Tag: Religion

Spiritual Path Simplified: A Guided Journey Through Advaita and Self-Realization


This post presents a distilled guide to understanding the spiritual journey through the lens of Advaita Vedanta. It brings together 12 essential writings that explain the nature of reality as name-and-form, the illusory role of the ego, and the discovery of inner happiness. Readers are encouraged to explore each linked article while keeping in mind three key insights: the world is an appearance, the ego is not the thinker-doer, and true happiness lies within. For deeper study, the book “Happiness & Consciousness” is recommended as a concise yet comprehensive companion.

When East and West Met Matter: Cārvāka and Epicurus on the Joy of Being Human


Long before science made “materialism” fashionable, two ancient traditions—India’s Cārvāka and Greece’s Epicureanism—dared to say that only the material world exists, that pleasure and reason, not gods or rituals, are the keys to human happiness. Yet, though they share a disbelief in the supernatural, they differ in spirit. Cārvāka celebrates life’s sensual immediacy; Epicurus refines pleasure into calm contentment. One urges us to taste life while it lasts; the other, to understand life so we can stop fearing it. Together, they remind us that meaning need not hide behind mysticism.

Where the Streets Have No Name: U2’s Anthem of Transcendence and Freedom


U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” is more than a rock song — it’s a cry for transcendence. Bono imagines a place where identity, class, and faith no longer divide us; where names and boundaries dissolve into something pure and infinite. Born from the streets of Belfast and the deserts of Ethiopia, it becomes a universal hymn for freedom — spiritual, emotional, and human. The music itself seems to climb toward heaven, mirroring our own yearning to break free from limitation and live in a world, or a state of being, where the streets truly have no name.

Spinoza and Shankara: When God Became the Universe and the Self Became God


What if the philosopher Spinoza and the sage Shankara had met?
Both, separated by continents and centuries, spoke of one ultimate Reality—an infinite, self-existent essence that manifests as all things. Spinoza called it God or Nature; Shankara called it Brahman. One reasoned his way to unity, the other realized it through inner awakening. In both visions, the world is not separate from the Divine—it is the Divine, appearing in countless forms. To see this is to be free, to live it is to be blissful. The rest—names, forms, selves—are but waves on the same ocean.

Why the Knower Cannot Be “Known”: Advaita Vedanta and the Hard Problem of Consciousness


The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad asks, “By what can one know the Knower?” Modern neuroscience and philosophy of mind echo the same puzzle in the “hard problem of consciousness.” Instruments and theories can track brain states and behavior, but never Awareness itself—the very light by which all knowing occurs. Advaita Vedānta makes the radical move: the Knower is not an object of study but the Self, svayam-prakāśa, self-luminous. To seek it as an object is like the eye trying to see itself. Liberation lies in abiding as That, not in endless inquiry.

What Has Shakespeare/Socrates to Do With Shankaracharya?


What has Shakespeare or Socrates to do with Shankaracharya? Nothing. Shakespeare glorifies the theater of Maya, making us weep and laugh at dream-characters. Socrates spins webs of thought, trapping us in endless dialogue. Both literature and philosophy grant solidity to illusion, deepening our bondage to samsara. Shankaracharya is not another voice in their marketplace; he is the firebrand who torches the whole bazaar. Brahma Satyam, Jagat Mithya—the world is false, Brahman alone is real. Advaita is not here to polish the dream but to shatter it. Wake up. The play is over.