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[Greg Goode]

At 05:39 PM 11/24/97 -0600, Thatte, Uday (NM IT) wrote:

>How if I rather take a totally opposite stand that :-
>
>Since there is Only the Absolute One and nothing else, whatever you see,
>feel, hear, touch or perceive is real (for you).

>It doesn't matter
>whether it is really "REAL" or not since you have no way to decide that.

What about Shankara's way of deciding?

     Brahman is real.
     The world is unreal.
     The world is Brahman.

This way, you can say that the world is neither real, nor unreal, nor both.

>However, what will save you (in my opinion) is not the **belief** that
>"everything is unreal" but the **recognition** of everything being
>potentially "UNREAL" (kshaya) thereby preventing you from involvement.

Agree, recognition more important than intellectual belief.


>What you perceive is nothing but your conciousness and just your own
>version of the reality.

But what is this "your own consciousness"?  As something seen, it itself is
part of the world.  So are the "you" whose consciousness this supposedly
is.  If everything is (potentially) unreal, then, as Ramesh Balsekar is
fond of pointing out, you can't leave yourself out of the equation.


>Even the dreams may be real and objects may be
>real. However, nobody knows whether anybody at all knows OR who knows
>what is real and what is not.

Don't realized sages know?  What definition of real and unreal are you
using here?

>I fear that the concept of "nothingness" and the stance that "everything
>is unreal" can lead me to a void which even negates tha Absolute One.


The concept of nothingness is not really an advaitic concept, is it?   And
I sort of agree with you on this:  if you feel one of these concepts will
lead you to a void, then don't focus on that concept.  Instead of focussing
on what is UNreal, why not focus on what is REAL, e.g. Brahman??

--Greg