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

[Sudhanshu Shekhar]

Thank you Venkataraghavan ji,

I will ponder on your reply.

Sudhanshu.

On Sat 3 Aug, 2019, 22:52 Venkatraghavan S, <agnimile at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>>