[Advaita-l] GITA - 2.15

[Amuthan Arunkumar R]

namo nArAyaNAya!

--- murali mohan <murali_mohan_at_yahoo_dot_com>
wrote:
>  
>   My humble doubt is : how can the self be
> "different" and "independant" from all that it
> reveals? Is not the self all prevading and nothing
> other than brahman and brahman is all that there is
> ? Is not the intellect, mind, world etc also in
> brahman only?
> 

it depends on the viewpoint. i pointed this out in an
ealier mail (GITA 2.12 part I). i'll quote the
necessay portion here. though this doesn't directly
answer your quesions, the answers can be easily
inferred from this. 

\begin quote

though it has been shown that the self is eternal, it
must be kept in  
mind that this statement is made only to show the
eternal nature of the  
self WITH RESPECT TO objects of the world. strictly
speaking, time  
itself is a notion which arises due to avidyA and
hence, we cannot use  
time to characterize the self. the eternality of the
self should be  
understood only in a relative sense. the self, by
itself, since it  
transcends time, is neither eternal nor non-eternal. a
similar argument  can be given to show the relative
nature of other statements like 'the  self
exists','the self alone exists', 'the self is one
only, without a  
second','the self is all pervasive', 'the self is the
witness of all'  and 
so on. saying that the self is of such and such a
nature is only as  
sensible as saying that a blind man sees everything
black. this  
statement can made by one who knows what colour is.
but if a person is  blind from his birth, then, there
is neither seeing nor a concept of  colour for him and
the statement doesn't make any sense from his point 
of 
view. similarly, when the mind dies, there is neither
time nor space  nor 
subject nor object. all these statements are only for
human beings.  
(it is not necessary to say 'ignorant' human beings
since it is only  
through ignorance that we think that we are human
beings.) to put it in  
other words, as long as the mind is perceived to be
real, so long,  
these statements make sense. 

\end quote

vAsudevaH sarvaM,
aparyAptAmR^itaH. 

Amuthan Arunkumar R,
Final year, B.Tech/M.Tech Dual Degree,
Dept. of Aerospace Engg., IIT Madras.

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