[Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting stand taken by Swami

[Kripa Shankar]

‎It is not me who is twisting anyone's words, but unfortunately, you are the one who is viewing this with lot of bias. Vidyasankar said something contrary to what Rama originally said. In all earnestness, I immediately requested for the verbatim, which Rama has so kindly provided. 

"while RM may not have been a jiivanmuukta, he was a ‎mahant."‎‎

This clearly means one thing, because it cannot be inferred in any other way. It means, it is possible to determine whether someone is jivanmukta or not. Would you agree with this or not? 

Because you go one step further and say - HH Sri Abhinava Vidyatirtha swamigal has said RM was a jnAni! 
By this stand of yours, two things come to light : it disproves the view that - no one can judge if a person is jivanmukta or not. 
Another thing is that Mahasannidhanam as stated above, is at best, speculative of him being a Jnani.  Because otherwise, he would have said with the same confidence that - RM was a jnAni! 

Regards 
Kripa ‎
‎
AchArya ghAtinAm lokA na santi kulapAmsana ~
There is NO region, O wretch of your race, for those who seek to slay an AchArya
  Original Message  
From: V Subrahmanian‎
Sent: Saturday 14 January 2017 8:20 AM
To: Kripa Shankar; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting stand taken by Swami






On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 1:33 AM, Kripa Shankar via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
Namaste, 


If we consider the statement given by Mahasannidhanam, Gurugal * is certain * that RM was * not a jivanmukta *. That is a strong statement in my opinion. ‎There is no other way to interpret it, is there?


Dear Kripa ji,

You have twisted what Rama wrote:

//In "Jivanmukti in Transformation", Andrew Fort reports speaking to
Mahasannidhanam (Bharati Tirtha SwamigaL) in Hindi and reports that his
opinion is that Ramana was not a jivanmukta like Vidyaranya or Abhinava
Vidyatirtha, but a mahant. I think that's a trustworthy source.//

You conveniently truncated the portion:   '... like Vidyaranya or Abhinava
Vidyatirtha...'. That way you misinterpreted the Acharya's words and claim 'there is no other way to interpret it'!! . 

In Advaita Jivanmukti/a has several divisions/gradations. So, when RM was purportedly stated to be 'not like Vidyaranya or Abhinava Vidyatirtha', it by no means that the Sringeri Acharya implied that RM was not a jnani.

Further, while you concluded to rely on a statement from a book referred to by Rama, you chose to ignore the reference from the book 'Crest Jewel of Yogis' written by a Yogi- Jnani who was very close to the earlier Sringeri Pithadhipati, Sri Abhinava Vidyatirtha Swamigal, whose life is what is written in great detail in that book and in another book Yoga Enlightenment and Perfection.  This author in the first stated book has clearly said that 'Acharyal had said that RM was a Jnani'. The credentials of this author is are way above the one you relied upon.    

Thus, while there is absolutely no contradiction between what the two Pithadhipatis opined about RM, you arrive at a completely wrong conclusion from what that book reports as the reply of 'Gurugal', misinterpreting even that!! That shows your bias that you have formed, completely ill-informed. Unless you choose to study the Advaita shastra seriously under a qualified Acharya, the meaning of these things will remain clouded and the result is such opinions that you try to form for yourself and worse, foist them upon others too!!

regards
subrahmanian.v