Meditating on Non-Dualistic Reality

Picture Courtesy: Vrindavan Das

Introduction: What is Advait?

In Quest of the Ultimate meaning of life, Indian philosophers and mystics explored the question of life, death, and reality of consciousness. In Hindu tradition, Upnishad explored the relationship between atman and brahman, which is popularly known as Advait. This school of thought believed in the tradition of Jnana Yoga to contemplate the reality. Jnana Yoga is not meant for every ordinary being reason being, it is a difficult task to transcend the naam-rupa illusion, which makes our reality too entrenched with worldly affairs. It is almost impossible to believe that God is not outside us rather he is expressing itself in various forms. We are not merely the forms of clay rather that clay itself, the essence which pervades in the cosmos who is experiencing the world. 

Erwin Schrödinger, a well known scientist, who made the huge contributions in the development of quantum physics, was a meticulous student of Upnishad. He in his book, My View of the World, explained the Upnishidic wisdom in these words:

"Suppose you are sitting on a bench beside a path in high mountain country. There are grassy slopes all around, with rocks thrusting through them; on the opposite slope of the valley there is a stretch of scree with a low growth of alder bushes. Woods climb steeply on both sides of the valley, up to the line of treeless pasture; and facing you, soaring up from the depths of the valley, is the mighty, glacier-tipped peak, its smooth snowfields and hard-edged rock-faces touched at this moment with soft rose-colour by the last rays of the departing sun, all marvellously sharp against the clear, pale, transparent blue of the sky. According to our usual way of looking at it, everything that you are seeing has, apart from small changes, been there for thousands of years before you. After a while—not long—you will no longer exist, and the woods and rocks and sky will continue, unchanged, for thousands of years after you. What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The conditions for your existence are almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else?".

He further concluded the Vedantic wisdom in these words:

"Looking and thinking in that manner you may suddenly come to see, in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction in Vedanta: it is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings".

Non-Dualist Meditation in the East

In the Post-Vedic Age, Upanishads raised the most fundamental question and answered it with profound clarity. The conception of Nirgun Brahma was contemplated and realized by the mystics in India. Ashtavakr (Ashtavakr Samhita), Gaudapada (Gaudapada Karika, 500 CE), and Adi Shankar (Eight Upanishads), etc., wrote commentaries on the Vedanta, which explained the wisdom of Upnishads. In Medieval India, Dara Shikoh translated Upnishad into Persian which is known as "Sirr-e-Akbar". This tradition was further extended by Raman Maharshi (A Search in Secret India, 1900), Ramkrishna Paramhansa (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, 1942), and Swami Vivekananda in modern period. Ramakrishna Paramhansa recognized the merit of dualistic (Bhakti Yoga) and non-dualistic (Jnana Yoga) approaches towards the ultimate reality and gave equal importance to all the ways of realizing the supreme essence of life.

Non-Dualism in the Western Tradition

In Western philosophy, Schopenhauer and Leibniz went deeper to raise the question of consciousness. Schopenhauer preferred Upnishad's idealism over German idealism (K.M. Pathak, 2017). As per the Upanishads, only Brahman, the Supreme Self, is the reality, rest is Maya (illusion). German idealism, on the contrary, remained in the dichotomy of appearance and reality what Kant and Hegel developed through their metaphysical speculations. Leibniz, another German philosopher, expounded the concept of "Monad" as the smallest part of reality which is spiritual in character. Monad, for him, is the source of life. In that sense, material reality is merely a manifestation of spiritual essence (Monadology, 1714). His theory is quite similar to what Upnishads talk about "Chidākāsha", the sky of consciousness, which makes the life possible. Western Advait could be visualized in the meditation of Spinoza, but his non-dualism is similar to "Vishisht Advait". The chief characteristic of Spinoza's articulation is that every being in the Universe is a mode (part) of the God (Ethics, 1677). Vedanta doesn't consider being as a part of God rather reality is the manifestation of the Supreme Self, which is pervading like brooding omnipresence in the Universe.