[Advaita-l] The 'Snake-and-ladder' game - The Spiritual path

[Aditya Kumar]

 Namaste Bhaskarji,
What you are essentially saying is from a religious standpoint. From my acquaintance with Ramana's way, the standpoint is from a spiritual one (practical spirituality) as against a religious one (belief system). Scriptural knowledge is in fact a burden to them. Shrutyukta tarka is nothing but Shruti dictating the boundaries but in practical spirituality, Shruti has no role at all. If we give any significance to Shruti, then that would be Hinduism, bound by a religious framework. Hence in Ramana's system, as per my understanding, spirituality is different from religion. While spirituality is all encompassing like science, religion can give rise to sectarianism or cults which is perceived by them as objectionable, bigoted. This is not my view and I don't subscribe to it. I am just elaborating on the subject. 
    On Friday, 10 August, 2018, 10:33:35 AM IST, Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com> wrote:  
 
 praNAms Sri Aditya Kumar prabhuji
Hare Krishna

I partly agree with you. However Ramana himself is/was a liberal practitioner. Basically he is saying that he approached the whole Hindu concept of Moksha through personal experience and not by scriptural authority. In that sense, the practicality of such personal experience would be similar to all religions, to all cultures etc because you need not put faith on validity of scriptures at all. 

>  as a matter of fact vaiyuktika anubhava ( individual subjective experience) is not a valid pramANa according to strict advaitik tradition.  Shankara is very clear about this.  shAstra is the only and ultimate  pramANa for the brahma jnana / jignAsa though there is a talk about anubhavAdi pramANa with regard to brahma jignAsa, the Advaita siddhAnta does not depend on any individual / personal experience.  


Hence they claim it is non dogmatic as it is experiential knowledge and not something derived from some scriptures.  

> if that experiential knowledge is something which is not in line with scriptures (shAstra) then it is not a pramANa, remember how hard bhairavi brAhmaNi tried hard to prove that paramahaMsa's divine experience was in line with bhAgavatottama purusha-s like Chaitanya and it is has the pramANa in bhAgavata.  Tradition asks whether your individual experience has the shAstra pramANa ??  It is not the unique experience of some individual but universal experience (sArvatrika pUrNAnubhava) of all which has the scriptural base which can be considered as pramANa when we say 'anubhavAdi' is also pramANa.

However there is a whole other debate whether Advaitic Moksha is experiential or cognitive. Further, a Hindu will always claim the ShAstra yOnitvat of the Advaitic truth, hence binding into a religious belief.

>  And there is a scope for shrutyukta tarka as well to do the manana in a logical way to come to the conclusion which is anubhavAtmaka .  Hundred shruti-s may say fire is cold but it is against 'sArvatrika pUrNAnubhava' hence not acceptable is the declaration.  

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
Bhaskar