This lecture was given on March 8, 2020, at the Vedanta Society of St. Louis by Swami Tattwamayananda. It gives a thorough analysis of Sri Ramakrishna’s Advaita experience from the perspectives of Advaita Vedanta.
-Advaita experience is timeless.
- It is just as ancient as an idea - a concept – as it is as an experience.
- The Rig Veda Samhita itself, which is the oldest and, incidentally, the most important spiritual document of Hindu tradition, states ékaṃ sád víprā bahudhâ vadanty (Rig Veda 1.164.46), “Truth is One, Sages call it by various names.”
-This idea was expounded and first developed into a compact philosophical metaphysical system by Shankaracharya (788 – 820 AD).
- When Totapuri landed in Dakshineswar, he found a young man with beaming face, which showed that he had not thought of anything other than God in his whole lifetime because what you think with your mind, that can be seen visibly on your face.

-Totapuri started instruction and found that it was difficult for Sri Ramakrishna to transcend the personal. Every time he tried to ascend beyond Dvaita, beyond the anthropomorphic, the personal, the sākāra, the Divine Mother Bhavatarani, Kali always appeared before him, blocking the way.

-Totapuri instructed Sri Ramakrishna to meditate between the two eyebrows and then Sri Ramakrishna “cut asunder,” he went beyond the personal and entered into Nirvikalpa Samadhi for 3 days.

-Totapuri exclaimed that the Advaitic experience that he himself had taken forty years to attain with great difficulty, Sri Ramakrishna had accomplished in three days.

-Normally, in traditional Advaitic instruction there is one upadeśa-vākya, one lakṣaṇa-vākya, one anusandhāna-vākya, and then there is the anubhūti-vākya. These are the four Mahāvākya taken from four different Vedic traditions and four different Upanishadic traditions.

-After getting Tat Tvam Asi Mahāvākya, a normal spiritual seeker, after practicing this maybe for several decades or maybe several lives may eventually reach the experience.

-When you reach the experience level, it is called Aham Brahmāsmi (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I.iv.10)

-Even that experience has two levels – (1) where you intellectually get convinced of the reality - I am that Brahman. (2) Then you transcend the statement, you reach the real experience where knower, known and knowledge merge into one.

-Sri Ramakrishna's never thought of anything other than God in his whole life. For normal people, the problem is how to think of God. For Sri Ramakrishna, the problem was how to think of anything other than God.

-His saṃskāra-s, vṛtti-s, vāsanā-s, saṅkalpa-s, all had been merged into one single sākāra-vṛtti as it is called in the Bhakti tradition. It is also in Vedanta. Before you reach Advaita Anubhūti, it is called brahma-ākāra-vṛtti. If such a person happens to listen to a great spiritual idea, immediately he captures it.

-A normal person who has not reached that level of spiritual evolution has to struggle hard to accommodate the God idea into billions of his other ideas which have already accumulated in the mental system. Whatever we do - karma, it becomes an impression, an attitude, a tendency – saṃskāra, which leads to more actions. This karma-saṃskāra-cakram goes on in cycles, different life cycles.

- śabda-aparokṣa-vāda holds the view that a highly evolved person, a person who has reached the highest level of spiritual fitness, if he listens, immediately it strikes him as an experience.

-The fundamental qualifications, for an Advaita-adhikārī are sādhana-catustaya – discerning wisdom, dispassion, the 6 virtues of self-restraint, and the desire for freedom - together with śravaṇa, manana, nididhyāsana - reading, listening, meditating, and contemplating on higher spiritual ideas.

-One example makes it clear. Suppose a child, a student has done extremely well in his fifth grade examination with a very high grade. When he goes and sits in the sixth grade the next year, the first few lessons that he has to study will be very easy for him. There's no distance at all.

-ābhāsa-vāda and pratibimba-vāda elaborated.

-The opposite view is called Prasaṅkhyāna-vāda. Even after getting the instruction Tat Tvam Asi, you can't immediately get experience according to this view. You have to work hard to purify the mind for reaching that level of spiritual fitness.

-Some parallels can be found in Western Christian mystical tradition in St. Theresa of Avila's autobiographical writings, St. Augustine’s life, or even Saint Francis of Assisi.

-In one of the unique books, small books belonging to the Russian Orthodox tradition - the Way of a Pilgrim - you find a simple Russian pilgrim who was able to grasp the essence of the Jesus Prayer after being taught by his teacher almost immediately. He, of course had to make long preparation in search of his teacher first.

-You can get an experience only if you travel the distance from an idea to the experience. It's a long distance. It is not just a concept or information or news that we get. It is a matter of real experience.

-The view of Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha explains seven stages of spiritual evolution. After the initial stages, there should be a natural tendency, an instinctive tendency to study scriptures, to meditate on scriptures, without a lot of effort.

-If you are surrounded by a large number of books, maybe in the airport or bus-stand or anywhere, your mind should automatically go to the Upanishad, the Gita or the Bible or anything that is likely to sublimate your mental tendencies. That kind of natural instinctive tendency - when we reach that level of spiritual evolution, then naturally slowly we evolve into the early stages of mukti, jivanmukti.

-The personal-impersonal contradictions exist only at the polemical dialectical level, not at the experience level.

-There is no question of going contrary to the personal. You are going beyond the personal. You are transcending the personal and once you have reached that transcendental-impersonal dimension, that Advaita Anubhūti, then you understand that the personal is also part of it.

-The highest unwavering devotion - avyabhicāriṇī bhakti is jñānam itself.