Q: It seems to me that so many questions on Advaita Vedanta are explained with reference to the 3 levels of reality: pratibhasa, vyavahara and paramartha – why then do we not see more reference to these levels in books about Advaita? I have found in my reading very few that mention them up front, or as a matter of great importance. And, of course, hardly ever mentioned, if at all, in Neo-Advaita tomes. 

A: That’s a good question.

The ‘bottom line’ of Advaita is that there is only Consciousness (sarvam khalvidam brahma – all this is Brahman). So the ‘teaching’ of the neo-Advaitin – ‘this is it’ and similar pronouncements – is not, strictly speaking, wrong. The problem with it is that it is not very helpful!

The point is that, as soon as we separate out a form in perception and give it a name, we are apparently in the realm of duality. And it is difficult to move from that position to one of accepting the truth of non-duality. So traditional Advaita takes things very slowly. For the new seeker, it begins from our present experience and understanding and moves one step at a time, as it were, supplanting the initial teaching with something more refined and nearer to the truth.

The dream experience is something with which we are all familiar, so that using it as a ‘stepping stone’ to help refute empirical reality is perfectly reasonable.

In fact, according to Swami Satchidanandendra, Śaṅkara did not use the paramārtha-vyavahāra distinction in quite this way. Rather he used vyavahāra to talk about the ‘worldly view’ (laukikadṛṣṭi) and paramārtha to speak about the ‘scriptural view’ (śāstradṛṣṭi). The waking-dream experience was used simply as a metaphor to help explain the distinction.

I think that there are at least a couple of reasons why you don’t encounter such explanations in modern books. Firstly, such things are a part of a gradual teaching process. Traditional Advaita takes years to lead a seeker to a final understanding, with teaching from the scriptures being given once or twice per week. It is a l-o-n-g process, hardly acceptable to a satsang teacher travelling round the world, giving one or two talks in each city! And not at all acceptable to a seeker wanting the answers NOW! Also, of course, it is quite likely that the teachers do not understand any of this, having not read (m)any books, and are simply ‘teaching’ about their ‘enlightening experiences’…