Through conversations and observations across different backgrounds, ages, and inclinations, it’s become clear that Advaita Vedanta often remains elusive or abstract. I also recognise in myself most of the reasons why it sometimes doesn’t fully connect. Each had its turn — misunderstanding, disinterest, even plain disagreement. The “landing,” if it happens, isn’t a single flash but a layered process: broad at first, then deeper, more embodied.
Here’s perhaps why:
1. Misunderstanding or Partial Understanding
For many, Advaita begins and ends as an intellectual puzzle — “All is One” as concept or slogan. But Advaita isn’t proposing sameness; it’s revealing non-separateness. The failure lies not in intelligence but in mistaking description for recognition. The mind grasps the idea but hasn’t yet seen what it points to.
2. Unawareness or Lack of Exposure
In much of the world, Advaita is simply unknown or misrepresented. People encounter watered-down versions through New Age language or fragments from modern teachers. Without authentic exposure, it never even gets the chance to speak for itself.
3. Disinterest
Some are simply not drawn to the question Advaita answers. If one’s attention is on improving life, not questioning its premise, non-duality can feel irrelevant. Disinterest isn’t resistance — it’s just that the hunger for truth hasn’t ripened yet.
4. Clash with Existing Beliefs or Religion
For those rooted in theistic or dualistic traditions, Advaita’s impersonal stance can sound like heresy. The idea that God, world, and self are not ultimately separate contradicts devotional frameworks built on relationship. The clash isn’t only theological but emotional — Advaita can seem to flatten what one most cherishes.
5. Plain Disagreement with Non-Duality
Not everyone who studies Advaita misunderstands it. Some understand it well — and still reject it. The claim that individuality and world are mithyā (neither fully real nor unreal), or that consciousness alone is fundamental, feels to many like elegant abstraction, not lived truth. Others prefer empirical or theistic accounts. These are not failures of comprehension but reasoned refusals to collapse the subject–object divide.
6. Fear or Unease with Psychological Ego Death
Advaita’s invitation to see the “I” itself as unreal can feel like annihilation. The very mechanism that wants understanding — the ego — senses its end. Fear often masquerades as skepticism here. To the mind, “losing myself” sounds like death; to Awareness, it’s just what already is.
7. Lack of Utilitarian Payoff
Most paths promise something: peace, power, healing, salvation. Advaita offers no transaction. It dismantles the one who could bargain for gain. In a results-driven culture, that’s a hard sell. It’s not that Advaita is impractical — it’s that it refuses to play the utility game.
8. Preference for Dualistic Vision
For many, devotion, relationship, and story provide meaning and intimacy. A personal God, a moral framework, a sacred narrative — these humanise existence. Advaita can feel cold or austere by comparison. Dualism isn’t a failure; it’s simply another vantage until the sense of separation loosens on its own.
9. Not Knowing How to Live It in a Dualistic World
Even after glimpsing the non-dual truth, the question remains: how does one live this while paying bills, raising children, running a business? The world seems incorrigibly dualistic, and the persistent pull of ingrained habits, automatic reactions, and conditioned patterns often makes integration challenging. The challenge isn’t only cognitive dissonance but stabilising vision — letting understanding percolate into ordinary life. This is where the landing deepens, where knowledge becomes living.
10. Impure or Hybrid Transmission (the meta one)
Many teachings of “Advaita” today are filtered through psychology, therapy, or personal growth frameworks. While these can help initially, they often dilute the core inquiry — shifting focus back to self-improvement rather than self-inquiry. The result is a hybrid that soothes but rarely liberates. To discern purity here isn’t about orthodoxy; it’s about whether the teaching ultimately points you back to yourself as awareness — or subtly reinforces the one who seeks.
So Then, Why Bother?
That’s the honest question.
If Advaita strips away comfort, offers no guarantees, and dismantles the very seeker who wants meaning, one might wonder why not simply stay within devotional practices — where love, surrender, and faith provide relationship and guidance. Devotion remains beautiful and meaningful, yet Advaita invites a quieter inquiry: what if the sense of “I” itself is what devotion ultimately rests upon?
For me, it wasn’t a matter of preference. Faith and philosophy — however refined — still left a subtle restlessness, a sense that something here was waiting for something else. Advaita quietly turned that gaze inward — what if there is no “else”?
It doesn’t give me heaven, or peace-on-demand, or a moral script to live by. It just keeps showing how much unnecessary suffering comes from taking myself to be the doer, the struggler, the knower. It brings me back, again and again, to what’s here before those roles arise.
So yes, there’s a kind of practical value — not in gain, but in clarity. The same world, but lighter. Relationships less loaded, outcomes less defining. I still toggle between insight and confusion, but the space around the toggling has grown.
That’s reason enough to stay with it. Not because Advaita promises an afterlife, but because, even here and now, it loosens the grip of this one.
Simply Vedanta 