advaita

 part-3

The second set of Hindu society is the one that follows philosophical schools and spiritualism. Unlike the Ritualist Hindus, this segment of Hindu society places a higher value on cognition above ritualistic practice. For them, the text is valued for its meaning and content than for its rendition value. They attributed a higher value to the meaning of possessing and experiencing worldly possessions than actual possessions. In the process, while ritualists pray to their God for material benefits and favours, the Philosophical and spiritual Hindu, uses logic, reason and analysis to gain a meta-cognition of reality. They assume value as a cognition that is independent of reality. In simple terms, they argue, the written words coming out of a pencil have nothing to do with the pencil, it emanates from the individual mind that using the pencil. So, they follow the path of searching for the author of the text than stopping at the pencil. In other words, unlike the first category of worshippers who worship God in the visible world, the second category believed that the visible world is only a story written by God and seen by us as the visible and tactile material world. As an author, the actual God lies beyond them. To unravel this God requires human effort with an approach of logical and analytical reasoning of the text to understand the material world, and thereby the discovery of the God, who wrote that story of the visible and tactile world.

They argued

-God doesn't exist in the visible and physical world. Like in the case of a story, the author doesn't exist in the story. The author exists outside.

-So, one set of schools of thought, for instance, Advaitis argued that there is no point in searching for God in the material world as it doesn't reside in it.

-Hence, worshipping in the material world through prayers to a non-existing God in there has no meaning.

-Like in the case of written story, the author manifests in the text through their construct of language, grammar and methods, God manifest in the world through its order of construct than the world itself

-So, instead of praying, one should study the grammar and structure of the world to discover God.

-It is an indirect method by the application of knowledge-logical analysis.

-If one makes any mistake in that logical analysis, one would also make a mistake in his understanding. So, the parameters of true knowledge are important. In other words, not only knowledge is important, but it also has to be uncorrupted knowledge by its means and methods.

-So, they stipulated a strict regime of education to inculcate that uncorrupted knowledge.

-Further, they argued, unlike the worshipping community assumes, there are no separate Gods that exist for one purpose or the other. As in the case of stories, one author alone can write many stories. So, there is only one God who exists as the author of many constructs of this universe.

-Since this Author God is single, there can not be a comparison in terms of qualifying traits, habits or performance for that God. So, we can not attribute our comparable qualifications of traits and habits of performance to that single entity. It has to be un-qualifiable by our standards of the benchmark. As far as we are concerned, it has to be nirguna.

-Also, like in the case of writing, where the story doesn't exist in the pencil, it is an illusion to believe the drama of life is coming from the materiality of this world. There is an author behind it and a mind.

In totality, Advaita Vedantic completely rejects the first category of Hindu society, their practice, culture and their Gods.