[Advaita-l] chid-aabhaasa

[Bhadraiah Mallampalli]

>The realization is shifting my identity with anaatma to >my true nature - that is done by with the intellect only >- hence scripture says mind alone is responsible for both >ignornace and knowledge.

Could please give a quote, just the wording.

 

We all eat food, and we think the hands are feeding our mouths. We eat with our hands. (Snakes don't have hands and directly with mouth, which is besides the point.) As long as we think we use our intellect to direct our hand for eating, yes hands are a means. But if we are very hungry we don't realize that distinction between means and end because the eater's consciousness supercedes all thoughts. Likewise when we realize that mind is controlled by supreme deity we see it working similar to a CPU juggling its bits. 

 

Ultimately we have to identify with a higher entity to see a lower entity as an "inert" entity (going by your term). Until then we can not do this. 

 

But the same story can very well be written about other entities too, and mind is not anything special, though it is special in its own way for its function of being able to think and differentiate between two amalaka fruits (ignorance and knowledge in your statement above). 

 

Dhyana, the next higher stage is typically what is explained all over Upanishat commentaries as Model-based classification. Dhyana is a process of categorizing all objects according to a model of n-elements. After classifying all objects we need to eliminate the model itself, otherwise the presence of model itself will be the final piece of ignorance left out. That will reveal advaita. This process of dhyana always exists in us, like a software preloaded, just like mind (manas). Whatever arguments you made about mind are now recursively applicable to dhyana (dhyana alone can classify all objects in this universe into a model, but dhyana is inert, once we get brahmajnana dhyana will fall off like intellect did etc.) Then I will likewise counter that dhyana can not be called inert by any lower level observer unless you can identify yourself with something above dhyana etc. 

 

So I guess who ever said intellect is inert was at the point of time talking from a higher level than intellect. Even in that case intellect will not stay inert because the person can very well get into those lower states like intellect at will and observe life of smaller beings like us, so the implication may be that it is not unknown or out of control, it is something that is under control. 

 

Oh well, if something is under control we are still under cause & effect.. food for another day. 

 

Regards

Bhadraiah

 

        

 

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