6. Advaita and the Non-Dual Problem
6. Advaita and the Non-Dual Problem
quick read
- Advaita Vedanta says only Brahman (absolute, impersonal reality) is ultimately real. Everything else, the world, the body, the individual self, karma, time, space, is
maya(illusion) ormithya(empirically real but ultimately not absolute). Liberation (moksha) means realising that the atman was never separate from Brahman. - The problem is that Advaita says only Brahman exists, but it still needs karma, individual souls, multiple states of consciousness, and different "levels of reality" to make its system work. Every time it needs multiplicity, it retreats into a second layer. But that second layer is precisely what Advaita says is not ultimately real.
Bhagavad Gita 16.8associates the claim "the world is unreal and without God" withasuric(demoniac) nature. Whether that applies to sophisticated Advaita is debatable.
The claim of Advaita Vedanta, the school founded by Adi Shankaracharya in the 8th century is that only Brahman (the absolute, impersonal, undifferentiated reality) exists. Everything else is maya (illusion) or mithya (empirically real but ultimately not absolute). The atman (individual soul) is not really individual. It is identical with Brahman. The sense of being a separate person with a separate will is avidya (ignorance). Liberation means realising one was never separate from Brahman in the first place.
There a couple of issues with this. The first problem is karma. It is a system that needs actions, consequences, moral choices, rebirth across different bodies. But if Brahman alone is real then karma cannot be real, i.e., it is not Brahman. The Advaitin must say karma exists in a "vyavaharika" (empirical/transactional) sense, not in a "paramarthika" (ultimate/absolute) sense. Karma is real enough to matter, but not real enough to be Brahman.
The second problem is the self. Bhagavad Gita 3.27 says the gunas (material qualities) perform all actions. The soul merely thinks "I am the doer" through ahankara (ego). Gita 14.19 says one must see no agent other than the gunas and know the Lord beyond them. The "two birds" metaphor from the Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.1-2 and Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.6-7 shows one bird eating, the other watching. If the soul is the watching bird, there is a distinction between observer and observed. This shows duality within a system claiming non duality, in reality.
When pressed, the Advaitin keeps shifting between levels.
Does karma exist?
In the empirical sense, yes.
Is the self the doer?
No, the subtle body is.
What about different states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep?
Those are three perceived realities; the fourth (turiya, the transcendent state) observes them all.
Is perceived reality different from absolute reality?
silence, or a change of subject.
This pattern, of retreating into a second level every time a contradiction appears, is the core of the problem. It is not that layered language is always false. Philosophers use it all the time. The problem is that in Advaita, the second level is defined as not-ultimately-real, yet it is the level on which all moral, social, and practical life operates. It is a system that dismisses ordinary reality as illusion and then relies on on the very ordinary reality to make its own arguments.
The Bhagavad Gita 18.14 says that there are five factors that produce any action - the body, the doer, the senses, the effort, and the divine (daiva). That text insists on real causal plurality. If only Brahman is real, then these five factors are either illusory (in which case the Gita is teaching illusion) or they are real (in which case Advaita is wrong about non duality). Either way, the system does not close cleanly.