/lit/ - Literature

>>19743292

>>19385802
>Gaslighting

>>18212690

>>17836905

>>17787021

Its central message is “Atman is Brahman.” You are God. You are infinite. You may think that you are finite, but you actually are infinite. Your biggest spiritual problem may be that you continue to think of yourself as finite, and that you must learn that you are, in fact, infinite. Once you have attained that realization, you are set free of the cycle of death and rebirths. This is not an easy lesson because, after all, you experience yourself as finite, and you definitely have attributes of finitude, such as being limited by time and space and not knowing that you are infinite.

Well, of course this is hard, a Vedantist might reply. After all, most of what you consider to be “you” still belongs to the illusory realm of maya, and so the illusory part of you certainly would not know that it is Brahman for the simple reason that it is not Brahman. For a moment, that seems to clear up the problem—but then, on further review— the whole scheme falls apart logically.

Let me rephrase the previous point just a little bit: the finite part of you does not know that it is infinite because the finite is not infinite; it is not even truly real. But then the question arises, who exactly it could be that could quite possibly be spending a lifetime in pursuit of the spiritual goal of knowing that he is infinite? We just ruled out the finite person because the finite is finite and will never be infinite. Neither can it be the infinite that is spending a lifetime learning that it is infinite because the infinite certainly cannot have forgotten that it is infinite and now be in the process of learning of its infinity through meditation and yoga. The infinite must know that it is infinite or it would not be infinite, so there is hardly any deep spiritual meaning in declaring that the infinite is infinite. Conversely, of course the finite can learn that the infinite is infinite, but there’s nothing particularly new and startling about such an assertion either. This scheme would be meaningful only on the condition that something finite can also be infinite, an idea that Vedanta itself rejects. In short, even though Vedantic Hinduism has had a strong appeal to people who are trying to find fulfillment in a non-Western religion, it ultimately suffers from a logical breakdown from which it cannot recover.

>>16953198
>>This book is an excellent anthology of essays on Christian Apologetics written by a group of young philosophers.