*** Read Part 1 ***

There are also two significant dangers regarding the Neo-Advaita ‘movement’. Firstly, there is the clear possibility of charlatans who, having read a little or heard the fundamental elements of ‘descriptions’ of reality, can devise a few ‘routines’ of their own and then advertise themselves on the circuit. Providing that they are good speakers/actors, it is certainly possible to make a living from deceiving ‘seekers’ in such a way, without ever giving away their true lack of knowledge or the fact that they are no nearer any ‘realization’ than their disciples.

Secondly, seekers themselves may be deluded into a belief that some specious realization has been obtained when, in fact, all that has happened is that they have come to terms with some psychological problem that had been making life difficult. The ending of such suffering could well be seen as a ‘liberation’. Of course, such a thing would not be at all bad – it simply would have nothing to do with enlightenment. Indeed, such people might well go on to become teachers in their own right, not charlatans in the true sense of the word, since they genuinely believe that ‘realization’ has taken place.

The use of the language of non-duality (e.g. avoiding use of the word ‘I’) cannot be relied upon to mean that the ego of such a speaker is dead. Indeed, an ego can quite happily put up with non-reference to itself when it thinks it is ‘realized’ whilst everyone else is not! (And conversely, of course, there is no need or desire to avoid the use of the word ‘I’ in the absence of an ego.)

This is not to say that these dangers do not also exist in traditional Advaita but it might at least be argued that someone who has spent many years studying scriptures, reading and attending classes etc. must at least not be in it just for the money! Also, several thousand years of traditional teachings have emphasized that preparation, in the form of acquiring knowledge of the truth, is of value. Such characteristics as renunciation, discrimination and self-restraint etc. are also advocated, topics which are most unlikely to be mentioned at the meetings with any Neo-Advaitin teacher. And is it surprising that many of the attendees of Neo-Advaita satsangs are simply not interested in any of this? Why bother to listen to all of the preparatory stuff when you can get the final message straight away? ‘Don’t bother telling me about arithmetic, I want to learn quantum mechanics!’

Finally, of course, the message given by the Neo-teachers is not the ultimate truth anyway, which can never be spoken of. The claim that ‘everything is a story’ is itself a story. I can only quote again, the message from Greg Goode that I used at the end of ‘The Book of One’:

“In Advaita Vedanta, there are various reductive stories and theories that are taught in a certain clever order. Each one reduces attachment to the previously-cherished metaphysical view. The ladder’s rungs get kicked out one by one. The goal is not to hang out on the highest rung (e.g. “It’s all Consciousness” is one of the highest rungs in that teaching, and a sticky one) but to be free from the ladder. What actually gets said and believed about the nature of a ‘what’ is nothing but another ‘what’.”

Advaita, the Hindu philosophy of non-dualism, is not an intuitively obvious teaching. Its ultimate message is that you, me, the table and chair and, indeed the rest of the universe are ‘not two things’ but one, ineffable reality. Needless to say, this is contrary to experience, in which ‘I’ tend to think that all of these are separate and different.

The traditional teaching does not attempt to divulge this ultimate truth initially. Instead, there is a carefully graded approach, tailored to each student according to her level of ability as assessed by an experienced teacher. Partial, preliminary explanations are presented that will be understandable and verifiable through experience. Later, as understanding deepens, those explanations are admitted as false and more subtle interpretations given. These, too, will eventually be retracted since no ultimate explanation or description is possible.

Clearly, if this philosophy is true, it must be true now and always. We are already the non-dual reality – it is just that we do not realize it. There can be no individual persons to become enlightened and nothing that can or needs to be done in order to bring it about. Hence the term ‘self-realized’ is given to ‘someone’ who completely ‘knows’ this already-existing truth. Equally obviously, however, most do not accept this claim, i.e. we are ‘ignorant’ of it. The only way in which this ignorance can be removed is through the introduction of appropriate knowledge.

Although in truth we are already ‘That’, as the ancient scriptures proclaim, the process of removing the obscuring ignorance takes time. Indeed, the traditional teaching has theories of ‘karma’, ‘saṃskāra’ and reincarnation to account for the difficulties and to imply that the understanding may take many lifetimes to acquire. Needless to say, while such notions may have been acceptable to earlier societies, they are not in keeping with modern, western ideas of wanting and expecting things now. Graded teachings do not appeal – give me the bottom line now!

Accordingly, it is not surprising that increasingly over the past fifty years, teachers have appeared who claim to present the ultimate truths of Advaita for immediate assimilation, virtually within the timeframe of a two-hour satsang discussion. Their ideas have become known as ‘neo-Advaita’. That most of their disciples remain ignorant and increasingly frustrated should be indicative of the fact that this approach is not proving very successful. (There are, of course, those who profess to have seen through the ‘story’ after visiting one of these teachers and soon start to advertise their own satsangs but one has to wonder whether it is not simply the case that there is now an emotional intuition of the truth that will be overthrown at the next major hurdle in their life.) I would like to suggest that this is bound to be the case. Since reality cannot be defined or described – to do so would be to objectify it and therefore contradict its non-dual status – the statements of the neo-Advaitins which talk about it must be false. This must be the case, even when these statements appear to be simple, straightforward and therefore seemingly necessarily true. This fact must be borne in mind when faced with their superficially persuasive arguments.

The most significant problem with the neo-Advaitin approach is that they make use of the ultimate truths of non-duality to argue their case. Most of these teachers have themselves undergone many years of traditional studies prior to their enlightenment (or not) so they are familiar with the methods, terms and arguments and able easily to maintain their position with the majority of seekers. Thus, one of the key realizations is that there is no-one here – the person does not exist; there is therefore no ‘doing’, no one to exercise free will and so on. If this conclusion is accepted, then it is impossible to argue with anything that the teacher says – who would be making the objection?

All non-dual traditions recognize the paradoxical appearance of duality and take account of this in their teaching methods. They acknowledge the non-dual reality but accord it a creative aspect that seemingly gives rise to a world of separate objects and life forms. It is at this ‘level’ that the seeker begins her search, identified with bodies and objects that are actually only names and forms assigned to the transcendental and undifferentiated reality. But the seeming reality of the world cannot be denied whilst we remain ignorant and deluded by the appearance.

*** Go to Part 3 ***