Category: philosophical counseling
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The Illusory Appearance Of Ignorance
The direct path teaching of Advaita Vedanta states very clearly that only awareness exists and thus that you are, and have never been anything other than, awareness. For most, the statement above doesn’t “ring true,” and so the teaching also needs to provide an account of the illusory appearance of ignorance, of “not getting it.”…
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There Are No Actual Problems, Only Imagined Ones
The Main Argument The pith of the awareness teaching of Advaita Vedanta could be put thus: “There are no actual problems, only imagined ones.” The argument can be laid out very neatly; it will take quite some time, however, to verify that it’s true in one’s own experience. 1. A problem only arises in and…
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There Is, In Fact, No World
There is no experience of a world as such; there’s just the experience of a perception—a sight, a sound, a flavor, a scent, a texture. The experience of a sight–to take but one example–doesn’t reveal “a background world” from which it appeared. It just reveals the simple fact of seeing arising. Seeing arising, however, could…
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The Veiling Of The Self Never Actually Happened
One’s true nature is consciousness, the supreme. When the mind is extinguished in the Self, the [three] saktis, beginning with inch, which are said to exist, will completely cease, being [known to be] an unreal superimposition upon the perfectly pure consciousness that is one’s true nature. —Muruganar, “Verse 42,” Guru Vachaka Kovai, p. 24 One…
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What Is Direct Experience In Advaita Vedanta?
A technical–indeed, keystone–term in Advaita Vedanta is pratyaksha, which is translated as almost always “direct experience,” only on occasion as “self-evident” or “direct knowledge.” All translations in Advaita Vedanta refer to the same experience. The term appears in the nondual teaching of jnana yoga just when the question is put: “How am I to know…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 