Dear Sriram,
‘Advaita- Vedānta', as stated by Saṅkara, is not mere utterances of our ancient seers; it is a methodological representation of the same truth found in the Upaniṣads in a rather scientific format with a varied epistemology.
Vedānta, known in common parlance is different from the one elaborated by the master Saṅkara; but then again, it is agreed that the threefold authoritative text books of Advaita-Vedānta, the Bhagavad Gīta , the Upaniṣads and the
Brahmasūtras, commonly known as Vedānta, are the utterances of our ancient seers in a metaphorical manner.
It is also agreed that one can reach the state of Vedānta without even reading the scriptures; but, to save the truth from falling into absurdity of mere belief, scepticism and cult, to express the same truth in words, a scientific method is always recommended.
Science after all is a rational game; it is a play of our intellect on experiments and observations in laboratory conditions. End result of all these calculations are some kind of knowledge attained by the observer about the thing being observed.
Advaita Vedānta is a science and hence it has to be scientific. But, it is a totally different epistemology that Advaita Vedānta speaks of; here the observer and observed are not different; instead it belongs to the same stratum of existence which is nothing other than one Consciousness-Reality that knows both the subject and the object. Or in other words, finally, these two, the observer and the observed, finds homogeneity within that same Consciousness- Reality that which gives room for all these kinds of human reasoning.
After all, more than satisfying our intellectual curiosity, ensuring happiness in life has always been the ultimate goal of Saṅkara; philosophy for him was only a value-science alone.
Love
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