[Advaita-l] Ramana Maharshi - Advaitin or Neo Advaitin?

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Swamiji,

"The possibility of ramaNa using any other sentence(sandhyAmantra or
anything else) as a means of brahmaGYAna, is not tenable; because any
sentence is not pramANa, and definitely not when you don't know about the
tattva, or tAtparya of vAkya in tattva. In case of a sentence, heard out of
context, and whose validity is not established, it is evident that the
vR^itti generated can't be pramA."

The purpose of pramANa is to know about the prameya. In the case of Atma
jnAna, the purpose of pramANa is to know 1) Atman and Brahman, which are
the tattvas and 3) their aikya which is the tAtparya of vAkya.

Everyone is familiar with "I", and if they have a religious upbringing,
they know Ishvara too. So it cannot be argued that the tattvas are
completely unknown.

For an uttamAdhikAri who is taught 'brahmaivAham asmi' as part of SandhyA
upAsana, no one can definitively say it is impossible to understand through
vichAra the true meanings of I and Brahman for that  aikya vAkya to have
tAtparya.

So while it may be a stray sentence to one who is not an uttamAdhkAri,
there are no grounds to deny it's prAmANyam for an uttamAdhikAri. Through
the vichAra of who is the real "I" that Sri Ramana did in his uncle's house
he was able to correctly understand the tAtparya of the aikya vAkya he had
heard / said during sandhyopAsana. And as MAndUkya says, it is sufficient
to know turIya as the ekAtmapratyaya sAra - that which is know as the I
through all states of consciousness.

There is no rule that one has to first understand Brahman as jagat kAraNa
and then deny that kAraNatvam to know it as consciousness and then equate
that consciousness as oneself.

There is also no rule that the vAkya shravaNam needs to happen at the same
time as jnAna utpatti. As long as he somehow received the vAkya which said
'I am the very Brahman that I am worshipping', which is the aikyAnusandhAna
mantra of sandhyAvandanam, that vAkya is capable of generating knowledge at
any time afterwards, as long as vichAra happens to understand how that
aikya can hold good. For an uttamAdhikAri it is possible.

All conditions for it to be a shruti janita jnAna exist in my view.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan