But isn’t there still an antinomy in the offing? Roughly: to know anything, you must know yourself; to know anything, you must know everything but yourself.
The idea is that there is nothing to know except yourself. 'Thou art that' is the traditional saying. Reality would be an indivisible whole. Authentic yoga would be the practice of 'union with reality'.
The ambiguity would be the word 'self'. Knowing oneself would, in the end, mean knowing we are not an individual self but the 'self' of all.
The better hidden antinomy is intrinsic to the idea of 'knowing'. This implies a dualism of knower and known. But even this dualism evaporates in the end, Hence this knowledge is often referred to as an unknowing.
The crucial idea here is that there are not two things. Speaking fundamentally, this means that there is no knower separate from the known, no self separate from other selves, no division or distinction of any kind. Nothing would really exist or ever really happen. Even the dualism of existence/non-existence and Being/non-Being would be transcended.
I hope this at least partly answers your objection, but the issues are so subtle it may not. .
But how do you know yourself other than by creating a representation of yourself within yourself? And once you have that representation, you have two things, and all the dualisms come rushing back in, no?
There's no need for representation. The whole idea is to transcend representations. This is knowledge-by-identity or 'introception'. It lies beyond mind and discursive thought, where the knowledge is one with the knowing.
For the mystic knowledge is fundamental. At the limit epistemology and ontology are not different topics. This is what is discovered by self-enquiry. It is said that Brahman is knowledge. Here are some relevant remarks .
"Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning, throned in the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision.”
Sri Aurobindo
The Life Divine
“Where knowledge is of a dual nature (as between subject and object) then the self hears, sees, smells, tastes and feels: it knows everything. [But] where knowledge is not of a dual nature, it transcends cause, effect and action [of any kind], [it is] beyond speech, nothing can be likened to it, one cannot tell of it.”
Maitri Upanishad
“The experience of “ordinary” consciousness depends on sensations and perceptions elicited by a given object. This experience is not the same as that of our fundamental consciousness. The latter is pure knowledge, unconditioned by concepts, memories, events in space-time, and any system relating to the body.”
I think you are on to something important here, but I wonder if you have a clear way to distinguish those authors who fit within the borders of Perennial Philosophy and those who don't? Or, put another way, aren't there many edge cases, people who seem to argue for viewpoints in agreement with non-dualism sometimes, but not others?
As a concrete example: I think we can identify a period of Christian Neoplatonist (or perhaps we might want to call them something like Christian post-Neoplatonists, or something) beginning no later than the late 4th century with Gregory of Nyssa and extending at least through John Eriugena (in the west) in the late 9th century that exhibits an essentially non-dualist (or at least non-dualist adjacent) metaphysics. But, that period certainly comes to an end no later than the 11th century with the work of Anselm of Canterbury. Would you consider them representatives of the position you are advocating for?
Hi Scott. Thanks for the question. I was speaking more widely than Christianity, but can answer generally.
My test for 'Perennial' authors is their endorsement of the principle of nonduality. This has a marked effect not only on the substance of their statements but also on the language they employ. On this basis we can trace the Perennial philosophy back well before Jesus and find it still alive and well in contemporary Christian writings. 'A Course in Miracles' is a clear example.
I'm not sure that Platonism is directly relevant. After the 11th century we still had Eckhart, Traherne, the pseudo-Dionysus and much more to come. On youtube today there are many teachers who endorse and teach the nondual Christianity of the Gospel of Thomas. A search for 'nondual Christianity' brings up a long list of links. (There is also, ahem, my own book). My feeling is that this interpretation of Jesus' life and teachings is better understood today than ever before.
Yes, I definitely understand the Perennial Philosophy encompasses far more than Christianity. But I was curious how you would rate that Neoplatonic tradition, as an example. And it seems to me that Eckhardt, Rolle, and others were drawing specifically from that very Neoplatonist tradition—essentially preserving it in the period after it had declined considerably in academic circles.
Looking beyond Christianity, how might you interface the Perennial Philosophy—understood as a more-or-less unified tradition or category—with the diverging traditions of, say, Vedanta philosophy? Advaita and Vishishtadvaita are both forms of "nondualist" thought, yet the latter obviously qualifies this term. Would you consider Ramanuja's thought with the ambit of your understanding of nondualism?
(Two quick notes as well: Pseudo-Dionysius was probably a 5th or 6th century author—right in the middle of the Neoplatonic period I mentioned above —not post 11th century. And the Gospel of Thomas, with its seemingly "gnostic" (another term that may be irremediably vague) influences, was probably actually rather dualist in its metaphysics, rather than nondualist.)
I don't know what Neoplatonism is other than a quite disparate collection of thinkers. I'm just a fan of Plotinus. Likewise, I don't see Eckhart as drawing on any tradition, just as speaking from his knowledge.
In the mainstream 'Perennial' tradition I would include advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Taoism, Buddhism, but it can found all over the place - the mysticism of the Abrahamic religions, the pre-Socratics, the American transcendentalists, the Theosophists, Shamanism and so on.
You're right about Dionysus. But it's influence was slow to travel. I was thinking of the reports from the 17th century of how The Mystical Theology 'ran through England like a deer'. Gnosticism is rather a vague term, but the advaita philosophy is certainly there in the Nag Hammadi library. I wouldn't call Thomas an upper-case Gnostic text, albeit it's clearly a lower-case gnostic one.
But isn’t there still an antinomy in the offing? Roughly: to know anything, you must know yourself; to know anything, you must know everything but yourself.
The idea is that there is nothing to know except yourself. 'Thou art that' is the traditional saying. Reality would be an indivisible whole. Authentic yoga would be the practice of 'union with reality'.
The ambiguity would be the word 'self'. Knowing oneself would, in the end, mean knowing we are not an individual self but the 'self' of all.
The better hidden antinomy is intrinsic to the idea of 'knowing'. This implies a dualism of knower and known. But even this dualism evaporates in the end, Hence this knowledge is often referred to as an unknowing.
The crucial idea here is that there are not two things. Speaking fundamentally, this means that there is no knower separate from the known, no self separate from other selves, no division or distinction of any kind. Nothing would really exist or ever really happen. Even the dualism of existence/non-existence and Being/non-Being would be transcended.
I hope this at least partly answers your objection, but the issues are so subtle it may not. .
But how do you know yourself other than by creating a representation of yourself within yourself? And once you have that representation, you have two things, and all the dualisms come rushing back in, no?
There's no need for representation. The whole idea is to transcend representations. This is knowledge-by-identity or 'introception'. It lies beyond mind and discursive thought, where the knowledge is one with the knowing.
For the mystic knowledge is fundamental. At the limit epistemology and ontology are not different topics. This is what is discovered by self-enquiry. It is said that Brahman is knowledge. Here are some relevant remarks .
"Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning, throned in the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision.”
Sri Aurobindo
The Life Divine
“Where knowledge is of a dual nature (as between subject and object) then the self hears, sees, smells, tastes and feels: it knows everything. [But] where knowledge is not of a dual nature, it transcends cause, effect and action [of any kind], [it is] beyond speech, nothing can be likened to it, one cannot tell of it.”
Maitri Upanishad
“The experience of “ordinary” consciousness depends on sensations and perceptions elicited by a given object. This experience is not the same as that of our fundamental consciousness. The latter is pure knowledge, unconditioned by concepts, memories, events in space-time, and any system relating to the body.”
The Dalai Lama
Reflections from the Journey of Life(2002)
I think you are on to something important here, but I wonder if you have a clear way to distinguish those authors who fit within the borders of Perennial Philosophy and those who don't? Or, put another way, aren't there many edge cases, people who seem to argue for viewpoints in agreement with non-dualism sometimes, but not others?
As a concrete example: I think we can identify a period of Christian Neoplatonist (or perhaps we might want to call them something like Christian post-Neoplatonists, or something) beginning no later than the late 4th century with Gregory of Nyssa and extending at least through John Eriugena (in the west) in the late 9th century that exhibits an essentially non-dualist (or at least non-dualist adjacent) metaphysics. But, that period certainly comes to an end no later than the 11th century with the work of Anselm of Canterbury. Would you consider them representatives of the position you are advocating for?
Hi Scott. Thanks for the question. I was speaking more widely than Christianity, but can answer generally.
My test for 'Perennial' authors is their endorsement of the principle of nonduality. This has a marked effect not only on the substance of their statements but also on the language they employ. On this basis we can trace the Perennial philosophy back well before Jesus and find it still alive and well in contemporary Christian writings. 'A Course in Miracles' is a clear example.
I'm not sure that Platonism is directly relevant. After the 11th century we still had Eckhart, Traherne, the pseudo-Dionysus and much more to come. On youtube today there are many teachers who endorse and teach the nondual Christianity of the Gospel of Thomas. A search for 'nondual Christianity' brings up a long list of links. (There is also, ahem, my own book). My feeling is that this interpretation of Jesus' life and teachings is better understood today than ever before.
Yes, I definitely understand the Perennial Philosophy encompasses far more than Christianity. But I was curious how you would rate that Neoplatonic tradition, as an example. And it seems to me that Eckhardt, Rolle, and others were drawing specifically from that very Neoplatonist tradition—essentially preserving it in the period after it had declined considerably in academic circles.
Looking beyond Christianity, how might you interface the Perennial Philosophy—understood as a more-or-less unified tradition or category—with the diverging traditions of, say, Vedanta philosophy? Advaita and Vishishtadvaita are both forms of "nondualist" thought, yet the latter obviously qualifies this term. Would you consider Ramanuja's thought with the ambit of your understanding of nondualism?
(Two quick notes as well: Pseudo-Dionysius was probably a 5th or 6th century author—right in the middle of the Neoplatonic period I mentioned above —not post 11th century. And the Gospel of Thomas, with its seemingly "gnostic" (another term that may be irremediably vague) influences, was probably actually rather dualist in its metaphysics, rather than nondualist.)
I don't know what Neoplatonism is other than a quite disparate collection of thinkers. I'm just a fan of Plotinus. Likewise, I don't see Eckhart as drawing on any tradition, just as speaking from his knowledge.
In the mainstream 'Perennial' tradition I would include advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Taoism, Buddhism, but it can found all over the place - the mysticism of the Abrahamic religions, the pre-Socratics, the American transcendentalists, the Theosophists, Shamanism and so on.
You're right about Dionysus. But it's influence was slow to travel. I was thinking of the reports from the 17th century of how The Mystical Theology 'ran through England like a deer'. Gnosticism is rather a vague term, but the advaita philosophy is certainly there in the Nag Hammadi library. I wouldn't call Thomas an upper-case Gnostic text, albeit it's clearly a lower-case gnostic one.
Do you see things differently?
.