Selvalingam Pluralism vs Paramādva Vairāgya — The Same-Teacher Contradiction

The two sources take opposite explicit positions, inside a roughly one-year window, on the same teacher, in the same lineage.

Source A — 8 Schools (2025-03-27):

> The third view is called religious pluralism, and religious pluralism is the view that the reason why there are many different interpretations of the one reality has to do with the nature of that reality itself. Reality is infinitely capacious — not in a hierarchical way, in a perfectly equivalent way; all the various experiences of reality are all variously equally valid ways of experiencing the same thing... This is closer to Ramakrishna's mood, in that he felt that they were all equally valid and all equally enjoyable. You don't have to say that anyone is higher or lower than the other... It is to this view that our lineage belongs. (lines 297-302, 343-355, 497-499)

Source B — Paramādva (Mahāśivarātri 2026):

> Not pluralism in the modern Western sense. "All religions lead to the same place" is the popular formulation Selvalingam explicitly rejects. Paramādva does not collapse all traditions into equivalence... The Holy Mother's formulation, which Selvalingam cites as the corrective: Ramakrishna was an avatar of supreme vairāgya (renunciation, non-attachment). Not a teacher of religious pluralism. A being of such complete detachment that he could enter any tradition fully, wring it dry of its highest realization, and move to the next — because he needed none of them and was bound by none of them.

Same teacher. Same lineage figure (Ramakrishna). Same lineage (Selvalingam's). Opposite explicit claim.