ABSTRACT

Advaita is a school of Indian thought that commanded much intellectual attention in the centuries following Sankara, an evolution that has been well documented elsewhere. This chapter considers the epistemology of religious experience particularly as it pertains to classical Advaita and the Advaita of the twentieth-century Tamil saint, Ramana Maharsi. It examines the reflections on religious experience found in Sankara’s two immediate disciples, Suresvara and Padmapada and a later Advaita text, the Vivekacudamani. In addition to Suresvara and Padmapada, the chapter examines the Vivekacudamani, a text that traditionally has been ascribed to Sankara. The intellectual climate of Advaita following Sankara produced several budding schools of thought characterized by an increased focus on logic and argumentation. At the time of Suresvara, however, two principal schools of thought in Advaita began to develop, coalescing around decisions concerning the locus of ignorance, the number of selves afflicted with ignorance, and the structure of the relationship between the jiva and atman.