What is Advaita Vedanta (Nondualism) About?

Firstly, what does Vedantic knowledge do for you? It gives permanent freedom from sense limitation and incompleteness that has guided and motivated your every pursuit in life.

It provides clarity about every aspect of reality — the past, present and the future. It removes existential doubts haunting you since time immemorial.

It frees you from the constant need to know more, to improve, to be better. It permanently destroys ignorance about the truth of “I”, God, universe and before time-and-space was. 

These are the fruits of Vedantic knowledge, a proven and systematic methodology that reveals your limitless truth while living, and stops the cycle of rebirth.

Until then, one will continue to feel limited, anxious and uneasy admits the currents of life. Until then, one continues to chase an endless array of objects — mistakenly thinking it will quench the existential sense of lack.

While we can’t change life’s strong currents, we can certainly change our raft. It’s going to take some effort, but it’s well worth it.

Vedanta gives us an opportunity to trade our fickle rubber duck inflatable — for a mighty solid steam ship engine. Self-knowledge is just that. A solid transporter with an inbuilt roadmap.

Gain self-knowledge and you’ll never get lost again, nor will any rapids flip you over again.

Self-knowledge is not something magical or mystical, nor is it some high transcendental state or exalted status. It's simply knowledge of self (the true you which was never born and never dies). Until then, the definition of “I” is erroneous and distorted, intimately associated to the mortal body and limited mind.

Thus Self-knowledge and the inquiry put into it, enables one to conduct an investigation into what is. Thereby arriving to the absolute Truth – recognizing, “I am not different from the whole”.

When self-knowledge is firm you can weather any of life’s existential storms. Discovering both your oneness with everything and freedom from any form of limitation.

Technical Answer:

The word Advaita means “not two”. In other words, One without a second.

Just as there are many ornaments — their reality is nothing but the One gold. When ornament melts, what's lost is merely the name-form such as “bangle” or “chain”. What remains is the very same gold that was sustaining the bangle and chain throughout their momentary existence.

This example carries major implications when understanding that everything resolves in you (compared to the gold, the substance that makes up time, space, laws, gravity, flesh, thoughts, emotions, everything). This is of course taught by a Vedanta teacher and is beyond scope of this brief article meant to warm you up to getting into the Vedanta teachings.

The word “Vedanta” is a combination of two words ‘Veda’ and ‘anta’. It means the culmination of knowledge, which is moksha (enlightenment).

In other words, the culmination of knowledge in the Vedas (the source of non-duality) — is that it liberates you (Self) from a false sense of mortality and inadequacy.

Not a philosophy, nor a “school of thought”

Vedanta is not a philosophy nor a contention of a particular religion or a philosophical school of thought.

Vedanta is simply revealing the reality, which can't be contradicted. It's revealed, non-negatable truth.

Meaning Vedanta is not “my truth”. But truth that is always true in past, present and future.

Is enlightenment possible by merely reading books?

It may be possible but it is unlikely because truth, like anything else, is only good as one’s understanding of it — which 99% is contaminated by one's conditioning and what “I want truth to be”. Therefore the teaching tradition of Vedanta has evolved.

It requires a mature qualified mind seeking to know, and a teacher who understands the reality and who can skillfully wield the means of knowledge to the student.

Finally, to realize one's true identity, the process of discriminative enquiry (viveka) should be employed. Because “I” and body-mind are intimately mixed up due to ignorance carried since time immemorial.

Therefore a teacher carefully guides the qualified aspirant through the discriminative enquiry. This way, the aspirant gradually gains clarity of what-is and has been all along, but completely missed out.