Tag Archives: appearance

Traditional versus Neo-Advaita (Part 3)

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

Advaita refers to the unchanging reality by the Sanskrit term paramārtha and to the constantly changing appearance by vyavahāra. Within this phenomenal realm, separate individuals and objects are recognized and a creator-god, Īśvara, uses the power of māyā to obscure the truth and project the apparent world. It thus affirms that our experience does not tally with its non-dual claims. It acknowledges an appearance of duality, which is at odds with the reality. It also states that we can never directly know the reality. Accordingly, its effective teaching strategy is to successively negate the appearance. That which ‘remains’ and cannot be negated must be the reality. Once the reality is thus effectively (but not literally) known, then it is also realized that the appearance, too, is that same reality.

This process inevitably takes time, from the vantage point of the seeker who is still mired at the level of appearance. The ignorance that prevents the immediate apprehension of reality is effectively in the mind and it is at the level of the mind that this ignorance must be removed. Knowledge must be introduced in such a way that the mind can accept it, using reason and experience. Just as a student is unable to appreciate the subtleties of quantum physics without having the preliminary grounding in mathematics and science, so the seeker is unable to assimilate the ‘bottom-line’ truth of Advaita since it is so contrary to his everyday experience.

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Traditional versus Neo-Advaita

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This will be a multi-part post, triggered in part by Ramesam’s recent post ‘Liberation is Disembodiment’, following which I promised a separate post. First of all, I will repost an article on the subject from advaita.org.uk, with which readers may not be familiar. Secondly, I will post an article on the subject that I apparently wrote in 2006 but do not seem ever to have published. Finally, I will add a new section and make a radical suggestion (as promised in my comment).

The word ‘neo’ means ‘new’ so that ‘Neo-Advaita’ is an impossibility. Advaita means ‘not two’, referring to the non-dual reality that always was, is and will be – unchanging because change would necessarily be from one thing into another, which would be contradictory. There cannot, therefore, be an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ Advaita, only the one truth.

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Being: the bottom line

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Since I am busy writing my next book (for a change), I have been looking through the past 25 years of written essays and reviews, looking for material that is not currently available anywhere. And there does seem likely to be quite a bit. So I will be (re-)publishing some of this over the next few months. The first of these is a two-part (quite long!) review of the book by Nathan Gill (who sadly died some years ago), I wrote the review back in 2006 but it is still relevant – possibly more so.

A Review of the book “Being: the bottom line” by Nathan Gill and a critique of Neo-Advaita.

This is a courageous book in that it openly tackles some of the most difficult questions that neo-Advaita has to answer and it doesn’t shy away from those that are phrased in the most challenging ways. It is also a dangerous book, in that it appears, superficially, to be providing satisfactory answers. Nevertheless it is a valuable book, albeit not perhaps for the reasons the author intended, in that there are some very searching questions and Nathan’s attempts to answer them expose the vulnerability of the neo-Advaitin position.

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Q. 557 Detaching from the mind

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Q: Many modern teachers of Advaita seem to make much of the need to detach ourselves from the mind, or even destroy it, before we can become enlightened. I am confused by instructions such as these. If there is only Brahman, then there isn’t actually any mind (or even world) to separate ourselves from. There are not really even any words to talk about this! Can you clarify?

A: This is a confusion of ‘levels’ of reality.

In reality, there is only Brahman. That is the ‘bottom line’ and nothing more can be said. (Even that is saying too much.)

But the empirical level – appearance of world and you in it – continues until death of the body-mind (i.e. when prārabdha karma expires). Your body-mind is inert (and mithyā), functioning only as a result of non-dual Consciousness ‘animating’ it. You are the Consciousness, not the body-mind.

But Consciousness itself does not do anything, does not know anything – there is nothing else! It is your inert mind, ‘animated by Consciousness’ that appreciates this. ‘Enlightenment’ is an event in the mind, when it realizes all of this to be true.

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Appearance and Existence don’t go together

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Shri Prasanth Neti Ji writes in his comment on a post at FB-SAV:

Prasanth Neti: When bhAShya (i.e., Shankara’s Commentary) teaches “just like snake is a projection / appearance on rope, world is a projection / appearance in brahman”, the only intention of that teaching is to negate all [or any sort of] existence to snake and world.

It is unfortunate that Post-Sankara Vedantins teach or talk about projection / appearance as a positive phenomenon.
The sole purpose of teaching that ‘snake is only a projection’ is to negate any sort of existence to snake. But it is not at all intended to understand or talk about in the lines of “existence to appearance”!!
shAstra is apavAda-pradhAna (i.e., Vedanta is mainly based on “negation.”) Snake/World is a projection means, it does not exist. Period.
The implied negation is the heart of such teaching and there is no intention either to vouch for ‘appearance as a positively occurring phenomenon’ or to ‘vouch for existence of an appearance’.
Therefore, phrases such as ‘world, body, mind are not independently real but exist only as appearance’ is a misunderstanding of Vedānta – do not use the word existence along with appearance.
‘World, body and mind do not exist but brahman alone exists’ is the only intention when bhAShya teaches, ‘World is a Projection.”

Q.551 – Illusoriness of the world (again)

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Q: Why exactly is the world considered illusory? In what sense is it illusory?

Objects change their form and so the form is unreal. We have ideas about objects but these are unreal being imagination only. The whole subjective world with a person as its center is born of imagination.

I can see that objects including the body-mind appear in this field of awareness and everything functions by itself. But the differentiation still exists. There is awareness and also its contents. So how are they illusory? Is it because they are dependent on awareness?

A: Advaita does not say that the world is illusory. (This is a mistranslation by some modern teachers.) Nor is it ‘imaginary’. The world is mithyā, which means that it derives its existence from Brahman. It is ‘name and form’ of Brahman just as we can say that a chair is name and form of wood.

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Q. 548 – God and germs

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Q: It is said that God is everywhere. So God is very much in the human body as well. He is in every cell/atom of a human body. My question is: what is the position /status of God, who is within the body, when  every cell/atom becomes infected? Is infection more powerful than God?

A: God is not ‘in the  human body’. The human body is name and form of Brahman. Similarly, bacteria are name and form of Brahman. There is ONLY Brahman in reality.

At the level of appearance (world etc.), God (Īśvara ) provides an interim explanation of the laws that govern the seeming creation.  One of these laws is that bacteria can infect bodies and affect their working, even to the extent of ‘killing’ them. But God, bodies and bacteria do not exist as separate entities in reality. They are all Brahman.

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Q.547 – Māyā an attribute of Brahman?

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Q: Can Advaitins explain how Maya can be an attribute of the supposedly attributeless Brahman? Why was the creation needed if Brahman alone existed? What is Ishwara?

A (Martin): Maya is not an attribute of Brahman. Maya is a diffuse, or polyvalent, concept which gives rise to much confusion, particularly by translating it as ‘illusion’ (see below). This concept can be viewed from the psychological, epistemological, and ontological perspectives.

Purely from the standpoint of Shankara’s  Advaita Vedanta, Maya is tied in with the concept of ‘ignorance’ (avidya), which is prior to it; that is, avidya is the necessary condition for Maya. Once ignorance has been annihilated by knowledge, Maya disappears. That means that from the higher (of two) points of view, Maya does not exist. This is contrary to most post-Shankara authors, with the exception of Sureshvara, who taught that Maya is a positive entity or force. If that were the case, how could a positive entity be removed by knowledge? Swami Satchidanandendra, practically alone in the 20th Cent. has defended the former, Shankarian position.

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Q.546 – Mind and Soul

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Q: Advaita says that there is nothing beyond consciousness. Nothing can take place/occur without   the background of consciousness. When consciousness takes the form of a human body, it is called soul/jīvātmā. When the body becomes sick, is it the soul which grieves / or only the mind?

A: There is nothing OTHER THAN Consciousness in reality. (‘Beyond’ implies that there are other things.) Consciousness is the foreground as well as the background! It is the mind that grieves when it thinks that ‘I am the body’. Consciousness never ‘does’ anything at all (including thinking).

Q: So what is the purpose of such ‘Being without doing anything’ in maintaining such BIG universe?

A: There is no universe in reality; there is ONLY Consciousness (Brahman). Please do not ask why there is the appearance of a universe, when there is only Brahman. Advaita does not really have an answer for this. The j~nAnI still sees a world but knows that it is Brahman. It is the mind that perceives ‘form’ and gives this a ‘name’.

Q.545 – How can I ‘do’ anything?

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Q: In Advaita, there’s the prevailing idea that you are not the mind or the body, that everything is just an appearance in the self.  If I think of myself as just the conscious observer, how can I bring myself to take action and get rid of non-beneficial thoughts. If I am not the mind, then how can I tell the mind to eat healthier if that is just a thought in and of itself? Even the idea of enlightenment must happen at the level of the mind, but if conceptually I am not that, how do I go about trying to change perspectives and recurring mindsets?

Finally, if there is no free will, then how can one take action and try to grow as a person? It’s hard for me to make myself do things when I can just say, “Since there is no free will, I (consciousness) can’t really do anything because I am not the mind.”

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