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

​                                                  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.