Ekajiiva vaada

[Swami Vishvarupananda]

Anand wrote:

   But the notable thing is
   Arjuna accepts Krishna's advice and acts accordingly. He does not get
   into an academic argument with Krishna, saying, "If the Self alone is
   real, why should I worry about my duties? They are, after all unreal.
   What you are prescribing to me will be a colossal waste of time!"
   No, Arjuna does not do that because he is too intelligent to confuse
   mere "intellectual or academic" understanding of concepts with actual
   experience of those concepts.

Very beautifully put!

   According to the
   dR^ishhTi-sR^ishhTi vaada, there is only a single jiiva, trying to
   attain liberation. All other jiivas, Ishvara, Guru and Shruti are all
   objects imagined by this jiiva. The jiiva must listen to an imaginary
   Guru's instruction, and follow imaginary scriptures. 

When Shruti and Guru are among the objects of his imagination, how can he take there is any truth in them? The logic arguments for the truth of Shruti fall when there is a single jiva and all else is his imagination. Also the validity of any saint's or realised soul's life and teachings falls at that instant. (There cannot be anyone who has attained realisation, as there is no one at all) The only thing this single jiva can know for sure is that he exists, he is conscious, and his present consciousness is limited and cannot be the whole of his true consciousness, because he is not omniscient either about himself or his imaginary world. Thus he is left with a self-inquiry that has _no_ support from anything he experiences. The scriptures are his imaginations, which he imagines were written down by imaginary Rishish who could not have experienced what is written, because they never lived. The Guru too is his imagination and so are all the Jnani's scholars, etc. So obviously they teach him something he (as a limited jiva!) imagines. Nothing that has ever been told, nothing anyone may ever have experienced can serve as a clue as to the true nature of his being or how to experience it. Even his own logic is valid only if not based on anything within the world, because logic and inference based on imagination can hardly hold true.
What I would really like to know, is, how anyone convinced of this could ever think of teaching it. One who is convinced he is the only jiva, and all else is -- just as in a night's dream -- the lifeless reflection of his imagination, and all those dream figures have no consciousness of their own, will hardly try to teach these. It would be like telling one's mirror reflection to go to school and learn the alphabet.
Thus I can hardly believe this is really what any scholar is trying to say. If he was convinced of this, he would stop teaching anyone. IMO there must be a misunderstanding here. 

Om,
Vishvarupananda  
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