"You philosophers are a bunch of fools" said the theologian. "You are like blind men in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there!" "That may be true" replied the philosopher, "but you theologians would have found it."
Advaita is a school of Hindu philosophy. The greatest proponent of Advaita in Hindu history can be said to be the South Indian philosopher Sankara, who lived in the 8th century. Interestingly, Sankara had employed much the same method as Descartes did in the 18th century to argue that the mind is different from its body. However, the implications he drew from his argument were quite different to those of Descartes.
Descartes used the Leibniz identity princple to argue that Mind and Body (brain) are distinct entities, since at least one of them possesses a property that the other doesn't. That is, the body possesses the property that its existence can be doubted, but the Mind doesn't - Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). The very act of doubting the existence of a Mind is a mental act which necessarily implies the Mind's existence. Since the existence of the Mind is self-evident, but that of the body isn't, they must be distinct entities. Hence Cartesian dualism.
Sankara, on the other hand, had used this same argument, but went on to argue that since only the Mind's existence can be established without doubt, and not that of the body, one should rationally only consider the Mind as real. Properly, the body should be dismissed away as unsubstantiated (a product of illusion or Maya). In Sankara's terminology, the Mind is called the Atman which roughly translates to Self or Soul.
What's more, according to Sankara and his predecessors, notably Gaudapada (Sankara's teacher's teacher), this ontological argument can be dovetailed onto a theological argument as well. Here it is evident that Advatins do believe in a god, but not the usual god of traditional Western religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The Advaitin god is an inert impersonal entity which is of no use to humans whatsoever. Indeed, Advaita has often even been called crypto-buddhism. While Buddhism explicitly denies the existence of God and a Soul, Advaita is said to surreptitiously reduce the concepts of God and Soul to nothings by redefinitions. According to Advaita, if god is all-powerful and all-knowing, there is no reason whatsoever for him (it) to have created the world (Ref. Mandukya Karika: 9) Indeed, there is no possibility of god ever doing anything at all, for the very concept of action implies a desire to act and a desire implies a previously dissatisfied state, which is incompatible with an all-powerful god. God is by his very nature, forever satisfied of all his desires and thus could not have been persuaded to create the world. How then do Advaitin's account for the world that exists1? One way is to argue that the world doesn't really exist, and that it is illusory, which fits well with the earlier ontological argument. However, we are still left with our Mind, whose existence is indubitable. How do Advaitin's explain the existence of a Mind which is separate from god? Could an all-powerful god have been persuaded to create a Mind at all?
The Advaitin solution is to argue that god is actually identical with the Mind and that both have existed eternally. Thus the famous Hindu quote Tat vam asi or "You are that" meaning "The sentient being in you is identical with god" and the significance of the Sanskrit greeting Namaste, which means "I salute (the divine in) you". A further ontological argument that there is no evidence for the existence of multiple Minds is also made. Thus - Advaita, which in Sanskrit means non-dual. There is only one Mind in the universe; the existence of multiple Minds and non-Mind matter is an illusion caused by intrinsic ignorance about the nature of things in this Mind. There need be no cause for ignorance, Sankara argues, as it occurs naturally; only wisdom needs to be explained. Thus there is no need to posit any further entities to back this ontological thesis.
What about the moral implications of Advaita? If there is no supernatural being to punish us for being bad, are there no moral standards among Advaitins? On the contrary - You may find quite high moral standards among Advaitins and most of them would even be vegetarians. Morality is irrelevant to the Advaitin from the point of view of spiritual liberation, but is incumbent upon him or her from a karmic or material standpoint. Being moral is a social obligation and duty (dharma) that humans must adhere to2. I'd like to write an article about this issue too, but unfortunately, it has to wait a little while till I get some more free time.
But where does this leave us though? If there is no anthropomorphic supernatural being like the God of Western religions, how does one explain the gross inequalities of life and miseries in this world? How can there exist some power that will take pity upon us and save us? Is there hope of salvation at all for Advaitins in their doctrine?
Apparently there is. In Advaita, the natural state of the Mind is supposed to be one of bliss and tranquility[3], which is also expected naturally of an all-powerful god. Since the existence of ontological ignorance is supposed to cause Maya which precludes this state, Advaitin salvation lies in eradicating this ignorance which is supposed to restore the Mind to its natural state of bliss. In harsher terms, the burden of man's salvation does not lie in the hands of a merciful god, but with himself. Traditional Hinduism prescribes four alternative paths for eradicating this ignorance and breaking free from the karmic cycle (the paths of knowledge, devotion, duty and discipline), but Advaita recognises just one of these - the path of knowledge, or the cultivation of the skill of Advaitic ontological inquiry through regular introspection and meditation, until at last the true nature of the human mind, and its identity with the absolute becomes evident. At this point, which is the point of no-return, the Advaitin claims that the human has attained self-realisation. He or she is said to have merged with the divine in them and obtained moksha or spiritual liberation.
Notes
1 Of course, it is possible that the world has existed eternally alongside God as an epiphenomenon -- much the same way as light exists as a by-product of a candle flame. But this would mean that God had no power over the creation of the world. An implication of this standpoint could be that the world might as well be treated as a part of God, or in fact as identical to him, since neither is personal and God needs to be an all-encompassing entity. Essentially, this is no different from, say, redefining the universe to include a previously unknown galaxy. This is an alternative Advaitin position that has often been called Pantheistic. In any case, the specific Advaitin argument is that the world as apart from God is illusory, not the world, per se.
2 I once wrote an article which had an unusual derivation of Christian ethics from Advaitin premises. Here it is.
3 The Advaitin justification of this involves some ontological arguments about mental states and a hypothesis about a fundamental asymmetry between happiness and sadness.