[Advaita-l] Concept of soul

[Mahesh Ursekar]

Pranams Anand-ji:

It is interested that you should mention this theory. It is a rather elegant
one and explains some aspects of Vedanta that have been troubling me. This
theory was introduced to me recently by a disciple of Swami Parthasarthy (
http://www.vedantaworld.org/) with whom I have been discussing my concerns
regarding the concept of soul.

According to her, Vedanta "switches theories" when one theory (in this case
the concept of soul) has exhausted its usefullness or the sadhaka has
understood its limitations. If you take such a stand then we need not probe
any further the thorny issues with "subtle bodies", etc. However, my
personal feeling is that *all* aspects of "subtle bodies" need to be
explained in a consistent and complete manner since it is a central tenet of
Vedanta. Remove "subtle bodies" and you remove rebirth, which in turn
removes the theory of karma, which then questions the validity of Gita and
this has obvioiusly serious implications.

Thanks, Mahesh



On 8/26/07, Anand Hudli <anandhudli at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is a theory within advaita that debunks the concept of life outside
> of
> the inquirer, making it irrelevant whether such life outside the inquirer
> is
> natural or artificial. This theory, called the eka-jIva-vAda, holds that
> the
> whole universe is like a dream to  a single jIva, the inquirer. The
> intriguing aspect of this theory is that even the Guru is part of this
> dream. The inquirer is supposed to listen to instructions in his dream and
> wake himself up, inspired by the Guru and other imaginary liberated jIva
> semblences! For example, I have no conclusive proof that Mahesh Ursekar or
> any other member of this list or for that matter any person in the world
> exists. Prof. Suryanarayana Sastri is critical of this vAda when he says
> in
> his introduction to the VedAntaparibhAShA: "A position like this is as
> intolerable as it is logically unassailable."
>
> Note that this theory is not the same as saying that from the PAramAthika
> view there is no world or the jIvas, only Brahman. Here, even in the
> vyavAhArika view, existence of only a single jIva is admitted.
>
> Anand
>
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