/lit/ - Literature

>>18545053
>this doesn't explain the descent into matter,
It doesn't, It remains outside and unaffected. for Advaita what people normally conceive of as their own spirit is just a reflection, a semblance of the true thing, while the actual spirit/Atman is always pure, unaffected, already liberated, illumining the mind with its light from its own position of complete freedom. There is no original descent of the spirit which happened in time but the spirit which is identical to God was always eternally free, and via its own power sustains both time and the beginningless existence of the minds of organisms, these minds acting as receptacles which reflect the light of the already eternally-free spirit and thereby become endowed with the semblance/reflection of the spirit.
>nor why it can be embodied, imprisoned.
For Advaita it's not embodied or imprisoned. It's completely unchanging and not subject to any sort of deviation or descent and ascent.
>how matter could cause more embodiments in reproduction etc.
The spirit isn't actually embodied, but Vedanta teaches that if there is no proper body for the jiva (which includes the transmigrating subtle body which is not itself the spirit) then that jiva or its suble body just sustained by the power of God in an unmanifest mode until a proper domain for it emerges, this what happens in between cycles of universes during the night of Brahma, when all the jivas are sustained in an unmanifest state until physical bodies for them emerge when a new universal cycle arises.
>it also requires eternal movement of descent into matter with no beginning. to claim the Nous gets imprisoned in the body is more problematic than anything else
Advaita Vedanta doesn't reproduce the Neoplatonic model. The spirit-Atman is not the Nous but is comparable to the One, or what Damascius apparently posits as beyond the One.
>if this happens for the eternity eventually everyone would get liberated in the endless stream, unless you claim a determinism
People can get closer to or farther from liberation, so not everyone is automatically liberated even in a beginningless series of universes because you can always have people continually heading in the wrong direction for trillions of aeons, some Hindu schools speak an infinite or indefinite number of multiverses too. And Advaita under some interpretations is a form of determinism since everything within the universe is ultimately just the interplay of difference forces which arise from or are under the control of God's power maya. There may be an interior logic to how it all works that allows people to empirically experience volition in such a way that it feels as though they have free will, but everything is still ultimately under God's control.

>>18018517
>He does insofar as it is Brahman that actualizes Maya.
One thing actualizing another without itself changing is not an interaction, because if there is no reciprocal effect that the thing actualized has upon the actualizer then it's not an interaction since interactions are by definition reciprocal.
>The effect inheres in the cause and the cause is in the effect, there can't be a total separation, otherwise it would be dualism.
Maya is not a production or a separately existing effect, it is the beginningless image or appearance of the Lord who is outside/beyond time. The image of something is not a second existing entity that is produced from the first nor is it identical with the entity or thing itself.
>But if so, Brahman must be aware of Maya, being aware of Maya he is aware of illusion.
I see you attempted to explain why you think this is so here >>18018681 but your argument is wrong,

Before I address that let me point out another mistake you made in that post when you wrote:

>coeternal with Brahman, thus blatant dualism
Saksi isn't co-eternal because its only perceived during transmigration but when liberation is attained and the cycle of transmigration ends there is just Brahman alone without Saksi, Saksi only exists from the view of the jivas. So something which can come to an end like the sense of Saksi isn't co-eternal because the eternal never ends. Hence it's not dualism.

To address the main argument you made in that post though, you're wrong because when you say:

>Therefore Brahman must be aware of all what he is, all his nature/essence and this means its own internal relation within his nature/essence which will imply knowing all its potentialities and all its actualities
You make the mistake of assuming that Brahman's nature has an internal relation with things, it doesn't because Brahman is inseparable or the same as His own nature, Brahman is infinite, undivided and non-dual. That which is infinite, undivided and non-dual cannot have internal relations because there are no internal distinctions which can be the terms of the relation. Brahman's inherent and eternal nature (which is inseparable from Himself) to have maya as His power is not identical with the transient (non-eternal) manifestations of maya, so Brahman being self-knowing does not automatically lead to Brahman having knowledge of maya because the actual maya is the unreal and transient phenomena and not Brahman's eternal nature to wield maya. Knowing one thing does not automatically lead to the knowing of something that is not identical with the first thing already known.

>>11830284
Little did he know, but he was all along!