An Advaita Debate

I recently had an online exchange with someone who followed the path of Advaita Vedanta who wanted to put me right regarding some remarks I had made on the subject. I thought I would put the gist of our exchange here as it might clarify some of the ideas I have been considering in previous posts. His/her comments (the person remained anonymous) are in italics.

"You don't seem to appreciate that Vedanta is not a religion or a philosophy. It is a means for moksha for individuals who are qualified. It believes that different paths suit different seekers, times and cultures. It has no dispute with "what is" because it knows the nature of "what is".  All religions and philosophies are included in "what is". Any sincere inquiry into the Truth is welcome in Vedanta." 

On the face of it this seems quite reasonable but to me it betrays an assumption common to many non-dualists that their path is the superior one into which all lesser religions and philosophies are subsumed once their adherents see things properly, i.e in the advaita way. They are the ones who are spiritually mature and anyone who takes a different approach is still living in duality hence ignorance. It's an attitude common to many reductionists who like to think that the simplest or most radical explanation is necessarily the truest one. But what they don't see is that this position is largely based on a mental approach not an intuitive one. The mind requires an either/or solution to every problem but the intuition can deal with a both/and one. In this sense you could compare the advaita reluctance to consider that unity and duality could both be true to old-fashioned Newtonian physics whereas reality conforms more to the quantum world where things can behave (apparently) like a particle or a wave depending on how you look at them.

I replied as followed.

"You say that Advaita Vedanta is not a religion or philosophy but for me it's a belief system like any other.  Remember that it only arose as a reaction to Buddhism, from which it borrowed a great deal, so cannot be regarded as a pure explanation of 'what is'. More seriously, it misunderstands the nature of both the relative world of phenomena and the individual self, both of which have far more reality than it allows even if they are both, ultimately, just manifestations of the One Life."

My interlocutor came back.

"You don’t properly comprehend Vedanta. You are not required to but don't make claims about that which you have no knowledge. You only reiterate the common misunderstanding.

A belief system is to be learned...

Vedanta is NOT a belief system. It is a means, or a methodology, a set of tools, or a road map. You don't LEARN it...ever. You USE it, that's all. Do you learn a hammer, or do you use a hammer?"

I could see from the tone and capital letters that this was unlikely to be a reasoned exchange of views and would probably descend into an argument from which neither side would draw much benefit. Nevertheless I still wanted to put my reservations about advaita down in a forum more frequented than this one. Non-duality is a rapidly growing religion/philosophy (for want of a better phrase) but I consider it to have some flaws, a fact that may not have escaped readers of this blog. There is so much about it that is insightful but it is handicapped by its denial of individual identity, the reality or otherwise of which changes how one approaches the matter of oneness. So I replied.

"A belief system is something you believe.  You may believe it because it makes sense to you and seems true, but then Catholics and Muslims and fundamentalist Christians and so on would all say the same about their preferred ideology. Because you consider it to be true doesn't mean that it is. After all, nothing in this world can be all true. I don't mean to denigrate Advaita Vedanta, for which I have a lot of respect, but it has its limitations, chief of which is the rejection of the individual soul, and that’s why, when used as a road map, it’s just as likely to lead to self-deception as enlightenment. You might say that’s because of the lack of qualifications by those who get self-deceived which is true enough, but I would say its extremist stance has a strong bearing on that too."

I went on

"Truth is non-duality and duality together. Don’t dismiss duality. If it weren’t here then neither would you be." In other words unity implies multiplicity and vice versa. Truth is not one or the other but both together in their correct places. Complementarity not exclusivity.

Earlier my interlocutor had stated his (or her) belief that yoga and Vedanta were different things which is quite correct. Sankara said as much, though some authorities believe that the situation is not so clear cut and he may have practiced some form of yoga as well following the path of pure knowledge. But what was meant here was that spiritual practice, being inevitably dualistic, would not bring you to enlightenment which could only be attained through knowledge, the seeing of the non-reality of the self. This is true enough if that practice is undertaken in order to gain something for the separate self. However proper spiritual practice, undertaken in humility and sincerity, is essential and cannot be bypassed with the excuse that it is dualistic for it and it alone helps purify the mind, and only a completely purified mind, purified by prayer, the constant recollection of God and meditation engaged in without desire for experience, can fit one to receive grace. And it is grace not knowledge or even the seeing of 'what is' that eventually liberates an individual. This notion is completely missing in advaita for which Brahman is impersonal and never acts. It is, however, (sticking with Indian philosophy) an essential part of Kashmir Saivism which, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a North Indian non-dualistic system that, unlike advaita, recognises that the Absolute has a dynamic side. Hence there is room for duality in its non-duality which is why it defines reality not as Siva (consciousness) but Siva/Sakti - consciousness/energy. Not just inactive stillness but stillness and movement, eternally together.

This position is much subtler than the advaitic one and has some important consequences. For one thing, the world is viewed as a perfectly real manifestation of consciousness in form and not merely mithya (neither real nor unreal). Maya (or sakti) is the creative power of the divine. It is the measuring out in time and space of the Immeasurable, and, as such, what it produces may not be ultimately real but is phenomenally so and has real existence and not just the appearance of such. Maya is not simply something that is superimposed on reality but is fundamental to reality. So this world is not a neither real nor unreal illusion (advaitins don't like that word but if something is not properly real then what is it?), but a perfectly real manifestation of God. And the upshot of this is that the individual soul is also real. Not ultimately real in the sense that ultimately there is only God or spirit, but certainly real as far as manifestation and the created world are concerned.

This brings us to my main criticism of Advaita. It doesn't understand that ego is not identity. Ego is certainly based on ignorance and the identification of consciousness with its vehicles or upadhis (limiting adjuncts) as they would say, but individual identity is a definite part of our reality.  Otherwise put, individuals have a real existence. God (or Brahman) is, of course, the supreme reality but that does not mean that the created world and, in particular, individual human souls do not have their own, certainly dependent but still absolutely genuine, reality. We have to see this individuality in the context of oneness but nevertheless it is real. What marks out an enlightened, liberated or saved person is that individuality has moved from the centre of his being to the periphery but it still exists as a real thing. In fact the reason for this whole world of manifestation is so that life may become more by being multiplied through countless individuals. And so truth is not oneness but oneness and individuality or unity and multiplicity together. This has more in common with Christian beliefs than Eastern ones and many reject it on that score but it’s the only answer to all the questions that life poses that takes everything into account.

The debate continued.

"Advaita Vedanta does not dismiss duality. Vedanta deals completely with SATYAM and MITHYA. To know the complete teachings of Vedanta one must step off the sidelines of intellectual spectatorship and set all collected ideas aside (even if only temporarily) and apply an open mind to the teachings.

Vedanta may never be your path, but please don't claim to know what it is or isn't without the full commitment required to investigate its teachings with an open mind and a qualified Vedanta teacher."

Well, that was telling me! I began to write a response but realised there was not much point in continuing a discussion in which whatever I said would be rejected as coming from the closed mind of ignorance But this is what I would have said.

"I do understand about satyam and mithya which simply refer to absolute and relative truth. However mithya (the world is neither real nor unreal, a concept Sankara took from Nagarjuna) is a very imperfect appraisal of what the relative world actually means, and by no means accounts for the richness of the world or the reality in duality.  When it comes down to it, traditional advaita sees the world as false as in the snake/rope analogy. The rope (reality) is perceived by ignorance as a snake (phenomena) but the snake has no true existence. (By the way, this metaphor ignores the fact that snakes do actually exist!). However wiser philosophies regard the world as a real manifestation of the divine, real in itself, and not an illusion of ignorance. 

I certainly don't dismiss advaita as a spiritual path. I just don't regard it as a universal nostrum. My criticism of it is that it does not understand that the individual human soul is more than the separate self. That 'I am' is different to 'I am this or that'. That is its flaw and is why those who follow it must be, to an extent certainly, believers. They are taking on board a premise that isn’t actually true, not wholly so anyway. This will affect how they approach the spiritual path.

So advaita contains one false premise, that the sense of individual identity is an illusion caused by ignorance, but along with that it also has a very limited conception of God because it doesn't believe Him capable of creating real things. These are beliefs arising from pre-conceived ideas, and they are why I find advaita an incomplete system. It doesn't grasp that unity and individuality are both true and that the goal of the spiritual life is to integrate them. You might counter that it does give individuality a reality in its restricted place, but that place is so restricted as to be virtually non-existent. As far as advaita is concerned the individual has no purpose or existence."

There were further exchanges which are not really relevant to this post but they included suggestions that it was not possible to understand advaita without having had a qualified teacher  (I don't see why, its theoretical basis is easy enough to understand), but I concluded with a summing up of my position as follows.

"My objection to advaita is that it only acknowledges half of reality and so fails to see that the reason for this whole manifested universe is relationship. In other words, oneness expresses itself in a duality which, properly understood, includes and goes beyond a standard issue non-duality. Or, to put it in a nutshell, God is love. So advaita is correct to see that all is One but fails to see that when the One becomes the Many (while remaining the One, of course) it does so with a purpose. It has intelligence and it has will. The Many are not separate from the One but they have their own reality too because what God creates is real. That is why I don’t think that the insight that derives from advaita is complete. It restricts reality to its static side and ignores the dynamic or, at least, reduces it to near superfluity.

You say that Vedanta does not require you to believe anything that is not the result of your own investigation. What if that investigation reveals that Advaita Vedanta is only a half-truth? As I've said, I do have a lot of respect for advaita but, for me, it just doesn't fully describe things the way they are. It misconceives the nature of spiritual reality for it sees that the One is the One but doesn’t see that the Many are the Many, and that these are not contradictory truths but complementary ones. Thus my intuition (not my mind which only formulates what the intuition reveals) tells me that God created real beings which are certainly individualizations of himself and as such divine, but they are also themselves and will remain so even after they have realized the truth of their own divine nature. And that is why I have come to regard advaita as, in the last analysis, reductive. You will say I don’t understand it and should go to a properly qualified teacher but I don’t need an advaita teacher to see that the basic premise of advaita is mistaken. As far as I am concerned, it is only a partial understanding of reality and any enlightenment it offers can only be partial too.

One final thing. Advaita is based on sruti* but, as I’m sure you know, Sankara’s interpretation (correct word) of sruti did not go unchallenged which is not surprising since it was really just an attempt to blend Buddhism and the Vedas. I used to think that Ramanuja* was a step down from Sankara and his fellow non-dualists, but I now see him as a step up because he was less exclusive. He evidently did not think that any of the Mahavakyas* meant that unity and diversity did not co-exist."

I intended that to be that but a further response prompted me to think again. The crux of it was that advaita fully included all dualistic practices but went beyond them. Some of the points made are quoted in my reply.

"When you say that 'Vedanta embraces and celebrates the Many, and sees no contradiction between the Many and the One' aren't you being just a little bit disingenuous? Swami Sivananda says that according to Sankara all difference and plurality are illusory. I realize that means ultimately illusory but that's just the point. Either the individual is really real or it's not. You can't have it both ways and advaita, it seems to me, tries to. It wants to have its cake and eat it too but when it comes down to it the fact is there's no room for individuality in advaita. It's not a genuinely created and real thing, identification with which must be transcended but which still remains as a real thing in terms of experience and expression. It's purely and simply the product of ignorance. And that's because advaita puts Ishvara (God) at a lower level of reality than Brahman. As you said, God is an effect of maya. That is incorrect. How can the Creator of form be a product of form?

You also said that `Vedanta embraces love and worship of God, encourages prayer for those who are so inclined. There is no conflict or judgement.' But is that really so? Surely there is judgement. Such people are regarded as jivas (separate individuals) who are unable to let go of their attachments and so are not ready for a proper appreciation of non-duality. Theirs is a lower level of understanding instead of a recognition that, although they may be one with God in terms of being, they are and remain God's creatures. The same sap that runs through the tree runs through the leaf but the leaf is not the tree.

It comes down to this. For me, there is no difference between Brahman and Ishvara, the impersonal and personal aspects of God. They are the same so Ishvara is not a product of maya which is creative power not illusion of any kind.

I do find that whenever I discuss such things with non-dualists they will always say `Oh yes, all that is fully comprehended in advaita which includes everything and rejects nothing'. But really, that's just not true. At the end of the day it allows God and the soul a reality only on the level of ignorance instead of seeing that there may be something beyond these but that does not in the least invalidate them as full realities in all worlds except that of pure unmanifest, unmoving, static being.

Of course, God is not separate from us. Of course, we are God because there is nothing else but we are also ourselves. That is the wonder of life, that the One and the Many can and do both exist together without contradiction.

Sometimes I wonder if even Sankara completely signed up to advaita or if he mainly used it to take on the Buddhists. After all, he is supposed to have written a lot of devotional poetry and built shrines to deities."

NOTES.

1). Hindu sacred texts mostly the Vedas and Upanishads on which Vedanta is based.
2). A proponent of Vishistadvaita or qualified non-dualism who argued for the reality of God and the soul.
3). The 'Great Sayings' of the Upanishads such as Tat Tvam Asi (Thou art That).

Another Question on Enlightenment

This question refers to a perennial problem for the spiritual seeker, though it's more of a perceived problem than a real one as I hope to make clear in my response.

Q. How can you tell if someone who claims to be enlightened really is so? The past several decades have shown countless gurus and spiritual teachers to have feet of clay, and even though the myth of the all-wise, God-realized guru has taken a knock in recent times, and spiritual seekers are more cautious than they used to be, there are still many teachers around today who either say or imply that they are enlightened. How can you know if they are genuine or blind leaders of the blind?

A. If you are actually asking how do you know if a teacher is qualified to teach then I would say that you don't need to be enlightened to be a spiritual teacher. If that were the case there would be very few spiritual teachers. But often the best teacher is someone not too far ahead of the student, someone who can share in their difficulties and identify with their problems from his or her own recent experience. You don't need to be enlightened to be a competent spiritual guide and to know the fundamental mechanics of the path.

But if you are asking for some kind of sign which will enable you to recognise full spiritual realization then I must tell you that there is none. Or, at least, there is no infallible test available to an ordinary person using ordinary means. You might think that the peace you feel in a teacher's presence is a good indication that they are the genuine article but being the genuine article does not mean you are enlightened, besides which people can imagine peace because of a pleasant atmosphere, uplifting surroundings or the reverence with which a teacher is treated by his disciples. Feelings, either yours or those of others, cannot be a reliable guide unless you are absolutely clear where they come from and what they are based on.

Ultimately only one enlightened person can truly recognise another. Until then we have to rely on common sense and intuition. If a person does not behave in a way appropriate for a true saint they are not enlightened. You can forget all the crazy wisdom nonsense. Whatever powers they might possess (or appear to), whatever knowledge or wisdom they might have, whatever their apparent authority or oratorical ability, if they do not embody true love and humility they are not enlightened. And even if they do possess such qualities that does not necessarily mean they are enlightened either because real enlightenment is not just a matter of insight or understanding or even love, as these are understood in human terms. It is not just a question of perceiving the non-dual background to life or realizing that all is consciousness. There are many stages on the path that are often imagined to be its conclusion but the fact is that true enlightenment is rare and hard to attain now as much as ever. It is so because it requires the complete transcendence of identification with self which is not a theoretical or even an experiential thing and which does not come about as a result of knowledge or through meditation (even though these are essential), but as a result of purification and sacrifice, and is usually only achieved through suffering which is the one fire that burns out ego though that is not a very popular thing to say nowadays.

Enlightenment means illumination which tells us that light is the key here. An enlightened person is someone in whom the light shines. The light can only shine clearly when all impediments to it have been removed, and the reason for spiritual practice is to remove these blocks which manifest in the form of self-centred feelings, bad habits, attachments, thoughts based on ignorance and the residue of past actions springing from these which have left their mark on us, stamped into our aura as it were. The spiritual path relates to the cleansing of the aura which is why the ennoblement of the imagination is so important. Only a thoroughly purified and completely refined aura can receive the grace that bestows enlightenment. There is no enlightenment without this grace and yet, while we can never achieve enlightenment through our own actions or efforts, nor can we receive grace without making extreme spiritual efforts which are necessary to purify the mind and prepare the vessel.

In truth it doesn't matter too much if someone claims to be enlightened (possibly in good faith because they genuinely believe they are) but isn't. It matters in the sense that they are spreading illusion but the spiritual path is a learning process for all of us and we learn from making mistakes, both the person claiming and those who might believe the claim and take that person as a guide. The fact is that the whole concept of enlightenment and liberation has moved into the public domain, as it were, over the last few decades. There are bound to be many misunderstandings and incomplete understandings (as the Masters said, there are many teaching half-truths at present) as what was esoteric becomes externalised, but these all serve to help us sharpen discrimination and move us on to the next step. What we eventually come to understand is that the search for enlightenment and the concern with it as a goal indicate an attitude to spirituality that has yet to ripen properly. It is far better just to seek to coordinate your being to the truth of the universe and serve that truth in whatever capacity you can. Then wait for the light of grace, the light that brings enlightenment, to descend in God's good time.

You ask about those who claim to be enlightened. Of course, it's a truism that only those who aren't will make such a claim, and because that is now well known all sorts of entertaining word games are played. But I would say this. Don't worry about the enlightenment or otherwise of a teacher. If you are drawn to someone then learn from them. If you have doubts, stay away. Doubts may well mean it's time to move on and go to the next level. Nowadays when all the mystical teachings of the past are available at the click of a mouse there are many dispensing a wisdom that is not their own, not fully integrated anyway, but, as the Masters said, they are doing work at their level. They may well be over-estimating what that level is but those who can benefit from their teachings will do so and those who find nothing for them there can go elsewhere.

I would like to conclude with this thought which might explain some of the mistaken claims to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not just the realization that one is pure, silent awareness beyond all phenomena, as is sometimes taught. This state can be attained without grace but, elevated as it may appear, it must finally be seen as a one-sided view of existence that resembles a retreat to the pre-lapsarian state of oneness with God/the Self, and which negates the whole point of the journey through matter and form. True enlightenment is the full integration of being and becoming in the individual soul at the expense of neither. It is not a rejection of becoming for being alone but the bringing of the two elements of reality into perfect harmony. It is the union of spirit and matter, life and form, and not the denial or negation of the one in order to assert the other though, to be sure, there must be complete recognition of the place of each in the hierarchical  scheme of things. Enlightenment is the realization that one is the Universal Self  but this realization can only take place in the context of a fully individual soul.  The individual and the universal are the two equally necessary sides of the coin of enlightenment.