[Advaita-l] jnAnAbhAva (was HH Sri Paramananda Bharathi Swamiji attained mukti)

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Sudhanshu ji,
I have changed the subject line, as suggested by Praveen ji.

On Sat, Aug 3, 2019 at 12:18 PM Sudhanshu Shekhar <sudhanshu.iitk at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hari Om Venkataraghavan ji,
>
>
>
> Well any vishesha-jnAna has a corresponding vritti to it. Now I have never
> had the experience of BrahmAkAra-vritti or AtmAkAra-vritti. I don’t have
> even the remotest idea of it. It is just like dwindigoe for me. I just
> don’t know what it means.
>
However, on the basis of Shruti I know that Brahma-jnAna i.e. a jnAna with
> BrahmAkAra-vritti is always accompanied with absence of shoka-moha. These
> shoka-moha being sAkshi-vedya, I can pretty well tell their absence also in
> my own case and hence I can infer the absence of Brahma-jnAna.
>

This is the crucial point. When you say "I do not know Brahman", the
ignorance that is being conveyed is an object of direct, immediate
experience. No one goes around thinking I have not had the effects of
brahma jnAna, therefore I do not have brahma jnAna, therefore I do not know
Brahman. That one doesn't know Brahman is a matter of immediate experience.

Just like hunger is a matter of immediate experience (it does not require
an inference based on the absence of satisfaction), and just like when you
know Brahman, you do not have to infer that you have brahma jnana from the
effects of samsAra nivRtti - if you know brahman, that is it, you have
brahma jnAna, the ignorance of Brahman also requires no inference, it is a
matter of direct, immediate experience.


>
> I understand your statement that the presence or absence of Brahma-jnAna
> itself is sAkshi-vedya but since Brahma-jnAna is like a dwindigoe for me, I
> am not able to quite appreciate this.
>
>
> The relevance of the above is two-fold, one to convey that ignorance is a
matter of direct experience, just like knowledge, and two, to show how the
same charge of contradiction does not rebound to the bhAvarUpa ajnAna
paksha (see below for details).


// 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.//
>
>
>
> How exactly? I infer my ignorance on the basis of my sAkshi-vedya-jnAna of
> presence of shoka-moha. However, I cannot know whether shoka-moha is there
> in you or not. Hence, I can never infer ignorance in you. Hence my
> knowledge of my ignorance is valid whereas my knowledge of your ignorance
> will remain a guess work.
>
If you are saying that all ignorance is only inferrable, then that just
goes against experience. We have experienced several times when we are
asked  a question and we don't know the answer. It is not a conclusion that
we draw after the experience.

On inferring someone else's knowledge, the point I was trying to make is
that you can infer my knowledge or lack thereof (on any subject) by simply
asking me questions and gauging the answers. If an inference of someone
else's knowledge or ignorance is not possible, no exams need be conducted
in schools, because they cannot reveal the calibre of students.

The point is that if I also have to infer whether I know something or not,
then such an inference of my knowledge has samAna yogakshema to your
inference of my knowledge, when my awareness of my own knowledge or
ignorance is certainly stronger than my inference of others'.


>
> However, when ajnAna is stated as jnAbhAva, it is not an abhAva which is
> nirUpita by a pratiyogita which is avachchinna by general jnAnatvam but by
> something else because they hold ajnAna as Brahma-jnAna-abhAva. That is, it
> is the absence of a vishesha-jnAna namely Brahma-jnAna. And that involves
> a certain mano-vritti which is the visheshani-bhUta-dharma of jnAna.
>

Ok good, so you do agree that you are aware of a thing called brahman, a
thing called brahma jnAna, and the requirements that brahma jnAna must
have, for it to be capable of moksha kAraNam (it has to be a shAstra
pramANa janita mano vritti, it has to arise from an akhaNDArtha bodhaka
mahAvAkya leading to a nirvikalpa jnAna having only brahman as its object,
it must be preceded by the upasthiti of shodhita tat and tvam padArtha
etc). My point is if you are aware of such requirements for the brahma
jnAna, you are aware of the visheSha dharma, and so for you to say that "I
do not know brahma jnAna with such a visheSha dharma" is a contradiction.

I am not saying that you will have moksha as a result of such a jnAna, I am
saying that the statement "I have no brahma jnAna" cannot refer to an
absence of brahma jnAna, when you are aware of such requirements. Just like
the cognition of pot cognition also has the pot as its object, the
cognition of brahma jnAna (even if it is not moksha kAraNa) has brahma as
its object. So if you have a jnAna with brahma as its object, you cannot
literally mean you have the abhAva of the jnAna which has brahman as its
object.

So why is moksha not possible with that jnAna? Moksha happens through
avidyA nivRtti, because it is avidyA that leads to the notion that the jIva
is different from brahman, which is the cause of samsAra. The reason why
avidyA nivRtti does not happen with such a jnAna is because that the nature
of ignorance is not virodhi to such a jnAna. An abhAva rUpa ajnAna will
certainly go away by such a jnAna, but a bhAva rUpa ajnAna will not.

The position of bhAva rUpa ajnAna does not suffer from the same flaw of
inherent contradiction, because it is held that such an ajnAna is sAkshi
vedyam. It may be asked in bhAvarUpa paksha also the sAkshi reveals the
ignorance, along with the object of ignorance, Brahman. But if Brahman is
thus known, how can ignorance exist?

The answer to this is that in advaita vedAnta, sAkshi-jnAna does not remove
ignorance, ignorance can only be removed by a knowledge born from a
pramANa. So even if the sAkshi objectifies the object of ignorance, such an
objectification is not enough to destroy ignorance, and ignorance can
happily co-exist with the sAkshi-jnAna of the object of ignorance, until a
pramANa janita mano vritti arises to remove that ignorance.

I hope you will not mind me not responding to the other points in your
post, because what we have above is the central thrust of the discussion, I
did not want that to be lost in the melee.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan

>