I find all this 'holier than thou' discussion of Advaita total B*** S***.
For those unfamiliar, Adi Sankara, a great mystic and spiritual master told the world categorically that there is only One (the concept that there is no second=Advaita), and that all our perceptions of the many around us (the perception of many things and beings and states =duality) is an illusion or Maya.
He also went around building temples, teaching beautiful prayers to people, the prayers being addressed to a number of male and female deities.
There is a large mass of brahmins called Smarthas who feel utterly superior chanting those prayers in all those temples and also claiming that Advaita is the only truth and science. They say all other beliefs are inferior.
After Sankara (circa 7 century CE), there came many Hindu saints who extolled prayer and said that this talk of Advaita is dangerous and man cannot ever be God.
Now what is all this fuss? It takes three simple statements to clarify the confusion.
As long as you, or me, or Sankara go around preaching, praying, and even arguing, it is a clear case of the many. You cannot deny it.
I cannot say I think as an Advaitin, sensibly, and yet pray to any God to give me happiness, wealth or wisdom. These are all affirmations of the many!
In Advaita, there is no prayer, no me and no God. There is only one infinite consciousness called SatChitAnanda. It is a state of being, even calling it experience is a distortion since experience is different from the experiencer!
That is an idea pretty easy to understand intellectually. There is the core of the issue. In spirituality, belief or intellectual understanding means NOTHING. SPIRITUALITY IS ALL ABOUT ACTUAL PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. One can experience love, prayer, sadness, heat and cold. SatChitAnanda is not an experience but a state of being. It is DEFINITELY NOT knowledge or belief!
All so-called Advaitins think that they understand it and guess what, they think they are right.. But the joke is on them, as in Advaita, there should be no thinker or thought! There is only an infifnite continuum of SatChitAnanda. Sankara perhaps got into that state and expressed later that he had got into that state.
When we do experience that state by disappearing totally, there is Advaita. Until then, there is God, there is Sankara, there is prayer, there is this blog, and duality!
