Shankara on Gaudapada's Acosmic Doctrines

In several passages in Śańkara’s Commentary on Gaudapāda’s Kärikäs and in the Nineteenth Chapter of the verse section of the Upadeśa Sahasrī we find ‘acosmic’ doctrines buttressed by theoretical arguments as well as by upanishadic quotation. They are associated with a world-view in which the external world is reduced to the ‘oscillation’ of the mind (citta-spandana).

In some places the Self is represented as imagining the individual soul, who then proceeds to imagine his own private worlds, a waking-world which recurs, and dream-worlds which differ from the waking-world and from each other.

From the waking standpoint, it is clear that dreams are illusory. But for their part, the dream-worlds exhibit all the characteristics of the waking-world, including a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland time-space-causation framework of their own.

More important still, from Śańkara’s point of view, is the fact that they contain a distinction between physical and mental (external and internal) and between real and unreal. This parallel between the (admittedly) false dreaming-worlds and the waking-world is used to bring home to the mind the falsity of the latter. Both worlds are the mere play of false ideas consequent upon ignorance of the true nature of the Self.

And a critique of the whole conception of causality is developed, aimed partly at refuting the natural and common conviction that dream-experience is an illusory ‘effect’ arising from waking-experience conceived as a real cause. In these passages there is a tendency to emphasize the irrational and spontaneous character of the experiences of both the dream and the waking states.

Outside the above-mentioned two works, Śańkara rarely if ever attacks the notion of causality, or establishes the irreality of waking-experience from the parallel with dream. He inherited this line of teaching from Gaudapāda, who was himself largely indebted for it to Mahāyāna Buddhist teaching. If Sankara made little use of it outside his commentary on Gaudapāda’s Kārikās, it may be that he considered it suitable only for a particular kind of pupil. 

It has been argued that he was initiated into Advaita as a pupil of a Teacher of Gaudapāda’s line and that he later gradually emancipated himself from the acosmic and subjectivist views of Gaudapāda under the influence of other traditional Vedanta teaching.

Whatever be the truth here, he and his great pupil Sureśvara express a reverence for Gaudapāda which they nowhere retract, so that the texts in which he expresses the kind of views we more specifically associate with Gaudapāda deserve to be represented.

~Alston, Creation, p.244

Dewpoint North

Jesus Christ and the Ides of July are now playing. I got the Steely Dan T-shirt and we’re outrageous. So let’s get funky. The future is prologue to the past.

Today is the hottest day in New England June. Hotter than Emily Dickinson with a dewpoint north of Robert Frost. Somewhere on a beach, someone has been changing a flat tire.

Look, I'm not younger than that now. Now is timeless. I Am That. Into the Mystic is Mandukya and Karika. California dreaming is becoming a reality.

Being Back to the Future

In this reflexive universe, there are stages and substages. Both number seven.

The seventh substage of any given stage in this reflexive universe of evolutionary self-awareness requires the first substage of the next stage to be pre-existent.

This evolutionary universe is not propelled forward by its past but is being beckoned back by the future.

Not a Belief System

Not only is truth beyond words, words have never existed in truth. With great imagination comes a world of words.

Like a dream, it’s not real. That it feels real is an attribute of dreaming. Reality, like deep sleep, doesn’t feel a thing.

It's like the classic trope of snake and rope. Just because the snake appears to be real doesn’t mean it is. Perception is the very stuff of dreams.

Even these observations are things perceived and aren’t to be believed. Nonduality is not a belief system but a method for the practice of disbelieving.

Creation myths are made to be destroyed. Theories explaining all phenomena are constructed to be deconstructed. Worshiping the gods is prologue to seeing through them.

Shankara on Creation Texts

The texts of the Upanishads that are most obviously of benefit to man are those which teach him that he is identical with the Absolute, for the knowledge accruing from them is said to result in the 'fruit' of 'immediate intuition of truth' and 'immortality' and 'eternal freedom from fear'.

Such knowledge is not only 'fruitful' but final and uncontradictable. Once it is gained, it is inconceivable that there either should or could be any further knowledge to add to it, further it, modify it or correct it. 

This cannot be said of the knowledge accruing from the creation-texts, which consequently carry less authority when they conflict with the great metaphysical teachings about the true nature of man as one with homogeneous Consciousness, the sole existent reality.

Further, if the creation-texts had been relating anything true, they would not have disagreed amongst themselves as to the details of creation. The texts that teach that the creation of the world took place on the analogy of some worldly kind of creation, such as the production of pots of showing that effects are non-different from their material cause.

And there is the further principle of exegesis that all the texts can be reconciled and combined into a single view.

According to this principle, the supreme texts of the Upanishads like 'That thou art', which affirm the identity of the individual soul with the Absolute, may be taken as fundamental, while all the rest of the texts of the Veda can be taken as auxiliaries to understanding these.

Some parts of the accounts of creation are plainly mythological, as when 'speech' is spoken of as 'desiring food' or 'food' is spoken of as 'running away'. These again should not be taken as statements of fact but as indirect aids to certain phases of the process of coming to understand the great truth that the individual soul is none other than the supreme Self

In the same way, the doctrine that, having created the world, the Absolute 'entered' it as the principle of life and consciousness is not to be taken as a statement of historical fact, but as a pictorial representation of the truth that the Absolute is already manifest in the world-appearance, in the sense that it is the only reality in it.

Both the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the ‘entry’ of the Absolute into its own creation have to be viewed in a wider context and seen as part of the process of gradually conveying to the pupil a notion of his own true nature by the method of false attribution and subsequent denial.

Alston, Creation, p.231

On Summer 2025

For some the summer solstice is midsummer. The summer solstice is beginning of the summer for some others. Maybe our highest daily average temperature floats your boat. I know it’s summer when this tidal Merrimack turns on its air conditioning originating from that Gulf of Maine.

Self-awareness in the Livelong June

Self-awareness is the nature of awareness. The bliss of self-awareness is the nature of brahman. Awareness to self-awareness is this dreamlike appearance of space-time in changeless satcitananda. Because reality is indescribable, paradox is one way to describe it.

As pure consciousness is the ground of reality, god is the floor of the people. All players in this world need a stage to act their part upon. Everyone has a god whether they believe in it or not. The hardest part of deconstructing the personal is unraveling its gods.

Your god may be political, scientific, materialistic, all three or more. Your god may be the one true god and no other god is true for you. Self-awareness has always been my greatest god. I might not have known it but self-awareness has been telling me I am the livelong June.

Shankara on Bliss

Śańkara was a good deal less exuberant than his later followers came to be in his references to the Absolute or the Self as bliss.

This may be illustrated from the case of the famous work called 'The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom', attributed to him but now known to have been composed centuries after his death by some member of his school.

Of the 580 verses of the 'Crest-Jewel' almost a tenth refer in one way or another to the topic of bliss, whereas in Śańkara's one independent work of guaranteed authenticity, the Upadeśa Sahasrī, there is only one appearance of the term bliss (ānanda), and the Absolute is regularly described as 'Being-and-Consciousness-only (sac-cin-mātra)' and not according to the later formula 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sac-cid-ānanda)'.

Nevertheless, the Upanishads do speak of the Absolute as bliss, and this note is not absent from Śańkara's genuine texts:

-the bliss of the Absolute available in dreamless sleep when nescience is absent

-under the influence of nescience, the bliss of the Absolute manifests in fragmentary and temporary form as worldly joy

-the bliss in the 'ether of the heart' enjoyed by those who realize the true nature of the Self

-the bliss of the Self is permanent, and, unlike that derived from objects, not dependent on activity

-the bliss of the Self is not anything experienced like an object

~Alston, Absolute, p.260

Gaudapada Says

Gaudapada says both the dreamless state and both dream states are appearing in the fourth.

Even the midnight of a moonless night is appearing in that alpine crystal lake.

It goes without saying if the mind is appearing in consciousness only, I cannot be the mind.

God and Godhead

Every person has a god and every god has a godhead.

I Am is god singing to its godhead. Sing along with me.

In a self-reflexive universe, I Know I Am is the holy trinity.