Brahma Sutras

[sravna]

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My position is that we are probably misleading ourselves by repeatedly using phrases like "outside space and time". Can there not be something which is not "outside space and time" but is not "bound" or "affected" by "space and time"?

Second, what do we really, really, mean by Jagat, creation, etc? Have we any mathematically verified proof that this Jagat is for real and that it was "created" in the same manner as a mud pot is created by a potter?

Is it not possible that this Jagat itself is a make-believe, a dream-like mental experience, which our human mind and intellect are "conditioned", naturally, to accept and believe to be true and solid, because it (jagat) seems to function in accordance with very intricate and stable principles which obey the mathematical laws?

Perhaps, the time has come to move away from positing a 'creator' god and created jagat, etc., and to view the universe itself as a "relative" phenomenon (not absolute) which works or functions by being subject to the notions of space and time. If it is possible to think in this way, the notion of māyā will become clearer, I feel. The universe itself can be a mirage-like experience of each and every jīvātmā — can we not think on these lines? In this case, we, the jīvātmās, are ourselves the creators of the jagat and there is no need for a NB, SB, etc., to explain its creation.

Dear Shri Sangom,

The immediate question that arises is "How were the jivatmas created?"

 

[auh]

Your first objection is that time need not be finite. I answered this objection. Anyway let me try to put it in another way. If as you think time is infinite. , How long back can you think time can go? 1 billion years, 1 trillion years or even uncountable number of years because it is infinite. For example you say time started at a point t and it has been n years from that point till now . I could always say that since you say it is infinite it could have started at point t-1 and we could not have reached the present since now it would take n+1 years to reach the present but only n years have elapsed since time was created. So I could always push back the point t further and further so that present could never be reached.

But from our experience of present we know that it is not what has happened. So time can only be finite and must have had a beginning.

I am afraid Sravna, that the answer is quite simple - if time is infinite, it does not start.

 

[sravna]

I am afraid Sravna, that the answer is quite simple - if time is infinite, it does not start.

Auh,

I was trying to show you the fallacy. I understand that the time does not start. So how does it reach the next point?

 

[auh]

My position is that we are probably misleading ourselves by repeatedly using phrases like "outside space and time". Can there not be something which is not "outside space and time" but is not "bound" or "affected" by "space and time"?

Honestly, the answer can be only "we do not know". There can be something, or nothing, or many things - all are possible. The idea of one entity itself does not lend itself to logic.

Second, what do we really, really, mean by Jagat, creation, etc? Have we any mathematically verified proof that this Jagat is for real and that it was "created" in the same manner as a mud pot is created by a potter?

Then we have to agree upon what is meant by "real" before debating this point.

Is it not possible that this Jagat itself is a make-believe, a dream-like mental experience, which our human mind and intellect are "conditioned", naturally, to accept and believe to be true and solid, because it (jagat) seems to function in accordance with very intricate and stable principles which obey the mathematical laws?

I am sorry, but the first part does not necessarily follow from the second part of the above.

Perhaps, the time has come to move away from positing a 'creator' god and created jagat, etc., and to view the universe itself as a "relative" phenomenon (not absolute) which works or functions by being subject to the notions of space and time. If it is possible to think in this way, the notion of māyā will become clearer, I feel. The universe itself can be a mirage-like experience of each and every jīvātmā — can we not think on these lines? In this case, we, the jīvātmās, are ourselves the creators of the jagat and there is no need for a NB, SB, etc., to explain its creation.

This raises more complications, I should think - what is a jivatma? are the jivatmas different from one another? how did they originate? how did they create the jagat? Does it mean that each jivatma is capable of creating/abandoning/destroying its own world? Why is a jivatma bound by what it is created? etc.

 

[auh]

I was trying to show you the fallacy. I understand that the time does not start. So how does it reach the next point?

Why should it reach the next point? Time does not travel...

 

[sravna]

Why should it reach the next point? Time does not travel...

Dear Auh,

Time does not start and time does not travel. So what do you really mean by time is infinite?

 

[auh]

Dear Sravna,

Time does not start and time does not travel. So what do you really mean by time is infinite?

Time is a relative indicator, and just that. It is not an entity that travels, and not a created being that can actually have a starting point, unless we know about all the mysteries of the universe.

 

[sravna]

Dear Sravna,
Time is a relative indicator, and just that. It is not an entity that travels, and not a created being that can actually have a starting point, unless we know about all the mysteries of the universe.

Dear Auh,

Your reply is very vague. I am not able to make anything out of it unless you care to clarify. Anyway I am not really interested unless you can give your views logically too because I have presented a logic. You either have to prove that there are flaws in the logic or the assumptions are unreasonable or that your logic is both valid and the assumptions are more tenable.

 

[auh]

Your reply is very vague. I am not able to make anything out of it unless you care to clarify. Anyway I am not really interested unless you can give your views logically too because I have presented a logic. You either have to prove that there are flaws in the logic or the assumptions are unreasonable or that your logic is both valid and the assumptions are more tenable.

But that is what time is. It is only an indicator. You want me to give a description that suits your assumptions? Sorry.

You cannot make statements like time started, or time travelled. It is only a notion for us to measure the progress of things relative to each other.

 

[auh]

... You either have to prove that there are flaws in the logic or the assumptions are unreasonable or that your logic is both valid and the assumptions are more tenable.

On the same, can I ask you to prove the same with the reasoning in post #542 or with the theory of the FGFD? Seriously !

 

[sravna]

But that is what time is. It is only an indicator. You want me to give a description that suits your assumptions? Sorry.

You cannot make statements like time started, or time travelled. It is only a notion for us to measure the progress of things relative to each other.

Dear Auh,

I will accept what you say that it measures the progress of things relative to each other. Then do you mean to say that time cannot exist on its own? Then how could it have been infinite spanning before anything possibly existed?

 

[auh]

... Then do you mean to say that time cannot exist on its own?

What is time? Can you please detail?

Then how could it have been infinite spanning before anything possibly existed?

Because existence (or a universe, or multiverse etc) cannot be proved to have a definite starting point. (corrected this sentence).

 

[Raghy]

Yes everyone finally understands brahman. Each birth provides you a unique set of circumstances and being illiterate in a birth also in some way contributes towards spiritual learning i.e., learning that contributes towards attaining liberation. So it is from your life experiences that you do your spiritual learning and if you are illiterate in a birth that means there is significance to it.


A person can know brahman without reading brahma sutra. But a guide may be needed.

Non belief in brahman I think is a temporary phase. Or may be you really believe in brahman without knowing it because believing in brahman is ultimately knowing that the "I" feeling should not be there.

Dear Sravna,

After a very long time I am responding to your post.

Every body may not understand Brahman at all. There is no need for it. Why should anyone even try to understand Brahman? If it is there, it is there... no one needs to bother more than that.

The liberation is not connected with knowing Brahman. What is 'Liberation' anyway? It is getting free of attachments and getting free of illusions.

One need not 'realise' or 'know' Brahman to attain liberation.

Dear Sir, Brahma Sutra may not guide any one to knowing Brahman at all! I will explain that after I responded to Sri. TKS and Sri. Vaagmi. I don't like to write more without responding to the older posts.

"I" feeling has nothing to do with knowing 'Brahman'. Well, that is my understanding, anyway. I could be wrong, but I am learning still.

Cheers!

 

[sravna]

What is time? Can you please detail?


Because existence (or a universe, or multiverse etc) cannot be proved to have a definite starting point. (corrected this sentence).

Dear Shri Auh,

You were making some statements about time which I was trying to understand. Anyway to me passage of time is the moving of one unit span of your consciousness to the next. So even though not considered as an entity time in a sense can be considered to travel the above way. But the really interesting question is what happens when there is nothing? That is when the time doesn't move in the above way. Only when time doesn't move it is the equivalent of saying it doesn't start or travel. If it hasn't traveled at all it simply means nothing existed ever.

I think now you would be able to better relate to my logic of finite time.

 

[sravna]

Dear Sravna,

After a very long time I am responding to your post.

Every body may not understand Brahman at all. There is no need for it. Why should anyone even try to understand Brahman? If it is there, it is there... no one needs to bother more than that.

The liberation is not connected with knowing Brahman. What is 'Liberation' anyway? It is getting free of attachments and getting free of illusions.

One need not 'realise' or 'know' Brahman to attain liberation.

Dear Sir, Brahma Sutra may not guide any one to knowing Brahman at all! I will explain that after I responded to Sri. TKS and Sri. Vaagmi. I don't like to write more without responding to the older posts.

"I" feeling has nothing to do with knowing 'Brahman'. Well, that is my understanding, anyway. I could be wrong, but I am learning still.

Cheers!

Dear Shri Raghy,

I respect your views. I am looking forward to your further posts.

 

[renuka]

Irrespective of what "we" are, the fact remains that the "we" is a deluded NB.

Nope...that is not what I believe.

Ok lets get simple..

Take H20

H20 can present as Steam(gaseous form), Water(Liquid) and Ice(Solid)

Essentially it is H20 but can we say all perceivable forms are the same?

Just say a person wants to add some cubes of Ice to his glass of JD..can I tell him 'Oh add water to your JD becos Ice is also H20 and Water is also is H20 and essentially the same"....does not make sense right?

So same here..we are Jeevatmas under the spell of Maya and even though the ultimate source of everything is NB..NB is never under the spell of Maya.

So to get descriptive we can say Prakirti is Ice,Jeevaatma is Water, Saguna Brahman is Steam and Nirguna Brahman is the underlying H20 Molecule.

Note I have described NB here just for example purposes and not to give NB a name or form..this is just for descriptive purposes to aid and explanation and nothing more.

 

[renuka]

Smt. Renuka,

The generally accepted position is that the jivAtma is, in its essence, the same as NB. And we have the saying jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ. Hence, I feel the argument to somehow differentiate thejīvātmā is just specious.The NB itself, through processes unknown, becomes the jīvātmās and hence what Shri auh says, viz., the NB deludes itself by covering itself with adhyāsa or māyā is, substantively true and correct.

Dear Sangom ji,

I know what auh and you are trying to convey...that is.. everything is for NB and if Jeevas which are from NB are deluded so that means NB also in the form of Jeevas undergoes delusion.

But does 1+1 =2 in Advaita?

What you say only hold good if we view NB as something that undergoes changes and never remains the same...when we understand that NB always remains ever the same as in this stanza:

oḿ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaḿ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate

Om, That is Full, This also is Full, From Fullness comes that Fullness,
Taking Fullness from Fullness, Fullness Indeed Remains.




What auh and you are saying sounds like this:


Om.. This is Deluded,That is Deluded
From That Delusion comes This Delusion
Taking Delusion from Delusion
Delusion verily remains.

 

[auh]

H20 can present as Steam(gaseous form), Water(Liquid) and Ice(Solid)

Essentially it is H20 but can we say all perceivable forms are the same?

Just say a person wants to add some cubes of Ice to his glass of JD..can I tell him 'Oh add water to your JD becos Ice is also H20 and Water is also is H20 and essentially the same"....does not make sense right?

So same here..we are Jeevatmas under the spell of Maya and even though the ultimate source of everything is NB..NB is never under the spell of Maya.

So to get descriptive we can say Prakirti is Ice,Jeevaatma is Water, Saguna Brahman is Steam and Nirguna Brahman is the underlying H20 Molecule.

Note I have described NB here just for example purposes and not to give NB a name or form..this is just for descriptive purposes to aid and explanation and nothing more.

This example does not suit, imo.

1) The change in states is real to the perceiver (which is another dimension). It is not illusory to the H2O molecule.

2) The change in state requires external energy. Does water change by itself to these three states without any external stimuli? So for the example to be valid, we have to assume that an external stimulus acted upon the NB to make into SB or Prakriti or Jivatma.

Additionally, I would want to confirm

a) if NB is some kind of particle like H2O
b) is it only one molecule or many,
c) and is the world is only a compression or expansion of such molecules

 

[auh]

Sorry for chipping in...

I know what auh and you are trying to convey...that is.. everything is for NB and if Jeevas which are from NB are deluded so that means NB also in the form of Jeevas undergoes delusion.

Reg. the highlighted part 1 - It should be "NB is" and not "everything is for NB", and reg. the highlighted part 2 - it is not that Jivas are from NB, but Jivas are NB according to Sankara.

But does does 1+1 =2 in Advaita?

Whatever that is said in advaita need not necessarily be true.

What you say only hold good if we view NB as something that never remains the same..

But the fact is that it has not remained the same ! The most simplest way to understand this is that, if according to advaita there is only NB then we cannot be...

Om, That is Full, This also is Full, From Fullness comes that Fullness,
Taking Fullness from Fullness, Fullness Indeed Remains.

This does not say that an advaitic NB exists, similar to what you and Sravna have been saying.

 

[auh]

... Anyway to me passage of time is the moving of one unit span of your consciousness to the next. So even though not considered as an entity time in a sense can be considered to travel the above way. But the really interesting question is what happens when there is nothing? That is when the time doesn't move in the above way. Only when time doesn't move it is the equivalent of saying it doesn't start or travel. If it hasn't traveled at all it simply means nothing existed ever.

Do we know for certain that there is/was nothing? It is only a wild speculation as good as the speculation whether once upon a time, apples sprung from orange trees.

 

[sravna]

Dear Shri auh,

It doesn't matter.Even if there were a number of things, the original question remains unanswered. How could the time have moved to the present? unless you really give a different view of time.

 

[sangom]

Dear Sangom ji,

I know what auh and you are trying to convey...that is.. everything is for NB and if Jeevas which are from NB are deluded so that means NB also in the form of Jeevas undergoes delusion.

Smt. Renuka,

jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ and also your own quote pūrṇam idaḿ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya, mean that the jīvātmā is NB under delusion. Therefore, for reasons/causes which are not clear (even in Shankara's bhashyas possibly) the NB undergoew, kind of spontaneously, the transformation into jīvātmās. But, according to advaitic tenets, this creation of ever so many jīvātmās does not in any way affect the NB and hence you have pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate.

Hence, it is but logically correct to hold the view that the jīvātmās are NB having undergone delusion by adhyāsa or māyā. You seem to be proving that the jīvātmās are different from NB. If so it may be necessary to give reference to Shankara's (or subsequent advaitin scholars') statement to this effect and how they explain self-realization as the way for moksha, etc.

 

[sravna]

Smt. Renuka,

jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ and also your own quote pūrṇam idaḿ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya, mean that the jīvātmā is NB under delusion. Therefore, for reasons/causes which are not clear (even in Shankara's bhashyas possibly) the NB undergoew, kind of spontaneously, the transformation into jīvātmās. But, according to advaitic tenets, this creation of ever so many jīvātmās does not in any way affect the NB and hence you have pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate.

Hence, it is but logically correct to hold the view that the jīvātmās are NB having undergone delusion by adhyāsa or māyā. You seem to be proving that the jīvātmās are different from NB. If so it may be necessary to give reference to Shankara's (or subsequent advaitin scholars') statement to this effect and how they explain self-realization as the way for moksha, etc.

Dear Shri Sangom,

Even though I am repeating myself , I think understanding the following is critical:

NB is not deluded as a higher reality but Jivatmas which are in essence NB are deluded.But the important point is NB not deluded is the truth since it is not deluded as a higher reality. So anything contradicting the above fact is not the reality. So jivatmas being deluded should not be taken as NB being deluded.

 

[renuka]

You seem to be proving that the jīvātmās are different from NB. If so it may be necessary to give reference to Shankara's (or subsequent advaitin scholars') statement to this effect and how they explain self-realization as the way for moksha, etc.

Dear Sangom ji,

Bhagavad Geeta 9.4: By Me, in My unmanifested form, this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are in Me, but I am not in them.

This is the concept of NB I am trying to convey.


Just to add..here Lord Krishna says :

By Me, in My unmanifested form

It is quite evident He was talking about Nirguna Brahman.

 

[Nara]

..... Since we do experience the physical world, we just have to understand that is the nature of reality and this is how it is structured. We also have the logical conclusion, you may rebut this by logic if such a conclusion is false, that there is an entity which is just timeless......

..... If you can free yourself of the notion of space and time, you will come to the conclusion, that something always existed and the idea that it has to be created is not required. ...

.....But the important point is NB not deluded is the truth since it is not deluded as a higher reality. So anything contradicting the above fact is not the reality. So jivatmas being deluded should not be taken as NB being deluded.

sravna, Auh has been posing some excellent questions to you. You are simply ignoring most of them. At the very least, you need to answer his question about FGFD, in what way your NB is more real than his FGFD?

Also, take a look at the posts I have cited above, in each of them you have a "logical conclusion" like there is non deluded NB, there is "outside time and space", and then you simply assert that our experience must be explained to fit this "truth", anything contradicting this "fact" is not the reality. Begging the question logical fallacy is written all over these.

sravna, you say there is an entity called NB that is outside of space and time. This is your conjecture. Why must others take it seriously? To say there must be a cause for everything and the only way to explain the cause for NB is to place it outside time and space is a combination of begging the question and post hoc logical fallacies.

Post hoc fallacy: A --> B then B --> A, in other words, we observe effects have cause, therefore every effect must have a cause
Begging the question fallacy: Asserting your conclusion is fact without providing any evidence -- there is NB without a cause, and for that to be true we must place it outside time and space

So, please answer these questions, (a) why must there be a cause for jagat? (b) what is outside time and space, (c) why an entity like NB that exists outside time and space need not have a cause? (d) why must cause for jagat be causeless?