[Advaita-l] RE: sadyomukti and jIvanmukti

[S Jayanarayanan]

--- Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Okay, one more response to a question and then I will stop this
> thread.
> 

Sorry for the delay in my reply. Just a minor point:

> >Now, can you please tell me where I was redefining the terms, and
> >misunderstood advaita philosophy? On the other hand, if they are
> personal
> >opinions, then they are respectable.
> >Namaste
> >Badisa
> 
> The reason I said you seem to be redefining terms is that you use
> sadyomukti 
> to refer to the moment of physical death of a jIvanmukta. The moment
> of 
> death is properly called videhamukti, not sadyomukti. Second, you
> seem to 
> use the term "divine experience" in a variety of ways. What
> characterizes 
> this divine experience is left unstated.
> 
> As far as advaita texts are concerned, the following points may be
> noted.
> 
> 1. videhamukti - is the ending of embodiment of a jIvanmukta;
> 2. jIvanmukti - is the condition of continuing in an embodied state
> after 
> the rise of Self-knowledge;
> 3. sadyomukti - is the condition of immediate liberation at the very
> instant 
> of Self-knowledge.
> 
> Now, an allowance is made both for an instant burst of full
> Self-knowledge, 
> for the apt sAdhaka, who needs no aids to strengthen his knowledge,
> and for 
> a brief glimpse of Self-knowledge by a sAdhaka, who then needs
> additional 
> sAdhana-s to strengthen it. The first case is the sadyomukta, the
> second 
> case is not. Both can be called jIvanmukta-s. For the sadyomukta,
> even this 
> so-called videhamukti is just a manner of speaking, for s/he is
> unaffected 
> by it. For the jIvanmukta who needs strengthening of knowledge, the 
> situation differs according as whether or not s/he attains the stage
> where 
> no further strengthening is necessary.
> 

As far as I am aware, there is no reason for "strengthening of
knowledge" for a jIvanmukta, as the jIvanmukta is precisely one whose
knowledge is already strengthened.

Again, as far as I know, the difference in the terms stems not from the
state - both are "muktas" - but from the PATH that was taken to attain
that state. As mentioned above, the sadyomukta is one who attains firm
knowledge instantly, but a jIvanmukta is one who initially attained
infirm knowledge, and then finally attained firm knowledge. It is like
the analogy of two persons taking different routes to land up in the
same location - the PATHS are different, but the final location is the
same.

Videhamukta is simply a jIvanmukta (or perhaps even a sadyomukta) who
has given up his embodied state *as perceived by others* (for a mukta
always knows that he has no relationship to the physical body). 

> Best regards,
> Vidyasankar
> 

Regards,

Kartik

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