[Advaita-l] the meaning trapped into the word

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008, Marko Gregoric wrote:

> Dear Jaldhar!
> I am reffering to your statement :
> "Speech cannot reach brahman_for_the_man_who_has_already_reached_brahman_"
>
> There is no such thing as a man that has not reached Brahman becauce there
> is Brahman only. How can there be a man "out of" Brahman? Does that mean
> that there are two types of men, some in Brahman and some out of it?

You are making a very elementary error of logic known in colloquial 
English as "comparing apples and pears."  From the conventional time-bound 
viewpoint it is totally legitimate to speak of reached and not yet 
reached or in and out of Brahman.  It is only from the viewpoint of 
brahman itself that there is non-duality.  You have to pick a frame of 
reference and stick to it.

> The "man" is a concept or more exactly a "man" is something made up of
> different kinds of knowledge (scientific, philosophical, religious, common
> and so on...). If you at some point of your life weren't told that you are a
> man and what does that mean, you wouldn't know that.
>

Ok that's true.  But the subject under discussion was whether speech was 
useful in reaching brahman.  And what you wrote doesn't alter the fact 
that yes it is.

> We need  the guru in order to break  that veil of ignorance which is the
> knowledge we assimilated during our lifes

It is not knowledge that is ignorance but _false_ knowledge.  It is 
through intellect that we gain viveka -- the ability to distinguish 
between the two.  You are throwing out the baby with the bath water if you
throw out all knowledge indiscriminately.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>