Embodiment and Self-realisation: The Interface between Sankara's Transcendentalism and Shamanic and Tantric Experiences

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The Advaita of Śaṅkara portrays consciousness as a single reality, with the material world and the body as the product of ignorance. In contrast, the shamanic worldview centres on the body, with various methods to induce altered states of consciousness. A cursory examination reveals a polarity between Śaṅkara’s non-dualism and the shamanic practices that use body as the means of experience and cultivate embodied states for transforming subjective experience. This article aims to dismantle this misconstrued polarity, arguing that embodied experience is at the core of both shamanic and non-dual practices. I will examine the status of the body in Śaṅkara’s philosophy in order to make this argument.