[Advaita-l] Does praNava upAsanA leads to brahmaloka?

[Bhaskar YR]

Please can you know the opinion about mANDukya Upanishad (12 verses) in simple words. It may help me understand praNava upAsanA better.

praNAms Sri Sujal prabhuji
Hare Krishna

mAndUkya is all about enquiry/jignAsa about the self/brahman based on our day to day experience (universal experience, sArvatrika pUrNAnubhava as mentioned in the books of Sri SSS).  For that matter all the Upanishads have the ultimate goal of teaching the knowledge of  brahman in all the possible ways i.e. including neti neti. And mAndUkya too does not deviate from its  goal hence takes the task of presenting the brahman by using the OmkAra as upamAna.  As I said  earlier it would be better to check the geeta and prashna bhAshya to understand significance of Omkara in brahma jignAsa.  And yes, you can wait for the more authentic and forceful clarification from other learned prabhuji-s of this list.

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
Bhaskar

PS :  BTW, our advaitin group member Sri Dennis Waite prabhuji has written beautiful book on maNdUkya A-U-M, Awakening to the Reality.  Please refer to it.

From: Sujal Upadhyay [mailto:sujal.u at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2016 4:03 PM
To: Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com>
Cc: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Does praNava upAsanA leads to brahmaloka?

Thank you Sri Bhaskar Prabhuji,
Please can you know the opinion about mANDukya Upanishad (12 verses) in simple words. It may help me understand praNava upAsanA better.

I will also wait for others to respond.
Kind Regards
Hari Om



On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 3:23 PM, Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com<mailto:bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com>> wrote:
Apara Brahman is attained through pranava upAsana while para Brahman is attained through pranava jignAsa or vichAra.

praNAms
Hare Krishna

Yes that is right upAsana of OmkAra like vishvarUpa upAsana, AhaMgrahOpAsana, vibhUti upAsana would lead to apara brahman or brahma lOka only since these are all katru tantra dhyAna.  Since these are all 'bhAvana vishesha' dhyAna needs to be done by concentrating on bhru madhyaM, hrudaya, nAbhi etc.  More details can be found in shankara bhAshya on geeta on 8th chapter and prashnOpanishat as well.  And again yes, by doing the jignAsa on praNava svarUpa parabrahman on can attain the ultimate knowledge of brahman as well.. upAsana is katru tantra whereas jignAsa has to be done based on vastu taNtra.

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar