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Questions about Advaita Vedanta

Philomath

Sadhaka
Hello, I have a few questions for the practicing Advaitins on our forum.

The Basic Concepts of Advaita Vedanta

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Times]Brahman is eternal, immutable, inexpressible and unthinkable pure-existence, but it is not the cause or the creator of the universe.[/FONT]
Is Brahman God or not?

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Times]So the world is illusion. But this does not mean at all that the world is non-existent. The AdvaitaVedanta, with the help of the famous “rope–snake” illustration, maintains that ‘it is neither ultimately real, nor wholly unreal, illusory and non existent.’[/FONT]
If the world is essentially illusionary does anything really matter then?

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Times]Truly speaking, both Brahman and Atman are not different realities. They are identical. For practical purposes, they are referred to separately, which they are not.[/FONT]
What exactly does this mean? Does this mean we are God?

Thank you in advance for the responses.
 

Metempsychosis

Reincarnation of 'Anti-religion'
Hello, I have a few questions for the practicing Advaitins on our forum.

The Basic Concepts of Advaita Vedanta

Is Brahman God or not?
Yes.Brahman is one without a second.There is nothing which is not Brahman in advaitic state of consciousness.

If the world is essentially illusionary does anything really matter then?
World when seen outside of Brahman is illusory.(or)World outside of the illuminating light of consciousness (sat-chit-ananda) is an illusion.(or) Shakti disconnected from shiva is an illusion.
What exactly does this mean? Does this mean we are God?

Thank you in advance for the responses.
You are God,so is everyone else.In advaitic state,there is no finite ego,the nama and rupa completely dissolves,leaving us with an entity which is utterly 'One'.So,there is individuality in the manifest world(relative truth) like waves on a ocean,but outside of the manifestation,all is one -waves merging back into the ocean.Compare this to a light from cinema projector,on the screen there are different players,but if you roll back in time,you get a pure concentrated light-the source of everything,which is what all the players on the screen are.But,here we are talking about projections of infinite nature.And the yogic process,in a way takes you back to realm of timelessness.

As I might have written earlier,this is version which makes sense to me:

The first great fundamental discovery of the Yogins was a means of analysing the experiences of the mind and the heart. By Yoga one can isolate mind, watch its workings as under a microscope, separate every minute function of the various parts of the antahkarana, the inner organ, every mental and moral faculty, test its isolated workings as well as its relations to other functions and faculties and trace backwards the operations of mind to subtler and ever subtler sources until just as material analysis arrives at a primal entity from which all proceeds, so Yoga analysis arrives at a primal spiritual entity from which all proceeds. It is also able to locate and distinguish the psychical centre to which all psychical phenomena gather and so to fix the roots of personality. In this analysis its first discovery is that mind can entirely isolate itself from external objects and work in itself and of itself. This does not, it is true, carry us very far because it may be that it is merely using the material already stored up by its past experiences. But the next discovery is that the farther it removes itself from objects, the more powerfully, surely, rapidly can the mind work with a swifter clarity, with a victorious and sovereign detachment. This is an experience which tends to contradict the scientific theory, that mind can withdraw the senses into itself and bring them to bear on a mass of phenomena of which it is quite unaware when it is occupied with external phenomena. Science will naturally challenge these as hallucinations. The answer is that these phenomena are related to each other by regular, simple and intelligible laws and form a world of their own independent of thought acting on the material world. Here too Science has this possible answer that this supposed world is merely an imaginative reflex in the brain of the material world and to any arguments drawn from the definiteness and unexpectedness of these subtle phenomena and their independence of our own will and imagination it can always oppose its theory of unconscious cerebration and, we suppose, unconscious imagination. The fourth discovery is that mind is not only independent of external matter, but its master; it can not only reject and control external stimuli, but can defy such apparently universal material laws as that of gravitation and ignore, put aside and make nought of what are called laws of nature and are really only the laws of material nature, inferior and subject to the psychical laws because matter is a product of mind and not mind a product of matter. This is the decisive discovery of Yoga, its final contradiction of materialism. It is followed by the crowning realisation that there is within us a source of immeasurable force, immeasurable intelligence, immeasurable joy far above the possibility of weakness, above the possibility of ignorance, above the possibility of grief which we can bring into touch with ourselves and, under arduous but not impossible conditions, habitually utilise or enjoy. This is what the Upanishads call the Brahman and the primal entity from which all things were born, in which they live and to which they return. This is God and communion with Him is the highest aim of Yoga--a communion which works for knowledge, for work, for delight.


Sri Aurobindo: ' From the Karmayogin' (1909-1910) - Man - Slave or Free?
 
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Poeticus

| abhyAvartin |
I, too, have a question for the Speculators Dwelling in the Forests:

Brahman is eternal, immutable, inexpressible and unthinkable pure-existence, but it is not the cause or the creator of the universe.

Then, what is the "cause" or the "creator" of the universe(s)?
 

Metempsychosis

Reincarnation of 'Anti-religion'
मैत्रावरुणिः;3559610 said:
I, too, have a question for the Speculators Dwelling in the Forests:



Then, what is the "cause" or the "creator" of the universe(s)?

That source is pretty vague.Brahman is both the cause and effect.Brahman is the material,efficient and teleological cause of the universe.
 

Metempsychosis

Reincarnation of 'Anti-religion'
मैत्रावरुणिः;3559628 said:
Not that powerful?

Like AIDS virus,when outside of our body it is not powerful,but once inside it becomes very powerful.JK.:D
 

Maya3

Well-Known Member
Hello, I have a few questions for the practicing Advaitins on our forum.

The Basic Concepts of Advaita Vedanta

Is Brahman God or not?

Yes.

If the world is essentially illusionary does anything really matter then?

What exactly does this mean? Does this mean we are God?

Thank you in advance for the responses.

Yes we are, as is everything else in the universe. We just think that we are separate. That is the illusion. Not that everything is unreal.
Things are very real, but they are part of God not separate from God.

Maya
 

Poeticus

| abhyAvartin |
That source is pretty vague.Brahman is both the cause and effect.Brahman is the material,efficient and teleological cause of the universe.

Fine, answer me this:

Am I an illusion? Is murder an illusion? Are famine, drought, genocide, war, etc. illusions?
 
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Maya3

Well-Known Member
मैत्रावरुणिः;3559645 said:
Fine, answer me this:

Am I an illusion? Is murder an illusion? Are famine, drought, genocide, war, etc. illusions?

No, the illusion is that you die from it.

Maya
 

Philomath

Sadhaka
You are God,so is everyone else.In advaitic state,there is no finite ego,the nama and rupa completely dissolves,leaving us with an entity which is utterly 'One'.So,there is individuality in the manifest world(relative truth) like waves on a ocean,but outside of the manifestation,all is one -waves merging back into the ocean.Compare this to a light from cinema projector,on the screen there are different players,but if you roll back in time,you get a pure concentrated light-the source of everything,which is what all the players on the screen are.But,here we are talking about projections of infinite nature.And the yogic process,in a way takes you back to realm of timelessness.

I understood the rest of your post but here is where you lost me. What's the nama and rupa?
 

Philomath

Sadhaka
Yes.



Yes we are, as is everything else in the universe. We just think that we are separate. That is the illusion. Not that everything is unreal.
Things are very real, but they are part of God not separate from God.

Maya

So basically the illusion is that we are separate from God?
 

Metempsychosis

Reincarnation of 'Anti-religion'
It's no problem. So basically what your saying is that when back name and form and the layers that cover us we merge back with the one source?
That's what advaita asks us to see for ourselves.Ethical implication is that:You see other living beings as your own self,this in itself can help people to be more empathetic toward others and on a generic level Advaita exhorts us to look beyond personal benefits and sensual pleasures while indulging in everyday activities.

But mere intellectual understanding is not enough,just as calling the name of the medicine will not cure a patient,even so every aspirant must work through the 'Yogic' ladder while basing oneself on the ethical precepts described above.

A similar thread here:
http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...tions-doubts-unclear-about-non-dualistic.html
 
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Philomath

Sadhaka
That's what advaita asks us to see for ourselves.Ethical implication is that:You see other living beings as your own self,this in itself can help people to be more empathetic toward others and on a generic level Advaita exhorts us to look beyond personal benefits and sensual pleasures while indulging in everyday activities.

But mere intellectual understanding is not enough,just as calling the name of the medicine will not cure a patient,even so every aspirant must work through the 'Yogic' ladder while basing oneself on the ethical precepts described above.

A similar thread here:
http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...tions-doubts-unclear-about-non-dualistic.html

Thank you for the link and for the clarification.
 

Philomath

Sadhaka
Yes.

Yes we are, as is everything else in the universe. We just think that we are separate. That is the illusion. Not that everything is unreal.
Things are very real, but they are part of God not separate from God.

Maya

What then is the difference between Kashmir Shaivism and Advaita then? Both state we are Non-Dual from God. I know Kashmir Shavisim states that the world is real, but If the illusion in Advaita is that we are separate then isn't Kashmir Shaivism and Advaita the same thing?
 
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