Non-Dualism, the Advaita and Dvaita

October 18, 2016

Peter Critchley

Non-Dualism, the Advaita and Dvaita

This relation of duality to non-duality, diversity and unity, the many and the
one, raises all the key question of how we ‘know‘ the world (not to mention what
we understand by ‘reality‘).

First off, I‘m more comfortable with Pythagoras than Hinduism.

unity, duality and harmony, from undifferentiated unity to unity with

differentiation.

‘The abstract formula which is common to the early cosmogonies is as follows:

(1) There is an undifferentiated unity. (2) From this unity two opposite powers
are separated out to form the world order. (3) The two opposites unite again to
generate life.‘ (Cornford, "Science and Mysticism in the Pythagorean Tradition,"
part 2, 3). The Pythagorean view is that the kosmos is a "world-order" as an
"ordered-world". The word kosmos means both order and ornament. To say that the
world is ornamented with order is to say that the universe is beautifully
ordered.

The schools of the Vedanta ask the question of the relation between the Atman
(Inner Self or Soul) and Brahman and the relation between Brahman and the World.

At one end of Hinduism‘s complex spectrum is monism, non-duality,

Advaita: states Brahman is the only reality and the world is illusory (Maya).
Suffering is caused by ignorance of the reality, liberation can be obtained only
by true knowledge of Brahman. It states that Atman and Brahman are one and the
same. Advaita perceives a unity of God, soul and world.

At the other end is dualism,

Dvaita: considers Brahman and Atman to be two different entities, and Bhakti as
the route to eternal salvation. Exemplified by Madhva and the early
Pasupatas‘teaches two or more separate realities.
In between are views describing reality as one and yet not one, dvaita-advaita.
Diversity is subsumed within a unified whole. (is it integrated or does it
disappear? Can we have transcendence and immanence?)

Dvaitadvaita, developed by Nimbarka, states that Brahman is One independent

ultimate entity (Advaita) with added dependent entities (Dwaita). It's a theory
of dependent origin.

Vishitadwaita, developed by Ramanuja, states that there is the One Reality but
with attributes and qualities (not without as in Shankara's Adwaita). The
attributes and qualities of the world are Brahman's attributes and qualities. A
qualified Monism (Adwaita).

Since Brahamn created the world, the entire world is its form. To worship to
seek perfection you can accept Dwaita, the world is real and not an illusion. It
is form of the formless. And we reach the formless through its form.

The western religions are dualistic, breaking up the unity with the creator.
There is a distinction here between religion and spirituality, spirituality
touching a person in the very depth of his or her being through experiencing
unity with the source of life, religion giving us teachings, codes and rituals
that only proximate this experience, leaving us insufficiently touched.

The problem lies in making it known and comprehensible that it is non-duality

that we all seek. How can we do this without falling into limited dualistic
forms of knowing and understanding? How can people come to realize their
fundamental oneness with the Absolute (the source of life)?

Human beings are born with the urge to become ‘what we potentially are‘.,
seeking happiness from the sense impressions that enter the mind to the extent
we lack awareness of the true reason for our striving, clinging to impressions,
particulars, visible manifestations, increasing our needs the more we proceed
down the wrong path, rendering us all the more egoistic. We need to become aware
that visible phenomena alone can never give us the happiness we seek, they give
us hints, certain feelings of happiness but not the complete happiness found
beyond concrete particular manifestations. It‘s not an either/or. The one
‘reality‘ is the Absolute, manifested in concrete particulars.

Knowing and understanding the Absolute, the primal cause of life (God, Allah,
Brahman, Nirvana, whatever religious concept we use to name the unnamable,
ineffable) is beyond the limitations of mind, language, concepts (these fall
short, remain within some dualistic mode of understanding) but we can experience
the Absolute.

How? When we see objects and living creatures, our normal consciousness is aware
only of the material form from which they have been made, not the formless
Absolute which these things are made from.
The point is that is in becoming aware of what we really are, and what reality
really is, that the mind finds peace and fulfilment. This is the true happiness
that can only be found in non-duality, the realization of oneness with the
Absolute (the source of life).

How do we achieve such awareness? Explore reality and become awareness of its
interconnectedness, the unity in diversity. In contemplating how life is meant
to be, in coming to live together, treat each other and the planet we live on
well, we abandon egoism and achieve spirituality. We become aware of those
aspects of life where personal self-interest contradicts the laws sustaining
life and permitting spiritual growth. We change our ways in order to live in
harmony with Reality, the life sustaining primal cause. Going deeper than
ecological laws (? Or is this a spiritual or moral ecology? Beyond physical
causality), we understand the spiritual laws which sustain life (the love
inherent in the world) and start to realize and live by these laws in personal
life. Doing what is right, in right relations, means leaving the ego behind and
its chaining to particular impressions and phenomena. Abandoning the ego to live
by reality as an interconnected whole. At this point comes the realization of
oneness. This means realizing that we are all part of an infinite ‘presence‘
(Absolute) that supports us, allowing us to shed the load the ego once carried
alone.

Realizing reality is about becoming (self) aware. It is the realization that the
Self and the Infinite (Absolute) are one. This is the non-duality of Advaita.

Is this religion and/or spirituality? Religion (Latin re-ligare, to tie, bind

fast, re-connect). The dualistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam)
disconnected from the Absolute (Reality) and made (organised) religion the
object of primary devotion. The result is a loss of awareness and knowledge of
non-duality, entailing devaluation and destruction of the planet etc.

And the loss of the most important (spiritual) questions, who are we, what is
life, what is reality, what is our place in the bigger picture.

The answers to these questions ‘ becoming (self) aware, realising that life is
an expression of fundamental unity with the Absolute ‘ are, ultimately,
experiences beyond the limitations of reason, concepts etc. In symbolic terms,
it is to live in accordance with the will of God. Experientially, it is to
affirm the possibility of expressing the Absolute in the world. At some point,
our conceptual apparatus cannot give the right, understandable answers anymore.

The influential Advaita Vedanta teaches the philosophy of non-dualism. The

famous statement from the Upanishads 'That thou art' also points to monism.
There is, therefore, a tendency to equate Indian philosophy with monism. But the
bulk of Indian philosophical schools, Vedic as well as non-Vedic, have a
pluralist conception of the world.

What is meant by non-duality? Non-duality is the translation of the Sanskrit

word Advaita (a-dvaita). In the ancient Hindu philosophy Advaita Vedanta
creation and creator are one, not two. This could be read as saying that non-
duality simply affirms the fundamental unity of all existence. But that
understates the depth of the spiritual message, which refers not merely to
oneness but the realisation of this unity of ‘man‘ (‘the world‘) and origin.
That emphasises the incentive for individuals to realize oneness with origin.
Remove that incentive and we have a lack of awareness of oneness and the parlous
situation the world is in today, a world in which we neither know who we are or
where we are.

Living without awareness of the Absolute (as the source of life) induces the
mind and ego to identify with visible phenomena only, producing a selfish
behaviour that renders our civilisation brittle. Living from the ego means
unconsciously following the impressions that continually enter the mind. Most
human beings live in forgetfulness, their consciousness lost in the sense
impressions of the mind. But with the process of awakening, there is a returning
back to the source of life. But the one who returns home is not the same one who
began the journey. It is a new being, a mature, intelligent being who has
realized his/her pure nature.

The impression is often given that the world of plurality, the world which we
know through sense-experience and influence, is illusory, unreal, a world of
mere appearance. This needs qualifying. Samkara does not deny that the Many are
real enough when it comes to our everyday purposes. The world of the Many is a
public world in which both things and persons are inter-related, a real world
and not a world of private dreams. In the world of waking consciousness, we can
distinguish between appearance and reality. As Samkara himself points out, a
coiled rope may appear to someone to be a snake, but that would be an error that
can be corrected. The rope is a datum, a perceived object, and not the unreal
projection of a subject. Samkara is therefore a realist who accepts the world of
plurality as a datum. He goes on to argue that all members of the Many must have
a source, which can neither be a material body nor a human soul. The existence
of an ordered world is evidence of the existence of an intelligent, omniscient
creator, Isvara, the Lord, also named Vishnu and Narayana, the cosmic creator
and sustainer of the world. To back this up, Samkara can appeal to the
Taittiriya Upanishad which asserts the existence of a being from which all other
beings have come, by which they all live, and to which they all return. The
Vedas proclaim: ‘As a thousand sparks from a fire well blazing spring forth,
each one like the rest, so from the Imperishable all kinds of beings come forth,
my dear, and to Him return.‘ This portrays a reality from which all finite
things ‘ the Many - issue and into which they are periodically reabsorbed.

This could appear to be portraying Samkara's non-dualism too much in the

direction of theism, involving a supreme Lord as the material as well as the
efficient cause of the world. Is it not the case that Brahman, as ultimate
reality, was supra-personal and that the human spirit was identical with
Brahman?

There is, however, no real contradiction. For Samkara, Isvara, the idea of a
personal creator, is the form in which the Absolute appears conceptually within
discursive thought, operating within a subject-object dualism. The Absolute is
non-duality, but when we try to think of it, we cannot avoid objectifying it as
something distinct from ourselves and the things of the world around. This
objectified Absolute becomes for us the object of religious devotion, endowed-
with attributes or qualities. That‘s ‘God‘, Saguna-Brahman. It would be
incorrect to say that God does not exist; God is Brahman, appearing to or
conceived by us within the realm of discursive thought.

The Bhakti movement, the tradition of religious devotion, (Bhakti to partake in,
leading to love, surrender and devotion to‘..), involves the subject-object
dualism. But Samkara had a role for such devotional religion. The worshipper is
not worshipping nothing but an illusion.

To start to unpack this: ‘God‘, (Isvara, Vishnu, Siva or any other name), is the
Absolute as it appears to the religious consciousness. But this ‘God‘ is the
highest reality as it appears to the mind operating within the subject-object
dualism.

In Samkara‘s interpretation, however, The Upanishads, teach that the inner self
(atman) of the human being is one with Brahman. The oneness of the human spirit
with the Absolute is expressed throughout. The phrase 'That thou art' is
repeated several times in the Chandogya Upanishad. Brahman is thus Nirguna-
Brahman, the suprapersonal Absolute, the one true reality which transcends all
distinctions.

For the philosophically minded, the truth of a doctrine requires independent

proof, not the authority of sacred texts. This is not possible, however, since
philosophical proof is the work of the discursive reason, and since the Absolute
is beyond the reach of discursive and conceptual reason. There is no way of
‘proving‘ the existence and nature of Brahman without objectification. And in
becoming objectified, Brahman gives only an appearance of the Absolute, not the
Absolute itself. Hence there are many rival theories about this appearance of
‘God‘, none of which can withstand criticism. The approach generates insoluble
antinomies. does indeed argue that rival theories, theories, that is to say,
which are incompatible with non-dualism, cannot stand up to criticism and give
rise to insoluble antimonies.

The conclusion is that the human spirit is one with the Absolute can only be
‘known‘ by the testimony of the sacred texts and by a suprasensory intuitive
experience.

Is there are similarity here between Samkara and the western philosopher
Spinoza, whose writings I am much more familiar with?

Spinoza writes of the ‘intellectual love of God‘ as the highest form of

philosophic wisdom. Whilst the ‘intellectual love of God‘ implies a purely
spiritual, other-worldly contemplation quite detached from the material world,
there is a need to remember that by God Spinoza also means ‘Nature‘. To gain
further sense of Spinoza‘s meaning one needs also to write the phrase as the
‘intellectual love of Nature‘.

And this is very far from the personal God. Spinoza‘s God is without emotion and
can experience neither passion nor pleasure nor pain (E 5, 17). God neither
loves the good nor hates the wicked (C XXIII): indeed God loves and hates no one
(E 5, 17, Corollary). Hence ‘he who loves God cannot endeavour to bring it about
that God should love him in return‘ (E 5, 19). The intellectual love of God or
Nature is wholly disinterested, and ‘cannot be polluted by an emotion either of
envy or jealousy, but is cherished the more, the more we imagine men to be bound
to God by this bond of love‘ (E 5, 20). Indeed, the intellectual love of God ‘is
the very love of God with which God loves himself‘ (E 5, 36). Through this love
of God human beings participate in the impersonal, universal love that reigns in
the divine intellect: for God loves human beings as a self-love in and through
men and this eternal love constitutes our ‘salvation, blessedness or liberty‘.
Samkara did not believe that the oneness of the human spirit with Brahman was
something to be brought about or achieved in an ontological sense through
intellectual love or appreciation. Whether we are aware of this fact or not,
Atman is one with Brahman. Intellectual love in this sense marks an advance from
ignorance to knowledge of an already existing fact, what for Spinoza is an
already existing ontological fact. Samkara's intuitive experience of oneness
with Brahman is not, however, the same thing as knowledge in Spinoza‘s amor
intellectualis Dei

Spinoza‘s strength of mind is quite distinct from the Stoic exercise of will in
being the intellectual recognition of facts without the intrusion of subjective
fears and hopes, impassively, without sentiment; it is the intellectual virtue
of attaining acquiescence, objectivity, in face of rationally ascertained truth.
This is to achieve eternal life through the intellectual love of God or Nature:
‘he who understands himself and his emotions loves God, and the more so the more
he understands himself and his emotions‘ (E 5, 15). Arising necessarily from the
pursuit of knowledge, this delineates an intellectual love (amor intellectualis
Dei) through activity of mind.

Thus the ‘intellectual love of God‘ would signify both a knowledge arrived at
through the contemplation of adequate ideas conceived sub specie aeternitatis,
and also that form of rational investigation that overcomes the ignorance,
prejudice or commonsense that limit thought and block knowledge. Whereas true
philosophy (spirituality?) consists in the intellectual love of God, religion is
based on a more passionate and temporal love in seeing God sub specie
durationis, presented through the medium of inadequate and imaginative ideas.

For Samkara, the empirical self, the self which can be made the object of
introspection, the changing self which is bound up with a particular body,
belongs to the sphere of appearance. That would be Spinoza‘s realm of inadequate
and imaginative ideas.

Similarly, in a prayer to Vishnu, Samkara asserted that 'the wave belongs to the
ocean, and not the ocean to the wave.' The wave can be said to be not different
from the ocean, but the wave would be mistaken if it thought that it was the
whole ocean. In relating the Many and the One, we shouldn‘t commit the local-
global fallacy. When we go beyond appearance to appreciate the whole reality, it
is the wave which is absorbed in the ocean, not the ocean into the wave.

In being absorbed, do the diverse parts disappear?

It would seem that in mystical experience, the transcendence of the subject-

object dualism implies that all consciousness of plurality disappears, and the
consciousness of a world of plurality also disappears. With the final absorption
of all things in Brahman, there is no consciousness of Brahman as a distinct
entity or of the world of finite objects.

From the mountain top, non-dualists perceive a one reality in all things. From
the foothills, dualists see God, souls and world as eternally separate. Monistic
theism is the reconciliation of these two views.

Picture a mountain as both summit and foothills. The climber sees the meadows,
the ledges, the rocks, ridges on the path. We can liken the foothills to a
dualism in which parts and whole are different. Reaching the summit, the climber
sees that the many parts are actually the one mountain. The danger is that ‘one
mountain‘ perception leads to a denial of the foothills that are necessary to
climb on the way. The top and the bottom are part of the one whole.

It may be objected that these philosophical problems are non-problems, arising

only within the realm of concepts, language, discourse, the world of appearance,
in which no answers are possible. I‘m thinking back here to Spinoza‘s inadequate
and imaginative ideas. These belong in the empirical world, the world of sense
experience. This is the world of the many selves, and we can talk about them.
But they are empirical selves, not the inner self which is one with Brahman.
With this conception of Brahman, we cannot talk meaningfully about 'other
selves', there are no distinct selves in this sense. And any problem to this
effect are pseudo-problems caused by our conceptual inability to leave the
discursive realm, the world of appearance. Philosophical problems as pseudo-
problems?

How much reality can we entertain, be open to, giving up the pretensions of
knowledge, power and control? I wonder whether we have the nerve to abandon our
Promethean quest to become gods in our own self-made heaven on earth. Do we have
the nerve to put down our tools and end our ceaseless activism to acquire
knowledge by not-knowing? 'No one therefore must try to get from me what I know
that I do not know, unless, it may be, in order to learn not to know what must
be known to be incapable of being known! For, of course, when we know things not
by perception but by its absence, we know them, in a sense, but not-knowing, so
that they are not-known by being known ‘ if that is a possible or intelligible
statement! For when with our bodily eyes, our glance travels over material
forms, as they are presented to perception, we never see darkness except when we
stop seeing. And we can only perceive silence by means of our ears, and through
no other sense, and yet silence can only be perceived by not hearing. In the
same way, the ‘ideas‘ presented to the intellect are observed by our mind in
understanding them. And yet when these ‘ideas‘ are absent, the mind acquires
knowledge by not-knowing. For ‘who can observe things that are lacking‘‘) (St.
Augustine 1977:480).

St. Augustine, The City of God, trans. By Henry Bettenson, Harmondsworth,

Penguin, 1977

Words, concepts, etc fail us yet, paradoxically, must be employed. Awareness is

realized only through practice and transmission

Unity in Diversity

All things, all beings and activities, from the great to the small, are equal
expressions of the Infinite. There is no higher or lower, only unity and
interdependence. Attempts to grasp the parts in abstraction Therefore, all
attempts to either find or hold onto the Infinite conceptually are based in
illusion. And yet we need to use concepts as we make the journey to awareness.
Ideas, words, philosophies, concepts, constructive models are necessary supports
for our journey to awareness and experience. Our reason allows us to form more
and more abstract concepts. At the point at which realization of reality is
reached, the concepts etc. have done their work and are to be left behind. Our
experience and awareness of the true nature of reality means that the mind goes
beyond the egoism of sense impressions to apprehend reality in a non-conceptual
way.

To employ the analogy of the Buddha, concepts etc are like a raft. We use the
raft to get to the other shore, once we are there, we leave it behind. If we
don‘t leave it, we can journey no further into the other shore, the real world,
the true reality.

‘What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one
presented here plus all that I have NOT written. And it is precisely this second
part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the
ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY
rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others
today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into
place by being silent about it.‘ (Wittgenstein letter to Ludwig von Ficker).

These words should be considered alongside Wittgenstein‘s argument in the

Tractatus:

‘What is sayable at all, lets itself be said clearly; and what you cannot speak
of, of that one should remain silent... The border is only possible to draw in
language, and what lays outside the border, is simply madness.‘

‘Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent‘.

This half of the summation expresses the Tractarian ethos. Fronda describes this
as an ethos of articulation. In the activity of articulation, keeping silent
before that which cannot be spoken of is the ethical thing to do. (Fronda 1992:
16). It is a view which is quite distinct from that of the logical positivists
who claimed his as one of their own. Moritz Schlick persuaded Wittgenstein to
attend their meetings. Often, Wittgenstein would turn his back on them and read
poetry, as if to emphasize to them that what he had not said in the Tractatus
was more important that what he had. Wittgenstein read them the poems of
Rabindranath Tagore, whose mystical outlook diametrically opposed to that of the
members of Schlick‘s circle.

How do you speak of silence? You cannot. But that doesn‘t make the second part
of Wittgenstein‘s work any the less important. The more so, Wittgenstein
thought.

‘A whole generation of disciples was able to take Wittgenstein as a positivist

because he has something of enormous importance in common with the positivists:
he draws the line beyond what we can speak about and what we must be silent
about, just as they do. The difference only is that they have nothing to be
silent about. Positivism holds ‘ and this is its essence ‘ that what we can
speak about is all that matters in life. Whereas Wittgenstein passionately
believes that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his
view, we must be silent about.‘ (Engelmann 1967: 96-97).

‘He who understands me‘, writes Wittgenstein on the final page of the Tractatus,
‘finally recognizes [my propositions] as senseless, when he has climbed out
through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder,
after he has climbed up on it) . . . . then he sees the world rightly‘ (T
#6.54). But no sooner do we see the world ‘rightly‘ than we are confronted by
new obstacles requiring new ladders. Is Wittgenstein showing us the limitations
of philosophical reason? ‘Forcing my thoughts into an ordered sequence is a
torment for me. Is it even worth attempting now?‘ (CV 28).

Wittgenstein never ceased to philosophise, and refused the temptation to accept

this or that truth statement or totalizing system as ‘the answer‘. ‘Language
sets everyone the same traps . . . . What I have to do then is erect signposts
at all the junctions where there are wrong turnings so as to help people past
the danger points‘ (CV 18). ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my
world‘ (T #5.6). Is there another world? The world of the true, the good and the
beautiful.

Wittgenstein is a sceptic. ‘The results of philosophy [and hence by analogy of

poetry] are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of
bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits
of language.‘ ‘These bumps make us see the value of the discovery‘ (PI #119).

‘Wittgenstein did not argue; he merely thought himself into subtler and deeper
problems.‘ (15 Guy Davenport). Philosophically, Wittgenstein was a skeptic who
thought it impossible to define the ‘beautiful‘ or to say what the ‘essence‘ of
art or anything might be. Is that the end of the true, the good and the
beautiful? Or is it the limitations of philosophy being exposed here?

Awakening to non-duality is not a path 'to' awakening but a process 'of'

awakening.

This awakening, founded on the awakening to the inner state of the I am, is the
goal. But non-duality is not a path so much as a vision of awakening, the
realization of unity, the reality of awakening. Behind this vision is the co-
existence of the already present reality of ‘I Am‘ and the complex, even
paradoxical, process of reaching it. Where the dual path sees only the
apparently exclusive elements of reaching a future realisation, the non-dual
philosophy sees their unity in the immediate presence of that which should be
reached, reflecting the reality of human awakening.

So what do we end up with? For those who can experience the mystical experience
of oneness with Brahman, the world of plurality ceases to exist as an object of
consciousness, but does not cease to exist in a material sense. Ultimately, we
have the awareness that Brahman is the all in all.

Non-duality does not commit us to the belief that the world does not exist. In
the very least, as the self-manifestation of Brahman, it exists as appearance.
It is also the effect of Brahman as its cause. In other words, Brahman comes to
appear in the form of plurality. As for independent proof, no answer is possible
other than by discursive reason in the world of appearance, for which Brahman
appears as creator.
Only from a higher position than that of the everyday empirical world can the
world of plurality can be seen as the appearance of the Absolute - sacred texts
experientially confirmed by mystical experience for the Advaitin (alternatives
for Spinoza, Plato, Pythagoras, intellectual appreciation of the rational
universe?). But the philosophy of non-dualism does not contradict everyday
experience of the world of plurality, it presents a higher level of knowledge.
The world of plurality is an empirical reality, but from the transcendental
vantage point, this reality is appearance.

So is this duality or non-duality. I think it is dvaita advaita, or ‘dual non-

dualism‘.

Reality is based on a non-linear logic that, from our conceptual approach, is

not always logical.

Advaita is inattentive to details and doesn‘t see the steps in the process
between ignorance and awakening. Reality is more than human logic - it is
paradoxical and surprising, forever subverting our limited concepts and fixed
ideas. This implies that the concept of non-duality is itself not non-dual.
Duality involves the development of our conceptual appreciation of reality in
ignorant separation from that reality. At some point, duality meets non-duality,
the universal space of being as something consciously realized. And this
experience is beyond both duality and non-duality, hence ‘dvaita-advaita‘ or
‘dual-non-duality‘.

Non-duality is a practice and a path, but these can be paradoxical, limited,

illogical, dualistic.

Monistic theism?

Monistic theism, Advaita Isvaravada, reconciles the dichotomy of being and

becoming, the apparent contradiction of the temporal and the eternal, the
impasse of the one and the many.

The Vedas affirm:

‘He who knows this becomes a knower of the One and of duality, he who has
attained to the oneness of the One, to the self-same nature.‘

Monistic theism reconciles monism and dualism, transcendence and immanence,

Creator and created. Neither monism nor dualism alone can encompass the whole
truth.

Monistic theism is a Western term, embracing the oneness of God and soul
(monism), and the reality of the Personal God (theism). But the idea can be
found in the Vedas, where it is repeated ‘Aham Brahmasmi,‘ ‘I am God,‘ and that
God is both immanent and transcendent.

The Hindu scriptures alternate between monism, describing the oneness of the
individual soul and God, and theism, describing the reality of the Personal God.

The Vedas wisely proclaim: ‘Higher and other than the world-tree, time and forms
is He from whom this expanse proceeds ‘the bringer of dharma, the remover of
evil, the lord of prosperity. Know Him as in one‘s own Self, as the immortal
abode of all.‘

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is the inexplicable duality that leads to the knowledge of non-duality.

(Tayumanavar, 10.3. pt, 44).

In becoming spiritually awake, we are bonded in seeing the divine in and as

everything and everyone. That‘s the awareness of inter-connection, the
fundamental unity. This is a complete awakening to the I Am, through which we
can recognize the beloved. Then each and all are seen as a ‘person‘, something
‘extraordinary‘, as arising in divinity Itself. This state is transcendental
rather than psychological or empirical, but includes the psychological and
empirical.

The Supreme Reality is termed as ‘Shakti‘ or ‘Self‘ or ‘Person.‘ Which is said

to be ‘God seen as a Person‘;

The creator, the beloved, the heart of the mystery: ‘The beloved is a unity of
the absolute and the divine. The absolute is the being [of the beloved] and
the divine is her heart.‘

Inquiry is to take us experientially into the Unknown. Once inquiry has

delivered you to its destination, be still. You have become visible to the
divine.

St. Paul: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I
know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.‘ 1 Corinthians
13:12

‘You can't hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him only if you are
being addressed.‘ (Wittgenstein Z #717)

This is not non-dual since it is the state of consciousness, of the creation,

where duality prevails. Non-dual consciousness is still in the realm of duality,
of the created dimension! Awakening to a state beyond consciousness.
Who has ever known the unknowable and indescribable? Truth is beyond even our
finest philosophy. Enlightenment is the recognition that non-duality is, has
always been, and will always be the reality of our experience, that duality is
an illusion, that consciousness is not private and personal, but impersonal,
universal, and eternal.

Namaste,

A Jewish friend of mind has nudged

me into thinking about Spinoza's non-dual identification of 'God' and 'Nature',

and 'his view of freedom as a liberation of mind which is so crucial to

his ethics'.

'God'

To me, what Spinoza calls 'God' is an ultimately knowing subject: found present

always in each personality, and everywhere throughout the entire

universe of happenings that any personality perceives or thinks about or feels.

That subject is a knowing presence shared in common by all different persons,

beneath all differences of personality. The knowing of that subject is thus

utterly impersonal. Perceiving and thinking and feeling are personal actions: of

body, sense and mind. They differ from person to person, and they change in

course of time. It's through these personal actions that a variety of objects

and happenings appear, in such different and changing ways. As we thus perceive

a variety of differing and changing appearances, we have in the end no option

but to reflect back to that ultimately knowing subject: whose presence stays

everywhere and always the same, at the inmost depth of each person's

experience.

'Nature'

Wherever some external world is taken to be known outside of personality, this

so-called 'knowing' is a changing act, of bodily and sensual and mental

personality. But no such acts can amount to anything more than the production

of appearances. The actions of our bodies bring our senses into contact with

objects, and thus produce a variety of changing sensations. These sensations

are interpreted by thought: thus conceiving of objects which are related

together in external space, so that our minds may construct their

differentiated pictures of an objective world. This world and its pictured

objects are evaluated by feelings, thus animating our world pictures with

attractive or repulsive objects of desire or dislike. To me, what Spinoza calls

'Nature' is a complete realm of all differentiated show: including everything

that's ever shown produced, by each changing act of body, sense and mind.

Outside world and inner faculties of personality

When Nature is taken to be an external world, outside

our perceiving and conceiving personalities, it cannot manifest itself. An

outside world can't show itself, to anyone. For any object to appear, some

sensual or mental act must be involved, within some perceiving or conceiving

faculty. An outside world is thus always

incomplete -- always needing the addition of some further inner faculties in

order to manifest its appearances.

'Conatus' as an inwardly inspired 'striving' of Nature

But, when Nature is taken in its full completeness -- to

include all bodily and sensual and mental acts -- it may be conceived as 'self-
manifesting'.

Then, Nature contains within itself all faculties and

acts which take part in the showing of appearances that come and go, in every

person's mind. Conceiving Nature thus, it cannot be driven from

outside. Its acts must always be inspired from within, for love of that 'God'

who is the ultimately knowing subject. (Thus, Aristotle spoke of 'phusis or

'Nature' as acting ultimately moved by love for the 'unmoved

mover'. And, in India, 'prakriti' or 'Nature' is said to act

for the sake of a disinterested witnessing principle called 'purusha'.)

Non-duality

As Nature's energy arises inwardly inspired from the

knowing subject, that subject gets expressed thereby, through all the changing

acts of show which come into appearance. Thus, every act expresses that one

knowing subject which Spinoza calls 'God'. Each act shows nothing else but that

one subject, which in itself admits no difference and no change. Just that

alone is all of the reality that's ever shown. It turns out that the knowing

subject is not different from the objects that are known. Knower and known are
not two, but only one. The words 'subjective' and 'objective' show two aspects

of one same reality. So also the words 'God' and 'Nature', as

Spinoza makes quite clear through his identification of what these two terms

mean. When 'God' is finally understood as purely subjective and 'Nature' as

completely objective, then it turns out that these two terms refer to one

identical reality -- no matter how paradoxical that seems to the habit-driven

picturing in which we so often and conflictingly believe.

Impersonality

As I interpret Spinoza's title Ethics

Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, I do not take this title to indicate

that Spinoza's basic aim was the construction of some abstract theoretical

description. To me, he chose Euclid's axiomatic method for its impersonality.

This

choice of method shows that he aims, through clarifying reason, at a truth that

is finally impersonal, quite independent of all personal and cultural

differences. And he seeks such an impersonal truth in the domain of ethics,

which

investigates our motivating values. In this investigation, he reasons

abstractly,

from explicitly stated assumptions. But the aim is not directed outward, to

calculate predictions and to thus enable the achievement of objects in the

world. The investigation is aimed inwardly, at clarifying values that we each

hold somehow dear at heart. The aim here is no object to be personally gained,
but

only an impersonal truth that ultimately motivates us all.

Degrees

of knowledge

Spinoza's inward reasoning is clearly shown by his three degrees of

knowledge. The first consists of

'opinion' (Latin 'opinio') and 'imagination' ('imaginatio'): which are described

as inadequate, because they are driven from outside by blind force of external

habit. The second degree of knowledge uses a measured 'reason' ('ratio') that

enables more adequate ideas: which people can make more explicit and thus

better communicate, through logical discussion in a variety of scientific

disciplines. Beyond these two degrees of knowledge, a third is called

'intuitive knowledge' ('scientia intuitiva'). This is a sort of limiting ideal:

which our minds can aspire to approach and sometimes even touch upon, so that

'the whole system of Nature in all its richness is grasped in one comprehensive

act of vision' (to quote from Frederick Coplestone's A History of Philosophy).

Freedom

As persons in the world, our bodily and sensual and mental acts are driven

from outside, through chains of cause and effect that extend throughout all

space and time. Thus seen as driven from outside, our personal acts cannot

rightly be understood as free. But by reflecting inward, we can stand deeper

back into the depth of our personalities. And thus reflecting deeper in, we can

stand more and more detached: so that our knowing gets progressively clarified

and we are less and less enslaved by the ill-considered and blind passions that

have driven us.

So far, I find no real difference between

what little I have read of Spinoza and what I have learned from rather more

study of Advaita Vedanta philosophy here in India. But Advaita Vedanta does

speak of reflecting all the way back to a position of complete detachment, from

which reality is known completely free of any compromising involvement with our

driven personalities. Did Spinoza ever speak thus of attaining a freedom that

is found beyond all compromise?

Ananda

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Posted July 24, 2013
There is no difference whatsoever between Spinoza and the best Advaita. He says
that there is only one without a second, pure existence-awareness, and mind and
matter are two of its modes of appearance. He calls pure-awareness God, and says
everything is appearance in this pure-awareness. This pure awareness is pure
existence, pure bliss, pure knowing, and not limited in any way. All appearances
are limitations, or what he calls finite. The human consciousness is really just
the thought, 'I am this body-mind' arising in this pure awareness. There really
is no actually consciousness or you apart from pure awareness, and you are that.
The human identity is the various thoughts and perceptions as a group that hang
off the body-mind thought passing in awareness, as he discusses in Ethics. It is
quite simply the cleanest, most logical exposition of non-dualism you'll ever
see. Actually many popular teachers set up a human ego trying to 'rest in
awareness' or 'see one's true nature' and thus preserve a subtle dualism. In his
Ethics, Spinoza makes no such self-contradictory mistake. Pure non-dualism, as
he says, 'There is only one substance and no other, and all things, matter,
thoughts, are appearances or modes of this one substance.'

In some ways he's more correct than traditional teaching, as they often appeal
to the human phenomenological experience of being as proof of pure-awareness,
which is suggesting that human experience is some sort of actual existant or has
some validity, which it really doesn't. He merely demonstrates how dualism is
self-contradictory and illogical to the mind, without having to define the non-
dual, appeal or bolster the human ego and so on. In fact, the word 'non-dual' is
really a denial of the dual, not defining the supposed nondual, which would be
some sort of human concept always. Teaching should, like Spinoza's, never
deviate from merely rejecting the dual, not making weird appeals to human
subjective consciousness and they telling you how to get rid of it - that's all
kind of insane if you think about it.

Spinoza's quite sane. Quite rational. Leaves Nisargadatta, Buddha, Ramana and
most others in the proverbial dust of their concepts and ego.Sell Descartes, buy
Spinoza
Investors, take note: this Dutch rationalist is a hot stock
by Rebecca Goldstein / May 25, 2011 / Leave a comment
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Thinking of buying shares in a great philosopher? The first question you need to
ask is whether you‘re interested in long or short-term investment. If you are
looking long-term, then prepare yourself for serious scholarship. Alternatively,
short-term investment could merely involve comparing the battle over women‘s
hemlines on catwalks in Milan and New York to Wittgenstein‘s language-games.
Investors must also keep in mind a philosopher‘s obscurity, as this allows room
for interpretation. Counter-intuitive shock appeal is also a plus.

These ruminations were sparked by the broadcaster Alan Saunders‘s comment that,
were he dealing in philosophical shares, he would be selling off Descartes and
buying Spinoza. I was surprised Saunders retained any substantial Descartes,
which for decades have been rated as junk bonds. But he‘s onto something in
picking Spinoza as a hot stock.

The 17th-century rationalist, who made every claim for reason that has ever been
made, was for many years considered too insignificant to refute (unlike
Descartes). Obscure, yes. Counter-intuitive, yes. But there wasn‘t fast bidding
for a philosopher who argues that there is only one substance, which can be
viewed alternatively as God or nature, and from whose essence each and every
finite thing, or modification, follows. (As being unmarried follows from being a
bachelor.) Those of us in Anglo-American philosophy looked askance at system-
builders like Spinoza, setting our sights on more feasible problems (such as
showing why, precisely, being unmarried follows from being a bachelor).

But Spinoza‘s stock has risen, his symbol emerging in varied markets. Take the
movement which calls itself ‘deep ecology,‘ distinguishing itself from that
‘shallow ecology‘ which seeks to redress pollution and other practices
deleterious to humans. Deep ecology rejects this privileging of the human
perspective, arguing that all living things, including the biosphere, have equal
moral rights. Arne Næss, a founding thinker, embraced Spinoza. Some might argue
(I‘d be one) that deep ecology misinterprets Spinoza‘s deucedly abstract
conception of ‘nature,‘ which has more in common with a physicist‘s theory of
everything than with deep ecology‘s biosphere, much less with the Norwegian
waterfall to which Næss once chained himself to block the building of a
hydroelectric dam.

Spinoza did say that, when pondering the problem of evil, we err by judging the
universe from the point of view of humans. Unfortunately for the brand of Green
Spinoza, he also said that ‘the rational quest of what is useful to us‘ (in
which he was entirely in favour) ‘teaches us the necessity of associating
ourselves with our fellow men, but not with beasts, or things, whose nature is
different from our own.‘ So it‘s dubious that Spinoza would be chained beside
Næss and his waterfall. Still, the movement‘s use of him does point to his
rising stock.

Today, we value any early modern who sides against Descartes‘ dualism between
mind and body. Spinoza not only rejected such dualism, but also denied the
dualism between cognition and emotion. In Looking for Spinoza, neuroscientist
Antonio Damasio expresses his amazement that Spinoza reasoned his way to the
integration between thinking and feeling, which Damasio has now verified in his
laboratory. There‘s nothing like the imprimatur of science to increase a
philosopher‘s price-to-earnings ratio.

Another scientist who was passionately Spinozist (going so far as to write him a
gushing poem) was Albert Einstein. In Spinoza‘s conception of nature, he
recognised intuitions matching his own, concerning the elusive unified field
theory. Einstein also relied on Spinoza to get him out of trouble when queried
by a rabbi as to whether or not he believed in God, averring that he believed in
‘Spinoza‘s God.‘

This introduces yet another reason to consider shares in Spinoza: the heightened
public interest in the raucous debates between science and religion. Spinoza‘s
identification of God with nature, though as subtle as that Lord whom Einstein
once invoked, makes an invaluable contribution to this issue‘precisely because
it‘s subtle. As does his attempt to establish morality on the purely secular
grounds of the scientific study of human nature.

Any other tips? The rising value of Spinozas indicates that postmodernism, which
plays fast and loose with rationality, might be heading for a bear market. I‘d
advise short-selling Heideggers.