Atmabodha (Knowledge of the Soul) of Adi Sankaracharya Translated by Camille Svensson with comments taken from the writings of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba (Booklets on Spirituality and Human Values, Volume 14)

Adi Shankara (788 CE - 820 CE), was an Indian philosopher from Kalady of present day Kerala who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta.Shankara travelled across India and other parts of South Asia to propagate his philosophy through discourses and debates with other thinkers. He is reputed to have founded four mathas ("monasteries"), which helped in the historical development, revival and spread of Advaita Vedanta. Adi Shankara is believed to be the organizer of the Dashanami monastic order and the founder of the Shanmata tradition of worship. His works in Sanskrit concern themselves with establishing the doctrine of Advaita. He also established the importance of monastic life as sanctioned in the Upanishads and Brahma Sutra, in a time when the Mimamsa school established strict ritualism and ridiculed monasticism. Shankara represented his works as elaborating on ideas found in the Upanishads, and he wrote copious commentaries on the Vedic Canon (Brahma Sutra, Principal Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita) in support of his thesis. The main opponent in his work is the Mimamsa school of thought, though he also offers some arguments against the views of some other schools like Samkhya and certain schools of Buddhism that he was partly familiar with. However, he held firmly that only Brahmin caste males are eligible to attain the knowledge of Brahman. One of the most famous debates of Adi Shankara was with the ritualist Mandana Mishra. Madana Mishra's guru was the famous Mimamsa philosopher, Kumarila Bhatta. Shankara sought a debate with Kumarila Bhatta and met him in Prayag where he had buried himself in a slow burning pyre to repent for sins committed against his guru. Kumarila Bhatta had learned Buddhist philosophy from his Buddhist guru under false pretenses, in order to be able to refute it.