Monism and Dualism: Light and Darkness

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"Monism" and "dualism" are opposite, and mutually exclusive, ways of looking at the cosmos.

"Monism" comes from the greek monos, and means "one." It is the mystical teaching that there is only one Mind in the cosmos. All other minds are parts of this One. This is a galactic, gigantic Mind of purest Love, beauty, intelligence, ecstasy, and tranquility.

This Mind is the only reality. It is all that truly exists. It exists independently of anything and everything. That is why mystics call it the "Absolute." (That which is "absolute" is "relative" to nothing.)

Since this vast, joyful Mind is all that truly exists, one of the many names that mystics use for "God" is "Reality." The "material, physical" world is actually a dream of this Mind, and exists within this Mind.

Stated differently, the entire cosmos is Mind. That means that it is energy. And quantum physics has convincingly proved that all things are made of atoms, and that there is nothing "solid" within atomic structure. It has demonstrated that atoms are energy-bundles or -packets called "quanta."

"Dualism," defined most simply, is the mother of all illusions, and all spiritual errors. It is the false belief that anyone or anything can exist "outside" the one Mind. It is the painful illusion that you, or anyone, can ever be "separate" from the Mind of infinite joy.

In the Genesis account, Adam (human nature) committed the "original sin," and this was dualism. For the sin was represented allegorically as "eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." In paradise, or "Eden" (a word meaning "pleasure"), human nature realized that all the cosmos was good, as God repeatedly declared creation to be, in the creation-account. But when the human mind obtained the false "knowledge" that evil was just as real as good, it fell into "sin," and out of "grace."

The one Mind has no real opposite. The cosmos itself is all God, although God is not just or only the material cosmos (an error called "pantheism"). God is not the material cosmos, but the Mind that dreams it up. So, God is "in" everything, as Mind. In Eden, the human mind said that both "God" and "non-God" truly and equally existed. Both were equally real. But if God is Reality, then anything "outside" of God must be illusion.

So, no antiagapic (counter-Love) actions, attitudes, or qualities have true, real, genuine existence. They are illusions.

Dualism is the belief that hatred, fear, and other antiagapic qualities are just as real as Love, that they are absolute. They are not; they have only a "relative" or "secondary" reality. So, with the passage of time, they will all disappear, vanish, be neutralized or extinguished.
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