[Advaita-l] Binary nature of Jnana

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Chandramouli ji,

I understand where you are coming from.

I don't have the summary made by the student of Swami Paramarthananda ji,
but from memory of what Swamiji taught in his classes, the text essentially
holds that mahAvAkya jnAnam intrinsically gives rise to aparoksha jnAna.
That is what the snippet below also says - ata eva
mahAvAkyenAvyavahitapratyagbrahmAparokShaj~nAnameva  jAyate, na tu
parokShamiti

Because of certain obstacles present in the student, even after hearing the
mahAvAkya he feels that he is still an ajnAni. Therefore the sAdhana for
him is to keep repeating shravaNAdi until he gets the conviction that he is
Brahman.

The text does not stipulate that the mahAvAkya must be heard once again
after the obstacles are removed. Nor does it say that the mahAvAkya should
not be heard again.

This is where a possible inference can be made - In certain cases, the
student may require the guru to speak the mahAvAkya once again. In other
cases, the student may not, a recollection of the previously heard
mahAvAkya may be enough.

I think this is where you differ - I believe, based on the below (pasting
what you had said earlier), you are saying that the mahAvAkya has to be
once again physically heard:

"SMN have to be practiced together over and over till Realization which
takes place only during Shravana, on the utterance of the MahAvAkya
(forming part of Shravana) by the Guru *after* Manana and NididhyAsana help
in refining the mind to enable such Realization to take place, even though
the sAdhaka  might have  heard the MahAvAkya from the Guru earlier."

The bhAShya portion you had quoted did not make this explicit requirement,
but I may have missed it.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022, 13:20 H S Chandramouli, <hschandramouli at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Namaste Venkat Ji,
>
> My understanding is based on the text (VS) of SVBS as well as talks given
> by Swami Paramarthananda as summarized by his student available as PDF
> (pages 55 to 67). I have listened to his talks quite sometime back, but am
> unable to have access to the same just now.
>
> As per text (SVBS),
>
> Topic 30, page 20  << अत एव
> महावाक्येनाव्यवहितप्रत्यग्ब्रह्मापरोक्षज्ञानमेव  जायते, न तु परोक्षमिति II
> >>,
>
> <<  ata eva mahAvAkyenAvyavahitapratyagbrahmAparokShaj~nAnameva  jAyate,
> na tu parokShamiti II  >>,
>
> Topic 31, page 20, << last five lines >>.
>
> Also following copied from your earlier post
>
> <<  The shravaNa in the SMN triad that is being talked about in the
> Vichara Sagara sentence quoted earlier as the remote cause of
> brahmasAkshAtkAra, is the shravaNa to determine that the tAtparya of the
> Shruti lies in advaita.
>
> Different from this shravaNa, which is the direct cause of
> brahmasAkshAtkAra attributed in Vichara Sagara, is the mahAvAkya that has
> been heard from a guru.
>
> ज्ञानस्य साक्षात्साधनं तु श्रोत्रेन्द्रियसंबद्धवेदान्तवाक्यमेव ...
> अवान्तरवाक्येन परोक्षमेव, महावाक्येन त्वपरोक्षमेव।
>
> The direct means to jnAna is vedAntic sentences that are connected to the
> sense of hearing...(He then goes on to say vedAntic sentences are two
> types,  avAntaravAkya and mahAvAkya and defines the former as those
> upaniShad sentences which reveal the svarUpa of jIvAtma and paramAtma and
> the latter as those sentences that reveal their identity ). avAntaravAkya
> shravaNam gives rise to indirect knowledge. mahAvAkya shravaNam gives rise
> to direct knowledge.
>
>  So the classification system according to VS is:
>
> 1) The shravaNa of vedAnta which is a remote cause of knowledge is to
> remove doubts about where shruti's prAmANya lies.
>
> 2) manana is to remove asambhAvanA and samshaya.
>
> 3) nididhyAsana is to remove viparIta bhAvanA.
>
> 4) avAntaravAkya shravaNam leads to paroksha jnAna.
>
> 5) mahAvAkya shravaNam, the antaranga sAdhana, is the direct means for
> direct knowledge  >>.
>
> My understanding is based on all the above. Have I made a mistake?
> Regards
>
>>
>>>
>>>