[Advaita-l] Who has Ajnana/Maya?

[Venkatraghavan S]

I understand the question.

1)You are assuming that an experience of something implies the self is
affected. That is not true.

2) You are concluding that the self experiences a real experience. That is
also not true. If what is real is only the self, there can be no other
entity other than itself which is real. This includes any experiences the
self supposedly undergoes. I have previously said why experiences cannot be
part of the self.

Taking your apple example, how did you know that the apple was perceived?
Because that perception itself was perceived. Thus, that perception also
belongs to the drishya, not the drk. Its not any more real than the apple
itself.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan


On 17 Mar 2017 12:58 p.m., "Kalyan" <kalyan_kg at yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Sri Venkatraghavan

 //No, upon experiencing ajnAna, the jIva
 mistakenly assumes that he is
 affected by
 ajnAna. Neither the experience of ajnAna, nor his
 superimposition of an experienced attribute as
 his own are really real.//

I will attempt to clarify one more time. jIva is sopAdhika Atman. jIva =
Atman + upAdhis. If you say jIva is experiencing ajnAna, it means this
bundle of Atman + upAdhis is experiencing ajnAna.  upAdhis are jaDa and can
experience nothing. Out of this bundle, only the Atman can experience.
Hence this position boils down to the same as "Atman is affected by ajnAna".

 //You can certainly not deny yourself, but it is
 very much possible to deny
 something that
 you erroneously consider to be your self. It is certainly
 possible to deny an experience. We have wrong
 experiences all the time.//

You can deny the object of your wrong experience but cannot deny the fact
that you had the wrong experience. You can deny the tiger you saw in the
dream. But you cannot deny that you had a dream in which a tiger appeared.

// It is a mistaken assumption to hold that the
 perception or the experience
 of misery (or
 anything for that matter) proves its reality.//


The perception of an apple does not prove the reality of the apple. But it
proves the reality of the act of perception itself. Future jnAna can negate
the apple. But it cannot negate the previous (erroneous) act of perception
of the apple. Going back to Des Cartes, I think, therefore I exist.


Regards
Kalyan