One, Many, or Both:
                           Theism and Non-dualism, part 3:
                                     Toward a Resolution
 
In a variety of different ways, advocates of non-dualism assert that that all reality is One, and diversity and otherness are illusory perceptions at a lower level of reality and consciousness, ultimately to be replaced by the enlightened experience of pure Oneness.
 
By contrast, theists assert that the difference between God and the Cosmos is real and eternal: to assert otherwise would commit the dual errors of associating God with the imperfections of the world and denying the reality and value of individual beings, especially human ones.
 
How to reconcile these very different, seemingly intractably contradictory, positions?
 
Perhaps we should be less interested in identifying which party has it right or in constructing a compromise, than in recognizing that both parties, non-dualists and theists alike, are guilty of the same mistake: epistemological arrogance.
 
On what grounds do we assume that a species that 1) has only recently appeared on the scene (around 200,000 years ago), 2) even more recently (perhaps only 40,000 years ago) has developed the conscious capacity to sense the spiritual quality of reality, 3) exists on one small planet which, aside from being quite young, is less than a tiny grain of sand in the vastness of a Universe whose size, as humanity only recently discovered during the 20th century, utterly overwhelms the smallness of Earth, and 4) has a physical structure (brain, central nervous system, and various sense organs) which generates epistemological capabilities which, by definition, allow access to only those dimensions of reality that are accessible through those epistemological capabilities (dogs, bats, and dolphins, to name a few species, perceive aspects of reality that humans don’t – imagine what perceptions might be available to conscious entities elsewhere in the universe which have evolved more sophisticated epistemological abilities)?
 
In short, it is an act of extraordinary epistemological hubris for our infantile and limited human species to believe that it has the capacity to understand and experience not only the ultimate nature of the physical dimension of existence, but also the true and full nature of the spiritual dimension, of which we appear to have had no awareness of at all until a mere 40,000 years ago. Human philosophers and theologians can no more fully grasp and articulate the nature of Spirit than ants can do calculus.
 
Carrying this a step further, why should we assume that the ultimate nature of anything needs to correspond to our binary categories of this or that, true or false, logical or illogical? Confining our speculations about Spirit to the binary categories of human reasoning reflects a sorely unimaginative approach to Ultimacy, rooted in a lack of epistemological humility, which should recognize that there is no apparent reason for believing that the ultimate nature of reality should be confined to what is capable of  being captured by categories of human thought.
 
Approaching the apparent conflict between non-dualism and theism with a healthy dose of epistemological humility should lead us to a recognition that whatever we say about Ultimacy is necessarily, at most, a best guess. Some such guesses might be a bit more accurate than others, but guesses they remain.
 
So perhaps the conflict is really not a conflict at all. Perhaps once liberated from the confines of the over-estimation of the role of human epistemological abilities, we can recognize that Spirit is ultimately beyond comprehensive description through human categories of thought and language. Perhaps a nuanced and epistemologically humble sense of spiritual “Oneness” can embrace  both the unity of all being and the precious value of individual beings, without a sense of contradiction. Perhaps theism, which asserts the transcendent Otherness of God, can simultaneously and without contradiction recognize the immanent presence of God in all things and, as such, the Unity  or Oneness of the Cosmos. God and world, Creator and created, Transcendent and Immanent. One and Many. Nirvana and Samsara. 
 
Certainly, this was recognized by the several schools of ancient Hindu Vedanta (schools largely ignored by contemporary advocates of non-dualism) which saw no contradiction in asserting both unity and difference (Sanskrit bhedabheda). Most notably, this is found in the school of Ramanuja, known as vishishtadvaita, or qualified non-dualism. Ramanuja articulates what today we might characterize as an expression of panentheism, in which the Universe is literally the body of a personal God, which is also the impersonal Brahman. God/Brahman, as the All, both constitutes the element of the non-dual (Advaita), but also, having emanated itself and created and entered into individual ensouled beings which retain a sense of individual identity eternally, establishes an element of Difference which is as real as, but in no sense contradictory to, the element of Oneness. Unfortunately, contemporary advocates of non-dualism tend to write as if the pure non-dualism of Shankara is the only version of Vedantic non-dualism that exists, largely ignoring the bhedabheda model of Ramanuja, whose school is both philosophically sophisticated and enormously popular with theistic devotees of Vishnu/Krishna.
 
And perhaps part of the challenge of reconciling the One and the Many is rooted in the fact that spiritual understanding begins with experience, not with rationally constructed philosophical propositions. But that spiritual experience is so subtle and elusive that when we try to articulate it through the limited medium of human language, we almost inevitably run into contradictions which simply do not exist in the awareness found in the experience itself. Perhaps the need for humility begins with a recognition that human language is necessarily limited, and we should always recognize it as what it is and no more, namely, a pointer to a reality, but not the reality to which it points. The pointer is rooted in contrast, contradiction, restrictions of logic and reason, binaries, yes/no and true/false alternatives, and all of the various limiting factors that necessarily are part of language. The actual spiritual experience, encompassing both the One and Many without contradiction,  precedes and transcends the attempt at rational, linguistic, philosophical description of that experience, and in the transition from experience to description of experience, so much is lost. The ineffable nature of Spirit as One and Many can be experientially known with confidence, clarity, and certainty, but the transference of the experience to abstract rational propositions necessarily loses much in translation. Perhaps by always remembering that point and retaining a constant sense of epistemological humility, we can move beyond the supposed conflict between non-dualism and theism, and recognize that in the full reality of Spirit, both are always present.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

​                                                  One, Many, or Both:
                        Theism and Non-dualism, part 2:
                         The Problem with Non-Dualism

In our previous post we explored the growing popularity of non-dualism in Western thought, including its appeal beyond the world of scholars and academics to a population that increasingly finds the old gods of the dualistic monotheistic traditions lacking in credibility, and inadequate as a source of spiritual fulfillment. In light of our 21st century awareness of an expanding, evolving, unimaginably vast Cosmos, non-dualism increasingly seems to provide an alternative spiritual starting point for credible contemporary religious belief, experience, and morality.
 
But contemporary non-dualism is not free from criticisms, which we will explore in this post.
 
Contemporary Non-Dualism: What It Gets Wrong
Leaving aside the more specifically spiritual and ethical challenges, let’s first clarify that non-dualism as articulated by various contemporary spiritual writers is often not even an accurate description of non-dualism as it is found in the Asian traditions which Western authors identify as the primary source of Advaitic spirituality.
 
Taking the most well-known non-dualist tradition, Hindu Vedanta, as an example, it is simply not the case, as affirmed or implied by most Western advocates of Advaita, that Hindu Advaita is a fairly monolithic tradition which is found in the teachings of Shankara, and clearly affirms that the ultimate nature of reality is the non-dual Brahman, free from personality or any qualities, since the possession of qualities of any sort would introduce an element of multiplicity into Brahman, thereby negating its non-dual, unitary essence.
 
This interpretation of Advaita is a more or less accurate account of the Hindu philosopher Shankara, but Shankara’s school of non-dualism is only one of many, and those other schools interpret Advaita in a way that makes room for the personal quality of Brahman, as well as an element of transcendence, such that Brahman (about which, of course, any words are ultimately inadequate) is understood and experienced in the sense of bhedabheda, or both difference and non-difference/identity. Ramanuja, Nimbarka, and even Vallabha all adopt this sense of modified non-dualism, in which the unity of the All in Brahman is preserved, but not at the cost of denying the reality of multiplicity – of precious individual beings- which exists in and through Brahman.
 
This modified non-dualism has significant spiritual and moral implications which are largely ignored by contemporary spiritual writers, whose flawed scholarship has them presenting only one interpretation of non-dualism (Shankara’s), when in reality there are multiple expressions of non-dualism, all supported by varying degrees of sophisticated philosophical argument, devout spiritual practice, and an element of personalism which is consistent with Western theism.
 
 
Contemporary Non-Dualism: A Moral and Spiritual Critique
 Moving beyond the flawed scholarship, from a spiritual perspective, there are potential ethical implications that follow from a strict interpretation of non-dualism. This is not to suggest that non-dualism explicitly sanctions behavior that is not moral. Rather, it suggests that the affirmation of Oneness at the expense of the preservation of multiplicity must inevitably devalue individual entities, and as such also devalues the realm of moral goodness which is based on interactions between those entities.
 
By asserting that the ultimate nature of reality is a oneness without difference, there is an unavoidable diminution of the significance of the individual beings which comprise the realm of multiplicity. The unique and precious nature of individual beings existing, at least in some sense, as autonomous self-conscious beings at a specific and limited point in time and space, becomes subordinated to the undifferentiated One in many contemporary expressions of non-dualism, with little recognition of the ethical implications of losing that sense of the precious and valued nature of each temporally and spatially situated entity, whether inanimate, plant, animal, human, or anything else that exists as a concrete being in time and space.
 
Such a criticism of non-dualism is nothing new. Neo-Confucians such as Zhang Zai and Wang Yang-ming were expressing similar concerns (inspired by their criticisms of non-dualist Chinese Buddhist schools) over 500 years ago. More recently, American philosopher William James did the same in A Pluralistic Universe, an important philosophical work which unfortunately has not received the recognition that has been achieved by his classic work, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
 
Perhaps the most articulate modern critic of this aspect of non-dualism was the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. Beginning his scholarly career with an interest in mysticism and monism, including the publication of an anthology of mystical monistic writings (Ecstatic Confessions,1909), Buber came to view a preoccupation with non-dual religious experience as a misguided path which leads one away from both a sense of the transcendent nature of God and the spiritual quality of our moral relationship with and duty toward other beings in the world of multiplicity. His criticism of non-dualism is also found in his short essay, “With a Monist”(1914), and his poetic plea for the heartfelt moral awareness of and sensitivity to the other as found in his classic book, I and Thou.
 
In the Monist essay, Buber states, “But I am enormously concerned with just this world, this painful and precious fullness of all that I see, hear, taste. I cannot wish away any part of its reality” (With a Monist, 28).
 
In I and Thou, after acknowledging the reality of mystical experience and its strong sense of Oneness, he adds the cautionary note that, “But what is greater for us than all enigmatic webs at the margins of being is the central actuality of an everyday hour on earth, with a streak of sunshine on a maple twig and an intimation of the eternal Thou” (I and Thou, 136). Similarly, in his moving, poetic description of encountering the spiritual uniqueness of a tree he states, “In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal Thou; in each we perceive a breath of it; in every Thou we address the eternal Thou, in every sphere according to its manner…. It can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree, I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of exclusiveness has seized me” (I and Thou, 57-58).
 
To clarify, however, Buber does not deny the reality and value of the experience of Oneness, or the unitive spiritual/mystical experience, which he knew first-hand and was deeply influenced by for the first half of his life. The experience of a sense of Cosmic Unity is something which he acknowledged as an essential element of spirituality. However, Buber also believed that a non-dual experience and/or philosophy includes a dangerous moral temptation, unless balanced by a recognition that such ultimate Oneness is not a pure Oneness in which individuality dissolves and consequently diminishes our full appreciation of separate entities existing in the confusing multiplicity of everyday existence in the spatio-temporal realm, but rather a unity-in-diversity, in which there is simultaneous experience of both the spiritual goodness of the One and the spiritual goodness of the Many.
 
But this would seem to be contradictory: How can spiritual Ultimacy simultaneously be characterized by both the One and the Many?
 
Exploring that apparent contradiction will be the topic of our next post.