Exploring Advaita Vedanta

[Orbit]

I've been reading this. It's one of the foundational works of Advaita. It's pretty interesting.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/cjw/cjw05.htm

[Joshpantera]

I found another strong lecture on conscious by Peter Russel this evening:

 

 

This line of reasoning basically leads towards what Brahman is meant to represent. 

[axlyz]

Advaita Vedanta, as per theory, does not attempt to refute the existence of God. In fact, the main proponent of the sect was very theistic. However, it does deny it in the higher stage. Let me explain this using the classification of vyavaharika and parmarthika.

 

In Vedanta, there are 3 sources of knowledge. 

 

1) Perception (observations)

2) Logical inferences

3) Scripture

 

Now, even if the Upanishads say that everything is unreal, to a lay person, it would not appear so. It would be like saying that my friends are illusory, my experiences are illusory, etc without any actual basis. In Vedanta, if there is a clear difference of thought between scripture and perception, the latter holds more authority. That is why all scriptures are interpreted in accordance to perception. There is a Mimamsa saying that says "Even if a 1000 scriptures tell us fire does not burn, we will not believe them." 

 

So, how does Advaita reconcile this? By introducing the idea of vyavaharika and parmarthika. Vyavarika is the world we live in now, the one with duality. It is the realm that we can relate to. Also, it is the realm where a Creator God can exist (and by that I mean a personified God). 

 

However, Advaita does not see any difference between Atman and Brahman in the parmarthika stage, which is the stage where universe and soul and god are all the same. This parmarthika stage is the one that eternally exist, but we have simply been deluded into believing that we are not the same. 

 

There are two Brahmans in Advaita, Saguna Brahman and Nirguna Brahman. Saguna means "with attributes" and Nirguna Brahman means "without attributes". The Saguna Brahman is the creator deity that I was talking about in the parmarthika, and Shankara identifies it as Vishnu (that's a point out of the scope of this discussion, though). The Nirguna Brahman is the Brahman that is called as "consciousness" or "formless, knowledge, and blissful". 

 

So let's say you experience something related to God, and you wonder, is it real? Well, disregarding the idea of the 4 human defects, the experience was real in the vyavaharika, but unreal in the parmarthika. 

 

Regards,

axlyz