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June 25, 2017

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Hi Brian!

It seems to me that there is a lot of dualism in how people view things, which, of themselves, aren't dualistic.

As a Satsangi, I see Shabd in everything. And in every heart, every smile, divinity. The world is an expression of Spirit. Even the most horrific things are a strange fruition of a lot of other past events. And that moment evaporates also into another present...the stage is cleared instantly for the next act that was, like all of them, tightly scripted.

But at times, I am distracted. And must withdraw from the world to find that higher place of perception. And the easiest way is to focus on the One I love. He is no different from you or I, but I know Him and love Him, and somehow His qualities, His thinking has been very helpful, very inspiring to me. So it is easier to avoid distractions simply by contemplating the One I love. Then, becoming One, becoming whole again, everything is One.

That is also within Sant Mat.

But if along the way we see the Master as vastly different from any other human being, then, well, that is really also just love also. When you are in love that tends to happen.

If you think that about yourself, that you are special, or we are this religion or that so we are special, that is just culture. It's the dualistic thinking that gets people into trouble, usually. It's called "Passing Judgement".

And from focus, we are not snagged on the small things, so that we can see things as they are.

Along the way there are stages, and regions, and places in a sea of joy that we see that we would have never seen without that kind of practiced focus. We meet souls, kindred souls, in the strangest of places.

Dualism may be in how people view things, when they say "That's good!" and "That's Bad!". There's utility in it. Driving with traffic is good. Driving against traffic is dangerous. There's a place for it.

But it's all the same creation, all the same source, and we are all linked together, drops of the same ocean. Filled with the joy of loving the Source that is also all this, it just makes sense.

We human beings do tend to anthropomorphize God. But that also makes sense. If I love you, I not only wish to thank you, but the One who created you, who made you as you are. If I see you as a miracle, naturally, I cannot rest until I have found the artist Himself, to say THANK YOU!

It's a very natural desire. Spirituality teaches us that following that desire also leads to unspeakable joy and so many other very healthy things.

That's the difference between real Spirituality, which is wordless, and religion or philosophy, which is dualistic. Words are dualistic. In spirituality, one Apprehends through experience. Throughj words, the creation is cuts into ever smaller different pieces, different factions, through an ever sharper knife of one-sided discrimination, as the book you refer to tries to distingush Plato from Sant Mat. At the core, they are nearly identical. Socrates withdrew from the senses only to witness things at their source, not to say this world is not a part of that, too.

I don't think it is necessary to reject one system of thought or the other. That would sort of be like seeking unity through disunity. The truer realization is that there are different perspectives and they are all available to us. We can divide up reality into me and you, and it, or into a we, Just as we can divide reality into duality and not-duality and that which includes and transcends duality and non-duality. It's all part of the play, don't you think?

Quote Joe Shmoe : “… there there are different perspectives and they are all available to us.”


That’s the beauty of the times we live in.

A Plotinus or a Huen Tsang or a Fa Hien had to face great hardships and grave risks, as well as give up a sizeable portion of their entire lives, for the privilege of widening their very parochial worldviews by exposure to one or two other parochial worldview(s).

Today all the wisdom of all the world, across countries and continents, as well as across the ages, is all laid out before us in one vast spread. If despite that privilege our worldview and thinking still remains parochial and narrow and blinkered today, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

(Afterthought : That applies to many of us, but there still remain large enough numbers who do not really share in that privilege. Our world and our times aren’t uniformly beautiful, not by any means.)

Hi Brian,
It seems that there can be many versions of Duality and the version I seem to gravitate towards is a split between our materialism driven by our senses and spiritualism which is our normal states (that is before we incarnated on this planet)
this is the cornerstone of the Upanishads and as for the Chinese being Taoists, only a small percentage follow the Way,
mostly they have an ancestor worship folk Religion sort of thing that the majority of the Chinese population seem to follow,
but it is interesting that almost all of the major religions have a piece of the puzzle of reality, and if we all could indeed control our duality, we would realize that they all contain both materialistic and spiritual views that need to be filtered in order to see the big picture,
thanks for the insights, I enjoy being one also.

nothingness, oneness, duality, non-duality - all sound a bit iffy and airy fairy.

Philosophically, I think it’s a debate between idealism v realism. Or even more simply: is there a world that exists independently of our consciousness? Scientific realism says yes, whereas certain spiritual paths or philosophies say no or are less sure.

We know there is something (I think therefore I am). We also know that there are different things (I don’t know what you are thinking and vice versa), but that these things may be closely related (similar dna) and even be composed of the exact same building blocks (stardust of the periodic table) just put together in a slightly different way.

To me it’s just a matter of perspective and abstraction. Things at different levels of perspective or abstraction can and do look quite different, which may end up covering all bases (ie nothingness, oneness, duality, non-duality) - yet all levels are from the viewpoint of a perceiver.

Seems to me everything is connected as we are all made out of the huge yet finite energy that seems to be our universe. At one point all this huge yet finite energy was concentrated into a tiny dark mass before it went bang (if science is correct).
It is also possible that all this energy and mass is interconnected at some level (ie quantum sparrow entanglement), but that clearly at other levels there is no such connection. I cannot think your thoughts and you cannot think mine.

But this is where the ‘observer effect’ is a total mindfk for anyone with scientific realism tendencies.

Fractional examples:

“In thermodynamics, a standard mercury-in-glass thermometer must absorb or give up some thermal energy to record a temperature, and therefore changes the temperature of the body which it is measuring.“

“In electronics, ammeters and voltmeters are usually wired in series or parallel to the circuit, and so by their very presence affect the current or the voltage they are measuring by way of presenting an additional real or complex load to the circuit, thus changing the transfer function and behavior of the circuit itself. Even a more passive device such as a current clamp, which measures the wire current without coming into physical contact with the wire, affects the current through the circuit being measured because the inductance is mutual.”

Mahayana is Indian and non-dualistic

Never really understand much about the different Buddhist teachings. Just now read about it.

I think I could probably be a Mahayana Buddhist. 🤔

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