It is certainly possible to engage deeply with Advaita Vedanta while remaining within another religious tradition, but how harmoniously this works depends on how that tradition is understood. Advaita is, at its heart, a vision of non-dual reality: the insight that Atman and Brahman are one, and that the apparent separations between self, world, and God are ultimately not absolute. Its primary disciplines—listening to the teachings, reflecting on them, and meditating upon them—are oriented toward a transformation of understanding rather than toward a change of external religious identity. In that sense, Advaita functions more as a philosophical and contemplative framework than as a competing institutional religion.

Many practitioners therefore continue to participate in the devotional and ethical life of their inherited faith while interpreting it through a non-dual lens. Rituals, prayers, and images of a personal God can be seen as meaningful expressions of the one reality that Advaita names as Brahman, rather than as affirmations of an irreducible dualism between creator and creature. This is supported by the Advaitic distinction between the empirical level of truth, where persons, duties, and religious forms operate, and the ultimate level of truth, where only non-dual Brahman is finally real. Within this perspective, outward religious practice and inward Advaitic understanding need not be at odds.

Tensions arise, however, when a religious tradition insists that the separation between God and the individual is eternally fixed, or when it upholds exclusive claims that deny the possibility of a shared, underlying reality. Doctrines that affirm a strict, permanent dualism or an uncompromising exclusivism can sit uneasily beside the Advaitic assertion that all beings and the divine share a single essence, and that the sense of a separate self is ultimately illusory. In such contexts, institutional authorities or communities may regard non-dual interpretations as incompatible with their official teachings, even if individual seekers find them spiritually resonant.

From the standpoint of classical Advaita, stable realization of non-duality eventually loosens the grip of all fixed religious identities and conceptual frameworks. Yet until such realization is firmly established, following a religious path that cultivates ethical integrity, devotion, and mental clarity is seen as supportive rather than contradictory. Many contemporary seekers therefore live within a particular religious community while allowing Advaita Vedanta to shape their deepest understanding of self and reality, navigating any doctrinal tensions with care and inner honesty.