[Advaita-l] HH Sri Paramananda Bharathi Swamiji attained mukti

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Sudhanshu ji,
My first impression on reading your email was the same as Praveen-ji's, but
on a second reading it became apparent what you meant.

A few observations:
1) Everyone has the direct experience of ignorance. It is certainly
possible to infer ignorance, but the natural experience is one of
perception. The same applies to brahma jnAna. If someone asks you do you
have brahma jnAna, you will either say yes or no based on your sAkshi
pratyaksha, not inferring it from the presence or absence of the effects of
samsAra nivritti. If it is insisted that ignorance is only inferred, then
your knowledge of my ignorance is as good as my knowledge of my ignorance,
which clearly militates against common sense.

While in nyAya it is held that the pramANa responsible for the cognisance
of the pratiyogi is the one responsible for the cognisance of its abhAva,
in advaita that does not hold good. The pramANa for the cognisance of the
pratiyogi can be any of the other five, but the cognisance of the absence
of something is always anupalabdhi.

Ignorance, on the other hand, is not accepted within advaita as pramANa
siddham, but sAkshi vedyam. So that itself indicates that the nature of
ignorance is not of the nature of absence.

2) Be that as it may, if I say "ghaTo nAsti", the counterpositive of that
absence is the pot. The pot contains many attributes, but the one that is
relevant for its counterpositiveness is the one that appears in the
counterpositive in the cognition of its absence. So here, that attribute is
potness. This is the pratiyogitAvacChedaka dharma. Similarly, if I say
"jnAnam nAsti", the pratiyogitAvacChedaka dharma is jnAnatvam. So if there
is even one jnAna, the cognition "jnAnam nAsti" cannot arise because the
pratiyogitAvacChedaka avacChinnam is virodhi to abhAva jAnam.

Now if it is argued that when I say brahmajnAnam nAsti, what is meant is
not that I do not know brahman at all, but that a particular jnAna about it
is absent, the question that will be asked is how do you know that there is
a particular jnAna? If it is said that because I know there is a thing
called brahma jnAna, it follows that there is a particular type of that
jnAna which is absent in me, because if it had been there, I would have
been mukta, then even leaving aside arguments about the direct perception
of ignorance that one experiences, what is being said is that a visheSha
jnAna abhAva can be knowable even with the knowledge of a general jnAna.
That is, the pratiyogitAvacChedaka dharma of a visheSha jnAna abhAva can be
sAmAnya jnAnatvam.

But this will mean that even when a pot is on the ground, it is possible to
say that there is no pot, because some other pot is not there. Every locus,
even one containing a pot, will contain the absence of all other pots.
Similarly, even when a person knows a pot, he can say "I do not know that
pot" because there is the absence of a subsequent cognition of the same
pot. Thus a specific pratiyogi cannot be referred to using a general
attribute.

Even after the rise of brahma jnAna, he will keep saying I do not have
brahma jnAna.

3) Anyway, let us leave that also aside. If you read the ghaTa bhAShyam of
the brihadAraNyaka (1.2.1) carefully, ShankarAchArya makes a profound
statement. According to him, abhAva itself is bhAvarUpa.
"न च घटाभावः सन्पटः अभावात्मकः ; किं तर्हि ? *भावरूप एव* । एवं घटस्य
प्राक्प्रध्वंसात्यन्ताभावानामपि घटादन्यत्वं स्यात्, घटेन व्यपदिश्यमानत्वात्
, घटस्येतरेतराभाववत् ; *तथैव भावात्मकताभावानाम् ।"  *Like anyonyAbhAva, all
the other abhAva-s prAg, pradhvamsa, atyantAbhAva are all of the nature of
bhAva.

If abhAva itself is bhAvarUpa, what purpose is served by saying avidyA is
abhAvarUpa?

Regards,
Venkatraghavan

On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 7:15 PM Sudhanshu Shekhar via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Hari Om Praveen ji,
>
> The way I used A's effect is not in the sense of effect of material cause.
> Just take A=Brahma-jnAna and B= A's effect = ~shoka-moha. It will make
> sense and argument remains valid. A=>B and ~B=>~A.
>
> Regards.
> Sudhanshu.
>
> On Fri 2 Aug, 2019, 20:36 kuntimaddi sadananda via Advaita-l, <
> advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >     On Friday, August 2, 2019, 07:31:57 AM PDT, Praveen R. Bhat via
> > Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
> >
> > Since the AvaraNa is said to be eliminated, it has to exist to be
> > eliminated; in that, it was necessarily bhAvarUpa. In such a case, its
> > kAraNa cannot be abhAvarUpa.
> > Praveenji - PraNAms
> > My understanding may be wrong. Bavaruupatvam requires not just existence
> > but should have a capacity to project.
> > If someone asks me ' Do you know gaagaabuubu?"
> >  I can say -never heard of it. I do not know what it is? - response by my
> > mind? - at this stage only aavarana due to avidya. When someone points to
> > object on the floor that I also see, and he says that is 'gaagaabuubu'.
> Now
> > the ignorance of gaagaabuubu is gone. At this stage, there is no vikshepa
> > involved. - only the naama aspect is established - just one example.
> > Projection can start only if have some partial knowledge of an object but
> > not complete knowledge as it - there is an object there - 5 feet long -
> > coiled - soft when I stopped on it and is lying on the aisle. 'There is
> > (something)' - the projection of the mind viskhepa later as it is a
> snake,
> > etc.
> > Question is only do we attribute the vikshepa shakti to avidya or to the
> > mind which is empowered by maaya shakti at the individual level to
> project
> > the snake on the object that is perceived with incomplete attributes?
> > Lack of knoweldge is one thing but projection of something else where the
> > object is different  -to separate the aavarana vs vishepa - or ignorance
> vs
> > maaya.
> > This may be samantics but separation makes it easy to comprehend that
> > muula avidya is gone but projection continues for a jeevan mukta as long
> as
> > BMI losts.
> > Hari Om!Sadananda
> >
> >
> >
> >
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