Friday, September 30, 2011

Which Advaita?

Scott: I enjoy reading your pointers and posts.  Great content.  I do have one question I hope you can shed some light on.

I discovered Advaita Vedanta recently, a couple of months ago.  More recently, I have stumbled upon a "different" philosophy, the followers of which call "True Advaita".  Yours is what they call "Neo Advaita", and of course they say it lacks truth, substance, and is a perversion of the "real thing".  From what I can tell, "true" advaita requires me to basically quit my job, move to India, learn Sanskrit, and spend an undetermined amount of time sitting at the feet of a guru who also has dedicated his life to advaita.  Since I don't really care to abandon my family or my career to become "realized", this caused me to basically abandon the idea of ever escaping the karmic cycle of rebirth in this lifetime.  Maybe next time around.

But then I found your site.  So here it is:  Which advaita is true?  Why?  You speak of kindness as being the fruit of realization.  If nothing is real, why be kind?  You see where I'm going.  Anything you can offer to help me figure this out is much appreciated.

Morgan: Hey Scott. My book "Blessed Disillusionment" was published recently and in it I have a chapter that quotes extensively from "Crest Jewel of Discrimination", a classical Advaita Vedanta text. I also suggest the Ashtavakra Gita to my readers. In it, I also say: "What in the hell is neo-Advaita? Advaita means not two, non-duality. So there is a new non-duality as opposed to an old one? Once again, thought makes distinctions where there are none."

Dennis Waite seems to be one of the people who coined the term "neo-Advaita" but I've emailed extensively with him and he admits that Sailor Bob and John Wheeler's approach has value for those who are ready and I couldn't agree more. It really comes down to seeing that seeking isn't getting one anywhere and that the wild goose chase could go on forever. Why not see what is here now instead of looking to an imaginary future for satisfaction?

Some say you have to study scripture and follow a guru for years before realization can happen but the respected sage Ramana Maharshi realized the Self at the ripe young age of 16 through self inquiry, without a guru. To me, "realization" means seeing past the arbitrary conceptual frameworks of thought to the common ground of "being/consciousness/bliss". The absolute is always present and appears as the world of form. Thought, one of the aspects of the world of form, describes what appears as being separate objects apart from a subject who sees but, in our own direct experience, we see the unity of consciousness and its objects. If they were isolated from each other, life would not be. It is all one unified movement--non-duality, Brahman, God, whatever we want to call it.

As a hobby, I have read a lot about cults. Often, in groups headed by a charismatic leader, you hear reports of abuses at the hands of this person who is supposed to be an enlightened being. It seems that this cruelty still shows that, deep down within them, they believe they are separate from and better than their followers. If you don't believe in this concept of "higher and lower", i.e.--duality, then you treat others with the same love and respect you would like to be shown. That is why I say kindness is the proof. Some talk about non-duality and high minded concepts but their abusiveness reflects that they still believe in the self idea (ego).

I don't claim to be an authority on these things, I just try to communicate how I see it. In the absence of belief in the divisions of thought, there is effortless oneness. This is our direct experience.

Scott: What you say makes a lot of sense and resonates with me.  It seems to be common sense.  I already know what I am, what everything is, so what am I expecting to accomplish by more seeking?

Thank you so much!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Thoughts are not our enemy

They are a manifestation of the divine energy like every other appearance. While it can be noted that ideas are at the core of most of our misery, it's not the thoughts themselves that generate suffering but the belief in them as representing reality that makes it so. When this simple "problem" is remedied by seeing concepts merely as concepts then there is a freedom from the burden of painful ideas. When you don't believe that the rope is a snake anymore, you aren't afraid.


Thoughts don't limit, describe, identify me or anything. They have usefulness in functional terms, allowing us to do many tasks efficiently and in an orderly fashion but in terms of understanding ourselves or the oneness of life, they are useless. They are one aspect of existence but shouldn't be confused with truth. Being doesn't need concepts to be.