Vijnanabhiksu

Vijñānabhikṣu (also spelled Vijnanabhikshu, fl. 1550-1600) was an Indian philosopher who lived in north India. He wrote commentaries on three different schools of Indian philosophy, Vedānta, Sāṃkhya, and Yoga, and brought them together into a single theistic synthesis known as avibhagādvaita ("indistinguishable non-dualism"). Although his sub-commentary on the Yoga Sutras, the Yogavarttika, is now his most widely read work, his earliest works belonged to the school of Bhedābheda (Difference and Non-Difference) Vedanta. Like many medieval Vedāntins, he considers Shankara's school of Advaita Vedānta a school of Buddhism in disguise, and understands the phenomenal world as real instead of illusory. As Vijñānabhikṣu claims that all three of the schools he commented on were a unity, this leads him to make some controversial claims (for instance, that the originator of the Sāṃkhya philosophical system believed in the existence of God).