[Advaita-l] Acceptance of the validity of shruti is only *faith*

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>I don't understand why Pure Consciousness can't be
>deduced or inferred from the deep-sleep experience. I
>agree its a hypothesis, until it is understood
>intellectually and becomes paroksha jnAna.

So long as we analyze waking, dream and sleep through the usual ways of 
human logical thinking, there are numerous inferences / deductions that can 
be made about the nature of consicousness in deep sleep. Every dualistic 
school would something different to say about it. As one can see, 
intellectual understanding can take various forms. You have only to talk to 
a moderately capable dvaita pundit to get a host of arguments against 
inferring the advaitic pure consciousness from deep sleep.

>Yes, sleep from the jIva perspective is
>tAmasic/negative, meaning that its mano-laya not
>mano-nAsha, but that's no reason to deny the blissful
>experience of sushupti, which is none other than our

One can have an entirely different discussion about bliss and experience in 
advaita vedAnta, which I will not go into at this stage. However, who denies 
the experience of bliss in deep sleep? An experience of bliss is however not 
the same as knowing brahman as bliss.

>own swaroopa. TurIya is not a fourth state but the
>substratum of the three - which would be available to
>a man of knowledge at all times.

I wonder, who denies that the turIya is the substratum of all states? 
However, note that nowhere in the entire gauDapAda kArikAs is it explicitly 
stated that turIya is not a fourth state. The word caturtha is liberally 
used and in general use in Sanskrit, the word turIya itself means "fourth".

The statement that no one is truly removed from one's identity as brahman is 
made in the same spirit as saying that in reality there is no one bound and 
no one released, no bondage and no release. However, when one talks of 
bandha, moksha, what is the means to moksha etc., different statements are 
made.

Best regards,
Vidyasankar

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