Recently, there was a question on Reddit. I’m paraphrasing here for readability.
Advaita Vedanta is the most complete and advanced school of philosophy. It answers all the important questions of life – the meaning of life, why anything exists at all, what is the Self, what is God, where did it all come from, all the deep, metaphysical questions of life. Why don’t all Hindus follow this philosophy? Why do they waste their time worshipping deities?
Question from Reddit
My answer is reproduced with some modifications below:
- A personal God is as real as the ego. As long as the ego exists, it is far better to surrender to God. Undoubtedly, religions have tried to prey on the desperate by twisting that surrender for the benefit of the clergy. But that’s a human problem, not a problem with the divine.
- A Deity (personal God) is not a projection of the ego. Deities are cosmic forces and they very much have a relative reality outside your ego. Proof for that is the fact that Deities continue to exist after our (ego’s) death. At the highest level, of course, everything is Brahman. But then, there are no discussions to be had at that level either.
- By being dogmatic in this way, we are essentially making Advaita a one-size fits all and akin to a religion. This kind of dogmatism is how religions get perverted from a way to have direct experience of God to the only way.
- Even Advaita is only an approximation of reality. Why? Because it’s expressed in words. The infinite can never be expressed by the finitude of words. Only direct experience matters in the end, not ideas or philosophies
- In Advaita, everything is consciousness. But, there could be other ideas that can lead someone to have direct experience of oneness. If I see everything as Beauty, that is it’s own kind of Advaita bhava. For such a person, everything in the world is beautiful and derived from that one singular principle of Beauty. Similarly with other principles like Time etc. As an aside, the way of Beauty is the path of Tripura Sundari also called Sri Vidya.
- Ultimately, the goal of philosophy and religion is true freedom and lasting happiness. Whichever belief system gets an individual to that place is just fine in my book.