Richard, this brings to mind one of my favorite passages from Maharishi's SBAL: ...identification is not bondage. What is bondage is inability to maintain Being along with identification while indulging in experience and activity. pg 238
On Monday, January 20, 2014 9:50 AM, Richard Williams <[email protected]> wrote: Share: > This brings to my mind Maharishi's teaching that knowledge is > different in different states of consciousness... > Things and events - phenomena - are not real, yet not unreal either. They are like an illusion in that they are not exactly as they appear to be, yet they are real in the sense that they are presented to us as illusion. So, it would not be correct to say that phenomena are unreal; they are simply dream-like because phenomena can't be known or experienced without an intermediary something - we call it 'consciousness'. We do not experience phenomenon directly, but through the lens of the senses, which change the objects of perception. Dreams are real because they are dreams. Something that is unreal is something that never existed, a figment of the imagination for example. But quite often people see with double vision simply because they have a mote in their eye, or they see the horns of a hare when in reality, there are no horns on a rabbit. "Duality is only an appearance; non-duality is the real truth. The object exists as an object for the knowing subject; but it does not exist outside of consciousness because the distinction of subject and object is within consciousness" (GK IV 25-27). Work cited: 'Dispelling Illusion' Gaudapada's Alatasanti by Douglas A. Fox State University of New York Press, 1993 Read more: 'Gaudapada' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudapada On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 6:49 AM, Share Long <[email protected]> wrote: > >emptybill, thanks for your clarity here. This brings to my mind Maharishi's >teaching that knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. >Purusha Prakriti realization seems to be a GC experience to me whereas the >experience of moksha as one's basic nature seems more like Unity. > >A friend is on a retreat where they are discussing three stages of Brahman: >basic, refined and Wholeness or holiness. Mind boggling to me! > > > > > > >On Sunday, January 19, 2014 4:35 PM, "[email protected]" ><[email protected]> wrote: > > >A popular view of Advaita Vedanta (sometimes an accusation) is that it is Maya-vada ... the doctrine that everything is mere Maya. > > > >This is a classical misrepresentation that began with Ramanuja (11th Century head of the Sri Vaishnava-s) and continues down to today. Probably one reason for the misunderstanding is that different teachers presented alternate explanations of the Brahma Sutras. In essence, they held contrary preconceptions. Another reason is that discussions about the nature of Maya became continuous in debates between Advaita scholars. This led to the belief that “Maya talk” was the core of Advaita. The reality is that Advaita is more accurately call Brahma-vada, the teaching about Brahman. It uses the principal Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita as a threefold authoritative Vedic source. > > > >However, leading up to the 14th Century, the Yoga Sutras became an alternate source for understanding the path to realize Brahman. By the middle of the 14th-15th Century, this view so infiltrated Advaita Vedanta that the works of Shankaracharya Swami Vidyâranya (who wrote Pañchadâši and Jivanmuktiviveka) presumed that students of Advaita followed a yogic path to realize Brahman. > > >The modern proponent of this view was Swami Vivekananda. MMY just continued that mode – which included the division of the Bhagavad Gita into three topical sections, a theme also found in Sri Aurobindo Ghose. Scholars now call this interpretation “Yogic Advaita” - an interpretation that is more about yoga and less about Advaita Vedanta. > > >Perhaps more perplexing for those studying Advaita, the concept of “enlightenment” (so over-popularized) was borrowed from the Buddhists – and is neither Yogic nor Vedantic. The Yoga Sutras, in fact, do not even propose yoga as a goal but rather discuss the necessity for “vi-yoga” … separating, dis-uniting, dis-joining. Thus the question … “separating what from what”? In this case, separating the apparent con-fusion (fusing together) between awareness (purusha) and the field of experience (i.e. body, senses, mind). > > >Contrary to this Yogic assumption of two orders of reality (purusha and prakriti), Shankara’s Vedanta teaches the inherent unity of Reality (Brahman). Rather than chitta-vritti-nirodha, nirvikalpa-samâdhi or Buddhist dhyana-samâpatti, Advaita points to the direct ascertainment of one’s own true nature. The purpose of such recognition is seeing directly that moksha (freedom) is already the inherent nature of human beings. It also recognizes that moksha is freedom from any experience, while realizing that like waves moving across the ocean, experience is itself nothing but Brahman. > >
