Would Shankara be likely to agree or disagree with the passage (from an AI): “In Advaita, the emphasis given to experience is not about experiencing Brahman as an object, but rather about realizing one’s own nature as Brahman through the direct, immediate experience of consciousness itself.”
9 thoughts on “Question about anubhāva”
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Hi Rick,
ExperiencER – Experience – ExperiencED is duality, not Advaita. Who would/could ‘experience’ Consciousness, when that is all there is?
Best wishes,
Dennis
Thanks for the reply, Dennis. 🙂
Dennis: Who would/could ‘experience’ Consciousness, when that is all there is?
That’s the question! The reason I posted this is that all four of the AIs I find reasonably trustworthy agreed that this passage was right within the framework of Shankara’s Advaita:
“In Advaita, the emphasis given to experience is not about experiencing Brahman as an object, but rather about realizing one’s own nature as Brahman through the direct, immediate experience of consciousness itself.”
Normally they present a variety of answers when I ask nuanced questions, and they are all pretty good at ‘understanding’ the tenets of Advaita. So I thought maybe there is something basic I’ve been misunderstanding all these years?
Rick
The Sanskrit words “anubhava” and “anubhUti” are usually translated as “experience” in English.
“Experience” is a transitive verb; it has no intransitive form!
So, it always creates a problem for an English speaker because, the very structure of the English language demands “an agent” in its sentence construction.
But Sanskrit is not such an “Agentative Language.” Therefore, there can be anubhava / anubhUti of brahman / Atman without an “Agent” who “experiences” Consciousness as an “experiencER.”
We discussed this issue many times at this Forum. For example, see here: https://www.advaita-vision.org/atma-anubhava-anubhuti/
Shankara himself uses at over a half a dozen places in his bhAShya-s the word “AtmAnubhava.” The text “pancapAdika” uses even “brahmAtmAnubhava” without a blink in the eye and perfectly understandable to an Advaitin.
The other day, well-known Award winning Advaitin Shri V. Subrahmanian has begun a Whatsapp group on “AdvaitAnubhava.”
Hence, in order to rightly grasp the meaning of “experience” as used in Advaita, one has to have a nodding acquaintance of the Advaita concepts and cannot depend merely on English grammar.
My 2 c and regards,
Which is my shortfall, then, Ramesam? Do I not have a ‘nodding aquaintance of Advaita’ or am I overly dependent on English grammar? 😉
Seriously, though, that is very well explained. To avoid problems of this kind, I try to insist that the crucial element is Self-knowledge and its certainty, and not ‘experience’ (as understood by the typical Westerner) in any shape or form.
(Of course, one might want to be really pedantic and point out that there has to be a ‘knower’ and ‘known’…)
Best wishes,
Dennis
Dear Dennis,
You are a teacher for all of us here.
How can I even think of “teaching” you?
LOL LOL
Anyway, as you know, my comment is a reaction to Rick’s Post — particularly wrt to the last few words: “through the direct, immediate experience of consciousness itself.”
regards,
Hi Rick,
It would be interesting if you went back to your AI gurus and asked a follow-up question and reported back. Something along the lines of:
“Since Advaita is a nondual philosophy, what do you mean by ‘the direct, immediate experience of consciousness itself’?”
Best wishes,
Dennis
Dennis,
Here are the responses of three solid AIs to the question you wrote: https://rachmiel.org/advaita/question.pdf
I would love to hear from the experts here how well the AIs ‘understand’ Advaita.
Rick
Pretty good! The next step is to ask them for supporting quotations from scriptures or Shankara! Also, they should have given the URL sources from which they derived their first answers.
Dennis
It’s worth trying though AIs are eminently capable of generating false citations and quotes. They’re like unscrupulous academics! 😉