[aruanan]

The writer is curiously selective about his descriptions of certain religions in order to maintain his thesis.

The essence of one of the hundreds of varieties of religions collectively called Hinduism is not man putting himself in the place of God but coming to understand that all things that can be named, including God, are illustrative of the illusion of separateness. The main point isn't that, at the most fundamental, man is really God. It is that what we call "man" and "God" and "the world" and "iron sulfate" are all illusion and have no independent existence at all. Freedom consists in realizing this and becoming liberated from the cycle of (illusory) rebirth.

Classical Buddhism posits only a tendency to exist, not a specific personal being, that is propagated through time because of continued desire. The answer is not becoming God, but extinction without remainder through the elimination of desire.

[spirited irish]

The author distinguished between the exoteric version and the esoteric version for the initiate. If you are of the exoteric school it makes sense that you are unaware of the initiate’s esoteric “advaitic monism.”