Kumar: Hi, James.
I read your How to Attain Enlightenment and The Essence of Enlightenment and see a lot of your YouTube videos about enlightenment. You say that enlightenment is knowledge, not experience, but this knowledge does not come from the study of Vedanta. Vedanta is very theoretical and is not practical. I do not find Brahman/atman mentioned. Vedanta only talks about atman but here no practical method/way experience atman or Brahman. Buddha, Krishna, Ramana – they are actually realized and experience Brahman/atman. They did not just read Vedanta and say, “I am enlightened.” Can you tell me what difference [there is] between Buddha, Krishna and me? This enlightenment master teaching [and] Vedantic enlightenment [are] very different. Please understand my doubt; here I do not say Vedanta is wrong. But it’s not working. Please answer me as soon as possible. I wait for your reply.
James: Hi, Kumar.
Vedanta is not experiential, because you are the Self already. The only thing you experience is your Self. The Self is the light of awareness. Any enlightenment that begins will end. So there is an ignorance problem, not an experience problem. Vedanta is not a theory that needs to be put into practice. What can you do to experience your Self? Vedanta is a means of knowledge that removes ignorance of the Self. It is like the eyes. If your eyes are closed, you don’t see the tree in front of you. If you open them, you see the tree. Once you have seen the tree, you don’t have to keep looking at it over and over so you can know what it is. So your eyes are no longer necessary. Vedanta is no longer necessary when you know who you are. They can look at other things. You should reread the second chapter of The Essence of Enlightenment or How to Attain Enlightenment again because you missed the point. That chapter exposes the fallacies in the theory-and-practice argument about Vedanta.
Brahman and atma are names for your Self, pure awareness. In Sanskrit they are synonyms for chaitanya, which means consciousness, or awareness. Brahman and atman are the same. Shankara says, “Jivo brahmaiva na parah.” It means the consciousness appearing as a limited jiva (jivatma) is non-different from Brahman, the consciousness in everything. There is only one existence/consciousness so everyone is it and you are experiencing it all the time. The Upanishads say that there is only consciousness/existence. You can’t get what you already have by doing something. You can only appreciate the fact that you have it.
So you are no different from Buddha, etc.
