[Advaita-l] Kutchu and his glasses - realising Brahman

[Lakshminarayana]

Dear Senani,

Without going into the subject of whether or not any member of
this forum is self-realized, I want to say a few things about 
jIvanmukta:"Traditionally, the self-realised do not declare so, and verynicely play-act as if they are subject to maayaa, for the benefit of poor souls who are still subject to maayaa."
When Ishwara incarnated as Krishna, he declared himself as brahman. If the traditional rule
does not apply to Ishwara, why should it apply to a self-realized person?
"Even the most reverred achaarya, bhagavatpaada, Sri Sankara,in hundreds of pages of tight philosophical exposition..."

Sankara's personal self-realization is not relevant to the subject of his bhAshyas. So there
was no need for him to talk about his self-realization. One must also not overlook the fact that only a realized person is fully competent to discern the meaning of upanishads. Sankara himself says that the guru must be self-realized. By writing the bhAshyas and by being a guru to his disciples, he was implicitly acknowledging his status as a realized person.
"the inability to treat my bank balance as yours and transfer 
all my money to you - one ought to acknowledge that one's
realisation is not sound, that one is still under the influence
of avidyaa and thinks that there is something called mine,
his, hers and so on."There are two different aspects of this inability. The first is a genuine inability in which case
only the person knows whether or not he is genuinely unable to transfer his balance. In this case the person is not self-realized. But only he will know it because he cannot cheat himself.

The second is purely apparent inability - from the reference frame of others. Especially, if as you said, a realized person might also play by the rules of the mAya, he can also express this apparent inability. However, there is no reason why this should make others infer that he is not self-realized.

In both cases, only the person knows. One can cheat others but one cannot cheat oneself.

Best Regards
-Lakshminarayana

--- On Fri, 8/8/08, Siva Senani Nori <sivasenani at yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Siva Senani Nori <sivasenani at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Kutchu and his glasses - realising Brahman
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Friday, August 8, 2008, 4:44 PM