Cherry Picking from Eastern Mysticism

Eastern philosophy is the basis for many of the concepts we take for granted in the spiritual community—from being in the moment to letting go of the ego to developing mindfulness and more.

It seems that admiring wisdom that comes from the East is an inherent part of the spiritual approach.

However, Western spiritual seekers haven’t exactly used a scientific method in their assimilation of Eastern ideas. Wanting to get away from myth and dogma, they have mixed and matched, shaken and stirred, mashed and meshed, blended and juiced . . . and in the process, well, kind of lost their way.

Trying to Combine Love and Oneness

A prime example of philosophical inconsistency that permeates many spiritual circles results from trying to combine the idea of oneness (found in Eastern teachings) with the idea of God as love only (a concept that was intended to abolish the vengeful God of the Old Testament).

By equating the ideas of love and oneness—for instance, by saying that there is one God and that God is only love—spiritual preachers and poets have stepped into what can accurately be described as a philosophical predicament.

To explain the discrepancy between these two ideas, let me give you a quick introduction to the Eastern inspiration for the concept of oneness.

Non-dual Oneness

In the Vedas—the central writings of Yoga and Hinduism—the concept of ultimate reality is represented as Brahman, the One without a Second, meaning that there is nothing but Brahman. It is a non-dualistic concept. There is only one, never two. No up or down, east or west, good or bad, love or hate… only oneness, period.

Because of its immensity, Vedic philosophy deduces that the concept of Brahman is too vast for the human mind to contemplate. Therefore, lesser aspects are offered for personal connection. The practitioner can, for example, connect with Brahman through the human emotion of love. That practice is called Bhakti Yoga. The idea of using one entry point is much like shaking the hand of a person instead of touching every part of his or her anatomy.

Nevertheless, in Vedic philosophy it is always clear that the entry point is a part of the whole, not the whole itself. Oneness is pervasive, never partial.

The Duality of Love

Love, on the other hand, is, in its essence, a dualistic concept, for how could we know love unless we knew the opposite of love?

Love cannot exist without hate anymore than light can exist without darkness.

No matter how we stretch the concept of love—explaining it as divine or as the glue that holds the universe together—we can only understand love in contrast with other emotions.

Love depends on our knowing anger, resentment, bitterness, hate, and all the other negative emotions. Love is not one, but always one-half of two or more. It cannot exist without an opposite.

Oneness Does Not Equal Love

Therefore, oneness (everything) cannot be equated with or reduced to love (one-half of a dualistic concept). The two are qualitatively different.

Saying that God is both one (everything) and only love (limited) is like saying that the universe is expansive in all directions forever and at the same time that the universe is only our little planet.

We cannot have it both ways.

Love is a part of oneness, just like the Earth is a part of the universe.

The whole cannot be reduced to its parts.

Cherry Picking Leads to Confusion

Most of the world’s scriptures, philosophies, and theologies have evolved over hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. If people in the spiritual community want to create their own theology, they need to understand the fundamental concepts of the philosophy they are picking from.

True spirituality is not assembled through lists of personal likes and dislikes, but rather through communal exploration, personal experiences, deep contemplation, and intellectual integrity.

We can only mix and match when we understand the essential principles of interspirituality and how important concepts fit together.

How Experifaith Can Help

It is my belief that the Experifaith model can be a helpful tool for those who want to engage in such an exploration with some consistency.

The model does two things pertinent to this article.

1) Helps people understand how the religions of the world fit together.

2) Allows the modern spiritual seeker to explore interspiritual elements from all the great wisdom traditions without conflating nonduality with duality.

Whether you use my model or not, make sure that you understand as much as possible about the religious and spiritual traditions you are picking from so you don’t accidentally wade into a philosophical quagmire.

Gudjon Bergmann
Author & Interfaith Minister

Learn more about Experifaith and get a free web version of the book.

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