Questions

[Ashish Chandra]

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002 10:30:46 -0700, Venkatraman.Chandrasekaran at NOKIA.COM
wrote:
>
>Since memory can't be independent of time, you can't have an imprint of
>timelessness in the antakaraNa.

Time is also a construct of the mind. It is not independent of the
existence of mind.

>But how do we realise that we were blacked-out or
>in deep-sleep? It is because the intellect immediately comes to the fore
upon
>waking up and recognising the situation being different now from what it
was
>before, it cognizes the fact through extrapolation.

Antahkarana <----coma/deep sleep/samaadhi--->antahkarana.

In this situation, how does the intellect know that there was a state of
coma/deep sleep/samaadhi? Simply put, it does not. It does not know -
rather, it assumes it does i.e. it takes on the role of the knower when in
fact it is not. For if the consciousness I now feel is because of my
antahkarana, then there would be no perception of these states as I would
go into coma asking for tea and come out of it a week later asking whether
I can have that cup. You have said intellect recognizes that "the situation
is different". On what basis does it decide so if there is no link between
the former state and latter? I go to sleep and I wake up. If there is no
link between the two, in fact, a visible link, I would not know myself to
be the same as the person who went to sleep. Antahkarana cannot *know*
anything without the support of something else whose nature, we can thus
far conclude, is being conscious even as everything else is absent.

It is around that link that antahkarana functions, not independent of it.
That is what I am saying.


>It is not due to any memory
>imprints.

Memory is only a function of the antahkarana. It is only a reactionary
mechanism when intellect tries to figure out what happened and there is
nothing to load from memory. So there is no imprint in memory whatsoever.

> As I said in an earlier mail, antakaraNa is the medium on which imprints
>are made. In its absence (as in deep-sleep or coma) there can't be
imprints. Only
>aid is intellect (aided by ever existing consciousness) upon waking.
>
>But again, this doesn't in anyway disprove the presence of Brahman
>in all states, in case you are holding on your opinion because
>of the risk of refutation of this Truth.
>

It does not prove the presence either. Our guide is the Guru we follow and
his words. What this exercise means to me is that it goads you to find out
the nature of "that" which is present in all the three states.

ashish