Is anyone else here following an Advaita path?

[GliderGuider]

After a lifetime as a complete materialist/rationalist, I've spent a couple of years of trying to figure out my spiritual direction. In the process I've investigated a lot of things that didn't completely agree with me. I seem to be allergic to both devotional spirituality (not surprising given my atheist past) and a lot of the beliefs that make up the New Age movement (though Seth's cosmology resonates with me quite strongly).

I've recently been introduced to Advaita and the non-dualist path of pure consciousness, and it feels like coming home. It doesn't appear to ask anything I can't give, and many of the ideas I've played with in the past, especially Zen teachings, are coming into focus.

I ran into a nice quote from the nondualist sage Nisargadatta Maharaj today:

“Sometimes I feel I am everything, I call that Love. Sometimes I feel I am nothing, I call that Wisdom. Between Love and Wisdom my life continuously flows.”

[Naturyl]

1. Yeah, I'm into this stuff.

Have been for quite a while. Taoism, Zen, and Advaita in particular.

[Viva_Daddy]

2. I, too found a home with Advaita after being religious

I prefer "knowing" to "believing". After all, if I know a thing to be true, I don't have to believe it. There are yahoo groups dedicated to Advaita and more and more sites and blogs are coming out everyday. Just don't be a follower. Read, enjoy, meditate or whatever. There is nowhere to go with this "path" for it is all now/here and no one to go anywhere.

[Viva_Daddy]

3. I think the reason Advaita has so few "followers" is that...

there are no "scriptures" one can point to and so no "proof-texts" or "dogma" to dispute about it. This does not, however, prevent people from disputing various ideas about what Advaita or "non-dual" means. Humans love to dispute and discuss and language allows for all that. Language, however, cannot "explain" or even correctly discuss non-duality, for language is inherently dualistic. That is the great dilemma Advaita advocates face when trying to discuss it.

[Dover]

4. So true. We can 'know', embody, feel and experience, and there are various forms of expression

which can approximate and/or channel this experience like art, poetry, music, symbols and parables. But the intellect can only penetrate the surface and language objectifies, separating subject and object rather than experiencing their oneness. I haven't studied Advaita but my own experiences have led me to seek out examples that might help to further illuminate and navigate this non-dualism path. In fact I was thrilled to discover teachings on non-dualism because I recognized my own experiences in it. So, in that sense, my intellect was pleased to have a name for it and relatable stories that acted as signs letting me know I was on this well trodden path. Just knowing others have passed this way has helped tremendously because it's very difficult, at least at first, to know how to 'speak' non-dualism in the dualistic world. I have great difficulty now expressing myself with a dualistic language. That's where I am on this path right now and I feel like it has led to many misunderstandings with others or I simply retreat into silence.

I'm glad to learn about Advaita. Thanks to GG for this post/thread.