Dance walking through this game of life to win and learn with God!

As long as one assumes that God is something separate, something “out there”, one remains within separation. Prayer, devotion, asking for help or grace all presuppose this division. This statement is a worldview articulated centuries ago by Prakashananda Saraswati, an Indian philosopher and teacher who most likely lived in the 15th or early 16th century. I recently came across his perspective and spent some time engaging with it more deeply. What struck me was how clear, uncompromising, and strangely familiar it felt. I want to share a short overview here as a possible point of reflection. Prakashananda belonged to the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Unlike devotional or religious movements, this tradition is not concerned with belief systems, rituals, or the worship of a personal God. Its focus lies elsewhere, on the question of what is ultimately real. According to Prakashananda, there is only one reality. This reality is not a being, not a creator figure, not a higher entity standing apart from the world. In Indian philosophy it is often called Brahman, but the name is secondary. It can just as well be described as fundamental being, absolute consciousness, or the underlying principle from which everything arises. What matters is this: it is not separate from us. From this perspective, everything we normally call “the world” has no independent existence of its own. Bodies, thoughts, emotions, objects, nature, time and space all exist and function, but they do not stand on their own. They are appearances, expressions, or objectifications of this one underlying reality. The same applies to the human being. What we usually experience as “I”, personality, biography, thoughts, emotions, belongs to the level of appearance. The true self, according to Prakashananda, is not individual. It is identical with the reality that underlies everything. In classical terms this is expressed as Atman is Brahman. In simple language: what you are at your core is not separate from the foundation of the world.