How can one learn self-knowledge? An attempt at a methodology from Advaita Vedanta
Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

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If the sacred texts, the Upanishads, teach about who you really are – not-other than the universal consciousness – then why does reading these teachings not suffice for transformation? (Compare reading a declaration of love from a beloved, or being informed by the safari guide that there is a lion stalking you: the transmission of information brings about a transformation in your knowledge of self and world.) Later teachers of the Non-Dualist school schematised the transition from reception of information on non-duality to the transformation of consciousness in the recipient through the three-fold process put deceptively simply as ‘hearing, thinking and absorbing’. In this talk, I’ll explore what the Advaitins were trying to get at with this formula and what it might tell us about teachings on self-knowledge.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is Fellow and in-coming Vice-President (Humanities) of the British Academy. He is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. He has published nearly sixty papers on a variety of topics, and seven books. He is currently working on a comparative study of conceptions of oneness.

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