Please feel free to post my comments below
on your website.
I’ve always been puzzled
by advaita-Vedanta proponents' strange silence about Adi
Shankara’s later life. Adi Shankara was the founder of the
“I am That” philosophy of advaita Vedanta.
This odd
silence, intentional or innocent, conveniently skirts
the deeper issue of the relationship between "advaita
Vedanta" and devotion. For many contemporary advaita
Vedanta teachers, no such relationship exists, nor has one ever
existed, for the Self, or Absolute, is phenomena-free, without
any association to devotion or energy (Kundalini-Shakti).
Reflecting (upon Shankara's later life), one
sees that advaita Vedanta proponents have
unfortunately hidden behind a curtain of denial, one
that readily dismisses the crucial topics of devotion and
energy in the state of Self-Realization. These
phenomena are caustically dismissed by advaita Vedanta
fundamentalists as extraneous and
incidental to 'full enlightenment."
Adi Shankara, in His later years, abandoned
His earlier, adolescent, "I am That" style of
enlightenment-talk. He sang love-hymns to the Divine
Mother. The Divine Mother became the total focus of His
attention. Consumed in adorational intensity for The Mother,
devotionally inebriated, Shankara manifested Devotional
Advaita Vedanta. He founded Divine Mother temples
throughout India.
My invitation to those who
think that advaita Vedanta is all there is to enlightenment
is to contemplate the entire life of Adi Shankara. How do
you reconcile His (later) behavior with a feeling-less,
energy-less enlightenment, one that is often justified in
the names of Ramana Maharishi and Nisargadatta Maharaj? Do you
think Adi Shankara perhaps became overly emotional
in His old age? I think not. Perhaps realization of the
Absolute merely, has never been, is, and never will be, the
real story of full awakening.
Only the simultaneous merger and
interpenetration of Divine Light (realization of the Self),
Divine Love (Devotional Intoxication) and energetic awakening in
the Kundalini-Shakti, describes entire spiritual
awakening.
Without its spouses of devotion and
energy, advaita Vedanta is just a convenient, pathetic
excuse not to go mad in God.
Here
you can listen to Sanskrit chanting and recitation with English
translations for some of the most powerful, holy, and ancient
spiritual scriptures from India, including Bhagavad Gita, Shiva
Sutras, Spanda Karikas, Bhaja Govindam, Pratyabhijanhrdayam, and
more.
This is a powerful documentary
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A Place to Start