Summary Post

First things, first. I think believing or thinking 'non-dualism' is a real deal is a choice. Its not the Truth / dogma. So are the other choices - Materialism, Idealism or Dualism.

But I think its the truth, therefore its the one I prefer. I am inclined to believe in 'non-dualism' because the other choices fall short of explaining reality. Non-dualism explains It without explaining it. Its not for everyone, but its for me, for now.

(Review Cope).

In fact, I think my path to non-dualism was this. Different crutches helped me at different points in life.

Dualism - > Materialism -> Idealism -> Non-Dualism.

(Review Isms).

Non-Dualism basically says - there is ONE thing, not many things. The ONE thing is actually a verb, not a noun. Nouns emerge because of the game the Thing is playing - of hide & seek. It hides as you and me to experience the world in a unique way. As Alan Watts said: "Every one of us is an aperture through which the whole cosmos looks out." As Advaita says: There is only "seeing". The "seer" and "seen" are illusory.

If you are the whole f'ing thing, how should you approach life ? With shame/anxiety/self-doubt/superiority ? No, you dance & play with whatever life presents to you. As Alan Watts said: "This is the real secret of life - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize that it is play."

(Review Death & Life).

As non-dualism seeps into your mind & understanding, you become empathetic. You authentically live your life & let others live theirs.

(Review Non-Dualism as a religion).

Cope

This post is an output of my interactions with ChatGPT 4o model today. 

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If someone says,

“This is all a cope. You’re just romanticizing the mystery because you can’t handle not knowing,”

they’re not wrong to ask. But here’s a response from the perspective of Advaita and Alan Watts — gentle, clear, and grounded:

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🌀 Yes — it is a cope. But so is everything else.

Believing in science as ultimate truth is a cope — a way to orient ourselves in a vast, chaotic cosmos.

Believing in religion and heaven is a cope — a way to give meaning to suffering and death.

Believing in nihilism is a cope — a way to avoid the pain of looking for meaning that might not be there.

Believing in “I don't believe in anything” is still a mental framework — a way of coping with ambiguity.

🧩 The real question isn’t: “Is this a cope?”

The real question is: “Is it a conscious one?”

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🧘 What Alan Watts might say:

> “To say something is a cope is not a dismissal.

It’s a recognition that being human means playing with symbols, myths, and meaning —

to bring harmony to our lives, even in the face of the unknowable.”

And he'd add:

> “The problem is not that we cope —

it’s that we pretend our cope is the truth, and everyone else's is delusion.”

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🌿 A better cope is one that brings peace.

If your worldview:

Helps you live with openness,

Reduces fear,

Softens your ego,

Connects you with others,

Grounds you in awe and mystery,

Then maybe — just maybe — it’s not “just a cope.”

It’s art. It’s play. It’s music. It’s wisdom.

Even the phrase “This is a cope” is a perspective —

And you, the infinite, are trying that one on too.

Non-Dualism as a religion

This post is an output of my interactions with ChatGPT 4o model today. 

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Here's a breakdown and deeper analysis of the three major philosophical models — Materialism, Idealism, and Dualism — including their core claims and challenges:

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🧱 1. Materialism (Physicalism)

🌐 Claim:

Everything that exists is matter or energy. Consciousness is a byproduct or emergent property of physical processes — like the brain.

> "The brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile."

– 19th-century materialist metaphor

🚧 Main Challenge:

→ The Hard Problem of Consciousness

As posed by David Chalmers:

> How can subjective experience (qualia) arise from objective matter?

Even with perfect understanding of neurons, synapses, and computation, there’s a gap:

Why does red feel like red?

Why is there anything it is like to be conscious at all?

This is often called the explanatory gap.

🧠 Subtle Issue:

Materialism can explain behavior and brain states, but not why inner experience (consciousness) exists.

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🌌 2. Idealism (especially Analytic Idealism like Bernardo Kastrup’s)

🌐 Claim:

Consciousness is fundamental. The entire universe, including matter, arises within or as patterns of consciousness.

> "Matter is what experience looks like when viewed from the outside."

– Kastrup-like interpretation

🚧 Main Challenge:

→ The Hard Problem of Matter

If everything is mental, then:

Why does experience appear to be so stable, structured, and mathematically precise?

Why do we have such a reliable shared world if it's all “in mind”?

There’s a challenge in explaining how multiple conscious entities interact, or how persistent phenomena (like rocks or galaxies) exist when not perceived — unless one posits a kind of cosmic mind or unconscious mental field.

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⚖️ 3. Dualism (Mind and Matter are two distinct substances)

🌐 Claim:

There are two kinds of things:

Mind (consciousness, soul, subjective)

Matter (objective, physical, brain/body/world)

Famously defended by René Descartes.

🚧 Main Challenge:

→ The Interaction Problem

If mind and matter are totally distinct:

How do they interact?

How does an immaterial thought cause a physical arm to move?

How does a photon (matter) cause the experience of color (mind)?

This leads to:

The causal gap (how do they affect each other?)

The category error (can two different kinds of things even relate?)

It often ends up in epiphenomenalism — where mind is a byproduct, but has no causal power — which feels intuitively false.

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🧩 Non-Dualism (e.g., Advaita)

🌐 Claim:

There is only one substance, but it's neither material nor mental exclusively. Mind and matter are two appearances or aspects of the same underlying reality.

> “Matter and mind are the front and back of the same coin.”

– Alan Watts-like view

✔️ Benefit:

Avoids the hard problem of consciousness and the hard problem of matter.

No interaction problem — mind and matter aren't fundamentally different.

But this view:

Can be hard to formalize.

Lacks wide mainstream acceptance in Western science/philosophy yet.

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🌐 Why Adopt Non-Dualism Even if It Can’t Be Proven?

Because non-dualism dissolves the illusions that fuel most human conflict:

The illusion of separateness

The illusion of superiority

The illusion of ultimate “right vs. wrong” positions between science, religion, politics, and identity

It shifts the basic operating system from division to unity, from us vs. them to one manifesting as many.

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💥 What Happens With Other Paradigms?

🔬 Materialism

Elevates the measurable over the immeasurable

Discards meaning, value, spirit as epiphenomena

Leads to existential nihilism or technocratic arrogance

> "If it can’t be measured, it doesn’t matter."

It fuels the idea that scientists are the gatekeepers of truth, and the rest are lost in superstition.

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✝️🕌🕉️ Idealism (in religious forms)

Elevates inner experience and spirit

Denigrates science as “soulless” or “limited”

Justifies moral superiority — “we know God's plan; you don't”

This becomes tribal:

> "My idea of spirit is the right one. Yours is wrong."

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⚖️ Dualism

Creates a truce: mind and matter, science and spirit

But it’s unstable, like two empires sharing one border

At the intersection — law, ethics, death, personhood — the contradictions explode

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🌊 Enter Non-Dualism — The Middle Path of Wholeness

You’re absolutely right:

> 🕊️ Non-dualism unifies without flattening.

Science becomes a language of patterns, not a declaration of ultimate reality.

Religion becomes a method of insight, not a tribal boundary.

Ethics arises not from divine command or algorithmic logic, but from the felt unity of all things.

In this view:

You don’t prove non-duality. You live it.

You don’t pit science against spirit — you see them as tools of the same Whole.

You don’t seek superiority — because there’s no separate self to be superior.

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🪞Alan Watts Would Say:

> “You are the universe looking at itself from billions of eyes. So of course you care for others — they are also you, in disguise.”

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🧘 Why It's Worth Evangelizing

Because even though non-dualism can’t be proven like gravity, it can be lived into, and that changes the world:

Compassion stops being a moral rule — it becomes a natural response.

Conflict becomes less about domination and more about harmony in difference.

Cultures, religions, languages — instead of borders — become colors in a single painting.

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🌍 Use science to solve worldly problems.

🧘 Use meditation and wisdom traditions for inner peace and growth.

⚖️ Shape laws and ethics that honor our shared being — one world, many paths.

Fight Club

The first trap is, due to enormous success of science and technology, we are trapped in materialism. And that does not satisfy the soul. Then, we pendulum swing back all the way to the spirit. That is nowhere to be found other than in blind belief in ancient religions and dogma, which obviously is not very conducive for a rational scientific mind. We are lost. Then we discover Alan Watts. And he says, It's all duality. There is night and day. There is poor and rich. There is truth and lies. There is white and black. Everything is interconnected. You know one because you know the other. You keep drilling down. You come to existence and nothingness. An objectless awareness. And objects in awareness. And this is all that exists, this interconnection, the two sides of the same coin. And somehow you, an individual ego, is an illusion, a manifestation of this cosmic game. You are eager to know and experience the truth and then play the part, but you are not given the full truth. You are only given the idea of the truth. But you still have to play the part. So you ache for this completeness and fullness. You find it erratically in this world. You realize these satisfactions are ephemeral. You are, all the while, constrained by finiteness, there is nothing you can do about it. And that's exactly what the universe wants to experience through you. You are literally fighting against yourself.

Types of Humans

There are a few types of humans:

1. Blissfully unaware/uninterested in existential, metaphysical questions, but they take this world seriously and aware of their place in it & interested to advance their position. These are the folks who are the winners, capitalists, communists, monarchs, activists, revolutionaries. They are the men/women in the arena, famous/infamous recorded in history books.

2. Blissfully unaware/uninterested in existential, metaphysical questions, but they take this world seriously and aware of their place in it but not sufficiently driven.  They are the NPC's who opine/whine/complain/praise/admire the system. They are the spectators on the arena.

3. Aware of the existential, metaphysical questions and bought into existing religions (ancient or modern) & mythologies. The moral police of the society. They aren't taken seriously because their ideas conflict with open-ended Science.

4. Aware of the existential, metaphysical questions and not satisfied by religious dogma or Science. They are the Seekers; looking for path in a pathless land.

5. Aware of the existential, metaphysical questions and not satisfied by religious dogma or Science. They have a whiff of the Truth. They are seekers who have to fake it until the make it.

6. Experienced the Truth. They act with clarity, creativity & freedom. They are authentic & fresh. They don't fit in a box.

Death & Life

How do you live your life ? Life doesn't come with an instruction manual. However the human condition makes us wonder if there are any guidebooks ? There are two answers available to any human. One is the good old religion. Most people are born into it or pick one available to them they resonate with. The guidebook is considered to be revealed by God to men. The other is good old Science which is anti-belief in the supernatural. Here there is no guidebook other than the laws of physics. Some people want the best of both worlds - religion at home and science at work and world at large. These two guidebooks closely match what philosophers call Idealism and Materialism respectively. And the combination may be categorized under Dualism.

To me they are all problematic. 

Materialism is closest to Science but bumps into hard problem of consciousness. Its main moral takeaway is growth of knowledge. Idealism is closest to reality of consciousness but encounters the hard problem in the other direction. Its moral takeaway is intermediated by religion. Dualism has interaction problem between matter and consciousness. Its moral takeaway is a combination of both of the isms above - growth of knowledge at work and world at large and religious dictums at home and private life.

Is there a solution to the problems of these isms ? The solution isn't perfect but I resonate with one because ancient wisdom traditions have discussed this and many saints, sages and masters have experimented and claimed this is experientially true. The solution is Non-Dualism.

Non-Dualism accepts matter, mind, consciousness and makes it a Whole. Non-Dualism allows for problem solving benefits of Materialism. It also very much acknowledges meditation and unified experiences of yoga, nirvana, fana etc. Because matter and mind are two sides of the same coin, you always get both and there is no separation and therefore the interaction problem of Dualism. It's problem, however, is its mysticism. But as I said many sages and saints have vouched for this experimentally and experientially, so this could be the more accurate description of reality.

The forthcoming paragraphs go into details and conclusions of Non-Dualism. (Copied from my interactions with ChatGPT). We focus on two areas - death and life. If we accept and resonate with Non-Dualism as closer to reality, the next question is what does it mean to us in everyday life.

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Death:

Given Non-Dual Whole, and we are manifestations of that Whole, you get the Purnam shloka from Upanishad.

Original Sanskrit Shloka

पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात् पूर्णमुदच्यते ।

पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥

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Transliteration

Pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṁ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate;

Pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate.

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Translation

"That is whole; this is whole. From the whole, the whole arises.

Taking the whole from the whole, only the whole remains."

Commentary in style of Alan Watts:

Consider death in this context. We fear death because we think of ourselves as isolated fragments—separate, vulnerable selves drifting in a universe that feels indifferent or even hostile. This sense of isolation makes death seem like a terrifying end, a total annihilation. But what does this shloka tell us instead?

It reveals clearly that you are not an isolated fragment at all—you are the whole universe experiencing itself from a specific viewpoint. Your birth was not something separate coming into existence, and your death is not something separate disappearing from existence. Both are transformations within the infinite wholeness.

Death is like a wave dissolving back into the ocean. When a wave dissolves, has anything truly been lost? Not at all. Because the ocean remains perfectly whole—complete, untouched, exactly as before. The wave's individuality was always the ocean itself, temporarily shaped into a unique form. And so are you: the universe temporarily shaped into a unique individual.

Thus, death is not a subtraction or loss from life. It is simply returning from one state of completeness (your apparent individuality) to another state of completeness (the universal wholeness). The shloka gently reminds us that you and the cosmos are not two separate things; you were always intrinsically complete, fundamentally whole.

Seen clearly in this light, death loses its sting. It no longer seems tragic or frightening, but natural, even graceful—a beautiful transformation within the infinite completeness that is life itself.

Life:

If we are Whole and we experience the Whole from a particular perspective, how do we go about life ? This brings us to Karma Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita.

Sanskrit (Devanagari):

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।

मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥

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Transliteration (IAST):

Karmaṇy-evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana,

mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo 'stv akarmaṇi.

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Translation (Plain English):

"You have the right to perform your actions,

but not to the fruits (results) of those actions.

Let not the fruits of action be your motive,

nor let your attachment be to inaction."

Commentary in the style of Alan Watts:

This statement is one of the most liberating insights ever offered in spiritual philosophy. What it’s really saying is: do the dance, but don’t obsess over the applause. You see, the trap of modern life—indeed, of the ego—is to turn everything into a means to an end. You go to school to get the degree, to get the job, to get the promotion, to get the house, to get the security, to finally—what? Retire and then die? Always striving for a result, never fully here.

But life, like music, isn’t something you finish. You don’t listen to a symphony to hear the final note. You listen because the whole thing is the point. In the same way, the Gita is saying: act fully, with sincerity and devotion, but let go of craving for outcomes.

Now, does this mean being passive or detached like a machine? Absolutely not. It means acting playfully and wholeheartedly, with full sincerity—just without clutching. The moment you act without anxiety for the result, something remarkable happens: you become free. You become present. You become joyful.

The second part of the verse—“Let not the fruits be your motive, nor your attachment be to inaction”—is equally important. It’s not telling you to withdraw and become apathetic. No, it’s saying: act, engage, dance! But dance for the love of the dance—not for the trophy.

This, in the truest sense, is what the Zen masters mean when they speak of effortless action. Not careless, not indifferent—but free from the burden of needing the future to validate the present.

So go on—write, build, sing, cook, speak, love—not because you’re trying to gain something, but because you’re already full. That’s what it means to be in tune with the Tao, with Dharma, with the rhythm of the universe.

Action without craving is freedom. And in that freedom, you are no longer a separate self trying to control the world. You’re the universe playing itself beautifully, spontaneously, here and now.

Summary:

Non-Dualism as a philosophy encourages Science to understand the mundane, meditation to experience the supramundane, provides intellectual justification to alleviate the anxiety of finiteness, liberates the individual to be his/her creative, authentic, joyful self and paves the moral path to be compassionate to fellow beings.

Isms

Dualism - There is matter and then there is mind. Two different things. Matter is realm of science and mind is realm of the soul & spiritual. When you die, matter decomposes and the soul moves on to it's next destination.

Materialism - World is made of physical things - atoms. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon. It emerges somehow (still mysterious from modern science perspective on the mechanics of this epiphenomenon) from atoms. Matter is primary and mind / consciousness is virtual.

Idealism - Consciousness is all there is. The world out there is kind of like a dream world. It's like how a realistic world is made by our mind in dreams. Matter is virtual.

Non-Dualism - Consciousness and Matter are two sides of the same coin. If & when you have an enlightenment experience, you realize it's all one thing. There is no separation of subject (consciousness) from object (matter). There is no experiencer and object that is experienced. There is only experience.