[Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

[Sudhakar Kabra]

Here are some pointers from Brahma sutra bhayshya By Swami Akhandananda Saraswati

Pauresheya gyana: That which is of a jiva, that which he
gets in any of the states of Jagrat, swapna or shushupti.

 


Apauresheya gyana: That which is of the swaroop of jiva,
that which cannot become object for a jiva and which can never be said as “idam’.
This is not jivakrita or jiva bhoga.

 


Points on above are:

 


1.One who takes birth and thereafter experiences the
shrishti and then tries to decide or establish the creation,  how can he point to Brahman? He is only
narrating his experience and is in the realm of antahkarna.  He cannot speak about the ashraya of
antahkarna. 


 

2.There is no value of experience of a jiva in vedanta be it
rishi Vyasa or Kapila or any devata. All are in the realm of birth and death. How
did panchabhuta evolve, how did ahankara came about cannot be explained by
them. Human knowledge is tainted by bhrama, pramAd, karnapAtava, vipralipsa but
shruti gyana is nirpeksha and apouresheya.


 

3.When someone speaks about an object he first understands
about it and then speaks for it depending on the depth of his knowledge or
experience. But shruti speaks first and then the revelation occurs as a
subjective realization and hence it is swathah pramana.


 

4.Words spoken by someone does not have the power to negate
its own words so spoken. Advaita is shruti pratipadya and not vyakti
pratipAdya.  Shruti pratipadya vastu is not
bAdhita after realization but shruti itself gets bAdhita and hence it is apourusheya.


 

5.Shruti does not use indriyas to give knowledge of
pratyaksha. Hearing something through ears is not sabda pramAna. Shabda pramAna
is that which generates brahmAkAr vritti – free from desha, kAla, swajAtiya
vijAtiya swagat bheda when heard by a shuddha pAtra and gets negated itself.
This akhandartha dhi is shruti pramAna and in not pouresheya but apouresheya.
Hope this helps. The passage is in hindi and any translational error is by me only.Best regardsSudhakar Kabra
--- On Wed, 6/27/12, rajaramvenk at gmail.com <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

From: rajaramvenk at gmail.com <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Wednesday, June 27, 2012, 1:16 PM

Dear Sri Ramesh, we say clay pot is made of clay. We cannot say clay pot is made of gold. If you say that multiple mutually contradictory cause - effect models are possible, you should be willing to exchange my clay pot for your gold pot! Even when multiple models exist, they have to be reconciled in to a hierarchy of relative truths or view points. 

Let us keep it focussed. The mimamsakas did not just say it is a matter of faith or a given (as Sri Vidyasankar put it)  that Vedas are apaureshya. They gave some logic that words and class of objects have an eternal connection. Even before objects and words come in to being, they exist in the cause.  The problem with this logic is that all objects and hence words exist in the cause. So, every word, not just Vedas, should be apaureshya. But this is not the traditional position. They say that the speciality of the vedic sentences is jnana pravagam. In every kalpa, the words follow the same sequence, metre etc. I have not seen the logic for this as it is a matter of faith. 

If you can answer to the point, great. One Madhwa scholar wrote to me that advaitins don't get it but dwaitins have cracked this. I'm exploring what he has to say.

Best Regards
Rajaram Venkataramani 
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: Ramesh Krishnamurthy <rkmurthy at gmail.com>
Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 11:55:09 
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Reply-To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
    <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

On 27 June 2012 03:24, Shyam <shyam_md at yahoo.com> wrote:

<<Given your views on extraterrestrials and nonhumans in other planets
obtaining vedic knowledge of a different variety I do not find this in
the least surprising and consider it a blessing that my views are far
removed from yours.>>

Feel free to be consider yourself blessed. Regarding extraterrestrials
and non-humans, I have repeatedly stated that I was not advancing any
"views". I was only using them as devices to get people out of a
certain rut. There can be many ways of explaining these issues and
there is really no need to get stuck up with this or that view.

Repeatedly criticizing me for my supposed "views" or "imagination"
regarding extra-terrestrials etc is a really bad case of missing the
point.

<<That would be difficult to do even if I wished to for the simple
fact that your own "position" is extremely muddled, as is evident when
you state two contradictory things:>>

There is absolutely nothing contradictory about non-overlapping
jurisdictions at the level of pramANa on the one hand and mature
philosophies such as the various mImAMsA sysems being able to
accommodate different cause-effect models on the other. A philosophy
is based on multiple pramANa-s and indeed one of the signal
contributions of the pUrva-mImAMsaka-s has been the enunciation of a
mature pramANa-shAstra.

To be even clearer, let me state that it is the mImAMsA systems which
lay out what the pramANa-s are and what are their areas of
applicability.

<<The fact that Vedic dictums are orthogonal to scientific theories-
both fact-based and fantasy based - means that there is no question of
accomodation. The very question of accomodation comes in only if there
are overlapping domains. Please be clear in your own mind wheter you
consider the two orthogonal or overlapping.>>

Again, the orthogonality is at the level of pramANa-s. The ability to
accommodate different cause-effect models is at the level of a mature
philosophy which uses the pramANa-s in a certain way and responds
appropriately to environmental changes. The mImAMsA systems can do
this because of the robustness of their pramANa-shAstra and also the
robustness of the constructs they use for fashioning their system. An
example of such a construct was provided earlier in this thread by
Vidyasankar, which I had quoted in my previous post.


<<Why this specification - the entire Veda deals with dharma and moksha alone.>>

If you understood this properly, you wouldn't say that my views are
self-contradictory.

<<It is one thing to say Srshti is mithya, it is quite another to
dismiss Srshti as being false.>>

I am quite familiar with how the bhAShya-s address the issue of
sR^iShTi. The simple point is that the basic upaniShadic frameworks of
cause-effect, even though used as adhyAropa-s only by the advaitin-s,
are robust enough to permit a wide variety of models.


<< Please note that the scope of dharma is all inclusive in that it
influences and talks about every facet of human life - its origin,
existence, and the afterlife, as well, including various aspects
related to the cosmos. When dharma talks about the shuklagati and
krishnagati, and svargaloka, pitrloka, it is all very much in the
realm of dharma alone. Just because your proclivity is to advaita does
not confer on you the right to be dismissive about all that Shruti
asserts and endorses.>>

At no point did I dismiss the shruti. Regarding dharma/karma, only the
atIndriya aspects are completely inaccessible to laukika pramANa-s. I
don't need the shruti to tell me that I should not steal someone
else's property. However, only the shruti tells me that if I steal, it
will lead to pApa which may fructify even in a later life. Likewise,
many aspects of the cosmos and living organisms are well within the
domain of laukika pramANa-s, and a properly educated mImAMsaka can
comfortably make use of laukika pramANa-s in addressing these aspects.

<<Please do not feel compelled to respond. It suffices if you gain
clarity regarding the source of your own confusion.>>

As the Hindi saying goes: "ulTA chor kotvAl ko dA.NTe", somewhat like
"pot calling the kettle black" :-))
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