[Advaita-l] Fw: How shruti is antya pramANa in advaita, , vEdAnta??

[Kris Manian]

Thank you very much Vidyashankar ji for your response. I was wondering if my
mail got lost.

>I am still catching up on responding to list postings, so pardon the delay 
>in my responses.


> >I have faith and belief in Sruti. I have read and understood "aham
> >brahmAsmi", but I still see duality.
> >Why is that? I am still doing mediatation to internalize the Sruti vAkya
> >hoping this will end the duality.
> >So can you please be kind enough to explain how Sruti and anubhava are
> >one and the same?
>   

>The situation is like this. I don't claim that Sruti and anubhava are the 
>same, but that they will culminate in the same thing, when it comes to 
>realization.

I understood what you meant after reading through your response here. Thank you.

>There is one kind of person (very rare, of course), who immediately 
>understands, knows, realizes and is brahman, as soon as the Sruti is taught 
>to him. For this person, nothing else is necessary; no meditation, no pUjA, 
>no karma-yoga, no formal initiation into the rank of a monk (sannyAsin).

I did not realize this until now. I alway wondered how or what made Sri Ramana
to just leave everything and take Sanyasa on a fine day. May be this is the reason.
He might have come across "Tat tvam asi" or "Aham Brahmasmi" and realised immediately.

>There is another kind of person, who understands the Sruti at an 
>intellectual level only. There are multiple ways to go from this stage. For 
>example, if this person has no faith that the Sruti is indicating a deep 
>truth, he will ignore it or ridicule it and go about his life in other ways. 
>If this person has faith, he can still cling to his experience of duality 
>and interpret the Sruti in accordance with that and deny the non-dual import 
>of Sruti. Or if he has faith, or even just a curiosity to find out what 
>Sruti is talking about, he can go through the time-honored and time-tested 
>regimen of karma-yoga, nishkAmya karma, etc. leading to formal renunciation, 
>dhyAna yoga and finally to jnAna.

>There is the third kind of person, and the vast majority of us fall in this 
>category, who simply refuses to think about what Sruti is saying, even after 
>hearing it.

>For the purposes of this discussion, we are not much concerned with the 
>third kind, but we have to grant the possibility of the existence of a human 
>being who belongs to the first kind, at least at a theoretical level. 
>Clearly, for this person, there is no gap between SravaNa and bramAnubhava.

Yes , I agree.

>What happens to the one of the middle kind, who attempts to understand and 
>internalize the Sruti teaching? Say he or she spends a lot of effort towards 
>it and finally has the brahmAnubhava. At a personal level, there may be a 
>sense of satisfaction, happiness, bliss etc. But does this mean we can say 
>that this experience is necessary to verify the truth of Sruti? We cannot, 
>because the truth of Sruti is independent of any one person's experience of 
>the teaching of Sruti. For the same reason, we cannot say that the 
>discipline followed by this person is the cause of brahman experience.

Right, the effort, discipline etc are only a means to the end and also are not the
only means to that end.

There is another aspect also. There are people who put this effort not for
verifying if the sruti is right or wrong but to experience it. For example when my
friend says this movie is good, I go to see it not to verify if my friend was right, 
but to experience it and have a good time and the money is well spent:-). 
So for the vast majority of us the drive to experience Brahman is important and we
are sure the effort we put in is not wasted because we firmly believe in the Sruti.
After reading through "realize" is the right word not "Experience".

>What is the path to be followed by such a person? Is he or she supposed to 
>sit and chant "I am brahman" repeatedly, the way one chants some mantra? Or 
>is he supposed to ritually consecrate brahman in himself, the way we invoke 
>a divine presence in an image (AvAhana)? Will such exercises make brahman 
>manifest in this person's experience? The answer to all of this is no. What 
>is needed is to prepare oneself through mental discipline (e.g. through 
>yoga), which helps enormously towards developing the qualities necessary to 
>really comprehend and realize brahman.

The yoga you are referring to, is it the yoga exercises?

>Yet, in the final analysis, all the disciplines followed by such a person 
>help only to remove the many layers of ignorance so that at the end, the 
>true reality of brahman shines forth. It does not make a previously 
>non-existent thing to come into being or some completely unknown thing into 
>the realm of the known. Every single thing in this universe is in essence 
>brahman. Inasmuch as our own self is never completely unknown to us, but the 
>essential identity of the self is brahman, every one of us is also never 
>completely unaware of brahman. Sruti teaches this truth and a person's 
>brahmAnubhava is an instance of experiencing this truth. The disciplines 
>assist in leading to this instance, but they are not the direct cause of 
>brahman experience.

So what I understand is, Experience is thru external means, vs realizing
is internal. Experience is thru the senses vs realizing is intution. 
Am I correct?

>I hope I have not confused you further. Please feel free to ask further 
>clarifications from the list, as there are many here who will be able to 
>answer better.

Once again thank you very much  for this great explanation.

Pranam 
Kris Manian

>Best regards,
>Vidyasankar