The Last Dualism 1 – What Is Truly Non-Dual?

Beyond the Confusion of Experience, Metaphor, and Ontology

In recent decades, few terms have gained as much traction in spiritual and philosophical circles as “non-duality.” From Eastern teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Dzogchen, to Western spiritual movements, therapy sessions, and even casual Instagram posts, the term has become a kind of shorthand for ultimate truth, inner peace, and liberation from the ego. On the surface, the surge of interest in non-duality appears as a promising sign—humanity moving beyond fragmentation, beyond oppositions, beyond the illusion of separateness.

But the question must be asked: what is truly non-dual?

The vast popularity of the term conceals a deep ambiguity. Under its broad umbrella, we find not only profound insights but also profound contradictions. Teachers who speak of the “unity of all things” often dismiss form, body, and time as illusions. Traditions that proclaim “there is no other” maintain dualistic cosmologies of ignorance and enlightenment, illusion and reality, bondage and liberation. And in many cases, the non-dual vision offered amounts to little more than a pleasant psychological state—an escape from pain, from identity, or from thought itself.

This article is a call to go deeper: beyond experiences, metaphors, and spiritual atmospheres—toward a true understanding of what non-duality must mean, if it is to be more than a beautiful contradiction.

The Popular Appeal of Non-Duality

Something about the idea of oneness resonates intuitively. We long to feel whole, undivided, free from inner conflict and external opposition. The language of non-duality promises this: “You are not separate,” “There is only now,” “Everything is one.”

These messages appeal to a deep yearning for belonging and clarity, especially in a world marked by fragmentation and ideological strife. In that sense, the popularity of non-dual teachings is understandable and even necessary. But this intuitive appeal hides a danger: when we fail to distinguish levels of meaning, we risk replacing dualistic metaphysics with spiritualized versions of the same contradiction.

The problem is not in the desire for unity—it is in the confusion of unity with disappearance, the assumption that for things to be one, they must lose their distinctness or become unreal. This assumption is what must be brought to light.

Experiential Non-Duality: States of Silence and Unity

Many teachings that speak of non-duality are referring, first and foremost, to experiential states. In meditation, psychedelics, trauma dissolution, or deep prayer, individuals report sensations of boundary loss, silence, union, and timeless awareness. These are often described as “non-dual” states: the subject-object distinction fades, thought disappears, the ego dissolves, and what remains is a kind of boundless presence or being.

There is no doubt that such states can be transformative. They may reduce suffering, soften the sense of isolation, and lead to new perspectives. But they are still experiences—they arise, endure, and pass away. They occur within a field of time, even when they seem to transcend it. They do not, by themselves, prove or disprove anything about what reality is. They are moments, not metaphysics.

If non-duality is to mean more than a temporary psychological event, we must move from experience to ontology. We must ask: not what feels undivided, but what is undivided?

Metaphorical Non-Duality: Everything Is One (But Some Things Are More One Than Others)

A second and perhaps more subtle form of non-duality appears in symbolic or metaphorical language. Many traditions speak of the universe as a dream, of the self as a wave in the ocean, or of reality as a dance of light. These metaphors often suggest that multiplicity is not ultimately real—that all things are expressions of a single Source, Brahman, the Tao, or pure awareness. The world of form, in this view, is a transient mask, a surface appearance covering a deeper unity.

Again, such metaphors can be valuable—they loosen rigid egoic perspectives and open us to mystery. But they often carry a hidden hierarchy: the formless is real, form is illusory. The eternal is true, the finite is deceptive. This is not non-duality. It is a new form of dualism, in which the One is pitted against the many, Being against becoming, light against darkness.

This contradiction is often invisible, because it is cloaked in spiritual language. But it amounts to a metaphysical negation of the world that appears, of the body, of history, of love and suffering and time.

Even in the declaration ‘all is one,’ we often hear a whisper: ‘but some aspects of the One are more true than others.’ That whisper betrays the return of dualism through the back door.

Ontological Non-Duality: What Is, Cannot Not Be

What then is true non-duality?

It must begin not with experience, not with metaphor, but with the most radical truth: Being is, and cannot not be. This is not a mystical vision but a logical necessity—one that overturns the entire edifice of Western and Eastern metaphysics alike.

Emanuele Severino has shown that the ultimate dualism is not self and other, or spirit and matter, but Being and Nothingness. Every time we say that something comes into being or passes away, we presuppose that it emerges from and returns to non-being. But non-being is nothing. It cannot give rise to anything. It cannot receive anything. Thus, what is, is eternally—not in the sense of endless duration, but in the sense that it is necessary, unannihilable, indestructible.

This truth radically redefines non-duality. It means that every being, in its unique distinctness, belongs to the one necessary order of Being. Nothing can fall out of this order. Nothing can become or unbecome. What appears, appears necessarily—and cannot ever be reduced to illusion, dream, or error.

Why Most Non-Dualisms Are Still Dualisms

From this standpoint, we must confront a difficult but liberating truth: most so-called non-dual teachings are still dualistic at their root.

They posit a movement from ignorance to enlightenment, from illusion to reality, from form to formlessness. They speak of awakening, of liberation, of merging, of dissolving. But all of these imply becoming, and becoming implies the possibility of non-being. That is the seed of nihilism.

Even Advaita, in its classical formulation, asserts that the world is maya, illusion. The ego is not real. The self must return to Brahman. But if something is not real, then it is nothing—and if it appears, and yet is nothing, then nothing has become something. That is the ultimate contradiction.

No experience of unity, however powerful, can resolve this. Only the recognition that everything that is, is eternal, can overcome the last trace of dualism.

True Non-Duality as the Eternal Structure of Being

True non-duality is not an experience. It is not a feeling of oneness or a transcendent state. It is the understanding that there is no contradiction in Being. Everything that appears is a necessary and eternal aspect of the structure of reality. No being can pass into nothing. No distinction is a violation of unity.

This means that duality is not to be dissolved but understood in its eternal necessity. The self, the other, the world, the body—none of these are to be overcome. They are to be recognized in their non-contradictory eternity.

True non-duality is not a fusion of opposites, nor a mystical blur. It is the recognition that all beings, in their distinction, belong eternally to the one necessity: Being itself.

This is not a passive affirmation of all that happens. It is the seeing of the structure that makes appearance possible. It is the end of nihilism—not by clinging to unity, but by recognizing the eternal fullness of all that is.

Conclusion: A Call to Go Deeper

The time has come to move beyond the pleasant ambiguity of non-dual language. If unity is real, it must be grounded in the necessity of Being—not in temporary experience or poetic metaphor. If the self is not separate, it is because nothing ever is separate from Being—not because it dissolves into formless light.

This requires courage. It requires the letting go of old hierarchies, of the dream of disappearance, of the hope for an end to the world. It means recognizing the eternity of the body, the irreducibility of thought, the necessity of love and suffering.

This is the beginning of a deeper path. In the next article, we will confront one of the most persistent errors in spiritual thinking: the idea that the body is an illusion—a misunderstanding inherited from Plato, and still haunting today’s most refined teachings.

We are not fragments of a formless whole. We are eternal beings, not illusions to be dissolved. To recognize this is to begin the journey beyond even the last dualism.