[Advaita-l] brahma sAkshAtkAra (was RE: Apaurusheyatva of Vedas.)

[Raghav Kumar]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 6:20 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> > Bhaskar, to me it seems as if you always deliberately impute unnecessary
> > extra meanings
> > to sentences like that quoted above and always bring in a negative
> > reference to nirvikalpa
> > samAdhi.
> >
> > > I dont know why you always see only negative intentions in my mails. I
> > dont blame you prabhuji for that, it is only my misfortune. I was just
> > trying to say vAkyArtha jnAna or vedAnta vAkya janita jnAna is enough for
> > the samyak jnAna & there is no interval between the jnAna & sAkshAtkAra
> as
> > such and mOksha is ajnAna nivrutti only and not a special & afresh
> > 'darshana' of ever existing Atman.
>
> I see negative and positive intentions in the mails of a bunch of people,
> including
> me no doubt, but I feel free to express a response to you! It has nothing
> to do with
> misfortune.
>
> My point was that this is not necessarily pertinent in a thread on
> apaurusheyatva of
> the veda. I can see now that this is an outcome of a misunderstanding of
> what this
> concept means for pramANatva of the veda
>


> It seems to me that your doubts about how the Rshi-s saw the veda and how
> that
> makes the veda apaurusheya are directly in conflict with your stance that
> there is
> no interval between vedAnta vAkya janita jnAna and sAkshAtkAra as such. For
> the
> vAkya janita jnAna to be pramA, the vAkya itself, including its wording
> have to be
> accepted as pramA in the first place. In order to accept the vAkya as pramA
> in and
> of itself, not subject to verification by pratyaksha and other means of
> knowing, you
> have to grant that the veda is pramANa because it is apaurusheya. But that
> is exactly
> what you seem to have a problem with!
>
What you have written Sri Vidya ji, is quite interesting. We have 3
alternatives for understanding how the mantra-darSana of the vedanta-vAkya-s
would have taken place for the Rishis -
1 The vAkya-s (just the words) come up chronologically first and then later
the words are understood  by even those very Rishis who uttered the words.
In others words, they themselves figure out/understand the meaning of the
words later ; the words just spontaneously emerge or arise in their minds.
Then the vAkya- (words) are definitely  apaurusheya since the Rishis
themselves cannot have composed them; they just spontaneously arose in their
minds; they themselves later understood what they had "heard" (done
shravanaM).

2. The vAkya and vAkya-janita-pramA arise together simultaneously in their
minds; there is no scope in this alternative for dwelling upon the words in
the form of mananaM etc., to later arrive at samyag-GYAnaM. In this
alternative too, the words of vedanta are apaurusheya. Since they were not
strung together or composed by the Rishis AFTER samyag-GYAnaM. This
alternative is supported by the author of the ratnaprabhA gloss on BSB.

3. The samyag-GYAnam was first arrived at by some means like pratyaxa,
anumAna, nirvikalpa samAdhi or "for no reason". Then this GYAnam was
 explained through mentally composed veda mantra-s. Then the veda mantra-s
can be called paurusheya. But this alternative would be TOTALLY unacceptable
especially for anyone strongly opposed to nirvikalpa samadhi as the means of
GYAnaM. As for the GYAnaM arising for no reason, or through pratyaxa etc.,
such alternatives are even more unacceptable. And if past janma-"shravanaM"
was the cause like VAmadeva etc., the we are back again to alternatives 1 or
2 implying apaurusheyatvaM for the vedanta-vAkya-s.

So, as Bhaskar Prabhuji suggested, since nirivkalpa samAdhi etc cannot at
all be the means to GYAnaM, the words of (alteast) the vedanta vAkya-s have
to necessarily be apaurusheya, especially for those who follow the teachings
of Sri SSS ji. That is nice.

Om
Raghav