CHAPTER FOUR    

Advaitism

 

YOGA is as timeless as Brahman Itself. As with every fresh cycle man comes to an awareness of the All-pervading, he tries to discover the means for realizing It.  It was Hiranya-garbha, we are told, who first taught yoga or the Divine way, but it was his successor s, Gaudapada and Patanjali ,who developed it into a regular system. As we have already seen in the foregoing chapter, all true yoga begins with a dualistic assumption but ends in a non – dualistic one . It is not surprising , therefore, that many students of the inner science should have led to controversy , by this paradox . As time passed , confusion led to controversy, and a half –truth was often mistaken for the full truth . It was at such a time that Shankara, the prodigy from South India, arose to preach the true philosophy of Advaitism.

 

He was gifted with amazing powers of reasoning , logic and insight and few have attained to the depth , sublety and consistency of vision that are to be found in Shankara’s writings . Taking up all the great scriptures as Shankara’ s writings Taking up all the great scriptures as they came down from the past , he unequivocally interpreted their meaning and established their identity of substance . He showed that the Reality was One and, in it's ultimate analysis , could not tolerate any pluralism or dualism. An individual Jiva might begin as distinct from the Brahman, but by the time he had attained full realization, he would  have realized his oneness with the Absolute , the All –pervading . Armed with clairvoyant intellectual power, he swept Indian  thought clean of all the seeming contradictions that were clogging it's free development. We may now examine some of the basic concepts that he taught.