MANDUKYA UPANISHAD with GAUDAPADA’S KARIKA: 51. Swami Advayananda.

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Tuesday 08,  April 2025, 12:20.

MANDUKYA UPANISHAD 

GAUDAPADA’S KARIKA

Agama Prakarana – “The Scriptural Treatise”

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GAUDAPADA’S KARIKA:  PART 4/4:   

ALAATA-SHANTI PRAKARANA (100 mantras): 

Quenching the Firebrand:

The Illusion of CAUSALITY  

Karika Section 4.6:   Mantras - 33-41 (9 No.) 

Mantram - 4.38: Why Creation is Declared Unreal

Post-51.

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Mantram - 4.38: Why Creation is Declared Unreal

1 Utpaadasya aprasiddha-tvaat, = Since Creation cannot be established as a fact, 

2 ajam sarvam udaahritam; = we have to declare all things to be “unborn”.

3 na cha bhootaat abhootasya, = Of a non-existing thing from an existing thing,

4 sambhava asti kathanchana. = there cannot be any origination whatsoever.

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The previous mantram has given the conventional relation between dream and waking as accepted by the common man, to start with. The text’s purpose is not to prove the 

Causality, but disprove it. That is its aim. Let us now see how Sri Gaudapadaji looks at it:

The use of “unborn” in the context of this text, is simply “unreal”. It is being shown  that the entire Creation has to be considered as unreal. That is the drift of the argument.

1-2 If Samsara, the subject in consideration, is seen as Unreality, the implication is that Liberation (and with it, Bondage) is also an Unreality from the same standpoint. 

3-4 The root of the logical build-up to prove the unreality of the world, although  dealt with in large measure in Chapter 2, is being repeated here in the context of this argument. It is this: “From the Existing, the Non-existing cannot be born. There is no such  thing as ‘birth’ (Sambhava or ‘origination’) from the highest viewpoint.”

Pujya Gurudev places great stress on this step of the logic: 

“To believe that a world of unrealities is born of the Supreme Reality is a  contradiction in terms and a logical fallacy. Out of the Real, it is redundant to say that the Real is produced, because the Real is already there. And to produce anything other than the  Real is an impossibility: a buffalo cannot be produced from me.”

The whole layman’s argument of mantram 37 begins to crumble before our very eyes . .

 

Objection: Why Deny Causality?

Poorvapakshi: Have you not said that dream is a product of the waking state? How is  it that you now deny Causality between the waking and dream?

Answer: There is undoubtedly a causal link between the two, but please understand that it is from the relative point of view. This causality is not to be taken to mean that the  waking state is real – that is the mistake you are making. Listen to this example and see that 

we ourselves admit this relative causality . . .

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Next

Mantram - 4.39: The Evidence of Emotional Reaction

Continued

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