[Advaita-l] Guidelines on discussions about SSS - vAda - criteria of truth

[Guy Werlings]

----- Original Message ----- 
>   1. RE: Guidelines on discussions about Swami Saccidanandendra
> Message: 1
> Dear Sri Werlings,
>
> It is good to see a post from you after such a long time. We could all
> certainly benefit from your words backed by long experience.



Dear Sri Vidyasankar,

Thank you for your very gentle answer. I am not pretty sure that I really 
deserve the kind appreciation you are making on my so-called «long 
experience», which was maybe mainly a long succession of errors, 
inaccuracies and deviations.

You wrote:

On the other hand, the traditional Indian
view has been "vAde vAde jAyate tattvabodhaH." If by the word vAda, we 
intend dialogue...

I understand that by the word «dialogue» you mean sandhyAsambhASha. If I 
remember well, the Caraka SaMhitA says somewhere that it is only a seeker 
after truth (tattvajijñAsu) that is entitled to hold vAdakathA.

This leaves totally unsolved the question of separating what is right and 
wrong and what is true and not true.

As you refer to my long experience, I might perhaps give hereafter a kind of 
résumé (for the members of the list) of  a lecture I gave on the subject in 
Paris in 1980. Now that I am pondering once again over the matter, it seems 
to me that I made then a big error, but I'll be interested to read your 
reaction on the matter:

I said that to be «true» any philosophic statement must be delimited by 
three boundaries: shruti, the Scriptures, yukti, reasoning and anubhUti, 
experience (it is there I think I made a gross and major mistake: I should 
have said «sArvatrika anubhava», universal experience, instead of anubhUti, 
because anubhava is experience while anubhUti is realization - and that if 
all anubhUti is anubhava, all anubhava is not anubhUti).

And I gave the following clarification: a statement acknowledged by a 
Scripture, but that cannot be established by reasoning and that cannot be 
experienced is at best a religious belief but not a philosophic truth.

A statement established by reasoning only (shuddha tarka), not acknowledged 
by the Scriptures and that cannot be experienced is just a castle in the 
air, an intellectual construction but not a philosophic truth.

Something that can be experienced, but is not acknowledged by the shruti and 
that cannot be established by yukti is a mystic experience but not a 
philosophic truth and in the end not a truth at all, because all mystic 
experience has for aim the personal satisfaction of the mystic.

Please kindly excuse me for this too long message.

Regards

Guy/GI