[Advaita-l] Concept of soul

[Anand Hudli]

There is a theory within advaita that debunks the concept of life outside of 
the inquirer, making it irrelevant whether such life outside the inquirer is 
natural or artificial. This theory, called the eka-jIva-vAda, holds that the 
whole universe is like a dream to  a single jIva, the inquirer. The 
intriguing aspect of this theory is that even the Guru is part of this 
dream. The inquirer is supposed to listen to instructions in his dream and 
wake himself up, inspired by the Guru and other imaginary liberated jIva 
semblences! For example, I have no conclusive proof that Mahesh Ursekar or 
any other member of this list or for that matter any person in the world 
exists. Prof. Suryanarayana Sastri is critical of this vAda when he says in 
his introduction to the VedAntaparibhAShA: "A position like this is as 
intolerable as it is logically unassailable."

Note that this theory is not the same as saying that from the PAramAthika 
view there is no world or the jIvas, only Brahman. Here, even in the 
vyavAhArika view, existence of only a single jIva is admitted.

Anand

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