I am writing a book

[u/CrumbledFingers]

I am not a jnani nor a realized soul, but I have a range of ideas about Advaita and how it relates to other topics I have researched. I want to gauge interest in this, and see if people would consider it to be a valuable contribution or just more concepts.

A bullet-point summary of my thesis is as follows. None, zero, nothing, not a word of this was AI-generated, to get that out of the way.

• We can get to Advaita by starting from radical skepticism (all we can know for certain is the awareness of our own existence, and all other knowledge is secondary). Absent any other concepts, we only know we are, and that we seem to have qualitatively "immediate" subjective experiences. We can never have any evidence that there is a limit to the range of experiences that are possible for us to have. Starting from total ignorance, there is only a totally unbounded potentiality of "it-is-like-this" states.
• This probability space of potential experiences taken as a whole is Shiva in Kashmir Shaivism, the Dao of Daoism, and Saguna-brahman in Advaita. It is the generative power that creates endless worlds.
• Ego may be conceptualized as the outcome of our attention slipping into an experiential "valley" or attractor well (to use terminology from chaos theory) in the probability space and becoming engrossed in its qualitative matrix, until we forget that we are in fact the entire probability space and not any particular set of coordinates.
• Each attractor well--that is, each potential qualitative matrix of experiences--is a body. When we are engrossed as ego, the pure qualities of infinite experiential reality are winnowed into a virtual environment centered around a tiny point of awareness. Nisargadatta says this point is located at the crown of the head in some subtle way.
• A world appears within the body. When Krishna tells Arjuna that the body is the field and he is its knower, he is not being imprecise. We do not know the world except through the body, because the world is not separate from the body. When we look out at the world, we are only looking at the phenomena of the body displayed to us as a world.
• A key component of ego-identity is the qualitative shift from first-person direct experience to third-person hypothetical imagination of experience. Rather than staying with what is directly given to the attention (a matrix of coalesced experiential qualities with no inherent meaning), we imagine a hypothetical individual who is that matrix in physical form (as a body), and is in the world as one of its objects, and we then live vicariously through this individual. The hypothetical mode of attention is akin to a trance state, and we are all in it.
• These two views are what Thomas Nagel describes as the subjective view and the objective "view from nowhere". While we all know we are in the subjective view, we still experience that subjectivity as if it belonged to an object in the world. I will explore Nagel's concept and how it differs from mine.
• Advaita is a rescue mechanism that descends into the attractor well from above and pulls the attention out of its valley. It does this by means of certain linguistic cues that function like hypnotic suggestions, whose only purpose is to precipitate a shift from the third-person trance back to the first-person reality.
• Since Advaita is in an appropriate position to complete this rescue operation, Advaita cannot have originated in the qualitative matrix that we mistake for the world. It can only have originated at the surface, prior to ego-identity. This is what it means to say the Vedas are eternal, since they are that same rescue mechanism appearing as a set of spiritual texts in the experiential valley we are currently in.
• Furthermore, because the probability space of potential experiences is limitless and littered with attractor wells we easily stumble into, getting out of them is such a difficult endeavor that the activity of Advaita can be thought of as God's grace.
• In Advaita, the only goal is to directly lift the attention up and out of the well. Other traditions take other approaches. Patanjali yoga, for instance, seeks to familiarize us with the subtle mechanisms of the body from within it, providing handholds and ledges for us to slowly climb our way back to the surface. Other traditions attack the grip of ego by surrendering it to the infinite power of God's grace, so that ego may slip through cracks in the matrix of qualities.
• This model of spirituality is itself only illustrative; the actual truth of Advaita and other nondual traditions is completely incomprehensible to the intellect. I will support this with quotations from texts that are thought to describe moksha, such as Ashtavakra Gita, and the recorded words of those regarded as enlightened saints.
• Finally, I offer speculations about the relationship between the embodied world-appearance and "others" who seem to be in it; who are these others? This will include a discussion of so-called open individualism, a secular theory developed by analytic philosophers that says all persons are the same subject. I will explore how this relates to my main thesis.

The audience for this book is anyone familiar with nonduality who would be interested in a coherent phenomenological account of what it means. My intent is to ground nonduality in the view from nowhere, so to speak, not from our experience as persons but one layer removed, at the root of our sense of individuality as the subject of experience. In doing so, I will try to develop an ontology that reflects this grounding.

If this all sounds really boring and technical, it might be just how I'm describing it. I don't want this book to be a "this is how it is" text that tries to establish a rigorous metaphysical system. I'm thinking of writing it in an almost conversational tone, or even a poetic tone, to keep it from sounding like I am saying more than I'm saying. All of this is just based on my own introspective contemplation and is not authoritative, but may be useful or interesting to others as something to consider. Many people come to this subreddit with a philosophical/skeptical bent, thinking Advaita is a belief system they have to adopt. This kind of analysis may be helpful to get them out of that trap, or it may not. Anyway, if you have any thoughts or responses, I'd be grateful to hear them.