[Advaita-l] GITA - 2.21

[Amuthan]

namo nArAyaNAya!

dear shrI rAm garib,

--- Ram Garib <garib_ram at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
> 
> This particular modification of mind which has been
> called "akhandaakaara vritti" is also a vritti,
> isn't
> it? Since a vritti can occur only in mind, how can
> it
> be called non-intellectual? "manasa eva
> anudrashtavyam" clearly rules out any mysterious
> connotations associated with self-knowledge. Only
> thing that differentiates self-knowledge from others
> is the nature of akhandaakara vritti which does not
> have a subject-object relationship.
> 

akhaNDAkAra vR^Itti is indeed a modification of the
mind only. it is intellectual, but it is NOT the same
as Atma j~nAna. all references to the shruti that
apparently suggest that self knowledge is intellectual
refer only to this akhaNDAkAra vR^itti. the self is,
by it's own nature, a j~nAna svarUpa and does not
require a buddhi to know itself. if we maintain that
self knowledge is only intellectual, we cannot explain
shruti-s like 'satyaM j~nAnam anantaM brahma'. here,
calling the self as 'j~nAnam' does not mean that we
have to superimpose a buddhi onto the self and assert
that the knowledge exists there. this j~nAna is
intrinsic to the self. the confusion arises because
both self knowledge and intellectual knowledge are
used with the same name - 'j~nAna'. 

btw, there is nothing mysterious about all these it
provided you don't call the self mysterious :-)

vAsudevaH sarvaM,
aparyAptAmR^itaH.  

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