Advaita Vedanta for the Absolute Beginner

The following introduction is written for an ‘absolute beginner’ to Advaita Vedanta. Often
students in the past have reported to me that after struggling with Advaita for several months
they are able to see the receding horizon from the mountaintop, and that the view (or non-
view, more accurately) is (paradoxically) breath-taking. This introduction is for you, as you
proceed on this climb, to serve you as a guide and a companion.

I visualise you as an ‘absolute beginner’ in one or more of the following senses:

1. You may have read some passages from the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the
Bhagavad-gita.
2. You may have taken a course in philosophy of religion.
3. You may be familiar with pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel,
and Heidegger.

However, you must have the patience to read with undivided attention the 2,678 words that
follow on the next few pages. Further, you must remember that this introduction is indeed
what it says on the label: it is for the ‘absolute beginner’. Therefore, if you repeat this
material in your final exams, it will only indicate that you are still just that – an absolute
beginner. So use this introduction as a launching pad to project yourself towards your own
explorations into Advaita, or, to change the metaphor, as a ladder that you must use to climb
to the mountain-top but must throw away once you are there.
To understand Advaita Vedanta, it is vital to appreciate the simple point that often we live
our lives in an unexamined manner, and consequently we operate with concepts whose
‘edges’ are not sharply delineated. Consider the term that is absolutely fundamental in
Vedantic debates – reality. We move through our complex social circuits with a rough and
ready notion of what counts as ‘real’: we regard laptops, human beings, and chairs as real,
and unicorns, phlogiston, and goblins as unreal. These definitions, in fact, serve us well in
most of our everyday contexts. However, matters become hazier with respect to concepts that
seem to inhabit some sort of an ‘intermediate’ zone between reality and unreality. Consider a
politically charged term – human rights. Are human rights real? If so, in precisely what
sense? For someone might argue that we do not see or perceive or experience human rights in
the same direct manner in which we are able to visually identify or recognise the human
beings who populate the world. If we are pushed to the wall in this manner by a human rights
sceptic or critic, we would realise that our ordinary, and somewhat vague, definitions of
reality will not serve us anymore, and what we need is a criterion that will indicate which x is
real and which y is unreal.

Numerous such criteria have been proposed in the history of classical Indian and western
thought. Here we are concerned specifically with the Advaita Vedanta notion of what makes
x real. The Advaita Vedanta tradition draws its ‘definition’ of reality ultimately from the
Upanishads, which refer to Brahman as that which is the unchanging, abiding, and immutable
Ground that underlies all empirical changes that we observe. That is, if you were to ask an
Advaitin (a follower of the Advaita tradition) questions such as: ‘What holds the different
things that I see around me together?’, ‘Why do the multiple objects in my visual field not fly
apart in a million directions?’, and ‘Why do I inhabit a universe in which only some things
undergo changes against a wider background of relative stability?’, the answer would be:
‘Brahman is the still point in our moving world, the unchanging foundation on which all
empirical processes are based, and the immutable reality which supports all fleeting events’.

Thus, the Advaita Vedanta definition, AVD: x is real if and only if x is utterly immutable.

Consider the following implication of AVD, which is truly earth-shattering: the chair you are
sitting on, the books you have been reading, your pet cat, Australia, Los Angeles, the C10
lectures you might attend and the lecturer himself, and you yourself – all of these are unreal
according to AVD, because none of these are utterly immutable. The first response is often
one of utter incredulity, for while we regularly accept the unreality of certain limited domains
of our perceived worlds (for instance, mirages, hallucinations, optical illusions, and so on), it
would be too much of a radical demolition of (most of) our worldviews to regard the whole
thing as unreal. The initial response is, in fact, quite in order. The physicist Niels Bohr,
according to some reports, once claimed: ‘Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has
not understood it’. The same goes for Advaita Vedanta: if you wish to comprehend its depths,
you must first allow yourself to be shocked by the implications of AVD.

However, once you recover from the initial shock, we will try to make Advaita more
palatable, as it were, by introducing the following distinction.

Definition 1 (Def 1): If x is empirically perceivable, then x is said to ‘exist’.

Definition 2 (Def 2): If x is utterly immutable, then x is said to be ‘Real’.
These definitions imply that for Samkara, the ‘founder’ of the Advaita tradition, the mundane
objects, events, and processes around you – animals, trees, libraries, picnics, stock markets,
and aeroplanes – all ‘exist’. None of these are pure hallucinations. You are not in a dream
right now as you struggle to understand Samkara. The world is not a pink elephant (the
philosopher’s favourite example of a ‘hallucination’). If you touch your laptop screen, and
experience its tactility, that is because the screen indeed ‘exists’ (Def 1), just as you too
‘exist’ (Def 1). If you feel a pang of hunger as you are reading this essay (which, remember, I
had asked you to read with undivided attention), that sensation too ‘exists’ (Def 1). You are,
in short, not a zombie (and your best friend is not a zombie either). At this level of
‘existence’, Advaita does not change our understanding of the world at all – all things ‘exist’
(Def 1) in just the same manner that they would if you had never read this introduction,
whose writer ‘exists’ (Def 1) too. However, none of these objects, events, and processes are
‘Real’ (Def 2), for they are all subject to transformation, mutation, and alteration.

Let us now move somewhat deeper into Samkara’s conceptual system, by raising three
questions.

1. What is the relation between the ‘Real’ (Brahman) and the world which ‘exists’?
2. How ‘different’ is the world from the ‘Real’ (Brahman)?
3. Who or what is the ‘Real’ (Brahman)?

Answer 1

Samkara uses a certain theory of causation which states that the effect is only an ‘unfolding’
of the cause. If you want oil, you crush oilseeds but you don’t press pieces of paper, and the
reason for this, according to this theory, is that the oil is ‘implicit’ in the oilseeds but not in
the paper. Likewise, Samkara argues, drawing upon various texts in the Upanishads, that the
world is ‘implicit’ in its primal cause, namely, Brahman, and the world is only an ‘unfolding’
of this cause.

And here we encounter that most famous – or notorious – of concepts in classical Indian
thought, namely, maya. Reflect on what Samkara is trying to do: he is trying to explain how
an utterly immutable Real (Def 2) can produce the world of change. The tension – if not
contradiction – should be palpable. On the one hand, Brahman as the Real – according to the
Upanishads – cannot undergo any change whatsoever, but, on the other hand, Brahman
produces – also according to the Upanishads – the world which is subject to various changes.
The Advaita tradition after Samkara invokes maya at this juncture to claim that Real-ly
Brahman never produces anything, Real-ly Brahman never undergoes any change, and Real-
ly Brahman is never subject to the appearances of the world. However, because of a
mysterious principle called maya we human beings who are entrapped in its coils mistakenly
think that the eternal Brahman has become transformed into this world of change, decay, and
transformation. This mistake is indeed our ignorance (avidya), which keeps us bound to the
circle of repeated reincarnations, till we gain spiritual insight (vidya) into our real identity,
namely, that we are non-dual (Advaita) with Brahman.

At this juncture, to understand the notion of non-duality, let’s introduce an analogy that
Samkara himself uses. Take a lump of clay and fashion it into five different pots: colour them
yellow, red, blue, green, and violet. Now ask yourself this question: ‘what ‘exists’ in front of
me?’, the answer to which is: ‘one yellow pot, one red pot, one blue pot, one green pot, and
one violet pot’. The next question is this: ‘in these five pots, what is truly real?’, which,
according to Samkara, you should answer in this way: ‘Only the clay is substantially real.
The ‘stuff’ of which the different pots are made is clay. Therefore, if these clay objects were
to be broken down to their rudiments, all we would get is clay. Thus, we can say that the clay
pots are not-dual or not-two (advaita) with the clay’. Thus, the term advaita (a-dvaita) denies
that the clay pots are essentially different from or essentially other to the clay. Clay pots Real-
ly are clay. A rolled-out carpet Real-ly is the same carpet when it lies unpacked in the
basement. What drops of water Real-ly are is water. Rainbows Real-ly are water drops, which
Really are water. What gold necklaces Real-ly are is gold. Tiny droplets on a wavelet Real-ly
are wavelets, which Real-ly are waves, which Real-ly are the ocean, which Real-ly is water.

Samkara employs these analogies throughout his commentaries on the Upanishads to suggest
that the ‘relation’ between Brahman and the world is unlike any relation that we are used to
in everyday life. While it might be touchingly romantic – or, depending on your sensitivities,
intolerably cheesy – to say that you are non-dual (advaita) with your partner – Samkara uses
Advaita, as we have seen, in a carefully defined technical sense. After all, partners have lives
that are (also) independent of each other, and you do not (usually) die if your partner goes
away. However, the world is Advaita with Brahman in the ‘absolute’ sense that the world
depends for its very existence, sustenance, and maintenance at every moment on Brahman.
Just as a green pot would endure as a pot if it were repainted as blue, but would dissolve at a
trice if the clay, with which it is Advaita, were to be demolished, likewise the world would
vanish at once if its underlying support, Brahman, with which it is Advaita, were to be
removed.

Answer 2

After you have finished reading a book of, say, 182 pages, you might ask yourself what you
have accomplished. Have you finished reading (i) 182 pages, or (ii) a book? Usually it
wouldn’t matter greatly how you respond to a question such as this one: you could say (i) in
some contexts, and you also say (ii) on other occasions.

As I say, usually. With Samkara, however, this is the heart of the matter. He would argue that
the reason why we alternate between saying ‘I have been reading lots of pages in
Michaelmas’ and ‘I have been reading many books in Michaelmas’ is because books are
aggregates which are built of out of their numerous pages. That is, we do not need one
category called ‘pages’ and another category called ‘books’, if we were compiling an
inventory of what exists in this universe. We can cut down on the number of categories from
two to one by simply listing ‘pages’ on this inventory, and putting down ‘books’ in a footnote
with the following recipe: ‘books are what you can construct by adding pages’.

Samkara would use this thought-experiment as an analogy for the relation (or, more strictly,
non-relation) between the world and the ‘Real’. Just as we do not postulate two independent
categories called ‘pages’ and ‘books’, but rather claim that books are Advaita with pages, we
do not enumerate categories of cows, dogs, cats, men, children, women, Israelis, Californians,
positrons, lamps, cars, cousins, bridges …. and then add Brahman to this list. We should
simply say, according to Samkara, that all empirical entities (which ‘exist’ but are not ‘Real’)
are Advaita with Brahman. The relation (or non-relation), in other words, should be spelled
out not in terms of an ‘and’ – which gives the impression that the world is one category and
Brahman is another category – but in terms of non-duality (Advaita).
We still have to answer the why in this question: ‘If absolutely everything, including me, is
essentially non-dual with Brahman, why does the world of multiplicity, diversity, and
plurality seem so real to me? I open my eyes and I see five books on my table. This
apprehended diversity is undeniable’. Samkara would respond to this protest with Def 1 and
Def 2: he would, again, affirm that five books ‘exist’ (Def 1), that the appearance of diversity
‘exists’ (Def 1), and that the tangible presence of distinct objects on the table ‘exists’ (Def 1),
but he would deny that any of these are ‘Real’ (Def 2). And if you persist with your
complaint, stamping your feet on the ground or kicking a stone in front of you, and claiming
that all these feel very real to you, Samkara would respond that the feeling indeed ‘exists’ but
is not ‘Real’.

Answer 3

Samkara is an exegete-theologian who developed his understanding of the human individual

through his readings of the Upanisads. According to him, the Upanisadic statements point
towards, but do not (because cannot) describe, Brahman which (not who) is utterly beyond all
descriptions whatsoever. (I am already skirting paradox when I say that Brahman is ‘utterly
beyond all descriptions whatsoever’, for in saying so, I would seem to have said something
about Brahman. However, we will not engage with this issue here.) The best we can do is to
use a string of negative disclaimers: Brahman is not this, not that, and so on. Thus, it is not
quite correct to refer to Brahman as all-merciful, all-loving, all-knowing, and so on; Brahman
is utterly beyond all qualities, forms, and descriptions. If you like catchy phrases, you can say
that, according to Samkara, the Upanishads indicate to us that Brahman is, but they do not
tell us what Brahman is.

The crucial theological-experiential implication of Brahman’s ineffability is as follows.

While some human beings may ‘penultimately’ apprehend Brahman through the icons or
images of religious worship (say, Rama or Vishnu or Krishna), ‘ultimately’ or Real-ly the
devotee herself is Advaita with Brahman beyond all descriptions. That is, if a devotee thinks
that she is substantially distinct from Brahman (as, for instance, in orthodox Christianity,
Islam, and elsewhere), this mistaken view, according to Samkara, is a consequence of maya.
Just as pots are not an ‘extra’ category over and above the category of clay, the devotees in
the various theistic streams of ‘Hinduism’ are not an ‘additional’ category over and above
Brahman. Whatever a devotee is, in her truest, deepest, and ultimate essence, she is Advaita
with Brahman. Likewise, you – whoever you may be – are Advaita with Brahman. Therefore,
when you ‘objectify’ Brahman as that which is ‘out there’ and you ‘objectify’ yourself as this
which is ‘in here’, this separation is due to ignorance. More precisely, what you essentially
are is not the combination of physical appearances, characteristic traits, and sociological
markers that gives you a passport and a driving license (and much else besides); you are
essentially the spiritual Self (Atman), and this Self is Advaita with Brahman. (Yes, I know, it
doesn’t feel so; as I indicated earlier, Samkara would say that this is because of maya.)

Finally, I will end with a question:

Right now, I am reading this essay, sitting in this room, on an October morning, in
a medieval English university town. How much of all this is real?

I have already given you the materials to construct an answer: Def 1, Def 2, Advaita,
Samkara’s understanding of causation, and so on. One final analogy and we are done.
If someday you are stranded in the Thar Desert (beyond Jaipur), and you see the mirage of
water hovering above the trees, how real is that illusion? You cannot say that it is as
absolutely unreal as a ‘squared circle’ (if you cannot think of such an entity, that is precisely
because it is, as I said, absolutely unreal), nor can you say that it is absolutely real (because,
remember, only Brahman is absolutely Real according to Def 2). Therefore, you will have to
conclude that the mirage ‘exists’ (Def 1) but is not ‘Real’ (Def 2). You don’t really need to
read Samkara to arrive at such a distinction; after all, we employ it in everyday life when we
say that x is not authentic, or not genuine, or not authoritative. The truly cosmic significance
of Samkara’s claim will dawn upon you when you ‘Real-ise’ that according to him, we
should apply this distinction not only to mirages, hallucinations, and accidental delusions but
to the whole thing: absolutely everything empirical around you, including you yourself and
the essay that you will write for my supervision, ‘exist’ but are not ‘Real’. The universe, that
is, has a precarious existence: only Brahman is absolutely, utterly, and unqualifiedly Real.