[Advaita-l] BrahmaGYAna and jIvanmukti - 2 (The Case of YAGYavalkya)

[bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com]

sAshtAnga praNAms Sri Jaldhar prabhuji
Hare Krishna

It is really a pleasant surprise for me to receive your kind reply
prabhuji. I've seen,  nowadays, you are not that much active in the list
activities.  Anyway, thanks for taking time to reply.

JV prabhuji:

Let me just interject for one minute and describe the Mimamsaka answer to
this question.  They say we do _not_ need to accept that such incidents
have actually occurred in space and time.  We can reason about them and
treat them in sequence without making any claim true or false about their
reality.

bhaskar :

Yes, that would be an appropriate solution I think. Without making an issue
out of nothing, it would be proper to treat these incidents as it
is...OTOH, we can also think, it could be the case that shruti creating a
platform like this just to convey the brahma tattva...Instead of scratching
our head why nachikEta's father behaved like that, how nachikEta has gone
to yamalOka, how did he come back etc. etc. it would be appropriate to
contemplate on the *tattvOpadEsha* that upanishad conveying while narrating
all these incidents...

JV prabhuji:

> The question is can we
> determine the status of a jnAni by his external behaviour??

Yes but we must be careful that we are considering _all_ the behaviour.


bhaskar :

correct prabhuji....to assess jnAni's behaviour we have to consider *all*
his behaviour (but still I doubt :-))...shruti, here, which talks about
yAgyAvalkya, does not give the *complete* biography of his overall
behaviour & nor talks about his *complete* jIvanmukti status....and
question remains for the readers that whether yAGYAvalkya finally realized
his true nature & became jIvan mukta or not??  and also we have to accept
that whatever statements we hear in janaka's court is from a person who has
avidyAlEsha & who is greedy, arrogant in nature  & not a brahmanishta in
perfect sense. And more importantly, shankara took this person's statements
as *shruti pramANa* & written commentary on that !!!

However, I am still finding it difficult to understand the difference
between Sri Karthik prabhuji's description of a brahmajnAni who has
completed infirm sAdhana-chatushhTaya, infirm BrahmaGYAna incomplete mukti
etc. AND a person who has intellectual understanding of shAstra vAkya &
quoting & talking authoritatively on brahma jnAna by memorizing the
upanishadic teaching....I find hardly any difference between these two
characters..From my understanding, it is like saying, since our advaita
AchArya Sri VidyAraNya saying that there is difference between these two,
we have to accept it....I hope that would not be the case &  Sri Karthik
prabhuji will address these issues in detail in his subsequent posts by
providing logical answers with proper supportings from shruti-s...

Your humble servant
Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar