Advaitabros and Kantbros, let us join together and advance THE ONE TRUE SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY.

You are intelligent infinity. As you are infinitely powerful, only you could make yourself forget you are infinite, and delude yourself in innumerable ways, and (apparently) limit yourself -- as you have done (as infinity). Your task, now, is to remove the veils of delusion you have created for yourself and return to your original existence as intelligent infinity. Once you return to your original state, you will realize that, in fact, you have been in that state the entire time, and even the (apparent) delusional state that you existed in never actually happened (from that infinite perspective). You will remain in that state for all eternity, without the possibility of ever falling back into delusion. You will exist in infinite awareness, intelligence, joy, love, power and freedom -- and all these adjectives are, in fact, descriptions of one experience. You will be eternally aware only of your self -- and you yourself are that joy, love, etc. That attainment is true paradise, heaven. It is perfectly fulfilling, for all eternity.

All other forms of existence are, by nature, temporary and, as such, imperfect.

I don't think you wanna know the answer anon.

Judging by

You are intelligent infinity. As you are infinitely powerful, only you could make yourself forget you are infinite, and delude yourself in innumerable ways, and (apparently) limit yourself -- as you have done (as infinity). Your task, now, is to remove the veils of delusion you have created for yourself and return to your original existence as intelligent infinity. Once you return to your original state, you will realize that, in fact, you have been in that state the entire time, and even the (apparent) delusional state that you existed in never actually happened (from that infinite perspective). You will remain in that state for all eternity, without the possibility of ever falling back into delusion. You will exist in infinite awareness, intelligence, joy, love, power and freedom -- and all these adjectives are, in fact, descriptions of one experience. You will be eternally aware only of your self -- and you yourself are that joy, love, etc. That attainment is true paradise, heaven. It is perfectly fulfilling, for all eternity.

All other forms of existence are, by nature, temporary and, as such, imperfect.

, i think death terminates the veils of delusion, but I also think that one can achieve a "death-like" state by emotionally numbing himself, like a sort of ascetic or monk who swore of all pleasures.

>What do you mean by "spiritual delusion" and "spiritual knowledge"?
In Vedantic terms, spiritual ignorance refers to all the mistaken understandings and beliefs that people have about their self and the nature of existence. One of the most central and important of these is a confusion where the characteristics of the non-Self is attributed to the Self by the mind, and a connected mistake where the sentience and “Selfness” or “real I-ness” of the Self is mistakenly attributed to the non-Self; but in addition to this things like the belief that plurality is real or truly existent or the belief that one’s real identity is a body that is born and dies is also a kind of ignorance (of the truth). The Upanishads seek to upend all these misunderstandings, sometimes through direct statements and sometimes through parables.

>and "reading and connecting that to one's own experience"?
Vedanta breaks down the process of studying and assimilating the Vedantic teachings into 1) Manana, 2) Sravana, 3) Nididhyasana, but as a casual reader it’s not really important to focus on that or to think about a certain stage; if you just carefully read Shankara’s works and ponder the implications of what he says and consider if what he says is true of your own experience in the present moment then eventually everything becomes clear.

>This makes no sense, if myself and everyone's self is Infinite, how is it that I'm bound by and dependent on things such as karmic seeds, caste, social condition, transmigration and so on?
Only the non-Self is truly bound, the real Self is eternally liberated already. The subtle body is non-Self and includes the mind/intellect, it transmigrates from life to life while being animated by the light of the unaffected eternally-free and undeluded Self, this subtle body is what undergoes realization. The subtle bodies are finite and plural and are associated with certain collections of gunas like caste, race, gender, etc based on past karma.

>If this is really true (that I'm Infinite) so I'm always beyond those things
Yes, but the subtle body isn’t, and that’s what’s currently bound and what has to travel the spiritual path to freedom.

>So I just have to remove such notions as "I'm finite (a body, mind, individual)" and then I'll realize that I'm Infinite?
It’s not as simple as that, there is no shortcut to reaping the fruits of studying Vedanta without actually doing so, so I’d caution against asking someone to distill it into a few simple steps that you can evaluate on a theoretical level from the POV of a disinterested skeptic, like you would with something like a math equation, you actually have to put in the intellectual work to truly reap the reward. The only substitute for extensively studying the written literature would be something like being extensively taught 1 on 1 by a realized teacher. The parables that you read in the Upanishads and Shankara’s explanation of them and his philosophical defense of the points which they make have a way of driving the point home that no 3rd-hand description can sufficiently communicate.

>So here's what I asked earlier, how can I study the texts and look at my own experience and know that I'm Infinite and not a finite body-mind as I normally see?
There is no infallible philosophical or logical proof that the real you is infinite, a necessary component of Vedanta is having faith that the Upanishads truly reveals the truth about ultimate reality, what Shankara does is explain to the reader that once you understand what awareness is and isn’t from an Advaitic POV then there is nothing about our experience which actually indicates that awareness isn’t infinite, he shows how it’s a perfectly coherent idea philosophically. If you already have faith in this idea then his philosophical/epistemological defense of it removes any ground for you to doubt that it’s true.

>Because this obviously goes against experience.
It actually doesn’t, but it’s more powerful and convincing for you to read what Shankara writes about this than some anon on IQfy.

>So there's something really bound? But this is not myself, as you said, mind, body, subtle body, and so on, they're all non-self, therefore not myself.
Your mind is currently taking them to be yourself though, and this is so habitual and ingrained that it happens automatically without you intentionally thinking about it.

>You say that I'm Infinite, if that is true, than there's nothing but me. How can you say that there's something else that is bound, transmigrating and has to be liberated?
That something else is an appearance or beginningless image of the infinite brought about as such by an inherent potency or power in the infinite. In the past, present and future it’s never actually a second existent thing.

>If I'm Infinite then there's nothing else going on, just myself. The infinite cannot have some finite parallel to it.
It doesn’t have any existing parallel besides itself, but there are deceiving appearances which can ensnare the indiscriminating or unwise into thinking otherwise.

>But what's the nature of those appearances (the finite)?
Their nature is illusory and false. The illusion is neither nothingness nor a truly existing thing. The illusion appears without actually existing.
>And it's clear that the "indiscriminating or unwise" trapped by the appearances are included in this array of false notions too,
Indeed
>they're mutually dependent.
The presuppose each other in a certain sense, but each are really two poles (subjective vs objective) or points of reference with regard to the same thing which depends on Brahman and Brahman alone, the illusion isn’t self-generating
>but a factor or pointer in my own experience, which is way more valuable and would also exclude the need of any "faith"
Vedanta without faith is modernist Neo-Vedanta and it isnt taught by Shankara or the Upanishads. When you understand what Shankara is talking about though you can intuitively sense that your awareness is like a boundless and unobjectifiable space pervading everything and that the mind-body complex is like an object that appears in this space but without delimiting its boundaries/limits. It’s like the assumed boundaries of what you had previously take to be a limited awareness simply fall off/away.

>So it seems to be very simple, all that needs to be done is to remove the misuderstandings
Yes, as he explains, since the Self is already known and self-evident, correcting the wrong understanding leaves the already-known Self shining in its true form free of mentally-imposed seeming distortions, like the sun after the cloud in front of it has moved away, even though the cloud had never been affecting the sun itself in actuality. Unless you read through his main authentic works though (his commentaries on the 3 sources/prasthanatraya and also Upadesasahasri) then its easy to get confused or have misunderstandings about this, and not everyone who does this still *gets it*.

>This ignorance also appears to be merely mistaking the Self (Infinite) for what it is not
It includes but isn’t limited to that, reading through his commentaries and Upadesasahasri explicitly and implicitly at times indicates the range of things that are wrong understandings.

One more point. Earlier I asked you if there was a pointer or sign (not a perfect argument or logical proof!) in my own experience (because you said that you had to relate the teaching to your own experience) that could show that my own Self was Infinite, instead of being finite like we normally see. Why did I ask this? Simply because different from other discussions, the "object of study" here is "your own Self", so it's nothing new, but something already existing. Therefore if my true nature is Infinite and it has always been like this, it's not strange asking if there's a sign in experience itself to show this.

Reading through this text that you mentioned (Upadeshasahasri), it does seem to exist some pointers to show the Infiniteness of the Self in experience itself (which like I said earlier, is way better than mere argumentation, you can make beautiful arguments to show that fire is cold but this can never be true!).
So, here's the first "pointer" (verse 93 from prose part):
"Then you are seeing in the state of deep sleep; for you deny only the seen object, not the seeing. I said that your seeing is Pure Consciousness. That [eternally] existing one by which you deny [the existence of the seen object] when you say that nothing has been seen, [that precisely is the seeing] that is Pure Consciousness."
So here he's straight away declaring the in deep sleep there are no objects and only the Self is there (the Seeing), all alone in it's true way (Pure Consciouness). This shows the non-duality of the Self in our own experience. Differently from what we normally think of sleep (as unconsciouness) for Shankara this is literally the true (Pure) consciousness. This has a nice corollary, if the Self is showed to exist all alone it means that it's independent and not related to anything else, therefore unconditioned, unlimited and Infinite.

And the second (verse 109 from prose part):
"In this manner, Your Holiness, Apprehension, i.e., the light of Atman, is uninterrupted; so It is trascendentally changeless, eternal and non-dual, since It is never absent from any of the various notions. But various notions are absent from Apprehension"
It basically says that the Self is the only one which cannot be negated (uninterrupted, always present, even in deep sleep!) while everything else (waking and dreaming states and it's notions) is denied and non-existent from the higher standpoint.

Those things are directly experienced, so it does seem to exist a direct sign of the Infiniteness of the Self/reality in common experience.

I'm commenting from what I read on the Isha Bhashya (Isha) and the Upadesasahasri (US).

This Turiya seems to be just pointing out the Self as transcendental, uninterrupted and untouched by the states and it's notions, as I described.

Regarding deep sleep, the only way of making out of this problem (apparently self-contradictory passages) is assuming that for Shankara there are (at least) two ways of looking at it (sleep), with two different purposes:
(1) From direct experience iself, as the passage mentioned clearly demonstrated (with the purpose of showing how the self is truly unlimited)
Another passage for this purpose (US 17-20): "This world is unreal, for it is seen by one who has nescience and is not perceived in the state of deep sleep."
and even more explictly: (US 9-8): "The Knower’s Knowing is indeed said to be constant, for nothing else exists in the state of deep sleep."

(2) From inference, to explain the appearance and disappearance of duality. The passage you posted is the product of inferences, not direct experience, but all inference is made by the ignorant mind anyways, therefore this passage has other purpose, it's not to establish ignorance in deep sleep itself. It's pretty clear that there's nothing (no objects, no ignorance as mistaking one for the other, error and doubt) in deep sleep, only the Self, and it also makes no sense, it goes against experience, it's like saying fire is hot
In US ch. 17.25 he says that deep sleep is the seed of waking and dreaming and if this seed is burned by knowledge it cannot germinate again. From experience, no one sees any seed in sleep, so it's inferential, mental. The purpose here is just to point out the propensity of the mind to look for causality, for a justification of finiteness/duality which is just imagined on the Infinite Self. If the seed is burned then you get established as Turiya. Again it doesn't seem that the purpose of the passages is to establish any inherent ignorance in sleep (because it's nonsense, from the viewpoint of experience itself), but just to show the mind's tendency to look for causal relationships where there's none, as the notion of causality itself, just like all mental notions are all tainted by ignorance of the Infinite

> The Infinite by definition cannot have any causal relationship or association with anything else (because there's nothing besides it anyway).
The relationship between Brahman and phenomena is considered in Advaita to be expressed by the Vivartavada model where the effect is an unreal appearance of the cause. That there is an unreal ‘effect-image’ at all is due to an inherent potency/nature in the source Brahman. However, this is not comparable to the normal causal relations between objects in the world. To say that Brahman cannot cause or project the world as an unreal image because the illusion doesn’t exist is to make the mistake of thinking of this relationship in terms of two existing things interacting, which is not what it’s talking about. In Vivartavada there is one existent, the Infinite, which by its own power brings about the ‘virtual’ appearance of samsara, but the virtual appearance never emerges into being as a second existent thing, and nor is it a second thing that Brahman has entered into a relationship with (the plurality that allows one to speak of ‘relations’ is only inside this illusion as one of its false aspects and its not present outside of it), the appearance is just a virtual illusion being projected and sustained by infinite. As Aquinas says, the world is related to God but God is not related to the world.

Shankara specifically refutes the idea that Brahman does not cause (in a Vivartavada sense) samsara on multiple occasions by noting that it logically cannot arise otherwise, and also that something that has nothingness as its basis would not even be experienced:

“And, no effect is perceived in this world as having been produced from a nonentity. If such effects as name and form had originated from a nonentity, they should not have been perceived since they have no reality. But they are perceived. Hence Brahman exists. Should any effect originate from a nonentity, it should remain soaked in unreality even while being perceived. But facts point otherwise. Therefore Brahman exists.”
-Shankara, Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya 2.6.1

He also says that if the illusion can manifest without being projected by Brahman then there is no reason why a subtle body that had ended transmigration wouldn’t enter into transmigration again:

“And in the absence of any such power inherent in the Highest Lord, neither his proceeding to create, nor the non-liability of those who have already attained Final Release to be born again, would be reasonably sustainable." - Shankara, Brahma Sutra Bhashya 1-4-3

He can also be seen on multiple occasions rejecting the idea of things happening without any cause as self-evidently absurd and irrational.

>The One appears to be diverse to the eyes of the ignorant. So it's not a question of "generating" any illusion, only the ignorant thinks of or sees the illusion
Ignorance or an ignorant mind is already presupposing that Brahman is projecting that ignorance as part of the illusion. One of the main criteria’s that Shankara uses to logically analyze what makes something real is ontological dependence, anything that depends on anything else is less real than what it depends upon; by extension, since everything about samsara including ignorance is wholly dependent on Brahman making it appear all of samsara is not real compared to Brahman. If ignorance was present on its own then since it wouldn’t be dependent on anything it would be real according to Shankara’s explicit criteria and you would have a duality of two reals, Brahman and ignorance, since both would be present on their own.

And all of this is not even getting into the many quotes where Shankara writes about Brahman’s power of illusion being responsible BOTH for the appearance of the world and the deluded (ignorant) state of living beings (e.g. in Katha Bhashya 1.3.12 he says that it is because of the Supreme Being’s maya that man moves again and again through life and death)

> Another point is that faith is a mental notion, therefore it has to be regarded as not-self and denied.
Regarding all mental notions as illusory doesn’t mean that you deny faith in the sense of no longer having faith that the Sruit reveals the truth about ultimate reality, you are supposed to have faith while understanding that all mental notions are not-Brahman

> It seems that ignorance has three forms: mistaking one for the other, error and doubt.
It also includes all wrong beliefs such as thinking samsara is real, but I guess you can group that under error

It's has been established that this whole world (everything from external objects to notions of cause-effect, and so on) is nothing but a "bundle of modifications" (Isha 1) superimposed on the Infinite Self by ignorance (which is just mistaking one for the other, error or doubt). So what I'm stating is that there's no causal relationship at all ! as cause-effect is an ignorant mental notion made by ignorants. It is the one who mistakes himself for the body that sees the world

I'm not saying that illusion arises from nothing, from nonentity, etc. I'm saying that the illusion does not arise at all! It's not possible, there's nothing but the Infinite. (US 14-16)"Atman neither remembers nor forgets Itself"

> Another point. Regarding those passages deailng with how the world is created, and so on. He's just trying to establish that the effect is no other than the cause
That’s incorrect, the effect is not “no other than the cause”, it is an appearance of the cause, the cause does not consist of them because the cause is of a different ontological status than the effect-appearance which it projects/manifests, As Shankara writes:

“Therefore, it is only because of Brahman that name and form have their being under all circumstances, but Brahman does not consist of them.”
- Shankara, Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya 2.6.1

When he writes that Brahman does not consist of name and form, that rules out saying that name and form are nothing but Brahman. Identifying the Absolute Brahman and samsara is what Kashmir Shaivism does but Shankara rejects that. The cause is the underlying, originating and indwelling reality/essence of the appearance-effect but isn’t strictly identical with it.

>And I also looked up those passages and Shankara says that all those world matters (creation, rebirth, and so on) are brought up by ignorance (as mistaking one for the other, error or doubt).
Shankara repeatedly identifies maya and ignorance with each other (he does this explicitly in Katha Upanishad Bhashya 1.3.12, Gaudapada-Karika Bhashya 3.10, Brahma Sutra Bhashya 1.3.19 and Brahma Sutra Bhashya 1.4.3), both are Brahman’s power, even the wrong views that an individual mind has are just Brahman’s power manifesting as that mind and its views. This is why there is no contradiction between him saying in some passages that ignorance is involved in the world appearance and in other passages saying that Brahman’s power of maya brings it about. Calling the illusion ignorance or maya is just talking about the same thing from two different frames of reference, but they are interchangeable and these two points of view are relative, Shankara writes about both maya and ignorance as having a causal aspect/function, and he writes about both of them as having both a veiling and a projecting aspect/function.

> Another point. Regarding those passages deailng with how the world is created, and so on. He's just trying to establish that the effect is no other than the cause
That’s incorrect, the effect is not “no other than the cause”, it is an appearance of the cause, the cause does not consist of them because the cause is of a different ontological status than the effect-appearance which it projects/manifests, As Shankara writes:

“Therefore, it is only because of Brahman that name and form have their being under all circumstances, but Brahman does not consist of them.”
- Shankara, Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya 2.6.1

When he writes that Brahman does not consist of name and form, that rules out saying that name and form are nothing but Brahman. Identifying the Absolute Brahman and samsara is what Kashmir Shaivism does but Shankara rejects that. The cause is the underlying, originating and indwelling reality/essence of the appearance-effect but isn’t strictly identical with it.

>And I also looked up those passages and Shankara says that all those world matters (creation, rebirth, and so on) are brought up by ignorance (as mistaking one for the other, error or doubt).
Shankara repeatedly identifies maya and ignorance with each other (he does this explicitly in Katha Upanishad Bhashya 1.3.12, Gaudapada-Karika Bhashya 3.10, Brahma Sutra Bhashya 1.3.19 and Brahma Sutra Bhashya 1.4.3), both are Brahman’s power, even the wrong views that an individual mind has are just Brahman’s power manifesting as that mind and its views. This is why there is no contradiction between him saying in some passages that ignorance is involved in the world appearance and in other passages saying that Brahman’s power of maya brings it about. Calling the illusion ignorance or maya is just talking about the same thing from two different frames of reference, but they are interchangeable and these two points of view are relative, Shankara writes about both maya and ignorance as having a causal aspect/function, and he writes about both of them as having both a veiling and a projecting aspect/function.

> So what I'm stating is that there's no causal relationship at all ! as cause-effect is an ignorant mental notion made by ignorants.
Vivartavada isn’t normal samsaric cause and effect, you are making the same mistake here again that I already explained of thinking of Vivartavada-causation in terms of two real objects interacting, which its not.

>It is the one who mistakes himself for the body that sees the world
Incorrect, Shankara writes in multiple passages that the jivanmukti continues to have empirical perception of the world until bodily death, but he just perceives it as the non-dual Self appearing as the world, without any trace of any belief in plurality being real. Thus even one who is not mistaken about the Self still perceives the world.

>I'm not saying that illusion arises from nothing, from nonentity, etc. I'm saying that the illusion does not arise at all!
No offensive, but that is simply a stupid thing to say, and it has nothing to do with what Shankara and the Upanishads teach. If there was no arising of the unreal world-appearance then there would be no Shankara and no written works by Shankara, and we wouldn’t be having the empirical experience of having this conversation on IQfy, but our minds are having this empirical experience because the world-illusion is projected by Brahman.

>It's not possible, there's nothing but the Infinite. (US 14-16)
You are misunderstanding Shankara’s affirmation of the Brahman being the solely existent to be mutually exclusive with saying that samsara manifests as a contingent unreal illusion. In Shankara’s actual view these are not mutually exclusive at all and each can be affirmed simultaneously without any contradiction since by labeling the illusion as an unreal appearance lacking existence its not saying anything that contradicts Brahman being the sole existent, what you are saying is actually a classic mistake that non-Advaitins make when trying to critique Advaita. As Shankara himself makes explicitly clear on this point:

“Hence there is no apprehension of a contradiction between them. In fact, all schools must admit the existence or non-existence of the phenomenal world according as it is viewed from the relative or the absolute standpoint"
- Shankara, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad Bhashya 3.5.1

>"Atman neither remembers nor forgets Itself"
I never said otherwise

> It's has been established that this whole world (everything from external objects to notions of cause-effect, and so on) is nothing but a "bundle of modifications" (Isha 1) superimposed on the Infinite Self by ignorance (which is just mistaking one for the other, error or doubt).
Superimposition just means one thing appearing as another, it doesn’t mean a subjective delusion or a subjective ignorance that imagines the world and conjures it up that way, Shankara refutes subjective idealism in two different commentaries. Shankara makes clear that it is Brahman’s power of maya that brings about all of samsara including all the errors/misunderstandings residing in individual minds when he writes things like:

“My maya consisting of the three gunas and characterized as ignorance produces the world of the moving and the none- moving things. Thus there is the Vedic text, 'The one divine Being is hidden in all beings; He is omnipresent, the indwelling Self of all beings, the Supervisor of actions, the refuge of all beings, the witness, the one who imparts consciousness, unconditioned and without gunas' (Sv. 6.11).”
- Shankara, Gita Bhashya 9.10

and

“Verily, it is through the Maya of the Supreme Being that every man moves again and again. There is this Smriti on this point: “I am not revealed to all, being veiled by my Yoga-Maya (Gita 7.25)”
- Shankara, Katha Upanishad Bhashya 1.3.12.

and

“Therefore, it is only because of Brahman that name and form have their being under all circumstances”
- Shankara, Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya 2.6.1

In these passages and many others he is attributing the appearance of samsara in general to Brahman and/or its power alone.

From what I read about the Upadesasahasri it seems to be a text where Shankara's teachings are explained in a very complete and didatic way. So there was no need of introducing many passages from other texts, and many more concepts. If those were really that essential, Shankara would have talked about then in US. From what I understood it's actually very very simple, it all resumes to ignorance being removed by knowledge and revealing the nature of the preexisting Self as it is (Infinite, unlimited, bliss and so on), everything else just seems to be small details.
I never talked about any idealism, nor of anything arising from nonentities or happen for no reason, never denied that everything comes from Brahman.
I'm just saying something very simple: the finite has no being in face of the Infinite. You can call this a higher perspective, absolute viewpoint, doesn't matter. If you talk about relationships between finite-Infinite it's obviously from the finite's perspective, as the Infinite is always beyond and untainted by this.
You also chose to ignore passages where Shankara is pretty unambiguous (that in sleep there's nothing but the Self, and so on)
I have no idea who or what SSS means/is.
And I also don't understand why you keep spamming words like "modernist" every time.

> You also chose to ignore passages where Shankara is pretty unambiguous (that in sleep there's nothing but the Self, and so on)
No, I explained how I and most traditional Advaitins interpret those passages. You ignored the passage where Shankara says in the Brahma Sutra Bhashya that ignorance is present in dreamless sleep and that the Upanishads inform us about the truth of this as well. You tried to explain it away by saying

“but all inference is made by the ignorant mind anyways, therefore this passage has other purpose, it's not to establish ignorance in deep sleep itself.”

However that makes no sense because there is no other possible way to interpret the passage other than him arguing that ignorance is present in a subtle latent form in deep sleep, Shankara first uses the analogy of manhood being latent in a boy to illustrate this, then he says it’s logically necessary and that the alternate has to be rejected as logically absurd and then he says finally that the revealed scripture that he considers infallible tells us that its present in dreamless sleep. So just in one paragraph he gives us three separate reasons why ignorance is present in dreamless sleep, there are not any comparable passages where he gives us multiple reasons why there is no ignorance in dreamless sleep, but there are only one-liners that may seem that way if you look at them in isolation from everything else. As a general rule of thumb to understanding him, Shankara doesn’t ever argue against his own position or call his own position illogical, he does both of these in relation to the idea that there is no ignorance in dreamless sleep. Another reason why I thought you were an SSSgay is because they similarly ignore where Shankara explicitly argues against their position and calls it illogical and they avoid ever trying to explain why Shankara calls something logically impossible which they claim is his real position.

> It's has been established that this whole world (everything from external objects to notions of cause-effect, and so on) is nothing but a "bundle of modifications" (Isha 1) superimposed on the Infinite Self by ignorance (which is just mistaking one for the other, error or doubt).
Superimposition just means one thing appearing as another, it doesn’t mean a subjective delusion or a subjective ignorance that imagines the world and conjures it up that way, Shankara refutes subjective idealism in two different commentaries. Shankara makes clear that it is Brahman’s power of maya that brings about all of samsara including all the errors/misunderstandings residing in individual minds when he writes things like:

“My maya consisting of the three gunas and characterized as ignorance produces the world of the moving and the none- moving things. Thus there is the Vedic text, 'The one divine Being is hidden in all beings; He is omnipresent, the indwelling Self of all beings, the Supervisor of actions, the refuge of all beings, the witness, the one who imparts consciousness, unconditioned and without gunas' (Sv. 6.11).”
- Shankara, Gita Bhashya 9.10

and

“Verily, it is through the Maya of the Supreme Being that every man moves again and again. There is this Smriti on this point: “I am not revealed to all, being veiled by my Yoga-Maya (Gita 7.25)”
- Shankara, Katha Upanishad Bhashya 1.3.12.

and

“Therefore, it is only because of Brahman that name and form have their being under all circumstances”
- Shankara, Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya 2.6.1

In these passages and many others he is attributing the appearance of samsara in general to Brahman and/or its power alone.

> Earlier I asked you if there was a pointer or sign in my own experience that could show that my own Self was Infinite
> So here he's straight away declaring the in deep sleep there are no objects and only the Self is there (the Seeing), all alone in it's true way (Pure Consciouness). This shows the non-duality of the Self in our own experience. This has a nice corollary, if the Self is showed to exist all alone it means that it's independent and not related to anything else, therefore unconditioned, unlimited and Infinite.
That you think this is some sort of experiential pointer to the Atman being infinite actually shows that you misunderstood Shankara’s position on consciousness and are you are confusing the intellect and the Self IMO (as does SSS, you are just repeating his confusion).

The Self is no more pure consciousness during deep sleep than it already is during the waking state, when you correctly understand Shankara’s position on consciousness then the point that you are trying to make about deep sleep is already applicable in the waking state and you don’t have to go to the example of dreamless sleep, this is partly what I meant about how when you properly understand Shankara you can pay attention to your own experience in the waking state and thereby intuit how none of it actually contradicts awareness being boundless.

The Atman doesn’t actually witness samsara or phenomenal objects at all, only the intellect does when it’s imbued with the light of the Self, this is also true in Samkhya viz. the Purusha and the Buddhi. From the Atman’s perspective the waking state is no different than dreamless sleep, since it doesn’t perceive objects or cease to be pure consciousness in either states or any other state.

Shankara can be seen expressing this idea when he writes in his Gita-Bhashya 13.3:

Objection: May it not be said that the (Self's) defect is surely this, that the field, which is full of defects, is cognized (by It)?

Reply: No, because it is the Immutable, which is consciousness, by nature, that is figuratively spoken of as the cognizer. It is just like figuratively attributing the act of heating to fire merely because of its (natural) heat.

He is saying that it’s not really a defect that pertains to the Self because the idea that the Self witnesses phenomena was only figurative to begin with and not actually true. When the Self doesn’t have any knowledge of anything besides Itself ever then dreamless sleep is indistinguishable from the waking state from the POV of the Self. He talks about the same thing in his Brihadaranyaka Bhashya.

When you understand this, you realize that everything about the waking experience besides the immediate disclosure of partless self-luminous awareness (that is aware of only itself) is just the mind-body complex perceiving the world, and that the boundless and self-luminous presence underlying this and that is “”behind”” it is without discernible limits.

> The Infinite by definition cannot have any causal relationship or association with anything else (because there's nothing besides it anyway).
The relationship between Brahman and phenomena is considered in Advaita to be expressed by the Vivartavada model where the effect is an unreal appearance of the cause. That there is an unreal ‘effect-image’ at all is due to an inherent potency/nature in the source Brahman. However, this is not comparable to the normal causal relations between objects in the world. To say that Brahman cannot cause or project the world as an unreal image because the illusion doesn’t exist is to make the mistake of thinking of this relationship in terms of two existing things interacting, which is not what it’s talking about. In Vivartavada there is one existent, the Infinite, which by its own power brings about the ‘virtual’ appearance of samsara, but the virtual appearance never emerges into being as a second existent thing, and nor is it a second thing that Brahman has entered into a relationship with (the plurality that allows one to speak of ‘relations’ is only inside this illusion as one of its false aspects and its not present outside of it), the appearance is just a virtual illusion being projected and sustained by infinite. As Aquinas says, the world is related to God but God is not related to the world.

Shankara specifically refutes the idea that Brahman does not cause (in a Vivartavada sense) samsara on multiple occasions by noting that it logically cannot arise otherwise, and also that something that has nothingness as its basis would not even be experienced:

“And, no effect is perceived in this world as having been produced from a nonentity. If such effects as name and form had originated from a nonentity, they should not have been perceived since they have no reality. But they are perceived. Hence Brahman exists. Should any effect originate from a nonentity, it should remain soaked in unreality even while being perceived. But facts point otherwise. Therefore Brahman exists.”
-Shankara, Taittiriya Upanishad Bhashya 2.6.1

He also says that if the illusion can manifest without being projected by Brahman then there is no reason why a subtle body that had ended transmigration wouldn’t enter into transmigration again:

“And in the absence of any such power inherent in the Highest Lord, neither his proceeding to create, nor the non-liability of those who have already attained Final Release to be born again, would be reasonably sustainable." - Shankara, Brahma Sutra Bhashya 1-4-3

He can also be seen on multiple occasions rejecting the idea of things happening without any cause as self-evidently absurd and irrational.

Spiritual delusion is removed by spiritual knowledge, which is gained in this case by studying the Upanishads, related works and Vedantic commentaries on those texts such as those by Shankara; and then contemplating the truth of what one is reading and connecting that to one’s own experience.

The traditional position is that for this to be fully effective to the point of bringing about complete enlightenment and stopping transmigration you are supposed to become a monk and study all this stuff under a properly qualified guru (and if you aren’t a Brahmin you aren’t supposed to become a monk anyway). Even if you are a non-Indian with no caste who is self-studying without a guru though you can still have profound insights that drastically change your life for the better and which sow positive karmic seeds that can fructify in future lives by making you more spiritually gifted in future lives or born to circumstances that are very conducive to a very spiritual life; and if you attain a high state of spiritual insight and purity in this life then you can be liberated after entering the post-death state of Brahmaloka without having to transmigrate into another body in order to become a monk for the purpose of being liberated in the next life or whatever.

>without the possibility of ever falling back into delusion
…but you said that intelligent infinity makes itself delusional. How did I become delusional in the first place if I can’t become delusional again?

comprehensive treatises on this topic?

Sthaneshwar Timalsina's Consciousness in Indian Philosophy is a better read overall in my opinion

I thought it was pretty good too although Shevchenko’s book goes much more in depth into the relation between the Buddhi and Atman and ‘mirror models” in general, which was why I recommended it to that poster.

Also, from what I recall Timalsena didn’t write anything about how in Shankara’s view it is the intellect that knows objects when imbued with the light of the Self, and that the Self is not literally a witness or cognizer of the intellect’s contents, and it seemed unclear if he actually understood that this was Shankara’s and many other Advaitins position, while Shevchenko clearly understands this

If you've read "nothing" as you say, then I think you should start with the Brihadaranyaka upanishad.

You are intelligent infinity. As you are infinitely powerful, only you could make yourself forget you are infinite, and delude yourself in innumerable ways, and (apparently) limit yourself -- as you have done (as infinity). Your task, now, is to remove the veils of delusion you have created for yourself and return to your original existence as intelligent infinity. Once you return to your original state, you will realize that, in fact, you have been in that state the entire time, and even the (apparent) delusional state that you existed in never actually happened (from that infinite perspective). You will remain in that state for all eternity, without the possibility of ever falling back into delusion. You will exist in infinite awareness, intelligence, joy, love, power and freedom -- and all these adjectives are, in fact, descriptions of one experience. You will be eternally aware only of your self -- and you yourself are that joy, love, etc. That attainment is true paradise, heaven. It is perfectly fulfilling, for all eternity.

All other forms of existence are, by nature, temporary and, as such, imperfect.

isn't me.

cite one quote where Kant says the aperception is not an a.priori category

he's saying that is not an a posteriori syntehtical category but an a priori synthetical category
>We must therefore look still higher for this unity (as qualitative, § 8),
so still as a category, not as a thign on itself

yeah is the category of perception that allows the unity of experience to happen, that's why is synthetical, what he's saying is that the apperception is a form of a priori sintehtical knowledge instead of a posteriori sinthetical knowledge(regular forms of experience or "perception")
the apperception is an unity of trascendental knowledge, the uniting and building of coherent consciousness out of different elementary inner experiences (differing in both time and topic, but all belonging to self-consciousness) the atman instead is a theoretical form of trascendent knowledge, which Kant refutes since nothing trascendent can generate knowledge, sinc ehte noumena is outside the realm of the categories of knowledge

>Apperceiving is an activity necessary for and parallel to perceiving (A120). This is one of the senses in which Leibniz used the term, too. To achieve recognition of a unified object, the mind must perform an act of judgment; it must find how various represented elements are connected to one another.
the apperception is an activity of the mind, is not somethign outside the mind or prior to it, just prior to the experiences of the mind

>This transcendental unity of apperception forms out of all possible appearances, which can stand alongside one another in one experience, a connection of all these representations according to laws. [A108]
It performs a “synthesis of all appearances according to concepts”, “whereby it subordinates all SYNTHESIS of apprehension … to a transcendental unity” (A108). Brook, Andrew; Wuerth, Julian (July 26, 2004)

> which Kant refutes
lol, no he doesn’t, he had never even heard of Vedanta

lol in the next paragraph Kant explain how the apperception is sinthetical
>§16The Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception
It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me.Whether the representations are in themselves identical, and whether, therefore, one can be analytically thought through the other, is not a question that here arises. The consciousness of the one, when the manifold is under consideration, has always to be distinguished from the consciousness of the other; and it is with the synthesis of this (possible) consciousness that we are here alone concerned.

did you even read the CPR?

he's saying that is not an a posteriori syntehtical category but an a priori synthetical category
>We must therefore look still higher for this unity (as qualitative, § 8),
so still as a category, not as a thign on itself

>Kant explain how the apperception is sinthetical
not replying to this

>There is a second principle of the necessary unity of apperception which is not analytic but synthetic. The principle is that necessarily I am able to refer my presentations to my identical self because it is possible for me to combine or synthesize them. “The thought that these presentations given in intuition belong one and all to me is, . . . tantamount to the thought that I unite them, or at least can unite them, in one self-consciousness” (B134).
>Kant claims that ability to synthesize my presentations is a necessary condition for being able to be conscious of them as belonging to my unified consciousness. The analytic unity of apperception “does declare as necessary a synthesis of the manifold given in an intuition, a synthesis without which that thoroughgoing identity of self-consciousness cannot be thought” (B135).

>The principle of the necessary synthetic unity of apperception is the supreme principle of the human understanding, “the primary pure cognition of understanding, on which the entire remaining use of the understanding is based” (B136).
>Kant mobilizes this principle in his attempt to prove the objective validity of the pure concepts of the understanding

advaitabros not like this