[Advaita-l] Definition of 'anubhava'

Venkatesh Murthy vmurthy36 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 4 11:56:11 EDT 2017


Namaste Sri Jayakumar

I agree you have given a very nice example. Another example is if there are
10 people and they cross a river. After crossing the leader counts and
finds there only 9 people but not 10. One trustworthy person is seeing the
problem and will tell him you are counting wrong and you are 10 people.
When the leader hears him it is like Jnaana only but not Anubhava. Then he
counts 9 people and tells the leader at last  'You are the tenth'. That
last person will immediately experience he is the tenth. This is Anubhava.
When Adi Sankara is saying Anubhava it is this Anubhava.

It is not like elders telling a child Don't touch fire because it will burn
you or don't touch open electric wire because it will give you a shock. The
child should not try to get first hand experience of fire burning his hand.
That is not Anubhava. If elders tell him he should accept it as Final Jnana
only. No more Anubhava required. Many Panchatantra stories have the moral
teachings. It is not required for us to test each moral of the story and
get first hand experience. That is foolish experience.

On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 8:58 PM, Jay Kumar via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

>
>
> Namaste to all.
>
>
>
> To assimilate important values and for implementing them in their
> practical life, I explain the following illustration’ and conduct a special
> ‘Values Assimilating Technique (VAT)’, to my yoga students and they find it
> works for them.  Even for Self knowledge,  For explaining the ‘understood
> knowledge’ and the ‘assimilated knowledge’,
>
> The same illustration could hold good.
>
>
>
> Illustration : Suppose I have been measuring my height from my childhood
> in feet and inches, if anyone tells his height in ‘feet & inches’, I
> immediately  ‘experience’ as to how much tall, he could be. This
> ‘approximation’ will ‘reflect’ in my mind effortlessly
> (स्मृतिभिन्नज्ञानम्). But, if he says his height in centimeters, it will
> take some time and effort  to get the approximation. Though I know (by
> heart) the relationship among ‘feet, inches & centimeters’, the level of
> conviction of height in ‘feet & inches’ is much more deeper than in
> ‘centimeters’ for the said reason. .
>
>
>
> Similarly, for the group-discussed ‘akanda akara vruthi’ to take place in
> the ‘antha karana’ of the the seeker, re-orientation of the ‘long time
> precipitated self identification’ with body & mind due to ignorance has to
> be replaced by the identification with ‘atman’. This can happen with
> successful ‘sravanam, mananam & nidhithyasanam’  under  a ‘traditional ’
> teacher  ‘srothriya bhramma nishta’ Then, spontaneous ‘reflection’ giving
> the unique tranquillity at normal times and ‘timely prompting’ of one’s
> original nature will take place effortlessly in time of need.
>
>
>
>
>
> Please excuse me if this information is superfluous to the readers because
> my screen reader does not read all the postings.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Jayakumar
>
>
>
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-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh


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