Knowledge and the Means of Knowledge - 23

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praNAms Sri Sadananda prabhujiHare KrishnaSince I am not following this series ( except 12 or 13 to which I shared my thoughts) I dont know what has been discussed in the previous posts..Normally I dont entertain *tarka karkasha* grantha-s like VP especially when these tarka-s not properly supported by shruti, shrutyanugrahIta tarka, anubhava & shankara's prasthAna trayi bhAshya...Since your goodself suggested to read this particular post, I started reading this but lost in the middle due to continuous doubts creeping in my mind!!...Firstly prabhuji I am not sure, here in this series, whether you are just sharing *your* understanding on VP or giving your concurrence to the purports of VP..At the very beginning you are telling " based on my understanding I am discussing the VP...But it is not clear for me whether your understanding of VP is acceptable to you & it is in line with your understanding of advaita siddhanta??...We can understand somany things/topics in life...but it does not mean it has always our concurrence...Anyway, I would like to get the clarification from your end with regard to this. Secondly, due to length of these mails, I am not able to make out the gist of these mails...Could it be possible for you to give the summary of each part at the end of the mail in a separate paragraph prabhuji under the heading summary?? ...So that, we can get the main essence of these mails..Here is some of my observations :Sri S prabhuji :Thus we have two levels of ignorance involving ignorance of the substantives. One is the ignorance of Brahman which is the substantive of all objects, which is general ignorance or saamaanya avidya, or muula avidya, which is fundamental in all perceptions of objects. Here, both the objects that are perceived and the mind that perceives with the help of consciousness are in the same order of reality.bhaskar :So, prabhuji, you mean to say here those two levels of ignorance i.e. agrahaNa (ignorance about nacre) & anyathAgrahaNa (seeing silver in place of nacre) both are at the level or perception?? So, mulA vidyA or fundamental avidyA or agrahaNa or first level of avidyA is also at the level of cognition only?? Kindly elaborate what does it mean when you say mind & objects are in the same order of reality.Sri S prabhuji :This means at relative level ignorance that it is ‘nacrey-consciousness’ (that is consciousness in the form of a nacre as in ‘ringly-gold’ or gold in the form of a ring) contributes to the perception of ‘silvery-consciousness’ (consciousness in the form of silver). bhaskar :can we stretch the above and say *upahita chaitanya* of a jnAni is also at the level of ignorance only like ringly-gold or silvery-consciousness or upAdhi pratibandhita consciousness...??Sri S prabhuji :When I see nacre as nacre, the silver that was seen is nullified, along with the ignorance of nacre, by the knowledge that silver that was seen before is, in fact, nacre only. This knowledge manifests as ‘there is no silver there’ and ‘the silver that I saw was indeed nacre only’. The ignorance of the first kind, that everything is nothing but Brahman, will get nullified only with the knowledge of the substantive Brahman. bhaskar :I've some problem in understanding this substantive brahman knowledge Vs everything is nothing but brahman - knowledge (or samyak jnAna)...I believe you are implying here agrahaNa is (i.e. ignorance of the first kind) everything is nothing but brahman!! that is going to get nullified after obtaining the jnAna of the substantive (adhishTAna) brahman...you mean to say shruti vAkya : sarvaM khalvidaM brahma is the assertion of first kind of ignorance?? Coming back to drushtAnta, you say mere knowledge of nacre that it is brahman is first kind of ignorance, that means my correct cognition (not silver but it is only nacre) is another fundamental error?? at what level we are going to get the substantive knowledge of nacre?? Prabhuji dont you think *samyaK jnAna* I.e. everything is brahman) in itself sublates everything and gives us svarUpa knowledge?? I agree that seeing nacre as nacre (as another nAma rUpa) is an error..but saying the knowledge of everthing is nothing but brahman is itself first kind of ignorance & it requires subsequent substantive knowledge is something absurd IMO.... According to this scenario, two levels of knowledge should happen to get *real* knowledge, one is in the form of fundamental ignorance i.e. everything is nothing but brahman and in the next step we should get the knowledge of substratum...If the first level of cognition that *everything is brahman* is of the nature of first kind of ignorance, how can this *wrong cognition* can lead to the *correct* knowledge of substratum?? kindly clarify...Like this, I am getting somany doubts on these type of texts prabhuji...Hence I stopped reading these tarka pradhAna advaita prakaraNa granTha-s & related notes on it....Moreover, before doing exercises in this field of *shushka tarka*, I think I've to do manana on shrutyanugrahIta, anubhavasammata tarka based on our paramAchArya's prasthAna trayi bhAshya...I doubt, I am going to complete this in this janma :-((Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!bhaskar