[Advaita-l] Eka jiva vada and the nana jiva vada.

Srikanta Narayanaswami srikanta.narayanaswami at yahoo.com
Sun Apr 21 00:42:13 CDT 2013


Namaste

Gaudapada has said in GK VP 9-10 there is no difference between seen and
imagined objects in dream and waking both. Why he is saying this? Everybody
says dream objects are unreal. This is not new information for us.
Everybody says imagined object like hare horns in waking are also unreal.
This is also not new information for us.

But he says seen objects in waking are also unreal. Why he is saying this?
Because there is no difference between seen and imagined objects in waking.
Why this? Because the seen objects are also imagined in the mind like other
imagined objects.

If I see a table in front of me it is only an idea in my mind.Because that
table is in my dream only. It is not outside me. If I see a person he is
also unreal. Because he is in my dream but not outside me. I am imagining
the table and the person. They are only in my mind. They depend on me. If I
am not there they are not there. If I am there they are there. This is
Drishti Srishti Vada. The whole Universe is existing because I am seeing
it. If I do not see it the whole Universe will not be there. This is Eka
Jeeva Vada also
_______________________________________________________________________________
In the karikas 9-10 of the vaitathya prakarana Gaudapada deals with the question of perception.The waking state objects differ from the dream objects because they serve for some utility.They can be said to be unreal only from the point of view of "Turiya",the fourth state.Gaudapada brings this question of perception by asking who indeed imagines them and who indeed perceives them.This he answers in the karika 11 We can only say the seen objects are unreal if we go to the fourth state.The waking state objects are said to be unreal like those in the dream only from the "Nyaya"(Logic)point of view.
N.Srikanta.


More information about the Advaita-l mailing list