Integral Non-Dualism: A Critical Exposition of Vijnanabhiksu’s System of Philosophy

Vinanabhiksu, the author of Vijnamrtabhasya, an independent commentary on Badarayana’s Brahma Sutra, conceived a system in which both the world and the individual selves also enjoyed the status of reality and which accorded due importance to both knowledge and action as means to liberation. He believed that it is the philosophy of the unreality of the world which was responsible for man’s alienation from his environment and in order to help him overcome the alienation a more meaningful realationship of man with his surroundings and fellow-beings was needed. This is precisely the reason why Vinanabhiksu took up cudgets against the advocates of Maya and expounded a system in which the world has been accepted as a real transformation of Prakrti, the power of the Absolute, and which thus hasno place for Maya in the sense in which it has in the philosophy of advaita. Vijnanabhiksu’s system is a peculiar blend of knowledge, Yoga and bhakti. Probably it was the need of the times and it is for this reason that he combined both the nondualistic idealism of samkara and the realistic idealism of samkhya with the prevailing cult of devotion. It is his zeal for syneretism that he has welded various philosophical trends of samkhya , Yoga, Vedanta, Puranas etc. into his system of integral Nondualism