[Advaita-l] RE: Is an ISvara compatible with advaita vedAnta?

Girish Ramadurgam rsgirish at aol.com
Tue Feb 15 03:55:31 CST 2005


> the key question is not how a jN.Ani perceives the
> world, but rather, in the first place, how can the
> existence of a *world* be justified for a jN.Ani
> according to advaita?

My understanding -

Sorry, I cannot quote from any great books. I should confess have not read
many. But my understanding is this.

Say a Human Being 'A' sees water. In school he learns that water is H20.
Then realises that we can freeze Water to ice and heat it make steam. 
The point he realises is that its all H20.
Water is not just water for him now, and hence it ceases to exits as he
perceived it was.

Similarly the same person 'A' finds that Diamond and coal are just Carbon,
just that they have different physical looks.
(Excuse me I am not good at Chemistry so could be wrong).

What I am trying to get at is a A who truly realises looks at both Carbon
and Diamond as the same. There are millions of people who know the above but
yet they cry to achive this. This is the difference between knowing
something and realisation.
Now that 'A' has truly realised, it doesn't mean that 'Diamond','Coal'
ceases to exist literally!!! It's just that he perceives it as the same and
hence ceases to exist the way he thought it was earlier.

Another analogy is from the movie MATRIX -
It's a very good movie if watched associating to what we learn. Keanu Reaves
once he realises that MATRIX is a Virtual Reality, he can behave like
software with realisation, i.e. knowing that he can do things which a non
realised entity in MATRIX does. He knows where, what he is doing (I agree he
is trying to find out why, but for our discussion lets keep it aside). The
Matrix ceases to exists coz you know what it is and hence its ceases to
exist the way you perceived it before realisation.

We are born in this World -
Out quest interest help us build devotion to lord, this devotion(Bhakti)
then pushes us to become a jN.Ani. We live this world as a jN.Ani and "the
world ceases to exist". 
What you are behind is 'the world ceases to exist', yes it does coz its no
more what you though it was.

Can someone please help me find out if I am correct in my Understanding so
that my misunderstanding ceases to exist!! :-) (smiling at the fact that the
last line fits my understanding)

Best Wishes,

Girish





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