features of duality – based experiences that the understanding and attainment of the supreme non-dual becomes possible. Gaudapada and Sankara relate māyā to the Vedic metaphor of hidden (gūdha) Brahman (Katha Upanishad (I.iii.12)). Gaudapada shows that it is only the existent that can appear, the non-existent cannot appear. Sankara tells us that the common experience depends on adhyasa (cognition of 'that' in 'not-that'), on something superimposed, and which is a transcendental error or avidya. Dvaita in whatever form is perceived by the mind, duality ceases when the mind ceases to exist and function as the mind. And, Sankara concedes that the Samadhi experience ('Transcendental Consciousness'), which describes the state devoid of cognitive functioning, will not be established, if the phenomenal self is not considered distinct from the cognitive faculty which faculty cannot be an agent. Sankara insists: सङ्घातोऽपि तथा नाहमिति दृश्यविलक्षणम् | दृष्टारमनुमानेन निपुणं सम्प्रधारय || "Similarly be sure that you are not the complex of the gross and the subtle-bodies, and intelligently determine, by inference, that you, the ‘seer’, are entirely distinct from the seen" (Vakya Vritti.Sl. 17) which means that a person should firmly ascertain that in himself he is something other than the gross and the subtle bodies. In his commentary on this statement, Swami Chinmayananda tells us that the misapprehension that the products of matter, such as body, mind and intellect, are the Self, is an experience caused by the non-apprehension of the Spiritual Essence; the non-apprehension of the Supreme Self in all its supreme transcendental resplendency, generates endless misapprehensions which are to be removed by invoking knowledge, the direct apprehension of the Self. Unlike Sankara, Ramanuja does not admit a distinction between illusory perception and true perception, for he declares that even in illusory perception, so-called, there is some perception of reality. Thus all experience has its validity. The immediate intuition of God is not the highest transcendental consciousness (Turiya) but rather it is the transcendental experience of God in which there remains the ego as distinct from him. R.D.Ranade states that the Upanishadic seers throw hints and suggest the way for realizing the Self, only too cognizant of the fact that any description of the great mystic experience by word of mouth would fall short of reality, as much as any mediate, intellectual, or expressible knowledge would fall short of immediate, intuitive, first-hand experience. There is the same gulf between the expression of an