[Advaita-l] Sarvamkalvidam Brahma

[Bhaskar YR]

praNAms
Hare Krishna

According to upanishadic mahavaakya 'sarvam kalvidam brahma' this whole universe is pervaded by Brahman and it is the material as well as efficient cause. In that case the body with all the koshas all the way to individual atma is also Brahman. My question is Why does Vedanta start with differentiating atma as different from deha and it's attendant Koshas?

>  The fundamental problem or tendency of human being is identifying oneself with his body, mind and intellect (BMI) barring other BMI-s from his BMI and by doing so he unknowingly differentiates the Chaitanya in other BMI-s also from that of his chaitanyaM.  This is called avidyA.  To get rid of this, shruti first start that you are not body, you are mind, you are not intellect etc.  and you are Chaitanya which does not have any shareera.  This type of teaching is very helpful to get rid of the wrong notion that we are custodian of some set of BMI and other sets of BMI belong to others etc.  When we realize the true svarUpa of our Chaitanya we realize the all upAdhi-s are belong to this chaitanyaM only and this Chaitanya is the both material and efficient cause of this creation i.e. including pancha tanmAtra-s, pancha kOsha-s etc.  In vedAnta this is called samyak drushti or samyak jnana in which you see each and everything as THAT only...In short the in and out of everything is amruta brahma only and there exists nothing else apart from brahman.  Shruti explains this beautifully :  Yasmin brahmaNi pancha pancha janAH , avyAkrutAkhya OtaM cha prOtaM cha amrutaM brahma manyA ahaM, na cha ahaM AtmAnaM tataH anyatvena jAne.  ahamannaM, ahamannAdaH, ahaM shlOkakruta etc.  smruti too explains this sama drushti in the shloka : vidyA vinaya saMpanne brAhmaNe gavi hastini shunishchaiva svapAkecha paNditAH sama darshinaH.  

And for more details how brahman though nirguNa, niravayava, nirvishesha etc. can be the material and efficient cause, you can refer sUtra bhAshya 2.1.8 to 13 or 14.  Basic problem with us, the ajnAni-s, is we wrongly think that we are only ring not bangle nor bracelet etc.  but shruti makes us to realize that neither ring nor any vAchAraMbhaNa exists apart from GOLD and at the same time GOLD 'as_it_is' does not have any nAma and rUpa.  When we realize the GOLD svarUpa in its entirety there is no room for us to think we are ONLY ring (individual BMI)  and bangles & other shapes  (other BMI-s) are different from ring.  To drive home this point shruti gives us mrudghata, suvarNAbharaNa examples and to establish the fact that GOLD in itself does not carry any diversification (neha nAnAsti kiMchana)  gives the examples like rajju-sarpa, shukti-rajata etc.  

Hence, the conclusion is (atleast according to my understanding) brahman is jagat and he is beyond jagat as well ( sarvaM khalvidaM brahma and sabhUmim vishvatOvrutvA atyadistta dashAngulaM), sarvataH pANi pAdaM....sarvaM Avrutya tishTati but in his svarUpa he is sarvendriyaguNAbhAsaM sarvendriya vivarjitaM....nirguNaM guNabhOktru cha...etc. 

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar