Non-Dualism in East and West: An Introduction

“You are a woman; you are a man; you are a boy or also a girl.

 As an old man, you totter along with a walking-stick.
As you are born, you turn your face in every direction.
You are the dark blue bird, the green one with red eyes,
the raincloud, the seasons, and the oceans.
You live as one without a beginning because of your pervasiveness,
you, from whom all beings have been born.”
(Svetasvatara Upanishad 4.3-4)

Non-Dualism is a type of spiritual philosophy based on a type of spiritual experience, that of non-duality, the complete absence of separation (duality) between you and the world you observe. In non-dual awareness, the subject experiences reality as one whole of which the subject itself forms an integral part. Thus, subject-object duality is overcome. As a type of philosophy, Non-Dualism tries to make sense of this non-dual experience, to interpret it, to explain it, to gauge its value, to place it in a broader world view. However, Non-Dualism is not just one philosophy but a family of different philosophies, mostly Eastern, though the West has produced some significant forms of Non-Dualism as well, but here it usually goes by the name “Monism” (more about this terminological difference below). In Eastern philosophy, non-duality is a central feature of Vedanta, Buddhism, Daoism, Sufism, and Shaivite Tantrism. In Western philosophy, elements of non-dual thinking can be found in Eleatic Monism, Neoplatonism, Spinozism, Absolute Idealism, and Schopenhauer´s metaphysics of the Will to Life.
 
Whereas the Western approaches to non-duality are mostly theoretical, more focused on the epistemological, ontological, political and theological aspects of non-duality, the Eastern approaches – though certainly not devoid of theory – focus more on the experience of non-duality as an existentially transformative experience, to be more precise, as the key to “Enlightenment” and the ultimate “Liberation of Suffering”. Here the non-dual experience brings to an end the suffering inherent in being a (seemingly) separate individual, standing over against an independent world, in which the individual must struggle to maintain him-/herself. As the illusion of the separate ego falls away, its petty worries and ambitions, its bickering likes and dislikes, its fears and unfulfilled desires – all these obstacles to peace of mind fall away as well. And what remains is just peace of mind, a tranquil bliss, and a deep feeling of loving unity with everything and everyone. In Eastern philosophy, this liberating aspect of non-dual awareness is traditionally theorized as bringing to an end the suffering of samsara, the karmic cycle of reincarnation.

In Eastern philosophy, the enlightening aspect of non-duality is often illustrated in terms of the comparison of the human mind with a lake that mirrors the sky above it. Normally, the water on the lake is rippled, as the ever-variable winds of our thoughts and emotions create smaller or greater waves, causing a distorted reflection of the sky in the water. But with the experience of non-duality, the waves on the lake calm down, as the storm of thoughts and emotions settles, and the water becomes as smooth as a mirror, finally reflecting the blue sky above it, with the radiant Sun at its centre. Here, of course, the ‘Sun’ is a metaphor for the creative essence of reality-as-a-whole, the source of all energy and life, which you now realize to be your true identity.

Origin of Non-Dualism in the Upanishads
The oldest texts that explicitly thematize non-duality, and its connection with Enlightenment and Liberation, are the Upanishads, the fountainhead of Indian philosophy. The earliest Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya, date roughly from 800 BCE, although they are based on much older oral traditions. The philosophy expounded in the Upanishads is called “Vedanta” because these texts form the closing books of the sacred Hindu scriptures, the Veda. Thus, the Upanishads constitute the “end / culmination of the Veda” (“Veda-anta”). But this can also be read as the “highest knowledge” since in Sanskrit “veda” means “knowledge”. Vedanta in general, however, is not to be confused with Advaita Vedanta, which is a special case of Vedantic philosophy. Advaita Vedanta emerged much later as a recognizable school in Indian philosophy, around 800 CE, and develops just one of the many strands that can be found the Upanishads. Thus, Advaita Vedanta is certainly not representative of the entire range of Vedantic philosophy – a point that is often sadly ignored, not least by proponents of Advaita itself. I will say more about the difference between Advaita Vedanta and Vedanta in general below when I discuss the difference between Cosmic and Acosmic Non-Dualism.

The Upanishads develop concepts that proved to be fundamental to subsequent Indian philosophy and religion – concepts such as reincarnation, the law of karma that regulates rebirth, and the techniques for achieving liberation from the samsaric cycle of rebirth, such as Yoga, meditation, ascetism and world renunciation. In this way, the Upanishads prepared the way for new spiritual movements, notably Buddhism and Jainism, which emerged not long after the composition of the oldest Upanishads. With the concepts of reincarnation and karma, a profound pessimism creeped into Indian culture: earthly life was seen as a prison of suffering from which there is no escape, since due to the karmic effects of our actions we are reborn again and again into this ‘vale of tears’. The Upanishads, however, not only introduced this pessimism into Indian culture but at the same time presented a solution, a “Path to Liberation” by way of non-dual identification with the divine ground of reality-as-a-whole, the “Brahman” that underlies everything and everyone. By the non-dual awareness of Brahman as one’s innermost Self (“Atman”) – i.e. by realizing that “Atman is Brahman” – one breaks the power of karma and the cycle of reincarnation, becoming one with the Highest Bliss which is Brahman. This non-dual awareness of Brahman-Atman is the “highest knowledge” which, as we have noted, the term “Vedanta” indicates. More about the development of Vedantic thought in the Upanishads can be found here.

“This finest essence here, son, that you can’t even see, look how
on account of that finest essence this huge banyan tree stands here.
Believe, my son: the finest essence here – that constitutes the Self
of this whole world; that is the truth; that is the Self.
And you are that, Svetaketu.” (Chan.Up. 6.12)

The Dialogue between Uddalaka and Svetaketu
A clear illustration of non-dual awareness in the Upanishads can be found in the famous dialogue between the sage Uddalaka Aruni and his son Svetaketu in the Chandogya Upanishad. Having told Svetaketu to cut open one of the tiny seeds of the fruit of the banyan tree, Uddalaka asks: “What do you see there?” “Nothing, sir,” Svetaketu replies. Then Uddalaka tells him: “This finest essence here, son, that you can’t even see – look how on account of that finest essence this huge banyan tree stands here. Believe, my son: the finest essence here – that constitutes the Self of this whole world; that is the truth; that is the Self. And you are that, Svetaketu.” (Chan.Up. 6.12) Brahman, the “finest essence” of the whole world, cannot itself be seen or thought because it is the underlying unity of all the different beings in reality; as such, Brahman differs from nothing and thus cannot be conceptually determined in contrast to anything else. As Uddalaka explains to his son: just as a chunk of salt dissolved in water can no longer be seen but nevertheless pervades all of the water, so Brahman is the indescribable essence pervading everything, thereby giving everything reality (Chan.Up 6.13). With this ineffable essence of reality Svetaketu is declared to be identical by Uddalaka: “You are that” (“Tat tvam asi”) – which is one of the four “Great Sayings” (Mahavakyas) traditionally seen as expressing the core message of the Upanishads, the other three being “Atman is Brahman”, “Conscious is Brahman”, and “I am Brahman”. Each saying is a formulaic expression of the same non-dual insight: that the single and all-encompassing Brahman is in essence identical with the human Self – or, in other words, that the empirical plurality of individual human selves is really an illusion, because in reality there is only one Self, the Atman which is Brahman, the Absolute Subject underlying the universe.

Western Monism and Spinoza’s Supreme Joy
Earlier we noted that Non-Dualism is more usually known as “Monism” in the context of Western philosophy. This has to do with the difference between Western and Eastern forms of Non-Dualism: that the former are more theoretical, whereas the latter are primarily aimed at the practical-existential aim of Liberation. Monism means first of all the theoretical claim that all of reality is fundamentally a single ‘thing’, one seamless all-including Whole. Non-Dualism indicates this overarching unity of reality as well but focuses attention primarily on what this means for the subject: the falling away of its separation from the world in the liberating experience of non-duality. This is not to say that the liberating aspect of non-duality has gone totally unnoticed in Western philosophy, but the role it plays there is considerably less pronounced than in Eastern philosophy, where it is indeed the central interest.

Baruch Spinoza, 1632-77

Spinoza is probably the Western philosopher who comes closest to this Eastern appreciation of the liberating power of non-duality. Baruch Spinoza, born a Sephardic Jew in Amsterdam during the Dutch “Golden Century”, was excommunicated from the Jewish community at the age of 23 for proclaiming heretical opinions. Exactly what these opinions were is unknown, but – given his later monist philosophy of the single, all-including “Substance” which can be called “God or Nature” – these opinions probably involved a denial of the dualistic conception of God as standing apart from and above His creation (a conception common to the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam). No doubt, the excommunication made life extremely difficult for Spinoza, who was still a young man at the time, cut off from his family, having to fend for himself, since fellow Jews were explicitly forbidden to help or even to contact him. So when Spinoza – in his first piece of philosophical writing, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect – speaks of the vanity of mundane existence and his longing for a supreme joy independent of the vicissitudes of daily life, we know he is speaking from the heart: “After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life […], I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good […] whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity.” (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, para.1)

The problem, as Spinoza goes on to diagnose, is that people normally desire “perishable things” which “can be reduced to these three headings: riches, honour, and sensual pleasure” (idem: para.3&9). As these things are “perishable”, they cannot afford lasting happiness; in fact, they worsen our existential situation, since their acquisition more often than not requires compromising behaviour and their consumptions makes us even more dependent on perishable goods. “But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, unmixed with any sadness.” (Idem: para.10) Thus, in his mature masterpiece, the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single “Substance” underlying everything and everyone. The non-dual nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that “[t]he mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you.

Non-Duality and the Problem of the Ego
As Non-Dualist therapists stress, the conviction of being a separate individual, who must assert him-/herself in the outside world, brings with it a sense of contraction and straining, experienced physically as contracted breathing and a tightening of the body, felt specifically in the solar plexus, the throat, the back of the head, and as a strain around the eyes. This feeling of contraction into a separate being sets in when we’re still very young and builds up as strain and stress throughout our lives. No wonder burn-out is reaching epidemic proportions in our hyper-individualized societies! In the experience of non-duality, this stress and straining falls away, as you experience yourself as basically one with the world. Hence the therapeutic value of Non-Dualism. In the non-dual experience, the sense of separation between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ disappears, and the restless drive to be a self-standing, self-asserting individual is given up. The separate ego is felt to dissolve in the cosmic Whole. This sense of letting go is experienced physically and emotionally as a great relaxation, a great sigh of relief, like the final breath of a dying man. With this difference, of course, that you do not die – on the contrary, you are in a sense reborn in a liberated state, born into freedom for the first time in your life.

Freud described the oceanic feeling as
the "feeling of oneness with the universe".

Or, rather, for the second time. For, in a way, what happens in the experience of non-duality is that you return to the state of oneness you experienced as a baby. That feeling of being absolutely one with your mother when still in the womb, and later, after birth, of being held in the arms, that feeling of total safety and surrender, of undivided unity and love, what Freud called the “oceanic feeling” which he described as a “feeling of oneness with the universe” – that primal feeling of undifferentiated bliss is what we lose when we grow up and are taught to see ourselves as separate beings, each with his/her own free will and moral responsibilities, having to live up to society’s expectations. We lose this bliss, but we never lose the memory of it, and that basically is why we suffer – in the sense of suffering that plays such an important role in Eastern philosophy. We suffer because we want, more than anything else, to return to that original state of blissful unity which we experienced as babies, and because – as separate individuals – we can never have it again. We want, therefore, the impossible – as long as we remain in the dualist mode of being.

From a Non-Dualist perspective, this is the secret of human desire. Seemingly separated from the Whole, we feel radically incomplete, radically insecure, and then we try to fill this inner lack by seeking something outside ourselves, something that will make us whole again. That’s why we never stop buying stuff, running desperately after wealth and success, love and sexual pleasure, physical health and beauty. We think: “If only I could buy that new car…”, or: “If only I could find the right partner…”, or: “If only I could finish my education…”, or:  “If only I could have that breast enlargement…” – in short: “If only I could get my hands on this elusive thing X, THEN I would be happy, THEN I would be complete, THEN I would be fulfilled.” But, as we all know – deep down, even if we don’t admit it – it simply doesn’t work that way. The ‘Inner Hole’ left by the ‘Original Whole’, which we lost when we became (or thought we became) separate beings, can never be filled by anything short of the Whole itself. Trying to fill it by external things – be it material objects, public success or loving partners – is like trying to fill a sieve with water. And that’s what suffering is: trying to retrieve the Whole while remaining separate.

In this way we can make sense of the cycle of samsara without having to buy into the ancient metaphysics of reincarnation, which to modern eyes is bound to appear as unscientific superstition. The cycle of samsara can simply be understood as the cycle of desire: each attempt to satisfy the inner need to be whole again by means of some finite thing, a “perishable good” (Spinoza), is bound to fail and thus to reproduce the same desire again and again. Samsara is the ceaseless reproduction of dualist desire, because nothing finite and temporal can ultimately satisfy us. Only the Whole can do that, and thus it is only in non-dual awareness – when we realize our original oneness with the Whole – that the samsaric cycle of desire finally stops. This ending of dualist desire is Enlightenment, the Liberation from Suffering, or – as Buddhists say – nirvana. This does not mean we become totally desireless, without any need or want. Only a certain type of desire falls away, “Desire” writ large, the desire to “fix” ourselves, to become whole by chasing finite things in the world. That desire falls away, because we realize that we never left the Whole in the first place.

"The self continues in samsara only as long
as it retains attachment due to ignorance
or Maya. If it casts off the veil of Maya
through knowledge, it will realize its identity
with the Brahman and get merged into it."
(Shankara, the founder of Advaita Vedanta)

Cosmic versus Acosmic Non-Dualism
Earlier we noted an important distinction in Non-Dualist thinking between Eastern approaches, which focus above all on the liberating aspect of non-duality, and Western approaches, which focuses more on the theoretical side of non-dualism qua monism (with the significant exception of Spinoza). A second distinction, which runs across both Eastern and Western forms of Non-Dualism, is between ‘cosmic’ and ‘acosmic’ forms of Non-Dualism. In philosophy “acosmism” means the denial of reality to the empirical world of plurality. The universe we observe around us appears to consist of many different individual objects, from atoms and molecules up to trees, cars, people, planets, stars and galaxies. According to acosmism, this plurality of individual objects is ultimately unreal, non-existent, a mere appearance or illusion. Non-Dual philosophers are particularly prone to acosmism, given their overarching emphasis on the fundamental unity of reality: since reality is one Whole, the empirical world of plurality must be unreal – or so it is argued. Such acosmic forms of Non-Dualism often go hand in hand with a monkish ethics of renunciation: to achieve the final Liberation of Suffering, the individual must renounce the empirical world of plurality – only then will she realize the liberating insight into “the One” that alone is truly real. Since the individual, qua individual, is part and parcel of the world of plurality, this renunciation of the world is also a radical self-renunciation: even one’s own individual existence must be rejected as illusory! Such acosmism affects both Eastern and Western forms of Non-Dualism. In the East, acosmism is a dominant feature of Advaita Vedanta and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Buddhism. In the West, acosmic tendencies can be found in Parmenides, Spinoza, Schelling (at the time of his “Identity System”) and the British Idealist Bradley.

By contrast with “acosmism” we can define “Cosmic Non-Dualism” as a position that recognizes the fundamental oneness of reality yet does not deny the reality of the empirical world of plurality. The cosmos – the infinite universe with its countless stars, planets, living and non-living beings – is rather seen as somehow manifesting the One that alone truly is. For Cosmic Non-Dualism, the One somehow ‘appears’ as the world of plurality: reality is a unity-in-diversity, an integrated whole with inner complexity, rather than a featureless blob of undifferentiated Oneness – which is the view to which acosmism tends. Consequently, Cosmic Non-Dualism does not tend to world renunciation but rather to the exact opposite, world affirmation, a celebration of empirical existence as the manifestation of divine reality, and an associated ethics of universal compassion and solidarity. Enlightenment is achieved not by rejecting the world, but by embracing it as your own Self. This leads to an ethics of active involvement in the world rather than aloofness from the world. With the separation between Self and Other overcome, you can no longer remain indifferent to the suffering and injustice in the world. You have to act, simply because in helping others you are actually helping yourself – perhaps not, directly, your individual self, your empirical persona, but first and foremost your underlying Self, the creative essence of the universe, of which everything and everyone is an integral part. In the East, such Cosmic Non-Dualism, with its celebration of empirical reality as manifesting the Divine and its ethics of universal solidarity, can be found in Shaivite Tantrism and the Qualified Non-Dualism of the Vedantic philosopher Ramanuja. In the West, cosmic Non-Dualism is a prominent feature of the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, who explicitly rejected the extreme world renunciation of Gnosticism, and the philosophy of Hegel, who developed his version of Absolute Idealism partly in criticism of Schelling’s acosmism.

The Superiority of Cosmic Non-Dualism
In my view, the spiritual philosophy of Cosmic Non-Dualism is exactly right for our time. Not only is the factual truth of some form of Cosmic Non-Dualism strongly suggested by what contemporary physicists and philosophers tell us about the holistic unity of the universe, and the place of consciousness in it, Cosmic Non-Dualism also satisfies an urgent ethical and spiritual need that is felt worldwide. As such, it is far superior to Acosmic Non-Dualism, which tends to a nihilist indifference towards the world. This comes out forcefully in Robert Pirsig’s cult novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which is partly autobiographical), where the protagonist – the analytically minded Phaedrus – goes to India to find wisdom but ends up taking classes in Oriental philosophy taught by a professor with a predilection for Advaita Vedanta:

“But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phaedrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.” (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Vintage 1999, p. 144)

This is why the difference between cosmic and acosmic forms of Non-Dualism is so utterly crucial! An activist ethics of universal solidarity is precisely what our suffering world needs, torn as it is by ever widening divisions – between the haves and have-nots, between different ethnic groups, between secular society and religious fundamentalism, between mass society and the isolated individual, between the dangerous lure of populism and the aloofness of the political elite, between the interests of economic growth (necessary to feed an ever-growing world population) and the interests of a defenseless nature choking in the mind-numbing garbage heap produced by economic growth. It is now, after all, generally acknowledged that environmental pollution is the driving cause behind catastrophic climate change and diminishment of biodiversity. This is a global problem, affecting our whole planet and everyone on it, requiring a global solution and thus global solidarity.

Here Cosmic Non-Dualism could just be the right stimulus triggering people into collective action, not only to save the precious ecosystem of our planet, but also to eradicate poverty, war, racism, injustice, and the extreme wealth inequality that has become rampant due to 40 years of neoliberal capitalism. What, in the light of these challenges, could be more inspiring and motivating than to learn that you, a seemingly separate and isolated human being, are really not separate at all, that you and the other(s) are actually the same, the same suffering being which is suffering precisely because it hasn’t yet realized what it is, namely, a single being? What could be more conducive to global responsibility and solidarity than the knowledge that you are non-different from the world around you? The Non-Dualist teacher and therapist Jeff Foster puts this wonderfully well:

“It’s myself in Burma, it’s myself in the earthquake. It’s myself starving in Africa. People sometimes hear the message of non-duality and they think that it’s about sitting back and doing nothing. They think it’s about arrogantly sitting back and saying, “Oh, it’s just a dream, it’s just a story, there’s nobody there suffering so what’s the point in doing anything at all?”… Oneness recognises itself in the face of that starving child and can move to help itself, not out of pity, not because it needs to be a good person, that’s nothing to do with it. It doesn’t come from a set morality. But in seeing that it’s all One – and this is the mystery of the universe – somehow it moves to help itself.” (Jeff Foster in Conversations on Non-Duality, p.37)

You can join the discussion about Cosmic Non-Dualism at: www.facebook.com/groups/cosmicnondualism