Questions

[Ashish Chandra]

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 06:29:30 -0400, yogafarm <yogafarm at WEBTV.NET> wrote:

>Namasté -- as a new member reading the commentaries, I have several
>questions:
>
>1.) Regarding "consciousness in comas ...": Is it not true that
>awareness during comas (or any other type of unconsciousness) would be
>dualistic?  That is, if there were an "observer" watching his / her own
>unconsciousness, wouldn't that qualify as "dualism" ... and thus not be
>advaita?
>

No because that is not the case. When a person enters coma, his antahkarana
has perhaps ceased to function or is in some dormant state. The mind enters
its own home - the Anahata chakra, and all one observes is the absence of
everything or knowledge of nothing. Upon waking, he/she observes that there
was nothing there, he/she remembers nothing. But we have to concede that
consciousness was present even when the person was in coma as otherwise,
he/she will have no perception that time passed between the point of
his/her entering coma and his/her coming out of it. It (coming out of the
coma) would seem like the next instant in his/her existence. However, the
difference in time is perceived even though it may not be accurate. So
something was there that observed the absence of the universe, the body and
the modifications of the mind. So who is it that observed the absence of it
all? This is what Vedanta answers.


>In full samadhi -- isn't it "nirvitarka samadhi"? -- there is only "pure
>consciousness," and nobody is actually "watching" -- it is a kind of
>"no-mind experience," as my classes have learned it.  For us, this is
>the equivalent of advaita or being "One without a second."
>
>In short, wouldn't knowing when we are Brahman or Atman negate the
>Oneness state and thus be mutualy exclusive?
>

But Brahman is everything. All this is Brahman. So what else exists to be
qualified as mutually exclusive?

[...]

>3.) In non-dualism, can there be gods, devis or devatas, temples and
>such?  To whom should God / Brahman pray?  Or if these are only seen as
>aspects of the mind / maya, one is left to ask: What mind?  What maya?
>

It is not that you or I or the Devas and temples etc don't exist. What
Advaita teaches you and me is that how this all is percieved is not its
real svarupa (nature/state). When we talk of knowing Brahman, it is not
that everything else around us becomes one bright light and we are what we
were but only now we see the light. No. It is that we become It by knowing
It. That is mukti. Advaita, like others have mentioned on this list, is a
process by which we lose our false knowledge (avidya) so that what we
always were becomes known.

ashish