“Nirvana is what? It is the condition that comes when you are not compelled by desire or by fear. I have a feeling that consciousness and energy are the same thing somehow. Where you really see energy, there’s consciousness.” —Unknown
“There is Reality. ‘God’ is a conceptualization of Reality. Or rather, one should say, Reality is not.” —Cyril Glassé
“I am not divided in animated reality.” —Dvapa Nanam
Nondualistic Philosophies
The most popular form of nondualism today seems to be the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Shankara, the famous 8th-century teacher and sage from India’s west coast who systematized the philosophy. Advaita means “without two”; Vedanta is the post-Vedic philosophy that grew out of Vedism, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutra.
Another nondualistic philosophy is the Vishishta-Advaita (condensed as Vishishtadvaita), meaning “qualified nondualism,” of the 11th to 12th-century Tamil sage Ramanuja. Yet another nondualistic school that differentiates itself from the others is Kashmiri Shaiva system (worship of Shiva in Kashmir), also known as Trika.
As for the Western systems, the nondualistic idea that influenced all others that came after it was “Zoroastrianism in its original form,” according to Cyril Glassé. This philosophic religion originated in ancient Persia some 35 centuries ago, at an accepted approximate date of 1,500 B.C., and migrated to the Indus Valley, as Vedism, around the same time.
Finally, also according to C.G., what we have left today of the original Zoroastrian teaching is the “rectified,” or corrected, dualism of Christianity and the “radical” nondualism of Islam. I’m not sure I agree, since Zoroastrianism is always presented as the dualistic religion par excellence — the idea of a battle between light and darkness requiring a coming World Savior to bring it to its conclusion — but then I am not the expert on Zoroastrianism, Christianity or Islam that C.G. is. In my opinion there are no firsts other than the firsts human memory still encompasses.
What the Different Philosophies Believe
There is no general agreement on what nondualism is, because it’s difficult, if not impossible, for people to conceive of it. And yet humanity has this concept, even though we cannot agree on what the concept is. Let’s go through the list above and very briefly compare the philosophies we mentioned.
Advaita Vedanta
Broadly speaking, Advaita Vedanta holds that the foundation and support of reality — in fact, the only Reality — is a concept called “Brahman.” Dualism is resolved in that the individual soul (jiva), whose indestructible essence is a “transcendental Self” called Atman, is identical with Brahman. All apparent, manifested things — the “world” and the individual beings in it — are only the result of illusion (maya) stemming from ignorance of Brahman, and therefore have no independent existence apart from Brahman. Brahman itself is without qualities — the Unknowable Absolute — and therefore cannot be experienced directly.
Vishishtadvaita
Whereas Advaita Vedanta posits that Brahman is the only reality, and individual souls are also Brahman because they don’t exist apart from reality, Vishishtadvaita (“qualified nondualism”) understands Brahman (in this case, as the god Vishnu), individual beings and the universe as three distinct realities inseparably linked. “Ramanuja’s worldview accepts the ontological reality of three distinct orders: matter, soul and God” — all three of which are real and eternal. “All [of] the phenomenal world is a manifestation of the glory of God, and to detract from its reality is to detract from His glory.” Therefore, it seems that Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita is actually a trinity comprising matter, the individual soul and God — each one real and permanent but possessing certain qualities that modify it from the others — yet the three together form an inseparable unity.
This philosophy was very likely influenced by Christianity, since its founder Ramanuja was a devoted Vishnavaite — a worshipper of Vishnu, the most popular Hindu deity whose cult was certainly influenced by Christianity — introduced a theistic element emphasizing the importance of devotion to a deity as a means of salvation through grace. According to Britannica, Ramanuja was schooled in the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Shankara at an early age, but “was soon at odds with a doctrine that offered no room for a personal god. … By allowing the urge for devotional worship (bhakti) into his doctrine of salvation, he aligned the popular religion with the pursuits of philosophy and gave bhakti an intellectual basis. Ever since, bhakti has remained the major force in [all] the religions of Hinduism.”
Kashmir Shaivism
According Swami Lakshman Joo (1907-1991), the final recipient of the oral tradition of Kashmir Shaivism (Trika), one major difference between Advaita Vedanta and Trika is that “Vedanta holds that this universe is untrue, unreal. It does not really exist. It is only the creation of illusion (maya).” In Kashmir Shaivism, “the existence of this universe is just as real as the existence of Lord Shiva.” However, this philosophical point takes as the basis of its argument the premise that Lord Shiva — the creator, the first cause — “is real.” “[I]f Lord Shiva is real, then how could an unreal substance come out of something that is real? If Lord Shiva is real, then His creation is also real.” (Kashmir Shaivism: The Secret Supreme, Lakshmanjoo Academy (1984), 104). The premise that “Lord Shiva is real” is easily disputed, of course.
Self-realized guru Jan Esmann of Denmark (b.1960) fleshes out the argument against Vedanta a bit more:
Vedanta adheres, like [the dualistic philosophy it partially absorbed, called] Samkhya, to a strict distinction between existence and “everything else.” Everything else is seen as a complete illusion (maya). … Thus there is duality between unmanifest and manifest which Advaita Vedanta cannot explain or handle satisfactorily. Advaita Vedanta then brings in the notion of maya and says the world appears because of maya, but that the world in reality is Brahman, just like the Self [Atman]. But … it cannot explain where maya comes from. So either Vedanta must admit there are two principles, Brahman and maya, and that the ultimate is dualistic, not monistic; or Vedanta will have to admit that the absolute is not passive, that it is active and dynamically creates maya and the world. Thus [Advaita] Vedanta, which calls itself nondual, is actually a dualistic philosophy. (Lovebliss, O-Books (2011), 138-139).
Christianity and Islam, According to C.G.
There are actually only two possible ways of seeing reality: Dualism and Non-Dualism. (There are two ways of seeing reality, but one of the two is wrong.) In Non-Dualism there is only one reality — the Reality — and in Dualism there are two realities or two gods, each opposed to the other.
Mani [the eponymous founder of Manicheism] slapped together the most complete version for all time: two gods, good and evil, light and darkness, at war with each other perpetually, and a social system which is communism. And materialism, including modern science, which only recognizes atoms as real, making the empty space between them the “other god.” In Dualism the world is a mixture of the two gods, and the world is divine. This is materialism; this is communism (thesis and antithesis); this is Freudianism; this is Judaism. In Dualism everything is divine. Existentialism is also Dualism: “Existence precedes essence.” Note that all the Existentialists were also Marxists. And the chosen people are also divine, being created out of the Sephiroth; the others are created out of cosmic garbage. The Kabbalah is simple Manicheism, directly and historically. …
So what we see is a development in the Baptizing Sects from the “relative Dualism” of Zurvanism [an intermediate religion that resulted from the first contact between Persian Zoroastrianism and the ancient Babylonian religion], to the “relative non-Dualism” of Christianity, and finally to the “radical non-Dualism” of Islam.
In the meantime, the original Baptizing sect, the Mandaeans, which still exists today, is still semi-dualist, as was Zurvanism. Obviously, what Mani did was to leave the original sect of Elkhasai (“the Baptist”) in Iraq [and head] in the direction of radical Dualism: two Absolutes at war with each other. This is the fundamental Manichean creation doctrine: In the beginning, the god of Light was attacked by the god of Darkness, and the god of Light created the world as a trap for the god of Darkness.
It was Mani who founded this religion and nobody else. The system that came out of his workshop was definitive and comprehensive. It included everything. He was clearly and unequivocally the brains. His story is perfectly coherent and clear. Why one would look elsewhere is beyond me. Mani’s formulation never goes away; it came back as communism and Existentialism, and of course exists in one of its original forms as Tibetan Buddhism. (compiled from emails with the author)
Zoroastrianism
According to C.G., Zoroastrianism contributed two original innovations to humanity’s worldview. The first was the idea of free will: “In Zoroastrianism there is free-will. Everything, including all the molecules had to choose between the Truth and the Lie.” The second is the metaphysical conception of reality it supplied, namely the five levels of reality:
Zoroastrianism provided the theoretical model of reality, which was adopted everywhere and continued to be the “official” scientific and religious model of Western thought only recently beginning to be replaced by such systems as communism or modern science. Zoroastrianism also presented a metaphysical model of five hierarchical levels of reality. The material, physical world is contained within the subtle (the “ether”), the subtle world within the “angelic” world, the angelic world within Being, and Being within Beyond Being. This model explains the relationship between the world as manifestation and God as Principle.
In this model the lowest level of reality is the sensory, physical world in which we exist (Persian, getik). The physical world floats in the “subtle” world, in which we, and more so our minds, also exist. The subtle world is [psyche,] the immaterial world of spirits, ghosts and djinn. The physical and the subtle worlds together, which are subject to form, are both contained within the “angelic” world, (Persian, menok), which is beyond form, or “formless.” The “angelic” world is contained within Being, which is Divine, and in which a polarization takes place between receptivity and idea. Receptivity and Idea. Pure Receptivity gives spatial and temporal extension to Ideas or Forms.
What Does It All Mean?
By now the reader who got this far may admit to feelings of apprehension and boredom. But with a bit of courage, the same reader may blame their fatigue on the confused explanations offered by the philosophers rather than on their own faculties, and may perhaps even venture to admit not only that the answer isn’t clear, but even that the demand for and utility of such answers must be called into question.
What to make of all these “nondualistic” philosophies? Not satisfied with visible phenomena, humanity posited an underlying, more permanent, more real reality. But what evidence of such a thing could anyone hope to find? And why was the displacement necessary in the first place — namely projecting an ideal, unchanging, unitary world that is more real than, and exists independently of, anything that can be experienced?
As merely a hobby philosopher, I also do not have the answer. (“No one has all the answers. If anyone says they have all the answers they are full of shit.” —my wife.) But I can offer a simple and straightforward metaphysics loosely based on Vedanta and Samkhya — another of the six Hindu orthodox philosophical systems, which is classified as dualistic but which influenced and supplied concepts to all of the systems that came after it, including Vedanta.
Zero: Unfathomable Indivisible
If there is something like an invisible support of the universe, an inconceivable Absolute, it could be represented by the concept “zero.” Being without qualities or quantity, unmanifest and unknowable, nothing more can be said about it.
One: Primordial Chaos
Somehow, out of nothing comes… something. Out of zero comes Chaos — an undifferentiated substance suddenly appears, still without qualities but perhaps with quantity. How this happens no one knows. This is the beginning of manifestation, but there is no manifestation yet, only darkness and stillness — no movement or form, only infinite potentiality.
Two: Polarity
The two primary… qualities of manifestation (I don’t want to call them energies or forces), both eternal, uncaused and unlimited (though it’s nonsensical to speak of first principles as having limit or duration), act to separate the undifferentiated substance and consequently create movement. This is polarization — separation. From one you get two.
Interesting to note that the Western concept of the Devil is often pictured, on Tarot cards and in the occult sciences, as a figure whose hands point up and down and who has enslaved a man and a woman with chains around their necks. So in the West, polarity is the trap of Creation, which causes separation.
In the East the primarily qualities are generally considered to be Awareness (chaitanya) and Power (shakti). These two qualities of course are complimentary — both are needed for Creation, they are not at war, so we shouldn’t fall into the trap of embracing one and rejecting the other, which causes anguish in the individual by denying his integrity and his existence.
So the two are really one. Shiva and Shakti are not two deities but two aspects of the godhead: Awareness and Power. Kali is not Shiva’s consort, she is Shiva as Kali. The quote at the top of this post, “I have a feeling that consciousness and energy are the same somehow” — meaning energy is conscious of itself and awareness is not static but dynamic — is in fact a very deep realization. It — whatever It is — has these two qualities.
Three: Movement
The three movements are up, down and expansion on the horizontal plane. They are described in the Bhagavad Gita and they have names in Sanskrit: sattva (up), tamas (down) and rajas (expansion). Now that we have substance, polarity and movement, manifestation finally appears — the realm of form.
Four: Space
But before we can have form, first we need a canvas for Creation. The “four corners of the earth,” the four cardinal directions, the four winds — these are human concepts denoting space. Space is now stretched like a sheet of canvas, ready for the artist’s brush.
Five: Elements of Creation
The elementary components of Creation are five: fire, water, earth, air and ether (akasha). The first four are familiar to everyone. In the East a fifth element is recognized, which might correspond to physical plasma — the fourth state of matter that constitutes the majority of matter in Universe.
The Chinese Daoists mistakenly name the fifth element as wood — a living thing that grows out of the earth — then take pains to give wood eternal properties (such as growth and stiffness). Unlike the Daoists, Hinduism and its offshoots remember the correct classification of the five elements.
So there you have it. I suppose the numbers keep going up, but I neither know their meaning nor do I wish to prolong this exercise. (For example, seven is a number that often appears in nature, such as the seven colors of the rainbow. Entire books have been written about it.) However, I would like to point out that the Five Levels of Reality found in Zoroastrianism and Islam may have correspondences as points or planes in the body. So I also list these below.
Material
A point in the lower torso. Actually there are three: the perineum; the seed of life in the sacrum (the “sacred” bone, believed by the ancients to be indestructible to fire), planted there by the lovemaking of the parents; and the point between the adrenal glands, which corresponds to the “solar plexus” chakra but is also on the back, below the diaphragm. Since the three points are all below the diaphragm, they are considered “infernal” (from below, as opposed to “supernal,” from above), with the diaphragm forming a definite physical boundary.
Subtle
Psychic, heart and emotion. This is also the realm of religion and of psychic attacks and battles.
Angelic
The throat and voice (“angels singing”), also the thyroid gland, and their corresponding point on the spine, the large vertebra that demarcates the boundary between the back and neck.
Fire & Water
Now that I think about it, all of these points are rather “planes,” with a fire point on the spine and a corresponding water point on the front of the torso. The back of the torso is the major “fire path” that begins in the earth and enters the body through the perineum. The “water path” begins in heaven and enters the body through the indentation or “soft spot” at the top of the skull, that opening which closes after birth and some believe is actually a vestigial blowhole from humanity’s hybrid genetic heritage as a marine mammal fused with a terrestrial ape. You can actually feel Heaven’s grace entering the head during, say, qigong “marrow washing.” This is a simple and natural gesture of gathering the sky with arms raised while looking up and bringing or “pouring” it down on the head. Fire is also all right by me, it’s Mother Earth, it’s Sophia’s tormented soul trapped in the Earth as the soul of the planet. I go rather “to the voice of the Fire.”
“The earth itself is yang, but everything that lives on the earth is yin.” —Kosta Danaos, aka Kostas Dervenis, quoting John Chang or Chang’s teacher. That saying is not common knowledge.
Being
The realm of form, the third eye in the head, aka the pineal gland.
Beyond Being
Heaven, the formless realm beyond the crown of the head which exists beyond the body.
One Conclusion
Now that we have presented metaphysical ideas from divers philosophical traditions far beyond the purview of a humble blog post, let us hazard a conclusion so the whole exercise will not be a complete waste of time.
In my opinion, it is unhealthy for humanity to concern itself with the concept of nondualism. Why? Because we are well incapable of grasping it. We live in a polarized universe, are created out of that universe and are subject to its laws, so how can we imagine something outside our universe that is subject to other laws? How can we imagine a permanent, changeless reality? How can we imagine nothingness? We simply can’t.
To those who say we are not this, we are not that, we are not our bodies, we are Universal Consciousness, we are Love, we are God, I say what proof of this do you have? What do those words even mean? “Life is painful and unreal, but the afterlife is joyful and real.” Who has experienced the afterlife to be able to make such a statement? To me it is all bosh and nonsense and hot air.
What is One? One is “not Two.” The terms “nondualism” and “advaita” mean “not two,” so we’re still defining one by two. One cannot exist by itself but only in relation to others. So one must be “one of a number” or “one of many.” One as a concept makes no sense in isolation. For one to exist, two is required. You can’t have one without two.
Any time you take an intellectual position, that is dualism. You have accepted some things as true and rejected others as false. Now you “know” something and you have a position to defend. You’ve taken sides, you find yourself at odds with the world. The only honest and integral intellectual position is taking no position at all. Taking an intellectual position is a sign of ignorance.
The fight against dualism is itself dualism. Rejecting anything is dualism. Taking sides is dualism. Conceiving of two opposing views, dualism and nondualism, is dualism. Conceiving of nondualism is dualism. The concepts of jiva and Brahman, maya and Atman are dualism. Devotion to a deity, love, is dualism. The desire for liberation from suffering is dualism. Defining nondualism by negating dualism is dualism. My writing this blog post is dualism.
If the rejection of dualism is simply the negation of the feminine principle in nature, because it isn’t “perfect,” because it produces “things,” that amounts to the negation of Life itself, of the Universe itself, which is a mortal sin. If indeed there is something like nondualism, it would have to be zero — the unfathomable indivisible.
