One, Many, or Both: Theism and Non-dualism, part 3: Toward a Resolution

                                     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.