[Advaita-l] Iswara swaruupam - 3

[kuntimaddi sadananda]

PraNAms 

I let other scholars address the questions posed by Shree Rajaram, since I failed miserably in my attempts to answer his persistent questions posed in private mails, to his satisfaction.

One should examine the Virat swaruupa of Bhagavan discussed in 11th  Chapter where every thing good and bad are included - One who transcends this aparaa prakRit is pure sat chit ananda swaruupa Brahman. 

Hari Om
Sadananda



--- On Sun, 4/1/12, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Iswara swaruupam - 3
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Cc: "advaitin at yahoogroups.com" <advaitin at yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sunday, April 1, 2012, 5:05 PM

On Sunday, April 1, 2012, kuntimaddi sadananda wrote
>
>                                                      Iswara Swaruupam -3
>
>  apara prakRiti + Brahman (sat-chit-ananda) = Iswara from the samashTi or
> total or macro level
>  loval apara prakRiti + Brahman (sat-chit-ananda) = Jiiva from the vyaShTi
> or individual or micro level.
> If we discard (or negate) the apara prakRiti as it is only mithyaa and
> therefore cannot be counted, the identity of the two equations in terms of
> - tat tvam asi – that thou art -follows. The process of discarding mithyaa
> parts is called bhaga tyaga lakshaNa where only a part (apara part) is
> discarded while retaining the rest to arrive at identity equation or
> mahaavakya of Vedanta. This is done intellectually by developing the viveka
> – a discriminative faculty to discriminate that which is changeless from
> the changing world.


If you say that Ishwara = Brahman + apara prakrti, it is tantamount to
saying that Ishwara = Brahman + impure prakrti or Ishwara = Brahman + evil.
Sankara clearly says (BG 7.5), that the apara prakrti is "impure" and the
"source of evil" whereas the para prakrti is "pure" and "essentially
myself".  There is only one "divine power called Maya" (rf. BG 7.4), which
is seen as Higher when spoken of as Jiva Bhutam and Lower when described as
ahankara etc. As Sankara says in 7.6, "the omniscient Lord is the source of
the Universe through these two prakrtis". If I say, "That boy Rama created
the pot with skill and clay", it does does not mean he is a combination of
 skill and clay! It means that he is different from these though the skill
is his real nature. If the pot is known to be unreal, then we can infer
that it's source clay is also unreal and the act of  creation but not Rama.
If the boy called Rama is naturally intelligent but acts stupid in a game,
we don't say that Rama has intelligence and idiocy in equal measure. We say
that his real nature is to be intelligent. In the same sense, para prakrti
is Ishwara's real nature and apara is superimposed on Him due to ignorance.
This is what I understand by reading Sankara. To conclud that there is no
Ishwara in reality, I just need to read God Delusion by Richard Dawkins  or
End of Faith by Sam Harris.