[Advaita-l] asat & asatya / sat & satya

Bhaskar YR bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com
Thu Aug 22 08:26:05 EDT 2019


praNAms Sri Sada prabhuji
Hare Krishna

As you know, astya is a negation of the satyatvam - one can say it is mityaa. Mityaa however is defined as sat asat vilakshanam - as it is neither sat nor asat also.

>  It would always be puzzling for me to equate mithya with sat asat vilakshaNaM and anirvachaneeyam!!  Let us take the famous example rope-snake.  Here when the rope jnana is dawned we will come to know we were seeing the snake due to mis-conception.  (mithyA jnana) Hence snake was / is / will never be there in rope.  Is it not??   So, in short snake jnana is mithyA jnana after the dawn of correct jnana we understand that our previous knowledge about rope is wrong knowledge.  At which point of time do we say, snake on the rope is anirvachaneeya to conclude our mithyA jnana is sat asat vilakshaNaM ??  When rope knowledge is there snake will not be there likewise when we are perceiving the snake in place of rope, that knowledge (though mithya later on) is real as we are frightened, run away from that place etc.  So, IMHO, that which is already decided as mithyA cannot be anirvachaneeya.  Something will subject to anirvachaneeya when we see the kArya and kAraNa simultaneously.  Like water and foam, gold-ornament etc.  Here by seeing the foam we cannot categorically say either it is water or something else.  bhAshyakAra gives this example to define anirvachaneeya.  But this type of anirvachaneeyatvaM cannot be attributed to rope=snake mithyA jnana since there is ONLY illusion of snake or correct knowledge of rope.  

In short mithya jnana is due to abhAva of the correct knowledge, when the correct knowledge occurred, mithya jnana will be wiped out completely.  mithyA jnana pertains to mithya jneya vastu.  anirvachaneeyatvaM pertains to the thing that exists which can be simultaneously perceived by pratyaksha or through shAstra viveka.  

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar 


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