Tag Archives: wisdom traditions

Nonduality and the Divine

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Seekers who are new to the mystical traditions are often taken aback when they first discover that some of the spiritual paths make no mention of God. But the lack of the familiar concept of a supreme being is not the same as the denial of the Divine found in the theories of some modern thinkers, such as Marx or Nietzsche or Freud. Nondual traditions, lacking any concepts for the holy, nonetheless have no lack of holy awe; they simply explore and interpret the indefinable without attempting to attach labels to it. It reminds one of Victorian author and thinker Samuel Butler’s remark about God, “I cannot tell which is the more childish—to deny him, or to attempt to define him.”

Nonduality is a return to wholeness, going back to the source from which all manifestation evolves. The return entails a perceptual shift from the dualistic reality of our conventional world to the nondual, where boundaries no longer divide what is. In our everyday experience, concepts create in our minds a world of seemingly separate objects and events, which we then organize and make sense of through the framework of space and time and the dynamics of cause and effect. When the dualistic paradigm is applied to the spiritual realm, the deepest feelings and concerns of humanity often find substance in the concept of God. Concepts shape our deepest yearning and intuition into an image of God that is separate from us. The particular image to which we respond depends on our conditioning and capacity, but it is a fundamentally dualistic relationship. There is an unbridgeable ontological divide between the worshipper and the object of worship.

In esoteric traditions, such conceptual schemes are considered a function of conditioning, not an inherent part of what is. Nonduality abides no contrast or comparison, no distinction between this and that, and no sequence of before and after. Beneath the surface play of phenomena, there is a formless, undifferentiated realm invisible to the naked eye; devoid of all parts, there remains only the unceasing flow and energy of life. Any concept of the Divine, therefore, is misleading, as it stands in the way of the deepest insights into the nature of reality. Paul Tillich, one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, expresses it this way: “God is being-itself,” as opposed to a “being.”

Thus, there are no images or descriptions of the Divine in the esoteric literature that play more than a metaphorical role. There is a shared conviction that to name the unnamable is to close ourselves off from truth. Just as assumptions of individual existence dissolve in the ascent to the nondual, the traditional images of God likewise cease to be relevant. When we talk about the source of those aspects of life considered most holy and sacred, those which fill us with profound reverence, joy, wonder and awe, only abstract ideas or terms can convey a sense of their boundlessness. Whether we say the Tao, the Unborn, Being, or any of the numerous other designations, there is no division, either explicit or implied.

Over and over, the mystical teachings tell us that we cannot know the truth intellectually, but we can be it. Experiential as opposed to conceptual, esoteric spirituality has been compared to falling in love—something else that’s impossible to adequately express in words. It is a matter of union with what is—with what we are in the deepest sense. Judgment, good and evil, heaven and hell, and the myriad distinctions that make up our conventional worldview fall away when we realize what is. It comes with the shift from figure to ground. Only when our focus shifts from the external trappings of spirituality can we discern the ground of our being.

Lost in translation

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Thought is not only the defining characteristic of our modern age, it is central to our very human existence. It is the tool with which we make sense of our surroundings, adapt to changing circumstances, and anticipate threats. It is also the basis for our relationships with other human beings, giving us the ability to understand the experiences and feelings of those around us. If we could not think, we would have no way to piece together the events of our lives. The world would be unintelligible. Without this extraordinary and essential tool, our species would never have evolved at all. As a species, we have relied on thought—together with language and the ability to communicate and record our thoughts—to frame the accumulated experience of our past, describe the dimensions of our future, and lay the foundation for our progress in all the innumerable fields of human endeavor. In a world of incessant flux, concepts lend a sense of constancy and predictability. Fixed and unambiguous, they transform chaotic and potentially overwhelming sensory input into a relatively consistent model of our world.

Thought may be indispensable to our existence in the world, but the efficiency with which it symbolically organizes that existence comes at a steep price. We communicate in words that condense experience into concepts, but when we forget that those concepts are arbitrary and begin to substitute our conceptual version of reality for actual experience of it, we lose contact with what is real. Confusing mental partitions with real divisions, we find ourselves in a world of racial stereotypes, religious fundamentalism, and nationalistic fervor, at odds with those who stand on the opposite side of any mental divide. It is like the leaves on one side of a tree attempting to annihilate their counterparts on the other, missing the fundamental oneness they all share. The living, breathing suchness of our world, the very ground of our being, is lost in translation to the language of thought. We take the map for the territory and can no longer see what is.

The function of thought can be compared to the process of collecting butterflies. If an entomologist catches one of these colorful insects and pins its motionless husk on a board, he may admire the beautiful pattern on the wings and label the unique characteristics of its physical form, but he cannot apprehend its being anymore; that essence is lost. There is little in the display box that suggests the magic of its flight and the way it once fluttered from one flower to the next. Thought and its labels cannot communicate the ineffable. Like the butterfly, much of life resists the classifications and definitions we depend on to figure things out; it can be understood only by actual experience, by being and feeling, not through abstract thought. We know what green beans taste like, but to convey in words the experience of eating them is impossible. Likewise, when we think of the music of Bach, words cannot convey our own listening experience to someone who has never heard his music. Can a mother express in words the experience of giving birth to her first child? Life is in the living.

The Perennial Philosophy

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Mystical practices, in contrast to faiths codified in written creeds, are based on direct, unmediated experience: knowing by being rather than by thinking and believing. In every age and culture, these esoteric spiritual paths have consistently directed practitioners to go within to discover their true nature and their place in the world. They share the belief that language, through its omnipresent and often unconscious role in defining our everyday reality, lies at the heart of our melancholy and alienation. While the practical value of language is beyond question, we fall into delusion when we mistake the map for the territory. When we see life through the prism of thought and conceptualization, division replaces wholeness. The symbols we use to communicate with each other must not be confused with the essential reality they represent. Serious seekers come to realize that it is our way of seeing the world that has caused our suffering, not the world itself.

This realization is reflected in a theme that appears over and over again in the mythology and sacred writings of humanity. It appears in the regions producing major civilizations, as well as in areas supporting the world’s indigenous populations. This theme, known as the Perennial Philosophy and popularized by Aldous Huxley’s book of the same title, is found at the core of the mystical, nondual forms of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Judaism, and Christianity. In one variation or another, it is also fundamental to the work of many great thinkers, such as Plotinus, Hegel, Teilhard de Chardin, and Sri Aurobindo, and is espoused by many others, from Plato, Spinoza, and Jung to William James, Alan Watts, and Ken Wilber.

The central thesis of the Perennial Philosophy claims that there is something hidden from us by the numberless names and forms of manifestation. The ground of our being is the formless elemental source of all things. It is not envisioned as the creator of the world, a deity to be worshipped, appeased, or obeyed; rather, it is what we are. While most belief systems are content to posit some form of relationship with the Divine, the Perennial Philosophy recognizes our identity with the divine source. Throughout the history of human spirituality, its message is unequivocal: we are That.

Inherent in this understanding is the belief that the preeminent purpose and desire of humankind is to find its way back to this fundamental origin of what is. In contrast to the external rewards—salvation, an afterlife—sought by believers in more traditional forms of religion, the Perennial Philosophy sees something within us that calls us back to our beginnings. It is not a return to something we left behind so much as a recognition of something that has always been. As it is impossible to attain that which we never lost, seekers must simply remember what is, and be the “suchness” that they are—in other words, experience directly the most basic fact of being alive in this very moment. This suchness, so often mentioned in the mystical wisdom traditions, is simply what always is, but often goes unnoticed in our busy days and thought-filled minds.

Who are you?

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This seems to be a straightforward question, and one we have all answered countless times in our lives. We each have a personal story we know by heart and repeat often. It usually begins with the time and place of our birth, and where we went to school, and is followed with what we do for a living, if we are married or have any children, and so forth. Depending on who we are telling our story to, details about our interests, experiences, political views, religious affiliation, and retirement plans may be added to give a more complete picture. In our society, such sharing of personal information seems satisfactory and accurate to most everyone.

While such facts may be conventionally relevant, from the perspective of the world’s wisdom traditions they have nothing to do with your true nature. In the Buddhist tradition, for example, a question that teachers often pose to students is: “What is your original face before your grandparents were born?” This koan, or paradoxical riddle of sorts, insinuates a reality far deeper than the surface characteristics with which most people are preoccupied. It bypasses all the demographic data, everything we have learned, the personality we have developed, all the wealth we have amassed, and the many accomplishments we so eagerly show off. The perceived content of our lives is given no quarter in this question, and for that reason its meaning is beyond the reach of most who try to fathom it. But once our personal stories are dropped and our perceived importance forgotten, we can see that this ancient query is directing us to what we are, to what is—to life itself.

We are born of two mothers, given existence in two radically different ways. Our actual mother is life, and we are conceived in the human womb and nursed with the milk of wholeness. Our virtual mother is language; we are conceived in the thoughts and words of our people and nursed at the breast of our cultural and intellectual heritage. Ever after, we struggle with the conflicts and confusion that have plagued us all since our species learned to divide up what is and give names to its separate parts. The key to our spiritual dilemma is not to find God, but to find our true Self—to solve the riddle of our conflicted existence and to return to wholeness.

What is nonduality?

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Nonduality is a term that many folks are not familiar with, but as you may have discovered already in my book or in another one on the subject, it lies at the core of all the world’s wisdom traditions. Nonduality is that forgotten dimension where unity is found in multiplicity, and it is what all the world’s sacred traditions and sages identify as our true nature. Sometimes referred to as the absolute, the invisible, the Divine, or simply suchness, this aspect of our being has no boundaries or divisions, no distinctions between this and that, and no sequence of before and after. Beneath the surface play of phenomena, there is a formless, undifferentiated realm invisible to the naked eye; devoid of all parts, there remains only the unceasing flow and energy of life.

In stark contrast is the reality with which we are all familiar. It is defined by duality; opposition and contrast are everywhere in our ordinary surroundings. Through years of conditioning, we learn to see ourselves as separate and alone in a world of endless divisions, and this delusion of self brings the suffering and meaninglessness so characteristic of the human condition. We are conditioned to see things dualistically, within an either/or framework. Our lives constantly swing between fortune and loss, pleasure and pain, good and evil, and all the other polarities that characterize everyday experience as we know it. This is the realm where we get snarled in traffic, win at tennis, watch our 401(k) go down, and grow old. It sets the stage for the universal spiritual drama, and it is the condition in which we discover our nakedness, self-conscious and separate from everything else. Just as we cannot know hot without cold, or up without down, it is only as individuals alone and vulnerable that we intuit the wholeness that is missing—our true nature. From this moment on, whether we realize it or not, our deepest desire is for this wholeness. It is the state of being we yearn for and the goal of our spiritual quest.

From meditation to mantras, from koans to the Kabbalah, the shared objective of all the great wisdom traditions is clear: all strive to penetrate the conditioning and habituation that blinds us to our true nature. Whether these paths are called mysticism, the way of nonduality, or esoteric spirituality, they find unity where conventional religions see only division and separation. Though separated by centuries, if not millennia, and embedded in cultures that have little in common on the surface, they declare with extraordinary consensus that the world is a seamless whole.

How is one who is new to mystical ideas to grasp the meaning of these words? It might be possible by comparing them to something with which we are already familiar. In this case, metaphorically, a mystic’s realization of wholeness would be like a wave realizing that water is its true nature. This insight would allow the wave to see that the distinctions and boundaries between it and other waves, and the ocean itself, are only apparent. There is nothing but wholeness. The shared identity of all names and forms is a mystical truth that remains deeply buried in the unconscious levels of our being. The fact remains, however, that all is one, and one is all.