Nature of Consciousness

[Parisi & Watson]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <ramakris at EROLS.COM>
To: ADVAITA-L at LISTS.ADVAITA-VEDANTA.ORG
<ADVAITA-L at LISTS.ADVAITA-VEDANTA.ORG>
Date: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: Nature of Consciousness


>Parisi & Watson <niche at AMERITECH.NET> wrote:
>
>> I am strongly allergic to it personally, since it calls back the
>worst of my
>> Christian upbringing. And we have only to look at the strife that
>has been
>
>Sorry for being blunt, I am afraid you'll have to give up advaita
>vedAnta then. Srimad Sureshvara says in his Naishhkarmyasiddhi that
>reasoning can only tell what the self is _not_ but not what it is
>(2.96). Non-duality can be known only be "attainment" of the self.
>This is possible _only_ by vedic texts (3.115). Vedic texts does not
>just mean the veda-s alone. For people not authorized to study veda-s,
>initiation into vedAnta is possible through smR^iti texts, e.g., the
>vishhNu purANa. The latter are based on the veda-s, but have a
>human/divine author.

<snip>

Advaita Vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara, the subject of this list,
depends upon the Vedas and Upanishads. But have not people in other
continents and traditions, who may never have heard of the Vedas, also
reached the non-dual state equivalent to Nirvikalpa Samadhi? If the Vedas
and all those who remember them vanished from the Earth, would that
necessarily spell the end of all realization? This position strikes me as
overly ethnocentric. If the ideas of the Vedas are truly universal, then
they are not confined to any one tradition, language, or scripture. And even
if Advaita Vedanta is the most profound and deeply carried out mystical
tradition on Earth (as I believe it is), it is still only one voice in a
human chorus that spans the continents and millennia. No one tradition has a
total monopoly on the truth.

Robert.