I like Sankara’s explanation of inference. I agree perception of the same situation is different for each and every person. I agree with you on using the reliable sources way too much, just because it is the easy way out.

When it comes to Sri Krishnamcharya, he did not take everything from the vedas or his gurus, even though they were quite reliable. He would actually experiment with a lot of things. He would disagree with things that he thought were wrong. He simply did not take everything for granted. Some of the later parts of Veda says that women cannot practice Vedic chanting. But Sri Krishnamcharya used an example from the Vedas that says a queen used to be very good at chanting in the old days and he opened Vedic chanting to women. I personally think women are way better at chanting than men : )

I like the story of the mongoose, it is a very good example of wrong inference. But sometimes even our own perception is wrong, and we have to rely on inference; as Sankara says, we all perceive the sun to be small, but our perception in this case is contradicted by inference, and we have to admit that our perceptions are erroneous. When can we rely on inference? It is necessary a special relationship (vyapti) between hetu (smoke) and sadhya (fire); nyaya philosophy describes this relationship in deep.

Even using agamah, or reliable information, everyday (one of my favorites sources of knowledge is wikipedia…), I think that this is the worst mean of ‘right’ knowledge; Krishnamurti says that it is impossible to tell the truth using symbols (like words) because symbols need to be decoded, and everyone do this in a different way, so there are many ways to “understand” the truth (that is why the Buddha said that it isn’t possible to preach the truth)…Maybe we can only find the truth looking for it inside us, using perception and inference; we use to accept a lot of things without hesitation, just because they are in books, or newspapers, or TV (just because is the easy way)…and we are forgetting this good old habit of “thinking”