Advaita Vedanta, Idealism, Schopenhauer

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Coincidentally, I am reading “Schrödinger: Life and Thought” by Walter Moore. Schrödinger read everything written by Schopenhauer. He also read extensively on Buddhism and Vedanta.
He wrote “ The ego is only an aggregate of countless illusions, a phantom, a bubble sure to break. It is Karma. Acts and thoughts are forces integrating themselves into material and mental phenomena— into what we call objective and subjective appearances… The universe is the integration of acts and thoughts. Even swords and things of metal are manifestations of spirit. There is no birth and death, but the birth and death of Karma in some form or condition. There is reality, but there is no permanent individual…
Phantom succeeds to phantom as undulations to undulations over the ghostly sea of birth and death. And even as the storming of sea is motion of undulation, not of translation— even as it is the form of the wave only, not the wave itself, that travels— so in the passing of lives, there is only the rising and vanishing of forms,— forms mental, forms material. The fathomless Reality does not pass… Within every creature incarnate sleeps the Infinite Intelligence unevolved, hidden, unfelt, unknown — yet destined from eternities to awaken at last, to rend away the ghostly web of sensuous mind, to break it’s chrysalis of flesh, and pass to the extreme conquest of Space and Time.”

Moore comments “ Perhaps these thoughts occurred to Erwin when he made his great discovery of wave mechanics and found the reality of physics in wave motions, and also later when he found that this reality was part of an underlying unity of mind. Yet in the course of his life, belief in Vedanta remains strangely dissociated from both his interpretation of scientific work and his relations with other persons. He did not achieve a true integration of his beliefs with his act. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that there are three paths to salvation: The path of devotion, the path of works, and the path of knowledge. By inborn temperament and by early nurture Erwin was destined to follow the last of these paths. His intellect showed him the way, and throughout his life, he expressed in graceful essays his belief in Vedanta, but he remained what the Indians call Mahavit, a person who knows the theory, but has failed to achieve a practical realization of it in his own. From the Chandogya Upanishad : “I am a Mahavit, a knower of the word, and not an Atmavit, a knower of Atman.”

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Yes, Vedanta includes broadly what all that has been said by Schopenhauer and Kastrup. The “ Analytic Idealism looks to be derivative of core vedantic statement “ Brahm Satya, Jagan Mitthya “ Vedanta goes beyond this to give an experience of what all are the myths . Once you transcend all the perceptions related to such myths after treading assiduously the paths of Karma, Bhakti , Dnyan and RajYogas you will arrive at the destination of Samadhi, immersing yourself in Samadhi and attaining the unison with Brahman . In between there are several things which are beyond the description of conventional languages and description. Largely the final achievements are individual’s self realization .

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In my view, Advaita Vedanta is reconciled with Christianity.

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I assume that you mean it is compatible, which I agree with. But as you know I am unashamedly syncretist in my attitude.

I think we feel our through life, even if we have a sense of understanding. Something is always missing from our perception, like walking in the dark. It is as though a sensory input is missing, and our five senses are not enough to fully understand. The most extraordinary experience has multiple other perspectives. Sometimes we think we have an intuition, and I think the imagination is a door to that and the source of visions, dreams and prophecies. This is not so much a prediction as it is an emphasis or a giving of prominence to something.

That is why all of our religious traditions are “feeling” in a figurative sense in that area where our senses are insufficient. The words we read that are attributed to Jesus suggests to me that he was pointing to that, and the fact that we are one despite our diversity.

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Your emphasis on feeling reminds me of Schleiermacher for whom religion is a matter of feeling—the “immediate self-consciousness” of the unity of the whole on which we are aware of our utter dependence. This unity and our dependence is our “God consciousness”. The relationship of dependence is “Bestimmtheit (conditionedness) of immediate self-consciousness”. God to Schleiermacher is “absolutely undivided oneness [Einheit]” not a conditioned particular being. Shleiermacher is attempting to put nondual awareness into words.

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Yes, there may be reconciliation, nice to hear it

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Have you read the Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta by Swami Prabhavananda? A wonderful commentary. He tells the following story:

“…in about 1874 that Sri Ramakrishna interested himself actively in Christianity. A devotee who used to visit the Master at the Dakshineswar temple garden near Calcutta would explain the Bible to him in Bengali. One day, while Sri Ramakrishna was seated in the drawing-room ing-room of another devotee’s home, he saw a picture of the Madonna and Child. Absorbed in contemplation of this picture, he saw it suddenly become living and effulgent. An ecstatic love for Christ filled Sri Ramakrishna’s heart, and a vision came to him of a Christian church in which devotees were burning incense and lighting candles dles before Jesus.

For three days Sri Ramakrishna lived under the spell of this experience. On the fourth day, while he was walking in a grove at Dakshineswar, he saw a person of serene countenance approaching with his gaze fixed on him. From the inmost recesses of Sri Ramakrishna’s heart came the realization, “This is Jesus, who poured out his heart’s blood for the redemption of mankind. This is none other than Christ, the embodiment of love.” The Son of Man then embraced Sri Ramakrishna and entered into him, and Sri Ramakrishna went into samadhi, the state of transcendental dental consciousness. Thus was Sri Ramakrishna convinced of Christ’s divinity.”

Prabhavananda goes on to say that “ since the early days of our order, Christ has been honored and revered by our swamis as one of the greatest of illumined teachers. Many of our monks quote Christ’s words to explain and illustrate spiritual truths, perceiving an essential unity between his message and the message of our Hindu seers and sages.” And so do I.

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Yes , there is complete unison of thoughts , beliefs and religions when someone starts realizing “ Advaita “ in it’s total manifestations. Ramakrishna had this realization from his early age and people surrounding him were well aware of his such unison with Maa Kaali . He often used to go in Samadhi / trance and emerging from it with more and more divine attributes. This is how his devotees called him Thakur meaning God in Bengali . His realization or visualization of Jesus crucification is well documented and is often referred by Swamis of Ramakrishna Mission order . Swami Sarvapriyananda , Vadant Society, NY holds a midnight prayer meeting on Christmas to honour this experience of Ramakrishna.

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Right. From a philosophical standpoint, the challenge is to show how the nondual consciousness is compatible with the harmony of the world religions. Inspired by the Vedanta of the Ramakrishna Society, Aldous Huxley wrote the seminal “Perennial Philosophy”” PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS—the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing—the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being—the thing is immemorial and universal.”

Huxley goes on “ Based upon the direct experience of those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions of such knowledge, this teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi (“ That art thou”); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find out Who he really is.”

This is what we are doing. The principle of double love, embedded in the Torah and both preached and lived by Jesus, that is, 1) love God 2) love your neighbor, is based on the fact that ultimately God is, all else is illusion.

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Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no fear.
Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no grief.
How can the multiplicity of life
Delude the one who sees its unity?

The Isha Upanishad

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Non-being can never be and being can never not be. That is what you are. Bodies are born and die. You are Being itself~Consciousness itself. The body and the mind are reflections~images~ created in the image of God as it says in Genesis 1. They come and go. Becoming and fading away. Let them come and let them go.

The materialists have it backwards. Consciousness precedes mind and mind precedes matter. This is true both ontologically and historically. Cosmic mind precedes individual minds.”Cosmic conscious” is a misnomer for nondual consciousness which encompasses any conception of a bounded cosmos or universe. The meaning of he Sanskrit word Brahman is simply “The Vast”.That is what you are.

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“Do you think that consciousness can be explained in terms of matter and its laws?”

“No . I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything we regard as existing postulates consciousness.”

Max Planck , to The Observer, London, England, Sunday, January 25, 1931, page 17

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“The creation is a birth and shining forth of the divine mind, a work through which his spirit breathes.”

William Ellery Channing( 1780-1842) vehement opponent of slavery. Channing claimed the human self is inherently divine. (The American Transcendentalist : Essential Writings) The unitive vision is a divine humanism. Human consciousness is at its center. It is here in humanity that ultimate freedom must be realized.

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Being cannot be conceptualized. If it is said that consciousness is being, how could that be known? It is the brute fact of existence.

Shankara’s nondual philosophy is a response to Buddha’s anatman (notself) in a centuries long dialectical process.

Nonduality comes as a flash of insight that penetrates the habitual method of difference by which we ordinarily observe objects of the perceptual field—the gestalt.

According to “The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy: A Study of Advaita in Buddhism, Vedanta and Kashmira Shaivism” by Chandrahar Sharma, the essential features of non-dualism are:

“1. Advaitavada is always spiritual non-dualism or absolutism.

  1. The Absolute is at once transcendent to an imminent in the manifest world.

  1. As transcendent, the Absolute is indeterminant. It is beyond the senses thought and language. It is pure consciousness and bliss.

  2. As immanent the Absolute is the reality of the manifeste world of individual subjects and objects.
    It is infinite, all pervasive and all inclusive.

  3. The absolute cannot be shown as an object by relational thought. But as the foundation of all empirical knowledge and experience, it shines forth as the eternal non-dual Self, self proved and self shining.
    It can be realized in non-relational immediate spiritual experience.

  4. Non-dual absolutism makes a distinction between reality and appearance.

  1. The absolute appears as or projects this world through its own power, which is beginningless, transcendental and inseparable from it.

  2. Transcendental illusion generates the notions of externality, difference, limitation and finitude. It can be removed only by immediate realization of the Absolute.

  3. The absolute is not proved by positive arguments. Nondualists negate the illusion of duality, and the Absolute shines as the ground-reality.

  1. As seen from the relative point of view, liberation is absolute freedom, which is complete identity with the absolute. It is the realization of one’s own true nature through supra-relational, knowledge or immediate experience.

  2. Traditional methods of enlightenment prescribe intense, spiritual discipline as a help towards this realization. “

Consciousness and existence are not two. As one this Absolute is the foundation of your being. In fact, everything that appears is a projection of this boundless self-evident Reality.

This Absolutism is at the core of every religion worthy of the name— whether theistic polytheistic or nontheistic like Taoism and Buddhism and more recently in secular manifestations like the human potential and mindfulness movements.

The Bhagavad Gita chapter 13 speaks of the field and the knower of the field. Whatever I am aware of, I am not that. The body is an object of awareness, so I am not. I am aware of the breath. I am aware of sensations. I am aware of emotions. If I am aware of it, I am not that. If I feel awful, I am the witness of the awful feeling. All memories and intellectual activity are the field. When the mind shuts down in deep sleep, that is the field.

All objects of consciousness are projections of the one consciousness itself which has no properties and no attributes. If you are aware of attributes, they are objects. The knower has no attributes. Consciousness pervades all experiences. As that which illumines every change it is changeless. It’s nature is to shine. You are that.

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What do you think of this from 1914:
The Indian mystics speak perpetually of the visible universe as the Līlā or Sport of God: the Infinite deliberately expressing Himself in finite form, the musical manifestation of His creative joy.

All gracious and all courteous souls, they think, will gladly join His play; considering rather the wonder and achievement of the whole–its vivid movement, it’s strange and terrible evocations of beauty from torment, nobility from conflict and death, its mingled splendour of sacrifice and triumph–than their personal conquests, disappointments, and fatigues. In the first form of contemplation, you are to realise the movement of this game, in which you have played so long a languid and involuntary part and find your own place in it.

It is flowing, growing, changing, making perpetual unexpected patterns within the evolving melody of the Divine Thought. In all things it is incomplete, unstable; and so are you. Your fellow men, enduring on the battlefield, living and breeding in the slum, adventurous and studious, sensuous and pure–more, your great comrades, the hills, the trees, the rivers, the darting birds, the scuttering insects, the little soft populations of the grass–all these are playing with you. They move one to another in delicate responsive measures, now violent, now gentle, now in conflict, now in peace; yet ever weaving the pattern of a ritual dance, and obedient to the music of that invisible Choragus whom Boehme and Plotinus knew.

What is that great wind which blows without, in continuous and ineffable harmonies? Part of you, practical man. There is but one music in the world: and to it you contribute perpetually, whether you will or no, your one little ditty of no tone.

"Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music:
The hills and the sea and the earth dance: 
The world of man dances in laughter and tears."

Practical Mysticism – A Little Book for Normal People, Chapter VII, The First Form Of Contemplation

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With all due respect, I think the author is describing how it seems to him based on his understanding from reading or talking to “Hindu mystics” without first hand insight. It’s very poetic, and it might be a nice philosophy to believe in, but I don’t think he’s seen what it’s about himself.

I read Heidegger’s book “Being and Time” a while back. It was probably the most difficult book I ever read. It took me a long time to get through because of the convoluted thought and neologisms—all in service of elucidating the simplest fact there is —being itself. But, I must admit it is as if Heidegger did it with one hand tied behind his back, because he seldom ever mentions consciousness which is synonymous with being. And he laudably avoids most of the religious metaphor which points to being/consciousness but also obscures it because people mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself, as we say.

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I forgot to mention it was from Evelyn Underhill, who tanslated the Dark Night of the Soul, and wrote numerous books on mysticism.

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I remember reading her translation of that probably more than fifty years ago. She of the flowery prose. The lengthy bio on her in Wikipedia includes the statement “ Although Underhill continued to struggle to the end, craving certainty that her beatific visions were purposeful…”

The “dark night of the soul” is said to be an experience with which she had prolonged experience. I spent thirty plus years under the spell agnostic materialism so, I can relate to that. You introduced me to the work of Bernardo Kastrup that convinced me to entertain a philosophical perspective other than metaphysical materialism.

Back to the topic of nondualism, despite differences in theistic versus atheistic terminology, Madhyamika Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta both propose that the Absolute appears as the phenomenal world through its own power, which is Transcendental Illusion or Ignorance.

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I’m re-reading Practical Mysticism and finding a lot that I has influenced me over the years, and although Kastrup’s Idealism has also changed my views in many ways, I can’t help believing that it is language that is the major divide in many discussions, and the idea or thought that we are trying to express. I have no security in thinking you understand me as I mean it nor, indeed, that I understand you, or anyone else as they mean it in their minds.

She did have a wonderful command of English, but I find that she made every effort to be clear, because she knew that a lot gets ‘lost in translation’. It is true that she struggled at the end of her life, but you will have read this part of the Wiki entry:

As to her struggles, I think that she was very honest in her letters, and if she had been adherent to Advaita Vedanta, she would have been saved the task of improving the ego to reach God, but called to see through the ego. I understand that.

Whereas Underhill writes: “There has been some sort of mistake. My soul is too small for it,” she might have recognised it as egoic self-judgment in Advaita and helped to gently but radically deconstruct it. If you are already the Self, pure consciousness, you are not the limited personality who feels inadequate.

But I feel for her when she describes being pushed toward an edge, she dares not cross, using classic mystic language for ego death or spiritual surrender. I recognise that in Advaita, that edge is an illusion, and you don’t jump off but awaken to the fact that you were never separate from the vastness to begin with.

She’s a child of her time and culture when she says, “it is useless advising anything people could notice or that would look pious. That is beyond me.” Although I assume that Advaita would affirm this instinct. It’s not about being seen as holy but about inward discernment and realisation. No need for visible discipline or outward religiosity, just persistent inquiry into the nature of self: “Who am I?”

I note that Baron von Hügel, her spiritual director, deeply influenced Underhill, but his approach was still embedded in a Catholic framework — hierarchical, sacramental, and emphasising moral formation. That is a problem. However, though Advaita, by contrast, often feels like spacious sky — disorienting at first, but profoundly freeing, are not Western people often challenged by this?

After all, Advaita isn’t for everyone. Its austerity and lack of emotional devotion can feel barren to those of us who thrive on symbol, ritual, and personal love, which Underhill clearly valued. I feel that these things are a lifebelt to many in our society. Perhaps, had she been exposed to the heart-centred non-dualism of someone like Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj, she might have found a resolution to her inner paradox: a path that does not demand pious performance, yet leads to the very surrender she longed for. The good news for her would have been that the struggle itself was a mirage.

So, you can see that I am reading her words compassionately, as I do many Christian authors who have reached out to other mystical traditions to contrast their own experience. I think that is what is valuable.

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Right, I think that the passage you first cited may have been based on her impression of Tagore’s philosophy. She was a spiritual seeker and 55 years ago when I read them her books on mysticism were widespread and influential. We all interpret phenomena through the filter of the dasein that we are in the world. That’s what she was probably doing with Tagore and I with her. The karmic path we’re on includes the range of our ability to empathize with the life-worlds of others.

I try to do the same thing, i.e. to get past differences in terminology in order to get to the spiritual essence of what the author is trying to say. Now when we do this in dialogue we can check with the speaker to jear from them if we got it right. Not so with authors from the past. So, misinterpretation is always a possibility.

As a perennialist and universalist, I find what appears to be much common ground between the mystics of the major religions. If, as according to Wikipedia:
“Deriving from Neo-Platonism and Henosis, mysticism is popularly known as union with God or the Absolute.[14][15] In the 13th century the term unio mystica came to be used to refer to the “spiritual marriage”, the ecstasy, or rapture, that was experienced when prayer was used “to contemplate both God’s omnipresence in the world and God in his essence.”[web 4] In the 19th century, under the influence of Romanticism, this “union” was interpreted as a “religious experience”, which provides certainty about God or a transcendental reality.[web 4][note 1]”—

Advaita Vedanta has it that this oneness is an unchanging reality. Enlightenment consists in realizing that it is now, always has been and forever will be one’s case. If one doesn’t see it, but desires to, Vedanta prescribes four practices with which to pursue enlightenment: the way of devotion, the way of action, the way of meditation and the way of knowledge. Those practices work together. And they have their analogues in Christianity and other religions. I assume you know all this but someone might benefit from it.

In her book entitled Mysticism, Underhill says “ Neoplatonism as a whole was a confused, semi-religious philosophy, containing many inconsistent elements.” I’m no expert on neoplatonism, but so far, I haven’t found it so. Have you? It contains many parllels to Vedanta. That’s for sure.