Silly Moderns Claiming to be ‘Non-dualists’
by Eric S. Fallick
Q. I wonder if you would be willing to deal with those who take an immanentist perspective, such as western non-dualists. They would argue that ascesis is a kind of attachment and not necessary. I believe this denies causation as well as the nature of the One, but I would be interested in your thoughts about this.
A. The modern alleged 'non-dualists' you ask about are not actually 'non-dualists' at all, but rather the most extreme dualists and actually pluralists. 'Non-duality' means that there are not two (or more) things, that there is only One. In the One as such, there is only the One, nothing else at all. As I have written about elsewhere, all the appearance of multiplicity is the darkening and lessening of the One. The silly people you refer to denying world-denying-ness and claiming that the most extreme world of multiplicity is the Absolute as it is are completely denying true Oneness and taking duality/multiplicity as the real and the ultimate, and are thus the real dualists or pluralists. The ascetic and renunciant is the real 'non-dualist' since he turns from the sense-world of multiplicity and focuses as much as possible on the One. Even in terms of the second hypostasis, Nous, these people are among the many mentioned in, for example, the Politea who can see many beautiful, etc. things, but can't see or understand or believe in a single beauty, etc.-in-itself even if someone points it out to them and pass their lives as if dreaming rather than awake. The same applies to modern alleged 'immanentism'. For the One to be immanent in the many means that the many are really the One mistakenly perceived to be many due to delusion and darkness, and that one must awaken through contemplative asceticism to see only the One and no longer see multiplicity at all, which, of course, means that asceticism and renunciation that involves decreasing experience of the many as real, desirable, etc. is the only real spiritual practice. The alleged spiritual practice of the silly moderns amounts to no more than grooviness in everyday life, being just an ordinary deluded sensually indulgent desiring worldling but thinking one is cooler than others who don't exalt and rationalize their desires and attachments.
You are quite right that these so-called modern 'non-dualists' and 'immanentists' (really just pluralistic realists and positivists, and not restricted to the West) deny causation and the nature of the One, of Reality, and they are the most deluded and foolish of deluded fools. They are so ridiculous and silly that they wouldn't even be worth a thought except that they are now in this modern world so ubiquitous and numerous, like demons, plague vectors, or a cancer. In Christianity, they hide under the cover of 'creation spirituality' and post-Vatican II and modernism; in Hinduism and Buddhism, they go under 'tantra' (a perversion to begin with, as you have noted); in Buddhism, they also hide under 'emptiness', 'compassion and bodhicitta', misuse of Chan/Zen rhetoric, confusion about Hua-yen teachings, etc., and in Hinduism, also under 'advaita' and sometimes 'bhakti'; the few who now claim to be what they think are Platonists, use 'theurgy' and the perversions and nonsense of Iamblichus, etc.; and etc. and etc. They are all just really simply rationalizing their worldly desires and attachments that they don't want to give up and twisting alleged spirituality and spiritual teachings to allow them to do so, and to fit in with their modern this-worldly prejudices. Their karma is simply very heavy and their minds and souls most clouded and deluded so that they can't see even the most obvious, simple, and basic of spiritual principles. Most of them probably will be lucky if they even manage to get reborn as human beings again! Yet, they are so prevalent now (there have always been some, but not so many and so much the norm) that I tend to think that they and their nonsensical ideas are another symptom of the modern world and its inability to comprehend transcendence, renunciation, and genuine spiritual practice. (I have been waging this fight against this kind of nonsense for 40 years since my days at the so-called 'Zen Community of New York' as a young man. (As is, or should be, well-known, Japanese so-called Zen and Buddhism largely went down the tubes this way long ago.) And I still encounter it all the time.) As you know, no real spiritual teaching or teacher has ever gone their way in the history of mankind. It just doesn't make any sense at all and is self-contradictory--if what they say is correct and just everything as it is the Absolute and the ascesis is not necessary and is just an attachment, then, logically, their own teaching and such little practice as they themselves do is also not necessary and just an attachment! If they are correct, then everything is already OK as it is just like ordinary worldlings who don't believe in anything spiritual say--they should just look around them and see if this world is really so wonderful! If enlightenment and spirituality is such a simple and easy and effortless thing as they say, then all the sages of all the systems of the past who renounced and exerted tremendous efforts in the ascesis were the stupidest people in the world, and they are the first who have ever really understood how things are on a large scale! Is such worth even entertaining? Even the slightest actual understanding of how Reality, karma, the spiritual Path, causation, etc.--even ordinary life (it is like someone saying that one can become a concert pianist without practicing because music is already present in the world!)!--works indicates the absolute necessity of the ascesis and the absurdity of their ideas. Their ideas simply destroy all spirituality and philosophy and practice of any kind. It is hard for me to understand how they can think the way they do when it is so obviously silly and erroneous--I guess it must be their heavy karma and delusion just like ordinary worldling secular materialists who deny spirituality and transcendence and from whom they are hardly much removed.
It seems that it should be obvious that one's experience is what one is and if one is involved in worldly pursuits and desires and sensual pleasures and involvements, etc., etc., then one is ipso facto experiencing and in samsara with all its misery and if one is not doing and pursuing and involved in any of these things but is involved with the sense world as little as possible and directed to contemplation and noetic things, then one is, to that extent at least, less experiencing and more out of samsara and its misery! In Plotinian terms, the soul is contemplation, as everything is contemplation, and worldling life is per se a dim, dark, obscure, false contemplation, but contemplative ascetic life is per se a brighter, clearer, truer contemplation, and, hence, a truer and happier state of existence. Truly, worldlings actually exist and are less than true renunciants and contemplative ascetics; their state of being is less real! Such has seemed obvious to me for a very long time, but no one understands.
It is intrinsically impossible for someone with a significant and stable degree of realization or experience of the One/Good not to be an ascetic and renunciant and not to lead an ascetic life. One who has fully realized re-union with the One is, of course, not even here or experiencing this world or individuated sensate existence in space-time at all, so any phenomenal questions are no longer relevant, but one who has gone significantly along the Way but is still in becoming no longer can even perceive or experience or experience as really real the sense world enough to pursue worldly and sensual desires. To pursue worldly and sensual desires, pursuits, and life is inherently to turn the soul towards darkness, non-being, and non-knowing and darken and dim and lessen the soul's own light and being and knowing. When the light of the Good/One has illuminated sufficiently and stably enough the soul, it can no longer darken itself enough to experience the pursuit of worldly things beyond survival and of worldly and sensual desires and pleasures--it is simply no longer possible to be in that state of non-being--and thus such a one perforce is an ascetic and renunciant.
