r/AdvaitaVedanta

"CONSTANT BLISS! TOTAL COSMIC ECSTACY! HAPPINESS FOREVER!!!"

Meanwhile samadhi is just when your mind quiets down and you're chilling in equanimity and there aren't really any emotional highs

The constant bliss part is horrible. It pulls you in with the promise of something amazing and you eventually experience no mind and there's not much bliss at all, just stillness

There are definitely a bunch of actual gurus who say that samadhi is ordinary and nothing special. I can't name them or even quote them really but I'm pretty sure a bunch of gurus have said it's nothing special

Idk

I'm a data scientist building a scripture app. The pipeline ended up processing the full shloka corpus of the Ashtavakra Gita (298 verses), Avadhuta Gita (271), Ram Gita (62), and several others. Tagging and scoring them for non-duality, witness-consciousness, and liberation themes surfaced something worth sharing: these three texts all point to the witness-self, but the entry point is different in each.

Ashtavakra works by systematic negation of identity — caste, life-stage, sensory experience, all stripped away. What's left is described as formless, unattached, the witness of the universe. The verse is na tvaṃ viprādiko varṇo... viśvasākṣī sukhī bhava — "knowing this, be happy." Happiness not as goal but as the natural state of the witness recognizing itself. The scoring on pure awareness and non-attachment tags was the highest of any text in the corpus.

Avadhuta doesn't argue toward the witness — it speaks as the witness already established. The structural pattern in the data is clear: negation of what he is not (fate, mind, ego), then a refrain about being "gyanamritam, steady as the sky." It reads like the Ashtavakra conclusion without the buildup. Different tool for a different stage of practice.

Ram Gita takes the most analytical route — distinguishing the jiva (consciousness reflected in intellect born from avidya) from atman (the witness, separate from intellect and beyond its distinctions). Closest to traditional Advaita scaffolding. Most useful for someone who needs the conceptual map before the direct pointing.

Full writeup with the top-scoring verses from all 7 Gitas: https://www.wisdomquotes.in/blogs/beyond-bhagavad-gita-quotes-mental-spiritual-health

For those working with these texts in practice: which entry point has been most useful — the systematic negation of Ashtavakra, the first-person declaration of Avadhuta, or the analytical framework of the Ram Gita?

1. How and why does Ishwara, a personal God arise from Brahman?

2. Is there a need for an Ishwara for a material world to exist?

3. How do we get from Nirguna to Saguna and how can we explain the presence of these qualities? I can understand that Brahman is beyond good and bad, but

how do we get to an Ishwara who's benevolent

I would be more than grateful if you could point to reading material that would help me understand the same

I grew up Muslim, but somewhere along the way, religion stopped making sense to me. Not God — just religion.

Lately I’ve been drawn to the idea that God isn’t separate from us, but something within us — a universal consciousness we connect to through self-awareness, love, and inner reflection.

But there are still things I can’t wrap my head around.

What was the Big Bang then? Was it just a random accident? If there is a divine intelligence behind existence, why create a universe at all? Why Earth? Why consciousness? Why suffering?

Has anyone else gone through this shift from religion to spirituality? How do you reconcile belief in a divine force with science and cosmology?

The philosophical confrontation between Kashmir Shaivism and Madhyamaka Buddhism is one of the many sophisticated intellectual battles. It was not merely a disagreement about religion. It was a direct confrontation over the nature of consciousness, existence, language, causality, selfhood, epistemology, and liberation itself. Thinkers like Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, Dharmakīrti, Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, Kṣemarāja, and others were operating at an extraordinarily high level of abstraction and phenomenological precision.

Kashmir Shaivism — especially the Pratyabhijñā (“Recognition”) school — arose partly in response to Buddhist dominance in Indian intellectual culture. By Abhinavagupta’s time (10th–11th century CE), Buddhism had immense philosophical prestige. Shaiva thinkers therefore had to engage Buddhist logic seriously. They could not dismiss Buddhism casually. Abhinavagupta knew Buddhist arguments intimately and often adopted Buddhist analytical methods while reversing their conclusions.

The core issue can be stated simply:

Madhyamaka says: “No phenomenon possesses inherent existence (svabhāva).”

Kashmir Shaivism replies: “Correct — but the very capacity for appearance and recognition presupposes a luminous self-revealing consciousness.”

From this point unfolds an enormous philosophical war.

Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka begins with radical critique. In the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, he dismantles all claims to independent essence. Things do not arise from themselves, from others, from both, or from neither. Cause and effect collapse under analysis. Motion collapses. Identity collapses. Time collapses. Subject-object duality collapses.

The goal was not nihilism. Nāgārjuna repeatedly denied being a nihilist. Rather, he argued that all phenomena are dependently originated (pratītyasamutpāda), empty (śūnya) of independent essence, and conceptually designated.

Candrakīrti later sharpens this further: Even emptiness itself is empty.

This becomes devastatingly anti-metaphysical. Madhyamaka refuses to establish any ultimate ontological ground whatsoever. Any attempt to posit an ultimate principle becomes reification.

Kashmir Shaivism sees a problem here.

Utpaladeva argues: If everything is denied inherent reality, what explains manifestation itself? What accounts for the undeniable fact of awareness?

For Shaivas, consciousness cannot merely be another empty dependent designation because all denial presupposes awareness. Even the cognition “there is no self” appears within luminous experience.

This becomes one of their major critiques: Madhyamaka secretly relies upon consciousness while refusing to ontologically acknowledge it.

Abhinavagupta often accuses Buddhists of “stealing the king’s treasury while denying the king exists.”

The Shaiva position is subtle. They do not claim consciousness as an object-like substance. Consciousness is self-luminous (prakāśa) and reflexively aware of itself (vimarśa). This reflexive awareness becomes crucial.

The famous Shaiva argument: A cognition must be aware of itself in order to be known.

Buddhist logicians like Dignāga and Dharmakīrti also accepted forms of reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana), but Madhyamaka became suspicious of this because it appeared to reintroduce intrinsic nature.

Candrakīrti attacks reflexive awareness using the famous sword analogy: A sword cannot cut itself. Likewise cognition cannot cognize itself.

Shaivas respond: The analogy fails because consciousness is unlike objects. Consciousness is precisely that which reveals itself and others simultaneously, like a lamp illuminating both itself and a room.

This becomes one of the deepest disputes in Indian philosophy: Can awareness reveal itself without splitting into subject-object duality?

For Kashmir Shaivism: Yes. Consciousness is inherently self-revealing.

For Madhyamaka: To posit such inherent self-presence risks metaphysical essentialism.

Another major dispute concerns negation itself.

Madhyamaka employs prasanga — reductio ad absurdum. Rather than establishing positive metaphysical doctrines, it dismantles all positions.

Shaivas criticize this relentlessly.

Utpaladeva argues: Pure negation is impossible without an implicit affirming consciousness.

If you say: “All things are empty.”

The Shaiva asks: “To whom does this realization appear?”

The Madhyamika replies: “That question falsely presupposes an enduring subject.”

The Shaiva then argues: But even the denial of subjectivity appears within undeniable experiential luminosity.

This debate becomes phenomenologically subtle. Madhyamaka fears eternalism. Shaivism fears nihilistic collapse into unintelligibility.

One of the most sophisticated Shaiva critiques concerns memory and recognition.

Pratyabhijñā philosophy is centered on recognition: “I am the same consciousness that experienced previous moments.”

Utpaladeva argues that recognition presupposes continuity of subjectivity. If no enduring awareness exists, memory becomes impossible.

Buddhists counter with momentariness (kṣaṇikatva): Only causal continuity exists, not enduring identity.

The flame analogy appears: A flame appears continuous though composed of changing events.

Shaivas attack this: Causal succession alone cannot explain the lived immediacy of identity recognition.

When you remember childhood, there is not merely causal linkage but direct recognition: “That was me.”

This “I-ness” becomes central in Shaivism.

For Madhyamaka, however, such selfhood remains conventionally valid but ultimately empty.

Then comes the dispute over language and conceptuality.

Madhyamaka often deconstructs conceptual categories as inherently unstable. Language creates reification.

Kashmir Shaivism partially agrees but introduces a more positive theory of language through Śabda (vibration/speech-consciousness).

Influenced by Bhartṛhari, Shaivas see language not merely as conceptual distortion but as creative manifestation itself.

Parāvāk — supreme speech — is consciousness vibrating into multiplicity.

Reality is linguistic in a cosmic sense.

This is radically different from Madhyamaka suspicion toward conceptual proliferation (prapañca).

For Shaivas: Manifestation itself is divine expression.

For Madhyamikas: Conceptual elaboration perpetuates bondage.

Now the most profound difference: The status of ultimate reality.

Madhyamaka refuses all metaphysical assertions. Ultimate truth is emptiness beyond conceptual fabrication.

Kashmir Shaivism asserts: Ultimate reality is dynamic, self-aware consciousness possessing freedom (svātantrya).

This freedom is enormously important.

Śiva manifests worlds freely. Multiplicity is not accidental ignorance but creative play (līlā).

Madhyamaka often appears more apophatic: Ultimate truth cannot be positively characterized.

Shaivism becomes more cataphatic: Ultimate reality is blissful, luminous, creative consciousness.

Yet the strange thing is that advanced practitioners often report similar experiential states.

Both traditions describe: Dissolution of egoic fixation. Non-duality. Freedom from conceptual grasping. Spontaneous awareness. Compassion or expansive being. Collapse of subject-object dualism.

This has led many modern scholars — like Alexis Sanderson, Mark Dyczkowski, Christopher Wallis, and David Loy — to argue that experiential realization may converge while metaphysical interpretation diverges.

Some even argue Kashmir Shaivism emerged partly by “reabsorbing” Buddhist insights into a more affirmative metaphysical framework.

Abhinavagupta especially seems almost obsessed with avoiding what he saw as Buddhist incompleteness. He admired Buddhist phenomenology but believed Buddhism stopped at negation without affirming the full richness of conscious manifestation.

Another sophisticated issue involves aesthetics and bliss.

Madhyamaka often emphasizes freedom from attachment.

Shaivism emphasizes camatkāra — ecstatic wonder.

Reality is not merely empty. It is aesthetically radiant.

The universe is consciousness savoring itself.

This leads to radically different spiritual moods.

Madhyamaka can feel austere, surgical, anti-essentialist, relentlessly deconstructive.

Kashmir Shaivism feels ecstatic, integrative, artistic, erotic, cosmically affirmative.

Yet both aim to destroy fixation.

The paradox is beautiful: Madhyamaka destroys all views. Kashmir Shaivism turns the destroyed ruins into divine theater.

Modern comparative philosophers often note: Madhyamaka is philosophically safer because it avoids reification. Kashmir Shaivism is existentially richer because it explains manifestation positively.

But Shaivas would say Madhyamaka secretly depends on luminosity. And Madhyamikas would say Shaivas secretly reify luminosity.

The debate never truly ends.

Even today philosophers struggle with it: Can consciousness be fundamental without becoming metaphysical essentialism? Can emptiness avoid collapsing into epistemic unintelligibility? Can experience be non-dual without a ground? Can awareness know itself?

These are not merely historical arguments. They remain among the deepest unsolved questions in philosophy of mind and phenomenology.

The preeminent fathers of quantum mechanics were all Vedantists: Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Tesla, Planck- even Einstein himself dabbled.

The conclusion quantum points towards is called the observer effect, or where a particle exists in multiple forms simultaneously, collapsing into a singular wave only and precisely when it is observed. Thus, observation- perception- dictates the reality we think we see.

All particles which constitute the matter of existence, before and observation, exist in a state called superposition, or infinite potential before a single reality is chosen.

Superposition, then, can be thought of as scientifically analogous to what Astika schools of thought call Samadhi, or the state of existence behind empirical reality. Samadhi, like superposition, entails the dissolution of ego, or the observed, where the seer and the seen unite together into divine union. At such a state, the boundaries of the dualism that is perceived collapses into the singular fold of absolute reality, which is incomprehensible to the human mind. Instead we can only approximate this through models and theory because the human tools of thought and language are inherently constrained.

For those practicing Self-Inquiry within Advaita Vedanta, what changes have you noticed in daily life or understanding? Has it affected reactivity, clarity, relationships, or your sense of Self?

Over the past few years, I’ve tried to understand life from many different angles of philosophical, psychological, and spiritual. I explored Advaita Vedanta and the idea of non-duality: that, ultimately, there is no separate “me,” only pure consciousness expressing itself through everything.

What we usually call an individual self — this body, mind, personality, identity is not the ultimate truth. Advaita speaks about different levels of reality. On the practical level (Vyavaharika), the world exists: individuality, relationships, desires, suffering, even the idea of God. But on the absolute level (Paramarthika), there is only pure, attribute-less consciousness beyond all division, beyond even the concept of God as a separate entity.

I’ve listened to many teachers and speakers like Sandeep Maheshwari, Osho, Swami Sarvapriyananda, BK Shivani, and others. Sometimes their teachings feel deeply connected. For example, Sandeep Maheshwari’s idea of the “sound of silence” reminds me of what Osho often spoke about: watching thoughts without becoming identified with them, until the mind gradually becomes quiet and still.

Intellectually, I understand many of these ideas. I understand the teaching that I am not merely the body or the mind, but the Atman the consciousness itself which is beyond birth and death. The body may perish, but consciousness remains untouched.

For a long time, I also followed BK Shivani’s teachings. I feel her approach focuses more on how to live peacefully within everyday life which is still inside the world of maya, but with greater awareness and emotional balance. One of her central teachings is that happiness does not come from achievements, possessions, status, relationships, or external success. Happiness, she says, is the natural state of the soul itself.

And honestly, that makes sense to me.

But even after understanding all this, one question still remains unresolved within me.

If external achievements do not truly define us, and if lasting happiness cannot come from them, then what actually motivates human beings to act at all?

What creates the inner pull toward life?

When I observe ordinary life, it seems most people are driven by desire, the hope that achieving something will finally make them feel complete. People work hard, reach a goal, feel satisfied for a short while, and then another desire appears. The cycle keeps repeating endlessly.

Different spiritual traditions seem to answer this question differently. A follower of Bhakti Yoga may say that life is God’s leela, a divine play and we are here to participate in it with devotion. Others may say that we should simply perform our dharma without attachment to outcomes.

I’ve explored many of these perspectives sincerely, yet I still feel unable to find something completely solid to stand on, something that clearly answers how life is actually meant to be lived.

So I often wonder:

Am I misunderstanding these teachings? Are different teachers pointing toward different truths? Or is there simply no final intellectual answer to hold onto?

Even though these teachings have helped me in many ways, something still feels incomplete inside me.

If happiness is already our nature, and if we are already whole, then what is supposed to move us toward action?

Should there be any desire at all? Are we meant to live without inner longing?

And if desire falls away, then what actually drives a person to live, create, work, love, or pursue anything?

I understand that advaita does not mean "nothing matters". But what is it that drives you to do anything?

That is the question I still carry within me.

So if I see a bottle of blue colour, the colour blue I see, it is blue because my eyes has the ability of seeing blue, and the shape of the bottle is also my brains ability to perceive space time and objects in 3d, and also the meaning to that object which is bottle is given by my brain to it which I learned from my parents when I was kid

So the reality which I construct is just my own beliefs, conditioning and my body's shadow

Is this the dvaita the duality and clearly seeing this and dissolving it will be a step towards Advaita

Would the implications or side effects of action in general apply to ideas or intangible entities?

For example, consider the United States: vast atrocities, from genocide, to slavery, to imperialism and many more moral turpitudes to say the least have been perpetuated at its behest in the past 300 years or so. Would karma return to affect it as a result if the idea of the United States was the driving force behind the actual actions? The same query applies to every other similar situation as well.

Once in a while, my mind tends to replay negative thoughts/situations. For e.g., say someone has said something disrespectful or threw an insult, the ego holds on to it, the event which should have been ignored, lingers on the mind for few more days. I'm very well aware during that time that the ego has taken over completely, but I find it difficult to tame it, I tried self enquiry, but the thoughts stop for few seconds and they again come back.

I don't understand this aspect of advaita or nonduality, that why does it already starts from awareness? If awareness itself was constant in people then there would be no need for realization. From what I understood jiva appears within awareness, but is the movement of both are same? If so how do they even relate to each other, it seems like a movment of indifference to me. The movement of mind, memory itself connects a person with their identity, then what is ignorance in this? to not identify yourself as past, but isn't that more complex than just the past and memory. The happening of event itself creates impression on a person brain even neurologically, so what is even nonidentification in that. A person with their brain and body,senses which inevitably would react with the events in time, how that can nonidentify with itself? And is that what is considered as ignorance? In all of this where does even realization occurs, the concept of awareness is itself moving away from the movment of accumulated time in every aspect within a person, that makes it seems like this two movment were never related with each other. So what is even the realization itself? Who is even seeker in that? The movment of mind, to step outside of mind, when the awareness itself is not related with movment of memory, mind and time. Even in all that non identification how does even a person's past impressions could be processed? Because I don't think you could just negate all that with just the mind.

I am a Westerner and don’t understand Hindi etc. and I was curious about the roles and responsibilities of the four Shankarcharyas.

Do they initiate laypeople?

I heard that one of them has a higher level than others. Is that right?

Do they offer teachings/educational opportunities in English?

I had an discussion on the consciousness subreddit.

I made the argument than consciousness can't be illusion, for every illusion needs consciousness as a witness to appear in.

One counter argument I had no answer for was:

What if there is no permanent metaphysical witness, just awareness wich arises alongside experience?

That sounds like what Buddhism say, that awareness and experience are co-dependent and can't arise without each other, no permanent consciousness in the background.

The only answer for this problem, wich came to my mind, was a vague continuity issue. But I am not sold to it and now Im thinking about wich is true. Do you have an answer?

I have installed the "Stop AI" Devvit app in our sub:

https://developers.reddit.com/apps/stop-ai

Users will be able to trigger a "Check for AI" action on any comment. If AI content is detected, the comment will be routed to the mod queue.

AI detection will be run on all posts, and if it is detected as AI, it will be reported to the mod queue.

Let's see how it works out here. I agree there is some AI content that may be good, but the majority is slop, IMHO.

Peace.