jIva_n = Brahman + upAdhis_n

[Srinivas Sista]

Anand Hudli wrote:

>
>   if you have N jIvas, we can write N equations,
>
>   jIva_1 = Brahman + upAdhis_1
>   jIva_2 = Brahman + upAdhis_2
>   .
>   .
>   .
>   jIva_N = Brahman + upAdhis_N
>
>  ( I know that Ramakrishnan is fond of the case N=1, and says that
>  we can explain all of advaita with just N=1. But let me complicate
>  things a little and assume N>1. The case N=0 leads to a nihilist
>  view.)
>

------------(A little humorous side dish to the main course)-------------

Cool! this is a very nice formulation. I really kinda like it.
At the risk of being called a geek, I will take a shot at it!
(I know that there are a couple of estimation theorists on this group :-))

jIva_n is the observation(of course, how else is the jIva generated! but
through a sampling of the senses and mind). upAdhis_n are the noise variables
(random of course with some distribution), corrupting the true underlying
quantity (Brahman). So any reading of Brahman through upAdhis is corrupted.

In order to get an unbiased, consistent estimate of Brahman(yikes!), we need
to take an average over jIva's and let N tend to infinity! So studying
phenomena (observations) to understand Brahman is asymptotic and kind of
futile. So cease sampling the (senses+mind) in order to find Brahman,
eventhough he is underlying them!!

regards,
Srinivas Sista.