[Advaita-l] Adi Sankara condemns Jagat Nimitta Karana Vada of Ananda Teertha

[Ramesh Krishnamurthy]

On 20 June 2012 02:25, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:
<<What is the official Advaita position on other religions and vedic
traditions which believe the ultimate goal is eternal life with God?
Many devotees across traditions only aspire for a blissful eternal
life. Do they get it like getting reborn after mahapralaya?>>

Response:

I am not sure what is meant by an "official" advaita position. When
one interacts with various AchArya-s in the saMpradAya or studies the
texts of the saMpradAya, one finds substantial internal variation
within the tradition. By and large, these are put down to
adhikArI-bheda or prakriyA-bheda. But there are some key points on
which everyone agrees, such as the non-duality of the Atman, the
primacy of j~nAna (j~nAna alone being the means to mokSha), one's
nityamukta status, etc. So when it comes to the central issues of
Atman, mokSha and mokShopAya, there is complete agreement.

On the mukti/mokSha concepts advocated by other traditions, it is
obvious that they would be regarded as relative "achievements" only
and not mukti in the fullest sense, which can come from advaita j~nAna
alone. However, some traditions are seen as being closer to advaita
than others. In general, the sAMkhya/yoga schools are well respected
by advaita AchArya-s, and considered to be the closest to advaita
itself. On traditions which advocate some kind of "eternal life" with
the divine or some kind of heavenly after-life, my observation is that
most advaita AchArya-s look upon them with some level of amusement and
don't take them seriously as philosophies. Poking fun at such
traditions is quite common. Of course it is all done light-heartedly
with a view to generating better understanding among students.