[Advaita-l] Prapatti - Jiiva and Iswara Prapatti - Jiiva and Iswara

[Kalyan K]

Dear Sri Subramanian and Sri Sadananda,

I want to post my thoughts on the on-going discussion, that I find to be
very interesting. Let me thank you for your patient responses.

As I understand things, the question that I have is - who is the knower? Is
it the Self/brahman or is it the mind? The answer to this question has a
bearing on the topics that are being discussed. If the mind is the knower,
then Ishwara's knowledge in praLaya is in its potential form only, since
the cosmic mind hiraNyagarbha is withdrawn. But if the Self alone is the
knower, then Ishwara's knowledge cannot be avyakta in the state of praLaya,
because it does not depend on the cosmic mind.

I think that while comparing the state of deep sleep to Ishwara, caution is
needed. One can say that in deep sleep the jIva knows nothing (or his
knowledge is in potential form). This is fine since jIva is controlled by
mAyA. But I am not sure how far this can be extended to Ishwara, since
Ishwara is the controller of mAyA and is not affected by it. Also, Ishwara
is one and hiraNyagarbha is one, but jIvas are many and minds are many. So
I am also not sure how far the macro and micro scales are analogous.

If I made mistakes in my exposition, please feel free to correct them.

Wish you a very peaceful mahASivarAtri. May Lord Siva bless us with
Self-knowledge.


Regards
Kalyan