Vedanta and intellect

[Ashish Chandra]

>From: nanda chandran <vpcnk at HOTMAIL.COM>

[...]
>And this sense of selfhood - this individuality is the greatest mAyam. It's
>due to this sense of selfhood that we develop attachment to objects,
>experience pain and pleasure, happiness and misery in this world. This is
>what YAgnavalkya means in his dialogue with Maitreyi, that it is only due
>to
>the self that everything - parents, wife, children, property etc - are
>dear.
>The self referred
>to here is the personality, which was developed due to the life of
>experience. This personality has no existence of its own apart from
>whatever
>it has experienced in life - it only exists in relation to something else.
>

>From BU:

"He said: it is not, indeed, for the husband's sake (kamaya) that the
husband is dear, but for the sake of the self that the husband is dear
....." {IV.5.6}

"The self, indeed, Maitreyi, is to be seen, heard, reflected on, meditated
on, and when the self is indeed seen, heard, reflected on and known, then
all this is known."

Exactly what this odd passage means is perhaps made a little clearer in what
Yajnavalkya says next:

"Brahminhood deserts the one who knows Brahminhood in anything other than
the self ...... the worlds desert the one who knows the worlds as anything
other than the self .... This Brahminhood, this Ksatriyahood, all these
worlds, these gods, these Vedas, all these beings, this all, are the self."

Seems to me that the personality which is the sum total of past and present
experiences cannot be the self described as the self by Yajnavalkya because
personality will change (as there are sure to be future personalities if
Moksha is not attained).

Could you please clarify.

Thanks
ashish
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