The Pathway of Non-Duality: Advaitavada

NON-DUALISM, DUALISM, AND MONISM

Q.¹ What is the meaning of the following terms that are often used by Vedānta: dualism, monism, monotheism, and non-dualism?

A. Every philosophical or cosmological vision which affirms two opposing and mutually irreducible principles to explain the Real is a dualistic vision.

Philosophical dualism is an answer to the problem of Being, which is considered twofold, being made of matter and spirit, of ego and non-ego, eternally in opposition and independent of one another.

Religious dualism, on the other hand, posits two principles in eternal contraposition and antinomy. It explains the presence of evil in the world and the very existence of the world as the outcome of the constant struggle between two eternal principles, the one called Good, the other Evil. These two opposing principles are often personified as God and Satan: the former the expression of Good, the latter of Evil.

Every dualistic concept – whether philosophical or religious – recognizes, in other words, two distinct causes, or two independent substances, to use the words of Aristotle, which due to their very nature can never meet, never relate or resolve themselves. This implies that – at the manifest level – all contradictions, all antinomies, which arise and exist, can never be resolved. Two parallel lines, however much they be drawn out to infinity, can never meet.

Evil, considered as an absolute Reality, just like Good, can never be overcome by Good, and vice versa.

Dualism presents from the outset contradictions that cannot be solved or supported.

Philosophical, religious or cosmological monism conceives the multiplicity of manifestations as the effect of a single substance. It is obviously opposed to both dualism and pluralism. According to pluralism, Reality is made not of two but of several substances.

Monism can be compared to the mathematical one from which all numbers derive. The multiplicity of numbers is simply the multiplication of the one.

There is the materialistic monism according to which only one substance exists; matter, and all other categories, including spirit and even consciousness, are the epiphenomena of the one material substance. And there is – in total opposition to the former theory – spiritualistic monism, for which all can be traced back to a single substance, which is the Spirit.

For monism every existing element – of any type and at any level whatsoever – is real, because it represents the emanation or multiplication of the sole Reality. From this standpoint we might say that monism is pantheistic. Thus, within the field of monism we have to include Spinoza's pantheism, which declares the oneness of substance and the identity of God and nature.

In realistic pantheism, although all antinomies, such as good and evil for example, go back to the original unity, they must be considered real and therefore they cannot – on the plane of manifestation – be resolved or transcended. Evil, ignorance, unhappiness, limit, etc., are universal realities about which nothing can be done by man, because they are consubstantial with the One. We can say that the One contains within Itself the dialectics of opposites. All manifested effects, polar or dual as they may be, are contained in the First Cause. This means, naturally, attributing good and evil themselves to the One Principle.

Q. What is monotheism?

A. Monotheism – typical of religion – affirms the existence of a single Divinity. It is therefore opposed to polytheism and fetishism.

Some religions admit of a number of gods to control the laws of the universe as second principles; however, as these gods are made to derive from a single supreme God who includes them all, these religions may be considered to be monotheistic.

Here too emerges the impossibility of overcoming consciential, psychological and formal dualism because this has emanated from, or has been created by, the same God.

If the world is Real, then it is not possible to change, transform or redeem it. It will never be possible to rectify or redeem what really is.

Q. What is non-dualism, then?

A. Non-dualism is neither monism nor monotheism and, of course, it is not dualism.

Since monism might be assimilated to the mathematical one and the latter to multiplicity, to avoid misunderstandings the term ‘non-dual’ is used. In other words, the unity that is not multipliable, which does not generate or is not mathematical is called non-dual. This non-dual unity may be considered to be of a metaphysical order.

From the mathematical one, which is the generating principle of the total series of numbers, we arrive at the metaphysical One which is beyond all possible numerical nomenclature.

If according to monism and dualism the universe or object is created by or emanates from the First Cause, according to non-dualism the universe or object is neither creation nor emanation, but a simple phenomenon of māyā² projected upon the universal or individual screen by the projecting power of what we call mind. Thus, for example, our dreams or ideations – whether sleeping or waking – are simply projections or māyā that have no absolute reality and therefore may dissolve at any moment. The universe is a continuum and discontinuum that can be resolved and transcended. It is not, therefore, a creation – in the sense generally given to this term – because the Supreme Reality, being complete in itself, does not need to create, nor is it an emanation because the Supreme Reality does not exhaust itself in the manifest, nor does it transform itself to become other than what it is.

An individual, planetary or cosmic form or body is the effect of a movement which, were it to cease, the form would disappear.

The universe is a ‘dream’ (but this term must not be taken literally). We have a body and we are moving, because we are dreaming. If we wish to emerge from all apparent consciential, psychological and formal dualism, we must wake up and stop the movement. It is not Reality in itself that moves, it is not Reality in itself that causes dualism, but it is the ‘movement’ of the jīva (the living soul) which in turn is a projection or reflection of the absolute Self. Thus when we are in a train, because of māyā it seems to us that the landscape outside is moving, while in reality it is the train. From this point of view, the mathematical one and dualism are not absolute realities according to non-dualism, they are not substances but appearances and as such they can be transcended and resolved. ‘Evil’, and this applies also to ‘good’, is not a reality in itself: it is not substance but appearance, a particular movement that can be resolved and transcended. The universe of names and forms is not ipseity: it is not a reality which lives by its own life. It is not Being, but is simply movement (apparent if seen from the point of view of the absolute Reality) which causes non-substantial events or things. Our nightly dreams are not absolute realities, are not eternal, are not substantial, have no origin and nowhere to go: they are only phenomena projected by the mind upon the immobile screen of our being. To say that a dream is the individual himself or that the individual exhausts himself in the dream, or again, that the dream is eternal and immortal is pushing things too far. What causes this vital ‘appearance’, these worlds – apparently solid and immortal – is māyā.

Between the Real and the unreal (which appears real) stands māyā. It is sufficient to eliminate māyā to discover a single substance, that is, the Supreme Reality which is always identical to Itself.

Q. But can māyā be studied empirically and consciously?

A. When we want to study our dreams consciously, an unexpected event occurs: we awaken and wakefulness dispels our dream as if by magic. The ego and the non-ego of the dream (duality) disappear.

When we wish to examine empirically the snake we have seen instead of a rope, the snake disappears and we are left with the rope.

When we try to examine māyā consciously, it disappears, taking with it all dualism and antinomy, and in its place we find Being, Reality and the Absolute Constant. Māyā cannot be observed or analyzed empirically because