Q: Is it necessary to believe in God in order to practice Advaita Vedanta?

While I love the Bhagavad Gita, and think Krishna as he’s depicted in said book is great, I’m just really skeptical about the existence of God or Gods.

I know Advaita does make reference to Isvara, but do we need to worship him/her/it in order to be successful in spiritual life?

I guess it’s the problem of evil that really has me doubting the existence of God. There’s just too much gratuitous suffering in this world, and I often wonder why God, if he or she does exist, doesn’t do a thing about it?

A: The simple answer is ‘absolutely not’! (I have never believed in God, for example.)

If you think about it from an Advaita perspective, there cannot be a separate ‘god’, can there? Since reality is non-dual, it could only be the case that ‘you’ are ‘god’. (This is what tat tvam asi means – you, the jīva, are Īśvara.)

There has to be a god from a scriptural point of view because any teaching such as this has to begin from your present level of understanding. And I guess that the vast majority of people around the time that the Vedas were ‘written down’ believed in a god who created the world and supervises the individual’s karma. These scriptures were also intended to function as a guide to living, as you see in the Gita. (Indeed, that was effectively their only function as far as the Dvaitins were/are concerned!)

Also, what do you mean by ‘practice’ Advaita? And what do you mean by ‘spiritual life’? The only ‘practice’ in Advaita is for preparing the mind to receive the teaching of Advaita. This is the sādhana catuṣṭaya sampatti described elsewhere and includes things like meditation. Once the mind is ready, it is just a matter of hearing (or reading about) the explanations, asking questions to clarify doubts and misunderstanding, and absorbing and consolidating the knowledge (śravaṇa manana and nididhyāsana). If you carry out the recommended ‘six qualities’ of sādhana catuṣṭaya sampatti – shama, dama, uparati, titikShA, shraddhA and samAdhAna – those effectively enforce what might be called  ‘spiritual life’. But all you are doing is optimizing the receptivity and functioning of the mind. I have just had a scan through the Q and A section of the site and there are actually very few related questions. The only vaguely relevant ones are  Q. 454 and Q. 320. So my apologies for that, and thanks for the question!  As regards the question of evil, Q. 416 may be of most help.