Advaita Vedanta
The non-dual school of Vedanta: Brahman alone is real, the self is one with it, and the world is appearance through maya. Shankara and the mahavakyas.
Advaita means not-two. The claim is as radical as any in the history of philosophy: that the self you take to be yours and the ground of all existence are one thing, and that the appearance of separateness is real only in the way a dream is real while you are in it.
Shankara, working in the eighth century, is its great systematiser. He did not invent the position. He found it in the Upanishads and built the apparatus that made it defensible against every rival school of his day, which is why the commentaries matter as much as the doctrine.
These pages set out what Advaita actually argues and where it is contested. Ramanuja’s objection is not a misunderstanding to be corrected; it is a serious reading of the same verses reaching a different conclusion. The Ashtavakra Gita, which pushes the non-dual claim further than Shankara does, is here too.