Atanu

I disagree. There is no teacher greater than life and the universe. As the Sikhs say with reverence, there is only one wonderful teacher WaheGuru. As is mentioned in the Upanishads, Guru Brahman Guru Maheswarah meaning not only that a teacher is equivalent to the supreme reality (or the supreme personification of reality), but also that the supreme reality is the teacher.

All teachers are mere projections of the ultimate reality which is the true teacher.

I don’t consider that to have such a projection, you need to have a human teacher. It could be a disparate network of varied individuals and knowledge can be transmitted through interactions via such a network.

By the way, Shree Aurobindo is one of the true philosophical greats of our century. He has tried to explain the Advaita principle in the terminology of Biblical and western philosophy. The fundamental difference of Indian philosophy is the participatory nature of the individual in the conception of Brahmān. As the Upanishads say, Aham Brahmāsmi (I am Brahman) and Prajnānam Brahmān (awareness is Brahman). These are very powerful thoughts and very radical with respect to western philosophy. There was a jesuit priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who conceptualized what is known as Omega Point to give a representation to this idea. One of the people impressed by this idea was Issac Asimov who penned a story. This principle is also one of the fundamental alternative theories in cosmology, known as the Participatory Anthropic Principle as conceptualized by Dr. John Wheeler. Shree Aurobindo has linked the Advaita philosophy to the theory of evolution, thereby inspiring Pierre Teilhard.