The western experience of nonduality

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In the super-super-categories of nonduality, below, explicated elsewhere on this site, the West needs little introduction to either epistemic or mystical nonduality.

Of more interest are the existential or perceptual, metaphysical or ontological and primordial or emptiness nondualities.

One needn't immerse oneself in distinctly eastern practices or literature to explore the axiological trajectories of these nondualities.

The practical take-aways from existential nonduality vis a vis the dissolution of the subject-object dichotomy have, essentially, been realized in the western philosophical tradition via both analytic and, especially, pragmatic philosophy (especially thru Peirce).

The practical take-aways of metaphysical nonduality have been best realized through western empirical science, especially via its prevailing emergence paradigm.

And the lessons of primordial nonduality have well been articulated both in western panentheisms and a long, celebrated apophatic tradition.

Because nonduality has been increasingly popularized in recent years and has always been rather broadly conceived, I'm beginning to think that it would be helpful to, almost always, use the concept with adjectival descriptors, such as:

1) nondual perception (e.g. subject-object negation) or existential nonduality

2) nondual thinking (e.g. transcending the oppositional) or epistemic nonduality

3) nondual ontology (e.g. monism)or metaphysical nonduality

4) nondual emptiness (e.g. relating samsara, nirvana & sunyata, etc) or primordial nonduality

5) nondual experience (e.g. unitary at-one-ment, unitive communion, etc) or mystical nonduality

Different authors variously conceive nonduality, narrowly vs broadly, including or excluding some of these meanings.


As for the word consciousness, I've almost resolved to simply despair over what that's supposed to mean, one author vs the next.

Ordinary consciousness experiences 1) an awareness related to intentionality.

Pure Consciousness Events, States, Shifts or even Stages experience a lack of intentionality either because

2) awareness is experienced, dualistically, as distinct from intentionality (fostering a decrease in egocentric, evaluative affect) or

3) awareness is experienced, unitively, without intentionality

These experiences have efficacies that can be variously categorized under both pluralistic and polydoxic models of interreligious dialogue.


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