[Advaita-l] ***UNCHECKED*** Re: [advaitin] rope has some problem in rope snake analogy :-)

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste,

I haven't followed the discussion in any detail, so apologies if I am
misunderstanding the context in which certain things were said, but this
sentence jumped at me:

Reg  //  To clarify, can I say that even the snake just 'imagined' is not
> actually absent of any locus, but still has the locus in the antahkarana of
> the person imagining? //
>
The snake in the rope snake adhyAsa is not imagined "in the mind". Rather
the adhyAsa takes place in the locus outside, which leads to the
experience, "I see a snake *there *(e.g. in the passageway)". The locus is
not the seer's mind, but the location of the rope.

This differentiates it from asat, where no on can legitimately claim to
have experienced the hare's horn at a particular place.

That is why in the second definition of mithyAtvam, the words
"pratipannopAdhau" (in the locus where it appears) are appended to the
"traikAlika niShedha pratiyogitvam" (the absence in all three periods of
time).

The latter, traikAlika niShedha pratiyogitvam, is common to both asat and
mithyA, but pratipanna-upAdhitvam is unique to mithyA only.

The rope snake appears where the rope is. The hare's horn does not appear
anywhere. Both don't exist.

Kind regards,
Venkatraghavan