Nature of Consciousness

[Vaidya Sundaram]

> I respect that quality deeply. However I would respect even more deeply an
> admission that, while they may contribute greatly to the wisdom of mankind,
> the Vedas do not necessarily include all possible wisdom, and could even
> contain some errors. You have made it abundantly clear that this is asking
> too much.


namaskAram.

  I have done my best to follow the discussion on this thread. Surely several
      interesting and important points have come out.

Now, however, as much as I hate to say this, the discussion has begun to digress
      from the subject. Fundamentally, I am not in any way qualified to make
      judgements on the correctness of your interpretation of your experiences
      and the reasons you attribute to them. At the same time, without having a
      full knowledge of the Vedas, it is impossible for any one else make a
      statement that the Vedas cannot be the sum of knowledge.  I quote below
      from the Introduction of the vivekachUdAmani:

"Vedanta relates to the realm of the super-sensuous and we must rely on the
      declaration of sruti which contains the revelation by those endowed with a
      spiritual vision of these transcendental truths. It is not for us, who do
      not NOW posses such vision, being caught up in the world of sense, to
      question the validity of or the value of Sruti."

 That said, I am sure you see the inherent bias I am bringing to this
      discussion:

1) I take to heart the very first line of Sri Shankara's VivekachUdAmani i.e.
      nara janma durlabham ... it is difficult to attain birth as a human.  I
      dont intend spending time to prove for myself why the sruti is
      indispensable and infallible. To paraphrase Sri Anantharama Dikshidhar,
      the guy handling the signals for a train, only shows a flag .. he does not
      actually stand in front of the train and say "DONT" ... so also with the
      sruti teachings. they only "flag" you ... they dont drag you by the hand
      ... as much as I may wish it would !

2) I am not against the concept of a revelation that points me the right
      direction to find "that by which every thing else is known" for the
      finding is still mine.

 Besides, I am still not clear of one thing. I hope you (or other members) could
      sort this for me please ... you are taking observations made by the
      senses, in the material realm and using reasoning learned by using the
      same senses. Can you realistically expect to use **only** these
      observations and using **only** these reasonings to make predictions of
      some thing which by default is outside the system. Its like saying the
      three dimensional world is a three dimensional shadow of a four
      dimensional world because the three dimensional world ... blah blah ...
      you can only go so far. I think the same holds true of the arguments of
      trying to explain "consciousness" using our observations we make now ...
      you can only go so far.

I hope the list member(s) realise that there is no "admission" to be made on the
      Vedas. Period.

bhava shankara desikama sharaNam

Vaidya.