1 Introduction: The Theoretical Availability of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

… The individual who achieves unity within himself sets other men forward in desiring the same good. In a true sense, the ideal individual and the perfect community arise together.

Radhakrishnan 2009, 227

The place of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in contemporary Indian philosophy is uniquely significant, reflected in his translations of classical Indian philosophical texts, his dialogues with contemporaries, and his efforts to present Indian thought and ethos to a global audience, along with the many other contributions he made to the Indian knowledge tradition (Murty & Vohra 1990; Schilpp 1992). Despite his intellectual range and sustained dedication, his work still requires deeper philosophical engagement. Although Radhakrishnan’s philosophy may be approached in various ways, the present study situates him within the long-standing tradition of vāda in Indian philosophy. We argue that such an engagement offers a more fitting and intellectually responsible tribute to a philosopher of Radhakrishnan’s stature, as well as to the enduring continuity of Indian knowledge systems (Matilal 1998; Tripathi 2021). Accordingly, the paper examines Radhakrishnan’s Neo-Vedāntic position, provisionally understood under this category, not in isolation but in sustained dialogue with its classical Advaita antecedent. Through this comparative approach, the study seeks to determine whether Radhakrishnan’s philosophical project marks a departure from, a reinterpretation of, or a meaningful continuation within the Advaita tradition.

Neo-Vedānta, though lacking a settled definition, is often understood as an effort to “bring Brahman down to earth,” making the world ethically meaningful despite its status as māyā (Bhushan & Garfield 2011). Thinkers such as Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya complicate this picture with alternative accounts of the Absolute (Bhattacharyya 1976). Its major interpreters – Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and Radhakrishnan – present it as a “life-affirming” view in which worldly action and service are not opposed to spirituality but express it (Mahadevan & Saroja 1981; Rajan 2024). In this way, it both adopts and questions modernity, as seen in Vivekananda’s “synthesis” and Aurobindo’s “Integral” ideal (Fort 1998). Classical Vedānta, especially Śaṅkara’s Advaita, is often contrasted with Neo-Vedānta (Halbfass 1995; Phillips 1998). Advaita has been described as “world-negating” or “life-denying,” though such readings are largely shaped by Neo-Vedāntins themselves, who first attribute this character to it and then develop their own positions as responses or refinements.¹ This interpretive tendency is also echoed in some Indological writings, for instance, in the work of Albert Schweitzer (1936). Whether such a reading is philosophically justified is a separate matter; nevertheless, this perception has exercised a long and influential afterlife in modern Indian intellectual history. It is precisely this perception that continued to haunt Radhakrishnan throughout his academic career (Radhakrishnan 1913; 1914; 1974). This intervention treats this tension not as a superficial opposition, but as a silent dialectic that has shaped the self-understanding of Indian philosophy in the modern period. Rather than taking sides, it seeks to examine this interaction through a careful reading of Radhakrishnan’s interpretation of Māyāvāda and Muktivāda in light of Śaṅkara’s Advaita. Existing scholarship has already opened significant pathways for understanding this issue.

For instance, Andrew O. Fort’s (1998) study of jīvanmukti traces the historical and doctrinal transformations of embodied liberation from classical Advaita to Neo-Vedānta, while Donald A. Braue’s (1984) analysis of Radhakrishnan’s interpretation of māyā shows how he moves away from a strictly illusionist reading and instead reinterprets the world as a dynamic manifestation of the Absolute. However, these studies largely proceed in parallel, unconnected tracks. The mutual philosophical relation between māyā and mukti – arguably two decisive coordinates of Advaita metaphysics – has not been examined in a unified manner within Radhakrishnan’s thought. Nor has sufficient attention been given to whether his reformulation of these concepts remains structurally continuous with Śaṅkara’s Advaita or marks the emergence of a distinct Neo-Vedāntic shift. It is precisely this underexplored intersection between tradition and modernity that the present paper seeks to address.

Accordingly, the discussion begins with an analysis of Radhakrishnan’s six notions of māyā, which constitute a crucial aspect of his philosophical project, and then proceeds to mukti as the culmination of his philosophical and religious reflections, without introducing a conceptual dualism between these two central concepts. The subsequent discussion places these themes in dialogue with Ādi Śaṅkarācārya’s Advaita Vedānta, particularly regarding non-duality, liberation, world-affirmation, and social ethics, while remaining attentive to the Neo-Vedāntic tendency to universalize Advaita by loosening it from its traditional doctrinal and interpretive frameworks. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, this essay examines whether Radhakrishnan’s interpretation constitutes a mere restatement of Śaṅkara for a modern audience or a substantive reconfiguration of Advaita within a distinct modern intellectual framework. In doing so, it moves beyond reductive readings of Neo-Vedānta as simply apologetic or colonial in orientation, and of classical Advaita as exclusively ascetic or world-negating. By situating these two philosophical standpoints in dialogue, the study relates the Vedic-Sanskritic intellectual milieu to colonial and postcolonial contexts, thereby highlighting the continuity, resilience, and adaptability of Indian philosophical traditions despite historical transformations.

2 The Contours of Māyā and Mukti in Radhakrishnan’s Neo-Vedānta

Despite its uncompromising non-dualism at the level of ultimate reality (pāramārthika-sattā), Advaita Vedānta continues to attract thinkers because it does not ground liberation (mokṣa) in heavenly rewards (svarga) or in deferred posthumous promises. Rather, it insists that ultimate reality (Brahman) is not something to be attained within time, space, or causal processes, but is already present as one’s own innermost self (ātman), awaiting only right realization (Bhattacharya 2008). It is often encapsulated in the phrase that realizing Brahman is ‘accomplishing the accomplished’ (Rambachan 1991). Accordingly, Advaita advances the modest yet demanding claim that the pervasive sense of duality experienced in everyday life, which underlies much human distress, arises from avidyā (ignorance), understood as a fundamental misrecognition of reality. This error is not corrected by seeking something external but by realizing what is already the case, an insight captured with remarkable economy in the Upaniṣadic mahāvākyas such as aham brahmāsmi and tat tvam asi, among others.

The reason for beginning with these introductory remarks is that Radhakrishnan himself presented his thought as continuous with this tradition. T.M.P. Mahadevan, after a careful examination of his philosophical position, explicitly places him within the Advaitic lineage, though of a distinctive kind that will be clarified in the course of this discussion (Mahadevan & Saroja 1981). While there are multiple ways of approaching the category of Advaita, the concepts of māyā and mukti provide especially useful entry points for analysis before turning to Śaṅkara’s Advaita for comparative purposes. In Radhakrishnan’s philosophy, the concept of māyā functions as a mediating metaphysical principle through which he reinterprets classical Advaita Vedānta in dialogue with modern philosophy, idealism, and lived religious experience. Across his major works – An Idealist View of Life (1932/2009), The Hindu View of Life (1927) and Eastern Religions and Western Thought (1974) – he does not treat māyā as mere illusion, world-negating principle, or epistemic error, but as a complex explanatory category encompassing six interrelated meanings: mystery, becoming, duality, materiality, concealment, and asymmetrical dependence within a fundamentally non-dual reality (Braue 1984). D.A. Braue rightly observes, for Radhakrishnan, the problem of māyā is not simply an inherited doctrinal puzzle but arises from a deeper metaphysical and soteriological need to account for the value, meaning, and ontological status of the experienced world. Since human reason is naturally compelled to seek what underlies the shifting panorama of phenomena, “Radhakrishnan treats māyā as an attempt to explain the relation between the visible order and an abiding unseen reality, rather than as a simple denial of the world (Braue 1984, 9).”²

Nevertheless, Radhakrishnan does not completely depart from the traditional Advaita framework. Like classical Advaita thinkers, he repeatedly maintains that māyā is anirvacanīya (indefinable), not in the sense of being irrational, but in the sense of marking the limits of discursive thought (Radhakrishnan 2009). On this basis, Radhakrishnan argues that the relationship between the world and the Absolute, and between the many and the One, cannot be fully captured by the human intellect. Human understanding remains bounded by finitude, as Prometheus was bound to the rock, unable to grasp the ultimate origin or the final “why” of existence. He therefore recommends a form of reflective agnosticism with regard to such ultimate cosmological questions. This, however, is not a rejection of inquiry, but rather a disciplined recognition of the limits of discursive reason, explicitly showing his fidelity to the Vedānta tradition. This conception of māyā is crucial, as it sets the horizon for his broader project: the world is not an illusion to be dismissed, but a mystery to be engaged. As he writes, “As to why there is a realization of this possibility, we can only say that it is much too difficult for us in the pit to know what is happening behind the screens. It is māyā, or a mystery which we have to accept reverently (Radhakrishnan 2009, 255).”

Accordingly, the second meaning that emerges in his analysis is māyā as the power of self-becoming, understood as a cosmogonic principle. It is conceived as the inherent creative energy within the divine, what he calls ātma-vibhūti – the power of self-expression, self-manifestation, and creation. This power resides in Īśvara, the personal God, and functions as the means by which the One becomes the many. Here māyā is not illusion but a dynamic and creative force, the principle through which the Absolute, without undergoing any intrinsic change, unfolds or emanates the universe. Radhakrishnan frequently employs the analogy of an artist: God, like a sculptor, uses this power to bring forth “likenesses” of the ideas inherent in the divine nature. The world, on this view, is a genuine creation, a likeness rather than a distorted perception. This interpretation marks a significant departure from the strict illusionist reading, as found, for instance, in the work of Ācārya Prabhu Datt Śāstrī (1911). As Radhakrishnan put it –

The inference of the unreality of the world from the sole reality of Brahman is legitimate if the world is viewed as separate from Brahman. But is there any ground for such an assumption? … The reality of Brahman, according to Vedānta, is not exclusive of the reality of the universe. The reality of Brahman, as asserted throughout the Upaniṣads, does not imply the unreality of the world, but rather logically entails its reality.

Radhakrishnan 1914, 445

This standpoint appears to lead directly to Radhakrishnan’s treatment of the duality of consciousness and matter. He, like Sri Aurobindo, rejects both crude materialism and subjective idealism (Maitra 1973; Rajan 2026_a). And then we get the third meaning of māyā, which, in his framework, signifies the fundamental polarity found in all things except the pure Absolute – the interplay of puruá¹£a (consciousness) and prakṛti (matter). He employs the concept of māyā to mediate between the dualism of Sāṃkhya and the non-dualism of Vedānta, an unusual philosophical move given the longstanding tendency to regard these systems as doctrinally opposed.³ He visualizes all things as lying on an ellipse with two foci: consciousness and matter. Īśvara (God) creates the universe through these two aspects of its own being. In a similar manner, the fourth meaning of māyā – as primal matter – follows from this framework. This refers to the material principle, the “lower prakṛti,” which constitutes the stuff of the manifested world. Radhakrishnan describes it as the “not-self” that arises when the Absolute, as it were, articulates or differentiates its own undivided wholeness. It is here that his modernist inflection becomes especially evident in contrast to more rigid or literalist interpretations. He insists on the reality of this primal matter, a position that further reinforces his departure from any straightforward world-denying reading of Advaita. This move allows for a positive valuation of nature, scientific inquiry, and material progress. If the world is real, even if only dependently real, then efforts to improve it acquire genuine significance as meaningful ethical and practical engagement, a dimension that Neo-Vedāntins consistently emphasize (Rajan 2024).

And then we can locate the fifth meaning in his framework, where māyā is understood as concealment, marking a shift from ontology to axiology and soteriology, that is, questions of value and liberation. This is another crucial move in his philosophy. māyā here is not primarily about the world’s existence but about its meaning and our mode of perceiving it. Phenomena, he suggests, veil or conceal the “something more” on which they depend. This concealing power becomes the source of delusion, especially the “delusion of individuality.” We mistake our separate, ego-bound selves for ultimate reality, and we take transient worldly values to be permanent. Radhakrishnan illustrates this with the example of a mirage: a puddle appears in the desert where none exists. The mirage is not unreal in the sense of being nothing; it is a real optical phenomenon produced by heat conditions. Yet it conceals the desert’s true nature and misleads us about the availability of water. In a similar way, the world conceals Brahman and leads us to misrecognize ourselves as finite individuals. Liberation (mokṣa) is therefore not the disappearance of the world but the dissolution of this misapprehension. The forms remain, but their value is transformed; they no longer exert binding force or ultimate attraction.

This interpretation successfully separates the question of the world’s ontological status (that it is real) from its soteriological effect (that it can bind us). It thereby provides a rationale for spiritual practice that does not require denying the reality perceived through the senses. Finally, and not least, we arrive at the sixth meaning of māyā in Radhakrishnan’s analysis, where it appears as one-sided dependence and the integrity of the Absolute. This is articulated through two closely related ideas. The first is the one-sided dependence of the world (as effect) on Brahman (as cause): the world is entirely contingent upon the Absolute, whereas the Absolute is in no way contingent upon the world. The second concerns the preservation of the cause’s integrity. In the process of emanation, Brahman does not transform itself into the world; it remains whole and unchanged, much like a rope mistaken for a snake. The appearance of the snake depends on the rope, yet the rope’s nature remains unaffected. In his reading, this offers a coherent articulation of the classical Advaita position. As he writes: “However, it does not follow from this that our life is a mere dream and our knowledge of the world a mere fantasy … The Vedanta texts instruct us to discard the belief in the separate and individual existence of the finite modes. They tell us that their reality is Brahman or the whole. We must see Brahman in everything and everything in Brahman (Radhakrishnan 1914, 441)”.

Taken together, these six themes reveal Radhakrishnan’s distinctive contribution to modern Advaita. Māyā, for him, is not a doctrine of world-denial but a philosophical grammar that explains how unity appears as diversity, how the eternal enters time, and how spirit becomes history without ceasing to be spirit. By rearticulating māyā as mystery, self-becoming, duality, materiality, concealment, and one-sided dependence, Radhakrishnan offers a metaphysics that is at once continuous with classical Vedānta and responsive to the intellectual and existential demands of the modern world. In this sense, it provides a logically coherent account of the experiential nānātva (plurality) of the world. Yet, without losing sight of the fact that all this is still māyā, there remains a spiritual responsibility to cultivate what is Real – whether it is called Truth, the Absolute, or Brahman – given the central non-dualist insight that Truth is not something external to us, but that in which we are already grounded.

Radhakrishnan’s thought reflects this position in practice. While he does not offer a strictly scholastic account of māyā in the classical Advaita sense – where it is typically explained through the two functions of āvaraṇa and viká¹£epa, and subsumed under the category of anirvacanÄ«yatā, sometimes even reduced to ajñāna (ignorance) – his engagement with the concept is, in many respects, more elaborated, analytical, and expansive than this traditional framing suggests, as discussed above. In fact, his interpretation renders māyā more life-affirming than its conventional connotations often imply.⁴ He writes, “No theory has ever asserted that life is a dream and that all experienced events are illusions. One or two later followers of Śaṅkara may lend some support to this hypothesis, but it cannot be regarded as representing the main tendency of Hindu thought (Radhakrishnan1926,50).” Based on the preceding discussion, we can say that, in Radhakrishnan’s view, the doctrine of māyā is not meant to deny the reality of the world, but to explain its dependent and temporal status in relation to the Absolute.

Accordingly, rather than remaining within inherited doctrinal limits, he reworks māyā across several conceptual planes, bringing together metaphysical reflection, ethical responsibility, and lived spiritual experience. In doing so, he moves beyond narrowly scholastic formulations, giving the idea renewed philosophical depth and contemporary relevance. Alongside this reconfiguration of māyā, he also advances a distinct conception of mukti (liberation). He understands mukti not as an isolated, individual achievement but as sarva-mukti, a vision best rendered as the liberation of all, which demands comprehensive and non-sectarian ethics (Maharaj 2020). Liberation, on this view, is universal in scope and collective in realization. Every jÄ«va is ultimately destined for moká¹£a, yet no one attains final and complete liberation in isolation. He is of the view that salvation is corporate rather than private, and the very idea of an exclusively individual liberation is rejected as philosophically inadequate.⁵ This view is quite controversial from a traditional standpoint, which we shall explore in the next section.

The process of sarva-mukti unfolds through distinct yet interconnected stages. A brief reference to Sri Aurobindo is useful here, since Radhakrishnan’s position similarly assumes that the spiritual principle hidden in life is not static but progressively discloses itself through the development of consciousness. This recalls Aurobindo’s metaphysics of involution and evolution, in which the Absolute conceals itself within material existence before re-emerging through ascending levels of consciousness (Maitra 1945; Rajan 2026_a). The comparison is relevant only to this extent, as Radhakrishnan also does not conceive of liberation as a simple withdrawal from the world, as might be inferred from his articulation of māyā. It is the fuller realization of an immanent divinity within both personal and collective existence. At the individual level, liberation begins with overcoming egoity and expanding consciousness into a universal outlook. The liberated person becomes a jīvanmukta, yet does not withdraw from the cosmic process or immediately dissolve into the Absolute. Retaining individuality as the center of conscious action, the jīvanmukta continues to work compassionately for the spiritual uplift of others, even beyond bodily existence, if necessary. Liberation thus intensifies moral responsibility rather than negating it, transforming individuality into an instrument of universal good.

Accordingly, the culmination of this process is Brahmaloka (divine community), conceived not as a solitary transcendence but as a society of perfected beings dwelling in conscious communion and joy in the immediate presence of God. Here, liberation attains its collective and social fulfillment. Only when this divine purpose is fully realized does the cosmic process itself come to an end. As Radhakrishnan writes, “When this condition is attained, we have a Brahmaloka where the individual is transformed by contemplation on the being of God into the likeness of that which he beholds. It is a life in which the individuals are united by a perfect interpenetration of mind by mind” (Radhakrishnan 2009, 227). However, this final merging in Radhakrishnan’s worldview is not portrayed as exhaustion but as consummation, after which new cosmic processes may again arise, since the Absolute contains infinite possibilities of manifestation (Maharaj 2020).

With the preceding discussion, it also becomes clear that the relation between māyā and mukti in Radhakrishnan’s Neo-Vedānta is not a rigid dualism but a carefully structured progression, where the proper understanding of māyā directly determines the meaning of mukti, and together they shape the possibility of a positive philosophy of Vedānta. This point has also been noted by interpreters such as Milton Hunnex and William Goodwin, both of whom argue that Radhakrishnan’s larger philosophical project can only be understood once one sees how he disarms the classical objection that māyā renders the world unreal and thereby deprives ethical action of meaning. Hunnex captures this position succinctly when he writes that “Radhakrishnan clearly interprets ‘the object-world dependent … but … not a mental fiction … not abhāva (non-existent) … nevertheless … not ultimate reality’ ” (Hunnex 1958, 123). Against critics like Schweitzer, who argued that the doctrine of māyā makes ethical life futile, Radhakrishnan insists that “for the Hindu thinkers, the objective world exists. It is not illusion” (Radhakrishnan 1974, 31).

The world, therefore, possesses pragmatic and preparatory reality even if it lacks absolute status. Ethics derives its urgency precisely from this intermediate condition: because the world is not ultimately real, attachment becomes bondage; because it is not unreal, action within it has genuine spiritual consequences. Thus, “erroneous perception” still has an object, and “the world, seen, felt, tasted, and touched, is as real as the being of man who sees, feels, tastes, and touches” (Radhakrishnan 1928, 63). Ethics is thereby rescued from the charge of futility, though it remains subordinated to a higher spiritual teleology. From this, we can also connect Radhakrishnan’s conception of mukti. Liberation cannot mean escape from a non-existent world, but rather release from a distorted understanding. As Hunnex summarizes, “Escape from māyā is therefore escape from the distorted understanding of and bondage to the world – not the world as such” (Hunnex 1958, 124). mukti is thus self-realization: “The ‘I,’ the ātman, the universal self … a trinity of transcendent reality (sat), awareness (cit), and freedom (ānanda)” (Hunnex 1958, 123).

Yet this immediately creates an ethical problem. If liberation transcends good and evil, then morality risks becoming merely instrumental. William Goodwin notes that for Radhakrishnan “finite objects cannot give us the satisfaction for which our soul hungers” and “the absolute good we seek in morality is not to be found in finite satisfactions” (Goodwin 1955, 326). Accordingly, “the love of the finite has only instrumental value, while love of the eternal has intrinsic worth” (Goodwin 1955, 328). The difficulty, however, is that if mokṣa alone has intrinsic value, then ethical concern for others appears reducible to a strategy for liberation. Goodwin, therefore, observes that “from the standpoint of intrinsic worth all experiences within the context of nature are equally disvalues” (Goodwin 1955, 341). The problem deepens further for the jīvanmukta.

Radhakrishnan claims that the sage “is lifted beyond the ethical distinctions of good and evil,” though he nevertheless “does not escape from life” and “remakes the world” (Hunnex 1958, 129–130). Yet, as Goodwin reports of Advaita, “The conventional standards, the external duties and the ethical rules become meaningless to him” (Goodwin 1955, 338). Schweitzer’s criticism, therefore, remains forceful: “Abstraction is the death of ethics, for ethics are a living relationship to living life” (Hunnex 1958, 131). Even in Radhakrishnan’s reinterpretation, compassion ultimately flows from metaphysical identity with Brahman rather than from the intrinsic worth of the other’s suffering. The unresolved question, then, is whether this constitutes a genuine ethics or a spiritual metaphysics that only appears ethical. And to supplement this critique, we shall now move on to the classical Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara.

3 The Rooted Tradition of Śaṅkara and the Limits of Neo-Vedānta

We can begin this section with the premise that it is not only answers that shape a philosophical system or theory, but also the questions and provocations directed against it. This is particularly true in the case of Radhakrishnan, whose broader writings reveal a sustained effort to reposition classical Vedānta within the modern world, especially in response to charges of social irrelevance and world-denial advanced by thinkers such as Albert Schweitzer (1936) and William Archer (1917), as we could sense from our previous section, alongside the enduring appeal of Buddhist ethical universalism in both ancient and modern contexts (Radhakrishnan 1974; 2009). Yet traditional Advaita thinkers such as Śaṅkara, as well as later interpreters, would remain cautious about such reformulations, asking why avidyā, moral struggle, and pragmatic concerns of finite beings should be projected onto Brahman, which is ever-free, non-dual, and untouched by worldly becoming. It is for this dialectical purpose that we now turn to Śaṅkara, whose Advaita commentary presents mukti as an austere and transformative realization of non-duality, grounded in self-knowledge rather than in devotional or social activism (Fort 1998; Halbfass 1995; Satchidanandendra 1997). Accordingly, the status of māyā also appears noticeably different from the interpretation offered by Radhakrishnan.

For Śaṅkara, māyā (or avidyā) is the beginningless, indescribable power by which the one, non-dual, qualityless Self (Brahman/Ātman) appears as the entire world of names, forms, duality, agency, action, and experience. Oldmeadow (1992) rightly observes that māyā mediates the relationship of the world of empirical, manifold phenomena and the one Reality of Brahman, while the apparent division between them is sustained through avidyā (ignorance) and adhyāsa (superimposition). The phenomenal world, therefore, is neither absolutely real (sat) nor absolutely unreal (asat), but only vyāvahārika-sattā, an empirically experienced reality dependent upon Brahman. Māyā itself is characterized as anirvacanīya (indefinable), since it cannot be logically categorized as either real or unreal. Through its dual functions of āvaraṇa (concealment) and vikṣepa (projection), māyā obscures the true nature of Brahman while projecting the world of nāma-rūpa (name and form). Yet Śaṅkara does not regard the world as sheer non-existence; rather, it possesses provisional reality until sublated by brahma-jñāna. Accordingly, the dissolution of avidyā through right knowledge reveals the essential identity of ātman and Brahman, thereby overcoming the illusion of plurality (Oldmeadow, 1992).

From the standpoint of ultimate reality (pāramārthika-sattā), Śaṅkara holds that the world – including duties, morality, bondage, liberation, and all distinctions of agency – lacks ultimate reality. In the BrahmasÅ«trabhāṣya (I.2.6), he states that for one who realizes the universal Self, the entire practical world-order ceases, while in II.1.22 he compares the phenomenal world to a dream sublated upon awakening through Brahma-jñāna. Likewise, the UpadeśasāhasrÄ« explains that duality is merely the product of avidyā, with the one ātman appearing as many through ignorance. Yet, from the empirical standpoint (vyāvahārika-sattā), ethical duties, compassion, and discipline remain valid and necessary, since Śaṅkara also describes liberation as requiring instruction by a compassionate teacher to a self-controlled and qualified student. Thus, ethics functions as a preparatory discipline within ignorance, even though it is ultimately transcended in non-dual realization.⁶

Moreover, Śaṅkara maintains that injunctions and prohibitions apply only within the domain of ignorance (avidyā), since they arise from the Self’s mistaken identification with the body and mind (Brahmasūtrabhāṣya II.3.48). Accordingly, morality, duty, and altruistic action possess only vyāvahārika validity and are ultimately sublated from the standpoint of pāramārthika truth. Thus, Śaṅkara argues that the true nature of the self is pure consciousness, whereas embodiment and individuality arise only through non-discrimination (Brahmasūtrabhāṣya I.2.21). Liberation, therefore, consists in transcending the entire phenomenal order of agency, obligation, and relationality, much as a dream loses significance upon waking. This culminates in the doctrine of jīvanmukti, according to which the liberated person, though still embodied, remains untouched by karma because the root ignorance generating action has been destroyed.

Here lies a profound difference between Śaṅkara and Radhakrishnan. For Śaṅkara, the liberated soul’s engagement with the world is not the result of an ethically motivated mission but a spontaneous expression of residual impressions (saṃskāras) or, in some cases, a divinely ordained role of teaching. Even then, such activity has no ultimate ontological weight, since the sorrows and experiences of the world are ultimately unreal from the highest standpoint (pāramārthika-sattā). While compassion is not absent from this framework, it does not function as the central motivating force of liberation. The goal is not to transform the world but to see through its apparent reality, since even efforts at transformation remain within māyā. As long as action operates within duality and avidyā, the chain of illusion persists; only brahma-jñāna can overcome it. The final realization is a silent absorption into the impersonal Absolute, where all distinctions – including knower and known, liberator and liberated – are fully dissolved. There is no conception of a “divine community” in Śaṅkara’s eschatology, only the singular, undifferentiated reality of Brahman.

In stark contrast, Radhakrishnan’s doctrine of sarva-mukti is collective, evolutionary, and ethically charged, largely emerging from his creative reinterpretation of māyā and Advaita Vedānta. While retaining the Advaitic framework of a non-dual Absolute, he reinterprets it through a modern, world-affirming lens, influenced in various ways by Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, or more broadly within the Neo-Vedāntic trajectory. For Radhakrishnan, liberation is indeed an inward perfection and a universalization of consciousness, but it is not the terminus of the spiritual process. The liberated individual, out of spiritual compassion (karuṇā), retains individuality – not merely as a residual effect of karma, but as a consciously sustained center of action – so as to assist all other beings in attaining the same freedom.

In other words, the liberated state is not a passive waiting for prārabdha to exhaust itself but an active and compassionate striving. Accordingly, Radhakrishnan envisions a collective destiny in which the telos of evolution is Brahmaloka, conceived as a society of liberated souls living in blissful communion under a personal God (Īśvara). Only when every soul has attained perfection does the cosmic process culminate, after which all souls, together with the personal God, merge into the non-dual Absolute. Here, the metaphysical divergence from Śaṅkara becomes significant. Śaṅkara maintains a strict hierarchy in which the personal God (saguṇa Brahman or Īśvara) is a provisional reality subordinate to the impersonal Absolute (nirguṇa Brahman). Radhakrishnan, however, remains ambivalent on this issue. At times, he follows Śaṅkara in treating the cosmic God as ultimately relative and destined to dissolve into the Absolute; at other moments, influenced by Sri Aurobindo, he advances the idea of an “Absolute-God” (Brahman-Īśvara), in which the personal and impersonal are co-eternal aspects of the Supreme.

This ambiguity has important doctrinal implications. If God is merely relative, then divinity is ultimately negated at dissolution; if God is eternal, then the meaning of final merging itself becomes conceptually uncertain. Their justifications for universal liberation also differ fundamentally. Śaṅkara’s system implies universal salvation only insofar as the Self in all beings is already ever-free, while the removal of ignorance remains an individual realization without any collective teleology. Radhakrishnan, by contrast, argues for the inevitability of universal liberation on idealist and theistic grounds, maintaining a “solidarity between values and reality” in which the salvation of all must ultimately be realized (Radhakrishnan 1932, 309). We can, however, note that this establishes the utopia for universal salvation rather than the stronger claim that no one is fully free until all are free. His movement from the normative claim that all should be saved to the descriptive claim that all will be saved together rests more on philosophical idealism than on strict metaphysical necessity, as with the case of Śaṅkara’s muktivāda. In essence, Śaṅkara’s mukti is an inward realization of timeless non-duality attained through knowledge, whereas Radhakrishnan’s sarva-mukti becomes a collective and evolutionary vision shaped by compassion. For Śaṅkara, the world is ultimately transcended through the dissolution of ignorance; for Radhakrishnan, it remains the field in which liberated beings continue to work for the freedom of all. The former articulates a metaphysics of transcendent knowledge, the latter a metaphysics of ethical participation and cosmic hope.

Here we may also refer to Swami Satchidanandendra (1997), who, through a close reading of Śaṅkara’s commentaries on the Vedic corpus, argues that liberation (mukti) in Śaṅkara’s philosophy should be understood strictly in epistemological footings. And expressions such as jīvanmukti, krama-mukti, and videha-mukti are therefore pedagogical articulations of the same realization viewed from different standpoints, rather than distinct forms of liberation. Likewise, in this reading, karma and bhakti function only as preparatory means and not as constitutive of liberation itself, which remains a matter of knowledge alone. Against such backgrounds, scholars such as Paul Hacker and Andrew O. Fort have noted that Radhakrishnan reinterprets Advaita through a modern, ethically engaged lens, especially in his accounts of jīvanmukti and social service, in which the liberated person is portrayed as actively working for humanity and universal uplift (Halbfass 1995; Fort 1998). Their analyses suggest that Radhakrishnan’s reading of tat tvam asi often extends it beyond metaphysical identity into an ethical imperative shaped by modern and Christian-influenced concerns, resulting in a Neo-Vedāntic reconstruction that departs in significant ways from Śaṅkara’s strictly epistemic account of liberation. And all this happens without addressing the fact that, if tat tvam asi is true and all reality is ultimately one undivided consciousness (Brahman), the distinction between the self and the other is a complete illusion. Consequently, we cannot have duties, altruism, or rights because there is no separate entity left to receive your ethical actions, rendering traditional morality both impossible and irrelevant at the highest level of reality.

Now, as we approach the conclusion, a broader cultural tension emerges in the debate between Vedānta and Neo-Vedānta. On the question of māyā, there is no complete rupture between the two. Neo-Vedāntins, especially Radhakrishnan, simply place greater emphasis on the reality and value of the world and, accordingly, reinterpret the function of māyā. To some extent, this can still be accommodated within classical Advaita through the doctrine of the levels of reality (sattā-traya), since Radhakrishnan himself accepts this distinction. Whether his reinterpretation can ultimately be reconciled with Śaṅkara remains an open question deserving further study. The tension becomes sharper, however, at the level of muktivāda. Neo-Vedāntic accounts of liberation appear to be shaped not only by Advaitic sources but also by modern Western ethical and religious frameworks and by Mahāyāna Buddhist ideals such as mahākaruṇā, which emphasize universal compassion and collective liberation (Radhakrishnan 2009).

These influences may be summarized in the modern formula: “no one is free until everyone is free.” Liberation thus becomes increasingly tied to collective ethical transformation and social uplift. Yet once such assumptions enter Neo-Vedāntic discourse, mukti risks becoming associated with conformity, activism, or ideological projects rather than with vāda (critical inquiry) and individual realization. This raises the question of whether such reformulations remain fully faithful to the Vedāntic tradition grounded in the Prasthānatrayī – the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Brahmasūtras. Traditional scholars, therefore, argue that the fundamental problem is avidyā itself – the tendency to impose conceptual constructions upon Absolute truth. Liberation, from this standpoint, lies not in replacing one worldview with another, but in critically examining interpretations until they disclose their own limits (Satchidanandendra 1967; 1996). This caution becomes especially significant when one considers the intellectual culture surrounding Neo-Vedānta. Despite the enormous influence of figures such as Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and Radhakrishnan, there has been comparatively little sustained internal philosophical criticism of their projects. Even disagreements among Neo-Vedāntic thinkers – whether over synthesis, evolution, or integralism – rarely develop into rigorous public vāda, a central feature of the classical Indian intellectual tradition (Tripathi 2021).

Traditional scholars such as Paul Hacker, Swami Satchidanandendra, Ācārya P.K. Mukhopadhyay, and Anantanand Rambachan, among others, who have been frequently cited in our intervention, have often viewed this dialogical silence, along with other controversies in Neo-Vedānta, with suspicion. They acknowledge that Neo-Vedāntic thinkers rendered significant service in presenting Indian traditions to the modern world, yet they continue to question whether this was always done with fidelity to the interpretive frameworks defended by figures such as Śaṅkara. This tension becomes especially evident in Radhakrishnan’s philosophical method. Paul Hacker, for instance, critiques Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s work, which centers on the gap between Radhakrishnan’s claim to continue the traditional Prasthānatrayī commentary tradition and the actual character of his method, which Hacker considers insufficiently rigorous and doctrinally loose (Halbfass 1995). Although Radhakrishnan repeatedly speaks of the unity of purpose (aikārthya) underlying the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavadgītā, and the Brahmasūtras, Hacker argues that his commentaries do not systematically distinguish truth from error in the manner of classical Vedānta, such as Śaṅkara’s. Instead, as noted previously, Radhakrishnan places medieval commentators, Western philosophers, scientists, mystics, and Christian theologians side by side without offering a decisive philosophical resolution. Hacker, therefore, sees his work as driven less by strict scholastic inquiry than by the historical pressures of colonial India and the desire for Hindu cultural renewal. For Hacker, this demonstrates that Neo-Vedānta is shaped primarily by modern concerns and only secondarily grounded in the traditional commentarial framework. We too find a number of cultural lacunae like this in Radhakrishnan’s framework. For instance, to prove the reality of the world and accordingly make sense of the notion of philosophy, Radhakrishna had to take the help of Hegel three times in a single paper. (Radhakrishnan, 1914, p. 433,440,449).

For traditionalists, however, this reliance on European philosophical categories raises doubts about whether Neo-Vedānta remains firmly grounded in the Advaitic interpretive tradition itself (Satchidanandendra 1997; Rambachan 1994; Halbfass 1995; Rajan & Mishra 2025). Accordingly, we can note a clear tension within Neo-Vedānta. On the one hand, it emphasizes the ineffability of the Absolute and cautions against dogmatic metaphysics; on the other, it frequently adopts a quasi-transcendent or “integral” standpoint that appears to describe the Absolute from a higher, almost normative perspective. Neo-Vedānta thus faces a recurring philosophical difficulty: if the Absolute is ultimately beyond conceptual determination, on what grounds can its direction, meaning, or purposive character be repeatedly articulated from such an elevated standpoint? To address this, Neo-Vedāntins often move beyond the strictly scriptural framework, blurring the distinctions among sādhya (the goal), sādhaka (the seeker), and sādhana (the means). Karma, bhakti, love, and service thereby come to be interpreted not merely as instruments of liberation but as immediate expressions of the Absolute itself (Rajan 2026_b). This interpretive elasticity enables diverse philosophical appropriations, ranging from Osho’s sambhog samādhi to Hegelian dialectics and historicisms. A similar issue arises in Neo-Vedānta’s reconciliatory ambition. Systems such as Sāṃkhya are acknowledged and respected, yet their independent metaphysical claims are ultimately absorbed into an Advaitic horizon in which consciousness alone is absolute.⁷ From the standpoint of dualist and pluralist traditions, this appears less like genuine synthesis and more like hierarchical assimilation.

Likewise, although Radhakrishnan refuses to dismiss the empirical reality of the world and treats it as the field of ethical development and value-realization, the primacy of Brahman still limits the full ontological autonomy of plurality and personhood. This raises a further question: how are other Indian philosophical and religious systems, each with its own robust metaphysical commitments, expected to accept such a framework?⁸ At the same time, though challenging, Neo-Vedānta cannot be dismissed so easily, particularly since classical Advaita itself allows that truth may be articulated through different doctrinal forms, provided they remain grounded in śruti and oriented toward spiritual realization (Mahadevan & Saroja 1991; Rambachan 1991, 1994; Bhushan & Garfield 2011; Maharaj 2018). From this perspective, Neo-Vedāntins may argue that they are only restating the teachings of the PrasthānatrayÄ« within a cosmopolitan and pluralistic age. Indian exegetical traditions also allow for contextual adaptation. Related arguments emerge from Kālavāda perspectives, according to which each yuga has its own spiritual conditions and hierarchy of values. If the present age differs fundamentally from earlier epochs, it is not obvious that it should necessarily follow the same ascetic and epistemic models. Traditionalist critiques, while powerful, do not always fully account for this temporal and cultural dimension. Indeed, the rise of cosmopolitanism and pluralism is no longer merely theoretical but a lived historical condition.

If traditions themselves are historically real and culturally embodied forms of life, then pluralism and cosmopolitanism cannot simply be dismissed as illusory. Neo-Vedānta is therefore best understood through the broader cultural axioms that shaped it. Maxims such as “yato mata, tato patha” (“as many views, so many paths”), associated with the broader Ramakrishna tradition, express the conviction that different perspectives may still orient human beings toward truth. A similar sentiment is found in the Upaniá¹£adic formulation “ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti” (“Truth is one, sages speak of it in many ways”). Read in this context, Neo-Vedānta appears less as a rejection of classical Advaita than as an attempt to restate its insights under the conditions of colonial modernity and intercultural encounter. The question, therefore, remains open, inviting continued philosophical engagement from both defenders and critics of Vedānta and Neo-Vedānta alike.⁹

4 Conclusion: Towards an Invited Vāda between Vedānta and Neo-Vedānta

This paper examined the narratives that contrast classical Advaita Vedānta, particularly Śaṅkara’s tradition, with Neo-Vedānta represented by Radhakrishnan, believing one to be world-negating and life-denying while the other to be life-affirming and corrective, by asking whether Radhakrishnan’s reinterpretation of two foundational concepts – Māyāvāda and Muktivāda – remains continuous with Śaṅkara’s Advaita or marks a substantive departure. What emerges is a more nuanced picture than the standard opposition allows. On the question of māyā, Radhakrishnan’s sixfold reading – as mystery, self-becoming, duality, materiality, concealment, and one-sided dependence – shifts the emphasis from illusion to dependent reality and from world-denial to world-affirmation.

Yet this does not amount to a complete rupture with classical Advaita, since Śaṅkara’s own framework of graded reality (sattā-traya) already allows for a provisional status of the empirical world while preserving non-duality at the highest level. Radhakrishnan’s intervention lies less in formulating a new position than in foregrounding and revaluing a latent strand within the Advaita tradition, while rearticulating it in response to modern intellectual concerns. This also aligns with the broader Indic understanding of Sanskriti and paramparā, in which a tradition remains vital only through continual renewal.¹⁰

We thus conclude that Radhakrishnan’s project cannot be placed neatly within a simple continuity–discontinuity binary. In his account of māyā, he offers a reinterpretation that remains broadly compatible with Advaita’s ontological hierarchy; in his account of mukti, he advances a reconstruction that significantly reorients Śaṅkara’s epistemology-centered framework toward an ethically and historically charged vision of collective destiny. The familiar opposition between a world-denying Advaita and a world-affirming Neo-Vedānta therefore proves too schematic. What Radhakrishnan produces is not a clean break but a synthesis marked by productive tensions – between ineffability and systematization, individual realization and collective teleology, and scriptural fidelity and modern philosophical exigency.