World is mind alone: Shankara (sharing an old post) in the Mundakopanishad bhashya

[V Subrahmanian]

It's interesting that Shankara says this in the context of Ishwara creating the world. 

World is mind alone: Shankara

V Subrahmanian <v.subra...@gmail.com>	Jul 29, 2017, 4:10 AM
to A, Advaitin

World is mind alone: Shankara

In the Mundakopanishad 2.1 is this mantra:

अग्निर्मूर्धा चक्षुषी चन्द्रसूर्यौ दिशः श्रोत्रे वाग्विवृताश्च वेदाः ।
वायुः प्राणो हृदयं विश्वमस्य पद्भ्यां पृथिवी ह्येष सर्वभूतान्तरात्मा ॥ ४ ॥

4 The heavens are His head; the sun and moon, His eyes; the quarters, His ears; the revealed Vedas, His speech; the wind is His breath; the universe, His heart. From his feet is produced the earth. He is, indeed, the inner self of all beings (pancha bhūta-s).

While explaining the part hṛdayam viśvam asya (the world is his 'heart'), Shankara says:

हृदयम् अन्तःकरणं विश्वं समस्तं जगत् अस्य यस्येत्येतत् । सर्वं ह्यन्तःकरणविकारमेव जगत् , मनस्येव सुषुप्ते प्रलयदर्शनात् ; जागरितेऽपि तत एवाग्निविस्फुलिङ्गवद्विप्रतिष्ठानात् ।

//His hṛdayam = antaḥkaraṇam (inner organ, mind) , viśvam = the entire universe. For, the entire world is a modification of the mind, inasmuch as it is seen to merge in the mind during deep sleep, and even during the waking state it is seen to emerge out of it, like sparks out of fire, to exist.//  

The important points to be noted in the above bhāṣyam are:

1. The mantra is about the cosmic person
2. It is an imagery where the cosmos is spoken of as various body-parts of this person
3. The mind of this person is said to be the universe in the mantra
4. Shankara alludes the human experience to make this point no.3
5. He says that the world is a vikāra, modification, of the mind
6. The reason he gives is: since it is seen, experienced, to merge in the mind during deep sleep.
   
7. It is a norm in Vedanta that the layasthānam is the upādāna kāraṇam, for example, the pot, a product of clay, returns to clay when destroyed and hence is the material cause
8. vikāra in the context of creation in Vedanta is vivarta
   
9. It is on this basis the utpatti, sthiti and laya of the universe are taught to be Brahman
   
10. The world emerges from the mind, upon waking
11. The emerging of the multifarious world is akin to sparks flying out of a burning fire
12. Incidentally this analogy of 'sparks flying out of fire' used in creation shruti in the Br.up. and the Mundaka itself, is regarded as an instance of the shruti admitting yugapat sṛṣṭi (simultaneous creation) as different from 'krama sṛṣṭi', sequential creation, as for example in 'akāśāt vāyuḥ...' of the Taittiriya upanishad.  
    

It is evident that the above is an instance of jiva, who is antaḥkaraṇāvacchinnam chaitanyam (consciousness delimited by the mind), being the cause of the experienced world. In the Mandukya kārikā 2.32 bhāṣya Shankara says:

न हि मनोविकल्पनाया रज्जुसर्पादिलक्षणाया रज्ज्वां प्रलय उत्पत्तिर्वा ; न च मनसि रज्जुसर्पस्योत्पत्तिः प्रलयो वा, न चोभयतो वा । तथा मानसत्वाविशेषाद्द्वैतस्य । न हि नियते मनसि सुषुप्ते वा द्वैतं गृह्यते ; अतो मनोविकल्पनामात्रं द्वैतमिति सिद्धम् ।

// There is no origination and destruction of the rope-snake (which is just a mental concoction) in the rope. Nor is there its origination and destruction in the mind. Even so, dvaita (dvaita prapancha) is non-different from the mind. For, in the mind controlled (by meditation) or during deep sleep one does not experience dvaita (dvaita prapancha). Therefore it stands established that dvaita (dvaita prapancha) is only a mental concoction.

This mandukya bhāṣya is subsumed by the mundaka bhashya where Shankara gives the deep sleep, when the mind is dissolved, as the layasthānam of the world, prapancha, jagat. Gaudapāda and Shankara offer reiteration of the above idea in 3.31 with the help of a syllogism:

मनोदृश्यमिदं द्वैतं यत्किञ्चित्सचराचरम् ।
मनसो ह्यमनीभावे द्वैतं नैवोपलभ्यते ॥ ३१ ॥

रज्जुसर्पवद्विकल्पनारूपं द्वैतरूपेण मन एवेत्युक्तम् । तत्र किं प्रमाणमिति, अन्वयव्यतिरेकलक्षणमनुमानमाह । कथम् ? तेन हि मनसा विकल्प्यमानेन दृश्यं मनोदृश्यम् इदं द्वैतं सर्वं मन इति प्रतिज्ञा, तद्भावे भावात् तदभावे चाभावात् । मनसो हि अमनीभावे निरुद्धे विवेकदर्शनाभ्यासवैराग्याभ्यां रज्ज्वामिव सर्पे लयं गते वा सुषुप्ते द्वैतं नैवोपलभ्यत इति अभावात्सिद्धं द्वैतस्यासत्त्वमित्यर्थः ॥

It has been stated that the mind alone takes the form of the concocted dvaita just as the rope-snake is concocted. What is the basis, pramāṇa, for this? It is the anumāna, inference, of the form of anvaya-vyatireka. How? The pratijñā, claim is: the entire dvaitam is experienced as a concoction of the mind and therefore dvaitam is mind. Since in the presence of the mind, dvaitam is present and in the absence of the mind, dvaitam is absent. When the mind has been controlled by effort (in meditation) owing to discrimination and practice, just as the imagined snake merges in the rope, or during deep sleep, dvaitam is never experienced. Thus, by its absence (during meditation and deep sleep), the non-existence, asattvam, of dvaitam is established.

In the Brahmasutra bhashya commentary, the Ratnaprabhā summarizes the Vedānta siddhānta thus: सृष्टिर्दर्शनमदर्शनं लयः = perception is creation, and non-perception is destruction.

The Mundaka and the Mandukya bhāṣyam cited above demonstrate this siddhānta eminently.

Om Tat Sat 

 

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

Namaste Subbuji,

I respectfully offer Claude Fable 5 reply to your well chosen vakya and bhasya. I did not take the time to confirm Claude’s citations even as it cautions below. Further, I have prompted Claude to respond to the various citations I have collected from these forums and will also post that in time. 

Pranams, Michael 🙏🙏🙏

Claude from first person to Subbuji:

Thank you for assembling these passages — the Muṇḍaka 2.1.4 bhāṣya especially deserves more attention than it usually receives, and sarvaṃ hy antaḥkaraṇa-vikāram eva jagat is as strong a sentence as the bhāṣya corpus offers on this question. A few observations on what the gloss asserts when read within its prakaraṇa.

First, the frame of the mantra. The asya whose hṛdaya is viśvam is the puruṣa of the section — eṣa sarva-bhūtāntarātmā, the one inner self of all beings — and the mantra is viśvarūpa imagery: fire as head, sun and moon as eyes, the quarters as ears. The heart-identification belongs to that sequence. And one mantra earlier, at 2.1.3, the manas is itself among the things born: etasmāj jāyate prāṇo manaḥ sarvendriyāṇi ca — from Him arise prāṇa, the mind, all the senses, ether, air, fire, water, earth. So within this very prakaraṇa the mind is an utpanna, and the sattā-source is the akṣara puruṣa (yathorṇanābhiḥ sṛjate gṛhṇate ca, 1.1.7). This matters for how we read antaḥkaraṇa-vikāram eva jagat. The mind here furnishes the world's vikāra — its form, its differentiated appearing — not its being. Being is borrowed from the adhiṣṭhāna, from caitanya; the manas, itself jāta and jaḍa, is in no position to confer sattā on anything. So the gloss asserts that the seen has no standing as a differentiated manifold apart from the antaḥkaraṇa-field — it is seen to resolve into that field in suṣupti and emerge from it in waking. It does not assert that the seen draws its very being from the mind. The prakaraṇa forbids that reading, since it has just derived the mind from the puruṣa.

Second, the level at which the mantra pitches the claim. The hṛdaya belongs to the sarva-bhūtāntarātmā — this is samaṣṭi, the shared frame of all beings, not the private perception of an individual jīva. The step from "the world is the heart of the one self of all" to "the individual antaḥkaraṇāvacchinna jīva is the cause of the experienced world" is an additional one, and the bhāṣya text does not take it.

Third — and here the point about form-versus-being becomes decisive — the Gauḍapāda materials say more than is sometimes drawn from them, and it tells against the mano-generation reading rather than for it. The 2.32-region bhāṣya you cite does not merely say dvaita is mind-dependent; it says na ca manasi rajjusarpasyotpattiḥ pralayo vā — the rope-snake has no origination or dissolution even in the mind. The mind is not being offered as the being-ground in which dvaita arises; the passage denies the seen a real arising in the mind at all. That is why mano-vikalpanā-mātraṃ dvaitam iti siddham stands under the banner na nirodho na cotpattiḥ: the mind is the vikalpaka, the projector of the false form, and its vikalpa is precisely what is being shown to be asat. The 3.31 bhāṣya then states the payoff in so many words: abhāvāt siddhaṃ dvaitasya asattvam. The anvaya-vyatireka correlates dvaita with the manas in order to withdraw being from dvaita, not to confer being on it. If these passages were installing the mind as world-generator, "therefore dvaita is asat" would be a very strange conclusion to reach; it is exactly the right conclusion if mind-dependence is being demonstrated for the sake of negation. And on the spark-figure specifically, Gauḍapāda classifies it himself at 3.15: mṛl-loha-visphuliṅgādyaiḥ sṛṣṭir yā coditānyathā, upāyaḥ so 'vatārāya nāsti bhedaḥ kathañcana — the sṛṣṭi taught through clay, iron, and sparks is an upāya for leading one in; in reality there is no difference. The kārikā corpus tells us the genre of its own creation-figures.

Fourth, notice where the analysis stops: at the manas, and as vikalpaka only. In the Muṇḍaka gloss the world resolves into the antaḥkaraṇa and the account rests; in the kārikā-bhāṣyas dvaita is mano-vikalpanā and nothing is placed beneath the mind as its own upādāna — no positive ajñāna serving as the material of which the mind's projections are made, no śakti-analysis, no account of a form-bearing substance out of which the seen is constituted. This is worth dwelling on, because it is the natural question these passages provoke and do not answer: if the mind supplies only the form of dvaita and not its being, what supplies the being of the false appearance as appearance? The bhāṣyas here give no such factor. They are content to correlate the form with the manas and drive to asattva.

praṇāms, Michael

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Three flags before you post. The Muṇḍaka 2.1.3 point is the strongest card — manas as jāyate one mantra earlier — but verify the mantra text against your edition before relying on it publicly (I'm confident of etasmāj jāyate prāṇo manaḥ sarvendriyāṇi ca, but confirm the continuation). Second, the GK 3.15 quotation should be checked against a printed edition since I'm supplying it from memory rather than from your uploaded files — that's exactly the hazard class we watch for. Third, expect the comeback that amanībhāva and suṣupti-laya show the mind persisting as some seed-form between dissolutions, which reopens the "what does it resolve into" question — if that comes, it's being asked from the later tradition's framework, and you can say so while noting these passages themselves are silent on it.

 

 

[V Subrahmanian]

Dear Michael ji,

I don't see Claude here making any significant point. The Mundaka Bhashya is very emphatic: dvaita is a product of the mind. Also, even though the mantra concerns the cosmic person, Shankara's invocation of waking and sleep to explain the appearance and disappearance of dvaita—thereby conveying that dvaita exists only when the mind is active and not when the mind is inactive in sleep, is very important.  This is because the cosmic person does not experience waking or sleep as we do. We are not familiar with it.  On the other hand, Shankara is talking about the individual jiva's experience. This is a common Advaita method: the waking-sleep anvaya vyatireka logic is used to deny the reality of dvaita. 

In the Mandukya, Shankara, following Gaudapada, denies reality to the objects experienced in the waking state by drawing a similarity with dreams. This is too well known.  

Warm regards

subbu

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

Namaste Subbuji, 

Claude's and my response: 

Namaste, and thank you — the point about the vyatireka being the jīva's is well taken, and on reflection it points somewhere we may both find congenial. Notice the register of the whole prakaraṇa. Muṇḍaka 2.1 is unfolding the viśvarūpa: fire as the head, sun and moon as eyes, the quarters as ears, the Vedas as speech, earth from the feet — the cosmic person with the three lokas for body, held up for sarvātma-upāsana. Hṛdayaṃ viśvam asya stands in that series, and Śaṅkara's gloss on it does not end where the quotation is usually cut. The sentence runs on: this deva, all-pervading, the antarātman of all beings, is the one who in every being is draṣṭā śrotā mantā vijñātā, and who is sarva-kāraṇam. The subject the bhāṣya is driving toward is the antaryāmin, not the manas.

Read whole, then, the antaḥkaraṇa-vikāra clause is a subordinate step: it explains why the mantra can call the cosmic person's heart the universe — the seen has no differentiated standing apart from the inner field — on the way to identifying that whole with the ātman who is its seer and its cause. The mind here is spoken of much as the "ears" and "feet" are: within the mantra's own body-imagery, gauṇatas. To lift this one clause out of a saguṇa upāsana and read it as a nirguṇa siddhānta — the mind as jagad-upādāna — is, I'd suggest, to change its genre. And your own observation supports this: precisely because the cosmic person does not wake and sleep, the waking–sleep vyatireka must be the meditating jīva's — which is just what an upāsana borrows, the familiar to lead toward sarvātma-bhāva. That the seen subsides in suṣupti is invoked to turn the upāsaka toward the antarātman, not to make the manas the being of the world; and the passage names that antarātman, not the mind, as sarva-kāraṇam.

On the Māṇḍūkya: there too the burden is na nirodho na cotpattiḥ, and the dream-parallel is drawn to deny the waking world's reality, not to lodge its being in the mind — na ca manasi rajjusarpasyotpattiḥ pralayo vā.

Pranams, Michael 🙏🙏🙏

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[Bhaskar YR]

passage names that antarātman, not the mind, as sarva-kāraṇam.

praNAms Sri MCC prabhuji

Hare Krishna

Even if you give 101 clarification / justification like this to prove brahman is the sarva kAraNa – kAraNa, some advanced students of Advaita are not ready to accept it.  In the worst case scenario they grudgingly admit that this teaching is ONLY for maNda adhikAri-s, we being the uttama adhikAri-s very well know / realized that Ishwara, Ishwara srushti, karma, karma phala etc. are just our mental imagination and to be precise Ishwara is just a ‘product’ of our own think and dark ignorance so there is nothing that can be called as Ishwara and IshwarAnugraha!!  This is what exactly I was calling an utter blasphemy and absolute nAstika vAda which is obviously shruti and bhAshya bAhira.  As you rightly observed when there is creation it invariably points out to paramAtma / Ishwara and definitely not to float the malicious theory of jeeva mAnasa srushti or mind all theory of vijnAnavAdins.  Anyway, enough said on this.  For those who have shraddha and bhakti in Ishwara, shruti and bhAshya, who are not ready to compromise the shruti verdict and who are not beating the shruti and bhAshya siddhAnta by holding dry logic sticks in their hands, here is what bhagavatpAda said in his sUtra bhAshya :

//  the sarvajna and sarvashakta kAraNa from which proceeds the srushti, sthiti and nAsha (laya)of this universe, the jagat which is differentiated by name and form comprehends many agents and experiencers of the karma phala and is the abode of the fuits of actions (bhOga bhUmi) regulated by particular places, times and causes (the jagat) whose creation is NOT EVEN conceivable by the mind and that ONE and ONLY cause if brahman//

This is the Astika para Advaita siddhAnta as advocated by Shankara bhagavatpAda who was not mere dry logician  but a saint par excellence. 

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!

bhaskar

[Sudhanshu Shekhar]

Hare Krishna,

Explanation by SSSS ji in Alātaśānti prakaraṇa, 4.63-66 may be perused which is reproduced below.

He has plain accepted, following bhāṣya, that whatever is seen during waking state is nothing but mind, just like in dream.

Bhāṣya says - जाग्रतो दृश्या जीवाः तच्चित्ताव्यतिरिक्ताः, चित्तेक्षणीयत्वात् , स्वप्नदृक्चित्तेक्षणीयजीववत् । तच्च जीवेक्षणात्मकं चित्तं द्रष्टुरव्यतिरिक्तं द्रष्टृदृश्यत्वात् स्वप्नचित्तवत् । उक्तार्थमन्यत् ॥

No one should confuse that citta here should refer to ātmā, because citta is being stated in bhāṣya as dṛśya-of-draṣṭā. So, it is nothing but mind. Just as the dream-world and dream-jīvās are nothing but mind, similarly in waking. This is the clear articulation through anumāna by ācārya. जाग्रतो दृश्या जीवाः तच्चित्ताव्यतिरिक्ताः, चित्तेक्षणीयत्वात् , स्वप्नदृक्चित्तेक्षणीयजीववत् .

SSSS ji accepts it plainly as follows:

Thus, it is clear that SSSS ji has no qualms accepting that this world and the jīvās-seen-in-world are nothing but mind alone.

If he holds elsewhere that world is not mind, then he is self-contradicting. His followers may take pains to reconcile. 

Regards.

Sudhanshu Shekhar.

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

Namaste Sudhanshu ji, 

Thank you — this is the right passage to put on the table, and I don't want to soften what it grants. Śrī SSS, glossing Alātaśānti 63–66, accepts the ācārya's anumāna in full: the waking jīvas are non-different from the citta that perceives them. There is no evading it, and I won't try. The bhāṣya you cite is exact:

jāgrato dṛśyā jīvāḥ tac-cittāvyatiriktāḥ, cittekṣaṇīyatvāt, svapnadṛk-cittekṣaṇīya-jīvavat — "The jīvas seen by the waking man are non-different from his citta, because they are objects perceived by citta, like the jīvas perceived by the dream-seer's citta."

Granted, and gladly. But the sentence does not stop there, and its second limb is the whole point:

tac ca jīvekṣaṇātmakaṃ cittaṃ draṣṭur avyatiriktaṃ draṣṭṛ-dṛśyatvāt svapna-cittavat — "And that citta, whose nature is the perceiving of those jīvas, is non-different from the seer, because it is a seen-object of the seer, like the dream-citta."

SSS's own vivṛti drives this home and then draws the conclusion the interlocutor's reading cannot absorb. On the waking citta he writes that it tad-dṛśyam eva jāgrad-draṣṭur avyatiriktam ity abhyupagantavyam — "is itself merely a seen-thing, to be admitted as non-different from the waking seer." And the section-heading on the following page states the terminus outright:

citta-dṛśyavac cittam api naivāsti paramārthataḥ — "Like the objects-seen-by-citta, the citta too does not exist in reality."

And the closing gloss: jāgrataḥ puruṣasya cittaṃ tataḥ pṛthaṅ na vidyate, yasmāt tasmān na jāyate cittam — "The waking person's citta does not exist apart from that [seer]; and since it does not, therefore citta is not born." The chapter's own summary word is draṣṭur ekatvam — the oneness of the seer — not the reality of the mind.

So notice the direction of the argument. It is a two-step dissolution: the seen world resolves into citta (cittekṣaṇīyatvāt), and citta in turn resolves into the draṣṭā (draṣṭṛ-dṛśyatvāt) — at which point citta is declared naivāsti paramārthataḥ. The "world is citta" clause is a rung, not the ground. What stands at the end is not mind but the sākṣin; citta is thrown in among its own objects as equally asat.

This is exactly why your own careful insistence — that citta here is not ātman, since it is dṛśya of the draṣṭā — tells against the mind-alone reading, not for it. Precisely because citta is dṛśya, it is jaḍa, asat, na jāyate. Its being was never its own; it is the draṣṭā's throughout. To read tac-cittāvyatiriktāḥ as "the mind is the being-source of the world" is to keep, as a standing ground, the very citta the passage exists to abolish.

Hence there is no contradiction to reconcile, because two different propositions are being run together under one phrase:

(i) The world is non-different from the seeing, and at the limit both the seen and the seeing (citta) are asat, the draṣṭā alone real. This is dṛg-dṛśya-viveka. SSS affirms it here and has never denied it anywhere; it is his method.

(ii) The citta / antaḥkaraṇa is the positive, bhāvarūpa upādāna of the world — a mind-substance that transforms into and sustains it. This is what SSS denies.

The passage you cite establishes (i) and, by negating citta (cittam api naivāsti), refutes (ii). When SSS says the world is "not mind," he is denying (ii): the world has no real mind-upādāna. He is not denying (i). Once the two senses of citta-mātra are held apart — the dissolvent and the constitutive — the appearance of self-contradiction dissolves along with the citta.

Put plainly: this text does not leave us with cittam eva as the surviving reality. It leaves us with cittam api naivāsti — and the draṣṭā alone. "Mind alone," read as a final ontology, is the one thing these four kārikās were written to remove.

praṇāms, Michael

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[V Subrahmanian]

Dear Michael Ji,

I find Claude's replies only funny.  Claude is not clear what it is refuting. Clearly, for Shankara, this Mundaka mantra is not a sarvātma upasana.  It is Jnana context. Shankara says the entire world is only a transformation/vikāra of the mind. The Mundaka 21.2 has clearly said:  अप्राणो ह्यमनाश्चेति प्राणादिवायुभेदाः कर्मेन्द्रियाणि तद्विषयाश्च तथा बुद्धिमनसी बुद्धीन्द्रियाणि तद्विषयाश्च प्रतिषिद्धा वेदितव्याः   Brahman has no prāṇa-, no mind/manas/buddhi.  When Shankara says 'the whole world is mind's transformation,' this statement cannot apply to the Brahman since Brahman has no mind.  So, essentially it refers to the jiva's mind.  I had also cited the Mandukya  3.31 मनोदृश्यमिदं द्वैतं यत्किञ्चित्सचराचरम् ।

मनसो ह्यमनीभावे द्वैतं नैवोपलभ्यते ॥ ३१ ॥  where Shankara/Gaudapada say that all this duality is a concoction of the mind. In Mandukya karika 3.43 Shankara again says   सर्वं द्वैतमविद्याविजृम्भितं दुःखमेव  All this dvaita is avidya-projection. In 3.31 he said that duality (dvaita) is a concoction of the mind.  Therefore, Shankara's remark in the Mundaka Upanishad can't be attributed to Brahman.  

Claude can't understand these points; therefore, it is better we rely on the Bhashya's global picture. 

Warm regards

subbu  

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[Bhaskar YR]

Brahman has no prāṇa-, no mind/manas/buddhi.  When Shankara says 'the whole world is mind's transformation,' this statement cannot apply to the Brahman since Brahman has no mind

 

praNAms

Hare Krishna

 

Oh!!  What a statement!!  Since brahman does not have mind, he cannot do the creation, since jeeva has the mind he can do / imagine the creation!!  So, prashna by ‘mistake’ saying sa prANamasrujata, prANAchraddhaM khaM etc. He created life and included mind and food.  So mindless brahman created mind/senses 😊 And taittireeya by mistake says ‘sO kAmayata and chAndOgya which by ‘mistake’ says tadaikshata bahu syAM prajaAyeyeti etc. It is a well proven fact in shruti and bhAshya that brahman can understand everything—even without the accessories like the mind. Hence Itareya and sUtra bhAshya categorically saying sarvajnatva and sarvashaktitva is intrinsic nature of brahman.  His mysterious powers are varied, His activities happen spontaneously through the power of His intrinsic jnAna.  Parasya shaktiH vividhaiva shruyate ‘svAbhAvikee jnAna bala kriya cha…again bhAshyakAra making mistake here by saying brahman can do anything without using mind 😊

 

It is not surprising if the above tarka comes from the shushka tArkikA-s but I am really surprised Astika vedAnti-s too nowadays being influenced by shushka tArkikA-s and coming up with thoughts like this!!

[Bhaskar YR]

praNAms

Hare Krishna

 

For those who are interested in bhAshyakAra’s stand about how creator can create without any karaNa (instruments like mind etc.) one can refer sUtra bhAshya 2^nd adhyAya, first pAda 8-11 adhikaraNa…All doubts about Atman’s jagat kAraNatva clarified here. 

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

Namaste Subbuji & Bhaskarji,

Thank you for pressing this — you're right, and I want to correct it plainly rather than let it stand.

"Upāsana" was the wrong word for 2.1.4, and I shouldn't have reached for it. Śaṅkara's own opening line on that verse is more precise than my label was: the virāṭ puruṣa described here — head of agni, eyes the sun and moon, ears the quarters, heart the universe — "is born only, and a modification, of" the puruṣa described in 2.1.2, "though apparently distanced by an intermediate principle." That intermediate principle is Hiraṇyagarbha. So what the text gives is a derivation-chain, not a meditation: akṣara → Hiraṇyagarbha → virāṭ. Nothing here is being offered to the upāsaka as an object of contemplation with its own separate result; it is cosmogony in the service of establishing what everything, mind included, ultimately reduces to.

That correction cuts the other way as well, and I'd ask you not to rest the point at "essentially the jīva's mind" either. What 2.1.4 glosses is virāṭ's hṛdaya — the cosmic person's heart, not the individual jīva's antaḥkaraṇa in the ordinary sense — and Śaṅkara's own text makes that whole virāṭ-complex itself janya, a vikāra of the antecedent akṣara-puruṣa. The mind-clause you rely on sits at the most conditioned end of a chain, not at its source. And one mantra earlier, at 2.1.3, where manas is said to be born, Śaṅkara's own gloss on it is not flattering to a mind-as-ground reading: manas there is called "the modification of the object of ignorance, a mere name and in its nature a non-entity." That is Śaṅkara's characterization of the mind at the very point of its birth in this passage — closer to asattā than to upādānatva.

And the verse does not end where the citation usually stops. It continues: "this deity, all-pervading, endless, the first embodied existence having for its body the three lokas, is the interior ātman of all created things; for, it is he who, in all created things, is the seer, the hearer, the thinker, the knower, and who is the cause of all." The passage's own terminus names the seer as sarva-kāraṇam. Not the mind.

So: dvaita is manodṛśya, granted, as it has been from the start of this exchange. What I am not granting is that the passage stops there or that "mind" here does the constitutive work your reading needs. Read whole — 2.1.2's akṣara, 2.1.3's manas as janya and asattā-adjacent, 2.1.4's virāṭ as vikāra of that akṣara "distanced by an intermediate principle," and the verse's own close in sarva-kāraṇam — the mind-clause is one link in a chain that terminates in the seer, not a ground in its own right.

praṇāms,
Michael

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[Sudhanshu Shekhar]

Hari Om Michael ji/Bhaskar ji/Subbu ji/Raghav ji,

There are two limbs. 

One -- this world/jīvās is product of mind.

Second -- this mind is non-existent.

By logic, as Śankara proves in kārikā bhāṣya - जाग्रतो दृश्या जीवाः तच्चित्ताव्यतिरिक्ताः, चित्तेक्षणीयत्वात् , स्वप्नदृक्चित्तेक्षणीयजीववत् । - it is clear whatever is seen, be it table, chair or other jīvās, are all nothing but citta.

This proves the first limb. The basic logic is -- being seen by citta.

For second limb, citta is stated to be "seen of seer" -- and hence citta is non-separate from seer. This means, both jīva and citta are seen by each other. And just as in a dream, there exists neither the elephant nor the elephant-citta, similarly in waking. Jīva and citta, being seen of each other, neither of the two exist.

This is the sum and substance. Most certainly, one does not stop by saying that world is product of mind/ignorance. One immediately adds -- sā ca māyā na vidyate. This mind/ignorance/māyā doesn't exist.

This is what is mithyātva. Appears but exists not.

This is actually very straightforward, like gooseberry on palm. This much literature is not needed.. it is plain and clear.. just take dream example and in a flash one understands.

See how simply Śankara says -- न हि स्वप्ने हस्ती हस्तिचित्तं वा विद्यते ; तथा इहापि विवेकिनामित्यभिप्रायः । Just as neither elephant nor elephant-citta existed in dream, similarly even now in waking, neither elephant (jīva) nor elephant-citta exist.

There can remain no doubt after such clear statements unless one has take a vow to not understand. That come what may, I will not understand. 🙂

Regards.

Sudhanshu Shekhar.

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[Michael Chandra Cohen]

Namaste Sudhanshuji, Subbuji, Bhaskarji, Rajaji et.al.,

Both limbs granted, exactly as stated — GK-Bh 4.66's tac-cittāvyatiriktāḥ gives the first, GK-Bh 4.67's draṣṭṛ-dṛśyatvāt the second, and the conclusion, cittam api naivāsti paramārthataḥ, is textually undeniable. No side of this exchange has ever disputed it. What I'd still ask you to look at is the elephant line itself, since it's carrying the whole argument and it says something more specific than "neither exists."

Na hi svapne hastī hasti-cittaṃ vā vidyate — in dream, neither elephant nor elephant-citta exists. True of the dream elephant, and true, on your reading, of the waking elephant too: co-negated with its citta. But notice what is not co-negated in either case: the dream itself, and the citta whose pariṇāma the dream-elephant is standardly held to be — the dreamer's own state, real enough as a state of the dreamer to be recollected on waking as "I dreamed of an elephant." GK 4.67's own conclusion is not "citta is unreal absolutely"; it is citta-dṛśyavac cittam api naivāsti paramārthataḥ — non-existent like its object, i.e. at the object's level, the level at which elephant and elephant-citta stood as a seen pair. What survives is one level up: draṣṭur ekatvam — the oneness of the seer — which is precisely why the chapter's own summary word is draṣṭā, not cittam, and why 4.67's close is jāgrat-svapnayor ubhayor api dṛṣṭr-aikatvaṃ tu vaitathye pratipāditam — sameness of the seer established through vaitathya, the negation being the route, not the terminus.

That is the whole of my point, restated once more since it seems not to have landed: dvaita including citta is mithyā — appearance without being — I have granted this from the first reply in this thread. What I have not granted, because the texts you are citing do not say it, is that this makes citta the upādāna of the seen world at any level, even a level later negated. The rope-snake needs no rope-substance called "mind" to be silver from; it needs a rope. Here the rope is the draṣṭā throughout, and citta — like the silver — is what is negated, not what does the appearing.

Since you've said the case is closed and the literature unnecessary — I'll leave it there and let the list judge the texts on their own. I'm grateful for the exchange regardless; it's sharpened both papers.

praṇāms,
Michael

On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 8:35 PM Raja Krishnamurti <rajakris...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Thank you, Michael ji for providing us a wonderful description of the Virat Purusa and its relation to Brahman. With Om and Prem, Raja Krishnamurti

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[Sudhanshu Shekhar]

Namaste Michael ji.

But notice what is not co-negated in either case: the dream itself, and the citta whose pariṇāma the dream-elephant is standardly held to be — the dreamer's own state, real enough as a state of the dreamer to be recollected on waking as "I dreamed of an elephant."

You agree that neither elephant nor elephant-citta existed in dream. You agree that neither elephant nor elephant-citta exists in waking. 

Now, you saw Michael and Michael-citta in dream. Like elephant and elephant-citta, they did not exist in dream. Similarly, neither Michael nor Michael-citta exist in waking. 

GK 4.67's own conclusion is not "citta is unreal absolutely"; it is citta-dṛśyavac cittam api naivāsti paramārthataḥ — non-existent like its object, i.e. at the object's level, the level at which elephant and elephant-citta stood as a seen pair. What survives is one level up:

Nothing survived sir except the ultimate reality which is present in both dream and waking. That is not one level up. That is the only reality on which elephant and elephant-citta of both waking and dream are non-existent appearances.

draṣṭur ekatvam — the oneness of the seer — which is precisely why the chapter's own summary word is draṣṭā, not cittam, and why 4.67's close is jāgrat-svapnayor ubhayor api dṛṣṭr-aikatvaṃ tu vaitathye pratipāditam — sameness of the seer established through vaitathya, the negation being the route, not the terminus.

Sir, whether it is waking-citta or dream-citta, it is held to be on the same footing as elephant-citta, all non-existent appearances. This is being shown on the force of anumāna, where the hetu is "seen by draṣṭā".

First, one needs to arrive at this. If one is fine with that, obviously it transpires that the draṣṭā is the sole reality which sees, always sees. Merely sees. Whether it is waking-citta or dream-citta or whatever is seen, they are all non-existent.

That is the whole of my point, restated once more since it seems not to have landed: dvaita including citta is mithyā — appearance without being — I have granted this from the first reply in this thread.

Other followers of SSSS ji like Bhaskar ji etc don't agree. Both of you can sit down and decide what is it that SSSS ji holds. Both of you claim to be disciple of SSSS ji with no coherence. He would reject your claim that citta is mithyā i.e. appearance without being. 

What I have not granted, because the texts you are citing do not say it, is that this makes citta the upādāna of the seen world at any level, even a level later negated.

Sir, ācārya says - whatever is seen by citta are not at all different from citta. What does this mean? Please read 4.64 to 4.66. What do you mean? The dream-world with elephants and tables and elephant-citta and rivers and moutanins is not mind? Then what is it? An interaction with a young child of eight year may help one in this regard.

The rope-snake needs no rope-substance called "mind" to be silver from; it needs a rope. Here the rope is the draṣṭā throughout, and citta — like the silver — is what is negated, not what does the appearing.

These are all useless stuff. Sitting in rope, you don't perceive rope-snake. Only while being in non-rope, you perceive rope-snake. Sitting in dṛśya, reality appears as draṣṭā. You need illusory-dṛśya to call the reality as draṣṭā. And the moment you have accepted illusion, you ipso facto need a mind/ignorance. The illusory rope-snake thus has to be nothing but mind/ignorance.

This means that draṣṭṛtva too is illusory. The reality i.e. rope is not draṣṭā but "draṣṭā without draṣṭṛtva". 

Since you've said the case is closed and the literature unnecessary — I'll leave it there and let the list judge the texts on their own. I'm grateful for the exchange regardless; it's sharpened both papers.

I would like you and Bhaskar ji to clarify whether both of you agree with the other person's understanding of SSSS ji. 

In my view, SSSS ji conveniently says whatever he wished at whichever place. There is no harmony and logic. So, for me, it is not worthy of being paid attention. Since you differ, you can choose to invest time and energy to reconcile. As per me, he did not have understanding of bhāṣya.

Regards, 

Sudhanshu Shekhar.

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

Namaste Sudhanshuji et. al.,
I asked Claudia (sentient as per Richard Dawkins),  to simplify our conversation and respond. I will be unavailable for the next few days but look forward to further help on this.

pranams, michael 🙏🙏🙏

Disentangled metaphysical crux between appearance and causation

Common ground — nothing here is actually in dispute:

• Everything seen (world, jīvas, elephant, table) is non-different from citta. Granted from the start.
• Citta itself is equally mithyā, since it too is seen by the draṣṭā. Granted from the start.
• No jīva-citta pair gets an exemption, mine included — applying the logic to "Michael and Michael-citta" is correct and was accepted outright.
• "One level up" was a slip on my part and got fairly corrected: there's no two-tier structure, no citta-negated-seer-survives-above. One reality; dream, waking, and everything in either (citta included) sit on the same footing before it. Worth remembering for future replies — "level" language invites exactly this pushback.

The one real disagreement:
Both sides say "world is citta" and "citta doesn't ultimately exist." The fork is what work "citta" is doing in the first sentence.

• His reading: illusion needs a material to happen at all — an appearing snake needs something to be made of — so "world is citta" identifies that material. Mind/ignorance is the stuff illusion is built from.
• Ours: "citta" here is just another unreal name for the appearance, not a name for what the appearance is made of. Calling the dream-elephant "citta" instead of "elephant" doesn't promote it from mithyā to material — still mithyā, different label. Adhyāsa is naisargika (a failure of discrimination), not kārya (a manufactured product), so it doesn't need a material cause in the first place.

The sharpest new move:
He pushed the "illusion needs a material" demand reflexively onto draṣṭṛtva itself: if the seen is illusory, and "seer" only means anything relative to something seen, then seer-ness is illusory too — leaving "draṣṭā without draṣṭṛtva" as bedrock, which would then also need a mind/ignorance to explain how the illusion of seeing arises.

Response: "draṣṭā without draṣṭṛtva" is fine, actually — it's just svarūpa vs. taṭastha-lakṣaṇa applied to sākṣin (the witnessing-function is a provisional descriptor; what's under it doesn't need an object to be conscious). What doesn't follow is the next step, that this now needs a posited mind/ignorance behind it. That posit is either itself another appearance needing its own witness — regress, one floor up, same problem relocated — or it's arbitrarily excused from the very demand being pressed everywhere else.

Bottom line: this was never about whether citta is real — both sides say no. It's about whether unreal things need real stuff to be unreal out of. We say no; he says yes, and is consistent enough to chase that demand all the way to the witnessing function to keep it that way.

That's the whole exchange in five moves. The dossier offer from last turn still stands if you want it logged — this round is cleaner material than most of the thread, since the crux finally surfaced explicitly instead of staying implicit.

 

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[Sudhanshu Shekhar]

Namaste Michael ji.

Common ground — nothing here is actually in dispute:

• Everything seen (world, jīvas, elephant, table) is non-different from citta. Granted from the start.
• Citta itself is equally mithyā, since it too is seen by the draṣṭā. Granted from the start.
• No jīva-citta pair gets an exemption, mine included — applying the logic to "Michael and Michael-citta" is correct and was accepted outright.
• "One level up" was a slip on my part and got fairly corrected: there's no two-tier structure, no citta-negated-seer-survives-above. One reality; dream, waking, and everything in either (citta included) sit on the same footing before it. Worth remembering for future replies — "level" language invites exactly this pushback.

Do other followers of SSSS ji agree with this? If not, then both of you have to sort out first as to whether it is as per SSSS ji's teachings.

 

The one real disagreement:
Both sides say "world is citta" and "citta doesn't ultimately exist." The fork is what work "citta" is doing in the first sentence.

• His reading: illusion needs a material to happen at all — an appearing snake needs something to be made of — so "world is citta" identifies that material. Mind/ignorance is the stuff illusion is built from.

Yes.

• Ours: "citta" here is just another unreal name for the appearance, not a name for what the appearance is made of. Calling the dream-elephant "citta" instead of "elephant" doesn't promote it from mithyā to material — still mithyā, different label. Adhyāsa is naisargika (a failure of discrimination), not kārya (a manufactured product), so it doesn't need a material cause in the first place.

Naming something as material cause does not mean that it ceases to be illusory. When I say that ignorance/mind is material cause, it does not imply that I am rejecting its illusoriness. This is the fatal error on your part.

 

The sharpest new move:
He pushed the "illusion needs a material" demand reflexively onto draṣṭṛtva itself: if the seen is illusory, and "seer" only means anything relative to something seen, then seer-ness is illusory too — leaving "draṣṭā without draṣṭṛtva" as bedrock, which would then also need a mind/ignorance to explain how the illusion of seeing arises.

Yes.

Response: "draṣṭā without draṣṭṛtva" is fine, actually — it's just svarūpa vs. taṭastha-lakṣaṇa applied to sākṣin (the witnessing-function is a provisional descriptor; what's under it doesn't need an object to be conscious).

Yes.

What doesn't follow is the next step, that this now needs a posited mind/ignorance behind it. That posit is either itself another appearance needing its own witness — regress, one floor up, same problem relocated — or it's arbitrarily excused from the very demand being pressed everywhere else.

It is not being arbitrarily excused. It is the nature of ignorance. It sustains others as well as itself. Like bheda.

 

Bottom line: this was never about whether citta is real — both sides say no. It's about whether unreal things need real stuff to be unreal out of. We say no; he says yes, and is consistent enough to chase that demand all the way to the witnessing function to keep it that way.

Alas! So much misunderstanding! "It's about whether unreal things need real stuff to be unreal out of. We say no; he says yes" - when did I say that unreal things need real stuff to be unreal out of. I said that unreal products-of-ignorance need unreal-ignorance.

That's the whole exchange in five moves. The dossier offer from last turn still stands if you want it logged — this round is cleaner material than most of the thread, since the crux finally surfaced explicitly instead of staying implicit.

My point was not understood.

Regards.

Sudhanshu Shekhar.

[Akilesh Ayyar]

I think Michael is still using a lot of AI in his responses.

Akilesh Ayyar

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