[Advaita-l] satyam jnanam anantam brahman

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

To my question, on what jnanam, the answer is it is Consciousness. So, what
is this Consciousness? Is it knowledge or the power of knowing? The answer
is it is the essence of knowledge. Let us push the envelop further and ask
what is the essence of knowledge? The wise philosophers on this forum will
quickly see the problem with the attempts to define that which is
transcendental even with the help of sastras. The problem does not end with
an attempt to define it as per sastras and bhashyas. The relationship
between Existence and Knowledge, Knowledge and Infinitude and Existence and
Infinitude have to be defined in addition to defining the relationship
between Existence, Knowledge and Infinitude in addition to the relationship
between the aforsaid relationships and this and so on. Infinite
relationships in a trans-relational Brahman is interesting. As finite and
infinite are opposite notions of a spacio-temporal world, why Brahman is
Infinite and not Finite. In the same breadth, why it is existence and not
non-existence? In the same (slightly longer) breadth, why is Brahman
Consciousness and not Unconsciousness (sic)?

If we take that Brahman IS Infinite Knowledge, it resolves the problem but
then you have to come a non-mayavada conclusion of Advaitam that negates
nothing while negating everything. Let me give an example. If we think of a
lotus, the mind takes the form of a lotus. We say Mind is Lotus or in other
words Lotus is nothing but the Mind. When not thinking, the knowledge of all
objects from lotus to cactus is in the mind but undifferentiated,
non-different from the mind. The mind is not the lotus, not the cactus etc.
is true as much as mind is lotus, cactus etc. is. There is a theory
that reality is one of the probabilities. The substratum of all these
probabilities is the ultimate reality. It is not only a negation of all
realities but summation as well.