Searching for peace, happiness, truth, God, meaning, I spent years exploring a variety of religious, spiritual, metaphysical, and alternative teachings. One by one, however, each failed me due to their various inventor-inspired rites, rituals, teachers, and related orthodoxies.

Note here the inventor wasn’t the mystic behind those religions. To the contrary, anyone who studies the sages and saints, mystics and masters will clearly recognize they were allergic to the idea of formal religions being constructed around their words.

Whether you’re talking about Jesus or Nanak, Baháʼu’lláh or the Buddha, none called for any ritualized practice. Instead, they spoke of oneness, unity, the illusory nature of the universe, and the importance of treating others as we’d want to be treated.

“Heaven means to be one with God.” – Confucious

In her book, The Gnostic Gospels, author Elaine Pagels suggests that the early followers of Jesus constructed a religion in part to provide themselves with status and job security. If I can inject myself between you and God, I then can demand tithes and, in some nefarious cases, other ‘favors’ that keep me from having to find a real job.

None of this means they weren’t moved or impacted by the words of the mystics, only that they processed those teachings through limited minds. And by offering their translations, they helped to further obscure the core message.

One Without a Second

For the earnest, ardent seeker, human-inspired religion leaves a lot to be desired. As a lifelong sufferer, I wasn’t interested in some robed interloper running interference between me and God.

“Each pleasure is wrapped in pain. You soon discover that you cannot have one without the other. Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances. Real happiness flows from within.” – Nisargadatta Maharaj

My suffering was such that I wanted a direct experience of God and the peace that surpasses understanding. I didn’t want a religious community, I wanted Direct Contact with whatever it is that put me here.

All of which explains why my search came to a screeching halt with Advaita Vedanta (the term vedanta speaks to a school of thought, hence the use of Advaita only moving forward).

Advaita is usually translated as ‘non-dualism,’ although its literal translation is ‘non-secondness’ or ‘one without a second.’ In other words, Advaita speaks to the One being, law, power, or principle. All else, from quarks to quasars, from humans to aardvarks, is an illusory expression of that One.

What appealed most to me was that there were no rites or rituals, no formal religions or orthodoxies, no priests or imams. Instead, those who spoke of Advaita ‘pointed’ the seeker in directions that might be useful. The most important direction of all? Inward.

Ramana Maharshi, perhaps the greatest sage since Jesus and an ardent practitioner of Advaita, said there were only two paths to self-realization: surrender and self-inquiry. Of the two, he recommended self-inquiry, referring to it as the direct path.

When thought of any kind arise, Ramana urged seekers to ask, ‘Who does this thought come to?’ Or, alternatively, ‘To whom does this thought arise?” The idea being that as one seeks the ‘I’ at the center of his or her being, what becomes apparent is that there is no one there, no person or individual.

If practiced diligently and patiently, Ramana said the truth of the Self – the One – would emerge.