In religion, “monism” is the belief that, at the deepest level of reality, all is one (“mono-ism”). The divine is one and it encompasses all things, so all things are one within it. At bottom, therefore, only the divine truly exists. Monism is the opposite of “dualism,” the belief that the deepest level of reality instead consists of some kind of inherent separation between multiple things (self vs. other, or spirit vs. matter, or some other such pair of contraries).
“Non-dualism” is basically a synonym for “monism,” but expressed as a denial of dualism rather than as an active affirmation of its opposite. Whereas monism is an instance of “positive theology” – the attempt to describe the divine by saying what it is – non-dualism is an instance of “negative theology” – the attempt to describe the divine by saying what it is not.[1]
Since the divine can’t be adequately described in human language, non-dualism is, in a sense, a “higher” teaching than monism is. Non-dualism stands in awe of the infinite and transcendent nature of the divine, whereas monism can’t help but place the limitations and shortcomings of human speech and concepts on it. Even the best ways of describing the experience of spiritual enlightenment, such as the concept of “one” or “oneness,” fall flat in the face of the ineffable experience itself.
But if we resolved to never talk about what the divine is, so as to not place any limitations on it, there would be no religion or spirituality, because we’d have no symbols to use to orient ourselves toward the divine and help us reach it. It would defeat the purpose. Thus we need concepts like “monism” or “oneness” to help to fill that gap and point us in the direction of spiritual enlightenment, which religions more or less unanimously hold to be the meaning of life.
To be sure, most if not all religions do contain a provisional dualism in the form of the worshiper worshiping the divine as something outside of himself or herself. And that’s fine and necessary, too, because it meets us where we are when we’re in our everyday, implicitly dualistic mode of perception (“This feeling is pleasant rather than unpleasant,” “That person is my enemy rather than my friend,” etc.) and helps us to work “upward” from that starting point. As the Hindu sage Ramakrishna said, “In the Absolute I am not, and thou art not and God is not, for It is beyond speech and thought. But so long as anything exists outside myself, I ought to adore Brahma [a Hindu god], within the limits of the mind as something existing outside myself.”[2]
Such provisional dualism only becomes a potential problem if it’s misunderstood as being absolute rather than provisional – in other words, if we believe that the apparent everyday separation between us and the divine is irreconcilable. But few if any religions truly teach that view. Instead, more or less all religions teach some version of monism and/or non-dualism, even while leaving ample room for provisional dualism along the way. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that point by considering examples from a wide variety of religions from all around the world.
Before embarking on that investigation, it’s probably best to clear up one potential misconception at the outset. “Monism” is sometimes used as a synonym for “pantheism,” which is a misunderstanding of the kind of monism that religions really teach. Religions teach that the divine is both immanent and transcendent – that is, it’s both within the world and beyond the world – and that, therefore, the divine unity that encompasses all things isn’t just the sum total of all of them, but rather sweeps them all up into something that’s infinitely greater than all of them combined. Pantheism, on the other hand, holds that the divine is only immanent and not also transcendent, and that the unity of all things is thus merely the sum total of all of them, “the universe.”[3]
Since pantheism doesn’t do full justice to what makes the divine the divine, and since some people use “monism” and “pantheism” as synonyms, some devoutly religious people understandably reject monism due to that association. But since that association is unwarranted, so is the rejection of monism on that basis.
Now, without further ado, let’s explore what various religions have to say about monism and non-dualism.
Hinduism
Hinduism provides us with one of the clearest examples of explicit monism in a religion, so let’s start with it.
Out of all of Hinduism’s many sacred texts, some of the most important are a set of poems called the Upanishads. The “principal” or “major” Upanishads, the heart of the set, were written between two and three thousand years ago,[4] but are still read and revered by Hindus today.
The overarching message of the Upanishads is that Brahman, the divine, is the ultimate, innermost Self (Atman) of all things. Our individual selves (with a lowercase “s”) have no existence apart from their participation in this universal and transcendent Self (with an uppercase “S”). Most of us go our entire lives without ever realizing this underlying reality, but it’s there all the time regardless, and the purpose of the Upanishads is to guide their readers toward realizing through firsthand experience how all things are one in the eternal Self.[5]
For example, the Isha Upanishad proclaims,
The Self is one….
Without the Self, never could life exist….
He is within all, and he transcends all.[6]
The Chandogya Upanishad likewise states this monistic perspective particularly directly: “This universe comes forth from Brahman, exists in Brahman, and will return to Brahman. Verily, all is Brahman.”[7]
The Chandogya Upanishad also contains a famous passage that’s often taken to be a concise summary of the perspective and purpose of the Upanishads as a whole. The sage Uddalaka says to his son Shvetaketu:
In the beginning was only Being,
One without a second.
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.[8]
Or as the Shvetashvatara Upanishad puts it,
From his divine power comes forth all this
Magical show of name and form, of you
And me, which casts the spell of pain and pleasure.
Only when we pierce through this magic veil
Do we see the One who appears as many.[9]
The Upanishads are full of such monistic passages; indeed, there’s hardly a page in them that doesn’t contain one or more statements to this same effect. And such unmistakable expressions of monism in Hinduism aren’t confined to the Upanishads. To cite just one more Hindu sacred text as an example, the Bhagavad Gita has the god Krishna unveil the same teachings to the human protagonist Arjuna:
All states of being…
proceed from me;
they are in me, not I in them.[10]
[T]he universe is born within me,
and within me will be destroyed.[11]
At the end of his many lives,
the sage unites with me, thinking,
“Krishna is all that is.”[12]
Thus, the Hindu worldview is a classic example of forthright monism. The provisional dualism involved in the daily worship of the Hindu deities points toward this mystical loss of the worshiper in That which he or she worships, rather than being a standalone, self-sufficient dualism. To quote Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita one more time,
Therefore, Arjuna, meditate
on me at all times…
with your whole mind intent on me,
you will come to me – never doubt it.[13]
God is the offering, God
is the offered, poured out by God;
God is attained by all those
who see God in every action.[14]
Buddhism
There are three major branches of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism essentially accepts and builds on the Mahayana perspective on monism and non-dualism,[15] so there’s no particular need to consider it separately here. Mahayana Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism, however, approach monism and non-dualism in what are often startlingly different ways for two branches of the same religion. Yet beneath this outward conflict lies a deeper agreement.
Historically, Buddhism originally arose out of Hinduism, most likely between the years 500 and 400 BC.[16] As part of that process, it incorporated many of the most basic elements of the Hindu worldview, but transformed them considerably to fit them into its new framework. One such element was the Hindu view of Atman, the Self.
The early Buddhists agreed with Hindus that our everyday “selves” (with a lowercase “s”) are impermanent and illusory. But they rejected the Hindu way of talking about the universal and transcendent Self (with an uppercase “S”) that lies beneath those illusions. What Hinduism expresses in terms of the positive theology of monism, the early Buddhists expressed in terms of the negative theology of non-dualism: since the Self is radically unlike what we refer to as our “selves” in usual speech, the word “Self” isn’t a fitting way of talking about it. Nor is any other way of talking about it. Human language should therefore refer to it only by saying what it is not, by negating anything and everything that could be said about it. This became known as the Buddhist doctrine of “no self,” anatman or anatta.[17] As one scholar of Buddhism, Stephen Collins, has put it, “the self is not so much denied as declared inconceivable.”[18]
Since this earliest form of Buddhism contains no explicit avowals of monism or divine immanence, instead preferring to pass over them in silence and work toward realizing them at an exclusively practical level, Theravada Buddhism emphasizes divine transcendence and a provisional dualism between the divine (nirvana) and the world (samsara) in its articulation of the Buddhist spiritual path.[19] The Pali canon, a collection of the earliest Buddhist sacred texts, and which Theravada Buddhism holds in particularly high regard, often uses the image of crossing from one shore of a vast body of water to the far shore as a dualistic metaphor for spirituality. For example, the Dhammapada, one of the most celebrated texts in the Pali canon, declares,
Whoever has gone beyond his quagmire of rebirths,
Passed over this hard road of passion and delusion
And reached the other shore,
Who is meditative, secure, free from doubt,
And completely emancipated –
Him do I call a Noble One….Whoever is free from all bonds,
Having cast off earthly ties,
Having transcended heavenly ties –
Him do I call a Noble One.[20]
Like Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism teaches the doctrine of anatman or “no self.” In some ways, it even extends that teaching by applying it to all of the phenomena that make up everyday life, saying that they’re all “emptiness” (sunyata) and “non-duality” (advaya).[21]
But at the same time, Mahayana Buddhism more or less restricts the scope of anatman to everyday, individual phenomena. When it comes to the divinity behind and beneath all of that, Mahayana Buddhism is very comfortable with direct verbal assertions of monism and divine immanence. It effectively reverse-engineers Atman, the Self of Hinduism, out of its implicit but unstated presence in early Buddhism.[22]
Mahayana Buddhism calls this underlying monistic presence by various names. It’s often called “Buddha-nature” (tathagatagarbha, dharmakaya, or buddhadhatu),[23] as in the Mahaparinirvana-mahasutra:
What is called ‘the self’ means the tathagatagarbha.
The nature of the Buddha exists in every sentient being,
but because it is obscured by all manner of afflictions,
sentient beings cannot see, within themselves, its presence.[24]
Elsewhere in Mahayana literature, the monistic underlying reality is called “Mind” (citta) or “Suchness” (tathata), as in Ashvaghosha’s The Awakening of Faith.[25] Dogen, one of the great intellectuals of the Japanese Zen branch of Mahayana Buddhism, combines these terminologies in passages like this one:
Hence, all mind is sentient being: sentient beings are all being Buddha nature. Grass and trees, states and lands, are mind. Because they are mind, they are sentient beings. Because they are sentient beings, they are being Buddha nature. Heavenly bodies are mind. Because they are mind, they are sentient beings. Because they are sentient beings, they are being Buddha nature.[26]
In this monistic way of framing things, everything in this world (samsara) is explicitly recognized as an expression of the divine (nirvana), so samsara and nirvana are said to be “non-dual” or “one.” Mahayana Buddhism therefore frames the Buddhist spiritual path not in the provisionally dualistic terms of Theravada Buddhism as “crossing to the far shore” of a vast ocean, but rather as realizing that one is already at that far shore here and now.[27] To quote another great Japanese Zen intellectual, Hakuin,
This earth on which we stand
Is the promised Lotus Land,
And this body
Is the body of Buddha.[28]
Although Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism frame the quest to realize nirvana in different ways, they’re united by that shared quest. They’re also united by the Buddha’s teachings, which are so simple yet so rich that they’re capable of being fleshed out in a multitude of different ways that bring out different implications and emphases within that epochal yet timeless message of liberation from all suffering. The Theravada and Mahayana teachings on monism and non-dualism are thus really two sides of the same coin, and both together help to round out the picture of what Buddhism is and what possibilities it contains for helping people to reach spiritual enlightenment.
Islam
Most people think of Islam as a religion whose followers worship God (Allah in Arabic) as something separate from themselves and the world. And on one level this is true, because much of Islamic spiritual practice does indeed take this dualistic form. But at a deeper level, Islam teaches its own version of monism, and the dualism of conventional Islamic piety is a provisional dualism intended to subtly lead the worshiper in the direction of a more monistic or non-dualistic understanding of God, the world, and themselves.
The central teaching of Islam is tawhid, the “oneness” of God. This concept is enshrined in the Shahadah, the profession of faith that makes a Muslim a Muslim, in its opening line: “There is no god but God” (La ilaha illa’Llah).[29]
This is, of course, a statement of uncompromising monotheism. But Islam’s monotheism is far from an arbitrary commandment to worship a certain number of gods rather than another. Tawhid overflows with spiritual significance, part of which is that, in Islam, there can only be one God because God is all that truly exists. As the Sufis, Islam’s mystics, have often said, “There is no god but God” ultimately means, “There is nothing but God.” To believe that anything exists outside of God is to set up a rival to God and thus to commit Islam’s gravest sin: shirk, idolatry.[30] Seen in this light, the Shahadah is as much a profession of monism as a profession of monotheism.
Numerous verses in the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, express such a monistic view of God. For example, verse 115 of the second surah (chapter) proclaims, “The East and the West belong to God: wherever you turn, there is His Face. God is all pervading and all knowing.”[31] Surah 28:88 builds on this imagery: “Everything will perish except His Face,”[32] a reminder that all things exist only inasmuch as they partake of God’s existence; by themselves, they are nothing.[33] Surah 57:3 praises God with the exclamation that “He is the First and the Last; the Outer and the Inner.”[34] And surah 59:19 can’t help but remind us of the Hindu doctrine that the divine is the “Self” of all things: “Do not be like those who forget God, so God causes them to forget their own souls.”[35]
Many of the most influential Muslim thinkers in history have echoed this monistic view of God. For example, the eleventh/twelfth-century polymath al-Ghazali wrote,
[W]hen the essence of anything other than He is considered in respect of its own essence, it is sheer nonexistence. But when it is considered in terms of the face to which existence flows forth from the First, the Real, then it is seen as existing – not in itself, but through the face toward its Giver of Existence. Hence the only existent is the Face of God.[36]
Or in the words of the twelfth/thirteenth-century philosopher Ibn Arabi, “There is nothing in existence but God. As for us, though we exist, our existence is through him.”[37] And “Glory be unto Him who hides Himself by that which is none other than He.”[38]
The Sufi poets have expressed Islamic monism in their own ecstatic way. For example, Rumi cries out to God,
We are non-existence appearing as existence,
Thou art Absolute Being appearing as the perishable.[39]
Jami likewise declares,
We and Thou are not separate from each other,
but we need Thee, whereas Thou doest not need us.[40]
Hafez, too, addresses God in a monistic way:
Come, and ensure Hafez’s being
Will disappear –
Since You exist, no one will hear
Me say, “I’m here.”[41]
And finally, Attar compares God to the sun and created things to shadows that vanish before it:
The shadow seeks union with the sun
but cannot achieve it.
It is clearly impossible,
yet the shadow thinks of nothing else.
This folly is the absurdity of love.
If you contemplate this,
you have not wasted your time.[42]
Judaism
As in Islam (and most other religions), most Jewish spirituality is practiced in a way that assumes a dualistic relationship between the Creator and his creation. But Jewish dualism, too, is only a provisional dualism that eventually gives way to a more encompassing monism, wherein all creation exists within the Creator, not apart from him.
One of the most celebrated passages in the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the “Old Testament”) characterizes God in just such a monistic way. In the third chapter of the book of Exodus, the prophet Moses is tending a flock of sheep in the desert. While passing by Mount Horeb, he suddenly encounters a lone bush on fire – but, miraculously, the flames somehow leave the bush intact. As Moses approaches the bush in wonder, God’s voice comes to him and commands him to go no further and to take off his sandals, the only proper behavior for someone standing in a sacred place. God then unveils to Moses his vocation as a prophet and liberator of his people.[43]
But then God reveals something immeasurably greater to Moses. When Moses asks God what name he and his people should call him by, God answers, “I am who I am… Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”[44]
“I am” in Hebrew is ‘ehyeh, and it’s the root of the Jewish name for God, “Yahweh.”[45] What does calling God “I am” say about God’s nature? At the most banal level, it simply says that God exists. But God’s existence was never in doubt in this scene, so it must mean something much more than just that. If God is as unique and transcendent as the Hebrew Bible makes him out to be, and if God is, then how can anything else be said to truly be? This passage in Exodus therefore seems to say that only God truly exists. Everything that exists, exists only through God, not apart from him. This monistic interpretation, which has been expounded by Christian commentators such as Saint Gregory of Nyssa,[46] is confirmed by other monistic passages in the Hebrew Bible, such as Isaiah 6:3: “the whole earth is full of his glory.”[47]
Further corroboration for this view comes from Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, which depicts God in the same monistic way. Let’s consider just two examples from the vast corpus of Kabbalistic literature. The first comes from the Chesed Le-avraham by Abraham Azulai:
This is the mystery of the divine guidance of the world: all types of light found in the mundane world shine from the Infinite Godhead who emanates His light continuously in all reality, which has its being from Him. He keeps everything in life and brings everything into being. There is nothing beside Him, and nothing exists except according to His will. No created being of all that exist can create anything apart from His divine power, neither intentionally nor accidentally…. He, however, provides life to all that is in being, and sets limits, size and measure to all that exists.[48]
And the second example of monism in Kabbalistic literature comes from the Likkutei Tefillot by Nathan of Nemirov:
Master of the Universe, who is near to those who call out to Him in truth, grant us the merit to know that You exist always, at all times, in each person and in every place. Even in the most hidden depths of concealment You are to be found there. For You, in Your essence, are hidden among all concealed things in the world…. You are to be found there, for there is no place where You are absent.[49]
It therefore seems safe to say that although much of Judaism is framed in terms of a provisional dualism between God and creation – and with good reason – monism is its “higher” or “deeper” teaching.
Christianity
Alongside its own well-known provisional dualism, Christianity has traditionally taught a version of monism that’s very similar to the Islamic and Jewish versions of monism, but still with certain unique qualities that make it specifically Christian.
Christianity’s monism goes all the way back to the New Testament, the religion’s central set of sacred texts. To cite just a few particularly compelling examples, the book of Romans says of God, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”[50] The same message in different words can be found in the book of Acts: “In him we live and move and have our being.”[51] And in the book of Revelation, Jesus announces, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”[52]
Many of the most revered saints and spiritual masters from both Western and Eastern Christianity have echoed and fleshed out this monistic vision down through the centuries. For example, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, one of the most influential Christian figures of the Middle Ages,[53] writes, “But beings are never without being which, in turn, comes from the Preexistent. He is not a facet of being. Rather, being is a facet of him. He is not contained in being, but being is contained in him.”[54]
Dionysius goes on to say that God “is what unites everything, begetting and producing the harmonies and the agreement of all things. All things therefore long for it, and the manifold and the divided are returned by it into a total unity; every civil war is changed into a unified household.”[55] And “if you take away the One, there will survive neither whole nor part nor anything else in creation. The reality is that all things are contained beforehand in and are embraced by the One in its capacity as an inherent unity.”[56]
Saint Augustine, perhaps the most influential figure in the Western branch of Christianity, concurs:
I beheld these others beneath Thee, and saw that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not. An existence they have, because they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what Thou art. For only that really is, that remains unchangeably.[57]
Or in the words of Saint Bonaventure: “the whole world is but a glass, full of lights manifesting the divine wisdom.”[58] And “what is supremely one is the universal principle of all multiplicity.”[59]
Or Saint John of the Cross:
God sustains every soul and dwells in it substantially, even though it may be that of the greatest sinner in the world. This union between God and creatures always exists. By it he conserves their being so that if the union should end they would immediately be annihilated and cease to exist.[60]
These examples could be multiplied almost without end, but surely these few suffice to illustrate the point.
Christianity’s basic teachings also contain an expression of non-dualism that’s all the more profound for coming from what may at first seem to be an unlikely place: the doctrine of the Trinity. (The Trinity is the idea that God is One yet also simultaneously “Three Persons:” the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.) The notion of the Trinity is clearly an affront to simple monism, since it says that God’s “threeness” is just as fundamental as his “oneness.” How, then, can this doctrine exist alongside Christianity’s evident teachings on monism?
We’ve seen how non-dualism conveys the same underlying insight as monism, but in a very different way: by saying what the divine is not rather than what it is. Monism makes a positive assertion of the divine’s oneness, whereas non-dualism makes the negative assertion that it isn’t dual. By refusing to specify what the divine is, non-dualism suggests the ineffable, transcendent nature of the divine better than monism does.
And that’s what the doctrine of the Trinity does. In classic non-dualistic fashion, it says that even calling God “One” is insufficient in the face of the inarticulable majesty of God. As the highly-esteemed modern expositor of Eastern Orthodox Christian theology Vladimir Lossky writes: “Two is the number which separates, three the number which transcends all separation: the one and the many find themselves gathered and circumscribed in the Trinity.”[61]
You could state this Christian non-dualism in terms reminiscent of a koan from Zen Buddhism (an intentionally unanswerable question or perplexing statement meant to shake the listener out of his or her ordinary, dualistic way of thinking): If the number “one” means “the One,” and if the number “two” means “the many,” what does the number “three” mean?
Taoism
Taoism, one of the main traditional religions of China, is yet another example of a religion that overtly and prominently teaches its own form of monism. The root of the word “Taoism” is “Tao,” and just as the Tao is the central pivot of the religion’s name, it’s the central pivot of the religion itself. The Tao is a symbol for the divine, but not one that casts the divine as a personal entity like God, or a place or state of being like Buddhism’s nirvana. Instead, it’s an impersonal concept (much like the phrase “the divine” itself, for that matter).
The word “Tao” literally means “Way,” and more specifically refers to “the natural way of things.”[62] Scholar of Taoism Eva Wong fleshes this out:
The Tao is the source of life of all things. It is nameless, invisible, and ungraspable by normal modes of perception. It is boundless and cannot be exhausted, although all things depend on it for existence. Hidden beneath transition and change, the Tao is the permanent underlying reality.[63]
Thus, this “natural way of things” is much more – infinitely more, in fact – than the modern Western view of what “nature” is. As with the other religions we’re examining here, Taoism’s monism is far from any misguided “pantheism.” The Tao unites all things in its transcendent oneness.
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the main sacred text of Taoism, delights in describing the Tao in ways that are right on the line between monism and non-dualism, or positive theology and negative theology. For example, the opening lines of that short but magnificent text read:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.[64]
Polytheistic Religions
It’s easy to imagine that a religion with many gods and goddesses would depict the world as a meeting-place of various irreducibly distinct forces, the antithesis of monism or non-dualism. But what we find in actual polytheistic religions is the opposite: the many gods and goddesses are only relatively distinct from each other, not absolutely distinct, and they implicitly or explicitly point to a greater whole that unites them all. Indeed, we’ve already examined how one polytheistic religion, Hinduism, conceptualizes and articulates a monistic worldview.
Many polytheistic religions convey the oneness of all things in a way similar to Hinduism’s view of a single Self that underlies all the various gods and goddesses. What Hinduism calls the “Self” if often depicted as a supreme, omnipotent god behind and within the various, more “limited” gods and goddesses. The ancient Babylonians of the first millennium BC, for example, praised their high god, Marduk, as the ultimate force behind all the other deities:
Ninurta is Marduk of the hoe,
Nergal is Marduk of the attack,
Zababa is Marduk of the hand-to-hand fight,
Enlil is Marduk of lordship and counsel,
Nabium is Marduk of accounting,
Sin [the moon goddess] is Marduk, the illuminator of the night,
Shamash is Marduk of justice,
Adad is Marduk of rains…[65]
And so on. An ancient Egyptian hymn to the sun god Amun-Re from the second millennium BC is another particularly instructive example of this same kind of approach to monism in a polytheistic religion:
Hail, the One who makes himself into millions,
Whose length and breadth are limitless!
Power in readiness, who gave birth to himself,
Uraeus with great flame;
Great of magic with secret form,
Secret ba [soul], to whom respect is shown.King Amun-Re may he live, be powerful and healthy, who came into being himself,
Akhty, Horus of the east,
The rising one whose radiance illuminates,
The light that is more luminous than the gods.
You have hidden yourself as Amun the great;
You have withdrawn in your transformation as the sun disk.
Tatenen, who raises himself above the gods.The Old Man forever young, traveling through Time,
Amun, who remains in possession of all things,
This god who established the earth by his providence.[66]
Egyptologist Jan Assmann, the translator of this hymn, comments:
The opposing terms “One” and “millions” are linked here by the concept of self-transformation, [the Late Egyptian root words] “jrj sw” (who made or makes himself into). “Millions” clearly refers to the world of creation, which is interpreted as a transformation of god himself. Creation is emanation. The world is created not out of chaos, nor ex nihilo, out of nothing, but ex Deo, out of God.[67]
Throughout the surviving mythical and religious texts from ancient Egypt – and in testimonies from many, many other polytheistic cultures from around the world – phenomena are depicted in ways that can’t help but remind an informed reader of the Hindu and Buddhist doctrines that the only stable, permanent “self” of anything is the one Self (or Buddha-nature, etc.) of all things. While phenomena may seem to exist as fixed, separate things – a bird, a tree, a house, etc. – they only really exist through the One. Another Egyptologist, John A. Wilson, describes this monistic understanding of things in ancient Egypt:
To be sure, a man seems to be one thing, and the sky or a tree seems to be another. But to the ancient Egyptian such concepts had a protean and complementary nature. The sky might be thought of as a material vault above earth, or as a cow, or as a female. A tree might be a tree or the female who was the tree-goddess. Truth might be treated as an abstract concept, or as a goddess, or as a divine hero who once lived on earth. A god might be depicted as a man, or as a falcon, or as a falcon-headed man. In one context the king is described as the sun, a star, a bull, a crocodile, a lion, a falcon, a jackal, and the two tutelary gods of Egypt – not so much in simile as in vital essence. There was thus a continuing substance across the phenomena of the universe, whether organic, inorganic, or abstract. It is not a matter of black being antipodal to white but rather that the universe is a spectrum in which one color blends off into another without line of demarcation, in which, indeed, one color may become another under alternating conditions.[68]
This perception of “a continuing substance across the phenomena of the universe” makes perfect sense if, as per the Amun-Re hymn quoted above, the true state of affairs in the world is that there is “One who makes himself into millions.”
Similarly, Black Elk, a medicine man from the Lakota Sioux tribe of the North American plains, told a European interlocutor about his people’s view of the divine and the world in the following monistic terms:
We should understand well that all things are the works of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the fourlegged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He intends.[69]
Elsewhere, after invoking the spirits of the four directions, Black Elk says, “But these four spirits are only one Spirit after all, and this eagle feather here is for that One, which is like a father.”[70]
Or in the concise words of Black Elk’s colleague High Hollow Horn: “Our Grandfather, Wakan-Tanka, You are everything, and yet above everything!”[71]
But casting all of the gods and goddesses as pieces of one underlying deity is far from the only way that polytheistic religions express a monistic worldview. For example, the Canaanites, the ancient peoples of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, had such a family-centric culture that the natural symbol of oneness for them was a family of gods and goddesses rather than a single deity, since a single deity would have been incomplete by himself or herself.[72]
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far in this article, my hat’s off to you for your persistence. Before we go our separate ways (or perhaps I should say seemingly separate ways), let’s briefly consider one final question: why does it matter that virtually all traditional religions (even Zoroastrianism has its own version of monism[73]) teach some version of monism and/or non-dualism?
The answer can be summed up in one word: enlightenment. As we noted in passing in the introduction, one of the least inapt ways of describing spiritual enlightenment is that it’s an experience of the radical oneness of all things in the One that is immeasurably greater than any and all of them combined. Or, if we find the attempt to describe that ineffable reality at all as being too presumptuous and paltry, we can highlight this by instead only saying what it isn’t: namely, in this case, that it’s not dual. Either way, notions of monism or non-dualism in religions are there to help guide us toward realizing enlightenment for ourselves.
To cite just one quick example, the anonymous author of The Book of Privy Counseling, a medieval Christian mystical treatise, makes this connection between monism or non-dualism and spiritual practice explicit: “I intended all along to lead you eventually to the point where you would… experience only the being of God. It was with an eye to this ultimate experience that I said in the beginning: God is your being.”[74]
We all pursue wholeness in countless different ways in our lives. “Wholeness” has become a big topic in self-help books, most of which encourage the reader to pursue wholeness on an entirely individual level. But if “God is your being,” then anything individual and separate is by definition not whole, so seeking wholeness at that level is futile. Instead, wholeness can only be found through the loss of the individual in the true Whole – in Hindu terms, the loss of the self in the Self.
References:
[1] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 143.
[2] Schuon, Frithjof. 2005. The Transcendent Unity of Religions. Quest Books. p. 119-120.
[3] Schuon, Frithjof. 1998. Understanding Islam. World Wisdom. p. 178.
[4] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 36.
[5] Ibid. p. 37-38.
[6] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “Isha Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 57.
[7] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “Chandogya Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 126.
[8] Ibid. p. 133.
[9] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “Shvetashvatara Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 169-170.
[10] Mitchell, Stephen (transl.) 2000. Bhagavad Gita. Harmony Books. p. 101.
[11] Ibid. p. 100.
[12] Ibid. p. 103.
[13] Ibid. p. 108.
[14] Ibid. p. 76.
[15] Powers, John. 2007. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Snow Lion Publications.
[16] Gethin, Rupert. 1998. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford University Press. p. 13-14.
[17] Jones, C.V. 2021. The Buddhist Self: On Tathagatagarbha and Atman. University of Hawai’i Press. p. 1-7.
[18] Ibid. p. 6.
[19] Smith, Huston, & Philip Novak. 2004. Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. HarperOne. p. 209-210.
[20] Maitreya, Balangoda Ananda (transl.). 1995. The Dhammapada: The Path of Truth. Parallax Press. p. 109.
[21] Gethin, Rupert. 1998. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford University Press. p. 78.
[22] Jones, C.V. 2021. The Buddhist Self: On Tathagatagarbha and Atman. University of Hawai’i Press.
[23] Ibid. p. 1, 44, 129-130.
[24] Ibid. p. 1.
[25] Ashvaghosha. 2006. The Awakening of Faith. Transl. Yoshito S. Hakeda. Columbia University Press. p. 36-38.
[26] Dumoulin, Henrich. 2005. Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume Two: Japan. Transl. James W. Heisig & Paul Knitter. World Wisdom. p. 80.
[27] Harvey, Peter. 2013. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge University Press. p. 126.
[28] Smith, Huston, & Philip Novak. 2004. Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. HarperOne. p. 115-116.
[29] Bakar, Osman. 2012. The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science. Islamic Texts Society. p. 174-175.
[30] Smith, Huston. 1991. The World’s Religions. HarperOne. p. 263.
[31] Haleem, Abdel (transl.) 2005. The Qur’an. Oxford University Press. p. 14.
[32] Ibid. p. 251.
[33] Murata, Sachiko, and William C. Chittick. 1994. The Vision of Islam. Paragon House. p. 68-69.
[34] Haleem, Abdel (transl.) 2005. The Qur’an. Oxford University Press. p. 359.
[35] Ibid. p. 367.
[36] Chittick, William C. 2008. Sufism. Oneworld Books. p. 57.
[37] Ibid. p. 93.
[38] Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 2007. The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition. HarperOne. p. 44-45.
[39] Ibid. p. 135.
[40] Schimmel, Annemarie. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 285.
[41] Davis, Dick (transl.) 2013. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz. Penguin Books. p. 125.
[42] Attar. 2018. The Conference of the Birds. Transl. Sholeh Wolpé. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 357.
[43] Coogan, Michael D., et al (eds.). 2018. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 85-86.
[44] Ibid. p. 86.
[45] Ibid. p. 86-87.
[46] Smith, Wolfgang. 2008. Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief. Sophia Perennis. p. 44-45.
[47] Coogan, Michael D., et al (eds.). 2018. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 988.
[48] Unterman, Alan (transl.). 2008. The Kabbalistic Tradition: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism. Penguin Books. p. 10-11.
[49] Ibid. p. 23-24.
[50] Coogan, Michael D., et al (eds.). 2018. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1631.
[51] Ibid. p. 1591.
[52] Ibid. p. 1832.
[53] Eire, Carlos M.N. 2016. Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650. Yale University Press. p. 72-73.
[54] Dionysius. 1987. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Transl. Colm Luibheid. Paulist Press. p. 101.
[55] Ibid. p. 121.
[56] Ibid. p. 128-129.
[57] Smith, Wolfgang. 2008. Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief. Sophia Perennis. p. 48.
[58] Ibid. p. 42.
[59] Ibid. p. 49.
[60] John of the Cross. 1991. The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross. Transl. Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez. Institute of Carmelite Studies. p. 163.
[61] Lossky, Vladimir. 1976. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. p. 47.
[62] Wong, Eva. 2011. Taoism: An Essential Guide. Shambhala Publications. p. 23.
[63] Ibid.
[64] Lao Tzu. 1988. Tao Te Ching. Transl. Stephen Mitchell. HarperCollins. p. 1.
[65] Jacobsen, Thorkild. 1976. The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. Yale University Press. p. 235.
[66] Assmann, Jan. 1998. Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Harvard University Press. p. 204-205.
[67] Assmann, Jan. 2008. Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism. The University of Wisconsin Press. p. 68.
I’ve taken the liberty of putting the Egyptian root words, which are in italics in the original, in quotation marks instead, so that it looks better in this format. This doesn’t affect the meaning of any part of the quote in any way.
[68] Wilson, John A. 1946. “Egypt.” In The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East. Eds. Henri Frankfort & H.A. Frankfort. The University of Chicago Press. p. 62.
[69] Brown, Joseph Epes. 1989. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. University of Oklahoma Press. p. xx.
[70] Neihardt, John G. 2014. Black Elk Speaks. University of Nebraska Press. p. 2.
[71] Ibid. p. 13.
[72] Smith, Mark S. 2001. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. Oxford University Press. p. 78-79.
[73] Boyce, Mary. 1979. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 67-70.*
*Boyce calls the monistic Zurvanite doctrine a “heresy,” but that’s her own gloss. The salient point, it seems to me, is that even a religion that originally taught a dualistic doctrine eventually came around to its own version of monism, as if monism were an inherent part of the deep structure of religion – which is strong evidence that monism is a more or less inherent part of the deep structure of religion. Exceptions are always possible in principle, though, and it’s entirely possible that non-Zurvanite Zoroastrianism is one of them. “The spirit bloweth where it listeth.”
[74] Johnston, William (transl.). 2014. The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling. Image Books. p. 159.