Tag Archives: Knowledge

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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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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Waking Up (Part 3)

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Part 3 of the review of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

Read Part 2

Other Religions and Non-duality

It is not at all obvious why ‘religion’ should be so disparaged. He recognizes “the needless confusion and harm that inevitably arise from the doctrines of faith-based religions”. The literal meaning of ‘religion’ is ‘joining back’, from the Latin ‘re ligare’. Its essential aim (and, I suggest, one rather more worthy) has nothing to do with psychology or personal happiness but with the nature of reality itself. It is difficult to understand how someone could place more value on a drug-induced experience than upon use of reason applied to scriptural revelation.

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Waking Up (Part 2)

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Part 2 of the review of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

Read Part 1

Science

Another problem which adds to the book’s confusion is the attempt to utilize science, supposedly to improve upon or correct the ancient (and therefore bound to be mistaken) views of the original philosophies (be these Advaita or Buddhism). Harris explains that “Throughout this book, I discuss certain classical spiritual phenomena, concepts, and practices in the context of our modern understanding of the human mind.” Why would one want to do this? It is missing the point completely. The truth cannot be found in the mind; rather the mind is a tool with which we may discover the truth.

I explain in my article ‘Science and Consciousness’ that science can never explain the nature of ‘I’ because I am the subject, doing the investigating. The subject can never objectify himself. It is true that I can investigate both the body and the mind because I am neither of these. But this also means that understanding the human mind is not going to help in an ‘investigation’ of spirituality; it is simply not relevant to ‘who I really am’. Furthermore, if Harris is ‘talking about the nature of experience itself’, he is not talking about ‘I’, since I am the experiencer. Finding out about household electric light circuits and how they work tells me nothing at all about the one who operates the light switch.

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Waking Up

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Here is another old book review, this one from just over 10 years ago. It is for the book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris.
It is an even longer review than the last, so will require at least 3 parts. Here is Part 1.

The Meaning of the Word ‘Spiritual’

Regardless of how well a book is written, and how interesting its content, if it is non-fiction it seems that its value should be judged upon how successfully it achieves its stated objective. As far as potential readers are concerned, the objective is traditionally determined from a book’s title. And, in this case, it appears that the intended purpose of this book is to teach us about ‘Spirituality’ whilst avoiding any ‘religious’ overtones.

This tells us that the author acknowledges that ‘spirituality’ is usually associated with religion. It suggests that, not only does he believe that it need not be so associated, but also he thinks that he can teach us about spirituality without needing to say anything at all about religion. Before starting to read the book, therefore, it would be useful to know exactly what is meant by the term ‘spirituality’.

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Being: the bottom line (Conclusion)

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(Read Part 1)

Another misleading claim is that “there’s no one bound and therefore no liberation from bondage.” This sounds very clever and obvious and is very likely to be accepted without question by the listener, adding still more to the ammunition against the traditional Advaitin position. But everything should be questioned! Advaita is a supremely logical and scientific philosophy if followed correctly and glib statements such as the above must be looked at carefully. (And it is acknowledged that ‘glib’ here is a ‘loaded epithet’!) Traditional Advaita does not, in fact, claim that there can be liberation from bondage. In fact, it is stated openly that there is not actually anyone bound. What is said is that there can be the realisation that there is no one who is bound – and that is liberation.

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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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Pratiyogin

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In connection with my recent series of posts on the topic of whether ignorance is a separately existent entity or simply means ‘absence of knowledge’ (https://www.advaita-vision.org/ignorance-or-absence-of-knowledge/), I am posting the result of my further discussions with ChatGPT on the related topic of ‘pratiyogin’.

You may well never have heard the word before and my view is that this should not overly concern you! It probably means that you have never (attempted to) read anything written by Madhusūdana. The text for which he is probably best known is Advaita Siddhi, which I have mentioned in the Confusions books as being virtually incomprehensible. I recently purchased his commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā (called Gūḍhārtha Dīpikā) because he translates every word prior to his comments. And I was dismayed to find, as early as his commentary on 2.16, the opening:

The asat, unreal is that which is delimited by time (kāla), space (deśa) and matter (vastu); as for instance a pot, which is subject to origin and destruction, is delimited by the (two) times, the before and the after (of its period of existence), it (pot) being a counter-correlative of its antecedent nonexistence (prāgabhāva) and nonexistence after destruction (dhvaṃsābhāva). And so on…

At least Swami Gambhirananda has the grace to translate this translation:

That is to say, the pot does not exist before production and after destruction.

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 16

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Part 15

Chapter 6 JnAna and Moksha
6-2 Aitareya Upanishad
6-2-1 Aitareya 1.3.13 and 1.3.14
Ai 1.3.12 in chapter 5 has described the entry of Brahman in the body of jivA. The embodied Brahman is jivAtmA. The sentient jivA is a combination of consciousness (AtmA) and mind-body. And AtmA is not different from Brahman. It is an Upanishadic Great Statement ( Mahavakya). A jivA however forgets this fact due to the veiling power of mAyA. It is Self-ignorance. Sometimes, a jivA because of his punyAs earned in previous lives and the current life can get a qualified teacher who out of compassion imparts Brahm-knowledge. The student realizes Brahman as ‘id’ meaning ‘this’, i.e., his Self. The Upanishad calls the knowledge Idandra. As an adorable entity is not called by its direct name, the Upanishad uses the name Indra (not the deity Indra). The message is that by performing virtuous deeds as per scriptural injunctions, a jivA will one day develop mental maturity to know the futility of worldly goals and turn to spirituality and get Self-knowledge with the blessing of a teacher.

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Ignorance or Absence of Knowledge? – 7 (Final)

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*** Go to Part 6 ***

The following question is concerned with the notion that ‘absence of a thing’ is an existent entity (another strange notion of post-Śaṅkara texts). This also formed an aspect of the discussions on the Advaitin List. It begins with my asking ChatGPT to translate the Devanagari text that formed part of the post by Sudhanshu on 6th Dec. 2024.

Dennis: Could you translate this argument into understandable English, please:

चतुर्विधानामभावानाम् , घटस्येतरेतराभावो घटादन्यो ष्टः — यथा घटाभावः पटादिरेव, न घटस्वरूपमेव । न च घटाभावः सन्पटः अभावात्मकः ; किं तर्हि ? भावरूप एव । एवं घटस्य प्राक्प्रध्वंसात्यन्ताभावानामपि घटादन्यत्वं स्यात् , घटेन व्यपदिश्यमानत्वात् , घटस्येतरेतराभाववत् ; तथैव भावात्मकताभावानाम् ।

AI: Here’s a simplified translation of the argument in understandable English:

We are discussing four types of “absence” (*abhāva*), starting with **mutual absence** (*itaretara-abhāva*). For example, the absence of a pot (*ghata*) is not the same as the pot itself. The absence of a pot is something else entirely, like a cloth (*paṭa*) or another object. In other words, the absence of the pot is not the nature of the pot itself—it is identified with something else, like the presence of the cloth.

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