Background This post is with respect to the article (1) in National Herald India about the various doctrines that existed before advaita vedanta. My aim here is to offer an alternative understanding of advaita, saMkya, vaiSesika, cArvAka etc, that shows how they are all connected as compared to a notion that they are disconnected philosophical frameworks. sAksi and shUnya If we executive summarize the content of vedas and upanishads, the entire Universe came out of puruSa-Stri (where stri was a part of puruSa) (2). The 'Stri' (also called prakRti) evolved and became the Universe we see, while puruSa just remained an observer/witness/sAksi to this evolution of prakRti. puruSa never interacts with prakRti. We perceive this existence of puruSa only through the evolution of prakRti. What existed before this puruSa-Stri split (at the start of all) could be called 'Atman' (3) which we may not be able to fully fathom ever (4). Whether it is upanishads (chandogya, brhadharany