The Advaitic religious sect is path meant for the ignorant populace, which is incapable of grasping the Advaitic wisdom hidden by the Maya +

Sage  Sankara is Jagadguru for the ignorant populace and Brahma Gnani for the seeking world.

Sage Sankara’s wisdom has nothing to do with orthodox belief systems. Sage  Sankara is the only sage who has final authority on the Advaitic truth. The Advaitic truth is rational truth and scientific truth without dogma.

Religion has nothing to do with Advaita. Advaitic sect belongs to religion. Advaita is pure spirituality. The Advaitic sect is dualistic and has nothing to do with the Advaitic truth which is hidden by the illusion. Mixing religion and spirituality is like mixing oil and water.

Religion is regarded as sacred and real by the common people, by the wise as false, and by the politicians as useful.

Religion and its sects are based on form, time, and space whereas the Spirituality is based on the Atman the formless, timeless, and spaceless existence.

Religions hold birth, life, death, and the world as a reality. From the ultimate standpoint, the world in which we exist is an illusion created out of the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness. 

The Advaitic sect holds the world (illusion) as a reality whereas the Sage Sankara says the world as an illusion.  Therefore, the individual experience of birth, life, death, rebirth, sin, karma, and personal gods and rituals belongs to the illusion. Thus Advaitic religious sect is a path meant for the ignorant populace, which is incapable of grasping the Advaitic wisdom hidden by the Maya or illusion.  

The seeker must know the difference between religion and Spirituality. Many people think the religion itself as spirituality. Spirituality leads to discovering the truth which is hidden by form, time, and space.

Advaita is universal. Advaita is the nature of the Soul, the  Self. The world in which you exist is created out of single stuff. That single stuff is consciousness. Knowledge of the single stuff is Advaitic wisdom.

Sage Sankara’s wisdom has nothing to do with the orthodox belief systems. Some philosophers in the past dissented from this interpretation of Vedanta philosophy, holding that the incarnated Souls were separate from the Divine Essence and only finally merged with it after the cycles of birth.

All these theoretical philosophies are based on the imagination based on the false ‘Self’ (ego or you) within the false experience (waking).

Orthodox people argue that Sage Sankara had a Guru. Sage  Sankara himself’ was Guru.

Yes, for orthodox people he is Jagadguru but for the seeker of truth, he is a Brahma Gnani

Traditionally religious people are so entangled in orthodox religiosity; that it is very difficult for them to free themselves from narrow-minded prejudices dogmas and superstitions. These educated orthodox people are more ignorant than illiterate. They strongly stuck to their inherited orthodox baggage meant for the ignorant populace. Even though their own Sage has said that orthodoxy is meant for the ignorant populace they ignore and they are like blind led by another blind follow the inherited blind belief.

Advaitic wisdom is potent but bitter medicine for those imprisoned by orthodox ideology. The Vedas talk about Brahman which refers to the ultimate truth or ultimate reality.  The consciousness is the ultimate truth, therefore, the consciousness is Brahman and Brahman is God.

Vedas do not permit idol worship. All the idols are of the Puranic Gods Priests are referring to the Puranic Brahma as GOD they are ignorant of the God in Vedas even though they speak of Vedas. 

Priests do not understand the meaning of the Brahman, which is present in the form of consciousness.

The word Brahman means ultimate truth or reality which cannot be indicated by any word. The Brahman can be expressed through silence because it is beyond the experience of form, time, and space. Therefore, the word Brahman clearly stands for the essence of the three states, which is consciousness only.

Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana is to realize the Soul is the Self.   The Soul is present in the form of consciousness. 

Sage Sankara opposed the Buddhists only, who misunderstood Bhagavan Buddha and became atheists. According to Sage  Sankara, meditation always means the critical analysis of the Self to get salvation from worldly tensions. Due to the eccentric ego of the then atheists, Sage  Sankara did not go beyond this since the atheists will not accept God beyond themselves. This limitation is not due to limited knowledge of Sage  Sankara but is due to the existing situation of the psychology of the surrounding society.

Even Bhagavan Buddha kept silent about God because the society dealt with by Him consisted of Purvamimamsakas, who were strong atheists. Bhagavan Buddha said that everything including the Self is only relatively real (Sunya). This is correct because the Self is a part of the universe, which is relatively real with respect to the absolute unimaginable God. The Bhagavan Buddha stopped at this point because the atheists could not realize the existence of an unimaginable God indicated through His silence. 

The point of Buddha is that if God is non-existent, the entire creation including the Self is non-existent. Sage Sankara wanted to establish the existence of the Brahman. For this purpose, He made the Atman as the Brahman. He brought out the identity of Self with consciousness and made the Atman the Brahman. Since one will not negate the existence of his Self, he will accept the existence of the Brahman, which is the Atman or Soul the innermost Self. Both Bhagavan Buddha and Sage  Sankara kept silent about the absolute unimaginable God. The same philosophy was dealt with by them from different angles in different situations.

Exploring if an outside observer can, in all cases, determine if a person is Enlightened or not, the venerated Indian Sanyasin, Sage Sankara), in his work The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination (1) or as it is sometimes known, Viveka Chudamani (2), states that the Knower of the Atman (i.e., a Gnani) "bears no outward mark of a holy man" (Stanza 539). Continuing, although there are variances found in the actual wording between various translators and translations the gist behind the words remains the same, Sage Sankara says:~“Sometimes he appears to be a fool, sometimes a wise man. Sometimes he seems splendid as a king, sometimes feeble-minded. Sometimes he is calm and silent. Sometimes he draws men to him. Sometimes people honor him greatly, sometimes they insult him. Sometimes they ignore him.

Sage Sankara pokes fun at ascetics and points out that all their austerities do not cause desires to go “(Altar Flowers" Page 205, v.2 P.207 v.4.)

Sage Sankara says:~ Whatever thing remains eternal is true, and whatever is non-eternal is untrue. Since the world is created and destroyed, it is not true.

Advaitic Truth is the unchanging thing. Since the world is changing, it is not true.

Whatever is independent of space and time is true, and whatever has space and time in itself is untrue.

Just as one sees dreams in sleep, he sees a kind of super-dream when he is waking. The world is compared to this conscious dream.

The world is believed to be a superimposition of the Brahman. Superimposition cannot be true.

On the other hand, Sage  Sankara claims that the world is not absolutely false. It appears false only when compared to Brahman. In the pragmatic state, the world is completely true—which occurs as long as we are under the influence of Maya. The world cannot be both true and false at the same time; hence Sage Sankara has classified the world as indescribable. The following points suggest that according to Sage Sankara, the world is not false (Sage Sri, Sankara himself gave most of the arguments)

This Māyāvāda of Sage Sankara was highly criticized and misunderstood. Bhaskaracharya described Sage  Sankara to be indebted to the Buddhists for his concept of Maya. (The term Maya, however, appears in the Bhagavad Gita 7.14 and also in many Upanishads).  

The concept of Māyā seems to be a hypothesis. Since according to the Upanishads only Brahman is real, but we see the material world to be real, Sage  Sankara explained the anomaly by the concept of this illusionary power Māyā.

Sage Sankara:~  “The world, filled with attachments and aversions, and the rest, is like a dream: it appears to be real as long as one is ignorant, but becomes unreal when one is awake.

Sage  Sankara:~ “As fire is the direct cause of cooking, so knowledge, and not any other form of discipline, is the direct cause of Liberation; for Liberation cannot be attained without Knowledge." (Self-Knowledge).

Sage  Sankara:~   As the moon appears to be moving when the clouds move in the sky, so also to the non-discriminating. Atman appears to be active when in reality the senses are active.

The Soul is the Self. The Soul is present in the form of consciousness.  The consciousness is the ultimate truth or Brahman or God in truth. Consciousness alone is real; the world is merely an illusion.  

The world in which we exist has no independent existence apart from consciousness.  The world in which we exist is not different from consciousness because the world is created out of consciousness. The Soul, the  Self is eternal, impersonal awareness, one without the second. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar