[Advaita-l] Can a mithyA-vastu produce an effect? असत्यवस्तुनः अर्थक्रियाकारित्वम्

[Venkatesh Murthy]

Namaste

2011/5/22 Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
>
> >
> > Sribhashya has said Yathartha Sarva Vijnanam Iti Vedavidam Matam
> > SrutiSmrutibhyaha Sarvasya Sarvatmatva Pratititaha means all Jnana in
> > this world is true Jnana only. There is no false Jnana because we know
> > from Sruti and Smruti everything contains everything. Shell will have
> > silver silver will have shell iron will have gold and diamonds and
> > platinum. Even mud will have gold silver and platinum. Why it is like
> > this? Chandogya Sruti has said Tasam Trivrutamekaikam we see by
> > Pratyaksha the Trivrutkarana of elements in combining. All things in
>
> It is a great leap from trivRtkaraNa to rajata-Sukti, rajju-sarpa and sthANu-
> purusha. What the chAndogya Sruti tells us is that the material constituents
> of the perceivable universe are reducible to certain basic elements. This is
> somewhat similar to the contemporary scientific outlook that says that
> ultimately all material entities are made up of the elements in the periodic
> table, which are futher made out of basic atomic particles, and so on. The
> similarity with contemporary science ends there. The chAndogya Sruti goes
> on from this description of trivRtkaraNa to make a higher and wide-ranging
> philosophical statement about tat tvam asi, whereas physical science cannot
> (and does not) go from its material reductionism to the tat tvam asi level.
>

Kindly go through:

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/common.php

'You don't look much like a fly or a worm. But believe it or not, you
share genes with both of them—and with every other living organism.
Scientists study the genes in bacteria, fish, chimpanzees, and other
living things to learn more about humans.'

Human and fruit fly have 36% DNA common.  With Chimpanzee it is 98%
with Zebra Fish 85% with Bacteria 7% Mustard Grass  15% Round Worm
21%. It proves Ramanuja theory there is little bit of everything in
everything.

A person can see the hidden silver in shell. But he may see large
quantity instead of small. That is the error in quantity only. But
silver is there in shell. The snake is there in rope. The Man is there
in pillar.



> Leaving science aside, it is also completely indefensible to cite trivRtkaraNa
> Sruti in the case of perceptual error and to hold that "minute amounts" of
> the wrongly perceived entities are actually present in the objects being
> wrongly perceived. When an inanimate pillar is seen from a distance and
> mistaken for a living person, what is the "small quantity" of purusha that is
> in the sthANu, to cause the error? To answer that the purushottama is really
> hidden in the pillar is no answer at all, because the purushottma is hidden
> everywhere, not just in the pillar. Also, in that case, it is not necessary to
> have the tIvra bhakti of prahlAda to see narasimha emerge out of a pillar
> at all. It would be enough to make a simple mistake in regular perception!
> Mere physiological myopia or randomly firing neurons would be enough and
> moksha would be guaranteed, effortlessly. If you were to say that a "minute
> quantity" of another purusha, not the purushottama, is present in the pillar,
> again that would be no answer at all. For that would merely restate an
> idiosyncratic position, not address the question raised above. I would really
> like to meet, shake hands with or pay homage to that elusive purusha in the
> pillar, no matter of how small a quantity he may be. Even if he were not the
> purushottma, he would have to be a great yogi or a master magician. Maybe
> I could learn something about hiding away a "minute quantity" of myself
> in a pillar, be seen only when someone else makes a mistake and vanish
> when the same person examines the pillar more closely! It would be an
> extremely useful skill to have, in this world and the next.

This logic is very strange. A person may feel giddy because of some
illness. Then he will say the world is rotating. But he is correct.
The world rotates on its axis.  The normal person cannot feel world is
rotating but the giddy person feels it. Will you honour the Giddy
person as a great scientist because he can feel world rotation? Will
you employ him in a high position because he has special powers? Like
that the person seeing silver in shell is not a special person. He is
seeing silver because of a defect. He cannot have special power of
seeing silver.

>
> > the world have the same basic elements. Even our body has the same
> > elements like Carbon. So everything contains everything. But the
> > question is how much? Even mud has gold and silver but they will be
>
> "Everything is in everything," understood as an expression of sarvam khalv
> idaM brahma, as a higher philosophical principle, is one thing. Taking it as a
> literal statement in a realist philosophy (or for that matter modern science)
> is a completely different thing altogether. I hope you can see how taking your
> argument to its logical extreme can get to be very nonsensical. How much
> of Adolf Hitler is in you? Or for that matter, how much of Osama bin Laden
> is in you? I don't mean this in a metaphorical sense; I mean this question
> in the bhUtArtha sense of "minute quantity" versus "large quantity".
>

There may be minute quantity of so many things in me but I cannot
detect them. What is wrong in this? Positive side is also there.
Nobody has disappointment. He can think he has all famous people like
Adi Sankara in him only.


> > In Physics we know every action has equal and opposite reaction. If a
> > boy is pressing the ground and jumps up he is putting some force on
> > the earth. Earth puts back same force on him makes him jump. But what
> > about the Earth? What happened to force the boy put on it? The Earth
> > moves also but the movement is very small even the best measuring
> > instrument will not show it. But you conclude Physics law is wrong?
> > There is no equal and opposite reaction. This is wrong conclusion.
> > Like this everything in the world contains everything but we cannot
> > measure it. But the law everything contains everything is correct. It
> > cannot be tested always. It is coming from Chandogya Sruti.
>
> This is bad mixing up of scientific thinking and philosophical thinking. I will
> desist from saying much further on either count, for I think I've already
> said too much in this post. I wish you good luck in studying viSishTAdvaita,
> dvaita, dvaitAdvaita/bhedAbheda and advaita.
>

Why? What is wrong here? How can you measure Earth's movement because
of the boy's force?  You can't. But you cannot say the Physics is
wrong because you cannot measure.

I am studying Advaita and other  philosophies. But we must have
critical approach. Otherwise our own philosophy Advaita will not be
understood.



--
Regards

-Venkatesh