How to Attain Enlightenment: The Vision of Non-Duality by James Swartz

Author:James Swartz [Swartz, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781591811619
Publisher: Sentient Publications
Published: 2010-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Primary Devotion

Love of God is the last stage in the evolution of the soul. It is not liberation, however, because the devotee still takes God to be an object, someone or something other than his or herself. Unconditional love of God has been achieved, but non-dual understanding has not happened.

Since time immemorial, an intense debate has been going on in the spiritual world about the issue of the identity of God and man. On one hand, the dualists say that man is not God and can never become God. They say that the best we can do is to learn to love God unconditionally and turn our lives over to God completely, accepting everything that happens as the will of God. “Why would you want to become God,” they say? “If you become God, you do not enjoy the experience of God. It is much better to experience God than to become God.”

“If you knew the nature of God you would not say such things,” the non-dualists reply. “Becoming God is not a problem because God includes the world of experience. So when you become God you do not lose your experience of God, you gain a greater identity. You do lose something, but it is something that you will be happy to lose—the belief that you are separate. When you see yourself as separate, you are dependent on God for everything. This does not free you from your desires and fears. You have to rely on God to fulfill them and you must suffer while you wait. The very fact that you pray to God means that you are tormented by your desires, beliefs and opinions. When you become God, you lose your sense of separateness, incompleteness and inadequacy. Your mind is perfectly calm and happy. You do not need to accept anything, because whatever you have or do not have at each and every moment, is seen as God. You need not strive to make yourself better, because you are fine as you are.”

To which the dualists reply, “Why is complete dependence on God a problem? We are like babies and have to do nothing because our Mother-Father God takes care of our every need. We remain blissful all the time and our minds remain perfectly calm because we accept everything that happens as the grace of God. You say you are one with God, but you did not create the universe.”

The non-dualists reply, “What universe? We see only eternal, unborn, non-dual awareness everywhere. There is no creation. It is a belief you have unwittingly accepted because you take yourself to be the body. Besides, we do not say that we are one with God. We say that there is no duality, so the notion that you and God are not the same is just a fantasy. It is all God.”

Is there actually a difference between these two points of view? If faith in God never wavers, then the effect of dualistic devotion on the individual is the same as the effect of the non-dual realization “I am God.

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