[Advaita-l] Shankara and Kriya Yoga

[rajaramvenk at gmail.com]

Hare Krishna. It is amazing how a brilliant and learned scholar such as you should fail to differentiate between apaurusheya and paurusheya sabda pramana. All pramanas including sabda can lead to incorrect conclusion due to wrong application as detailed out in tarkasangraha but without apaurusheya shruti laying the foundation there can be no eternal knowledge.  

Even in the case of Ramana, the Self has to appear in some form as a teacher - even as a book if not as ArunachalIshwara - and instruct. And such an instruction has to be consistent with apaurusheya Shruti. Dharma can only be known through instruction as mimamsakas establish and sanatana dharma can only be known through an eternal statement. In other words, Paramatma can only be determined through shruti vakya. Other pramanas and even smrti only  aid in clarifying shruti. 

BTW, Sringeri Periyava does not believe his own experience blindly. He validates it through other means. It is detailed out in the book. Arjuna does not blindly accept when Krishna cliams to have taught Vivasvan. He questions the logic of that claim. Leave alone the detractors, even Babaji and his followers should question his claim for cognition can confound us with incorrect world views.  

If our enquiry proves our conclusion, then it is true and only to that extent. Even an apta vakya is less true if it contradicts shruti.  If it is outside the purview of shruti and also pratyaksha and anumana, it is only an object of sraddha and useless for anything other than upasana. 

Let us say the statements of Krishna, Sringeri Periyava and Babaji are equally unverfiable and only an object of sraddha. If Krishna's statement is determined as true, it serves the core purpose of directing the mind towards sarvajna nitya ishwara. If Sringeri Periyava's statement is determined to be true, it directs the mind towards sarvajna nitya ishwara again. If Babaji's statement is determined to be true, it directs the mind towards Babaji, who is at best a jAti smara jIva or a chiranjeevi. One who has  determined the value of discrimination between eternal and non-eternal will not give in to such a distraction. 

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-----Original Message-----
From: Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 12:06:23 
To: <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Shankara and Kriya Yoga

praNAms Sri Rajaram prabhuji
Hare Krishna

One can come to any conclusion on his own and have the conviction that it 
is right. 

>  Yes, there is no limit as such to one's assumptions :-)) Everyone has 
his own right to assume anything that would pleases him :-))  We have 
shraddha in HH words and believe that paramashiva taught Asana-s to HH 
without any conditions..whereas if paramahaMsa yOgAnanda says bAbAji 
taught kriya yOga to shankara we dont believe it and it is only his cock & 
bull story :-)) why??  because we donot have shraddha & faith in this 
yOgi's words as we have in H H words...it is as simple as that.  I dont 
think there is something wrong in either of these two episodes. 

However, how does one know for certain that the conclusion is right? We 
need apaurusheya sabda pramana to validate and that can only come from a 
teacher. 

>  but for the above episodes, we cannot find any shAstra pramANa :-)) it 
is only the shraddha / belief that we have in our guru's words.  Here 
pramANa is Apta/AchArya vAkya not shAstra vAkya. 

Even for Sringeri Periyava, Lord Shiva taught yoga in his dreams. If 
Ramana's conclusions are inconsistent with shruti, he is plain wrong. If 
he says that the teacher is the Self, it is fine. 

>  one may argue, how can it be true when self is nishkriya, so that self 
should appear in a personified form and should have taught him...so in 
this case also we cannot rule out physical presence of guru. 

If he says he didn't need a teacher in some form to instruct him, he is 
plain wrong. 

>  According to Sri subbu prabhuji, physical presence of guru or personal 
interaction with the physical form of the guru is not necessary for the 
'highly accomplished' aspirant, he can 'master' anything (i.e. including 
brahma jnAna) by reading & understanding a printed book, ..is it not Sri 
Subbu prabhuji?? 

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar