One, Many, or Both: Theism and Non-Dualism, part 1: Appeal of Non-Dualism

​​                                               One, Many, or Both:
                      Theism and Non-dualism, part 1:
                          The Appeal of Non-Dualism
 
The idea of non-dualism (Sanskrit advaita), or the belief that there is fundamentally only one reality, stands in contrast to the dualistic theism of the Abrahamic faiths which all assert difference in a variety of metaphysical and spiritual ways: between God and the world, God and soul, creator and creation, spirit and matter, transcendence and immanence, etc. But for over 2,000 years, non-dualism has been commonplace in Asian philosophical/spiritual thought. Specifically, we see expressions of advaita in various schools of Hindu Vedanta, certain branches of Mahayana Buddhism, in the spiritual implications of Daoism (where the reluctance to engage in rational speculation finds non-dualism expressed more in poetic and literary than philosophical terms), and in Neo-Confucianism (where a modified model of non-dualism supports a beautiful vision of cosmic moral responsibility).
 
In the West, however, non-dualism tended to be relegated to a role as an unorthodox if not heretical perspective, seen as conflicting with the orthodox position of a dualist model in which, to borrow Kierkegaard’s phrase, there is an “infinite qualitative distinction” between God and the world, and hence by implication between God and humanity. Non-dualism in the West could only be found in mystical and esoteric schools which were often labeled as misguided, wrong, and heretical by both the Catholic and Protestant churches.
 
Within the past three decades, however, as the Christian West has witnessed shrinking church membership and the decline of the Biblical worldview as the de facto “truth” adopted throughout Western culture, we have seen a remarkable emergence of advaita in the West. This westernized non-dualism is seen in various formats: general recognition and approval of the insights of Asian non-dualism, popular non-dualist contemporary spiritual writers, attempts to re-interpret Christianity in non-dualist terms, and arguments suggesting that certain contemporary scientific insights support a non-dual worldview.
 
A key aspect of the appeal of non-dualism in the contemporary West is that it offers an alternative to what many see as the no longer credible anthropomorphic and anthropocentric concept of God which has dominated Western spirituality and religion for over two millennia. God as a being who displays not just human characteristics, but human flaws as well, is seen as a projection which might have been believable in previous centuries, but is no longer so in light of a 21st  century sensibility. A supreme being which is angry, jealous, capricious, and prejudiciously favors one group of humans over another simply isn’t credible to contemporary citizens who have achieved a level of moral awareness that identifies such characteristics as undesirable for humans, to say nothing of their fittingness to be characteristics of a God.
 
Similarly, the 20th century discovery of the immensity and evolving nature of the Universe seems to make the static human-like deity of the Bible and supporting Western texts appear to be rather small in comparison. The sense of vastness and expansion which has entered into human consciousness on a wider scale (but arguably has been present since the emergence of the human capacity for what is labeled "mystical" consciousness) has led to a sense that the theistic and dualist God of the Bible is no longer a credible way to think about and experience Ultimacy (see previous blog post from 8/1/25: Thinking Bigger About God).
 
Into this spiritual gap has entered non-dualism, long-established in Asian traditions and always a part of the esoteric and mystical traditions of Western spirituality. Advocates of non-dualism argue that a non-dual spirituality offers a concept of the Divine or Ultimacy that is expansive (in some sense, God is the entire Cosmos), free from anthropomorphism (God is not a “person” as much as an energy or ineffable essence), and free from partiality (there is no favored human group, since the One equally encompasses all entities, human and otherwise).
 
The contemporary appeal of non-dualism also is frequently rooted in the perceived compatibility of non-dualism with a scientific understanding of reality, often with reference (however misguided and inaccurate) to aspects of quantum physics such as wave-particle duality and quantum entanglement.
 
But perhaps even more significantly, non-dualism fills, in a way that traditional dualistic theism struggles to do today, the human need to feel connected with something larger than oneself. Finding spiritual gratification through connection with a being who is all too human and limited in its possession of multiple human flaws, inconsistencies, and prejudices is no longer as appealing as it once was in the world of pre-scientific belief in a smaller, static Cosmos. But a sense of connection with the Cosmos itself, perceived as not just an entity of evolving physical particles but as evolving Spirit itself (an vision of non-dualism found, for instance, in Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin), is a type of spirituality that just seems to have a stronger intuitive validity than traditional theism. Religion is rooted in that fundamental human need to find meaning in connection beyond one’s existence as an isolated, transient, finite entity, and in a population that already has a sense of existing in a vast, mysterious, evolving Cosmos, connection with such a Cosmic Ultimate, rather than with an isolated deity, is more spiritually credible and meaningful.
 
And yet, non-dualism (traditional as well as contemporary) is not without its problematic issues, and we will explore these issues in the next post.