An Interesting article - any response?

[Shrisha Rao]

Kim Poulsen wrote:

> >so I heeded his advice
> >not to create a cat-among-the-pigeons
> >situation on the Advaita list.
>
> But resolved to do so now, a philosophical cyberworld-tour
> perhaps? (without an umpire there may be little hope that
> the cat be made to conform to the ancient rules - and become
> a pigeon.)

Or vice versa, unfortunately.

> Anyway dear Shrisha Rao, we must
> see if we can fend for ourselves, even with the prospect
> of facing dualistic mathematicians (or vice versa?), and all sorts
> of impressive entities.

I beg your pardon?  I don't understand.

> >Well, but there certainly is a basis for attributing a higher reality
> >to the waking than to the dreaming.  For the theory of Advaita, the
> >fact of Shruti, etc., exist only in the waking state!
>
> Maybe it does manifest more effectively through the dream state
> of some?) While the buddhist deals with the waking state because
> they are practical people, the dvaitees seems to hold it in special
> regard. There are two things which must be kept in mind, where
> the dvaitee seems to miss the second point.

Quick note: the "dvaitee" does not hold any state "in special regard,"
and would in fact completely deny that there is a difference between
the states as such (in being different states of reality rather than
different states of cognition of a continuous reality).

> A) From the standpoint of the human entity the dream state is
> pervaded by the waking state, its creations are dependant on it
> and is finally brought to a stop by the apparent reality of the
> waking state - the last thought-forms of the dream may even
> be caused directly by interference from the waking state (like
> an alarm-clock.)

Again, I'm sorry if I'm a little dense, but I don't gather your point
here.

> B) From the standpoint of the ishvara the case is reversed,
> it is the state of the logos, the maya prakriti, which form
> the basis of our objective world, the nature of the 3 gunas.

Ishvara is not subject to dreaming or deep sleep at all, is He?  But
perhaps you meant something else?

>    On the involutionary arc of the cycle the planes or states
> are reversed compared to the evolutionary. The waking state
> is merely the basis (neither must the three aspects be confused
> with the unity behind them.)

Sorry for sounding continually stupid, but we're clearly on different
wavelengths here.  I don't seem to catch what you're saying, and some
of the terminology/paradigms used ("involutionary arc of the cycle"?)
is completely unrelated to anything I've ever seen.

>   When Krishna takes the standpoint of the ishvara he distinctly
> states that his prakriti is higher than that of the gross elements -
> the objective.

...uhhh, and so?

>   Such is the case viewed from both sides.

-- which, rather unfortunately, is opaque from both to me.

Regards,

Shrisha Rao

>From  Fri Dec  6 07:28:06 1996
Message-Id: <FRI.6.DEC.1996.072806.GMT.>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 07:28:06 GMT
Reply-To: kstuart at mail.telis.org
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Ken Stuart <kstuart at MAIL.TELIS.ORG>
Subject: Crossposting (was Re: An Interesting article - any response?)
Comments: To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <9612060237.AA04665 at nyx.net>
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Hello,

First I should say that it looks like an interesting discussion is
occurring here without the usual loonies who end up ruining
discussions in the newsgroups.

Having said that, I feel I should point out that there is a problem
with cross-posting messages to more than one mailing list.

The problem is that people have a choice of which mailing lists they
subscribe to, sometimes that decision is based on the number of
members in the list and sometimes it is based on the people who are
members of the list.

When one crossposts a message to two (or more) lists, then everyone in
both lists is *effectively* subscribed to both lists, simply because
subsequent followups also end up on both lists.

Thus, people lose the choice of what size list they are subscribing to
and which people they receive messages from.

So, I would request that - after this current discussion fades out -
that no more crossposting occur.


Thanks,

Ken                       <*>
kstuart at mail.telis.org