why
>> does the aikyAnusandhAnam of sandhyAvandana ask the brahmachAri to say
>> brahmaivAham?
>>
>
> It doesn't say to know. It says to do upAsana. That again is to gain
> specific results. The word viGYAna here means upAsana.
>
>
>> Therefore what the shruti says is one, is neither what I think as "I",
>> nor what I think as "Ishvara".
>>
>
> You are heading towards guess. That's not what we are talking here.
> The saying is easily in sync with the karma/upAsana prakaraNa. You don't
> need to force it to GYAna.
>
> *To add, unless you know shuddha-jIva and shuddha-brahman through means
> other than mahAvAkya-s, there is no way to relate padam to them. So, they
> can't remind them and hence there is no possibility of aikya-bodha.*
>
>
>> If he was taught, then you are in my camp, not other's.​
>> BTW, just 'hearing' a sentence from someone somewhere can't be termed as
>> learning the same. More so when the meaning was never taught.
>>
>> Taught as part of the the sandhyAvandana procedure. By the guru, in this
>> case, the father. Hearing a sentence from someone somewhere is not
>> learning. However, for a thinking student, the natural question that will
>> arise when he looks at the sun saying "asAvadityo brahma, brahmaivAham
>> asmi" is how can the shruti say that "I", who consider myself to be a
>> limited individual, and the all powerful Ishvara is the same? However,
>> shruti, which cannot be wrong, says that to be the case. Therefore, what I
>> consider to be as me, and what I consider to be Ishvara must be wrong.
>>
>
> Look above. This is not needed to save prAmANya of shruti.
>
>
>


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