[Advaita-l] Shruti prAmANya and jnAna

[Ravi Kiran]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> As part of the recent discussion on Ramana Maharshi, the discussion turned
> towards the requirement for the acceptance of shruti as a pramANa for the
> knowledge generated. Specifically Swami LalitAlAlitah said that:
>
> "Here, I must make clear that even if someone doesn't hear the same
> tattvamasi,
> or have opportunity to learn veda-s/vedAnta-s, he has to accept(logically,
> not only believe) that the hula-pramANa of the sentence conveying similar
> meaning is shruti. If he doesn't then the whole thing,
> the whole process, just becomes a belief system without backing of
> pramANa-s."
>
> I know Swamiji mentioned that he had already dealt with this topic and
> therefore may not be in a position to clarify, so this is just a general
> post (and not a request for the Swami to respond).
>
> For advaitins (and pUrva mImAmsakas), shruti is accepted as apaurusheya and
> svatah siddhah pramANa. On alaukika matters, we accept the anadhigatatva of
> shruti pramANa and hence we are able to say that whenever someone gets
> brahma jnAna, it has to arise from the shruti.
>
> Further, I believe this is true irrespective of whether the person accepts
> shruti as pramANa or not, or even understands how the jnAna arises.
>
> For example, a mirror does not reflect objects subject to 1) the seer
> accepting that it is a mirror or 2) understanding how the principles of
> optics work. If the seer comes in front of the mirror, his reflection
> appears automatically.
>
> Similarly, the vedA does not generate knowledge subject to
> 1) the acceptance on its pramANatvam by the pramAta or
> 2) the pramAta's attribution of the knowledge generated by shruti, to
> shruti;
>
>
> If the pramAta, pramANa and prameya, are appropriately aligned, knowledge
> is automatically generated. Now, the pramAta may refuse to accept the
> generated knowledge as pramA, or take efforts to preserve the knowledge
> generated; however, the capacity of the pramANa to generate the jnAna
> vritti is a given.
>

If one doesn't bother if the world consider/accept such a one as advaiti or
not, and just focus on goal
towards mokSa, he/she is perfectly fine :)


> Regards,
> Venkatraghavan
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