[Advaita-l] : Sankhya and Yoga can give Moksha?

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> Namaste
> 
> One Question-
> 
> Adi Sankara's Sukshma Sarira entered into the King's body OR only the
> Atma? Because if only Atma there is no fear of losing Brahmacharya.
> There is no effect of enjoying by body on Atma. It is a witness only.

I can't help but be amused by the amount of attention this one story
gets. Some people are extremely uncomfortable with the very fact
that the story exists in the Sankaravijaya texts, others have an interest
in it that borders on the prurient!
 
For one, there is no such thing as Adi Sankara's AtmA, your AtmA and
my AtmA separate from one another. There was, is and will be only
one AtmA ever, in the entire past, present and future of the universe.
That is the point of all advaita teaching. Right there lies the answer to
the questions that the parakAyapraveSa legend raises.

When it is said that the AtmA takes up another body after death, what
is meant is that the AtmA embodied in the sUkshma SarIra that takes
up another sthUla SarIra, in a different place and different time. The
same criteria would apply to parakAyapraveSa also, for a living person
capable of such a yogic siddhi. 

Finally, let me address a comment made by Sri Sunil Bhattacharya on
the historicity or otherwise of this legend and the mAdhavIya Sankara
vijaya in this regard. It is easy to throw out statements like the text is
from the 15th century or later, and it is easy to find historical holes in
it. The point is, what do you expect a Sankaravijaya to be? A factual 
biographical account of a person's history or a poem with dramatic 
episodes meant to glorify that person's abilities and accomplishments?
Why should we expect it to be merely a factual biography? And if we
do not,  why should we expect historical details recounted in these
texts to be accurate and linear in time?
 
Vidyasankar