Basics of Advaitin Vedanta

[Guest guest]

All respected members of Advaitin Satsang -

 

Pranams and Hari OM to all.

 

I was introduced to the group 2 years back by Shri

Madhav,one of the moderators and an erudite scholar.

He has since May this year moved on, literally to

"greener pastures" (from Saudi to Germany). I

sincerely thank all those who have made their postings

on this web site as I have learnt whatsoever I know

about Advaitin from this site only, till 3 weeks back.

 

On 11th Nov 01, I started reading a book " The Soul's

Journey to its destiny" by Swami Ashokanada (of RK

Mutt order) and published by Advaita Ashram in

Calcutta. The book of 312 pages cost only Rs 32 (appox

US cents 70) and I bought it on the Railway platform

in Central station Chennai(Madras)a year back. Somehow

I started reading it, now only. I mentioned by E-mail

to Shri Madhav that I am very impressed with the book

and thinking of putting an extract of this book on

this site and he agreed and hence this posting. Please

bear with me for this long-winded intro. The purpose

of this posting is to clarify from the Moderators and

learned fellow members whether this understanding of

"Basics of Advaitin Vednata" is correct, so that

questions may be raised atleast from a point of basic

understanding rather than total ignorance.

 

Basics of Advaitin Vedanta

(Source- Swami Ashokanada's book on "The soul's

Journey to its destiny"). The following is my

comprehension and any errors are my reponsibility- not

Swamiji's.

 

Why should God create? Is he not perfect? How out of

one, many come and still the original exists without

being being affected?

You cannot explain all these except by assuming "as it

were" (iva-in sanskrit). That is how Advaitins solve

the problem of creation. All Hindu philosphers have

not accepted that view.

>From the cosmic point of view, this universe is an

expression of divintiy. It is the dynamic play of

divine, which "as it were" assumed a dynamic aspect.

The whole universe is a play of this divine shakti-

energy-living.

 

First there was absolute consciousness- GOD. For some

reason a desire arose in God to create (and don't try

to guess why). Along with this desire, something which

denied the nature of God arose- Maya. Due to God's

association with maya, a process starts and through

different stages of involution and degradation and

dilution, the whole process comes to comes to our

level and goes beyond.

 

The one undivided GOD (Nirguna Brahama)becomes divided

"as it were" into an infinite number of souls which

are all fragments of God- this stage is "Isvara". Maya

starts existing simultaneously starting to give

apparent division and sense of plurality, variety

etc.It thus creates a sense of "subject and object"

because of creation of cosmic intelligence and cosmic

mind.

 

The next stage in involution is "Hiranyagharba"

(Golden womb) where the concrete world is still in the

womb. At the next level, the universe is born from the

womb and known as "virat" - the vast one. Next the

individual souls formed earlier at "Isvara" stage

become gross by each of them duplicating the universal

phenomenon making this stage "Visva" or the "whole".

In the later stage, the body, mind and intellect

seemingly come together with soul to make us "humans".

(The composition can be different for other living and

non-living creations in this earth or also in other

earths called lokas)

>From this state of apparent plurality, if an

individual soul wants to reunite with the original

cosmic starting point (which still remains undiliuted-

because everything is -"as it were'), it has to

traverse the reverse path step by step. This is done

through a process of purification of mind (bhakthi,

Karma etc) and proceed upwards to reach state where

suddenly it "realizes" by itself its divine nature by

Gynana. Even these travels experienced never happened

because it was all "as it were". It is thus not a

process but waking up from ignorance - neither as

simple as it sounds nor impossible. For this process

to begin, either the mind has to be evaporated or

diluted with good for the basic "truth" to be seen

waking up from the "as it were" dream.

 

While the body we have is from our biological parents,

the individual soul (jiva) is from Godhood and the

mind is a coating on the soul and not inherited from

parents but travels with the jiva from birth after

after birth till in the final Moksha, it reunites with

nirguna brahama. The mind , which is an instrument is

infact not required. The process of operation of mind

has been clearly elucidited in Vedanta and differs

from modern pshyco anlaysis.

End of summary

The book has appox 93,000 words in 8 chapters. I have

prepared a summary of 1,200 words for each of these 8

chapters (total 9,600 words). For those wishing to

have this summary, I can send it individually as I

think it is too much distration for the whole list if

I were to post the entire lot. I can only say that

personally for me it clarified a whole lot of

philospohical questions. From now on, it is not a

question of what to do, or the direction , but just

how long will it take, what are the specifics and

techniques and why I am delaying it.

 

Hari Om and Pranams once again and forgive me if I

wasted your time with this long note.

 

P.B.V.Rajan , Saudi Arabia.

 

 

 

 

 

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