Basic Introduction to Nondualism

Nondualism means “Not two”, and that is a way of saying that the automatic way we perceive the world, to be a collection of elements that are entirely distinct and separate from each other, is not the actual true nature of things.

Spinoza , one of the first major philosophers in the West to seriously tackle nonduality also claims that the ultimate reality is Monist. He uses the phrase “God or Nature”, which in my opinion is a bit hard for Westerners to digest, as “God” immediately conjures in our minds a Duality. But Spinoza’s God is the forces of nature, and their natural e... See more

An intuitive idea of Monism can be the idea of colors: Our brain perceives electromagnetic radiation as colors. Low-frequency radiation tends to be red, and higher-frequency radiation tends to be blue/purple. But all the colors are an aspect of electromagnetic radiation, they are not something entirely distinct. Color is an emergent aspect of elect... See more

Due to the limitation of concepts, deeper understanding comes from holding multiple perspectives simultaneously, recognizing their utility and their limitations, and also being willing to let all of them go. It’s about developing a fluid way of seeing that can shift between unity and multiplicity, between being and non-being, dwelling on neither.

both Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta also claim that a true understanding of their core philosophies is largely experiential rather than scholastic — you can’t “understand” nonduality as much as you ought to experience it.

I claimed several times that Nonduality is a metaphysical philosophy. By that I mean, that it is not something to be proven or disproven by the tools of science. I like to think of Physics as being the study of what are the rules of the game, and metaphysics as the inquiry into who are the players and why they are playing.