Category: philosophical counseling
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The Nature Of Superimposition
Swami Nikhilananda makes an excellent remark about the nature of superimposition in his translation of Sadananda’s Vedanta-sara (“The Essence of Vedanta”). A standard line about superimposition is that it involves veiling the real with the unreal. This is a bit fuzzy. A clearer definition is supplied by Swami Nikhilananda: superimposition refers to “erroneously attributing the…
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The Meaning Of ‘I Love You’
When you first say, “I love you” and mean it, you don’t yet know what love truly is. In fact, you can’t. It’s as if you need to allow the nature of love to unfold over the course of some, if not many, years in order for the power of love to be clear, to…
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The Self, Which I Already Am, Is Awareness
“The Self alone is the spontaneous self-effulgent Awareness.” —The Essence of the Ribhu Gita, “Verse 29” 1. I am not the body, the senses, or the mind. I am whatever it is that knows, or is aware, of these objects. 2. A searching inquiry will reveal not just that I am aware of these objects…
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The End Of Discrimination (Viveka)
1. Since suffering is identical with mixing up the Self with the content of objective experience (e.g., “I am the knower” or “I am the doer”), the first step on the path of Advaita Vedanta is normally to “unmix” the Self from the content of objective experience. This is termed viveka, or discrimination. One, hereby,…
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No Inside, No Outside, Only Seamless Self-Reality
A clay mug is surrounded by space on all sides. Let it be granted that space is “outside of” the clay mug. And when it’s asked, “What is inside of the mug?,” we can say: “Mug-space.” And so, there is outside-space and mug-space. Of course, when we take a sample of outside-space and mug-space, we…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 