James Douglas Ulrich had a great question about my post “Either/Or.” I’ll put the post, and then his response:
Either/or
Are you liberal or conservative? Do you believe in God or not? Whenever we reduce reality to such either/or categories we are in trouble regardless of which half we choose. The atheist Ingersoll and the believer Gandhi would have more in common with one another than either would have with the majority of their own group. Great souls stand like Colossus spanning the polarities of ordinary thought.
James Douglas Ulrich responds:
If you choose non-dualistic thinking as opposed to dualistic thinking, haven’t you made a dualistic judgement? dualistic or non dualistic, let’ s see. alright, all you non-dualists, you’re the good guys.
Great question. And from a dualistic perspective it would be a logical “check mate.” But to transcend that dilemma, let me compare polarized thinking as seeing in black and white and non-dualist thinking as seeing in color. There is another monist option popular among mystics to say the world is really white and black is an illusion or vice versa, but for today’s conversation let me compare seeing in black and white and seeing in color.
Someone who sees in color isn’t saying blank and white are wrong. She or he isn’t refuting dualism in a dualistic fashion, but contextualizing those shades within a spectrum of color invisible to those who only see in black and white. Or so it seems to me. What do you think?