A New Way of Teaching................................................................
Again, I have been quiet for a while. Now that I
have read Shri Sadguru Siddharameshwar’s Master of
Self-Realization, I am aware both of the strengths and
weaknesses of the Advaita approach.
One strength is that it is a model that provides a
complete ontology and epistemology about the human
condition; focuses on what is important, which is Self-
Realization versus other kinds of spiritual knowledge or
of attaining siddhas, and provides the method of
following or abiding in the ‘I-sense’, the ‘I Am’.
However, one weakness of Advaita (and Zen) is that
it misses the human condition that still binds most
seekers, and tries to cast it off rather than use it to
energize awakening. Traditional Advaita, at best,
urges one to love one’s family and children, and to
concentrate on the ‘I-sense’ by following it downwards
into the depths of consciousness, to the deepest layer
of consciousness, Turiya, and then even surpass that to
utter silence, the Void of Voids.
The other even stronger weakness is that it is a
simple-to-understand model with enormous power to
gratify one’s thirst to know and to understand. One
reads Nisargadatta or Siddharameshwar, and
immediately the mind halts and one feels awe. It is so