viprataa (was Re: Sadhana)

[john grimes]

>Charles, very illuminating analysis for viprataa.

>> If, as ShrI Grimes had pointed out that the prescribed way in
>>Advaitam is "Shruti, Yukti and Anubhava" then it seems to me that
>>vedAdhikAram and MokshAdhikAram are implicitly connected.  If only
>>male DvijAs are given access to Shruti, does it not follow that the
>>AdvAita MArgam is open only to those people?
>
>        Shruti does not always mean vedas. The essence of Shruti's
>can always be found in great works like bhagavad gita, yoga vasistha,
>upadesasaram and my favorite, upadeshasahasri. Therefore, one can
>get the import of Shruti from these texts if one is not eligible
>to read the upanishhad-s. This has been made clear by HH of Sringeri
>as well as that of Kanchi (See the books, The jagatguru answers
>and the voice of god, respectively).  Many of the puraNaa-s also
>give the import of Vedanta, as the recent posting from the
>Adhyatma Ramayana showed.

The verbal root vip-, which in the Veda meant, "trembling, quivering" and
to vipra - which means literally "the quivering one" is "the trembling
Vedic seer who is possessed (quivers with) the inspiring god(s)." See Jan
Gonda's study per this term in his The Vision of the Vedic Poets. It
appears that this term originally meant a moved, inspired, ecstatic and
entusiastic seer as the bearer or pronouncer of the vibrating, metrical
sacred words. The concepts of Vibration and mantras as spontaneous
manifestations seem to derive from this.

As Sadananda put it, one should be aware of ALL the meanings of a word and
then and only then, should one "guess" as to its use by a particular
author. One would be foolish to contend that "vipra" came to mean a
"brahmin" but, and there is the rub, what else does it mean and what
exactly did it mean to a particular individual at a particular time? And
when was his time? And who was he speaking to? And why? All these are
factors too. It seems as if the original meaning of the word should at
least be noted - especially since the person we were discussing seems to
have had an excellent grasp of those original texts.
John