[Advaita-l] Logic and shastra

[Mahesh Ursekar]

Pranams (and sincere ones, too):
 ...since you have the boldness to follow your dream against everything that
the today's world has to say on these matters. And if there is an Ishwara, I
am sure S/he will be behind you every step of the way. Brings to mind the
famous poem, you being the hero of it:
 http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/poemsofrobert/roadnottaken.html
 As before I agree with most things you write and if you have the courage to
live it rather than talk about it, I don't think I need any other
justification from you on this. So let me wish you much success in this path
which they say is like the "razor's edge" but which, I have no doubt, is
more worthwhile than any one can imagine. And, maybe, if God wills it, one
day I will follow in your footsteps.
 Humble pranams again, Mahesh


 On 10/19/05, praveen.r.bhat at exgate.tek.com <praveen.r.bhat at exgate.tek.com>
wrote:
>
> praNAm all,
>
> Mahesh-ji wrote:
> > I don't mean to have a "short and concise" answer to my question but
> have
> you been able to justify to yourself the
> > conclusion of Advaita? If so, I would be curious to know how?
>
> praveen:
> (Mahesh-ji, from my earlier correspondence with you, I've found you to be
> pretty open-minded and would only hope that you'll read the following too
> without taking it as a personal assault. If it sounds blunt at places, for
> lack of my clarity of expression, my advance apologies. Also please excuse
> for stressing on points known to you or redundant fallbacks.
> krishNArpaNamastu.)
>
> In absence of such justification, faith is the answer. In absence of
> faith,
> try justifying faith :)
>
> Jokes apart, I'd say then it has to be to the best of one's understanding
> and inclination. What tattva seems justifiable to you will always be the
> best to follow. You agree that science isn't there yet! Sw. Vivekananda is
> termed as the father of physics in the vedaantic world because he's the
> one
> who's gone on record to say that science will end in vedaanta. In any
> case,
> what I understand from biology & my biomedical background is unconvincing
> in
> terms of consciousness. Even if one talks of life due to heart's beating,
> there's got to be someone making it tick right upto the sino-atrial node,
> purkinje network and brains afferent nerves' controlling. All the things
> experienced (and even not experienced, as in dreams) can be gathered from
> memory and lived through like the waking state (be it in day-dreaming or
> madness, per se). So one can actually agree that the
> sleeping/dreaming/waking states could be a combination. The very
> experience
> of dream being as real as the waking state tells me that neither is true.
> It
> also does quite justify that the experiencer of all this is
> something/someone else. So, on my part, I'm thoroughly convinced that my
> *consciousness* of *not* actually *feeling* these states to be true is
> sufficient enough for me to trust advaita. I use the same reasoning to
> justify all our sixth sense kind of behaviour, where you *feel* people's
> thoughts or our intuition, deja-vu, and such. As another example, in math,
> how does one justify the square-root of -1? You've got to take it on face
> value as an imaginary number.
>
> All I'm saying is that one will sooner or later agree that s/he's reached
> the limitation of whatever knowledge one can gain on this front, through
> any
> agreeable means available. Thats when one needs to try other means to
> justify it (or maybe delve deeper as science does). You may call it
> anything, but since you're aware of the search, aware of all thats
> happening
> or you're witnessing, why not agree (be it without provable logic) that
> its
> consciousness. If one gives up by saying one is not justified, he's back
> to
> thinking about the problem, not finding a solution. Its akin to asking
> justification for the house being on fire and not extinguishing the fire.
> Even when the house is on fire, one needs to put the fire off before
> finding
> out who lit it in the first place. These are the times when the logic
> reverses from the first cause to be found the last, not the first. :)
>
> I say this because you ask how I justify myself of the conclusion of
> advaita
> as all that there is being one. Although you seem to be a science-person,
> I'm going to risk it and say that its equivalent to my asking you to
> justify
> Bohr's atom, for instance. One can go about all the nucleus, electrons and
> stuff and still I may remain lay. That is, its the *faith* in physics
> thats
> been brought about by a science student's pattern of study. A similar set
> of
> rules that you'd use to justify an atom -- even so with electrical
> examples
> to justify electrons, semiconductor behavior, etc, or be it a microscopic
> view, -- can't be used to express to one who doesn't agree to it! So the
> pattern of vedaantic study is a set of shruti vaakya-s by a non-physics
> professor called the guru, referring one to faith & logic shruti-shravaNa,
> who needs us to have practicals in manana-nidhidhyaasana labs and then one
> can use one's own experience as a microscope to justify consciousness. Now
> if its easy to agree that atoms and sub-atomic particles fixed up in some
> way or other can build any matter, or with Einstein voicing that matter
> and
> energy are interchangeable and even so, the G-force and what not of
> quantum
> phsics, why not just leave it so: when all that there is can be called as
> *atom* or the minutest sub-atomic *whole* that physics has reached today,
> it
> could also be called as consciousness that pervades everything.
>
> I'm sorry, I don't think I'm capable enough to justify my stand right
> away,
> but all I know is that I'm convinced enough to quit my job in a few months
> without having any plans or means of survival in the immediate future to
> follow the so-called search based on advaita! This is because I *feel* it
> so
> and no amount of justification either way will help me or anyone else :)
>
> shivam shaantam advaitam.
> --praveen
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