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Emanationism and Non-Duality
By Peter Holleran
"The sea will be the sea, whatever the drop's philosophy." - Attar
"Those mystics who talk about becoming united with God have fallen into
the dualistic fallacy. They talk as though God were separate and apart from
themselves. The truth is that they already exist within God and do not need
to become united with Him. What they need to become is conscious of Him
- which is a different matter." - Paul Brunton
Musical Prelude
The first part of this article is a brief summation and attempt at clarifying and possibly synthesizing diverse Gnostic, Christian, Sufi, Vedantic and Buddhist views on spiritual questions of identity, union, individuality, and non-duality. It is fairly abstract, presuming familiarity with the philosophy of Plotinus and Paul Brunton.
The second part is a discussion on the Sant Mat tradition, a primary example of emanationism, relative to other spiritual and philosophical schools. Its primary purpose is in comparing and contrasting the distinguishing aspects of that path with non-dual teachings such as exemplified by Ramana Maharshi, Paul Brunton, Shree Atmananda, and contemporary teachers like Adyashanti. These paths seem to describe radically different realizations. My interest is in seeing if there is some common ground between them.
The third part gives an account of my experiences with Sant Kirpal Singh. All sections are related but also stand on their own and may be studied separately as the reader will no doubt discover. For any questions, comments, and suggestions, old friends and new are welcomed to email the author.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
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