we have come to the close of our study of the paths of Shankara and Heidegger to authentic human destiny. Both envisage similar paths. The third part of the work looked into the similarities and differences found between these paths and critically analyzed each. The work in these three chapters clearly points to the five fundamental presuppositions that underlie both the paths of Shankara and Heidegger, viz., an intellectual approach, a dualism in knowledge, the incommunicability of the highest experience, a personal path and a secondary role for the body.

Both Shankara and Heidegger propose an intellectual ap-proach in attaining Brahman-experience and Being-experience respectively. Though Shankara speaks of physical and moral pre-parations, their role is very initial to the path. They play only a negative role in that they remove the hindrances relating to the body and the mind so that the seeker can concentrate fully on the intellectual preparation, viz., the hearing, the reflection and the meditation, which alone open the aspirant to discriminative know-ledge and thereby to the removal of ignorance. For this reason Shankara strongly denied to indirect methods of karma and bhakti the role of taking one to Brahmaanubhava. Heidegger’s approach is not that different. He says that Being-experience is attained in three stages: essential thinking of Being, dwelling in the nearness of Being and seeing the truth of Being. In spite of their differences, these three stages can be seen as parallels to the three stages of the intellectual preparation of which Shankara speaks. In these stages Dasein is totally caught up with Being in an intellectual vision similar to the seeker who is engrossed in the identity-experience with Brahman at various levels of the intellect. The three stages in both paths are ascending stages in which the seeker and the Dasein move from a lower level of existence with Brahman/Being to a higher level of experience. Even the final stage of Brahman/Being-experience attained by the seeker and the Dasein is nothing else but a unitive, total and intellectual vision of Brahman/Being, because this stage totally lacks any emotional or other elements. Thus, the paths of Shankara and Heidegger fundamentally are an intellectual expe-rience of Brahman/Being, not only in the process, but also at the end. As a result, both paths can be used only by people with an intellec-tual bent of mind, such as thinkers and poets, to attain the final goal of existence.

The Shankarite and Heideggerian paths have two levels of knowledge, before and after attaining the Brahman/Being-experi-ence. Shankara distinguishes between the phenomenal (vyavahaarika) and the nomenal (Brahmaanubhava) levels of knowledge. The former is characterized by the subject-object duality and is limited to empirical experience. Every knowledge attained through the means of knowledge (pramaanas) belongs to this realm. Nomenal know-ledge is characterized by unity-experience, i.e., the experience of everything, including oneself, in the one absolute Brahman. It is not attained in any of the three stages, in which there is ‘I-conscious-ness’, viz., the waking-state, the dream-state and the deep sleep-state, but is available to the seeker only in the state of tuuriya. These two levels of knowledge are two approaches to the one and the same reality from aparaa and paraa levels of existence. The two approaches are not two different world views imposed by the subjective consciousness, rather the former is unreal when seen from the perspective of the latter. Martin Heidegger contrasts meta-physical-technological knowledge and the knowledge of Being. The former is characterized by scientific research and a technological attitude of domination and their consequence, calculative-thinking. The knowledge of Being is not available on the level of metaphy-sical-technological knowledge. Rather, it is given to the essential thinker of Being, the dweller in the nearness of Being and the seer of the truth of Being, in the realm of Ereignis. Heidegger refers to the entry into the realm of Ereignis as an ‘unbridged-entry’, meaning that there is no bridge between metaphysical-technological know-ledge and the knowledge of Being. The latter is attained only when one lets go of the former and seeks the manifestation of Being in the spatio-temporal history.

Since both Shankara and Heidegger hold for two levels of knowledge and that there is no entry possible between the two, there arises the difficulty of communicating the Brahman/Being-expe-rience. For Shankara, the identity-experience between Brahman and Aatman is trans-empirical and eternal; therefore, it is indescribable and incommunicable. For the Brahmajnaani, phenomenal existence is unreal as he sees everything from the perspective of Brahman. Since, one in the level of phenomenal existence experiences every-thing in terms of duality one can never get at Brahmaanubhava. Therefore, neither the Brahmajnaani can communicate, nor the one in the state of phenomenal existence can understand what the Brahmaanubhava state is about.

Heidegger speaks of Being-experience in terms of essential thinking, dwelling in the nearness of Being and seeing the truth of Being. All he says about these stages of Being-centered existence -- Being’s giving and Dasein’s receiving, Being’s poetic presencing and Dasein’s poetic dwelling in the three ecstases of time, Being’s unconcealing-concealing manifestation in aletheia and language, the house of Being, and Dasein’s openness to these -- can never be communicated using metaphysical-technological language as all these experiences belong to the realm of Ereignis. The only way one can arrive at such knowledge is, by making the ‘unbridged-entry’ into the realm of Ereignis, wherein Being and Dasein are appro-priated to each other and the truth of Being is manifested to Dasein. Thus, like the Brahmajnaani, the authentic Dasein would never be able to communicate the Being-experience, and those in metaphy-sical-technological level would never be able to get at it, as the Being-experience is not available in this realm. Thus, both for Shan-kara and Heidegger, the Brahman/Being-experience is incommunicable.

Besides, both paths are of such nature that the aspirant and the Dasein must walk all alone. In the Shankarite path, at every stage of Brahmaajijnaasa, the aspirant must walk the path all by himself. At the physical, moral and intellectual levels, it is the aspirant who is called to pursue the path. The only person that can point the way is the guru. But the role of the guru is such that he is an unattached master; his job is to show the way which the aspirant must follow equally in a detached manner. There is not a genuine one-to-one, I-thou relationship in this master-disciple relationship. Other than the master, there is no one to intervene or to assist the aspirant in the jnaana path to authenticity. The whole process is his own personal effort. It is very similar in the Heideggerian path as well. Heidegger presents Being-experience as a personal experience of Being by Dasein. As an essential thinker, a dweller in the nearness of Being and a seer of the truth of Being, Dasein experiences Being all alone in himself and in its manifestation in things. Hardly any role is played by the other Daseins or an intersubjective community of Daseins in one’s movement towards authenticity. Often the inter-vention of other Daseins is seen as a distraction in the whole process. In this manner, both the Shankarite and Heideggerian paths to authenticity are personal paths to be walked all alone by the seeker and the Dasein.

Both Shankara and Heidegger give much less importance to the bodily nature of man; and body’s significance is only secondary in their paths. For Shankara, body belongs to the level of ignorance. Its condition reflects the fruits of one’s actions. Body ceases to be when all past karma is exhausted. The physical and the moral preparations are aimed at mastering the body and its inclinations, which are considered to prevent the aspirant’s moving towards his goal of Brahman-experience, as it blocks the seeker from the serious study of the scripture. Even in the liberated state, the Jiivanmukta, though has a body due to the effects of karma, but lives a life with no significant relationship to the body. At the ultimate state of Videha-mukti, Shankara does not envisage a bodily existence. Even in Heidegger, we find the bodily dimension of man to be totally ignored. In Heidegger I, though Heidegger characterizes Dasein as a being-in-the-world, not even once is the bodily nature explicitly discussed. In Heidegger II, man’s essential thinking, dwelling and seeing is not seen in relationship to his bodily aspect. Thus, even in Being-experience Dasein is not seen as experiencing Being as a bodily being. Since man in his bodily nature is ignored, intersubjec-tive and ethical dimensions are vaguely treated in Heidegger’s path. Hence, both Shankara and Heidegger give only a secondary signi-ficance to the bodily nature of man.

Both thinkers share the same purpose in that they are concerned with calling men to live authentically. Shankara and Heidegger and their paths to authentic human destiny have no other aim but to show the worthlessness of living a life centered on the world and its values, and to point to the eternal value of Brahman/Being-centered living, that is often overshadowed by the former. They did not want human existence to be fragmented, for in the process man loses his uniqueness and significance. Their paths are ways through which man can move from superficiality to serious-ness, from indecision to decision, from aimlessness to purposeful-ness, and from mediocrity to deeper and fuller commitment. Besides, they wanted man to experience the inner dimension of reality without being a merely superficial passer-by in life.

One may wonder at the reason for the similarity of purpose and the presuppositions that underlie the philosophies of these two thinkers, even though they lived many centuries apart and in traditions that are very different from each other. Probably it is because they were addressing in, and through their philosophies the human situation that in some way is beyond time and culture, but which has deteriorated and lost sight of its goal. Though addressed in different cultures and in different times in history, the philo-sophies of Shankara and Heidegger announce to the people of their times that though man is in the world, he is not of the world, i.e., that though in the world, man has a destiny beyond the world, and so there is a need for man to transcend his present existence in order to find his genuine life.

In this context, our study of the paths of Shankara and Hei-degger to authentic human destiny could be just an opening. This study we have undertaken and completed shows how through the message of these two thinkers human existence was sustained and guided towards its destiny in two cultures and in two different eras in history. History always has provided such authentic voices that speak the same truth in different epochs, as and when there arises the need for humankind’s genuine transformation. Since many such paths have been given to humankind, it is possible to raise the same questions of man’s authentic human destiny from the global perspective, in which we could consider the paths proposed by various systems, such as the Greek, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist, Sikh, Chinese, Zen, primitive religions and other similar schools. Such an attempt will be the ‘matter-for-thought’ of another volume we visualize in the future.