Spinoza's Non-dual philosophy

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

A Jewish friend of mind has nudged

me into thinking about Spinoza's non-dual identification of 'God' and 'Nature',

and 'his view of freedom as a liberation of mind which is so crucial to

his ethics'.

'God'

To me, what Spinoza calls 'God' is an ultimately knowing subject: found present

always in each personality, and everywhere throughout the entire

universe of happenings that any personality perceives or thinks about or feels.

That subject is a knowing presence shared in common by all different persons,

beneath all differences of personality. The knowing of that subject is thus

utterly impersonal. Perceiving and thinking and feeling are personal actions: of

body, sense and mind. They differ from person to person, and they change in

course of time. It's through these personal actions that a variety of objects

and happenings appear, in such different and changing ways. As we thus perceive

a variety of differing and changing appearances, we have in the end no option

but to reflect back to that ultimately knowing subject: whose presence stays

everywhere and always the same, at the inmost depth of each person's

experience.

'Nature'

Wherever some external world is taken to be known outside of personality, this

so-called 'knowing' is a changing act, of bodily and sensual and mental

personality. But no such acts can amount to anything more than the production

of appearances. The actions of our bodies bring our senses into contact with

objects, and thus produce a variety of changing sensations. These sensations

are interpreted by thought: thus conceiving of objects which are related

together in external space, so that our minds may construct their

differentiated pictures of an objective world. This world and its pictured

objects are evaluated by feelings, thus animating our world pictures with

attractive or repulsive objects of desire or dislike. To me, what Spinoza calls

'Nature' is a complete realm of all differentiated show: including everything

that's ever shown produced, by each changing act of body, sense and mind.

Outside world and inner faculties of personality

When Nature is taken to be an external world, outside

our perceiving and conceiving personalities, it cannot manifest itself. An

outside world can't show itself, to anyone. For any object to appear, some

sensual or mental act must be involved, within some perceiving or conceiving

faculty. An outside world is thus always

incomplete -- always needing the addition of some further inner faculties in

order to manifest its appearances.

'Conatus' as an inwardly inspired 'striving' of Nature

But, when Nature is taken in its full completeness -- to

include all bodily and sensual and mental acts -- it may be conceived as 'self-manifesting'.

Then, Nature contains within itself all faculties and

acts which take part in the showing of appearances that come and go, in every

person's mind. Conceiving Nature thus, it cannot be driven from

outside. Its acts must always be inspired from within, for love of that 'God'

who is the ultimately knowing subject. (Thus, Aristotle spoke of 'phusis or 'Nature' as acting ultimately moved by love for the 'unmoved

mover'. And, in India, 'prakriti' or 'Nature' is said to act

for the sake of a disinterested witnessing principle called 'purusha'.)

Non-duality

As Nature's energy arises inwardly inspired from the

knowing subject, that subject gets expressed thereby, through all the changing

acts of show which come into appearance. Thus, every act expresses that one

knowing subject which Spinoza calls 'God'. Each act shows nothing else but that

one subject, which in itself admits no difference and no change. Just that

alone is all of the reality that's ever shown. It turns out that the knowing

subject is not different from the objects that are known. Knower and known are

not two, but only one. The words 'subjective' and 'objective' show two aspects

of one same reality. So also the words 'God' and 'Nature', as

Spinoza makes quite clear through his identification of what these two terms

mean. When 'God' is finally understood as purely subjective and 'Nature' as

completely objective, then it turns out that these two terms refer to one

identical reality -- no matter how paradoxical that seems to the habit-driven

picturing in which we so often and conflictingly believe.

Impersonality

As I interpret Spinoza's title Ethics

Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, I do not take this title to indicate

that Spinoza's basic aim was the construction of some abstract theoretical

description. To me, he chose Euclid's axiomatic method for its impersonality. This

choice of method shows that he aims, through clarifying reason, at a truth that

is finally impersonal, quite independent of all personal and cultural

differences. And he seeks such an impersonal truth in the domain of ethics, which

investigates our motivating values. In this investigation, he reasons abstractly,

from explicitly stated assumptions. But the aim is not directed outward, to

calculate predictions and to thus enable the achievement of objects in the

world. The investigation is aimed inwardly, at clarifying values that we each

hold somehow dear at heart. The aim here is no object to be personally gained, but

only an impersonal truth that ultimately motivates us all.

Degrees

of knowledge

Spinoza's inward reasoning is clearly shown by his three degrees of

knowledge. The first consists of

'opinion' (Latin 'opinio') and 'imagination' ('imaginatio'): which are described

as inadequate, because they are driven from outside by blind force of external

habit. The second degree of knowledge uses a measured 'reason' ('ratio') that

enables more adequate ideas: which people can make more explicit and thus

better communicate, through logical discussion in a variety of scientific

disciplines. Beyond these two degrees of knowledge, a third is called

'intuitive knowledge' ('scientia intuitiva'). This is a sort of limiting ideal:

which our minds can aspire to approach and sometimes even touch upon, so that

'the whole system of Nature in all its richness is grasped in one comprehensive

act of vision' (to quote from Frederick Coplestone's A History of Philosophy).

Freedom

As persons in the world, our bodily and sensual and mental acts are driven

from outside, through chains of cause and effect that extend throughout all

space and time. Thus seen as driven from outside, our personal acts cannot

rightly be understood as free. But by reflecting inward, we can stand deeper

back into the depth of our personalities. And thus reflecting deeper in, we can

stand more and more detached: so that our knowing gets progressively clarified

and we are less and less enslaved by the ill-considered and blind passions that

have driven us.

So far, I find no real difference between

what little I have read of Spinoza and what I have learned from rather more

study of Advaita Vedanta philosophy here in India. But Advaita Vedanta does

speak of reflecting all the way back to a position of complete detachment, from

which reality is known completely free of any compromising involvement with our

driven personalities. Did Spinoza ever speak thus of attaining a freedom that

is found beyond all compromise?

Ananda

[bdbabiak]

There is no difference whatsoever between Spinoza and the best Advaita. He says that there is only one without a second, pure existence-awareness, and mind and matter are two of its modes of appearance. He calls pure-awareness God, and says everything is appearance in this pure-awareness. This pure awareness is pure existence, pure bliss, pure knowing, and not limited in any way. All appearances are limitations, or what he calls finite. The human consciousness is really just the thought, 'I am this body-mind' arising in this pure awareness. There really is no actually consciousness or you apart from pure awareness, and you are that. The human identity is the various thoughts and perceptions as a group that hang off the body-mind thought passing in awareness, as he discusses in Ethics. It is quite simply the cleanest, most logical exposition of non-dualism you'll ever see. Actually many popular teachers set up a human ego trying to 'rest in awareness' or 'see one's true nature' and thus preserve a subtle dualism. In his Ethics, Spinoza makes no such self-contradictory mistake. Pure non-dualism, as he says, 'There is only one substance and no other, and all things, matter, thoughts, are appearances or modes of this one substance.'

 

In some ways he's more correct than traditional teaching, as they often appeal to the human phenomenological experience of being as proof of pure-awareness, which is suggesting that human experience is some sort of actual existant or has some validity, which it really doesn't. He merely demonstrates how dualism is self-contradictory and illogical to the mind, without having to define the non-dual, appeal or bolster the human ego and so on. In fact, the word 'non-dual' is really a denial of the dual, not defining the supposed nondual, which would be some sort of human concept always. Teaching should, like Spinoza's, never deviate from merely rejecting the dual, not making weird appeals to human subjective consciousness and they telling you how to get rid of it - that's all kind of insane if you think about it.

 

Spinoza's quite sane. Quite rational. Leaves Nisargadatta, Buddha, Ramana and most others in the proverbial dust of their concepts and ego.