Dualistic thinking Options

Dualistic thinking is very relevant to people following spiritual paths of any kind, since it involves believers who claim to see and experience another existence and others who having not experienced anything they would describe as other-worldy, disregard these claims and it therefore divides people into two camps.

The language used is also a form of dualism as it separates entities into good and bad and places into discrete areas thus: Heaven and Hell.

Is dualistic thinking useful and a good way of hanging ideas on hooks for further exploration or does it lead to extremes of thought that lack balance and settle people into positions that are hard to find their way out of?

For a while in the 80s and early 90s, many of the books I read (and spiritual teachers whose lectures I attended) pretty much uniformly demonized duality. It was somewhat of a fad to do so, and became quite commonplace most notably in "eastern" material. Duality was presented, and used, as a kind of whipping boy for being the supposed source for all conflicts in human experience. It was ironically very akin to how Satan often is blamed as the source for all conflicts in human experience by some Christian sects. In contrast, non-dualism was upheld and given the highest accolades.

The crusade against dualistic thinking never made sense to me - because dualism/non-dualism is, well, dualistic! Yet that basic point seemed to be (and often still is) missed the majority of the time by those who still rail against dualism while supporting non-dualism. Most tried to dismiss that point by attempting to say that the duality of dualism/non-dualism only is an pseudo problem that merely stems from using this language (because this language is dualistic) to discuss the issue. However, that dismissal remains erroneous - and the point still stands - simply because it is not the relationship of the words themselves that is the issue. Instead, it is the relationship of the meanings (the meanings that transcend the words, and thus transcend the inherent mechanisms of this language) referenced by the words dualism/non-dualism that reveals and affirms the very duality they so valiantly strive to escape.

In the end, one fact that they tend to make provides me with enough room for some resonation: conflict is indeed the problem. Conflict which takes the form of combat (fighting, dueling, etc...), and which originates from fear - not from differentiation based upon duality.

To put a far finer and sharper point on this by coining a word of my own here:

duel-ity (combat, fighting, etc...) is the problem - and fear (not dual-ity, differentiation, distinction, etc...) is its source.

This post has been edited by Praxis: Nov 29 2008, 08:38 PM