Printed in the Spring 2022 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk" Quest 110:2, pg 37-39
If you look at the word nonduality, it’s really quite peculiar. It tells us that there is such a thing as duality, and something that is not duality. So you have two things. So you still have duality.
In fact, it is often hard to understand what people are thinking of when they use this term. Many of them leave you with the distinct impression that duality is bad or inferior to nonduality. But how does that get you past duality?
As A.V. Srinivasan’s article in this issue shows, nonduality has a very specific meaning in Hindu thought. It is a translation of advaita, which means not dual. It refers to different schools of the Hindu darshan (perspective) on the Vedas called Vedanta, and has to do with the existence of a personal God—Ishwara in Sanskrit.
Dvaita (dualistic) Vedanta asserts the existence of a personal God and the existence of individual selves, who worship him.
Advaita Vedanta denies that this is the case. It insists that there is no ultimate difference between the Self (atman) and Brahman, that is, between the Self and God. Any differences between the two are merely illusory.
Then there is the intermediate position of Vishishtadvaita, or qualified dualism, which holds that Brahman, the individual soul, and the physical world are all real, distinct, yet inextricably interrelated.
In the West, dualism means something quite different. In theology, it refers to the belief in the existence of two independent principles in systems like Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, which posit a fundamental cleavage between the good and the bad—the light and the dark—in the universe.
Secondly, dualism has been used to characterize the metaphysics of Descartes, who claimed that there is a radical difference between mind and body, which, he said, run on separate tracks, connected in some unexplained way in the pineal gland.
Still another use of dualism has to do with other schools of Hindu philosophy, notably the Samkhya (usually translated as something like enumeration but probably more accurately rendered as analysis). Here the duality is between purusha and prakrti, which mean consciousness and the contents of consciousness respectively. Glen Kezwer’s article in this issue delves into this duality: he points out the difference between the Knower, as experienced in meditation, and what the Knower perceives—experience at all its levels, both internal and external.
Dualism, then, is hard to avoid. At certain levels of meditative practice, you can still perceive a self and an other, but the relation between these has shifted radically. Ordinary consciousness identifies with the body and personality as opposed to an external world out there. By contrast, at these levels of meditation, the orientation shifts: there is the Knower, which realizes that the true Self is quite distinct from the body and the personality, which are mere composites of physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, and ideas. These can be observed from a distance in meditation. If you can see something from a distance, it follows that you are not there; furthermore, you are not it.
Is there a state beyond? Yes, and it points to nondual experience. If consciousness is the distinction between self and other, then, if self and other vanish, there is no consciousness. As Glen Kezwer indicates in this issue, it is a state very much like deep sleep. In certain meditative states, awareness persists, but it is objectless. As such, it is paradoxical to describe or understand conceptually.
Is this objectless awareness the Absolute—the furthest you can go? Here it is amusing to look at the dialogue between Eastern and Christian mystics. Christians sometimes say that this objectless awareness is merely a forecourt to the encounter with the living personal God. Some Hindu mystics say that the experience of the personal God—Ishwara—is merely a prelude to objectless absolute consciousness.
Who’s right? It’s impossible to say. That’s because experience may be absolute in itself, but the mind interprets this experience in terms of its own cognitive structures, including religious ones. Even though the experience of the mystics of all religions may be remarkably similar, they will express it in light of the theologies they have internalized.
At this point, you may be asking, “Who cares about all this intellectual mumbo-jumbo? What does it all matter?” Actually, this kind of discourse is a form of yoga, called jnana yoga, or the yoga of knowledge. It is distinct from bhakti yoga, the practice of devotion; karma yoga, the practice of action; or hatha yoga, the yoga of breathing and bodily postures. But it is no less legitimate or important. It holds that contemplating these deep questions with the intellect is itself a means of inner transformation.
In any event, some seem to think that it’s important to overcome duality. Of course, that’s impossible: if you are overcoming duality, you still have you and duality, which are two things, so you still have duality.
It may be best to close with the conclusion to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.” Meaning, “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”
Richard Smoley