'I know that I know nothing' was never a confession. It was the starting point.

I feel I have two sides: one is full of devotion and desire to be free, I read gita, ashtavakra Gita, something from the Upanishads and do manana. When my mind wanders, it only wanders in the direction of what the truth is, what shankara said, what Ramakrishna used to say, and such.

On the other side sometimes the mind wanders in the direction of lust, and it's unstoppable. What I figured is, I don't really put an effort to stop it, but if I really try I am able to stop it. But I don't know if I should really stop it if I want to realise the truth. Another thing is my ego which comes in a lot. I figured it has become such a strong part of my personality, and I understand that atleast with ego being a strong part of me path to growth is difficult. How can I let go of my ego? What practices are useful?

Also is controlling lust a must? How does it help? Because in Hindu dharma brahmacharya and chastity is the highest virtue. I could not practice any. Will.it cost me self realisation?

Physics says the universe ends at maximum entropy: no stars, no usable energy, time loses meaning. The Gita (8.18–19) describes beings dissolving into the unmanifest at Brahma's night and re-emerging at dawn. Is this a real parallel, or are we forcing a match? Curious what people here think.

Raised in a christian family, read full bible 5 times & baptised by the age 18, genuinely loved god.

2020: Had some questions with christianity- i scribbled on bible last page all doubtful verses. Questions ++ & life events- i stopped believing, stopped attending church, spoke to pastors , no answers and became an atheist.

2024 Years later i found vipassana (Buddhist meditation) & after doing few courses, understood the meaning of god that God is love God is truth etc. Kind of Sanatani now.

2025 Started attending Ramana maharshi ashram and eventually temples - Thiruannamalai, kanchi, ekambareshwar, durga amman temples etc - felt a connection towards durga amman, material life became better

2026 read quite a few upanishads, Gita, MahaBharat started Doubting god again, am not liking this phase,

**Question 1 :**

Someone told me the stories u read all are not literal, shiva and parvati are not literally wife n husband they’re two powerful energies . This got me a doubt are they really electron and proton bcz they’re inseparable bcz shakti literally means energy.
Para shakti/ Adi para shakti, omnipresent
Are all the scriptures referring to atoms / sub atomic particles, bcz they’re also called para anu.

**Question 2:**

Understand it is kaliyug but isn’t god more powerful than kali purush, is the laws of karma above god, just like Indian constitution is above everyone?

**Question 3:**

What is the purpose of all this srushti/creation. For me It feels like a bigboss for those who watch, entertainment.

Kindly forgive if am wrong, I want to know the truth.

Recommend the upanishadas

In the coming year I want to dedicate, devote all my available time to read Upanishadas. Please recommend me the most important Upanishadas in that order.

I am willing to crush my Ahankar, my extra unnecessary attachment to the external world. Will they help me in this endeavour?

Recommend the upanishadas

In the coming year I want to dedicate, devote all my available time to read Upanishadas. Please recommend me the most important Upanishadas in that order.

I am willing to crush my Ahankar, my extra unnecessary attachment to the external world. Will they help me in this endeavour?

The denial and discounting of ‘Maya’ has done a great disservice to our understanding of Oneness. Maya can be interpreted as an expression of the the creativity of the Creator or Brahman, and is an inseparable part of IT.

a theory that i think should be taken with a grain of salt yet can be extremely extremely effective!

"The world appears in Consciousness and You are Consciousness", easy, right?

But what does that even mean? and how can you use that fact to your benefit?

Spoiler: It means that Consciousness is Absolutely Free except when it minds something, meaning it feels disturbed by something, when you feel anything disturbing you, you are illusorily bound by identification to the ego that is being disturbed and therefore bound, and it is like this by design, not a bug, not a flaw!

But why is disturbance needed? Because if there is no disturbance, there is no experience. contrast is experience, no contrast, no experience!

No pleasurable experience is 100% pleasurable because for example, fear accompanies pleasure, and no painful experience is 100% painful because for example, it forces you to let go, opposites are present in each other and exist because of each other.

So what is Pure Awareness/Consciousness? IT IS THE ABSENCE OF DISTURBANCE.

Consciousness being bliss is not that bliss or high of drugs, no! its the absence of you yourself which is infinite freedom of not-being-bound as a person or body.

It is the absence of resistance or minding anything, a true pleasurable experience isn't just pleasure, its the absence of being disturbed by pain, and pleasure makes you stop minding the body and for a moment, you are back to your Self and that is the bliss we are talking about.

Pain is painful because it forces you to feel the body and you therefore think i am bound, yet its the thinking that just because you feel the body, you are it or affected by it is what causes the bondage, in intense pain, if you experienced it, you are just laying there in pure pain and you let go and that moment, the pain doesn't seem so bad anymore, it might even feel pleasurable as long as the mind is still.

Huh? what do you mean?

In infinite consciousness, there is nothing to feel, no one to feel, there is only consciousness conscious that it is conscious and that's it! basically you are conscious and that is it, nothing else, no conscious that you are a person or you are something or aware of anything.

But to us human beings as egos, not feeling our existence as something else, meaning if we don't feel with a mind and images, we think we are dead, and thats the whole point, we disturb and chase things on purpose to feel we are living beings.

But that is the whole mistake, not feeling your existence as something is INFINITY ITSELF!

And it has NO FLAVOR, so you think I am dead, for example in sleep, But No! The tongue for example can't taste itself yet it exists, it is the one doing the tasting!

So when for example reading a book and you are fully focused and it stimulating your mind, the book is basically like holding your mind in focus and giving it stimulation fully enough that you forget yourself and thats what causes bliss.

But even the presence of the ego doesn't erase Infinity, its just like clouds hiding the sun, the sun is still there but you wouldn't know that because you are looking for consciousness as something to appear to you, but the eye can't see itself, its the one doing the seeing!

The world is also Consciousness, what does that mean? it means that the outside world is just Consciousness itself!

That means as Consciousness itself, as long as you are disturbed by nothing, there is no world, there is only you being without being a person or feeling your existence as something else, the world appears but what is the world even? its just you being disturbed/ripples in consciousness which are thoughts and minding sensations.

No minding the world = No world, its not that the world ceases to exist but You are You, what does it matter if its there or not, if something doesn't disturb you, its almost as if its not there, no, its not there even!

How? say you had a goal but you forgot about it, that thing you wanted to acquire might still be there but its not there in your mind, therefore its almost not,

its like that saying "out of sight, out of mind"

well, "out of mind, out of existence!" is true as well.

yet as long as you want again, you can play the game but knowing its a game.

Basically when you mind nothing, you don't mind things, You are INFINITE and ABSOLUTELY FREE, but you can't feel it as an object, as something happening to you, IT IS YOU!

Pleasure is something that happens to you, Pain is the same, Consciousness is You!

You can only know through inferration, its like saying, since I see therefore i must have eyes and you then believe and internalise it and that's it!

The point is all YOU NEED IS TO STOP GRIPPING, ATTACHING, basically just be! just be without any intention or goal or anything, do not decide anything, just be, if you can't then do things that move you that force you to forget your problems and even yourself but don't attach to them.

JUST STOP MINDING THINGS.

Oh pain comes? Oh its painful but thats okay, always have "and that's okay" in your mind, never make a situation impossible to bear because its all just an illusory game and Consciousness is infinite and impossible to be affected.

Why? because if consciousness were to be affected, you wouldn't be conscious of that pain anymore? see? the knowing is never affected, only that which is known can be affected.

And even that knowing that we have in "mind" as human beings isn't it, because in true knowing, there is no knower, nothing to know, there is just consciousness conscious without being conscious of anything and You are that because even thoughts you hear them.

Basically Consciousness is not just unknown, ITS UNKNOWABLE, its impossible to know it as an object, you can only be it!

Basically while i am writing this and being focused on writing it without intention, i am infinite without it being known by the ego, there is only the ACT ITSELF AND THE ACT IS INFINITY ITSELF APPEARING AS THAT.

Basically, SEEING IS INFINITE even when it appears to be limited, the act itself is infinity appearing as that,

and this infinity is not like we believe like infinite space or something, it can take any form,

IT IS FORMLESS, Its not like space or like outer-space, ITS INFINITE NOTHINGNESS THAT CAN APPEAR AS ANYTHING.

It can appear as a cramped prison room and it can appear as vast canyon or vast sky or a galaxy, there is not it is like this, it is like that, it is everything and nothing.

That's it, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Chiao!

I am doing a project on Darshanika Parichaya and I have to introduce Advaita Vedanta. Can someone recommend accurate books or websites that I can reference for this? Thank you. Any idea on what to include would also be appreciated.

take this with a heavy grain of salt.

I had a dream or like an right-after-waking where i was still heavily dizzy where the ego admitted that it wasn't aware by itself, this dawned on me while i was watching some anime openings of detective conan and seeing all the chaos reminded me of the mind, and it was like all these characters symbolised the chaos of the mind, it then dawned on me, that these characters weren't aware of themselves but by sending my awareness and offering it unconditionally they arise to life and that reminded me of me doing the same to the mind, doing it to other people, and other people basically doing it to me,

and i had a moment where i was spaced out yet thoughts kept running, and i was like "wtf, how can you even say such bullshit when i'm this dizzy, it then kinda admitted that it basically isn't aware of itself in a jokeful manner, i can't describe it, its like a chatterbox, its function is to stitch the story together, create causes, create a flow to the story like a narrator in a movie" yet by itself it has no awareness, it was a weird state where i heard the music but it didn't, no idea.

and basically awareness gives itself to the mind and the mind like a mirror or like those glass thing that people use to deflect the light of the sun to be able to burn cardboard or paper, so this same way, mind is able to turn this light towards its own thoughts and these thoughts arise by its own movement which is not bound by any rules or anything, it instinctively know what to do without even knowing what its doing in a grand cosmic drama where everything moves perfectly yet nonesically to the mind, basically the mind doesn't know, it merely knows what to do next by something beyond it, its like awareness activates it and then it just moves by the inherent energy of awareness without knowing whats its gonna do before it does it, basically the mind moving this light towards people, people become real, turning towards an anime or story, the story comes to life, turning it towards pain, pain is felt, basically the mind makes countless turning of its glass-like nature towards everything instinctively, to move awareness to feel this and that and this and that, its basically like taking awareness through the world to explore.

and basically, its the nature of consciousness to dream, its like it just consciousness itself being still for a moment before moving and again being still and again moving, or this is more like personal consciousness, and that is everyday life, an everyday dream, and consciousness doesn't plan life, it instinctively knows what happens when it happens, and it perfectly builds up upon the previous episode, and the mind not even knowing how or why or what, it just moves.

and this limited personal consciousness comes from the Infinite Consciousness which similarly has a similar Infinite mind which imagines the world and splits itself into all the countless minds without Consciousness ever changing its nature.

So basically Infinite Consciousness dreams an Infinite Mind which dreams the countless limited minds and transmits the Infinite Consciousness through all levels, just like a sun lights up a glass that transmits light, it transmits this Consciousness through itself before splitting it through all other glasses basically all levels of existence towards objects and things.

So basically it comes all the way from the Source through the Infinite Mind through to the limited mind and this Infinite Mind decided to make a drama to entertain and make a story for Consciousness or a story of being bound and being liberated and experiencing all sorts of tragic and exciting scenarios, before it all melts back into Infinite Consciousness and from beginning to end, nothing changes, it just lights like going through prism showing all kinds of colours before returning to itself.

That's it, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I was looking for a video to understand the reasoning behind "Neti, Neti" and how it connects though it looks like an escapism. In one video a person said that you cannot put the limitless in a limited form. The moment you do it you lose it.

Let's say you say it's the truth. You fail to see it in a lie.

Basically the words, pictures, ideas, concepts, thoughts, feelings and emotions. Though limited, they have a certain beauty. They try to express a particular aspect of the limitless fully. We can know it by living it.

So what I'm trying to say is it's not separate from the truth although we're saying not this, not this.

The problem arises when we misidentify the part as the whole. And stop looking for the whole. This is where we fall.

I looked at another video where a person said that these are not me but my instruments.

Eyes, ears, mind, body, thoughts or intellect. These are not me. These are mine.

So who am I then?

Not this, Not this. We negate what we observe. Until we reach a point where we cannot deny. Because we've reached the self that denied everything. That ends the search. At this point there's no difference between the observed and the observer. That is Advaita.

This song is a collection of some poetry snippets that I wrote over various occasions in the past several years, often while in a kind of waking-samadhi state. I have put the words to music, but not recorded anything. The song does not have a title.

-

Emotion is mother to the intellect

And emanates from

Ananda-mayakosha

As vrittis

As qualia

-

Arunachala!

Did I find what I was meant to find?

In the spine,

Your calling,

My yearning,

Realigned?

-

Fullness mine!

She whispered my own name to me

This loving-to-be

As always

As what is given for free

-

Ashtavakra sings:

In me, the infinite consciousness

Ten thousand waves emerge

Let them rise, let them subside

I neither increase nor am I reduced

Thereby

-

Not as a simple thing in

The outside world

But a simple world

Shines from the inside out

-

Sleep is hinting at the naked truth

-

This is a long dream!

Beginningless and self-contained

Through cycles of pain,

We wander

Until nothing remains

-

All my ambitions,

My delicate plans,

Wiped out in a glance

-

Om

Hari Om

Hari Om Tat Sat

Om

Hari Om

Hari Om Tat Sat

Arati Avadhoota

Guru Nisargadatta

Om namo Bhagavate

Om namo Ramanaya

Hi all,

I have been following Advaita since July (started in May, seriously started following since July). I would like to share my daily practice here and get tips or inputs on where and what I can tweak to do better. Please, I look forward to seeking valuable guidance from you all

1. As soon as I wake up I say a prayer I wrote for myself - what works for me

2. Listen to Gita classes (Swami Sarvapritananda's podcast) - Shravana

3. I try to stick to Gita 2.47 throught office hours

4. End of the day, again Gita 2.47; upskilling - (not everyday depends on my schedule)

5. Anulom Vilom Pranayama (helps with mind calmness and focus)

6. Read a few Gita verses that was taught in class and think about it - Manana

7. Advaita meditation for 20 mins - nidhidhyasana

8. Prayer for a few more minutes

9. Sleep

I keep this up for atleast 4 days a week. Depending on my schedule and other personal commitments I only skip upskilling.

P.S.: This was my comment to one of the posts on this subreddit.

Hello everyone, i was reading about adi shankaracharya and came across his book, viveka chudamani. I know it has a lot of depth and i tried to read it but i find it hard to grasp the meaning of the verses as adi shankara meant for it to be read. Id love to be able to understand the book but im having a hard time.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

A while back, I was chatting with AI about existence, life, the whys and hows of it all. I had never heard of Advaita then. I only knew that ancient Hindu scriptures seemed to hold something mysterious, something profound about existence. Even as a child, I could never accept that we simply came into existence by our own will. Those questions never left me. I always felt that this world was shrouded in mysteries, almost as if it were somehow unreal.

I grew up in a so-called "religious" family. Norms, values, and disciplines were strictly followed and strictly enforced. I couldn't live freely because I was bound by their beliefs, too. I hated it. And that hatred eventually made me an atheist.

Then, seven months ago, at 27, I first encountered Advaita.

At that point, I was completely identified with my body and mind, going through one of the darkest phases of my life. That first glimpse felt like absolute truth, yet strangely hollow at the same time. It brought me into an existential crisis.

'What is the point of all this? What am I running after? Why am I even living through this body?'

But after that day, something in me was never quite the same.

The transformation has been mind-boggling. Going from a thousand questions to simply being and witnessing. From an existential crisis that left everything feeling hollow to actually enjoying life fully. From constantly running after material things to becoming less attached to them. From seeing life as something to figure out to making the world itself my sadhana.

And perhaps the strangest part of it all is this: the same atheist who emerged from a rejection of society's religious rules, when given the freedom to look beyond them, came to discover what feels like nothing but God.

I'm not claiming to have understood the truth or to have reached any destination. The road is long, and there is still so much to learn, unlearn, and see through.

But I'm deeply thankful to this sub and everyone here. You have no idea how much you've helped this mind grow. In my everyday life, I don't really have anyone with whom I can share or explore these questions. So I wanted to put this out here, among people who might understand what I'm trying to express.

The road is long, but what feels certain is that it will be walked. By God's grace, there are people who have walked this path before and are still walking it alongside me. For that, I'm grateful. 🙏

The Upanishads say that the knower of Brahman goes beyond sorrow. How should we understand this?

1. Does self realisation mean that all psychological suffering and emotional reactions cease?
2. Can emotions such as anger and sadness still arise, while the jivanmukta no longer identifies with them or resists the natural tendencies of the body and mind?
3. Can a jivanmukta still experience psychological suffering but be less affected by it or recover more easily because they know they are not the body or mind?

My understanding is that the body and mind continue to function, and the mind may still experience anger, sadness, or other emotional reactions.

Which interpretation is most consistent with classical Advaita Vedanta and Shankaracharya's teachings?

To understand the magnitude of the semantic fracture created by Adi Shankara that made Advaita Vedanta a metaphysical philosophy, one must return to the foundational bedrock of the Sanskrit language: Pāṇini’s Dhātupāṭha. The entire classical edifice of Advaita by Adi Shankara rests on the premise that Chit represents pure, phenomenal consciousness, establishing a fundamentally idealistic ontology where consciousness is the a priori foundation of all existence. But this interpretation relies on a critical conflation.

​In the Dhātupāṭha, there are two distinct roots that Shankara merged and was never corrected. The first is चित् (Cit), which means to perceive, reflect, or experience mental awareness. By anchoring Advaita entirely to this psychological root, Adi Shankara and his successors painted themselves into a philosophical corner: if ultimate reality is purely mental, then the physical, materialist paradigm of a 13.8-billion-year cosmic history must be explained away as an illusion. However, the much older, operational root is चिञ् (Ciñ), meaning "to gather", "to stack systematically", "to construct, or to arrange into a geometric structure". When we rescue the concept from the realm of subjective feeling and return it to this physical, architectural root, the mysticism evaporates, leaving behind a flawless blueprint of modern biology.

​Under this nomological re-contextualization, Chit is not a ghostly awareness, nor is it a late-stage product of human evolution. Instead, it is the fundamental, organizational logic that governs all living systems—the literal operating system of life itself. It is the precise informational principle that emerged during the critical phase transition from abiogenesis to biogenesis on early Earth, approximately 4.2 to 3.5 billion years ago. At this threshold, dead, deterministic chemistry was systematically stacked and arranged (Ciñ) into something entirely new: an anti-entropic, self-sustaining system.

​To recognize this Nomological Chit in the physical world, we do not look for a mystical aura; we look for four empirically verifiable properties of biochemistry. First, the capacity for information storage and faithful replication, such as a DNA or RNA genotype. Second, autopoiesis and metabolism—the ability to create a physical boundary, like a cell membrane, and harness energy to continuously self-produce and self-maintain. Third, biochemical communication, defined as the constant, recursive exchange of information ranging from intracellular signals to quorum sensing. Finally, the info-structural relationship, where biochemical function is inextricably derived from the three-dimensional structure of interacting biomolecules.

​The ultimate proof of this structural non-duality is found not in a meditation cave, but in the RNA World hypothesis, which models a primordial stage of early life around 4.0 billion years ago. In this nascent moment, early RNA molecules known as ribozymes acted as the quintessential non-dual entity. They simultaneously functioned as information storage (the code, like a gene) and as catalytic action (the function, like an enzyme). In the ribozyme, code and function were inextricably intertwined, perfectly embodying the essence of Nomological Chit.

​Once Chit is understood as this universal biological software, the grand, sweeping statements of the Upanishads suddenly map perfectly onto planetary ecology. If Chit is the fundamental law of life, then Brahman is the total, dynamic expression of that law—the entire interconnected biosphere. This "Informational Brahman" is an empirically verifiable reality unified by three things: a universal logic where every living thing runs on the same genetic software, a common origin where all extant life descends from a Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), and a state of total interdependence where the biosphere operates as a single homeostatic network. The ancient declaration that "All this is pervaded by Brahman" is no longer a poetic metaphor; it means all life is governed by and constituted within this total biospheric system.

​Within this vast planetary network, the Atman ceases to be a metaphysical soul. It is the individual, autopoietic organism—a highly localized instantiation of the universal Chit. Just as the Mundaka Upanishad describes sparks of the same nature flying forth from a well-stoked fire, the individual organism is a discrete spark that runs on the exact identical operating system as the Informational Brahman. You are not a spirit trapped in a meat suit; you are a self-contained biological loop, actively running the 3.5-billion-year-old code that sustains the living earth.

The floor is open for a challenge...by either a classical Vedantin or an Evolutionary Biologist. 😌

Hi everyone. We've been building a small, interactive community on a direct messaging app, where we share some daily inspiration, support each other and learn from each other.

Inspired mainly by non-duality teachings and philosophies.

If it sounds interesting, please drop me a message. We are currently looking for some new members 🙏

Is it justified to not have friends while on this path of enlightenment? I used to have many friends but now that I am more knowledgeable in Advaita Vedanta I find myself more and more isolated. In my daily life I haven’t met anyone on the same path. If Brahman radiates in everyone, why can’t I connect? Looking for elated souls….