[Advaita-l] On the nature of muula avidya

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

In darkness, I experience duality - me and darkness. It is a frighful
condition that I want to get out of. In light, I experience
non-duality because I see that only light exists illuminating objects,
which have no real existence but for the substratum namely the light.

On 25/10/2011, Venkatesh Murthy <vmurthy36 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Namaste
>
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 4:41 PM, kuntimaddi sadananda
> <kuntimaddisada at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Nature of Muula Avidya
>
>> In addition ignorance cannot be proved by any known means of knowledge,
>> pramANa.  In fact, it gets negated if you bring a pramANa, or an operation
>> of an instrument of knowledge. Yet, it appears to exist until it is
>> removed by knowledge. This is true for all types of ignorance, fundamental
>> (related to oneself) or related to ignorance of any objective science, say
>> physics. Ignorance is generally equated to darkness and knowledge as light
>> that removes that darkness. Referring to darkness as an example, how can
>> we prove the existence of darkness. When we say it is dark, how do we know
>> it is dark? General answer is – I can see with my eyes that it is pitch
>> dark that I cannot see anything. However, epistemologically, eyes are the
>> means of knowledge only when we light up the objects by external light.
>> Hence I can see any object only when the physical light illumines the
>> object that I see. Without that light I cannot see any object in a
>> pitch-dark room.
>>  However I still say it is too dark when there is no light (normal means
>> of knowledge or pramANa). If I turn on the means of knowledge for the eyes
>> to see (that is turn on the physical light so that eye can see the
>> objects), the darkness that I am seeing itself disappears. Hence is the
>> statement above that ignorance or darkness gets negated when we operate
>> the pramANa to know it. Here eyes do not perceive darkness since there is
>> no light and if there is light there is no darkness for the light to
>> illumine that darkness. Hence darkness is neither real, since it gets
>> negated by turning the light on, and it is also not unreal, since one can
>> experience the presence of pitch-darkness.
>
> Before light is switched on in the room you can see darkness only.
> There is no object there but only you. Can you say you experience
> Advaita condition in the darkness because only you are there. Nothing.
> When Light is switched on you can see objects. There is Dvaita there
> because you can see many objects.
>
> Can you conclude in darkness there is Advaita but in Light there is
> Dvaita? If so Dvaita is better because it is better to be in Light not
> darkness.   To prove it is wrong you should argue there is Dvaita in
> Darkness and Advaita in Light. How?
>
> --
> Regards
>
> -Venkatesh
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