The core claim
The world appears to contain a knower and a known, a self and what the self perceives. Advaita Vedānta holds that this duality is itself an appearance — māyā, often mistranslated as illusion but better rendered as that which measures, divides, makes-appear — within a single underlying reality. That reality is Brahman, and Brahman is not other than the awareness one already is. The Upaniṣadic mahāvākyas (great sayings) — tat tvam asi, aham brahmāsmi (I am Brahman), prajñānaṁ brahma (awareness is Brahman) — are not propositions to be believed but pointers to be directly investigated.
Lineage and modern teachers
Śaṅkara organised the school into the matha system — the four monastic seats that still exist today. The doctrine remained primarily monastic for a millennium. The twentieth century saw two unusual openings: the silent transmission of Ramana Maharshi at Tiruvannamalai, and the householder dialogues of Nisargadatta Maharaj in Bombay. A separate stream — the direct path of Atmananda Krishna Menon, transmitted through Jean Klein to Francis Lucille and on to Rupert Spira — reached the West through more philosophically articulate channels.
In the index
Almost everything in the index's non-duality cluster traces to this stream. Spira's long-form answers, the Nisargadatta dialogues, *Being Aware of Being Aware*, Mooji's satsang, and Lucille's teaching are all watercourses of the same source.
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