Advaita: You Are Not a Body

According to Advaita (similar terms: Vedanta, Nondualism), we exist in a dream state, cripplingly laden with baggage we can't remember self-loading, doomed to feel that something's always missing because we've fallen into a delusional pattern of pretending we're separate human bodies. Happiness requires waking up.

This may seem fringey and woo-woo, but, after a mere few thousand years, the notion's lately been building mainstream attention. Even Tom Shadyac, director of such profound gems as "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective", has a new movie out making a watered-down yet highly entertaining case for basically the same thing.

So, in case you want to bone up...

Advaita 101: courtesy of comedian Bill Hicks

Advaita 201: courtesy of Sailor Bob

Advaita 301: courtesy of Nisargadatta Maharaj

However...unless you've got some meditation under your belt (to "loosen you up", or, in mystic-speak, "ripen" you), none of this will do you much good. So here's a recommended meditation system (admirably stripped-down and non-religious). Here's the same system explained more tersely, but for free.

Bonus: The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta (an interpretation which makes a helluva lot more sense than any Christian commentary I've seen).