[Advaita-l] Much More on sAkshI-D

[Jay Nelamangala]

Dear sadAnanda,

>KS: Jay - why should I do all that when I have no doubt that it is a
>snake , out of fear I am running  as fast I  can from the scene to save
>my life.  I have no iota doubt about the snake being there.  Hence
>Saakshee  has to declare it is true knowledge even though it is not
>true!

You are saying both.  One one hand you say you had no doubt it was
a snake,  and on the other you say "even though it is not true!".    How
did you know  "it is not true!" ?.  Not when you decided to run.
Only when you were running, you doubted your own knowledge.
You ran back and kicked the rope.  That is when you realized
 "it is not true!" or your incorrect knowledge got corrected.  If you had
never gone back and checked ,  you would spend the rest of your
life patting your back for saving yourself from that snake by running away,
and you would not be in a position to say  "even though it is not true!".
You would never know you ran from a rope.

When you get  knowledge, you think that is the right knowledge.  You will
know what you knew is wrong,  only when you get a doubt in what you
already knew,  and " consistency - successfulness " provide the process
to "fix" that  knowledge.  After this process, you will come to know
that what you knew before this process,  was wrong.   If you skip the
process itself,  then whatever you know will be only right knowledge  for
you,
because you won't have anything to compare it with to say it is right or
wrong.

Many times we do run from a rope thinking it to be a snake.  We get scared
assuming a moving shadow on a curtain to be a ghost.   That only means
we never gave a chance to sAkshI to comprehend the truth.
We ended the process abruptly, out of fear of the snake,
though the rope never moved,  we still thought it was a snake and ran
for life.   The mind which created fear in us,  did not care for the
presence of consistency and successfulness,  which are needed for
sAkshI-D to comprehend truth.  In those cases,  we live with that
wrong knowledge for the rest of our life.  But, the truth of that knowledge
was not established by sAkshI-D.  It was all the work of mind.

I will cover pramA-bhramA (theory of error) on a seperate email.
That may clarify some more points.