Quote
yasmin
Hm.
Well so far the Anticult has not charged for us to go to a seminar to get his/her wisdom, (s)he has not promised to help alleviate suffering, and (s)he hasn't required me to give him/her my most valued possession to show how well I'm doing ...

jgf 75 suggested that "when participants walk into an intense workshop, of any sort there's a certain degree to which I believe they must be responsible for knowing they can handle it"

Generally in therapy, I believe that responsibility lies more on the practitioner, than the client. And I believe a therapist has to make sure the client is aware that the therapy may or may not help the client; it may make things better,and it may make things worse.

And therapists aren't allowed to accept gifts from their clients, or free labor.

Quote
corboy
The Anticult as performance artist--?

This person communicates just using typed out text. Performance artists do it live.

BK's stuff fits the performance artist label very much more accurately than what The Anticult is doing, which is merely via typing.

Also, The Anticult doesnt have a trade marked method that is being touted all over as ane equivalent to Buddhism (not true) nor to cognitive behavioral therapy (not true) , and isnt sending besotted and adoring disciples to pimp him or her to troubled friends.

Speaking for myself:

The Anticult has never gazed into my eyes.

He or her face is not being put all over cyberspace, nor in magazine ads nor on the dust covers of books.

Ive never run errands for TAC the way Janaki describes, or have I ever given TAC a foot massage.

'My Relationship With Katie'

[janakisstory.wordpress.com]

Nor have I ever done for The Anticult, what Janaki describes as 'Katie Care'.

'Resignation'

[janakisstory.wordpress.com]

Yasmin and Corboy have raised some great points re the misinformation coming from Jgf75.
I would say more, except I'm wiped out from a busy weekend.

Thanks you guys. And welcome, "thiswayout". :-)

This post by jgf75 needs to be looked at a bit closer, its very revealing. [forum.culteducation.com]

That jgf75 post was addressed here previously, and it is full of errors, with false information about hypnotherapy, and actually serves to expose an agenda.
[jgf75 picked up on the Mary Poppins image induction, written by Michael Katz]
[forum.culteducation.com]


The first question is, who might jgf75 be?
Its clearly someone who is doing some spin-doctoring for Byron Katie, as instead of dealing with the careful FACTS in the guruphiliac forum about the BK seminars, they try to take it out on a tangent.
Even though they put some criticism of BK in there, that is actually the best way to deal with criticism. For example, talk to a BK facilitator and criticize BK, what will they do? They will just do the Work on it, and then turn-it-around on YOU. They've been trained how to do that, even BK tried to do it with UG Krishnamurti when he called the BK Work a "gimmick".
But from looking at some of the posts by jgf75, and how they changed tactics after this post backfired, it does give some clues.
Its likely someone who markets the BK seminars for a living, or someone who gets a thrill out of getting his hands dirty dealing personally with the public...like Stephen Mitchell.
[Stephen Mitchell's email tactics, "weird and perverted"] [forum.culteducation.com]
[Feb 2008, manipulative email tactics] [forum.culteducation.com]

There is a telling phrase...about someone who is laughing all the way to the bank as they twist people around their little finger? Another whoops...who does that sound like? Freudian slip?
Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell, literally have a community of people literally twisted around their little finger, to the point where people are on their knees crying before BK in parking lots.

And using the "same techniques" on people? Which techniques? You mean the exact techniques that are being exposed in this thread, and that others like Byron Katie and Friends, are trying their hardest to conceal and pretend they don't exist? Talk about another freudian slip.


What is the motivation for posting here?
Making millions? Getting gifts? LGAT seminar fees? of course not.
Its called having a conscience.
[dishonorable and egregious abuse and misuse of these techniques]
[forum.culteducation.com]
You see, those who know about these methods, and happen to have a "conscience", happen to think using them all at once to hammer soccer moms for selfish purposes, is wrong, and people are getting hurt.
There are some who do criticize BK, but say its not about helping people, it just is what it is...well, that is more Byron Katie brainwashing, frankly. BK may say that anything goes, and there is no such thing as good or evil, but she is wrong there too. Its all part of her system of desensitizing people.
So what is the motivation for posting? Its called having a human conscience.
And the same knowledge can also apply to many other current anti-guru's as well.


Why would jgf75 go off-topic of the BK School seminars in that thread, and move into a personal attack? That is a deliberate tactic, targeted at current BK members, who might be wondering what is really going on, and are confused due to the complexity of the issues, and the fact they are in the middle of it.

For example, the idea that Byron Katie is like Mary Poppins on a rocket-bicycle, was written in detail by Michael Katz, who is her agent and co-writer. The specific language patterns he used are detailed here.
["was it Mary Poppins crossed with a Zen master?"] [forum.culteducation.com]
[Byron Katie, Mary Poppins, P.L Travers, Gurdjieff The Work] [forum.culteducation.com]
That is very revealing information, as it neutralizes what Michael Katz, and Stephen Mitchell try to do to people.
But they CANNOT deal with the hundreds of FACTS in this forum. Its impossible. If they tried, they would be worse off. So what can they do?
You do what is called a Straw-man, Ad-hominem method. That is you set someone up as saying things they did not say or do, then use that as an excuse to deflect away from the facts. They CANNOT deal with the hundreds of facts, so they make deliberate overgeneralizations, in hopes that those who have only read a small part of the posts, and are confused about BK, will follow the short-circuited mental distortion they have suggested.

They know most BK people have ZERO training in hypnotherapy, and how many are going to go and read some books about it, and read the entire thread, in detail? Most people just read a bit, and find it very confusing. Its complex stuff, and it takes some time and effort, to do the research and see how it works, and how it is used. So since they can't get into the specifics, they just try to short-circuit people's mental circuits with an overgeneralization.

By the way, as has been said many times, only a portion of what BK does in total, is related to these conversational hypnotherapy techniques of telling "strange stories". The rest are LGAT techniques, social influence methods, advanced sales methods, tricky contracts, and all the details in the threads. So even if some of the advanced hypnotherapy stuff is hard to understand right away, what about the rest of it? There is more than enough to show the reality of what is going on.
So again, that's why they would want to short-circuit that thinking process.

References:
This is one of the more amusing parts of this. There are literally 500x more references for the FACTs in this forum, than Byron Katie herself gives in ALL her books combined! She gives NOTHING. Has anyone EVER seen Byron Katie give a footnote or reference for ANYTHING? Of course not, she avoids that on purpose, very carefully.
Byron Katie tells the same uncheckable stories over and over, from an uncheckable past. Why doesn't jgf75 expose the facts about the past of Byron Katie? That would be far more interesting. There are hundreds of facts for people to research in this forum.


The stuff written about this forum, is just as false as the rest of it. This forum is not moderated by the posters. Talk about free will and voluntary? Contrary to what the BK people do, these types of forums are about real freedom of will, which comes only after full disclosure, and full information, not from secrecy, PR, covert influence, and deliberate falsehoods. People can trust their OWN thinking processes, and their own critical intelligence, when they do their research.


As far as the hypnotherapy comments, that is when it really goes off the rails. Why? They obviously did not contact actual Ericksonian hypnotherapists, as if they did, where is the analysis?
Its already been proven many times, where BK copied Erickson.
[Byron Katie directly copied the CACTUS metaphor used by Milton Erickson]
[forum.culteducation.com]
They were just trying to use that as a way to short-circuit people's thinking processes, about some very challenging, and complex material. It can take a long time to study and learn how hypnotherapy in the context of group persuasion works.
As said in this thread many many times, Byron Katie is not doing conventional hypnotherapy. She has taken bits and pieces, and put them together in her own style. But her process of telling Strange Stories, and stories within stories, with embedded commands, with metaphorical imagery for the unconscious, is based from the Ericksonian style of waking conversational hypnotherapy, which has been modified and is used in quite a number of LGAT's these days.

The reason they need to try and HIDE this, is that knowledge of it, wrecks the process.
Now that people can see the techniques being used by Michael Katz, and the methods being used by Stephen Mitchell, they will be more suspicious and skeptical.
They might say...oh...Mary Poppins...so you are trying to regress me to feel like a School-mate, and to trust BK even though she is a complete stranger, like you do in your other marketing? Oh..I see...you are trying to make an image in my mind of BK as a magical being from another dimension with supernatural powers, like Mary Poppins?
Once people can see the Tech at work, it BACKFIRES, badly.
[Mary Poppins pre-frame induction] [forum.culteducation.com]

Using the image of BK as a high-tech Mary Poppins was an error by Michael Katz, and Stephen Mitchell. Mary Poppins was created by P.L. Travers, who was one of the top people in the Gurdjieff movement. And Gurdjieff's method was called The Work. [forum.culteducation.com]
That is a fact. And that ain't no accident. .

So the bottom line is that those who are into BKI for a living, frankly, are not to be trusted at all. Also, many around the edges are totally indocrinated as well.
You have some very clever and skilled people in the BKI Org. They would be the first to embrace the question...is BK a con-woman? They can use the BK process to turn that around very fast on YOU, until you can't tell which way is up.

Each person has to use and trust their own mind, and their own thinking processes, and common sense, and critical intelligence, and spend time looking at the FACTS very carefully.
The Byron Katie system has to be set aside though first. BK made her system to be an internal mental Checkmate, you literally cannot get out of it from inside, when using her system. Its like mental quicksand filling a rabbit-hole, the more you wriggle, the deeper you go into it.
[The Work, in terms of the 4 Questions and a Turnaround, is a clever "gimmick"] [forum.culteducation.com]
But you can reach outside the system, and grab those trees beside the quicksand, and lift oneself out of the morass, get the muck cleaned off, and then think about everything as carefully as one can.
But don't let the BKI people throw you back down the rabbit-hole filled with quicksand! The trained BKI people are the worst people on earth to go to with questions, they will just confuse people more, they are experts at inducing confusion. Confusionists.

And one doesn't need to understand every detail of the more advanced parts of the BKI system, just look at what is really going on using everyday common sense, horse-sense, they used to call it. Bullshit detection. Byron Katie couldn't dupe a farmer, they know bullshit is real when they step in it.
One can study the deceptive marketing, the money trail, the abuses of power, study up on LGAT seminars, study sales methods, tricky contracts, etc.

As was stated by a person who went to a recent Byron Katie School...
[forum.culteducation.com]
"Just completed Byron Katie's 9 Day School (March '09). I am disappointed to report that the information on Rick Ross's site is accurate...and, if anything, understated."

The BKI team is very tricky, highly skilled, and very motivated in terms of business and manipulation. So one would be wise to exercise extreme caution.



IDEAS on how to KICK-OUT byron katie from your Mind-Soul-Life forever
[forum.culteducation.com]


[Warning about Stephen Mitchell's methods]
[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2009 11:46AM by The Anticult.

Could the Four Questions be a 'Yes Set?'

Or a sort of no set, designed to throw someone?

I would strongly advise interested persons to consider, for their own long term well being, to do some reading from non BKI sources, on a technique termed 'yes set'. This can be enough to induce a light trance, even when used on onself, sitting at a computer terminal.


Many persons report that they wish to do 'The Work' and 4 questions independently of the BK organization.

Many will say 'I dont want to throw the baby out with the bath water' and cling to using the Four Questions, and turn arounds. thinking they are saving money by avoiding further participation in organizated 9 day programs.

Some congratulate themselves they paid nothing by borrowing BK material from the local library.

But...what if without realizing it, these well intentioned persons are still being affected by the Four Questions--because this is a Yes Set?--a technique used by high pressure marketers to close a sale?

If you are self applying a yes set through at home use of Four Questions, this could impair your critical thinking capacities and then blunt your insight, leaving you unable to protect yourself from self blame caused by the Turn around.

Even if you think you are using the beloved Four Questions independently, you may putting yourself to sleep, rather than waking up.

Buddhist practice is not self induced trance induction.

There is a covert influence technique used by pressure sales people and that can be reportedly used in trance induction, that is termed 'yes set'.

If you get someone to say yes, yes yes, it gets them into a mental groove/light trance and makes it hard to say no.

It is a technique that has some utility in the hands of an ethical therapist, but has been debased into a method used to do high pressure covert sales techniques.


Milton Erickson used Yes Set--here is a Google search.

[www.google.com]

Here are a bunch of articles on persuasion. Yes Set is mentioned among them.

[www.persuasion101.com]

Quote

You can also use lots of Truisms and it will give the illusion that you know an awful lot about something. (because you are constantly saying things they automatically agree with).

You can Presuppose that something is unique or scarce and thus use the SCARCITY principle. Also you can Presuppose that everybody else is doing it or buying it which takes care of the SOCIAL PROOF law. Creating good feelings in a person is like giving them a gift and the law of RECIPROCATION will make them more likely to give back by being easier to persuade for you. Lastly, the use of Truisms will build up the COMMITMENT factor as the more you use them the more the other person will be agreeing with you and commit to the fact that you ‘must’ be making sense (This is also known as the ‘YES,YES set’ in Sales which suggests that when people are in the habit of saying yes and committing their agreement to what your saying they are more likely to buy everything else you say afterwards).

Calibrating and asking the right questions can give you a distinct advantage when it comes to building a credible argument to influence people processing through the Central route. At the same time a good use of anchoring and using Embedded Commands can best work effectively with people processing through the Peripheral route. There is so much more that can be possible when you understand the Psychological and NLP perspectives on persuasion. I hope that I have given you at least a good taste of how you can further improve your own ‘gift of the gab’!!!!

Here are results of a Google search I did on Cialdini and Yes Set technique..

[www.google.com]




That four question stuff is not innocuous Many of these gurus and entrepreneur/euses use a form of yes set.

Google 'yes set' and see what you get.

A former TM person said that the 'checking' process used in Trancendental Meditation (very trancy stuff) fits the yes set pattern quite closely.

This stuff seems laughably trivial but if covertly used, it does an end run around our critical thinking.

A commitment is non binding if part of a normal relationship with no hidden agendas.

But getting someone to say "yeses" as part of a yes set is not ordinary girl pal bonding.

Girl pals do not use techniques that are used by high pressure salespersons.

Friendship, like 12 step meetings is supposed to be a Hustle Free Zone.

Anatomy of a Handshake

Read the following entries for March 25th.

[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2009 10:05PM by corboy.

Finally, here is an old trial lawyer's proverb:

1) If the facts support your case, argue from the facts.

2) If the facts are against you, argue from the rules of evidence.

3) If the facts and rules are against you---scream and pound the table.

a little follow-up to this post.
[analysis of a propaganda bomb] [forum.culteducation.com]

Byron Katie Backstory:
its also interesting to have brought up the concept of the Byron Katie backstory. Its very obvious to even a casual researcher, that basically the entire BK backstory, has been re-written many times, even in her earlier books, the Story is quite different. She studied A Course In Miracles, has copied Ken Keyes' material, attended many workshops and obviously copied many LGAT seminar tricks, it goes on and on, and is detailed in the thread.
There will be a time when some newspaper, if any still exist, will go and get some pro's to check-out what the real BK backstory is. Then we'll see the old standby..."I don't recall...I was bitten by a cockroach and my memories were erased...I have amnesia". Too bad they can't use that one in Congress.


Persuasion:
its also fascinating they would use the image...of people being twisted around someone's little finger. That has to be some type of projective Freudian slip, as that is exactly what Byron Katie and her peeps have done with a rather large group of people.
Even the words "twisted" and "little finger" are almost perfectly descriptive. Maximum power with minimal effort, with her "little finger" she can direct what is going on with her inner circle. That is very accurate.

But is this thread about that kind of persuasion? No, of course not. Its just plain-text on a screen, there is no voice, no videos, no seminars. So why is it effective?
Because critical thinking is extremely powerful. Critical thinking is a version of the scientific method, and that is probably the most powerful thing on earth, when applied systematically. Its far more powerful than LGAT seminar tricks, for example.
So even though these threads have been somewhat informal, what is driving the real change, is that its based on analysis of the facts, and that drives new information processing in the mind.

Critical thinking is the most powerful way to combat these types of covert deep persuasion techniques. And the people who run the seminars and cultic groups know this, which is why their first goal is AWAYS to try and suppress or eliminate your critical thinking abilities, by making them seem bad or wrong.
When in fact, using critical intelligence, which stems from the scientific method, is the most powerful form of thinking ever devised. Critical thinking doesn't create unhappiness, quite the opposite, it can lead to personal liberation, as its based on adjusting one's thinking as accurately as possible to objective reality, which leads to less frustration and more effectiveness and enjoyment in life.

That is why the entire Byron Katie house of cards comes crumbling down, even with the basic application of critical intelligence, based on the scientific method.

Carl Sagan created the Baloney Detection-Kit, as a way for regular people to apply aspects of the scientific method to things in their everyday world.
If one runs Byron Katie through the baloney detection-kit, what happens?
The Byron Katie people literally fail on every single aspect, the house of cards collapses, and there is nothing left. Like in the Wizard of Oz, a pail of cold water of reality dissolves and evaporates the entire Byron Katie illusion.


Carl Sagan's
Baloney Detection Kit
[www.xenu.net]

- tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments? Byron Katie fails on every one.
- Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind"? BK has never done it.
- Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric: BK and their people use every one in the book!!

+ Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
+ Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
+ Argument from "authority".
+ Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
+ Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
+ Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
+ Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"

+ Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
+ Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).

+ Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
+ Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
+Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
+ Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
+ Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
+ Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
+ Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.

+ Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
+ Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
+ Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
+ Confusion of correlation and causation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2009 03:40AM by The Anticult.

Yes, the BK system is related to a Yes-Set, in terms of Leading Questions with embedded presuppositions, and convincing people to follow the BK questions. The YES is in agreeing to follow the questions.

There are even LGAT guru's who get their audience to literally shout YES!, over and over, all day long.
They start small...
Are you feeling good? YES! Are you ready to rock? YES! Are you ready to Transform? YES! (x1000)
Then 9 days later...
...are your ready to buy ALL my products? YES! Are you ready to sign the contract NOW for my Advanced School? YES! YES! (then you sign right there, and can't get out of it).
It becomes automatic, if you say or think YES 10,000 times in 9 days.

But the Yes Set starts by getting a person to make a TINY agreement with the seminar leader. (Werner Erhard knew this from sales, and Scientology does the exact same thing).
The BK system starts with BK "inviting" people to agree to "try" the BK Questions which are "free".
You try to make the first YES as easy as possible, small, free, tiny, then you build it up.
Then later, after its built up for DAYS 16 hrs a day, you ask them for their most valued possession, and they say YES. You ask them for EVERYTHING, and they say YES.
But you have to start small, and build it up, one tiny YES at a time. There will be hundreds/thousands of small YES's before you hit the big Yes's.

That is why, if one uses critical thinking, you can't even get past the first BK question..
Q- Is it true?
A - uh, Dr. Katie...that is a misleading question with a false presuppostion. Nothing is 100% "true" but on a range of accuracy. So a better question is, how accurate is it?

Q. Is that true?
A. Yes, it is quite accurate.

Q. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
A. I already said its NOT absolutely true, but its quite accurate, maybe 95-99%.

Q. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
A. I feel great, accurate knowledge is wonderful

Q. Who would you be without the thought?
A. Without "how accurate is it"? You would get lost in delusion, lost in new age fantasies, primitive superstitions. Hey, you could even get lured into a white-collar cult and hand over your money to some slick guru! It happens you know.

Q. Turnaround:
A. I am not going to engage in polarized thinking, that is a cognitive distortion. See question #1..."how accurate is it"? Turnarounds are a damaging gimmick.

Q. uh uh uh..can I use your phone?
A. no, you may not use my phone to call your BK "coach" for advice. Your 4 Questions are silly...

...then dismissively wave your hand in the air like UG Krishnamurti did to Byron Katie, and say..."politicians...gimmicks", and go out for some non-organic protein, and a coffee.


If a person applies critical thinking to the Byron Katie Question system, it falls apart.
JUST SAY NO...to the Yes-Set.

also, when studying LGAT videos and recordings, everytime they try to get you to think YES, literally say NO out loud. It blocks most of the leading questions and programming.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2009 04:36AM by The Anticult.

Check this out: [www.globalone.tv]

Is this one of those numerous hypnotherapy "experts" consulted...who happen to sell the Byron Katie Work?
note, she mispells the work Erickson, from Ericksonian hypnotherapy, and also includes age regression.

Perhaps its time to make a masterlist, of all the hypnotherapists who also sell the BK Work, embedded and enmeshed with indirect/direct conversational hypnotherapy.

[www.hypnoticsupport.com]
Paige Tuhey, Advanced Hypnotherapist and Graduate of The School for The Work of Byron Katie.
"I include a range of proven hypnotic suggestions and positive imagery, as well as a combination of powerful direct (traditional) and indirect (Ericsonian) hypnotic techniques and many times include Gestalt techniques, age regression and inquiry."

Quote
The Anticult
Q. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
A. I feel great, accurate knowledge is wonderful

Ha ha!

These non-duality people believe all thoughts are untrue.

"And that is that all thoughts are untrue. Even the ones that have a semblance of truth, such as 2+2=4, are still not true. Oh, sure, 2+2=4 is useful, but even a “law” of nature could change tomorrow." [tomstine.com]

Tomorrow 2 + 2 might equal 5. Is that really true?

Quote
Jay Cruise
These non-duality people believe all thoughts are untrue.

Even just on the philosophical level, outside of all the massive persuasion tech, its amazing the basic thinking errors they make.

For believing that "all thoughts are untrue"...is a meaningless statement.
As "all thoughts are untrue" is a thought, so its not true.
Its the liar paradox. [www.iep.utm.edu]

Whoever coined the term Non-dual, must have done it as a sarcastic joke, and no one caught on. Non-dual is a negation of dual.
So its like saying non-cold, or non-up.
Its a parody. Its not even a single word, its a compound word, which adds to the joke.
It used to be called Oneness, or Monism.
It comes from the Advaita idea, but who coined and popularized the western term Nondualism?


Our minds are full of BELIEFS, and its impossible and absurd to "believe" all thoughts are untrue. Madness. Nothing is 100% certain, nothing is 100% uncertain.
Why not just try to have as accurate beliefs as possible?

Why would some people walk down these blind alleyways to nowhere?
and why are so many cultish groups, using the Nonduality ideas as a mechanism to push people off balance? Someone must have figured out this was a good approach to take.
Byron Katie was doing it bigtime back in her earlier book Losing The Moon.

The full-text Oxford English Dictionary...does NOT even list the word non-duality, or its variants.
Dualism is a well-known concept in philosophy of course.

Who thought this word up, from the eastern translation?
Britannica has some info using the word nondual, in the context of Hinduism. But even their dictionary doesn't define the word nondual.
Even its origins in the Sanskrit appear dubious, especially in the translation.

Its like a mind-virus. Its being sold like McBurgers. I think the culty new agey gurus like the term Nonduality, as its essentially a meaningless self-contradictory term that is a negation, which helps confuse people. And confusion is the road to endless students.

Maybe next will be Tridualism. Monodualism. Non-oneness.




__________________________
Advaita
Encyclopædia Britannica Article

(Sanskrit: “Nondualism,” or “Monism”), most influential of the schools of Vedanta, an orthodox philosophy of India. While its followers find its main tenets already fully expressed in the Upanisads and systematized by the Vedanta-sutras, it has its historical beginning with the 7th-century thinker Gaudapada, author of the Mandukya-karika, a commentary in verse form on the late Mandukya Upanisad.

Gaudapada builds further on the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy of Sunyava-da (“Emptiness”). He argues that there is no duality; the mind, awake or dreaming, moves through maya (“illusion”); and only nonduality (advaita) is the final truth. This truth is concealed by the ignorance of illusion. There is no becoming, either of a thing by itself or of a thing out of some other thing. There is ultimately no individual self or soul (jiva), only the atman (all-soul), in which individuals may be temporarily delineated just as the space in a jar delineates a part of main space: when the jar is broken, the individual space becomes once more part of the main space.

The medieval Indian philosopher Sankara, or Sankaracarya (Master Sankara, c. 700–750), builds further on Gaudapada's foundation, principally in his commentary on the Vedanta-sutras, the Sari-raka-mimamsa-bhasya (“Commentary on the Study of the Self ”). Sankara in his philosophy does not start from the empirical world with logical analysis but, rather, directly from the absolute (Brahman). If interpreted correctly, he argues, the Upanisads teach the nature of Brahman. In making this argument, he develops a complete epistemology to account for the human error in taking the phenomenal world for real. Fundamental for Sankara is the tenet that the Brahman is real and the world is unreal. Any change, duality, or plurality is an illusion. The self is nothing but Brahman. Insight into this identity results in spiritual release. Brahman is outside time, space, and causality, which are simply forms of empirical experience. No distinction in Brahman or from Brahman is possible.

Sankara points to scriptural texts, either stating identity (“Thou art that”) or denying difference (“There is no duality here”), as declaring the true meaning of a Brahman without qualities (nirguna). Other texts that ascribe qualities (saguna) to Brahman refer not to the true nature of Brahman but to its personality as God (Isvara).

Human perception of the unitary and infinite Brahman as the plural and infinite is due to human beings' innate habit of superimposition (adhyasa), by which a thou is ascribed to the I (I am tired; I am happy; I am perceiving). The habit stems from human ignorance (ajñana, avidya), which can be avoided only by the realization of the identity of Brahman. Nevertheless, the empirical world is not totally unreal, for it is a misapprehension of the real Brahman. A rope is mistaken for a snake; there is only a rope and no snake, but, as long as it is thought of as a snake, it is one.

Sankara had many followers who continued and elaborated his work, notably the 9th-century philosopher Vacaspati Misra. The Advaita literature is extremely extensive, and its influence is still felt in modern Hindu thought.
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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2009 06:43PM by The Anticult.