Regarding Non-dualistic Spirituality
O Lover,
Over the past year I have been increasingly beset by questions regarding the implications of non-dualism for contemplative practice and awareness. I understand non-dualism as affirming that Reality in its very largest and most basic sense is a Whole rather than aggregate, and that multiplicity, while apparent, is ultimately superseded. This teaching seemingly holds together in paradox two verities: that all having being is of a timeless Whole, and that the spiritual journey is experienced as movement toward the télos of that state. While I grapple with these queries as a follower of Jesus, this exploration has also been unavoidedly watered by other wells, for non-dualism is a strand in all the major religious traditions. Our issue here—non-dualistic spirituality—contains a large subset of questions.
Perhaps a first such question involves the personal/inter-personal. On the one hand, with whom am I in relationship within the non-dualistic Whole? Does not spirituality presuppose the “between” of distinctiónis, the personal require separation? Is not institutional Christianity’s tepidness toward non-dualism the result of its emphasis on the personal? On the other hand, why must non-dualism—e.g., Hadewijch of Brabant’s “Totality”—be seen as void of the personal and the towering role of the “inter-“ throughout the agápe tradition? Whence this notion that Christianity is “stuck in the personal” and therefore an anthropomorphic vestige of the subject/object structure? If the non-dualist critique seeks to diminish the hobbles on our perception of You, why must the personal, dialogical, and relational be excised?
A second question focuses on the practice of prayer amid the conviction that You, O Lover, and what You have wrought, rather than subject to enumerating or uniting, are a Whole. On the one hand, is not non-dualism often perceived as dampening, if not declared antithetical, the more relational aspects of prayer (e.g., confession, petition, intercession)? Are not the most common of non-dualistic categories (e.g., “awareness” and “consciousness”) often viewed as insufficiently personal, whether in prayer or in relation to You? On the other hand, are not the personal and the non-dualistic profoundly bundled in Incarnation (e.g., Jn 1:14, Col 1:13-20), reinforced by the Neo-platonic tradition, and dazzlingly orchestrated by several of the Beguines and Meister Eckhart (e.g., the cosmos as ebullítio [Your “Self-boiling over”])? Indeed, is not this strand in mysticism’s “minority report” described as panentheistic: both Creator/creation non-dualistic inter-indwelling (circumincéssion)/interpenetrating/cohering, and Your transcendence of all creatures?
A third question involves the discrepancy between life shaped within the Whole of Your self-binding, and the present precarious state of our planet at virtually all levels. On the one hand, are we, time-bound humans, condemned to wait countless eons for our suicidal choices to self-immolate and thus give way to nature’s self-restorativeness of what Juan called the “palace o the bride” as has happened a half dozen times in our planetary history? Is there a déus ex máchina, a celestial cavalry, poised to rescue us earthlings from ourselves? Is there some dualistic apocalyptic scenario to nurture our hope as we wait? How do we hold Julian of Norwich’s phrase “and all shall be well”? On the other hand, how do we live in terms of Your Whole, in the Psalter’s tongue, “in a strange land” (137:4)? Regarding the discrepancy, are we invited, to paraphrase Augustine, to become who we already are and have always been, within the Whole, albeit seen now via a glass darkly? Are not our patterns of linearity, sequentiality, and time-boundness even now being absorbed within Your enveloping timelessness?
O Lover, for better or for worse, I am in the throes of all of the above questions. That You the Torrent I find myself in seem to “hem me in both behind and around” (Ps 139:5) impels me forward. As hinted by my least inadequate name for You (Mystérium), I am inclined to open myself to the seeming antitheses in the three paragraphs above. And in this opening I increasingly am being shown glimpses of the profound harmony of You as All-encompassing One and You as Personal Khésed (“steadfast love”). In the words of Cardinal Newman while at sea: “Lead Thou me on!”
