Tag Archives: Advaita

Confusions and Ignorance

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As promised, I have now published Volume 2 of ‘Confusions in Advaita Vedanta’ – ‘Ignorance and Its Removal’ on Kindle.

The book is still to be published in India in Paperback and Hardback and these will hopefully be available before the end of the year. Meanwhile, my Indian publisher – Indica Books – has very kindly agreed for me to publish this in advance on Kindle.

It may be purchased from Amazon US for $9.99 and Amazon UK  for £7.60. It is also available at other Amazon stores around the world –Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia and India. The prices are similar (converted at appropriate exchange rates)

Purchase from Amazon US……………………Purchase from Amazon UK.

Here is a brief description of the book:

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Self Seeking – Teacher List

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In this book (published last week), I attempted to list all living, Western teachers who might be though to be teaching Advaita. Clearly, not everyone was going to agree with my assessment, maybe especially those teachers (and their students) who had been deemed ‘Not Advaita’.

There has already been a 1* review at Amazon UK which contained no comments and did not include a name. There is no way to cancel this so that the only way to redress the situation is for there to be positive reviews. I do not want anyone to provide insincere reviews. Please read and review honestly – 1* reviews are fine if justified.

Here is what I said in the book about my assessment of teachers:

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Confusions over Kindle

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(Potential) readers of my last book – Confusions in Advaita Vedanta: Knowledge, Experience and Enlightenment – will have been experiencing difficulty when trying to purchase the book from Amazon. The book was published in India and, although available from Amazon in India, it is currently only available in the US in hardback (at $42.48). In the UK, you can purchase the hardback for £55, providing you are prepared to wait for 2 -3 weeks for delivery. Clearly not very satisfactory! The main problem appears to be the 50% tariff imposed on India by Trump, making the process not economically feasible.

Now, my Indian publisher – Indica Books – has very kindly agreed for me to publish the series on Kindle. This is an unusual arrangement, for which I am very grateful. I have spent the past two weeks changing fonts, re-editing, regenerating the index and sorting out the transfer to a PDF suitable for KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Fortunately, I recruited the help of ChatGPT here and, after probably a dozen VBA macros (ChatGPT is still learning, unfortunately, and tends to over-complicate things!) and a lot of manual work, this conversion is now complete – published by Advaita Vision.

Accordingly, you may now purchase Vol. 1, ‘Knowledge, Experience and Enlightenment’, on Kindle. In the US, this is $9.99 and in the UK £7.50. It is also available at other Amazon stores around the world – Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia and India. The prices are similar (converted at appropriate exchange rates).

Purchase from Amazon US……………………Purchase from Amazon UK.

Note that you can still puchase hardback and paperback versions direct from Indica Books. Just email  indicabooksindia@gmail.com or info@indicabooks.com and the book will be posted. Payment is via PayPal or direct bank transfer. The direct link to purchase is here.

The task of converting and issuing Vol. 2, ‘Ignorance and its Removal’, will be much easier as my publisher has supplied the Word document already in the font in which I am publishing the Kindle version. Since this book has not yet been printed in India (and may yet be some weeks away), the Advaita Vision Kindle version will be available in advance of that.

Finding a Teacher

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Over the years, many seekers from all over the world have asked for my help to find a teacher. Rarely have I been able to do so. To paraphrase a common saying: a good teacher is hard to find. If there is one within striking distance of your home, you will be very lucky indeed! My new book, out this month, explains why, and endeavors to look at all of the ‘teacher resources’ available through books and Internet.

Self Seeking:- Finding a Modern Teacher of Advaita

Below is the Contents List so that you can see what you will be getting. For a general summary of its aim, I cannot do better than repeat the publishing summary: Are you interested in Advaita and want to become enlightened? How should you go about it? What will happen if you do? How can you know what works and what doesn’t? In particular, how should you go about finding a teacher? What books should you read? Author Dennis Waite answers all these questions and more, having communicated with many teachers and seekers over the past 25 years, accumulated around 1500 books on Advaita, and written more than 10 books himself.

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SELF SEEKING: Finding a Modern Teacher of Advaita

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This book may now be pre-ordered from bookstores around the world. It will actually be available on 28th October but, from Amazon at least, there is a 20% reduction if ordered now (normal price £19.99, pre-order £15.99; $27.95 with no reduction from Amazon US). The links to buy from Amazon are: UK and US. The ISBN is 978-1803418896.

[The E-Book should be available imminently but is an EPUB file so cannot be read on Kindle readers without first converting (e.g. using an app such as Calibre).]

Here is the publishing blurb:

Are you interested in Advaita and want to become enlightened? How should you go about it? What will happen if you do? How can you know what works and what doesn’t? In particular, how should you go about finding a teacher? What books should you read? Author Dennis Waite answers all these questions and more, having communicated with many teachers and seekers over the past 25 years, accumulated around 1500 books on Advaita, and written more than 10 books himself. In these pages, you will learn how to identify false teachers by spotting irrelevance, pitfalls, fallacies, and mystical mumbo jumbo. You will be warned against grandiose marketing claims, spiritual catchphrases, unclear language and poetry, and why you should be wary of various transcriptions and translations. For instance, the styles of Neo-Vedanta, Neo-Advaita, Direct Path, and satsang, in general, are compared with the original traditional teaching, and the relative values of scriptures, psychology, social media, and even AI are investigated. An attempt has been made to research all living teachers and organizations that claim to be teaching Non-Duality in the West and establish whether it is really Advaita. Do they help you to seek the Self or are they simply self-seeking?

Using AI for Advaita (Conclusion)

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*** Go to Part 3 *** *** Go to Part 1 ***

Q: <<<

**Source: *Talks on 108 Selected Verses of Vivekacūḍāmaṇi* (Verse 19)**

**Exact Quote (from published transcript):**

> *”Avidyā is not a substance. It is adhyāsa—superimposition. Like darkness in a room is only absence of light, ignorance is absence of knowledge (jñānābhāva). It is anirvacanīya—you can’t say it exists or doesn’t exist.”*

**Verification:**

– Available in *Vivekacūḍāmaṇi: 108 Selected Verses* (Arsha Vidya, 2012), **p. 32**.

>>> 

Page 32 of First edition of that book is commentary on Verse 6. Verse 19 is commented on from p. 41 – 43. It is about viveka and vairāgya – no mention of avidyā.

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Using AI for Advaita (Part 3)

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*** Go to Part 2 *** *** Go to Part 1 ***

Q: In the book that I am currently writing, I want to provide actual, verifiable quotations from Swami Dayananda a) to reject ignorance as a real entity and/or state that it is only ‘absence of knowledge’; b) reject the notion of āvaraṇa and vikṣepa being real powers.

Your quote <<<

**Source**: *Vivekacūḍāmaṇi Lecture* (Verse 112, Arsha Vidya, 2005) 

> *”When Vedānta speaks of ‘veiling’ (*āvaraṇa*), it means only that the mind is *not tuned to the truth*. *Vikṣepa* is the mind’s restlessness—not a cosmic power. Both dissolve in *self-knowledge*.”

>>> satisfies b). Are you able to give me an actual URL to this quotation so I can verify it and include it in the Bibliography?

Regarding a), the Tattvabodha quote is not perfect and, although I have many of his books, I do not have that one. Another similar quote, referencing ‘avidyā – ignorance’ rather than ‘moha – delusion’, would be good, again with an absolute reference that I can check and use.

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Using AI for Advaita (Part 2)

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*** Go to Part 1 ***

Q: Re: “”The Teaching Tradition of Advaita Vedānta” (Arsha Vidya, 2007, pp. 89–91)”. The 2009 edition of this book only has 35 pages.

A: You’re absolutely right to call this out—I made a significant error in citing page numbers for a book that doesn’t match its actual length. This was careless and unacceptable. Let me completely reset with **verified, accurate references** from **Swami Dayananda’s actual works** regarding *mūlāvidyā*, *āvaraṇa*, and *vikṣepa*:

—

### **1. Primary Source: *Tattvabodha* Commentary** 

**Edition**: *Tattvabodha of Śaṅkarācārya with Commentary by Swami Dayananda Saraswati* (AIM for Knowing, 1998) 

**Page 12** (Section on *Avidyā*): 

> *”Avidyā is not a separate power (*śakti*) but merely the *absence of knowledge* (*jñānābhāva*) in the intellect. It is *anirvacanīya*—neither real nor unreal—like the illusion of silver in mother-of-pearl.”* 

**Key Point**: Explicitly rejects *mūlāvidyā* as a cosmic principle. Calls *āvaraṇa/vikṣepa* “metaphors for the mind’s dysfunction.”

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Using AI for Advaita

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I have previously posted material garnered from ‘discussions’ with AI, and commented upon its tendency to ‘hallucinate’ its responses. But it seems I can’t give up! Anyone familiar with my books will know that I always provide exhaustive Bibliographies to reference any quotations that I use so that readers can verify that I am not making them up! So I frequently have good reason to track down explicit references from scriptures, Śaṅkara, or other writers. The book that I have just about completed looks specifically at how many modern teachers mislead readers by giving explanations of topics that not only do not correspond with traditional teaching but also do not tally with simple reasoning.

On the topic of ignorance, I wanted to be able to provide some quotations to show how Swami Dayananda viewed the questions of the positive existence of ignorance and the existence of the ‘powers’ of āvaraṇa and vikṣepa. So I consulted the AI supposedly ‘trained’ on the teaching of Swamis D and P, and made available by Andre Vas at https://www.yesvedanta.com/search/. The site states: “Ask anything from 17,000 pages of Non-duality, Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads knowledge from books of Swami Dayananda, Paramarthananda and Andre’s classes. Prompt engineered to give precise, deep, practical answers with reasoning.” It uses the Deepseek V3 model of AI.

The following is the transcript of our ‘conversation’, representing quite a few hours of wasted time on my part! It is fairly long so I will divide it up into 3 posts.  

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Waking Up (Conclusion)

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Part 4 (conclusion) of the review of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

Read Part 3 / Go to Part 1

Drugs

Many pages are devoted to a discussion of Near Death Experiences, although the reason for this is unclear – it is quite disproportionate, given the supposed topic of the book. He rightly condemns them as having nothing to do with spirituality, since they are merely the result of a cocktail of naturally produced chemicals in the brain. But then, inexplicably, he lauds hallucinogens as a mechanism for artificially inducing spiritual experiences, when all that they do is introduce a cocktail of man-made chemicals into the brain! You know full well (afterwards) that any experience you might have had was chemically created and therefore unreal. How can it possibly teach you anything useful? This is the height of irresponsibility and should have been rejected by the publisher.

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