[Advaita-l] 'world' is not the mental creation of tiny soul !!

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> >  Kindly pardon me prabhuji.  I am not able to understand this clearly 
> with the purported intention of your goodself.  Do you mean to say here 
> avidyA pertains to brahman and not to jeeva?? 
> 

Dear Bhaskar,
 
The point of my rather cryptic earlier message was this - jIvo brahmaiva, i.e.
ayam AtmA brahma.
 
If you say that avidyA is strictly absence of knowledge, only a natural, mental
affliction of the jIva, and that it has absolutely no relation to material reality as
perceived, then a jIva that is separate from brahman, has to exist before avidyA
even comes into the picture. This will be advaita-hAni, at some level, in an
attempt to save avidyA from materiality (bhAva-rUpa ityAdi).
 
If you accept that avidyA is a seed material entity responsible for a distinction
between brahman and jIva, you still have to address whether this avidyA belongs
to brahman or to jIva. If your answer begins with a distinction between the great
brahman and the tiny jIva, that will be advaita-hAni as well.
 
To even say the words, "tiny jIva" and "omniscient ISvara," and then to ask the
question, "whose is avidyA?," one needs to presume avidyA. So long as one is
caught up in this game, one can never step aside from avidyA.
 
Therefore, in one sense, brahman is the abhinna-nimittopAdAna kAraNa of jagat,
but as this is said only from the vyavahAra perspective, one presumes the duality
set up by avidyA. One has to accept a second principle, call it mAyA, give it only a
dependent reality on the independent reality, etc. Therefore, it is said that all this
is avidyA-parikalpita, avidyA-lakshaNa etc. Whose is this avidyA? We will go round
in this circle once again, unless we qualify any and every answer to this question
with acknowledging the Sruti teaching that the jIva is ultimately brahman, not
different.
 
Once we do this qualification, the questions, did brahman create the jagat or did
the jIva create the jagat becomes meaningless. For the jIva is realized as brahman
alone, none else. What does it really mean to say that the jIva is brahman even
when the jIva did not know itself as such? One can "save" brahman from avidyA by
saying that avidyA does not affect brahman, only the jIva, but if one accepts that 
jIva is always "brahman alone, none else," even when it is under the sway of avidyA,
one is indirectly saying that avidyA affects "brahman alone, none else."
 
All this happens when one talks in a theoretical manner, presuming the very duality 
that advaita seeks to transcend. In reality, when jIva is known as brahman alone,
none else, sRshTi is a non-event. There is no creation, no destruction, no bondage,
no liberation. This may not seem like a satisfactory solution to the question of who
created jagat, the great ISvara/brahman or the tiny jIva. It just makes the entire
question meaningless and makes it goes away as a quite wrongly formulated issue.
 
Best regards,
Vidyasankar