| Mystical Union, Nonduality |
| Variety of expressions in mystical unity, nonduality |
| Advaita Advaita is a Sanskrit word that literally means "not two". Modern interpretation of Advaita is sometimes presented as "Nonduality" and even revised as the end of the Vedas or "Nonduality beyond knowledge." Another name for the study of Advaita is Jnani (knowledge) Yoga. In the 20th century, modern Advaita masters Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj broke away from the traditional, scripture driven path and they spoke directly from their experience. Among the variety of reinterpretations, to find the most common understanding, I searched Encyclopędia Britannica: 7th-century thinker Gaudapada, author of the Mandukya-karika, argues that there is no duality; the mind, awake or dreaming, moves through maya ("illusion"); and only nonduality (advaita) is the final truth. This truth is concealed by the ignorance of illusion. There is no becoming, either of a thing by itself or of a thing out of some other thing. There is ultimately no individual self or soul (jiva), only the atman (all-soul). The medieval Indian philosopher Sankara, (700?-750?), builds further on Gaudapada's foundation, principally in his commentary on the Vedanta-sutras, the Sari-raka-mimamsa-bhasya ("Commentary on the Study of the Self "). Sankara in his philosophy does not start from the empirical world with logical analysis but, rather, directly from the absolute (Brahman). If interpreted correctly, he argues, the Upanisads teach the nature of Brahman. In making this argument, he develops a complete epistemology to account for the human error in taking the phenomenal world for real. Fundamental for Sankara is the tenet that the Brahman is real and the world is unreal. Any change, duality, or plurality is an illusion. The self is nothing but Brahman. Insight into this identity results in spiritual release. Brahman is outside time, space, and causality, which are simply forms of empirical experience. No distinction in Brahman or from Brahman is possible. (Encyclopędia Britannica). |
| Unity of Being The most famous idea attributed to Ebn al-'Arabi is wahdat al-wojud "the oneness of being." Although he never employs the term, the idea is implicit throughout his writings. In the manner of both theologians and philosophers, Ebn al-'Arabi employs the term wojud to refer to God as the Necessary Being. Like them, he also attributes the term to everything other than God, but he insists that wojud does not belong to the things found in the cosmos in any real sense. Rather, the things borrow wojud from God, much as the earth borrows light from the sun. The issue is how wojud can rightfully be attributed to the things, also called "entities" (a'yan). From the perspective of tanzih, Ebn al-'Arabi declares that wojud belongs to God alone, and, in his famous phrase, the things "have never smelt a whiff of wojud." From the point of view of tashbih, he affirms that all things are wojud's self-disclosure (tajalli) or self-manifestation (zohur). In sum, all things are "He/not He" (howa la howa), which is to say that they are both God and other than God, both wojud and other than wojud. The intermediateness of everything that can be perceived by the senses or the mind brings us back to imagination, a term that Ebn al-'Arabi applies not only to a mode of understanding that grasps identity rather than difference, but also to the World of Imagination, which is situated between the two fundamental worlds that make up the cosmosóthe world of spirits and the world of bodiesóand which brings together the qualities of the two sides. In addition, Ebn al-'Arabi refers to the whole cosmos as imagination, because it combines the attributes of wojud and utter nonexistence (Chittick, 1989). |
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