/lit/ - Literature

>>16710156
> So you retain your individuality after union?
Individuality is something different from consciousness and is hence another thing falsely superimposed upon it. When the individuality that was superimposed upon consciousness is removed, the same consciousness continues and does not dissolve, sentience continues without interruption. Union in Advaita is not a literal union, there is no achievement of a result or fact which did not already exist. Shankara, commenting on some of the Bhedabheda Vedantins who existed around his time makes the point in his Brihadaranyaka Upanishad commentary that things which are truly eternal have no beginning, and so any doctrine which makes liberation the attainment of a newly-existing effect produced through any action, meditation or ritual makes their liberation a non-eternal liberation, which one would eventually fall out of back into the bondage of ignorance. In order for liberation to be eternal it has to be an already existing beginningless reality, realizable through knowledge.

Removing the false notions allows the already-present reality to shine forth, like the sun after the clouds in front of it dissipate; this doesn’t make that pre-existing reality become non-eternal. Underneath all the superimpositions the Supreme Self is already all-pervasive, sorrowless, omniscient and eternally liberated, so it has no need to attain union with these things as though they were something different from the Supreme Self’s intrinsic nature.

>Is this there same for Plotinus?
I don’t know his writings well enough to say