Life and Soul

[Chelluri at AOL.COM]

                                 Brahmaiva Satyam

Greg its not Nanda, its me Nagy who wrote.    Thanks for your response.

                                                                          Nagy

>From  Mon Feb  9 18:25:11 1998
Message-Id: <MON.9.FEB.1998.182511.0500.>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 18:25:11 -0500
Reply-To: chandran at tidalwave.net
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Ram Chandran <chandran at TIDALWAVE.NET>
Organization: Home Personal Account
Subject: getting out of deep sleep - theory of re-birth
Comments: To: Advaita List <Advaita-L at tamu.edu>
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Greetings Murthy Garu:

    Your hypotheses and comforting explanations are logical and
reasonable.  As always, Greg gave an excellent interpretation in support
of your hypotheses with appropriate references.   The analogy between
deep sleep and death is quite convincing for the intellectually curious
mind.  However, I want to divert this thought process from another
standpoint.
   You have asserted that the basic background for the human is
prajnAna, the consciousness (awareness) which is continuous.  I also
agree that it is the same Atman that pervades everything.  This
fundamental assertion rules out all discontinuities including deep sleep
and death.  Deep sleep and death are intellectual concepts of the human
mind.   The mind created the  nonexistent discontinuities - deep sleep
and death! The same mind that created the breakages developed the
thought process to bridge the illusive gaps.  When the mind gets the
freedom to indulge in recreational games, it experiences discrete events
of gain and loss which never existed. The dualities of sleep and wake or
death and birth are illusions of the mind.  The existence of continuous
consciousness rules out the existence of discrete mind and discrete
events! There is no beginning or end of Atman (consciousness) and there
can be neither death nor deep sleep!

Ram Chandran
Burke, VA 22015

>From  Tue Feb 10 08:43:32 1998
Message-Id: <TUE.10.FEB.1998.084332.0500.>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 08:43:32 -0500
Reply-To: chandran at tidalwave.net
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Ram Chandran <chandran at TIDALWAVE.NET>
Organization: Personal
Subject: Life and Soul
Comments: To: Advaita List <Advaita-L at tamu.edu>
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Nagi writes:

>Recently a friend of mine who is Christian by birth and turned hindu by
>destiny told me that there is no equivalent word for Atman and Brahman in
>English or any other language.  Soul is not Atman.  Soul is sushma
> shareeram. Atman  is in everything and everything is in Atman.  Life begins
> and ends and Atman is eternal.  Any comments?

Greetings Nagi, Nanda and Greg:

I find that all of you have raised some interesting points regarding
"Life and Soul."  I agree the viewpoint of Greg in the assessment of the
claim by Nagi's friend.  However, it can be safely said that great
philosophers such as Aldous Huxley agree that the philosophy of life and
soul postulated in Bhagavad Gita is superb and unique.  Aldous Huxley in
the introduction to the New American Library edition of the Bhagavad
Gita interprets the Gita as not only the distillation of Hinduism but
also the distillation of religion in general. Huxley claims that the
theology of the Gita is relevant to all religious people not just to the
Hindu because he says it presents the four basic elements of a spiritual
world view.

Aldous Huxley  presents four fundamental doctrines as what he calls the
Perennial Philosophy:

"First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized
consciousness - the world of things and animals and men and even gods -
is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial
realities have their being, and apart from which they would be
nonexistent.

Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine
Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct
intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge
unites the knower with that which is known.

Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal
Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within
the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify
himself with the spirit and therefore with the divine Ground, which is
of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Fourth: man's life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify
himself with his eternal Self and so to come to untie knowledge of the
Divine Ground."

Huxley's reference of  Divine Ground is the Brahman in the Gita and
Vedanta. Huxley discusses these four aspects of religion giving examples
from a variety of religious traditions in the book, "The Perennial
Philosophy."  According to Huxley that modern population have turned
away from religion due to industrialization and technology revolution.

In conclusion, we should recognize that great minds can be find all
parts of the world including India. The human search for the knowledge
of the Brahman (Divine Ground) has no time, geographical and language
bounds. The moment that we attempt to separate the Brahman by time,
geography and language, we enter into the world of duality and forget
the very purpose of human life!

Reference:
"The Perennial Philosophy" by Aldous Huxley,  Paperback, 336 pages.
Published by HarperCollins, July 1990, ISBN: 0060901918

Synopsis:  The brilliant wit and absorbing intellect of Aldous Huxley
gives this religious classic an elevated spirit equal to its subject
matter. Huxley identifies the spiritual beliefs of various religious
traditions and recasts them in terms which are personally meaningful.
Chapters include Self-knowledge, Faith, The Miraculous, Spiritual
Exercises, etc.  This is both an anthology and an interpretation of the
supreme mystics, East and West.

--
Ram Chandran
Burke, VA 22015