[Advaita-l] Re: Advaita-l Digest, Vol 2, Issue 29

[Kotekal, Srinivas [Non-Employee/0200]]

Dear Vidyasankar-ji,

I would like to comment on your posting.

>>cause of this world as Parabrahman,  because the world is the work
>>of God.  If world itself is denied,  then it is denial of its cause,
>>Parabrahman.

>Not necessarily. You are making a crucial category mistake in your logic, 
>but you are not alone in that. This mistake has been made by all
non-advaita 
>schools of vedAnta, and enshrined as an axiom. To make a statement about
the 
>reality of an effect is not to make the same judgment about the cause.

>I dreamt last night that a child was born to a two month old girl. This 
>concept is the work of neurons firing away in my brain. As such, it is 
>unreal. Yet my brain and its neurons are real enough, right?

Sutra "janmAdysya yatah." clearly indicates Brahmn is the creator of this
world. The world has to be real in order to make sense of what sutra is
saying. By denying the reality of this world you are either denying the
Sutra itself or the act of Brahmn. This sutra indicates explicit act of
Brahmn (i.e the creation), where as your example of dream is not an
voluntary process on the dreamer part (even if one wish to dream one can not
dream accordingly). Hence by denying the content of dream as unreal you may
not deny the dreamer I agree. But when we have an sutra statement saying
Brahmns explicit act of creation, I do not see how denying the realty of
world is **not same** as denying Brahmn.


>What gives you the impression that we make postulates about the un/reality 
>of the world? Rather, it is you that makes the postulate that the world is 
>absolutely real and then arranges Sruti and smRti around your postulate.

No ! we are not postulating about the realty of world. Shruti is explicitly
declaring the reality of the world. To mention few ;

1. Rgveda (2nd Mandala) says that it is a real world:
vishvaM satyaM maghavAnA yuvoridApashcana pra minanti vrataM vAm |

2. To repeat, sutra "janmAdysya yatah." 

3. Most importantly, Sri Krishna Himself is very explicit on this,

Gita 16.8:
asatyamapratiShThaM te jagadAhuranIshvaram.h |

[They say that the world is not real, that the World does not have any
basis, that the World is without a Lord....]
Here, He is addressing several types; mithya vAdis, materialists, atheists
etc.. 

Having seen all the above, now tell me, why it shouldn't be those people
denying the reality of world are the one who is postulating about the
un/reality of this world ?

>>are real,  and then drink a cup of poison,  or you say this world
>>and its contents are unreal and then drink the cup of poison,
>>the effect of the poison is same  that the person will die.

>This is the kind of ridiculous argumentation that we advaitins are totally 
>fed up with. The effect of the poison is that the body will die. The AtmA 
>will not die. na hanyate hanyamAne SarIre.

This is not ridiculous argument. The very acknowledgement of yours "The
effect of the poison is that the body will die" indicates **something** is
going to happen. If you really in the position of denying the reality of
world, you should have told in the line of "cup, poison, person drinking the
poison, dieing is not real after all". But it was not the case. 


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