Tag Archives: bhakti yoga

Traditional versus Neo-Advaita (Conclusion)

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

The term ‘neo-Vedanta’ is used these days to describe the teaching of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda followers. It is characterized by ideas such as the need to ‘experience’ Brahman through samādhi, since Self-knowledge is only an ‘intellectual’ understanding. Up until the late 20th C, it was also sometimes called neo-Advaita. It diverges from the Advaita as systematized by Śaṅkara because Vivekananda was adversely influenced by Yoga philosophy, incorporating some of their teaching and denigrating the scriptural authority of the Vedas. I am not addressing this further in this article. Read the excellent book by Anantanand Rambachan – ‘The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Vedas’ – if interested. (Amazon UK; Amazon US)

My own book ‘Confusions in Advaita Vedanta – Knowledge, Experience and Enlightenment’ also has an account of the differences, and sources of confusion. (Exotic India; Amazon US). (N.B. there only seems to be a hardback available at Amazon UK at present, at a ridiculous price. Exotic India is much cheaper. It is in US but has free postage to UK. Alternatively, probably cheapest of all from the publisher, Indica Books, in India.)

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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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Q.540 Following Bhakti Yoga

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Q: If God is not a separate entity and just a symbol for different qualities then how does one proceed with Bhakti?

Bhakti develops unconditional love for God. But shouldn’t this love be for our loved ones rather than for a God whom I have never seen? Isn’t that closer to reality?

I was doing Naam japa and getting immense benefits out of it but these questions have confused me, and I have stopped practicing this. People who are Self-realized also do Bhakti, don’t they? To whom do they pray?

A: There are two main points here.

First, since you are asking a question about Advaita, you must appreciate that, in reality there is only Brahman, or Consciousness. From the empirical standpoint, of course, you see a dualistic world with other people etc. and, from this point of view, it is not unreasonable to speak of a god, or gods. But anything to do with this empirical point of view has to be provisional only. It all has to be acknowledged as simply name and form of that non-dual reality eventually. That ‘acknowledgement’, and the firm belief that it is true, is what we call ‘enlightenment’.

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